{"id":299959,"date":"2025-07-28T12:00:19","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T11:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=299959"},"modified":"2025-07-27T03:41:19","modified_gmt":"2025-07-27T02:41:19","slug":"the-gaza-riviera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/07\/the-gaza-riviera\/","title":{"rendered":"The Gaza Riviera"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Never Again (Certain Restrictions Apply)\u00a0 – by Mr. Fish<\/p><\/div>\n

Israeli society cheers on the Gaza slaughterhouse and sees in genocide not a crime, but a utopian fantasy.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

26 Jul 2025 –<\/em>\u00a0Israelis do not see the images of skeletal corpses of Palestinian children<\/a> who they have starved to death<\/a> as a curse. They do not see the slain families they gun down<\/a> at food hubs \u2014 designed not to deliver aid but lure<\/a> starving Palestinians into a<\/a> massive concentration camp in the south of Gaza in preparation for deportation \u2014 as a war crime. Israelis do not look at the savage bombing and shelling<\/a> that kill or wound dozens of Palestinian civilians, where an average of 28 children die daily<\/a>, as anything extraordinary. They do not see the wasteland<\/a> of Gaza, pulverized by bombs and methodically being torn down<\/a> by bulldozers and excavators, leaving virtually<\/a> the entire population of Gaza homeless, as barbaric. They do not see the destruction<\/a> of water purification plants, decimation of hospitals and clinics, where doctors and medical staff are often unable to work because they are weak from malnutrition<\/a>, as savage. They do not blink at the assassinations of doctors<\/a> as well as journalists<\/a>, 232 of whom have been murdered<\/a> for trying to document the horror.<\/p>\n

Israelis have blinded themselves morally and intellectually. They view the genocide<\/a> through the lens of a bankrupt media and political class that tells them only what they want to hear and shows them only what they want to see. They are intoxicated by the power of their industrial weapons and license to kill with impunity. They are drunk on self-adulation and the fantasy that they are the vanguard of civilization. They believe that the extermination of a people, including children, condemned as human contaminants, makes the world, especially their world, a happier and safer place.<\/p>\n

They are the heirs of Pol Pot<\/a>, the killers that carried out the genocides in East Timor<\/a>, Rwanda<\/a> and Bosnia<\/a> and, yes, the Nazis. Israel, like all genocidal states \u2014 no population since World War II has been dispossessed and starved with such speed and ruthlessness \u2013 has a final solution<\/a> that would have earned the stamp of approval from Adolf Eichmann<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Starvation<\/a> was always the plan, the preordained final chapter<\/a> of the genocide. Israel methodically set out from the beginning of the genocide to destroy sources of food, bombing bakeries and blocking food shipments into Gaza, something it has accelerated since March, when it severed nearly all food supplies. It targeted<\/a> the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) \u2014 on which most Palestinians depended on for food \u2014 for destruction, accusing its employees, without providing evidence, of being involved in the attacks of Oct. 7. This accusation was used to give funders such as the United States, which provided<\/a> $422 million to the agency in 2023, the excuse to halt financial support. Israel then banned<\/a> UNRWA.<\/p>\n

Over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed<\/a> by Israeli soldiers and U.S. mercenaries in the chaotic scramble to get one of the few food packages distributed during the brief blocks of time, usually an hour, at the four aid sites set up by the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation<\/a>, according to the U.N. Human Rights Office.<\/p>\n

Once Gaza was turned into a moonscape after 21 months of saturation bombing, once Palestinians were forced to live in tents, under crude tarps or in the open air, once clean water, food and medical aid became nearly impossible to find, once civil society was obliterated, Israel began its grim campaign to starve the Palestinians out of Gaza.<\/p>\n

One in three people in Gaza are going multiple days without eating, according to<\/a> the U.N.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq, a 1.5-year-old child in Gaza City, faces life-threatening malnutrition as the humanitarian situation worsens due to ongoing Israeli attacks and blockade, on 21 Jul 2025. Having dropped from 9 to 6 kilograms, he struggles to survive in a tent in Gaza City, where milk, food, and other basic necessities are non existent.
(Photo by Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini\/Anadolu via Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/figure>\n

