Enough: Have Mercy On Us

As the slaughter in Gaza lurches on, Israel may have implausibly reached a "sadistic new phase of the genocide" when one of their relentless air strikes killed nine of ten children - ages 6 months to 12 years old - of Palestinian pediatrician Dr. Alaa al-Najjar as she worked at Nasser Hospital to save other small victims of Israel's "doctrine of devastation." The atrocities mount; so does a damning global consensus. Dr. Mads Gilbert: "Horror of all horrors. This is beyond everything."

The death toll in Gaza has now surpassed 54,000 Palestinians, including over 17,400 children. Untold thousands more remain missing and presumed dead beneath rubble, and Israel continues to kill at least 30 Gazan children a day, roughly one every 45 minutes, in the brutal ground and aerial onslaughts of Operation Gideon's Chariots. Since Israel shattered the ceasefire in March, nearly 616,000 people have been displaced, often multiple times, and increasingly in the last month or so as Israel has ceaselessly ramped up attacks on both the only shelters left and on allegedly "safe" zones. "They call places safe, then attack them," said one Gazan whose sibling had just died in a "safe" zone duly bombed. "I'd rather stay home with my family - at least we all die together."

In the first months after Oct. 7, Israel also adopted a policy of "non-operational" - ie no military rationale - systematic destruction of Gaza, a strategic move to “flatten the area" to lay the groundwork for ethnic cleansing and render impossible "the return of people to these spaces... We are here forever." Often, the IDF destroyed 90% of neighborhoods by bombing, bulldozing or burning - a well- documented "ritualized demolition" "to make Gaza unlivable for generations to come." "In the end, we're not fighting an army, we're fighting an idea," said one commander. "I want to make the idea unviable." At the same time, a report by Breaking the Silence found Israeli soldiers were told there are basically no civilians: "You’re shooting at anything that moves - and also at what isn’t moving."

Thus, when "no place is safe," the grim images and grisly headlines: "Flesh Everywhere," "Family Burned Alive," "Gaza Is the Slaughterhouse," the bombing of a shelter that "Leaves Children Charred." More than 700 Palestinians killed in one week, more than 200 in 48 hours. A 12-year-old shot and killed, a four-year-old decapitated, a 12-year-old in a wheelchair incinerated. A packed school-turned-shelter in Gaza City bombed, killing dozens of people, mostly children sleeping; one photo showed the body of a baby girl, pulled from the rubble in her pajamas. As usual, the Israeli army claimed the school was "used by the terrorists," but offered no evidence. And increasingly, their actions, and claims, are decried as "barbaric."

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz charges ongoing attacks on civilians "can no longer be justified as a fight against Hamas terrorism." The UN's Francesca Albanese calls the new aid plan "ridiculously inadequate, like a sadistic taunt"; 11 NGOs call it a "politicized sham” and “blueprint for ethnic cleansing.” Even Israeli leaders are finally speaking out. Retired general and opposition leader Yair Golan argued "a sane country" doesn't fight against civilians or "kill babies as a pastime," which the blood-soaked Netanyahu called "despicable anti-Semitic blood libel." Former Israeli P.M Ehud Olmert dismissed such claims of anti-Semitism by "a chorus of thugs" in the face of Israel's "war of extermination (with) indiscriminate, unrestrained, brutal, and criminal killing of civilians."

"How many dead Palestinian children is enough?" asks Gary Smith, of an "ethnic cleansing, pure and simple" that has been Israel's goal since 1948's Nakba. "As a Jew, I am well aware that Israel has been systematically killing children for 77 years," he writes. "What is new is the world watching children blown to literal pieces, and having limbs torn off by United States missiles." Echoing him, Action on Armed Violencenotes death in Gaza "has become so routine that even its most obscene iterations barely make the news." But the airstrike that killed Dr. Alaa al-Najjar’s children "broke through the veil" because it makes the "moral vacancy" of Israel’s murderous failures - framed as a campaign to dismantle Hamas, excused by the logic of impunity, impossible to ignore: "This is not just poor strategy. It is moral self-immolation."

Early last Friday morning, Dr. Alaa al-Najjar, 35, said goodbye to her 10 children before leaving their house in Khan Younis to go to work at Nasser Medical Complex; her youngest, six-month-old Sayden, was still asleep. Like every day, she worried about leaving them home, but felt compelled to do what she could to help the ceaseless stream of victims; her husband Hamdi al-Najjar, also a doctor, dropped her off. He'd just returned home, and she was working in the emergency ward, as the strike hit their house. When she heard of the blast, she ran to the site to see rescue workers pulling the small charred bodies of her children from the flames and rubble. They found seven bodies: Rakan, Ruslan, Jubran, Eve, Revan, Luqman, Sidra. Two remained trapped: The oldest, 12-year-old Yahya, and the youngest, Sayden.

Her husband lay heavily bleeding on the road with chest and skull fractures; at the hospital, he remains on a ventilator in critical condition. Of her 10 children, only her 11-year-old son Adam survived; he went bloodied into surgery, one arm hanging by a thread. A distraught relative rushed to the hospital. "Enough!" she said. "Have mercy on us! We plead to all countries." An IDF statement said "an aircraft struck a number of suspects" and "the claim (of) harm to uninvolved civilians is under review." Dr. Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian physician who worked in Gaza and documented the losses - "dear colleagues" killed "in cold blood," newborns dead without oxygen, snipers shooting through windows, Al-Shifa Hospital become "a graveyard" of patients, staff, refugees - called the murder of Dr. al-Najjar's children "a complete moral collapse." "Do more," he said in a somber video. "Gaza is burning." This week, colleagues at Nasser Hospital said Dr. Alaa al-Najjar is back at work.