Archive July 28, 2025

In its most recent report, titled Our Genocide, the Israeli-Palestinian human rights organization B’Tselem referred to Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide.

Israel’s war against Gaza, which has claimed at least 59 lives, 733 lives, and injured 144, 477 people, is strongly condemned in the report, which was released on Monday.

The report’s analysis of Israel’s policy in the Gaza Strip and its horrifying outcomes, in addition to statements from senior Israeli politicians and military commanders about the attack’s objectives, leads to the unmistakable conclusion that Israel is engaging in concerted action to purposefully destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip.

In other words, Israel is murdering Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

During the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, an estimated 1, 139 people died, and 200 were taken prisoner.

Our Genocide:

The report explores Israeli violations against Palestinians, going back to the 1948 founding of the Israeli state, which “had a clear goal from the beginning: to cement the Jewish group’s supremacy over the entire territory under Israeli control.”

According to the report, the state of Israel exhibits “settler-colonial patterns, including widespread settlements that involve displacement and dispossession, demographic engineering, ethnic cleansing, and the imposing of military rule on Palestinians.”

The report notes that this was accelerated after October 7 as it looked back at Israel’s efforts to “uphold Jewish supremacy, relying on a false pretense of the rule of law while, in reality, the rights of the Palestinian subjects are left unprotected.”

The report claims that the majority of Jewish-Israelis and the Israeli legal system have praised the “broad, coordinated onslaught against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”

Additionally, the report discusses the increased Palestinian displacement efforts in Gaza since October 2024.

Many experts attributed Israel’s actions to an attempt at ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza. By November 2024, roughly 100 000 people living in northern Gaza had been driven out of their homes, according to the document.

Beyond Gaza, the report claims that since 1967, Israel has increased its violent activities in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

In 2021, B’Tselem first used the term “apartheid” to describe the two-tier reality that Palestinians and Israelis in historically Palestinian territory are subject to.

Genocide in deeds and deeds

Amos Goldberg, a scholar of the Holocaust, wrote in an article in the New York Times about the rise in protests in Israel and the condemnation of Israel’s actions in Gaza.

However, Israeli society continues to be divided over Israel’s war against Gaza. According to a Pew Research Center poll conducted in June, only about 16 percent of Jewish Israelis consider it possible to coexist peacefully with Palestinians.

According to a survey conducted by the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA), 64 percent of Jewish Israelis oppose Israel’s temporary occupation of the Gaza Strip.

Israeli political commentator Ori Goldberg, a former professor and national security consultant, has been accused of being anti-Semitic. He also wrote on the social media platform X that these views are “vile.”

Yesterday, I was overcome. I had a 24-hour mouth shut due to Israeli society’s vile behavior. Not sadness or anger, it was an immediate response. I was unable to speak. For the first time since receiving a diagnosis, I hives. I believe I attempted to refute reality. I’m back. …

Elia Ayoub, a writer, researcher, and host of the podcast The Fire These Times, told Al Jazeera, “I can only draw the conclusion that the pressures from within Israeli society are truly as great as Ori Goldberg recently noted.”

He continued, “Israeli society has normalized a genocide for nearly two years, which demonstrates the deep moral rot at the core of their political culture.”

Israeli government officials have been making violent phone calls to the Gazan population in the interim.

“Thank God we are erasing this evil, the government is rushing to destroy Gaza. Jewish people will be the only people in Gaza, Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu declared last week on Israeli radio.

Even if it was late, welcomed news

The 79-page report by B’Tselem includes interviews with numerous Palestinians in Gaza who have endured the last 22 months of attacks.

Israel’s most renowned human rights organization’s use of the phrase “genocide” to refer to Israel’s actions in Gaza is likely to stifle the organization. Israeli compatriots have brutally attacked many of their own country’s actions in Gaza.

Even though some people think it could have been done sooner, B’Tselem uses the weight of the word “genocide” to make it even stronger.

Even though it comes very late into the genocide, Ayoub said, “I welcome this news.”

Street protests are frequently portrayed as the unfortunate outcome of a failed political system in Kenya, just like in many other nations. According to logic, the inability of state institutions to address grievances through political, legislative, and regulatory action undermines trust and makes the streets vulnerable to roosts of popular discontent.

In this telling, protests are seen as a political issue, with complaints expected to be legitimately resolved using the coercive or consensual mechanisms of the formal political system.

This viewpoint has also been adopted by Kenya’s increasingly paranoid regime, which was led by its predecessors, William Ruto. While generally recognising the right to protest, it has attempted to portray Generation Z’s largely peaceful and sustained protests and agitations as a threat to public order and safety and as a delegitimise the street as a means of addressing public issues.