Starvation is not a pretty sight. I covered the famine in Sudan in 1988 that took an estimated<\/a> 250,000 lives. There are streaks in my lungs \u2014 scars from standing amid hundreds of Sudanese who were dying of tuberculosis. I was strong and healthy and fought off the contagion. They were weak and emaciated and did not.<\/p>\n

I watched hundreds of skeletal figures, ghosts of human beings, trudge at a glacial pace across the barren Sudanese landscape. Hyenas, accustomed to eating human flesh, routinely picked off small children. I stood over clusters of bleached human bones on the outskirts of villages where dozens of people, too weak to walk, had laid down in a group and never got up. Many were the remains of entire families.<\/p>\n

The starved lack enough calories to sustain themselves. They eat anything to survive \u2014 animal feed, grass, leaves, insects, rodents, even dirt. They suffer from constant diarrhea. They have trouble breathing because of respiratory infections. They rip up tiny bits of food, often spoiled, and ration it in a vain attempt to hold off the gnawing hunger pains.<\/p>\n

Starvation reduces the iron needed to produce hemoglobin, a protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen from the lungs to the body, and myoglobin, a protein that provides oxygen to muscles, coupled with a lack of vitamin B1, which affects heart and brain function. <\/strong>Anemia sets in. <\/strong>The body, in essence, feeds on itself. Tissue and muscle waste away. It is impossible to regulate body temperature. Kidneys shut down. Immune systems crash. Vital organs atrophy. Blood circulation slows. The volume of blood decreases. Infectious diseases such as typhoid, tuberculosis and cholera become an epidemic, killing people by the thousands.<\/p>\n

It is impossible to concentrate. Emaciated victims succumb to mental and emotional withdrawal and apathy. They do not want to be touched or moved. The heart muscle is weakened. Victims, even at rest, are in a state of virtual heart failure. Wounds do not heal. Vision is impaired with cataracts, even among the young. Finally, wracked by convulsions and hallucinations, the heart stops. This process can last up to 40 days for an adult. Children, the elderly and the sick expire at faster rates.This is the future Israel has preordained for the two million people in Gaza.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Palestinians shove to receive a hot meal at a charity kitchen in the al-Mawasi area of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on 22 Jul 2025.
(Photo by -\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

But it is not the future Israelis see. They see paradise. They see an ethno-nationalist<\/a> Jewish state where Palestinians, whose land they stole and occupied<\/a> and whose people they have subjugated and forced into an apartheid existence, do not exist. They see cafes and hotels rising up where thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of bodies lie buried under the rubble. They see tourists frolicking on the Gaza beachfront, a vision enhanced by an Artificial Intelligence-generated video uploaded<\/a> to social media by Israeli Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology, Gila Gamliel. It is what a Gaza devoid of Palestinians would look like, echoing the absurdist AI video posted<\/a> by Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

In the new video, carefree Israelis eat at seaside restaurants. Anchored in the sparkling Mediterranean are luxury yachts. Gleaming hotels and office high rises, including a Trump Tower, dot the beachfront. Attractive residential neighborhoods stand where now there are broken, jagged mounds of concrete. The video shows Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, as well as Trump and Melania, strolling along the seaside.<\/p>\n

Gamliel, like other Israeli leaders and Trump, cynically uses the term \u201cvoluntary emigration\u201d to describe the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. This omits the stark choice Israel actually offers the Palestinians \u2014 leave or die<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has called<\/a> for a \u201csecurity annexation\u201d of the northern Gaza Strip and vowed that Gaza will become an \u201cinseparable part of the State of Israel.\u201d He made the remarks at a Knesset conference called \u201cThe Gaza Riviera \u2014 from vision to reality,\u201d which presented proposals for the building of Jewish colonies in Gaza. Smotrich said<\/a> Israel would \u201crelocate Gazans to other countries,\u201d and that Trump endorsed the plan.<\/p>\n

