TEHRAN - Israel has perpetrated heinous crimes in the Gaza Strip since launching war on the besieged Palestinian territory more than seven months ago.

It has slaughtered nearly 35,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 7, many of whom are women and children. 

The regime has regularly launched deadly strikes on residential buildings under the pretext of targeting Hamas fighters in response to the surprise military operation that the resistance group carried out in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

Medical sites have not been spared in Israeli assaults too. 

The Israeli army has brutally killed patients and medical staff in its raids on hospitals. 

Last month, hundreds of bodies were recovered from a mass grave inside the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis after Israeli forces withdrew from the city on April 7. 
Bodies were also retrieved from mass graves at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. 

Following the discovery of the mass graves, Palestinian officials revealed horrifying details about the tragedy. 

They said dozens of the bodies were found with bound hands while others still had medical tubes attached to them. It indicates that they may have been buried alive. 

Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman with the UN’s human rights office, also said some of the bodies found at the Khan Younis hospital were “found with their hands tied and stripped of their clothes”.

Israel had stormed the hospitals and carried out cold-blooded massacres there. The Israeli army claims that Hamas uses hospitals as its command centers. The regime, however, has failed to provide any evidence to back up its claims.  

Despite such appalling atrocities, Israel has not been held accountable so far.  

In addition, the US, which is Israel’s main supporter, has brushed off calls to use its leverage to bring a halt to the regime’s killing machine. 

The US has supported Israel’s narrative that it has the right to self-defense. 

General Mark Milley implies that political purpose justifies the slaughter of Palestinian civilians at the hands of Israeli forces. Although American officials have sharpened criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s deadly military campaign in Gaza following domestic backlash, they have not taken any practical actions to stop the war of genocide in Gaza. 

The US could cut military aid to Israel and take firm measures at the UN Security Council if it wanted to halt Israel’s brutal onslaught.

Israel is an apartheid regime that does not scruple to commit barbaric crimes against Palestinians. 

The US has turned a blind eye to these atrocities because it has perpetrated similar acts. 

Apart from the atomic bombings of Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 which killed tens of thousands of people, the US has claimed the lives of a large number of civilians during its military invasion of countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan.  

The US has always tried to justify the tragic deaths of civilians. American officials have claimed that the country’s armed forces target “militants” who use civilians as human shields. 

Former Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley has made up similar excuses to justify Israel’s brutal onslaught on Gaza. 

"I feel horrible for the innocent people in Gaza that are dying, but we shouldn't forget that, we, the United States killed a lot of innocent people in Mosul, Raqqa, that, we, the United States killed 12,000 innocent French civilians as here we are in the 80th anniversary of Normandy," the former top American commander made the comments at AI Expo for National Competitiveness at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center hosted by the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP) on May 7 and 8. 

He was referring to the US attacks in Iraq and Syria at a time when the Daesh terror group occupied parts of the Arab nations and Allied bombings of French villages and cities during the Second World War. 

The US has claimed that it deployed forces to Iraq and Syria to eliminate Daesh. However, the US is accused of abetting the terror group. During his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump accused the administration of then president Barack Obama of founding Daesh. 

“We destroyed 69 Japanese cities not including Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We slaughtered people in massive numbers, innocent people who had nothing to do with their government. Men, women and children. War is a terrible thing but if it is gonna have meaning; if it is gonna have any sense of morality there has to be a political purpose and it must be achieved rapidly with the least cost,” Milley added. 

His comments, in fact, are reminiscent of the idiom, “the ends justify the means”.

Israel is using the same pretexts to justify its war of genocide in Gaza. 

Israel has tried to demonize Hamas by likening it to the Daesh terror group. But, Hamas has become more popular than ever among Palestinians because it has put up resistance against the occupying regime in the face of its brutal war on Gaza. 

Israel like the United States can kill more civilians but it won’t be able to crush the Palestinian resistance through military operations. 

Netanyahu has vowed to continue the Gaza war until “total victory” over Hamas. But, he should know that the war will end sooner or later and his regime will suffer a crushing defeat at the hands of the Palestinian resistance.