28,500 Days: The Long Genocide

PALESTINE ISRAEL GAZA GENOCIDE, 25 May 2026

The Wire | Jewish Voice for Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service

A displaced family living in a heavily damaged building west of Gaza City, 12 May 2026.  Photo: Yousef Zaanoun

20 May 2026 – On 15 May, Palestinians around the world commemorated the 78th anniversary of the Nakba, when Zionist militias expelled 750,000 Palestinians from their homes, killed thousands, and destroyed hundreds of villages and cities between 1947-1949.

This is the mass displacement upon which the state of Israel was established in 1948. But the Nakba isn’t an event that began and ended 78 years ago. It is a century-long crusade to annihilate Palestinian life: the long genocide.

The day before Nakba commemorations is the Israeli flag march — a yearly “celebration” of the illegal Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem. Thousands of Israelis rampaged through the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, attacked passersby, and chanted about killing Arabs and burning their villages. Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir was captured on video storming the Al Aqsa mosque courtyard with a group of Israeli settlers, dancing and waving an Israeli flag as Israeli police looked on.

The dispossession of Palestinians isn’t just a racist rallying call for Israeli extremists: It is a daily reality for Palestinians across historic Palestine, one that is baked into the Israeli state’s treatment of Palestinians at every level.

The day Ben Gvir and thousands of Israelis tore through Jerusalem, Israeli forces shot and killed 16-year-old Fahd Zidan Owais. A day before, the Israeli military shot and killed 16-year-old Yusef Ali Kaabnah while he tried to defend his family’s sheep from a mob of Israeli settlers. In Gaza, the Israeli military has killed over 72,000 Palestinians and forced over two million to flee their homes. An American Jew from Brooklyn told +972 at Thursday’s “flag march” that he hoped Palestinians currently being displaced would never be able to return home: “It’s very sad to me that after the [1967] war Arabs were allowed back — that was a big mistake, and I hope they won’t make those mistakes in Gaza and in Lebanon.”

Recognizing that the Nakba never ended, last Thursday Rep Rashida Tlaib — the only Palestinian American in Congress — reintroduced a resolution that acknowledges Israel’s ongoing dispossession of Palestinians:

“Today, the Israeli apartheid regime is committing genocide in Gaza, violently erasing entire communities across the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, and bombing Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. It is a campaign to erase Palestinians from existence.”

Digging through the rubble with bare hands

While tens of thousands are forced to flee their homes in the West Bank due to settler and Israeli military incursions, millions in Gaza fight to survive the ongoing genocide, unclear if they will ever be allowed to return to their homes.

With heavy equipment still blocked from entering Gaza, Palestinians like Mahmoud Khilla have been forced to dig through the rubble with their bare hands in the hopes of retrieving the bodies of their loved ones. Khilla’s entire family was killed in an Israeli strike on his apartment building in 2023, nearly 30 months ago. Today, his hands are bloody as he methodically breaks away at packed concrete, using broken shovels, sledgehammers, and his own hands.

During the course of the genocide, the Israeli military killed and imprisoned hundreds of medical professionals and deliberately destroyed dozens of hospitals, leading to a complete collapse of the healthcare system. Today, 12-year-old Jana Al-Hajj, paralyzed from the waist down, is losing hope of recovery. Now unable to walk, Jana’s father pushes her on a bicycle to go to physical therapy appointments. But without a single functioning MRI machine left in Gaza, Jana’s doctors are out of answers — and in the absence of a proper diagnosis, Jana will never be allowed to seek medical treatment abroad, a privilege afforded to a lucky few.

Despite these horrors, Palestinians are choosing to rebuild with the resources at their disposal. Amid the intentional destruction by Israel of nearly all of Gaza’s cultural centers, libraries, and universities, last month Palestinians in Gaza opened the aptly-named “Phoenix library” in Gaza City, now a refuge for college students whose university libraries have been reduced to rubble:

“Luckily, we were able to retrieve books from under the rubble of private and university libraries. Other books belonged to people who were martyred during the war and were donated to us by their families.” 

Rebuilding on quicksand

As land theft and Israeli violence only escalate, Palestinians are rebuilding their lives on quicksand, facing down a genocidal Israeli state that has been trying to erase them from existence for the last 100 years.

In March, the Israeli government quietly approved 34 illegal Israeli settlements — the largest number of illegal settlements ever approved at one time. That’s in addition to the 60+ illegal settlements that the current Israeli government has approved in the last three years. In the 30 years before the current administration took power, a mere six settlements were approved by various Israeli governments.

In an instant, land painstakingly cultivated and defended for years by Palestinians was formally handed over to Israeli settlers. Now, Mustafa Badaha of Deir Ammar can no longer step foot on the land where he once built a summer home for his family to gather, nor can he access the rows of olive trees he spent years caring for.

