Gaza, a Genocide in Real Time
The world watches Gaza’s destruction in horror on social media. How is the greatest human drama of the century seen from Latin America? And why should we care even more?
By Cristian Asencio (Connectas)
HAVANA TIMES – They are confined in a minimum area of land, forced to flee bombings and snipers day and night. They want them out, but at the same time, they are not allowed to leave. They were declared enemies for being who they are, and they are being killed while getting food or looking for care in hospitals. A UN committee declared they are victims of genocide.
Those are the words by Refaat Alathamna, Bolivian-Palestinian doctor stuck in the Gaza Strip, to CONNECTAS: “We have had to move several times. Escaping from one place to another. We have lost family members. One of my uncles was killed four days ago. A nephew was severely wounded a week ago, in this doorstep, by an attack nearby. And bad news keeps coming in about relatives that were attacked by either bombs or snipers.”
Alathamna has five children. Since that’s all he has left, he is obsessively determined on saving them. On his Instagram account, he shares images of what is left of Gaza, of his never-ending search for shelter, food, and water, of prices (8-dollar eggs, 100-dollar gasoline liters), and of some happy moments, such as when one of his kids recovered his soccer ball. In one of his latest posts, he thanked Chilean President Gabriel Boric for having evacuated 68 people. In turn, he asked for help to get him and his family out. “I humbly ask, if possible, that you help me get out of here with the assistance of the Bolivian government,” he wrote on Instagram.
Although the doctor keeps the faith, his audios reflect disappointment regarding the position of states the world over: “These are governments that have opted for silence, some are even accomplices. Very few have rejected what is happening. But we appreciate the people around the world who are putting pressure on those governments to put an end to what is happening here.”
Social media is playing an essential role in making the crimes of the Israeli offensive public. Anyone on Instagram or TikTok can see journalists being murdered in a hospital, buildings knocked down to displace its residents, or parents crying over their dead son.
Argentinean journalist Teresa Bo, who has covered conflicts in the Middle East since the beginning of the century, asserts that this conflict has a peculiarity that contrasts with other conflicts in prior decades: “Very few will be able to say ‘I didn’t know’ or ‘I didn’t see it’.”
Bo sets examples of events that have gone viral: “We are seeing Israel create a new NGO called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to replace grassroots organizations that give out food, and kills 30, 40, 50 people almost every day, when they are desperately looking for food.”
In fact, Alathamna decided not to attend the calls of that controversial foundation. “It seems that, for soldiers, it is a game to shoot people who are looking for food,” he adds. According to the UN, over 1,000 people who were looking for food died in Israeli attacks.
Teresa Bo works for Al Jazeera. This news broadcaster has the largest number of journalists in Gaza, and has been hit with the murder of some of them. She herself has been in Israeli territory after October 2023, when Hamas’s terrorist attack prompted the conflict.
Bo is concerned that, despite the evidence, there are people justifying the death of civilians (upwards of 60,000) and journalists (more than 210).
For instance, reporter Anas al Sharif, killed with four of his co-workers during an Israeli strike to a hospital. Israel didn’t even bother to pass the attack as a mistake. On the contrary, it justified it saying that Anas al Sharif had “been the leader of a terrorist cell of Hamas,” however, it didn’t provide evidence for that claim. “This is about killing the messenger. We have seen it throughout history and it’s become systematic for Israel. I’m not the one saying it, Reporters without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and the UN are all saying it.”
Bo is worried that violence can get normalized, that it gets lost on social media’s scroll and influencers, or that the same technology gets used to cover everything up. “There are a lot of fakes. People are sharing old videos to say that hunger is an exaggeration. Let’s not forget that the government of Israel claims that people in Gaza are not hungry. Netanyahu has been open about it.”
It’s not the only thing that the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamín Netanyahu has said. On Monday, September 8, he urged Palestinians to leave Gaza. “I say to the residents of Gaza: you have been warned – get out of there!”, he said. He also warned that he intends to gain military control of Gaza to then transfer power to a civil authority. “We want to have a security perimeter, but we don’t want to govern it.”
