Netanyahu Escalates Gaza City Again — But The Walls Are Closing In

Right, so the United Nations has finally said it out loud: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Not “alleged atrocities,” not “serious concerns,” but the crime of crimes, spelled out in black and white, fully evidenced after years of investigation. And how does the so-called civilised world respond? With the usual theatre of excuses. Trump assents to the invasion of Gaza City. Marco Rubio calls Palestinians “barbaric animals” like a dutiful echo of the standard Zionist genocidal sneer. And Israel’s own defence minister boasts of burning Gaza, as if pride in extermination were a statesman’s credential. Meanwhile, Gaza itself is reduced to rubble, schools and clinics bombed, a million people handed a death sentence in the words of Medecins Sans Frontieres. The UN has named Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide. But will anything actually change because of it?
Right, so it should have been the headline of the decade. It should have been the wake up call to world leaders globally. A United Nations Commission of Inquiry, after months of investigation, has published its findings and said the word most governments have twisted themselves into knots to avoid: genocide. Not alleged war crimes. Not possible crimes against humanity. Genocide — the deliberate destruction of a people, in whole or in part. The first time a UN body has used the word. The charge written into international law after the Holocaust itself as we know it to be. The one crime the world swore would never again be tolerated. And yet here we are, in 2025, with the UN itself saying it is happening in Gaza, and the are bombs still falling harder than ever.
The Commission did not hedge its language. It found reasonable grounds to believe that Israel has committed four out of the five acts defined under the Genocide Convention: killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting life conditions calculated to bring about destruction, and preventing births within the group. The one act it did not confirm was the forcible transfer of children, but four out of five is enough to leave no doubt, it only takes one. Most damning of all, the Commission concluded that genocidal intent — the hardest part to prove in law — was the only reasonable inference that could be drawn from Israel’s conduct. The destruction of Gaza is not an accident. It is not collateral damage. It is a deliberate policy.
This verdict should have stopped the world in its tracks today. It should have forced every Western capital that preaches the language of “Never Again” to finally confront the contradiction between their slogans and their silence. It should have forced arms deals to be cancelled en masse, trade preferences to be suspended, and sanctions to be applied. Instead, the reaction has been next to nothing. As the UN speaks of genocide, the United States doubles down on its role as Israel’s shield. Donald Trump has literally given assent to the campaign of destruction in Gaza City. Marco Rubio has flown in to join the chorus, parroting Israel’s rhetoric and adding his own flourish by calling Palestinians “barbaric animals” directly to Netanyahu’s grinning face. And rather than show shame, Israel has responded with boasts. Defence Minister Israel Katz has declared proudly that Gaza is burning, his words timed to coincide with the most violent strikes on Gaza City since October 7th, 2023.
This is impunity laid bare and they are boasting about it. The UN names genocide. The US offers cover. Israeli officials boast of burning cities. The circle of destruction closes with no consequence in sight. Yet to call this a closed triangle — Israel killing, America shielding, the rest of the world watching — is to let too many off the hook. Because under the Genocide Convention, every state on earth is obligated to act once genocide is known. And now that the UN has said it plainly, there can be no more excuses, no pretence of doubt, no hiding behind the fog of war. The risk was already recognised by the International Court of Justice back in January of last year. The UN Commission now says the acts are happening. The evidence is overwhelming. The duty to prevent and to punish is real. And still the world sits back.
To understand the scale of this abdication, we have to look first at the Commission’s findings themselves. This was not the work of a partisan NGO or a group of activists that Israel and its defenders could dismiss with the usual slurs. It was led by Navi Pillay, a former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in the aftermath of that genocide. It used the standards of the Genocide Convention itself. Its conclusions are rooted in law as much as in morality. The acts it catalogues are not vague. Killing members of the group is self-evident in the tens of thousands of Palestinian dead, most of them civilians. Causing serious bodily or mental harm is visible in the mass maiming of children, the spread of trauma across generations, the deliberate targeting of hospitals and medics. Inflicting life conditions calculated to destroy is seen in the starvation policies, the cutting off of water and sanitation, the forced displacements into zones where no life is sustainable. Preventing births is documented through the destruction of Gaza’s fertility clinics and the denial of reproductive health services.
