There is a human cost to everything. And we are seeing, in real time, the devastating impact of the wholly disproportionate and utterly horrific bombardment of civilians in Gaza: the mangled children, the broken bodies, the desperate, wailing women, the families bombed as they shelter in schools, the doctors – sometimes operating without anesthetic – begging for help, an entire people brought to absolute despair.
It is 17 months since I wrote that Israel’s vengeance meant that “everywhere is death and destruction and cruelty and chaos” a collective punishment turning Gaza into a hellscape. Since then, the situation has become immeasurably worse – and shrill claims of anti-Semitism have been joined by ludicrous accusations of ‘blood libel’ against critics of Israel’s actions.
I had thought the extent of human suffering could not possibly reach new depths until I listened to this interview with Tanya Haj-Hassan, a paediatric intensive care doctor, who spoke to Sky News about the dreadful, unimaginable moment when Dr Alaa al-Najjar, a respected pediatrician, saw the charred bodies of her own children being brought to Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, after an Israeli missile hit her home.
Nine out of Dr Alaa’s ten children were killed when her home was bombed by Israel. Their names were Yahya, Rakan, Raslan, Gebran, Eve, Rival, Sayden, Luqman, and Sidra. Her colleagues wept and fainted as the small, burned bodies of the children were brought in to the hospital. Dr Alaa’s husband, Hamdi, also a doctor, was grievously injured by the bomb. Yesterday, he also died from his injuries. Her sole surviving child, Adam, underwent emergency surgery as his left arm “was just about hanging off,” the doctor who operated on him told the BBC. When the little boy “came out of the operating room, he called out for his sister Eve, saying, “There’s blood on the tree”.
Nothing I can write here can convey the extent of the grief and terror and horror visited upon that family. I’m one of nine children. I simply cannot envisage it: almost everyone I love most gone in an instant – hell and hatred and pain and indescribable suffering unleashed upon them. How could the mind bear such agony? How could the soul recover?
One of Dr Alaa’s relative, Youssef al-Najjar, told AP: “Enough! Have mercy on us! We plead to all countries, the international community, the people, Hamas, and all factions to have mercy on us.” Alas, there is no mercy in this pitiless, brutal war.
But wars are not simply fought with bombs and bullets and drones: they are also won with propaganda. And so, one of the chief talking point of the Israeli government and its military representatives and the supporters of same has been to accuse its critics of anti-Semitism.
How can criticism of the wilful bombing of hospitals and schools be “anti-Semitism”. Why is it “anti-Jewish” to bring attention to the threat of hunger and starvation for millions of people? Those of us who are horrified by the images of burning homes and dead bodies we are seeing on a daily basis aren’t asking Israel to stop because we hate Jews, but because the slaughter of our fellow human beings cannot continue.
And, yes, we were also sickened by the savage massacres perpetrated by Hamas of October 7th, and want the hostages returned. But the ongoing whole scale murder of innocent civilians is not a proportionate response.
Israel’s forces respond to criticism with stony defiance. Hamas is hiding in schools and hospitals, they say. Their missiles are targeted against Hamas militants, they insist, even as the UN says that more than 500 schools in Gaza (95% of the total number) will either need full reconstruction or major work to be functional again – while 400 schools received a direct hit.
“There is no humanity left in Gaza, and no humanity left as the world continues to watch day after day as families are bombed, burned alive and starved,” UNRWA said after yet another attack on yet another school.
Israel says Hamas is to blame because they are using civilians as human shields. But how can that be used as justification when it is surely evident to Hamas that Israel is willing to pulverise said supposed human shields? And isn’t Israel effectively using that convenient claim to allow them to commit the worst of what are generally held to be war crimes – bombing hospitals, churches, schools, refugee camps, women, children, the sick, the innocent – as they seek out Hamas.
