By Finn McKenna
The new year arrived with more misery, violence and little hope for the people of Gaza. 2026 sees the besieged people still displaced, traumatised, and languishing in waterlogged tents and what remains of their damaged homes. The new year does not bring a new start, but a continuation of the same fear, exhaustion and hardship. Infants die from malnutrition and exposure to the elements in the freezing mid-winter. As of 9 January, at least 425 Palestinians in Gaza have been murdered by the globally-hated Israeli army, since the beginning of the so-called ceasefire.
In the 24-hour period between 8 and 9 January, the Western-supplied bombs rained from the sky, extinguishing the lives of 13 Palestinians, including several children. Israel has killed an average of five Palestinians a day since the ceasefire came into effect. The genocide continues, albeit at a different tempo.
Mass starvation
The question facing the people of Gaza is survivability; how are they going to continue living in the wasteland of rubble that Israeli forces have rendered Gaza? Sadistically adding to the suffering, on 1 January 37 NGOs in Gaza were proscribed. The banned organisations include ActionAid, International Rescue Committee, Médecins Sans Frontières, and the Norwegian Refugee Council.
Having honed its smearing of UNRWA over the course of years, the Israeli propaganda machine is trying to conjure an image of the staff of Médecins Sans Frontières (one of the aid groups active in providing essential care in Gaza) as having Hamas and Islamic Jihad associations. The aim of such narratives is to shore up support within Israeli society for the Gaza genocide; to cleanse any potential of a conscience to develop amongst Israelis about the wellbeing of Palestinians, and to smear the reputation of those at the coalface who are trying to provide life-saving care to the infirm, wounded and vulnerable.
Within Israeli-Jewish society, shaped by the fascistic Zionist State, dehumanising racism towards Palestinians is widespread, and unfortunately the majority of its populace has embraced the campaign of destruction of Gaza and its people.
Undermining legitimacy
As mentioned, Israel’s motivation is both to undermine the legitimacy of the international aid groups and to remove as much external assistance for the people of Gaza as possible. For example, MSF provides 20% of hospital beds and assists in one-third of births. The practical effect of the rooting out of the aid groups is that it will make the situation facing the Gazans even more extreme and unbearable.
This aim is rooted in the Zionist objective to render Gaza completely unliveable, to continue with ethnic cleansing via genocide, and pushing Gaza’s beleaguered population into the Sinai Peninsula. ‘To hell or to Sinai’; Oliver Cromwell would blush at the depravity and callousness of Netanyahu’s regime.
Naked colonialism
The leading forces of Western Imperialism, in the regimes of the US and Israel, have returned to the method of naked colonialism. The decapitation of the Venezuelan state through the abduction of Nicolas Maduro and Cilia Flores must be understood in this context. The ICE murder of Renee Nicole Good reflects how the violence of imperialist nations inevitably boomerangs back to the core; Good’s murderer served as part of the US occupation force in Iraq.
From Minneapolis to Caracas, from Dublin to London, from Cairo to Riyadh, mass struggle against the world system of capitalism and imperialism is essential to weaken the political forces that conspire to destroy the Palestinian people. Mother Jones’ rallying cry applies aptly to the people of Gaza today; mourn the dead but fight like hell for the living!
