Calls to Silence Critics of Israel's War on Gaza Intensifies
Netanyahu equates "Free Palestine" to Nazi rhetoric as he carries out horrific atrocities in Gaza.
The charred bodies of seven children arrived at the Nasser Medical Complex in southern Gaza as Dr. Alaa al-Najjar tried to save the lives of others in the emergency room. It didn’t take long for the pediatric doctor to realize that the young victims were her own kids, who were with their father in Khan Younis when the Israeli defense forces bombed their family home.
Dr. al-Najjar’s husband Hamdi, who’s also a doctor, survived the bombing. But the IDF’s attack killed nine of their ten children. The remains of their 7-month-old and 12-year-old are still missing. Although Israel has made its objective of ethnically cleansing Palestinians from Gaza through displacement, indiscriminate bombings and intentional starvation clear, the IDF is still regurgitating the same eye-roll-inducing excuse that they had no choice but to slaughter nine kids in their quest to “defeat Hamas.”
I personally don’t believe them and I have trouble accepting that anyone with a functioning brain does. In fact, I would ask Israel’s defenders to consider the moral take they’ve subscribed to in the name of Israeli victims, which argues that Israel’s decades-long occupation and brutalization of the Palestinian people does not justify Hamas’ atrocities on October 7th. How do they reconcile holding that view on one hand, while simultaneously justifying the mass slaughter and collective punishment of Gazans in response to Hamas’ actions on the other?
Many in the U.S. and around the world are unwilling to give the IDF’s barbarism a pass. But as the chorus of critical voices grows louder, efforts to silence Israel’s critics have intensified. Recently, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attempted to censor the free expression of Americans by exploiting the tragic killings of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C.. Before the victims could be buried, Bibi used the horrific crime as an opportunity to shut down any calls for Palestinian liberation.
