Why Israel’s War in Gaza Is Wrong—and How History Keeps Repeating Itself

By Trinity Barnette

A Conflict Written in History—and Blood

The Israeli–Palestinian conflict didn’t start on October 7, 2023. That day was another breaking point in a century of overlapping wounds—a conflict born from two peoples, two promises, and one small strip of land both call home. It’s a story that began long before rockets and sieges—before Gaza became a synonym for rubble and loss.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, two nationalist movements rose in parallel: Zionism, a Jewish movement for a homeland in historic Palestine as refuge from European persecution, and Arab nationalism, a push for self-rule across the Arab world. When the British captured Palestine during World War I, they issued conflicting promises—the Balfour Declaration (1917) supporting a “national home for the Jewish people,” and the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence implying British support for an independent Arab state. Those contradictions lit the fuse for everything that followed.

After the Holocaust, waves of Jewish survivors immigrated to British-controlled Palestine. Violence between Jewish and Arab communities escalated over land and displacement. In 1947, the United Nations Partition Plan tried to divide the territory into separate Jewish and Arab states. The Jewish leadership accepted; Arab leaders rejected it. When Israel declared independence in 1948, the first Arab–Israeli war erupted. Israel survived and expanded its territory, but over 750,000 Palestinians were displaced or expelled—an event remembered as the Nakba, or “catastrophe.” That mass displacement still shapes Palestinian identity and fuels demands for the right of return.

Decade after decade, the same questions have remained unresolved:

• Borders—Where does Israel end and Palestine begin?

• Jerusalem—A city sacred to Jews, Muslims, and Christians, claimed by both as a capital.

• Refugees—Millions of Palestinians still denied return to ancestral homes.

• Settlements—Israeli construction in occupied land, illegal under international law.

• Security and Recognition—Israel’s demand for safety and legitimacy; Palestine’s demand for freedom and statehood.

Despite moments of hope—the Oslo Accords (1993), Camp David, the Abraham Accords—no peace has lasted. Instead, Gaza became a cage: a blockaded territory ruled by Hamas since 2007, cut off from the world by both Israel and Egypt.

Then came October 7, 2023—when Hamas launched a surprise assault on southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages. It was the deadliest day in Israel’s history. What followed was even worse: Israel’s massive retaliation against Gaza has killed over 68,000 Palestinians, nearly half of them women and children, and displaced nearly all 2.3 million residents.

Israel calls it self-defense.

The world calls it collective punishment.

And beneath the politics, propaganda, and justifications—it’s the same story told again: a fight over survival that keeps repeating itself, only bloodier each time.

The War That Changed Everything

October 7 wasn’t just another attack—it was the day decades of rage, grief, and occupation erupted at once. When Hamas militants stormed southern Israel, they shattered the country’s sense of invincibility and reignited the world’s most volatile conflict. Israel’s immediate declaration of war marked the start of a campaign that would devastate Gaza on an unimaginable scale.

Within hours, Israel imposed a “complete siege”—cutting off food, water, fuel, and electricity to 2.3 million people. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s words were chillingly direct: “No electricity, no food, no fuel—everything is closed.” Human Rights Watch called it what it was—a call to commit a war crime.

Israel said its mission was to “eliminate Hamas.” But its tactics—mass bombardment, forced displacement, and the starvation of civilians—bore the unmistakable marks of collective punishment. The United Nations confirmed famine conditions across northern Gaza in 2025, calling it “entirely man-made.” Aid convoys were blocked, humanitarian workers were killed, and UN agencies said deliveries fell to a fraction of what was needed to keep people alive.

The Israeli government framed it as self-defense; global observers called it a moral and legal disaster. The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, accusing them of using starvation as a weapon of war. Parallel warrants targeted Hamas leaders for the October 7 massacre and hostage-taking. Both truths coexist—Hamas committed atrocities, and Israel has responded with atrocities of its own.

By 2025, Gaza’s cities were gone—leveled into dust and memory. Over 1 million people were trapped in the south without clean water. Disease spread faster than aid. Journalists, doctors, and aid workers were detained, tortured, or killed. And still, the bombs kept falling.

Every war tells us something about who we are. This one tells us how quickly humanity can vanish when vengeance masquerades as justice. Israel said it wanted security—but no one is safer now. Gaza lies in ruins, hostages have died, and a generation of children has grown up surrounded by death, hunger, and grief.

This war was supposed to destroy Hamas. Instead, it has destroyed Gaza—and with it, the moral standing of the very state that claimed it was defending itself.

What Israel Says vs. What It’s Doing

Israel insists its war is about self-defense—about destroying Hamas and rescuing hostages. But when defense turns into starvation, and liberation looks like annihilation, it stops being self-defense. It becomes domination.

For nearly two years, Gaza has been under a “total blockade”—a policy that has starved its population, stripped its hospitals of medicine, and turned survival into resistance. In early 2025, UN experts officially confirmed what Gazans had been saying for months: famine was underway in Gaza City and spreading south. The report called it “entirely man-made.” Israel called it “a lie.” But satellite images, malnutrition data, and aid statistics told the truth—people were dying not just from bombs, but from hunger.

Under international humanitarian law, it’s a war crime to starve civilians as a method of warfare. The International Criminal Court cited this when it issued arrest warrants for Israeli leaders in 2025. The Geneva Conventions are clear—cutting off food, water, and fuel to an entire population is collective punishment, no matter what military justification is offered.

