Depravity Now!

 

No matter how sadistic you think the state of Israel is, it’s worse. It’s impossible to get to the bottom of its depravity.

Take, for example, the very recent assassination of four Palestinian journalists via an air strike on a tent they were sleeping under. It seems that one of them, named Anas Al-Sharif, had become rather renowned for his reporting on the Gazan genocide. So Israel did what any gangster organization would do. They rubbed him out, along with three of his colleagues.

Not only did they kill the messengers, but they proudly showed off their criminality by announcing the killing in advance. They declared, with no evidence or even logic, that Al-Sharif was working for Hamas. And that, by Israeli military logic, was all the excuse required to eliminate him (and, again, anyone hanging out with him).

Al-Sharif knew he would very likely be killed. His friends knew it. The Committee to Protect Journalists knew it: two weeks before his murder, they called for him to be given some kind of protection, noting he was “being targeted by an Israeli military smear campaign he believed was "a precursor for his assassination".

 

Al-Sharif and his three colleagues are only four among some 270 journalists killed by Israel since October 2023. They are virtually all Palestinian, as Israel has banned any outside reporters from entering. This form of censorship is “unprecedented in any other conflict in modern history,” according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

The recent murders were made even more obscene by the Israeli mafia kingpin Benjamin  Neten-Yahoo, who, just hours before the killings said Israel would start allowing journalists into Gaza. Here is what he said, with a straight face:

In fact, we have decided, and I’ve ordered and directed the military to bring in foreign journalists, more foreign journalists, a lot. There’s a problem of assuring security, but I think it can be done in a way that is responsible and careful to preserve your own safety.

No Fish For You

Maybe even more revealing – though much less reported on -- is a ban on Gazans entering the sea waters off its western coast. That’s right: No fishing, no swimming, no bathing, no wading, under threat of being murdered by gunboats or drones.

The most recent edict was issued by the Israeli Defense Forces on July 12 of this year – during an intense heat wave. Posted on X (Twitter), it said this:

Strict security restrictions have been imposed in the maritime area adjacent to Gaza—entry to the sea is prohibited. This is a call to fishermen, swimmers, and divers—refrain from entering the sea. Entering the beach and waters along the entire Gaza Strip endangers your lives.

The ban on swimming – so far – is not being enforced.  But it could be at any time, which ramps up the anxiety for Gazans even further. As one Gazan mother told a reporter,

“The sea was the only outlet left. If they kill us for going there, maybe that would be easier than this slow death[.]… Still, I fear for my children. My oldest is 9. How can I convince him that swimming in the sea could get him killed?"

 

 Another Gazan emphasized the cruel intention of the ban. “This is not about security,” he said. “It’s economic, social and psychological warfare, a weapon of slow, deliberate suffocation.

The ban on fishing, meanwhile, has been in place since October 2023 and is enforced rather brutally. An estimated 200 fishers were killed, mostly by Israeli Naval Forces, between October 2024 and December 2025. 

That’s a relatively small number out of some 60,000-plus documented Gazans murdered since October ’23.  But that’s exactly why the sea water ban is so telling.  It illustrates how no cruelty – no matter how trivial -- has been left unapplied.

Here’s a good example of how the seawater ban is used to perpetrate cruelty for its own sake. It is from a United Nations report of May 2025:

On 8 November 2024, a 16-year-old fisher boy, Mohammed Attif Al Bardaweel, and three other boys were retrieving their fishing net from a paddling fishing boat off the coast of Rafah. According to Mohammed’s father, INF started shelling the boys, so “they got out of the water and fled.” Once the boys reached the shore, they split into two groups while running home. However, a drone pursued them and struck the two boys running in the rear group, where Mohammed was killed and another boy was seriously injured, losing one of his eyes. The drone then followed and struck the two other boys, injuring both.

 

Prior to the recent “war,” according to the same UN report, the fishing industry was “a main source of livelihoods and food for Gaza’s population.” Traditional, small-scale fishing had produced 4,460 tons of fish annually and aquaculture had added 750 tons more. The World Bank had estimated “around 18,000 people in Gaza directly depended on fishing for their livelihoods, with an extended impact on over 110,000 family members.” 

 

But that was then. Today, the industry is down to seven percent of pre- 2023 production. Viewed that way, the seawater ban is not cruelty of its own sake. It is a practical part of a larger cruelty, the deliberate starvation of some two million people for the crime of being Arabic.

If you’re keeping score at home, the number of Gazans starved to death reached 227  today, August 12. It is likely to increase rapidly in the near future.  

End