We are simply expected to take Israel at their word when they insist that yet another missile aimed at yet another hospital or school or refugee camp – and yet further appalling scenes of death and horror – is justified because they claim they were aiming at Hamas and, presumably, the dead civilians are simply collateral damage. Reports from the UN on the targeting of hospitals in Gaza repeatedly refers to the IDF failing to provide evidence of their claims regarding Hamas targets. The international media are now banned from Gaza – a step which speaks for itself in terms of cover-up and concealment.
This repeated circumvention of the international rules of war has led to the most unrestrained brutality. The WHO has recorded 697 attacks on hospitals or health care centres and providers since October 2023. At least 94% of all hospitals in the Gaza Strip are damaged or destroyed, it adds. The UN estimates more than 1,000 healthcare workers have been killed in that time.
Hundreds of medical staff in Gaza have also been arrested by the Israelis, and doctors who have spoken publicly say they endured “brutal and constant violence and abuse” – with harrowing testimonies of the torture, beatings, starvation and humiliation they say they suffered during months of detention”.
A report by a UN Independent Commission found that “Israel has implemented a concerted policy to destroy the health-care system of Gaza”. But that concerted policy doesn’t seem to be directed solely at the health-care system. It is increasingly evident that what is at play here is not just terrible vengeance, not simply a desire to “open the gates of hell”, but a bid to empty Gaza of Palestinians.
After almost two years of war, less than 5 per cent of Gaza’s cropland can now be cultivated, the UN says – and its estimated that approximately 92 per cent of all residential buildings in Gaza – around 436,000 homes – have been damaged or destroyed since the start of the conflict. The strip has been reduced to ruins: a strategy that would, of course, facilitate the land grab that now seems increasingly likely given Netanyahu’s promise to “take control” and fight for “total victory”.
In the West Bank – where Hamas does not govern – Israeli settlers are using “violence and intimidation” to drive Palestinian families from their homes. That “creeping annexation” as Senator Michael McDowell called it, is really a form of terrorism practised with impunity as Jerusalem turns a blind eye and supports further settlements.
Against the overwhelming evidence of a ruthless, indiscriminate bombardment, and the growing public anger at same, supporters of Israel fall back on that shakiest of defences – slandering their critics. To the usual hysterical accusations of anti-Semitism is now added the almost bizarre charge of blood libel.
Blood libel has a specific meaning: an old and thoroughly disgusting accusation falsely laid against Jews claiming they practised ritualised murder, in particular the murder of children. To describe the condemnations of Israel’s actions as being blood libel is not just absurd, it is an attempt to deflect from the indefensible actions of the Israeli forces pulverising Gaza.
My colleague and friend John McGuirk takes a different view on this conflict than I do, which he is entitled to do, but I take issue with depicting an Taoiseach’s criticism of Israel’s actions as “blood libel”.
It is true that in the propaganda war around the long and bloody conflict in the region, statements are sometimes made which are incorrect or which not verified – such as the claim, made by a senior UN official that 14,000 babies would die in Gaza within 48 hours if Israel did not let food through. Instead, it was clarified that a report had warned that 14,100 severe cases of acute malnutrition were expected to occur between April 2025 and March 2026 among children aged between six months and five years in Gaza. This brought a flurry of accusations of “lies” and “blood libel” and the disquieting assertion that children up to 5 weren’t really babies, as if that matters when you are starving.
But isn’t the clarification almost equally disturbing? Shouldn’t we be appalled by the expectation of 14,000 infants suffering severe acute malnutrition – which is really another word for starvation, and being at risk of dying from same – whenever it is expected? And isn’t it understandable that it is easy to believe the worst of Israel in this regard when it had blocked all shipments of humanitarian aid, including food and medical supplies, leaving an already deeply traumatised people close to famine according to the IPC? Donald Trump, normally a staunch supporter of Israel, said that “a lot of people are starving in Gaza”. Some truths are impossible to ignore.