““Everything is legal—I have permits—but it makes no difference. A settler comes and simply says, ‘This is my land. You have no place here.’”

Thousands of miles away, two NYC synagogues hosted the “Great Israeli Real Estate Event” on May 5 and 11 for the purpose of auctioning off stolen Palestinian land. This is a blatant violation of international law. It’s also not the first event of its kind; similar “expos” have been hosted in Baltimore and New Jersey — and another is scheduled to take place in Manhattan later this month.

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Jewish Voice for Peace, with roughly 750,000 members, supporters, and participants, is the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world; a national, grassroots, multiracial, cross-class, intergenerational movement of U.S. Jews working towards Palestinian freedom and Judaism beyond Zionism. We envision a world where all people live in freedom, justice, equality, and dignity and believe that through organizing, we can and will dismantle the institutions and structures that sustain injustice.

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One Response to “28,500 Days: The Long Genocide”

1. Hoosen Vawda says:

   26 May 2026 at 10:22

   Open Letter to The Editorial Board and Contributors of Transcend Media Service
   Subject: A Respectful Appeal for Collective Moral Agency Beyond Commentary and TMS Publications.
   Dear Esteemed Professors, Senior Members and Founders of Global Peace Organisations, Editorial Board Members, Scholars, “Moral Heirarchists” and Contributors to Transcend Media Service.
   I read your publications in the recent issues of TMS, noting a thread of commonality expressed in support of the ongoing plight of Palestinians. I commend your stance. Thank you for accepting my second appeal, appended as an open plea, to engage in a collective effort to highlight the problem of ongoing suffering, torture and genocide of 72,764+ Palestinians, with over 10,000 reportedly vapourised by the collective allies of Israel. The global silence is indeed abysmal, in this major humanitarian crisis of the 21st century.
   With humility and deep respect for the intellectual legacy of TMS, founded on the principles of peace journalism and the visionary work of Professor Johan Galtung (MHSRIEP), I write to you as a fellow contributor, committed to the shared pursuit of justice, dignity, peace and global harmony. I trust that in your frenetic schedules you will kindly read this document with good intentions.
   Recent reports published within TMS, including those addressing the plight of flotilla activists and the ongoing suffering of Palestinian civilians, reflect the moral clarity and courage that have long defined this platform. These contributions illuminate injustice with scholarly rigour and human compassion.
   Yet, I write today with a gentle but earnest question:
   Can we, as a community, move from witnessing to collective moral action?
   In March 2026, I submitted a draft memorandum proposing that TMS, as a body of globally respected thinkers and “Titans of Peace Propagation” consider endorsing an urgent humanitarian appeal to the United Nations. The intention was not to impose unanimity, but to explore whether our shared ethical commitments might find expression in a unified call for:
   • immediate ceasefire measures,
   • protection of civilians,
   • The targeted killings of journalists
   • Blatant violations of the different Geneva Conventions
   • accountability under international law,
   • and renewed multilateral engagement through the United Nations system.
   I fully appreciate that TMS is not traditionally an advocacy institution, and that editorial independence is essential to its integrity. However, I respectfully submit that:
   There are moments in history when moral scholarship may justifiably seek a collective voice.
   The events currently unfolding, whether involving flotilla activists, civilian populations, or broader regional instability in the Middle East, pose profound challenges not only to international law, but to our shared humanity.
   I wish to clarify that this appeal is not a criticism of editorial decisions, nor an expectation of institutional uniformity. Rather, it is an invitation:
   An invitation to individual conscience
   Should a collective institutional endorsement be impractical, perhaps an alternative path may be considered:
   • voluntary endorsement of the memorandum by individual contributors,
   • publication of parallel perspectives exploring actionable peace mechanisms,
   • or informal cooperation toward engaging established UN humanitarian channels.
   TMS has long illuminated the path toward peace.
   Might it now, in some form, help to gently walk that path together?
   I remain deeply grateful, appreciative and indebted for the platform TMS provides, under the editorial baton of the long serving and esteemed Professor Antonio Carlos Siva Rosa, as well as for the tireless efforts of its editorial Board and contributors. My intention is not to burden, but to contribute, however modestly, to the living tradition of peace through scholarship and ethical engagement, which forms the very basic tenets of peace propagation, as initiated by the late Professor Johan Galtung (MHSRIEP)
   With respect, sincerity, solidarity and hope,
   Hoosen Vawda
   Peace Propagator
   Durban, South Africa
   Global: + 27 82 291 4546
   e-mail: vawda@ukzn.ac.za
   Dated: Tuesday 26th May 2026
   Reference: TMS/Cont/26052026/RHV1

   Reply