For a long time, words faltered; now, they are lacking. With each passing day in this unlimited war of extermination waged by the fascist Israeli government against Gaza, it becomes clear that no words can describe a reality that defies all reason, all rationality, even that of war. Hence the silence that grips our consciences, ravaged by the multifaceted nature of the infinite misery experienced by an entire civilian population that has been martyred and is now starving. Yes, words fail us. And yet we must express, we must not remain silent for lack of adequate words, the infinitely repeated horror that we have been experiencing every morning for more than six hundred days when we learn that a new stage in the exterminationist will of Netanyahu and his killers has been reached. And that tomorrow will be worse, and the day after tomorrow even worse, if nothing stops the Western-armed arm of these war criminals, these maniacs of an “eye for an eye” law that no moral or religious prohibition seems capable of containing. It is in this infernal circle of exterminatory madness that the people of Gaza are dying one by one and the inhabitants of the West Bank are resisting, as best they can and with what little they have, the colonizing will of madmen who, if they were true followers of Islam, would be irrevocably condemned by the defenders of Western “values.” values” of the West.
After more than 600 days, what gnaws at us, what exasperates our powerlessness, is to see that, day after day, without anyone to stop it, the State of Israel is pouring money into saving the clique that has taken over the country, in a logic of extermination ofa people already partly driven from its land in 1948 [1], and which is now experiencing its second Nakba. What hurts us, hurts us deeply, is having to feel, day after day, a sense of disgust at the idea that, despite a few courageous dissenting voices, the Israeli people, themselves born of a genocide (and what a genocide!), seems to be passively covering up a large-scale ethnic cleansing process and the crimes against humanity that its ruling clique is committing in its name, without anyone, despite what is emerging from the soul-searching of a fraction of the Mossad and the army, thinking of deposing the band of murderers who govern them—which does not seem impossible given the real power they wield. For the worst thing the Israelis will have to endure will be the feeling of shame that will inevitably seize them one day—and, at the same time, the Jews of the diaspora, many of whom are nevertheless engaged in resistance to this cynical enterprise—at the thought of having acquiesced, directly or indirectly, to a genocide conceived, planned, and carried out by a clique of thugs who dare to do anything, even knowingly fomenting a new wave of anti-Semitism throughout the world. Crass stupidity did the rest, particularly in France, where, wallowing in its unconditional support for Israel after the massacre of October 7, 2023, committed by the other clique of fanatics—that of Hamas—the dominant media-political caste, led by ” anti-anti-Semites” as credible as those who claim to belong to the National Rally, has disgraced itself to such an extent that no subsequent mea culpa will be able to wash away the original sin of their unconditional support for the IDF and its fanatical spokespeople.
“The State of Israel,” says historian Sophie Bessis in a recent interview with Mediapart, “has committed and continues to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity. As the heir to the victims of genocide, it is now passing into the camp of the executioners in the eyes of a large part of world opinion. All this is documented, but it is denied, silenced or obscured by Western leaders. We have not yet grasped the full extent of this earthquake [2].” The Palestinians are experiencing this upheaval in their flesh; the Israelis, at least those who have not lost their minds, are experiencing it in their minds, as are many Jews in the diaspora. It is like an endless tragedy brought to its highest expression by unbridled, eradicating, and pathological colonial supremacism, where not the slightest human empathy for otherness remains. At the end of it all, there is nothing. Death is the only prospect. A death without warning, opening onto a field of ruins from which any hope, however slight, of possible coexistence will be definitively erased. One could always argue that Hamas is responsible for this earthquake since it opened hostilities on October 7, 2023, but this short-sighted view of history will only convince the crusaders of Israeli supremacist order, who are well aware, if they read Haaretz even casually, that this barbaric assault could never have taken place without complicity—objective or subjective—from the Israeli secret services, whose legendary efficiency has long been proven. Many clues seem to indicate that this 7-7 attackcould never have taken place without the complicity—objective or subjective—of the Israeli secret services, whose legendary efficiency has long been proven. There are many indications that October 7 was planned and promoted at the highest levels to provide a pretext and justification for the fascist clique in power—Netanyahu, Smotrich, and Ben Gvir—and to settle the question of Gaza once and for all, and, beyond that, in the warlike fury unleashed by this atrocious event, that of the West Bank, destined, in the conquering Zionist imagination, to become once again Judea and Samaria, a “Jewish land” finally eradicated of its indigenous Palestinian population [3].
It is in this same nihilistic perspective that we must view the information – confirmed on June 7 by Avigdor Lieberman, former Minister of Defense – that the Israeli state is supplying weapons in the Gaza Strip to rival militias of Hamas, linked to mafia activities and in business with Daesh, to loot, under the protection of the IDF, the scarce food reserves that should reach a starving population. This is unspeakable. It is perfect self-indulgence in ignominy. “Israel is working to defeat Hamas by various means,” Netanyahu recently declared in a video posted on social media. And all means are acceptable to this war criminal. In saying this, he is following in the footsteps of his predecessors who, for several decades, have regularly gambled on the worst: bringing Hamas to power to counter Fatah, exploiting internal divisions within the PLO to weaken it, and outsourcing the hunt for Hamas by resorting to bribed mercenary gangs. All these practices define a rogue state on a path to the worst, when the worst is the condition for crushing any hope, however small: obtaining a bag of flour to feed one’s family. All boundaries of infamy have now been crossed.