Israeli Minister of Heritage Amichai Eliyahu, who once proposed<\/a> dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza, declared<\/a> that \u201cAll Gaza will be Jewish.\u201d The Israeli government \u201cis racing ahead for Gaza to be wiped out,\u201d Eliyahu said. He described Palestinians as Nazis. \u201cThank God, we are wiping out this evil. We are pushing this population that has been educated on \u2018Mein Kampf<\/a>.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Genocidal killers embrace fantasies of eradicating a native population and expanding their ethnonationalist state. The Nazis carried out their genocidal assault, which included mass starvation, on Slavs, Eastern European Jews and other indigenous people, dismissed as Untermenschen<\/em>, or subhumans. Colonists were then to be shipped to Central and Eastern Europe to Germanize the occupied territory.<\/p>\n

These killers do not reckon with the darkness they unleash. The upscale beachfront properties dreamt of by Israel will never appear, just as the modern, exclusively Serb<\/a> capital, with its golden domed cathedral, imposing presidency building, 15-story clock tower, state-of-the-art medical center and national theater with a 72-foot revolving stage was never built on the ruins of Bosnia.<\/p>\n

Rather, there will be ugly apartment blocks, populated by<\/a> the usual miscreants, proto-fascists, racists and mediocrities who live in the Jewish colonies in the West Bank. These ultranationalists<\/a>, who have formed rogue militias to seize Palestinian land and joined the Israeli army in murdering<\/a> over 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank since Oct. 7, will define Israel. They are the Israeli version of the 3-million-strong Pancasila Youth<\/a> \u2014 Indonesia\u2019s equivalent of the Brown Shirts or the Hitler Youth \u2014 that in 1965 helped carry out the genocidal mayhem that left half a million to one million dead.<\/p>\n

These rogue militias, equipped<\/a> with automatic weapons provided by the Israeli government, lynched<\/a> Saifullah Musallet, a 20-year-old Palestinian-American, who was attempting to protect his family\u2019s land two weeks ago. He is the fifth U.S. citizen killed in the West Bank since Oct. 7.<\/p>\n

Once these Israeli goons and thugs are done with the Palestinians, they will turn on<\/a> each other.<\/p>\n

The genocide in Gaza signals the abolition, for Israelis as well as Palestinians, of the rule of law. It marks the obliteration of even the pretense of an ethical code. Israelis are the barbarians they condemn. If there is any warped justice in this genocide it is that Israelis, once they finish with the Palestinians, will be forced to live together in moral squalor.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize\u2013winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for\u00a0<\/em>The New York Times,\u00a0where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief. He previously worked overseas for\u00a0<\/em>The Dallas Morning News,\u00a0The Christian Science Monitor, and<\/em> NPR. He used to be the host of the Emmy Award-nominated <\/em>RT America show\u00a0<\/em>On Contact.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original – chrishedges.substack.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

26 Jul 2025 – Israeli society cheers on the Gaza slaughterhouse and sees in genocide not a crime, but a utopian fantasy. Israelis do not see the images of skeletal corpses of Palestinian children who they have starved to death. They do not see the slain families they gun down at food hubs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":299961,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[3287,1559,1854,101,100,1199,2242,87,865,1029,1966,1644,88,2416,771,427,2897,880,99,70,965,1025],"class_list":["post-299959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide","tag-anti-zionism","tag-collective-punishment","tag-crimes-against-humanity","tag-cultural-violence","tag-direct-violence","tag-ethnic-cleansing","tag-famine","tag-gaza","tag-genocide","tag-hamas","tag-hunger","tag-international-court-of-justice-icj","tag-israel","tag-israeli-occupation","tag-nakba","tag-palestine","tag-sociocide","tag-state-terrorism","tag-structural-violence","tag-usa","tag-war-crimes","tag-west-bank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299959"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":299964,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299959\/revisions\/299964"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}