As the devastating Israeli onslaught against Gaza enters its fourth week, over 7,000 Palestinians have been killed, nearly 3,000 of them children. Hospitals, schools, residential buildings, mosques, churches, ambulances, and even UN facilities have been targeted by the Israeli occupation’s indiscriminate use of force against the Palestinian civilians. Entire families have been wiped out as a result of the relentless Israeli bombing of the besieged enclave.

Perhaps the most tragic atrocity committed by the Israeli military during the present war was the deliberate bombing of the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital which resulted in the killing of 500 Palestinians who had gathered at the hospital to seek refuge. Even after widespread international outrage following this massacre, Israel continues to threaten hospitals across Gaza to evacuate or face bombardment.

The Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital massacre was not the first of its kind, since mass slaughtering of innocent civilians is a routine the Israeli regime practices. Israeli history is inundated with horrific massacres and deadly violence against the Palestinian nation. In fact, the very creation of the state of Israel relied upon the appalling massacres of Palestinians to force them to flee their ancestral lands.

Between 1947 and 1949, Zionist militias ethnically cleansed over 500 Palestinian villages and cities and committed over 70 massacres. Around 15,000 Palestinians were killed and 750,000 native Palestinians were forced out of their lands into other parts of Palestine or neighboring countries.

One of the most brutal Israeli massacres took place at the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin, situated at the western outskirts of Jerusalem. On 9th April 1948, around 200 Zionist militants attacked the village and killed 250 Palestinians, most of them children, women and elderly. Victims were raped, tortured and mutilated before being killed and buried in mass graves. Survivors were put on trucks and paraded in Jerusalem before being shot dead.

The violent massacre of Palestinians at Deir Yassin sent waves of terror across Palestine and triggered a mass exodus of Palestinians from their lands, allowing Zionists to illegally seize Palestinian territories and form a Jewish state just a few weeks following the tragedy. Similar horrific crimes were committed by Zionist militias in numerous towns across Palestine, such as Tantura, Al-Dawayima and Lydda.

The survival of Israel depended on mass killings of Palestinians and therefore, the Israeli military has frequently participated in shocking acts of genocide even after the inception of Israel in 1948. In the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the year 1982, around 3,000 Palestinians were killed in cold blood over a span of only two days by Israeli-backed militia in Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.

The perpetrators of these harrowing incidents were never held accountable by any entity, a deplorable practice that continues today as Israel commits major war crimes in broad daylight with complete impunity.

Israel and its allies such as the US and France have repeatedly justified the ongoing Israeli genocide against the Palestinian nation as an act of “self-defense” against Palestinian “terrorists.” From using AI-generated images to paying social media influencers, Israel and its supporters have employed every imaginable means to portray Israel as an “innocent victim” of a “surprise terrorist attack” launched by a “radical militant group” similar to ISIS.

The Western media’s narrative blatantly ignores the broader context of 75 years of ethnic cleansing and suffering of the Palestinians. What it intentionally wishes to hide from the audience is the clear fact that Israel is not wiping out entire families in Gaza because of Al-Aqsa Storm Operation retaliation, but because killing Palestinian civilians and forcing them to flee their lands to allow further Israeli expansionism is merely an age-old Israeli war strategy.