The director of the office of Amnesty International in Chile, Rodrigo Bustos, claims that the world took too long to acknowledge what is happening. Amnesty was one of the first to conclude that the situation in Gaza is a genocide. “The three characteristics are present: massive killing (At least 65,000 casualties, as per conservative figures), grave damage to the population given their ethnicity or religion, and generating conditions to impede the continuity of life.” The latter, for Bustos, is clear, since Israel has used hunger as a weapon of war, and has destroyed hospitals, schools, and fields of crops. “But the genocide is increasingly being admitted by more states, authorities, civil society organizations, and even human rights organizations within Israel,” he adds.
An example of this is what happened in the Vuelta a España. This cycling race couldn’t conclude due to protests sparked by the participation of a team owned by an Israeli mogul who is also a friend of Netanyahu. President Pedro Sánchez, applauded the boycotters of the race: “First of all, let me express our deepest admiration and respect for the cyclists, but also for the Spanish people mobilizing for just causes such as the one of Palestine.” In Latin America, several presidents from the left of progressives have condemned the actions of Israel. For example, Chile’s President Gabriel Boric argues that what is happening in Gaza is a genocide.
Other presidents, such as Lula da Silva from Brazil, and Gustavo Petro from Colombia, have also made statements.
In Petro’s case, he severed relationships with Israel, banned the export of coal to that country via presidential decree, and accommodated an emergency conference for Gaza this year.
On his part, Lula da Silva said in the BRICS summit this year: “We cannot remain indifferent to the genocide carried out by Israel in Gaza, the indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians and the use of hunger as a weapon of war.” The Brazilian president had been declared persona non grata back in 2024, after Lula compared what is happening in Gaza with the Holocaust.
Latin America is largely pro-Palestine
In fact, aside from Panama, all of its countries have recognized the Palestinian state. But the region has a multitude of businesses with Israel, in particular in defense. That is why some political leaders got criticized when they first suggested that Israel’s IDF was crossing the line in Gaza.
Others claim that it is better to remain neutral. In Chile, for example, presidential candidate Franco Parisi, a populist, said that if he got elected, he would “refrain from getting involved in that mess … Israel is a strategic partner for Chile.”
There are leaders, especially in the right and in evangelical sectors, that show their direct support, and even deny the hunger denounced by international organizations. Among them is Argentinean President Javier Milei, who earlier this month said: “Food gets there, but the terrorists of Hamas block distribution.” He added: “The cover of a famous magazine showed the problem of people dying of hunger in the Gaza Strip, it turns out that the photo had been altered.”
Teresa Bo explains that Milei considers himself an ally of Israel and the United States, and has even extended an invitation to Netanyahu to visit Argentina, which didn’t materialize. “The fact that there is a president as supportive of him and of everything he represents entails going against the United Nations, the International Criminal Court (the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu), and against international humanitarian law.”
Bo adds that, although international law was disregarded in the last century, “it at least seemed to exist, but nowadays its transgression is normal.”
Despite UN resolutions and reports of neutral international organizations, nothing seems to stop the cornering of Palestinian population in Gaza. As it happens, on September 12, the UN endorsed a resolution to revitalize the two-State solution of Palestine and Israel, and the disarmament of Hamas, with 142 votes in favor and 10 against (including Israel, the United States, Argentina, and Paraguay). “Countries issue agreements looking for a solution, and then comes the United States to exercise its veto power. It’s happening with Ukraine with the Russian veto –it is frustrating,” Bo mentions.
Nevertheless, there are leaders in the far right that have started shifting their stance. For instance, the Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni said in a conference that the attacks of Israel in Gaza are “disproportionate” and that there have been “far too many innocent victims”.
Bustos expresses that the Israeli invasion would not hold without the support of other Western nations. “It exposes the frailty of the system to protect human rights when the United States vetoes resolutions that demand a cease fire to halt the barbarity. There has also been complicity, most of the weapons used by the State of Israel have been sourced by the United States and Germany. Therefore, one of the requests by Amnesty International is to enforce an arms embargo to Israel”.
For doctor Refaat Alathamna, every day the world fails to agree on a cease fire, is a day of mortal danger for him and his family. “I don’t want to lose my children. I don’t want to be another victim. We’ve seen the worst. Enough.”