What makes this irrefutable is that intent, the specific mental element required for genocide, is made clear not just by patterns of destruction but by words. Israel’s leaders have supplied their own prosecutors with the evidence. Defence Minister Yoav Gallant called Palestinians “human animals.” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for Gaza to be erased. And now Katz brags of burning Gaza itself. The Commission’s conclusion is simple: these are not slips of the tongue, not battlefield hyperbole. They are evidence of state policy aimed at the destruction of a people.
This is why the finding matters so much. It is not just another report of war crimes. It is a declaration that the threshold crime of crimes has been crossed. Which brings us to the second, unavoidable question: how does the United States respond to this? Because the answer tells us everything about why Israel acts with such impunity.
Marco Rubio comments are especially damning, parroting Israel’s own genocidal language as he has. His description of Palestinians as “barbaric animals” is not an unfortunate phrase. It is a deliberate echo of the very rhetoric the former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant used in October 2023, rhetoric already flagged by the Commission as evidence of intent. When a senior US senator repeats that language to Netanyahu’s face, he confirms that Washington is not merely shielding genocide but actively sharing in its incitement.
Under Article I of the Genocide Convention, states are obligated not only to prevent genocide but also not to be complicit in it. The International Court of Justice, in the Bosnia v. Serbia case, ruled that a state can be held responsible for aiding or abetting genocide even if it is not the primary perpetrator. The United States, by continuing to supply weapons, by vetoing UN action, by providing political endorsement and rhetorical support, is plainly complicit. It is not a bystander. It is a sponsor. And that sponsorship has consequences. Israel’s burning of Gaza has detonated into something that cannot be walked back on — the UN’s verdict of genocide stamped into the record, Israel branded as a genocidal state. The US is begging to be dragged to court over this.
But this is what allows Israel to act with such arrogance. It knows that the veto will block any Security Council resolution. It knows that arms will keep flowing. It knows that no matter how brazen the boasts, no matter how openly ministers speak of burning cities, Washington will protect them. That is why Katz can brag of fire. That is why Gallant could call Palestinians animals. That is why Netanyahu can launch his most violent strikes since October 7th, flattening towers and killing dozens in Gaza City in what is presented as a “final push” to clear the city. The shield is absolute, so the arrogance can be limitless, but what should never have happened again after the Holocaust is happening again. That it is a self declared Jewish state doing that, makes the spectacle all the more obscene.
And it is arrogance on full display. Katz’s boast that Gaza is burning is not a statement of necessity. It is not couched in the language of counter-terrorism or unfortunate collateral damage. It is gloating. It is performance. It is saying to the world: we can burn a city, admit it, and you will do nothing. That is not military necessity. That is boastful impunity.
And look at the timing. This latest assault on Gaza City is the heaviest since October 7th, 2023. That date is not incidental. The entire campaign was justified on the back of Hamas’s attack that day. Gaza City was hammered in those early weeks. Now, almost two years later, just weeks from that anniversary, the same city is again being flattened, as if to close the circle. Francesca Albanese, the UN’s Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, has said this plainly. She has warned that the purpose of this assault is to make Gaza City uninhabitable, to render it the “last piece of Gaza” that must be destroyed in order to force displacement. She has accused Israel of ethnic cleansing, using unconventional weapons and bombardments not to win battles but to make civilian life impossible.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, has provided the details. In just four days, ten UNRWA buildings were hit. Seven schools. Two clinics. These were not empty structures. They were being used as shelters by thousands of displaced civilians. He has warned that there is literally no safe place left in Gaza City or the north. Healthcare in the Al-Shati camp has collapsed. Water and sanitation services are running at half their previous capacity. Displacement has become a cycle without end, families forced from one ruin to another, each time bombed again.
