More than twenty months into the genocide, Israel has rendered Gaza a hellscape on earth. This hellscape is not an act of God, or a natural disaster, or some force majeure — it’s human-made, orchestrated by Israel, funded and armed by the United States, and cheered on by Western political elites.

For five hellish months, Israel has imposed a total blockade on Gaza, blocking all food deliveries to the starving population of two million Palestinians, almost half of them children, and condemning hundreds to a slow and agonizing death. Unsatisfied with forced mass starvation, Israeli forces carried out the equivalent of their previous flour massacre in Gaza almost daily, slaughtering over one thousand Palestinians seeking food. On Wednesday, more than one hundred international aid and rights groups appealed to governments to take immediate action in Gaza, where over one hundred thousand children are facing imminent mass death if this barbarity continues.

The humanitarian calamity is so horrific that top UN officials have abandoned their customarily restrained tone for outraged and emotionally charged condemnations. UN secretary-general António Guterres has berated the international community for ignoring the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, which he said presents a “moral crisis that challenges the global conscience.”