Israel’s leaders defended their tactics by pointing to Hamas—claiming the group hides behind civilians, stores weapons in hospitals, and steals aid. Some of that is true. But the laws of war don’t allow retaliation that destroys entire cities. They don’t allow siege warfare that targets life itself. You can’t bomb a bakery and call it self-defense. You can’t block insulin, baby formula, and clean water, and still claim to stand on moral ground.

Every image out of Gaza tells a story that contradicts the official narrative—children eating grass, hospitals turned to rubble, aid workers killed while carrying food. Over 192 journalists have been killed, making this one of the deadliest wars for the press in modern history. The United Nations said Israel’s new aid distribution system—restricted to a few sites that require Palestinians to travel miles through dangerous zones—violates humanitarian principles.

Even the United States, Israel’s closest ally, has publicly warned against “indiscriminate” tactics. And yet, U.S. weapons, money, and political cover have made the war possible.

This isn’t about denying Israel’s right to exist or its right to safety. It’s about asking what that safety costs—and who pays the price. Because when your security depends on starving two million people, you’ve already lost the moral war.

In Gaza, survival has become rebellion. Every child still breathing, every doctor still operating without anesthesia, every parent digging through rubble for their family—they are living proof that humanity can persist even in hell.

The Human Cost—and the World’s Response

Numbers can’t tell the story of Gaza. They can measure death, but not dignity. They can’t explain what it means to bury your family in the same rubble you once called home—or to search for clean water in a place surrounded by the sea.

By 2025, nearly every one of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents had been displaced. Families walked miles through bombed-out streets only to end up in overcrowded tents with no food, no toilets, no safety. Doctors performed amputations without anesthesia. Mothers gave birth in classrooms. Journalists—who risked everything to show the world what was happening—were killed by the very forces denying the crimes.

And still, the world watched. Some called for a ceasefire. Others sent weapons.

When the International Court of Justice agreed to hear South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, it marked a shift—the first time in decades that the global system publicly questioned whether Israel’s actions crossed the line from occupation to extermination. The court hasn’t ruled yet, but the evidence is hard to ignore: mass displacement, blocked aid, targeted infrastructure, and an official famine confirmed by UN-backed experts.

At the same time, the International Criminal Court went further—issuing arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, accusing them of using starvation as a weapon of war. The ICC also issued warrants for Hamas leaders behind the October 7 massacre and hostage-taking. Both truths coexist—a terror attack that shattered Israeli lives, and a military response that erased Palestinian ones.

In September 2025, a wave of countries—including the United Kingdom, France, Canada, and Australia—formally recognized the State of Palestine, citing the “appalling situation in Gaza” and Israel’s continued settlement expansion. It was a diplomatic earthquake—a long overdue acknowledgment that you can’t bomb your way to peace.

Even some Israelis began to ask whether this was truly about defense anymore—or about control. Polls showed record levels of dissent, with soldiers and civilians alike questioning a war that had dragged on longer than any in Israel’s history.

Yet amid the ruins, Gaza refused to disappear. Community kitchens rose out of debris. Children drew on the sides of tents. Aid workers kept returning after every airstrike. Every act of survival became a quiet form of resistance—a reminder that occupation can destroy cities, but not the spirit of a people.

Reflection—When Justice Becomes Personal

Wars like this force the world to pick sides. But there’s a difference between sides and values. Between choosing a people and choosing humanity.

It’s possible to condemn Hamas for killing civilians—and still hold Israel accountable for killing tens of thousands more. It’s possible to grieve Israeli lives lost—and still demand justice for Palestinian families buried alive under rubble. Justice doesn’t depend on identity. It depends on truth.

What’s happening in Gaza isn’t just politics—it’s history repeating itself because the world keeps mistaking vengeance for victory.

And if there’s one thing the last two years have shown us, it’s that silence is complicity.

You don’t have to be Palestinian to see that what’s happening is wrong. You just have to be human enough to care.

When War Becomes an Excuse for Rape

Sexual violence isn’t a side effect of war—it’s a weapon. Every report, every testimony, every silenced survivor is proof that brutality doesn’t stop at borders or battle lines. When men in power choose vengeance over humanity, women pay the price in the most personal way imaginable.

What’s happening to women in Gaza and Israel isn’t politics—it’s rape used as terror, humiliation, and control. And the world will call it “complex” to avoid accountability. But there’s nothing complex about it. It’s the same violation survivors everywhere know too well—the theft of safety, the erasure of dignity, the demand to carry someone else’s violence forever.

As a survivor, I can’t look at this war without seeing myself in those women. Their pain deserves more than headlines—it deserves justice that doesn’t depend on which flag they live under.

Raw Reflection

I write about pain because I’ve lived it. Different story, different battlefield—but the same violation of what it means to be human.

When I see Gaza, I see every survivor who’s ever been silenced and blamed for their own suffering. I see children growing up surrounded by loss and still finding ways to laugh. I see women carrying both life and grief at the same time.

You don’t have to be Palestinian to feel this. You just have to have a heart.

What’s happening in Gaza isn’t complicated—it’s cruelty with a political excuse. It’s power without accountability. And as long as we keep debating the language instead of confronting the horror, people will keep dying while the world calls it “defense.”

Justice isn’t selective. It doesn’t belong to one religion, one race, or one border. It belongs to anyone who still believes in humanity when it’s hardest to.

So yes—speak up. Post about it. Learn the history. Mourn the dead. But most of all, refuse to be numb. Because silence doesn’t protect peace—it protects the people who profit from war.

And that’s exactly why I’ll keep writing.