Zionist Israel: The Scourge of Our Times

The investment of American governmental and corporate forces (systems) in defending and/or downplaying Israeli genocide has numbed the conscience and accelerated ferocity in a nation fully steeped in a violent reality; a reality playing out on its streets today.  

Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, effectively expressed what many are feeling about the ongoing genocide in Gaza and how it is different from others. In her 15 September 2025  “Gaza – The Shame of Our Time” press briefing, she stated:

“It [today’s genocide] is openly incited, cynically denied, and relentlessly supported, armed, and weaponized, while those who oppose it are silenced,  beaten, criminalized, and smeared. This is why I say this is the shame of our         time and the collapse of the international legal order in this moment, not only for the Palestinians, but for all of us. So I asked, prime ministers, presidents, foreign ministers, so-called world leaders. How do you sleep? When will you act, truly act beyond the words?”

Albanese is correct; it is the greatest shame of our time.  It is, however, Israel and the United States that carry that great shame; an ignominy that will live in the timeline of history.  

Numbers cannot capture the depth of the suffering; they are, however, vital in  helping end it.  

Numerous reports indicate that the following crimes against humanity have been committed against the Palestinians in Gaza by the Zionist regime from 7 October 2023 to January 2026:    

+ Israel has killed 71,800 from direct fire (half of the casualties women and children); with more than 10,000 buried under the rubble.

+ Israel has injured 171,555.

+ Israel has killed 234 Palestinian journalists and associated media personnel.

+ Israel has starved to death 440 (including 147 children).

+ Israel has made orphans of more than 19,000 children.

+ Israel has caused more than 58,000 children to lose one or both parents.

+ Israel’s bombing has resulted in some 6,000 amputees (1,500 or more are children).

+ Israel has created insecurity and hopelessness, causing 80 percent of Gaza’s 1.1 million children to suffer acute trauma. 

+ Israel has destroyed 95 percent of agricultural land.

+ Israel has destroyed 2,308 educational institutions and facilities (kindergarten to universities); all universities have been demolished.

+ Israel has damaged and completely destroyed 81-92 percent of all structures, including 89 percent of the infrastructure.  

+ Israel has detained without charges over 12,000 Gazans; its military has “disappeared” approximately 2,000.  

+ Israeli bombs have exposed Gazans to numerous toxic materials and environmental contaminants, creating long-term health risks.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been killed. The Gaza Health Ministry has relied, until now, solely on hospital records; therefore, the number of deaths is an undercount.  Since there are no fully functioning hospitals left in Gaza, the Ministry has had to augment its reporting based on information from first responders and reliable media sources.  

As Stephanie Savell, director of Brown University’s Cost of War Project, informed us, “Every single person in Gaza is sick, injured or both.”

Gaza was only the beginning for the murderous Zionist regime.  According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs , between 7 October 2023 and 16 January 2026, Israeli soldiers or Zionist colonizers have killed 1,049 Palestinians (at least 229 children) in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.  

According to the Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, illegal colonizers carried out nearly 4,723 attacks against Palestinians and property in the West Bank in 2025, forcing the displacement of 13 Bedouin communities.

Palestinians have always been seen by the United States and other Western countries as expendable. That was borne out in 1948 when the U.S. and its allies pressured the newly-created United Nations to give international legitimacy to the Zionist claim to Palestine. That the establishment of an ethnocentric colony on another people’s land meant the displacement and ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population mattered little to them.   

Genocide was the inexorable last act for a colonizing power founded on the supremacist national ideology of Zionism.  

Interestingly, by 1975, the international community recognized the dangers of a nation born in ethnic cleansing.  They understood that:

• Israel had no intention of ever withdrawing, as designated in UN Security Council Resolution 242, from Palestinian and Syrian land it had illegally occupied since the 1967 War.

• Israel’s doctrines of exclusiveness, supremacy and settler-colonialism were reflected in its ruthless practices of racial discrimination and oppression against the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

• Zionism was a threat to the peace and security of the region and the world.  

Championed by the Arab League, Muslim majority and Soviet bloc countries and the Non-Aligned Movement, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in November 1975 adopted Resolution 3379, officially determining that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.”

Supporters of the resolution saw it as a means to address issues of colonialism and oppression, while Israel and its allies, particularly Washington, employed the tactical antisemitism designation to abrogate it. 

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. at the time, used inflated language to denounce the resolution: “The UN is about to make anti-Semitism international law…The [US] does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act…a great evil has been loosed upon the world.”

After a decade of intense lobbying and making its participation in the 1991 Madrid peace conferencecontingent upon revocation, Israel secured the votes to reverse the resolution; which it did on 16 December 1991.  

Resolution 46/86, in one briskly-worded sentence,—“The General Assembly decides to revoke the determination contained in its resolution 3379 (XXX) of 10 November 1975—set aside the “Zionism is racism” determination.

The “infamous act” (a UN resolution) that Ambassador Moynihan railed against pales in comparison to the gravity of Israel’s “infamous genocidal acts”— an “evil” that “has been loosed upon the world.” 

Astonishingly, it took a genocidal Zionist war on a defenseless population for the Western world to begin to listen to them, to realize the terror and humiliation they have endured for more than eight decades at the hands of a diabolical “state.”

Israel’s systemic violence, dehumanization of Palestinians, prolonged apartheid occupation and atrocities in Gaza reflect an unhinged society in moral crisis.  Unfortunately, we see the same cruel indifference to Palestinian suffering from those in the United States who control the levers of political, economic and military power, determine policy and convey information.  

Palestinians will endure—justice and righteousness are on their side. Until they return home to Palestine, there will be no peace and justice in the world. 

True justice would see Palestinians returning home to their ancestral land, as Gaza begins to heal.  It may not happen today; maybe not tomorrow; but one day it will. Insha’Allah.

The post Zionist Israel: The Scourge of Our Times appeared first on CounterPunch.org.