TEHRAN - The death toll from the ruthless Israeli assaults on the besieged Gaza Strip that started on October 7 last year has exceeded the grim milestone of 40,000. The United States of America has played a critical role in the staggering number of casualties.

The figure represents almost two percent of the tiny enclave’s 2.3 million population. It has made the war on Gaza one of the deadliest in the 21st century. By a long distance, it is also the bloodiest in the decades-old Palestinian struggle for statehood. 

The United Nations says the Gaza health ministry is a reliable source when registering data on casualties and has matched its own research and statistics following previous Israeli wars on the Strip. 
The ministry only counts bodies that are received, registered and buried. It publishes the names, ages and ID numbers of all identified fatalities, which it says is based only on deaths that have been confirmed by medics or by a judicial process, and not for “media attention”. 
Experts believe the figure is an undercount, indicating more than 10,000 bodies are buried under the rubble, concealing the untold horrors of a much larger death toll. 
The Lancet medical journal published a report by academics on July 5, estimating indirect deaths as a result of other measures that Tel Aviv has imposed on Gaza, such as the all-out blockade. 
The Gaza health ministry does not announce Palestinians dying from other causes such as diseases, hunger and thirst. According to The Lancet, the death toll is several times higher than official estimates and possibly above 186,000. 
Most of the Palestinians killed by Israeli ammunition are women and children, according to the health ministry and at least 92,000 others have been injured so far. 

The health ministry does not categorize traumatized Palestinians as injured. Many of the injuries that are registered are due to limbs being blown off, which can also increase the death toll later.
Many charities have said they are “heartbroken”. 

An unknown number of Palestinians have been rounded up by the Israeli occupation forces and taken to military detention centers where investigations have revealed systematic torture and cases of rape against prisoners. 

Israeli actions in Gaza can be classified as horror but also terrorism, under the UN definition of terrorism. 

In public, America repeatedly calls for a “ceasefire” in Gaza and privately sends more weapons to Tel Aviv. In a new move, the U.S. has approved $20 billion in arms sales to Israel, including scores of fighter jets and advanced air-to-air missiles, the State Department announced on August 14. 

Some of these arms packages are declared publicly, others are shipped privately through loopholes to avoid any delays in Congress. 
The United States has been calling for a ceasefire only after some of the most horrific massacres and war crimes have been carried out by the Israeli military in Gaza.  
American media outlets have documented U.S.-made bombs landing on places of shelter for displaced Palestinians. 

Among the 40,000 Gazans killed so far, at least 16,456 of them are children. This is in addition to children orphaned or maimed for life. Among the victims are over 11,000 women. 

The Israeli military has also killed a record number of UN staff, humanitarian workers, and journalists.  The regime also enjoys the political and diplomatic support of the veto holder U.S. at the UN Security Council. 

The Gaza genocide, now in its 11th month and quickly creeping to one year, has witnessed many tragedies. Regrettably, there appears no end in sight. 

Critics accuse the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden of not even imposing minor restrictions on arms shipments to the Israeli regime, the least Biden could have done. 
Hypocritically, the United States is also engaging in another round of “ceasefire negotiations” in Doha without the Palestinians even being represented at the talks. 

In a video address, the UN’s human rights chief, Volker Turk said, “This unimaginable situation is overwhelmingly due to recurring failures by the Israeli (occupation) Forces to comply with the rules of war”. 

“On average, about 130 people have been killed every day in Gaza over the past 10 months. The scale of the Israeli military’s destruction of homes, hospitals, schools and places of worship is deeply shocking,” he lamented. 
“International humanitarian law (IHL) is very clear on the paramount importance on the protection of civilians, and civilian property and infrastructure,” Turk added. 

IHL is what American officials advocate for in public but the past decades have shown America’s total disregard for IHL and violations of it. 
All the Palestinian lives lost, injured and scarred in Gaza could have been prevented, if the U.S. did not greenlight the Israelis to treat Palestinians as anything but human beings.