The road to and reality of genocide

JVL Introduction

We publish below an extract from this important article that illustrates how we got to this genocide after decades of  the Israeli State’s occupation, siege and terrorising of the Palestinian people.  Below is roughly one third of the article and we encourage you to read it all if you have the time. As usual, you can access this via the link at the end of this introduction where you will also be able to access the many references that are not included here.

I have extracted much of what the authors wrote about Gaza but there is more and much of interest about the West Bank and the overall history of Israeli aggression towards and the killing, maiming, destruction and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. It is horrifying to see listed, to remember what we have been witness to and then to try to imagine living through, all the appalling attacks and privations that Israel has meted out on the Palestinian people in Gaza, much of which continues despite the so called “ceasefire”.

In one part of the article not posted below the authors note this observation from Patrick Wolfe  “The question of genocide is never far from discussions of settler colonialism.”  (and go on to say) The project to establish a state for newcomers in an area already populated by others inherently presumes a displacement of the indigenous inhabitants. Where expulsion fails, elimination offers an alternative route to the same end. As the legal scholar William Schabas writes,“genocide is the last resort of the frustrated ethnic cleanser”.

This article was originally published by EuroZine (published in Irish pages) on Wed 26 Aug 2026. Read the original here.