I Knew the Gaza Ceasefire Wouldn't Last Long
I don't know why anyone believed it was going to stop
Trigger warning here: war, famine, graphic descriptions of violence — including towards children. Make your mental health the priority!
So, it took, what… two weeks for Netanyahu to claim that the Palestinian people have violated the latest ceasefire deal, and to start bombing them again?
That’s about what my spouse and I expected.
Trump made a big deal about how he negotiated peace, how he’s a force of good in the world and how he forced Israel and Gaza to come to the table and hash out an agreement.
He likes to bluster and talk himself up like a master negotiator, which we all know is total bullshit. The man barely knows where he is half the time.
This was never a real agreement. It was always a smokescreen on the part of Netanyahu, a way to obfuscate his intentions and give the Trump administration plausible deniability to keep supporting them by making their victims look like the bad guys again.
Again. He uses the exact same trick every single fucking time, and people just roll with it.
It’s frankly astonishing how long it’s taking the rest of the world to acknowledge the simple facts of what Israel is doing in Gaza and the West Bank. We’re seeing some countries finally stepping up to recognize Palestinian statehood and acknowledge their right to live, but we have yet to see any true intervention.
It’s genocide. It’s ethnic cleansing. There is no doubt, there is no confusion.
I’m not going to be mincing words on that point, I’ve made it very clear where I stand. And for the record, the International Criminal Court agrees.
More to the point, the ICC has been investigating war crimes and genocide in Gaza and the West Bank since 2021, well before this latest burst of violence that began with October 7th, 2023.
It’s been going on a lot longer than that.
You would think that in the year 2025 — nearly 2026 — we as a species would be able to recognize horror when we see it. We have the internet, all of the world’s information at our fingertips with a potent lens through which to study history and facts.
And yet we still get people who deny the Holocaust and can’t identify an obvious genocide even when the legal definition is shoved under their nose and the details smack them in the face.
I wish I didn’t still have to talk about this. I wish more people would snap out of their haze and think to themselves, “Hey, maybe bombing little kids and starving an entire population to death is a bad thing!”
But here we are. And here we go again.
When you want to eradicate a people, you don’t stop at bullets. You don’t even start with bullets.
You start by constructing conditions that make it impossible for them to survive even if you aren’t actively killing them.
You might, for example, create the conditions for famine or disease.
You might create long-standing blockades that prevent food, clean water and medical supplies from getting to the people who need it. You might start shooting at aid centers or bombing hospitals.
You might set up ‘food distribution centers’ that funnel large crowds into enclosed spaces, only to line up and start shooting the civillians who were gathering in hope of a hot meal.
You might shoot missiles at ambulances, volunteers and journalists — making it so that people feel they have no one to call for help, nowhere to turn and no way to get the message out.
You might destroy residential areas, leaving people homeless and fleeing along roads choked with dust and no water. You might bomb the refugee camps they set up when they have nowhere else to turn.
You might leave thousands of children orphaned, with life-threatening injuries, deny them medicine and create such horrific scarcity that little children might have to have mangled limbs amputated with no anesthetic.
You might, in other words, do everything you can to destroy their safe havens, take away their basic resources and deny them even the most basic human dignity and compassion.
You might do that. If you were a genocidal monster.
Sound familiar? It should, because none of this is hypothetical. All of this is happening in Gaza, and innocent people are suffering.
And while they are, the world continues to drag its feet, or worse, keeps handing weapons to the perpetrators. And in a shameful display of cowardice, there are still far too many people who won’t call it what it is.
I will probably lose readers for taking this stance; there are probably people who usually read what I write who will immediately call me antisemitic and smear me to others.
I can’t stop you. It’s bullshit, and you know it’s bullshit, but I can’t stop you.
Calling out an act of genocide and criticizing a government for its crimes does not equate to hatred for all of that country’s citizens. Being critical of China as a state does not mean you hate Chinese people as a whole.
Same situation here.
Netanyahu’s government is performing evil right now, but the Israeli people are not a monolith, and many do not support the genocide at all. The people within Israel who are speaking out and protesting are doing the right thing, and they need our support to bring change.
