Gaza is not an aberration - Israel planned this genocide decades ago

Jonathan Cook

11 June 2026 07:25 BST

In October 2023, Israel found an excuse to breathe new life into an old story of slaughter and expulsion. The chief differences this time have been of scale and duration

The truth slowly comes to light: Israel's genocide in Gaza was planned decades ago.

Listen to the testimonies of four Israeli soldiers who served in Gaza. 

Soldier 1: “Human lives didn’t matter. You could kill, there was no law. No one would say a word to you. But it’s not a good feeling. It mainly kills your humanity.”

Soldier 2: “At first I wasn’t willing to execute Arabs who weren’t resisting [that is, civilians]. Then we came to the conclusion that we had to kill. We went through the process of ceasing to see them as human beings.”

Soldier 3: “We caught guys, lined them up and eliminated them. In retrospect, it looks like murder.”

Soldier 4: “We would roam through refugee camps in Gaza and carry out purges... Every soldier who was there created a ‘concentration camp’, and they didn’t hesitate to kill people who caused a slight disturbance.”

No, these testimonies are not new. The whistleblowers did not serve in Gaza during the current, ongoing genocide there. These accounts are nearly 60 years old, published last week by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz under the headline "We were ordered to kill”. 

Read the article in the Middle East Eye here.

Video of visually impaired Palestinian boy crying over broken glasses draws global attention

A video of a seven-year-old Palestinian boy in Gaza who suffers from a severe visual impairment crying over his shattered glasses has drawn widespread attention across social and international media.

The footage of Ayoub Junaid has shone a light on the plight of the many visually impaired children in Gaza who, because of Israel’s blockade and the devastation caused by the war, have been unable to access eye examinations, corrective lenses or specialist ophthalmic surgery.

After the clip was viewed by tens of millions of people, Ayoub received a new pair of glasses. This good news, however, does not solve the underlying problem, as he urgently needs surgery.

Ayoub’s mother, Eman Junaid, 30, displaced in the Gaza City port area, tells the Guardian her son’s problem began when he was two.

“Ayoub suffers from very severe nearsightedness after having a fever illness,” she says. A doctor told Junaid that Ayoub’s vision would gradually improve as he got older, but the opposite happened – the prescription he required increased and the lenses he now needs are not available in Gaza.

“We were preparing to travel for treatment, but the war started and everything stopped,” she adds.

Read the article here & see the video.

Truth

Candy and the Kings

When a journalist is killed, thousands of people are silenced. According to documentation by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and the United Nations, more media professionals have been killed in Gaza by Israe than in World War I, World War II, the Vietnam War, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan combined.

They are still also not letting international journalists in. Gaza is the only "war zone" globally where independent international journalists are entirely banned from entering by Israel has maintained a near-total blockade on independent foreign press access since October 2023, only allowing highly restricted, military-escorted tours for selected outlets. If you have nothing to hide why aren't you allowing any reporter's in?