Unless those complicit in the Gaza genocide are held to account, the brutal consequences will be felt far beyond that shattered land. The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas offered a respite for traumatised survivors. But Donald Trump’s declaration that he is not confident it will last has prompted renewed terror. From the new president’s decision to lift the pause on shipments of 2,000lb bombs to Israel, which were dropped repeatedly on civilians in so-called safe zones, to his pick for the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, who once said there was “really no such thing as a Palestinian”, those hoping for lasting peace are right to worry that the carnage will soon begin again.
The assault on Gaza is normalising an almost limitless violence against civilians, all facilitated and justified by multiple western governments and media outlets. It is worth recalling the destruction of Guernica by Nazi and Italian forces during the Spanish civil war nearly nine decades ago. Guernica was one of the first aerial mass bombardments of a civilian community, and it scandalised the world. The then US president, Franklin D Roosevelt, deplored how “civilians, including vast numbers of women and children, are being ruthlessly murdered from the air”. The Times journalist George Steer wrote that, “In the form of its execution and the scale of destruction it wrought, the raid on Guernica is unparalleled in military history.” Alas, Guernica turned out to be a trial run for the aerial obliteration of European cities a few years later: the Nazi military leader Hermann Göring told the Nuremberg trials that Guernica allowed the Nazis to test out their Luftwaffe.