Médecins Sans Frontières has put the warning in starkest terms. The Gaza City offensive, they say, is a death sentence for one million Palestinians. That is not metaphor. It is medical fact. Newborns, critically ill patients, the elderly — none of them can survive forced evacuation into already collapsing areas. Sanitation breakdown means disease will spread. Water shortages mean people will die within days. To order a million people to move when there is nowhere safe to go is not protection. It is extermination by attrition.
Put all these alarms together now. Albanese calls it ethnic cleansing. Lazzarini says there is no safe place. MSF says it is a death sentence. The UN Commission calls it genocide. These are not isolated or partisan voices. They are the UN’s own human rights machinery, the largest humanitarian agency in Gaza, and one of the most respected medical NGOs in the world. They converge on the same conclusion: Gaza City is being deliberately destroyed to make life impossible for its people. Israel is not only levelling a city. It is branding itself forever as a genocidal state, its name fused with Gaza’s destruction.
And yet what is the response of the so-called international community? Some European governments wring their hands but do nothing. Britain’s foreign secretary insists the UK has not “concluded” that genocide is occurring because intent is supposedly unproven, even as the UN says intent is the only reasonable inference. Germany continues to ship arms. The European Union dithers over suspending trade privileges. Inaction is dressed up as caution. But it is not caution. It is betrayal. Because the Genocide Convention does not say states must wait for a final court judgment. It says states must act once there is a serious risk. That risk was recognised by the ICJ back in January of last year. Now the UN Commission has declared genocide is happening it is a reminder of state failure, its not a call to do what needs doing, its reminder of what they failed to do more than 18 months ago. Every state that remains silent is not neutral. It is complicit.
This is why it is wrong to speak of a triangle. It is not just Israel at one corner, the US at another, and the rest of the world as spectators. It is a pyramid. At the top sits Israel, committing the acts. Holding it up is the United States, shielding and sponsoring. And beneath them, forming the wide base that allows the structure to stand, are all the other states that know their obligations and refuse to meet them. Each silence, each abstention, each arms sale, is another stone in the pyramid of complicity.
And then comes the final word from UNRWA itself. Philippe Lazzarini has described Gaza as a wasteland. Not a battlefield. Not a city under siege. A wasteland. The term is chilling because it captures the essence of what has been done. That it has already happened. The world failed to stop it. Gaza has been stripped of life, reduced to rubble, denied the means to survive. This is what genocide looks like in practice: a land emptied, a people starved, a future destroyed and despite playing out in real time for all of us to see, yet our governments have remained unmoved and complicit by default.
So here is the verdict. The UN says genocide. MSF says death sentence. Albanese says ethnic cleansing. UNRWA says wasteland. The evidence is overwhelming, the alarms are blaring, and yet the bombs keep falling with American assent. History will not record this as a debate over definitions. It will record it as a moment of complicity. Because what good is the Genocide Convention if states can ignore it? What good is “Never Again” if it applies only to enemies and never to allies? What good is international law if it cannot prevent the deliberate destruction of a people in real time?
The wasteland is not only in Gaza. It is in the institutions that promised protection and delivered nothing. It is in the hollow rhetoric of governments that swore Never Again and now shrug. It is in the media that buries genocide findings behind euphemisms. It is in the silence of states that know their obligations and choose cowardice. The wasteland is legal, political, moral. Israel is branded a genocidal state, and the United States branded as its shield. The only question left is how far America and its allies will go in defending the indefensible — and what happens when the shield itself finally cracks as history tells us it will inevitably do?
Where Gaza is reduced to a wasteland though, the warnings are that the rest of the Middle East is on notice that they could be next, so much so, that at the pan Arab Summit in Doha, the scene of recent Israeli strikes itself, Egypt and Iran have come together on the same page to call for action and unity in order to shield the rest of the Middle East from coming for them. But will the monarchies of the Gulf stop counting their oil and their money for long enough to realise what they say is true? Check out the details of that story in this video recommendation here as your suggested next watch.
Please do also hit like, share and subscribe if you haven’t done so already so as to ensure you don’t miss out on all new daily content as well as spreading the word and helping to support the channel at the same time which is very much appreciated, holding power to account for ordinary working class people and I will hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.