By David K. Shipler 

In nearly two years since the Gazawar began, the world has learned what Israel does when it feels its veryexistence is threatened. It invades, bombs, maims, starves, blockades, sickens,dislocates, and traumatizes an entire population of innocents whose mostradical leaders and their followers have committed intimate atrocities againstinnocents inside Israel: Sacrifice innocents for innocents. It attacksthroughout the Middle East, in Lebanon, Iran, Yemen, and Qatar. It defiesinternational condemnation. It dismisses evidence of its victims’ suffering as antisemiticpropaganda.

            What it hasnot done, obviously, is use its nuclear weapons, which Moshe Dayan revealedto me in 1981 could be quickly assembled. As Defense Minister, he reportedlyurged consideration of their use when Israel was attacked by Arab countriesin the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Whether the possibility came up this year, asIsrael bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities, is not yet known publicly.

            The lessoncouldn’t be clearer: Born as a refuge for Jews after the Holocaust, Israelinherits a legacy of anxiety and persecution, and therefore treasures itsmilitary strength. It feels risk beyond what hard-headed securityexperts might assess. Nevertheless, as Henry Kissinger once said about theJewish state, even paranoids can have real enemies.

And so, when its own intelligenceand military hierarchy grew so complacent that Hamas terrorists could easilyflow in from Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023 to slaughter, rape, and kidnap, a traumatizedIsrael sensed doom and replied with terrorism of its own, which aninternational commission of the UN Human Rights Council hasnow defined as genocide.

No more terrible accusation couldbe leveled against a state that rose from the ashes of genocide. The label,which carries consequences under international law, is a conversation-stopper. Whilecritics of Israel can disagree about its accuracy, the “g-word” debate hascreated an odd sense of abstraction. It has become shorthand for a panoply ofatrocities, which, when listed, make an indictment even more telling. That iswhat the UN commission has tried to do.

Israel has generally blockedinternational journalists from Gaza, thereby preventing independent, neutralreporting. But the commission’s 72-page condemnation assembles in one documenta detailed picture from international medical and aid workers, humanitarianagencies, individual Palestinians, and others.

The report gives particularattention to the fate of future generations of Palestinians, charging Israelwith deliberately targeting maternity hospitals and clinics, and in one case a facilityproviding in vitro fertilization. The commission argues that Israel has “destroyedin part the reproductive capacity of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group.”

As early as November 2023, “Oxfamreported that newborns up to three months old were dying of hypothermia,dehydration and infection as mothers had little to no medical support and wereliving in appalling conditions without water, sanitation, heat or food,” thecommission writes.

Children have suffered gunshot wounds,suggesting that they were targeted. Hundreds have had limbs amputated, somewithout anasthesia, due to Israel’s blockade of medical supplies, thecommission says. “Gaza is home to the largest cohort of child amputees inmodern history,” according to a representative of the United Nations Office forthe Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The famine induced by Israel’speriodic blockade and limits on food shipments have caused deaths, but will alsohave lifelong consequences for children who survive, given the damage done bymalnutrition during critical periods of brain development. As of this month,the report says, acute malnutrition is being experienced by 70,000 childrenunder the age of five and 17,000 pregnant or lactating women.

“Short-term complications couldinclude infants not meeting motor developmental milestones within the firstyear of life,” the commission says. “In the medium term, children would beunable to develop speech and meet language milestones, and their cognitiveabilities could potentially be impaired in the long-term.”

There are many more charges:torture and sexual abuse of prisoners; trauma intentionally induced by threatsof killings; widespread destruction of agriculture that curbs food production;the repeatedly forced displacement of some 1.9 million Palestinians; and thetargeting of civilian homes, schools, and hospitals.

Israel contends that Hamas has beenstealing food from shipments, but of course if there were sufficient food, nonewould have to be stolen. It is the shortage itself that creates the conditionsripe for theft and black markets.

Israel also argues correctly thatHamas located itself among civilians. That goes unmentioned in the commission’sreport, which is a missed opportunity to discuss the ethics of killingcivilians in large numbers when they are being used by the enemy as humanshields.

A finding of genocide requires afinding of intent, which is hard to prove. The commission cites statements bythree top officials: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu likening thePalestinians to the Old Testament enemy Amalek, whose men, women, children, andinfants God ordered the Israelites to annihilate. President Isaac Herzog, who announcedabsurdly, “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible.” And DefenseMinister Yoav Gallant, who ordered “a complete siege,” declaring: “noelectricity, no water, no food, no fuel. We are fighting human animals, and weact accordingly.”

In addition, the commission findsgenocidal intent supported by the “circumstantial evidence” of a repeatedpattern of conduct that persisted even after its devastating effects on thecivilian population were documented.

It’s hard to see any motivationother than to remove Palestinians from Israel’s security landscape.

Although the country’s physical survivalwas not truly in jeopardy, despite the rhetoric of Israeli leaders, the attackby Hamas, a beneficiary of Iran, was amplified by attacks from Iran itself andits proxies—Hezbollah in Lebanon and Houthis in Yemen—raising the specter ofhostile encirclement. Israeli communities near the borders with Gaza andLebanon were ghost towns after tens of thousands of Israelis fled and becameinternal refugees.

In response, Israel redrew theregion’s military map by obliterating Hamas’s armed capacity, decimatingHezbollah, and, with American help, seriously damaging Iran’s nuclear-weaponsprogram.

But the Israelis have also inflictedone of modern history’s most devastating, sustained assaults on a civilianpopulation, which continues in Gaza far beyond military necessity. Combinedwith officially permitted vigilante and army assaults in the West Bank, Israel ismaking life unlivable for many Palestinians in those territories, apparently hopingthat most will flee—somewhere—and that Palestinian statehood will evaporate asa realistic prospect.

Israel has a longstanding practiceof multiplying the harm it suffers with brutal retaliation a thousand-fold ormore. The Gaza war is Israel’s most extreme exercise of that strategy in itshistory, and history will judge. It will also judge the two weak Americanpresidents who enabled these crimes against humanity: Joe Biden, who merelywrung his hands, and Donald Trump, who is blind to people and sees Gaza as a realestate opportunity.

The supreme irony is this: Insecuring its physical existence, Israel has lost its existence as a moralenterprise, the basis on which it was founded. Its moral authority is buried inthe rubble of Gaza, where it is indeed fighting that existential war—and losing.