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We are journalists and feminists. The crimes committed against civilians are intolerable to us wherever they happen. For this reason we vehemently condemn Israel’s vengeful and blind reaction following the Hamas attack. The violence of this new phase in the conflict cannot be separated from the history. The Israeli occupation forces locked the population of Gaza in a veritable open-air prison, the most densely populated in the world.
And Israel has repeatedly bombed Gaza over the past decades, killing thousands of people as Western public opinion remained unmoved.
This stranglehold of oppression and pain, in total defiance of all international resolutions and fundamental human rights, is also being perpetrated in the West Bank where rampant colonization has led to an exorbitant number of arrests, incarcerations, and Palestinian victims. Also to be added to this sinister reality is the Israeli occupation army’s occupation of holy sites which has exasperated Muslim and Christian populations.
The supremacist and ultra-violent ideology of the Netanyahu government and its far-right ministers— Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich—festered for months and led to this new war in the region. Israel equates the civilians of Gaza with the fighters of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades (armed wing of Hamas) and intends to punish an entire people.
But where will the horror of this new siege lead, with Gaza under bombardment? How much more suffering will the Palestinians still have to endure in an enclave abandoned to Israeli vindictiveness?
