Week 13 of Israel’s genocidal slaughter in Gaza. The New York Times tells readers—many of them outraged that the U.S. is not doing a thing to stop the genocide—that U.S. Secretary of State Blinken “is returning to the Middle East this week with the goals of getting Israel to curtail attacks that are killing thousands of Palestinian civilians and preventing the war from spreading across the region.” 

But then there is the reality that people need to confront. Last week the death toll in Gaza continued to rise at basically the same pace it has since Israel’s genocidal assault after the Hamas raids of October 7. The death toll is now over 22,438, with almost half—more than 10,000—of those being children. At least 57,614 people have been injured by Israeli bombs and missiles in Gaza. Bomb and missile attacks aimed at the civilian population continue to kill, maim, and traumatize the most vulnerable. In the south of Gaza, the region Israel has demanded people flee to, Israel bombed the Nasser Medical Complex and the Al-Amal Hospital. 

And now, as we will get into in this article, starvation and disease threaten to eclipse even the horrific death toll from bombs and missiles. 

And here’s more reality: There is a real danger of “war spreading across the region.”¹  And that is a serious concern for the rulers of the U.S. But the “bottom line” of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is that Israel is a unique and irreplaceable asset in U.S. domination in the region, and beyond. 

And so, like a cartel whose turf has been violated by a smaller rival, Israel sees a need to hit back with sufficient vicious depravity to re-establish its unchallenged brutal subjugation of the more than seven million Palestinians² under its boot. And while the U.S. and Israel have their differences on how to do that, they agree on the need to “send a message” to any force that challenges Israel.

Some of what is going on between Biden and Israel’s rulers does reflect differences on how to send that message. But the essential aim and effect of Blinken’s “shuttle diplomacy” and the “leaked” stories of Blinken having tense arguments with Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu (Netan-NAZI)… is to divert and defuse global outrage, including within the U.S. itself. It is to provide cover for reactionary Arab regimes allied with the U.S. who rule over oppressed masses furiously demanding an end to Israel’s slaughter. 

Winter in Gaza: Death by Bombs, Starvation, and Disease

It is winter in Gaza. That means cold rain and thunderstorms blowing in from the Mediterranean Sea with which Gaza shares a coastline that runs the length of this outdoor prison. People carry the bodies of their loved ones through resulting floodwaters, seeking a place to bury them with some dignity.

Freezing, starving children, drenched with rain, barefoot and shivering huddle around fires. There is no fuel, so anything burnable, including material from bombed out buildings is used for fires, often releasing toxic fumes into the densely packed encampments where people seek shelter. 

And “shelter” for the overwhelming majority of people in Gaza is handmade tarps of plastic that do little to keep out the cold and rain. The sand that people sleep on is soaking wet. There is no water, no food, and no toilets. 

There is almost never internet to connect with family, to try to find emergency resources, or to tell what is going on to the outside world. There is no electricity to charge phones or other devices. People have fled from place to place attempting to follow Israeli directives to evacuate the last place they sought shelter. One area Israel designated as a “safe zone” (which only means it might be less likely to be bombed) in southern Gaza is less than 10 miles long and only about a half-mile wide. There, families and their meager tarps are so tightly packed that some cannot fit in the “safe zone” and are forced to sleep outside it. 

And Israel is bombing these “safe” places now. On January 4, Gaza authorities reported Israeli forces bombed so-called “safe areas” 48 times, committing “six massacres” that claimed the lives of 31 people in Rafah, in the south of Gaza, in three days alone.

This is “life” right now for more than 80 percent of population of Gaza, driven from their homes by Israel’s relentless bombing.

Killing Children, the Elderly, with Starvation and Disease in Gaza

On a recent episode of Al Jazeera Live broadcast, How will hundreds of thousands in Gaza survive this winter? journalist Youmna ElSayed described life for her and her children there. She had been in Gaza until very recently. She reported that “when we say there was no safe place [in Gaza], we meant that in the literal word… I have to evacuate many times with my children, from place to another place that could be relatively safer than the previous living conditions.” She said that any residential neighborhood could be the target of Israeli bombs. 

