In Tuesday’s early morning hours, as Palestinians in Gaza were preparing for another day of fasting for the Muslim holiday of Ramadan, Israeli forces pounded the besieged Strip with a massive surprise-attack barrage of air strikes, killing over 450 people, most of them women and children.

It was a brutal act of wanton killing. In the span of hours, entire Palestinian families were wiped out and buried in the rubble of their homes. Children and women were burned alive and murdered in their sleep. Survivors include a month-old girl, who was pulled from the rubble after the air strike killed her parents and brother.

Among the victims were the family of Nasreen Abdu, who was killed alongside her husband and three children when their family home was bombed in Gaza City. She was the sister of prominent Palestinian legal advocate Rami Abdu, who serves as the chairman of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, which documents war crimes in Gaza, and who lamented the tragedy with astonishing resilience.

The Israeli onslaught targeted various areas across the Gaza Strip, from north to south, including Jabalia, Beit Hanoon, Gaza City, Nuseirat, Deir el-Balah, Khan Younis, Rafah, and al-Mawasi, which had been designated as a safe humanitarian zone for displaced Palestinians. Targets included two schools where hundreds of displaced families were taking shelter — al-Tabin School in Daraj, Gaza City, and Dar al-Fadhila School northwest of Rafah City.

Since Tuesday, Israeli forces have killed over six hundred Palestinians, while wounding more than ten thousand others, including at least 110 Palestinians killed on Thursday.

The horrific massacre was among the deadliest days of Israel’s eighteen-month-long genocide in Gaza, and one of the deadliest days for children in Gazan history. It took place during Ramadan and amid Israel’s total blockade of food, water, energy, and electricity into the besieged Strip. Palestinians describe the massacre as a “bloody suhoor,” referring to the pre-dawn meal during Ramdan, which they could hardly provide under total Israeli blockade.

The onslaught was a stark violation of the cease-fire agreement with Hamas, which Israel has violated over a thousand times since January. The surprise attack has destroyed whatever hope or shred of happiness Palestinians had reclaimed in Gaza over the past two months.

A day after the massacre, Israel invaded the Gaza Strip, sending troops back into areas swelled with displaced and starving Palestinians. The Israeli army is meanwhile gearing up for a ground invasion of Rafah, where over million displaced Palestinians are taking shelter.

Following the massacre, in a televised address on Tuesday evening, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that the onslaught on Gaza was “only the beginning,” while vowing to blitz the ravaged Strip with “increasing force” and warning that future cease-fire negotiations would “only take place under fire.”

On Wednesday, invoking Donald Trump, Israel’s new defense minister, Israel Katz, issued a “final warning to the residents of Gaza,” pledging to unleash an orgy of “total ruin,” forced displacement, and “destruction and total devastation.”

By vowing to annihilate Gaza, Israeli leaders are clearly emboldened by the Trump administration. Trump’s numerous remarks in support of ethnic cleansing in Gaza have ensured that Israel continues to act with impunity there, with total contempt for international law and norms.

Israel’s renewed onslaught has been carried out with US weapons and blessings, and launched with one hundred simultaneous air strikes and US-made bombs. Israeli top politicians have confirmed that the attacks were “coordinated” with the United States. Trump administration officials have cheered on the Israeli onslaught, while vowing that “We support Israel in its next steps,” as acting US ambassador to the United Nations Dorothy Shea pledged before a UN Security Council.

Rights groups have expressed their sheer horror and outrage at the massacre. Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), described the bloodshed as “hell on earth.” Rachael Cummings, Save the Children’s humanitarian director based in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah, said the attack was “nothing short of a death sentence for Gaza’s children.”

Families of Israeli hostages held in Gaza condemned the onslaught as a deliberate attempt by the Netanyahu government to dismantle the cease-fire agreement. The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which represents the families of captives in Gaza, said in a social media post: “We are shocked, angry, and terrified by the deliberate dismantling of the process to return our loved ones from the terrible captivity of Hamas.”

Meanwhile, US politicians continue to cheer on Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza with bipartisan complacency. One day after the massacre, Democratic senator John Fetterman visited Israel in a public display of fealty. Netanyahu gifted the Pennsylvania Democrat a silver pager inspired by Israel’s terrorist attack in Lebanon last year. (It was a noteworthy downgrade of the gold pager that Netanyahu gifted Trump at the White House.)

As Israel massacred 450 innocent people in Gaza, including nearly 200 children, Democratic leader Chuck Schumer went live on national TV to parrot a debunked Israeli propaganda about the “forty beheaded babies,” which has since served to justify Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Accompanying the US-backed destruction of Gaza is the anti-Palestinian neo-McCarthyism that’s sweeping US campuses, from Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s abduction of anti-genocide activist Mahmoud Khalil to the recent abduction of Georgetown University scholar Badar Khan Suri, who was kidnapped by masked Department of Homeland Security agents. This growing authoritarianism has been cheered on by Republicans and Democrats alike and facilitated by US liberal institutions, which are now rewarding war criminals and genocide architects with honorable professorships.

Israel’s Ramadan massacre was one of the worst acts of butchery in a war that has been filled with them. More appear likely to come.