After all, what does it matter to this clique of crazy supremacists, congenital racists, god-crazies, and limitless mass murderers running the Israeli state that, under their rule, their country’s image is deteriorating a little more every day in the eyes of the world? What does it matter to them that their army, self-proclaimed the “most moral” in the world, has become, under their orders, the very embodiment of barbarism in action? What does it matter to them to trample on the rules of international law of war, the most basic moral principles, and UN decisions? The cynicism of the clique is such that nothing will work except sanctions, the imposition of a military embargo, and the immediate international recognition of a Palestinian state.
It is an understatement to say, more than 600 days after the start of this murderous offensive, that there is an urgent need to stop, by all means, the incredible massacre that has already been caused by this war of annihilation waged by the Israeli state. The figures speak for themselves: out of a population of 2 million, 54,000 Palestinian bodies have been duly recorded in Gaza—the most likely figure being closer to 100,000 victims, or 5% of the Gaza population. This horrific toll speaks for itself, especially since it concerns exclusively a civilian population directly targeted by snipers or killer drones piloted by the sacrificial intelligence of the Israeli Defense Forces. As for the numbers of missing, wounded, maimed, and permanently disabled, they are so high that statistics no longer keep track.
How did we get to this point, to such a degree of dehumanization and political ignorance among world leaders and their media mouthpieces, to the point of obliterating, in the name of purely commercial imperatives or strategic interests, the only question that needs to be asked: how to stop the hand of crime and, at the same time, isolate the clan of criminals. There is no other question that is more important or more urgent. Yet this question is still not on the agenda, while Gaza burns and the situation worsens every day in the occupied West Bank with the use of heavy weapons by the army and war tactics by the settlers, forced displacement of populations, kidnappings, and demolition of homes. All this is of a confusing darkness. The line has been drawn by the fascist Israeli clique in power. They will see it through to the end. It will be worse than in 1948. Because this time, they want to finish off the Palestinians. And to do so, they will stop at nothing. Hamas, which thrives on martyrdom, doesn’t care if there are 50,000, 100,000 or 200,000 victims. On the contrary, the more martyrs it has, the better its business is and the more recruits it gets. This is another aspect of this tragedy with a double effect. Favored, even manipulated, by the Israeli government, Hamas can only thrive in a state of war. This is the other side of the terror that is being unleashed on the Palestinians, its armed wing and its police. When all they—the Palestinians—want is to live, simply live, on their land.
What we know for sure is that, left to war criminals as crazy as Netanyahu, Smotrich, and Ben Gvir, Israel has crossed every line of abject cruelty. In moving from a genocidal people to a genocidal power, the “Jewish state” has dealt a blow that is likely fatal to Judaism and its history of resistance to the repressions it has suffered over the centuries. What we have also understood, for more than 600 days now, is that those small-time politicians and paid-up pundits who have played the anti-Semitism card so despicably against those who peacefully oppose Israeli war criminals have trivialized its exceptional nature for a long time to come. And that is serious. They bear full responsibility for this. It is so heavy that sooner or later it will come back to haunt them like a boomerang.
Finally, somewhat lost in this unspeakable situation that overwhelms us, devastated by the passivity of the powers that be around the world, which continue to fuel a mass crime by arming the killers, it is not useless, in closing, to salute the powerful movement of solidarity with Palestine that is developing in global civil society, mainly among young people. And to honor, at the same time, the initiatives to block containers of military components destined for Israel—such as those of the dockworkers in Fos-sur-Mer and Genoa—and the chartering of humanitarian flotillas, such as the Madeleine, seeking to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza.
When crime has no name, resistance to indignity remains the most sacred of duties. So that the hope for a world that is simply livable, that is, free of all those who spread hatred, may live on in our hearts. The stakes are high. For the very existence of Palestine, for Judaism to cease to be assimilated with the executioners who pervert it, and for ourselves.
Freddy GOMEZ
Notes
[1] Between 1947 and 1949, approximately 800,000 Palestinians were driven from their lands by Israeli forces in the aftermath of the proclamation of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948. “The Nakba—which translates as ‘catastrophe’ or ‘disaster’ in Arabic [Ed. note] – is the name given by Palestinians to the expulsion of large numbers of people from their homes during the war that began with the partition plan on November 29, 1947, and ended in the summer of 1949 with the Israeli-Arab armistices” (Dominique Vidal).
[2] “Les Palestiniens n’ont jamais été autant en danger” (Palestinians have never been in such danger), interview between Rachida El Azzouzi and Sophie Bessis, Mediapart, May 31, 2025. Sophie Bessis is also the author of a remarkable book, La Civilisation judéo-chrétienne : anatomie d’une imposture (Judeo-Christian Civilization: Anatomy of a Fraud), recently published by Liens qui libèrent.
[3] Like Gaza and the Golan Heights, the West Bank – Judea and Samaria for the Zionists – was conquered by the State of Israel during the Six-Day War of 1967.
Source: Digression sur l’innommable (Digression on the Unspeakable) by Freddy GOMEZ for A contretemps
Translated by TerKo using a free translation tool
Rebounds: