World witnessing 'unchecked orgy of manic violence and destruction' in Gaza: Analyst

By Press TV Website Staff

What the world has been witnessing in the besieged Gaza Strip since October 7 last year is an “unchecked orgy of manic violence and destruction,” says a US-based scholar and activist.

In an interview with the Press TV website, Professor Assaf Kfoury, a computer science professor at Boston University and a political activist with roots in Lebanon and Palestine, said the Israeli regime could not have pursued its genocidal campaign in Gaza “without the weapons supplied by the US.”

The death toll in the Israeli genocidal war against Palestinians in the besieged coastal territory since October 7, 2023, has already surpassed 40,000, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

Almost the entire population of over two million has been displaced and rendered homeless. Infrastructure has been destroyed, and there are no longer any “safe zones” amid the Israeli bombings.

Professor Kfoury emphasized that while the official death toll in Gaza stands at 40,000, the actual number is likely much higher.

“I think it is worth noting what a very good British investigative journalist, Jonathan Cook, has concluded: The official death toll in Gaza is a lie. The casualty numbers are far, far higher,” he said.

In a blog post last month, Cook, an award-winning independent journalist, asserted that the figures have been “stalled for months,” as it serves Israel’s interests by lulling the Western public into a false sense of complacency.

“The reported death toll in Gaza is way too low by every imaginable metric. We need to be stressing this – all the more so when Israel’s apologists are vigorously engaged in a disinformation campaign to suggest that the figures are inflated,” Cook wrote on his website on July 31.

Professor Kfoury seconded him, citing eyewitness accounts from health workers who traveled to Gaza in recent months and witnessed “horrific” scenes.

“We have eyewitness accounts from several health workers (doctors, nurses, and their assistants) who have managed to enter Gaza for a few days or longer in recent months. What they have reported is horrific,” he told the Press TV website.

On American complicity in the Israeli genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza, the Boston University professor asserted that the US has “definitely been complicit in the devastation of Gaza.”

“The complicity is overt and publicly reported in all major newspapers for everyone to see. Of course, they do not label the delivery of weapons as ‘complicity,’ which carries a negative connotation. But you ask if the US is ‘equally’ complicit,” Professor Kfoury stated.

“In fact, if there are degrees of complicity that evolve over time, I would argue that the US has been more complicit, increasingly so as time passes, in the destruction of Gaza.”

He further added that the US has been involved in the Gaza genocide from the “very beginning,” as it had the “power to demand and enforce a ceasefire simply by withholding the weapons.”

Regarding the fate of ceasefire negotiations between the Israeli regime and the Hamas resistance group, mediated by Qatar, Egypt, and the United States, Professor Kfoury said they are “going nowhere.”

“If they are still being conducted and will continue, it is because the US wants and needs them to save face vis-a-vis the rest of the world. The US has to act as if it genuinely wants a ceasefire, though, in fact, US actions increasingly appear as a diversionary tactic to let Israel pursue its campaign,” he noted.

The latest round of ceasefire negotiations in Doha earlier this week ended without a breakthrough.

Hamas, in a statement, stressed that it “acted with full responsibility in response to the efforts of our brothers, the mediators in Qatar and Egypt, and with all the proposals aimed at reaching an agreement.”

However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “obstructed” the deal, the movement said.

Professor Kfoury said dialogue and deadly bombings “cannot go together,” referring to the incessant killings of Palestinian civilians in Israeli bombings and raids across the blockaded territory.

“Honest dialogue and deadly bombings cannot coexist. Unfortunately, and sadly, this is all unreal or hypothetical because ‘honest dialogue’ is never part of the Israeli and US agenda. To repeat a common aphorism, for the US in pursuit of its Middle East policy, ‘it's my way or the highway,’” he stressed.

On the assassination of Hamas politburo leader and lead negotiator Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, the US-based academic and activist reiterated that the Tel Aviv regime is “not interested in peace.”

“Israel is not interested in peace. It is addicted to assassinations: It kills leaders of Hamas (or of Islamic Jihad in Gaza, or of Hezbollah in Lebanon) without any serious consideration of what comes next,” Professor Kfoury told the Press TV website.

He said the Israeli regime “acts out of sheer vendetta and vengeance, regardless of the consequences.”

“By killing Ismail Haniyeh, Israel may well expand the theater of war -- and we will find out in the next few days -- but I do not think Israeli leaders have carefully considered what would follow from their decision to kill Haniyeh,” the academic-activist said.

Professor Kfoury further stated that the regime is already in “serious trouble,” bogged down in an “unwinnable war in Gaza,” with its military “showing signs of strain.”

“The Israeli economy is suffering greatly, and the online Israeli newspaper *Times of Israel* recently reported that as many as 60,000 businesses may close this year,” he added.

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