The language of ‘self-defence’ has become a shield behind which collective punishment is inflicted upon more than two million Palestinians
THE destruction of Gaza is no longer merely a war. It is the systematic dismantling of a people, their history, and their right to exist on their own land. Every hospital bombed, every school flattened, every starving child trapped beneath rubble exposes a brutal truth: this is not about “security.” It is about domination, occupation, and control.
Israel’s actions in Gaza have crossed every moral and legal boundary recognised by humanity. Entire neighbourhoods have been erased from the map. Civilians are denied food, medicine, water, and electricity. Aid convoys are obstructed while desperate families are forced to survive in conditions unfit for human life. The language of “self-defence” has become a shield behind which collective punishment is inflicted upon more than two million Palestinians.
According to humanitarian agencies and UN estimates, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, the overwhelming majority of them civilians, including thousands of women and children. More than 70 percent of homes, schools, roads, and civilian infrastructure have reportedly been damaged or destroyed, while hundreds of thousands face famine-like conditions due to blockade and bombardment. Generations are being traumatised in real time. These are not accidental outcomes of war; they reflect the deliberate scale of devastation inflicted upon an already besieged population.
Humanitarian Catastrophe
The humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Gaza has few parallels in recent history. Doctors are performing surgeries without anaesthesia. Families queue for hours for a piece of bread or a bucket of unsafe water. Children who survive bombings are growing up orphaned, displaced, and psychologically scarred. Journalists, aid workers, and medical personnel — people protected under international law — have themselves become targets of attack. What is being destroyed is not only infrastructure, but the social and moral fabric necessary for human survival.
But Gaza is not Israel’s land to seize.
The Palestinians are not foreigners in Gaza. They are its people — rooted in its soil through generations of memory, labour, culture, and resistance. No amount of military power can erase that truth. Occupation does not create legitimacy. Violence does not create ownership.
What is unfolding today is inseparable from a larger political and economic project. Gaza occupies a strategically critical coastline along the Mediterranean Sea. Control over Gaza means influence over maritime access, trade routes, offshore gas reserves, and regional power balances. Analysts and rights advocates have repeatedly warned that behind the rhetoric of “eliminating Hamas” lies a deeper ambition: depopulating Gaza, fragmenting Palestinian society, and tightening Israeli control over land and resources.
This is colonial logic in its modern form.
Throughout history, powerful nations have justified conquest by portraying the occupied population as expendable, backward, or dangerous. Palestinians are now enduring that same machinery of dehumanisation. Their suffering is sanitised into military language while their dead are reduced to statistics. Yet behind every statistic is a human being: a child crushed under concrete, a mother searching for bread, a father carrying the body of his daughter through smoke and dust.
The world cannot pretend ignorance anymore.
International law is unambiguous. Collective punishment is illegal. Forced displacement is illegal. The targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure violates the Geneva Conventions. The International Court of Justice itself has warned of plausible genocidal acts. Yet the killings continue because powerful governments continue to arm, finance, and diplomatically shield Israel from accountability.
This complicity stains the conscience of the international community.
Particularly disturbing is the silence — and in some cases active support — from governments that claim to uphold democracy and human rights. Strategic alliances, arms deals, and geopolitical calculations have been placed above human life. Palestinians are effectively being told that their lives matter less than military partnerships and economic interests.
Question Mark on India’s Position
India’s position has also caused deep anguish among many who once viewed the country as a historic supporter of anti-colonial struggles and Palestinian self-determination. The growing military, diplomatic, and economic closeness between India and Israel, even amidst mounting civilian deaths in Gaza, represents a painful departure from the moral foundations of non-alignment and international solidarity that India once proudly championed.
But history teaches us something important: occupations and systems of apartheid eventually collapse under the weight of injustice. The struggle of the Palestinian people is not simply about territory. It is about dignity, identity, memory, and the universal human right to live free from occupation and siege.
No state has the right to annihilate a population in pursuit of power. The world must move beyond empty statements of concern. There must be immediate and enforceable sanctions against Israel for violations of international law. Arms transfers must stop. Independent investigations into war crimes must proceed without political interference. Humanitarian aid must flow freely and safely. Above all, the Palestinian people must be recognised not as obstacles to regional strategy, but as a nation entitled to freedom, justice, and self-determination.
Global Hypocrisy
Gaza is not real estate. It is not a military prize. It is not a bargaining chip for regional dominance.
It is the homeland of a people who refuse to disappear.
And if the world continues to watch silently while Gaza is starved, bombed, and buried beneath rubble, then history will remember not only the brutality of the occupier — but also the cowardice of those governments, corporations, and leaders who enabled a genocide in full public view and still dared to call themselves civilised.
The bloodshed in Gaza is no longer only Israel’s crime; it has become the moral collapse of the international community itself. Every government that continues to arm, finance, justify, or remain silent in the face of mass civilian slaughter has forfeited the right to speak the language of human rights, democracy, or international law. The ruins of Gaza now stand as a monument not only to Israeli brutality, but to global hypocrisy on an unforgivable scale. History will not merely ask who dropped the bombs. It will ask who supplied them, who defended them, who profited from them, and who watched an entire people being erased while issuing empty statements of “concern.” The shame of Gaza will haunt this generation of world leaders long after the smoke clears and the mass graves are counted.
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Ranjan Solomon is a writer, researcher and activist based in Goa. He has worked in social movements since he was 19 years of age. The views expressed here are the author’s own and Clarion India does not necessarily share or subscribe to them. He can be contacted at ranjan.solomon@gmail.com
