In Gaza, Israel seems intent on violating every single provision of the Geneva Conventions governing the rules of war. It is bombing homes, schools, hospitals, refugee camps, and water and electricity infrastructures. It has gone even further and now seems to be pursuing a policy of deliberately starving the population by blocking aid in the form of food and water from entering the region.

Jeremy Scahill and Sharif Abdel Kouddous write in the invaluable site Drop Site News that Israel has turned Gaza into a killing cage, a war of extermination.

With the full support of the Biden administration, Israel is waging a merciless war of extermination against the 400,000 Palestinians remaining in the northern Gaza Strip as the government of Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly considering a plan to annex the territory. No food, water, or medicine have entered the north since October 1 as Israeli forces have conducted a campaign of intense airstrikes and ground forces have invaded and encircled much of the area. 

As it orders residents to flee the north, Israel has intensified its attacks on Deir Al-Balah, a city in central Gaza that has not suffered the vast scale of destruction unleashed by Israel in other parts of the Strip. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have fled to the city in recent months. In the early morning hours of Monday, Israel bombed a crowded tent encampment for displaced people on the grounds of Al Aqsa hospital, engulfing civilians in a massive ring of fire. Video from the scene showed patients—some of whom appeared to be in beds attached to IV cords—being burned alive as others in the encampment tried desperately to extinguish the fires with small buckets of water. 

“I swear to God I saw people burning in front of me. By god, no one could do anything. The man, the woman and the little girl burning in front of me, I swear to God. In front of me they burned, in front of me. Their souls left in front of me, in front of us, in front of all our eyes,” said Saleh Al-Jafarawi, an independent Palestinian journalist who filmed the massacre. “No one was able to do anything, no one was able to advance and get them. We tried, but we couldn’t, the fire was so strong that no one was able to advance and pull them out of the fire. They were burned alive. Their bodies were charred. This is a crime that we have never seen and no one has seen like it,” he added in a video posted on his Instagram account. “I swear to God the scenes that will remain in our memories, will remain in our hearts forever. We will never forget the scene that I witnessed today: The scene of the child and he is burning in the heart of the fire and no one was able to help him.”

That what is happening are war crimes by Israel on a massive scale is indisputable. The claims by the Israeli government that they are only targeting militants would be laughable if what we are seeing were not so horrifyingly tragic. The indiscriminate and widespread firepower that is being used on the population can only explained by saying that Israel simply does not give a damn and that terrorizing the population by wholesale massacres is their goal.

Both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and others in the GOP and Democratic leadership make weak and half-hearted calls for restraint and mild criticisms of the Israeli government while refusing to do the one thing that might have any effect at all, and that is threatening to cut off all military and civilian aid to Israel. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu obviously knows this and as a result he ignores the massive worldwide condemnation of Israeli actions and treats Biden and Harris with disdain, even contempt.

France ‘s president Emanuel Macron has stopped sending arms to Israel and is urging other countries to do so.

Macron called for a political solution in Gaza and halting arms deliveries to Israel, putting France at odds with the US, as pro-Palestinian protests surged across Europe on Saturday.

“I think that today, the priority is that we return to a political solution, that we stop delivering weapons to fight in Gaza,” Macron said in an interview with France Inter.

He also confirmed that France is no longer sending arms to Israel.

The comments put France at odds with the US, which gives Israel €3.4 billion in military aid every year as part of a 10-year agreement.

Other European countries are taking small steps at cutting off military aid as protests spread across Europe. The UK has made small cuts in military aid as have some other countries.

Britain on Monday announced the immediate suspension of around 30 out of some 350 arms exports licenses to Israel for items used in the current conflict in Gaza, including sales of components for some military aircraft such as fighter planes, helicopters and drones as well as items used for ground targeting.
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Italy announced late last year that it had stopped sending weapons to Israel, though some arms exports continued. The government said it was honoring existing orders on the condition that the weapons would not be used against civilians, Reuters reported.
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Spain’s Foreign Ministry said in February that the country has not authorized any arms sales to Israel since Oct. 7. However, El Diario newspaper reported that military exports authorized before the war had been sent to Israel after the war broke out.

In the Netherlands, a court ordered the Dutch government to suspend the export of parts for F-35 fighters to Israel because of evident risks of serious violations of international humanitarian law, in response to a lawsuit brought by Oxfam Novib and two other rights groups. The Dutch government’s appeal against the decision is being heard by the Supreme Court.

Belgium’s Walloon region in February suspended two licenses for the export of gunpowder to Israel, local media reported, following the International Court of Justice’s order the previous month directing Israel to do more to prevent civilian deaths in Gaza.

Canada’s Foreign Ministry said in March that the country had not approved any arms export permits to Israel since Jan. 8 and that the pause would continue until it could ensure Israel’s “full compliance” with export controls. Permits granted before Jan. 8 would remain in effect.

Germany, however, like the US, continues to send arms to Israel.

These are largely symbolic, token steps. What is needed is a full-throated arms embargo of Israel. That is the only way to curb the reckless and cruel expansion of their wars against not only Gaza but other countries in the region.