If you want to see what hatred looks like, take a look at what Israeli officials have to say about the innocent people they’re bombing. Not Hamas as an organization, but the civilians.
“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.” — Former Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant
“It’s an entire nation that is out there that’s responsible. It’s not true, this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up, they could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.” — Isaac Herzog, President of Israel
As an aside, I want to address claims that the civilians of Gaza deserve to be killed because they ‘voted for Hamas.’
No, they did not. Most of the Palestinian people in Gaza have never voted at all.
The last election in the Gaza Strip was held in 2006, almost 20 years ago. Prior to the events of October 7th, 2023, the median age in Gaza was 19 years.
19 years. The voting age in Gaza is 17.
Over half of the entire population of the Gaza Strip is comprised of minor children, and even more are young people who have never cast a ballot in their lives.
They were either not born yet, or were too young to vote the last time Gaza held an election. The vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza back then, and certainly now in 2025, have never voted in an election in their lifetimes.
They did not vote for Hamas. Stop repeating that bullshit.
And by the way, if you’re wondering why the median age in Gaza is so low compared to other countries, it’s because of the conditions within the state under Israeli blockade.
Poverty, food insecurity, lack of medical resources and an unsafe water supply contribute to high infant mortality rates and a very low rate of survival for seniors and other vulnerable people.
This is not new, it was in place long before October 7th, 2023.
It turns out that living under Apartheid isn’t good for your health.
Since this latest war began, it goes without saying that the life expectancy in Gaza has dropped like a stone. Sitting around 75 before the war, it has now dropped to about 40 years.
This is due to a combination of violence, famine, disease, displacement, a lack of clean water and the loss of medical centers and treatment options for injury or illness.
Remember what I said earlier about creating conditions that make it impossible for people to survive? Let’s take a look at the legal definition of genocide.
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
Now take another look at what Israel is doing.
See why I have no doubts?
If I seem angry in this piece, it’s because I am.
I feel helpless. I feel horrified that my tax dollars have been used to support this, and I feel sick to see other countries — ahem, U.S.A. — still staunchly propping Israel up on its campaign of eradication and conquest.
I care about people, and so I can’t help but be furious.
I don’t write about the genocide in Palestine as often as I should; I cover human rights abuses, and surely this is among the worst in the world right now. It’s up there with what’s happening in Sudan, which is another outrage that isn’t being talked about nearly enough.
Sudan Is Still In Crisis, And They Need More Help Than Ever
The world’s eyes are locked on Ukraine and Gaza, which is understandable.
I think it’s that feeling of helplessness that keeps me focused elsewhere. I feel like I can do more to bring change here at home, so that’s what I tend to set my sights on.
And frankly, with what’s happening here in North America, there’s a lot to fight against.
With the genocide in Gaza and the West Bank, my heart is broken, and it feels like screaming at a wall. I can donate to support humanitarian aid organizations, I can call it out, I can try to educate people when the topic comes up, but it feels like pushing a stone uphill.
I feel like I can’t give enough to make a difference. I’m sure I’m not the only one feeling the grinding fatigue and grief whenever it comes up. But then again, we’re all tired here.
We’re all World-Weary, aren’t we?
Fatigue isn’t a reason to stop fighting for what’s right. After all, it won’t go away until the horrors end and we have space to breathe. And every moment this continues is another child orphaned, another family buried under the rubble of a collapsed city block.
So, even though it’s exhausting and feels hopeless, I won’t stop talking about Gaza, or the West Bank, or the blockade, or how our countries are taking the wrong side. I’ll write about it here, I’ll discuss it in my podcast episodes, I’ll tell people in person, I’ll share the facts and figures when the opportunity arises.
We need to keep talking about it. We need to call it genocide, we need to keep the pressure up.
We need to protest, we need to sign petitions, we need to call our representatives and write them letters and spread facts to combat the propaganda. We need to correct lies and misinformation and never let up, because to do nothing is to be complicit.
When this is over, everyone will claim that they were on the right side of history in their hearts.
I want to know that I tried to act.
Solidarity wins.