People believe what is happening in these streets to be fashionable, Ruto said a month ago. They upload selfies to social media accounts. However, I want to let you know that if things go this way, we won’t have a nation.

The state’s preferred response is clear: the killing and abducting of protesters and the decision to charge them with “terrorism” crimes, taking inspiration from Western governments that have criminalized pro-Palestinian and anti-anthem sentiments. At the same time, protesters have been repeatedly urged to discuss their concerns with the government and, more recently, to hold an “intergenerational national conclave” to address their issues.

However, it is flawed to view protests as a risky response to political dissatisfaction. Democracies are the product of demonstrations, not the result of their failures. Beyond formal institutions, transparency, mutual aid, and political consciousness can flourish, according to the Generation Z movement. Grievance, rigorous debate, civic education, and policy engagement have been the topics of activism on the streets and online forums.

Without the assistance of the state or international donors, they have raised money, provided medical care, legal assistance, and supported bereaved families. In doing so, they have reaffirmed the importance of citizenship beyond the five-year requirement of casting ballots. It’s about stepping up to help shape the future, together, creatively, and bravely.

In many ways, the Generation Z movement is a reincarnation of the 1990s reform movement, which saw Kenyans engage in a decade-long street protest against President Daniel arap Moi’s brutal dictatorship. The demand that Ruto be denied a second term in the 2027 election is repeated in defiant chants like “Ruto must go” and “Wantam” echo the rallying cries from 30 years ago: “Moi must go” and “Yote yawezekana bila Moi (All is possible without Moi)”.

A powerful political strategy was to focus the conflict on Moi. It sparked a broad coalition’s unity, attracted international support, and compelled crucial concessions, including the extension of civil liberties and crucially, the assembly and expression rights.

By the time Moi left office at the end of 2002, Kenya was arguably at its most liberated, and its spirit was captured in the Gidi Gidi Maji Maji song I Am Unbwogable! (I am utterly unchangeable and invincible! ) However, that triumph also revealed a deeper danger: the idea that changing the system would mean removing a leader.

Mwai Kibaki, Moi’s successor, was praised then as a reformer and gentleman of Kenyan politics, who quickly began to reverse long-lost victories. His administration attempted to defy constitutional reform, raided newsrooms, and ultimately presided over a stolen election that brought Kenya to the brink of civil war.

In 2003, one of his closest ministers, the late John Michuki, exposed the true mindset of the political class: “One of our own could share power with Moi,” he claimed. Constitutional change to devolve the presidency’s power was only required. He remarked that there was no longer a need for it after Moi had left.

After Moi’s departure, it&nbsp, it&nbsp, and the political class’s obstruction, leading to the passage of a new constitution.

Generation Z must steer clear of the 2000s transitional trap. In the political imagination of Kenya, power has frequently been the prize rather than the issue. Real change, however, calls for more than just shifting the state’s names. It calls for a commitment to reshaping the environment where state power operates as well as a refusal to view it as the destination. The youth should beware of political machinations that are more concerned with change than with advancement.

This class’s current demands for national dialogue and intergenerational conclaves should be viewed with suspicion. This has already happened in Kenya. Each of these elite pacts was presented as a means of converting popular discontent into meaningful reform, from the 1997 Inter-Parties Parliamentary Group discussions and the negotiations that former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan brokered following the post-election violence in 2007 to the infamous “handshake” between President Uhuru Kenyatta and his rival Raila Odinga and the failed Building Bridges Initiative. They frequently failed to defuse movements, stifle opposition, and defend established power.

Even worse, Kenya has a long history of appointing reformers to positions of state authority, starting with opposition leaders and journalists and then abruptly abandoning their principles at the top. Political compromise is replaced by racially rhetorical rhetoric. Not transform, but rule and extract is the goal. Many people end up supporting the systems they once opposed.

Ruto must go is a potent method of pressure and mobilization. However, the ultimate goal shouldn’t be taken into account. That was a mistake made by my generation. We forgot that the formal system’s rituals of elections and elite agreements prevented us from achieving the freedoms we now enjoy, and that Ruto seeks to reverse this trend by imposing change on it from the outside. We allowed politicians to sabotage street protests and redefine power and elite consensus as the solution rather than the issue.

Generation Z must take lessons from that setback. Its main goal should always be to reverse the system that encourages and sustains oppression, not to feed reformers into it. Additionally, it is necessary for the streets to remain a legitimate hub for powerful political participation, not one for pacification or criminalization. Democracies are not threatened by its opposition to formal state control. It is a democracy.