Sixteen people were killed when an Israeli air strike hit a Greek Orthodox church in Gaza. The hundreds of Palestinians seeking shelter there, as apartment blocks and entire civilian neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble throughout Gaza, were given yet another reminder that there are no safe places in that tiny strip of land, which millions aren’t allowed to leave.

Israeli officials have been remarkably blunt about how little effort they’re making to target Hamas fighters as opposed to simply piling up Palestinian corpses and hoping the fighters are somewhere in the mix. Israel’s ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, compared the bombing of Gaza to the Allies’ indiscriminate firebombing of Dresden during World War II, saying that it was the only way to beat the Nazis, and similarly this is the only way to defeat Hamas — never mind that numerous legal experts have called the bombing of Dresden a war crime. Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, says that the civilian population is responsible for the crimes of Hamas — even though Hamas never won an outright majority in any election, and about half of Gaza residents weren’t alive when the last election happened — because the Palestinians haven’t overthrown Hamas in an uprising.

The presidency is a mostly ceremonial role in the Israeli system, but Herzog being able to say something like that without having to resign in shame is profoundly telling. The Israeli government has been quite open about the strategy to deny millions of civilians food, water, and medicine as a pressure tactic against Hamas, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has framed the conflict — which, remember, is taking place entirely within territory that Israel has controlled since 1967 — in existential and apocalyptic terms.