Military intervention must be used to stop the genocide in Gaza
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/23/military-invervention-israel-gaza-war
In Kosovo, Nato intervened in 1999 after mass killings and the threat of further ethnic cleansing. Why aren’t Gazans being protected in the same way?
On 20 May, the secretary-general for humanitarian affairs at the United Nations stated that 14,000 babies would be dead unless the blockade was lifted immediately. The day before, the former Knesset member Moshe Feiglin said: “Every child in Gaza is the enemy.” And now, world leaders in the UK and France threaten vague “concrete actions” if Israel “does not cease the renewed military offensive and lift its restrictions on humanitarian aid”. But undefined “concrete actions” are woefully insufficient. To those leaders I say: Gaza’s children cannot eat statements.
Bezalel Smotrich, the Israeli finance minister, declared last week: “We are destroying everything in Gaza, the world isn’t stopping us.” So let’s say what must be said, without apology: military intervention to defend Gaza is not only justified – it is required. It is humanitarian. It is overdue. Israel must be stopped.
A no-fly zone must be set up around Gaza to prevent further aerial bombing; and a coalition of willing states should come together to form a corridor to 1) end Israel’s colonial mechanism that is set to take 65% of Gaza’s land and 2) allow for the immediate dispersal of humanitarian aid. Military intervention should not merely be aimed at pausing the killing – it should be used to protect Palestinians’ right to exist as a people, with dignity, sovereignty and full unconditional control over their land and futures.
The latest UN announcement about the risk to Gazan babies follows others from the Israeli prime minister’s office that make Israel’s intention to destroy Gaza unmistakably clear. On the recommendation of the Israeli army, they said they would allow in a “basic amount of food” to the south of Gaza – but not out of mercy, not to save lives. The stated reason: to prevent famine from undermining the coming ground invasion, to clear space for “intense fighting”. In other words, aid would be permitted only to fuel further ethnic cleansing. Food not as relief, but as relocation. Nutrition as a tool for displacement. Netanyahu claimed that international pressure, including from pro-Israel Republican senators and the White House, required the appearance of humanitarian intervention. “Our best friends in the world – senators I know as strong supporters of Israel – have warned that they cannot support us if images of mass starvation emerge,” he said.
...
We have tried the petitions. We have written the letters. We tried peaceful protests and encampments. We have submitted the evidence. We have watched the Geneva conventions recited like prayer, while their every clause is violated. We have waited for the ICC to act while the United States rushes more weapons to the border. We have watched food convoys bombed, aid workers executed, newborns starved. We are not unreasonable. We are simply not willing to die politely.
Military intervention is not some imperial fantasy we borrow from the west. It is a mechanism built into the very structure of international law. Article I of the genocide convention requires states not only to punish genocide but to prevent it. The responsibility to protect doctrine (R2P), adopted in 2005 by every member of the United Nations, asserts that when a state is “manifestly failing” to protect its population – or, as in our case, actively trying to destroy it – other states are obligated to intervene, not encouraged, obligated.
And yes, there is precedent. In Kosovo, Nato intervened in 1999 after mass killings and the threat of further ethnic cleansing. In East Timor, a multinational force deployed to halt atrocities committed by militias supported by the Indonesian army. In Libya, security council resolution 1973 authorized military action “to protect civilians and civilian-populated areas under threat of attack”. Each time, the world acknowledged that force was the only viable form of protection. That sovereignty could not shield slaughter. That delay meant graves.
So why not now? Why not for Palestinians? Is it that our children starve too quietly? That our bodies do not make for good television? Is it because the bombs are labeled “Made in America”?
No one is asking for occupation. No one is asking for invasion in the name of oil, democracy or flags. We are asking for survival. We are asking for the same intervention that has been carried out for others when the death toll passed a certain threshold. Gaza is not asking to be exceptional. Gaza is asking not to be abandoned.
Military intervention is not violence – it is what stops violence. It is not the failure of law – it is its fulfillment. And it is the last remaining form of aid Israel has not managed to bomb, blockade or twist into a weapon of war. Airdropping rice into craters is not aid. Aid is removing the cause of the starvation. Aid is opening the checkpoints, not filming them. Aid is armored vehicles securing corridors for ambulances that no longer have to lie about their destinations to avoid being blown apart. Aid is ending the killing – not watching it with subtitles.
...
