As I write these words, we are witnessing a massacre without precedent since the turn of the millennium. The merciless offensive unleashed by the Israeli government following the Hamas attacks has killed more than eighteen thousand Palestinians in ten weeks, two-thirds of whom are women and children. It has destroyed 70 percent of buildings in the north of the Strip, a percentage higher than that caused by the bombing of Dresden in World War II, today considered a paradigmatic example of a war crime. It has devastated Gaza’s three universities. It has also deliberately bombed bakeries, schools, and hospitals.

Faced with this campaign of collective punishment, 1.7 million Gazans — over 80 percent of the population — have been forcibly displaced to the Egyptian border, where conditions are worsening by the minute and there is no infrastructure to accommodate them and no guarantee of their safety. Among the victims are doctors, journalists, United Nations personnel (101 dead, the highest number in the organization’s history), and even well-known poets, such as the recently murdered Refaat Alareer. We are seeing unbearable images, as one of the most sophisticated armies in the world methodically unleashes truly heartbreaking violence against the civilian population.

No one who looks at the reality of what is happening with objectivity and decency can deny that ethnic cleansing is taking place in Gaza. As recognized experts on the Holocaust and the historical study of genocides have expressed, the time to act to stop this massacre is now. We cannot take refuge in pedantic verbal constructions or keep silent, as so many European leaders do, having so much to say about other conflicts but muted in the face of the flagrant war crimes being committed against the Palestinian people. Looking the other way is not something that they will be able to justify to posterity.