In fact, this conflict has repeatedly seen Israel decry disinformation as evidence of ill will towards them, but then go on to take precisely those actions they so hotly claimed painted them in a bad light. One example is when the historic St. Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church was bombed by Israeli forces literally days after Israel’s supporters had en masse complained about fake news claiming the church had previously been targeted. Similarly, the world’s media was tied up in knots after Israel accused them of reporting in bad faith that it had bombed Al Ahli Arab Hospital in October 2023 – but it has, in fact, bombed the hospital since then, and clearly has no issue with bombing hospitals in general.
Israel’s supporters claim that politicians have repeated unverified claims in an attempt to demonise them: but the truth is that it is their own brutal, indefensible actions have made Israel the focus of so much criticism. The unsubtle threats of repercussions for Ireland for calling out Israel’s brutality are the actions of a bully whose strength is mostly gained from a powerful ally, albeit one that may, at this point, be concerned that Israel has gone too far.
Anti-Semitism is to be deplored, always. But it is not blood libel to bring attention to, and roundly condemn, the killing of innocent children by Israeli bombs – or to criticise the blockading of aid needed to feed hungry children and families.
It is not anti-Semitic to believe, as many people in Ireland do, that Israel’s actions in Gaza may now amount to genocide. More than 54,000 Palestinians have been killed, and another 124,000 injured out of a population of just 2.2 million people.
The Times of Israel reports that, last month, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich “shared his vision for the Gaza Strip, predicting that within half a year, the population of the territory would be confined to just a narrow swath of land, with the remainder of the enclave “totally destroyed”.”
“Within a few months, we will be able to declare that we have won. Gaza will be totally destroyed,” Smotrich said. “In another six months, Hamas won’t exist as a functioning entity.”
He told the listening audience that the population of Gaza, some 2.3 million Palestinians, would be “concentrated” in a narrow strip of land between the Egyptian border and the so-called Morag Corridor, which runs the width of Gaza between Khan Younis and the border city of Rafah.
The area would be a “humanitarian” zone, the Religious Zionism leader said, “absent of Hamas and terrorism.”
Seeking to totally destroy a region and confine its people to a narrow strip sounds very much like genocide – and while it is perfectly fair to challenge an Taoiseach on his claim, accusing him of blood libel is ridiculous and, or would be if what is happening wasn’t so tragic. Likewise, baseless and historically illiterate attempts to paint Ireland as an anti-Semitic country because of strong opposition to the elimination of Palestine is seen by most people for what it is: an increasingly shrill tactic seeking to draw attention from the slaughter.
There are, sadly, many other ongoing conflicts and travesties killing innocent people throughout the world. But Israel’s supporters seem to demand that unless equal attention is given to each and every one, criticism of their actions in Gaza is invalid. That’s nonsense. Israel’s destruction of Gaza is made possible because of support from the United States: and the establishment of Israel was first proposed by Britain. Its entirely understandable that the West feels drawn to this conflict and repulsed by the horror that we are all witnessing day after day on our screens.
The prolonged conflict is also spreading to other jurisdictions with shocking consequences: the cold-blooded murder in Washington of two staffers at an Israeli embassy, and the attack on a group gathered in Colorado in support of Israeli hostages by a man who shouted “free Palestine” as he tossed Molotov cocktails at them.
And last night, the UN secretary-general called for an independent investigation into claims that Israeli forces had opened fire on Palestinians waiting to collect aid. This conflict seems to have no end. Solzhenitsyn wrote that the line separating good and evil passes not between states, but through the human heart. The terrible irony in this dreadful conflict is that the Palestinians are also Semites. 80 years of an eye-for-an-eye has grown nothing but hatred.
Is it the case that Israel will push on and achieve what many believe has long been their aim: the appropriation of Gaza and the West Bank in its entirety, with Palestinians scattered to surrounding countries and the four corners of the earth? But that would leave them isolated and vulnerable and at risk from enmity now heightened and sharpened by years of war. As someone who believes that the Jewish people have a right to a homeland and to live in peace, that does not seem like a victory either.