Youmna ElSayed described searching for hours, even days, to find a piece of bread or water for her child. And that often a single bottle of water was shared by six people over 24 hours. 

Dr. Mads Gilbert is a world-renowned physician who has spent much time in Gaza, and coordinated massive relief efforts around the world. He told Al Jazeera that under current conditions, the combination of cold winter wind and rain will make the risk of hypothermia—the dangerous lowering of a person’s body temperature—a particular danger for small children and those who are already starving and sick.  

Conditions in the densely packed camps pose an imminent threat of the spread of intestinal infections producing vomiting and diarrhea in conditions where there are no bathrooms or latrines and a severe lack of water to treat dehydration.

Turning Gaza into a Death Camp

Simply put, the people in Gaza who have so far survived Israel’s genocidal bombing, destruction of heath care facilities, and blockade of relief supplies are locked down in a death camp. 

According to Mads Gilbert, the UN and relief agencies have the capacity to rush a massive infusion of water, fuel, food, sanitation equipment, and durable tents into Gaza. But Israel continues to block this by choking off aid reaching Gaza through neighboring Egypt, and not making its own border crossings into Gaza accessible to aid organizations. And what little aid is allowed to trickle in cannot reach people in need because Israel repeatedly bombs UN aid convoys inside Gaza, including along routes it has declared are safe. 

News coverage of Israel and Palestine in U.S. media overwhelming focuses on Jewish Israeli victims of Hamas’ reactionary massacre on October 7. It aims to indoctrinate people in this country to only care about or identify with those victims. Hamas killed or kidnapped about 1,000 civilians in Israel (along with about 400 security forces). But well over ten times that many Palestinians (mainly civilians) have been killed by Israel in Gaza since October 7. And those who have survived face an extreme threat to their health and lives from ongoing Israeli bombs and being starved to death.

Despite Growing Dangers, the Rulers of the U.S. Stick with and Back Israel’s Genocide

Israel’s ongoing massacre in Gaza, and the openly genocidal declarations of its rulers, are creating real problems for the rulers of the U.S. This is because Israel’s genocidal war has given rise to outrage against the U.S. throughout the Middle East, and even within the U.S. itself. Israel’s genocidal slaughter is undercutting moves by the U.S. to develop open alliances between reactionary Arab countries like Saudi Arabia and Israel to confront Iran’s growing influence. And genocide against Gaza has exposed and undercut attempts by the U.S. rulers to brand themselves as bringing “freedom and democracy” to the world.

And here is one more product of Israel’s genocide: it has increased the influence of the so-called “Axis of Resistance,” reactionary Islamic fundamentalist forces aligned with Iran in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and elsewhere.³  That development and others pose a growing threat of a regional war that would itself pose the danger of drawing in Russia and/or China in some form. And that conflict has the potential to spiral into war on a catastrophic scale even beyond the region.

And yet, with all the real problems that backing Israel presents to the rulers of the U.S., Biden and the whole U.S. ruling class continue to back Israel to the hilt. Why? The answer is that Israel is an irreplaceable, uniquely reliable enforcer for U.S. interests in a region critical to maintaining domination of a planet of exploitation and oppression.

Part of what makes Israel such a “special” and irreplaceable asset for the U.S. empire is that in most of the other countries of the region, a large proportion of the population hates the U.S., whereas in Israel the huge majority (whether liberal or reactionary) feel a special kinship to the U.S. And this provides a political stability that the U.S. finds essential in such a volatile and strategic area of the world. 

The intensifying horror in Gaza must be met with bigger, more determined, mass protest. People who are courageously and righteously taking a stand and acting to stop Israel’s genocide in Gaza (and increasingly in the West Bank) must be defended.⁴  And most importantly, intensified struggle to STOP Israel’s genocide in Gaza must be merged with an understanding of, and determination to act on, the urgent need for revolution in the belly of the beast responsible for all this and so many more crimes against humanity.

The almost-indescribable horror in Gaza underlines this truth from Bob Avakian:

We, the people of the world, can no longer afford to allow these imperialists to continue to dominate the world and determine the destiny of humanity. They need to be overthrown as quickly as possible. And it is a scientific fact that we do not have to live this way.