Myanmar Spring Chronicle – August 6 Perspective
(MoeMaKa, August 7, 2025):
Lessons for the World from the Genocide in Gaza
On October 7, 2023—just 20 days before Myanmar’s “1027 Operation”—armed Hamas fighters in the Gaza Strip bulldozed through the border fences separating Gaza and Israel, using paramotors (motorized parachutes) to infiltrate Israeli territory. They attacked both security forces and civilians, including opening fire on a crowd at a music festival and taking around 200 hostages back into Gaza.
Following that, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched a massive military response. Under the banner of defeating Hamas and rescuing hostages, the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) began air and ground operations that have now lasted over one year and ten months.
Those closely following the news may already be familiar with all these events.
According to Palestinian authorities, more than 2 million Palestinians live in the Gaza Strip. Since the beginning of Israel’s operations, over 50,000 Palestinian civilians have died due to Israeli airstrikes and ground invasions. The actual number of Hamas fighters killed remains unclear, but the scale of civilian death is staggering.
Recently, due to Israel’s complete blockade, Palestinians have begun dying of starvation. Dozens have been killed while gathering at food distribution points due to Israeli and U.S.-supported security forces opening fire.
Israel’s prolonged blockade of Gaza—cutting off food and aid—is widely considered a war crime: using starvation as a weapon against civilians. The destruction of homes, hospitals, schools, and religious buildings, combined with continuous bombings and arrests, prompted the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israel’s Defense Minister. However, no actual arrests have taken place.
While initially framed as a military operation to rescue hostages and eliminate Hamas, Israel’s war on Gaza has continued well beyond that scope. With nearly all infrastructure in Gaza destroyed, Netanyahu’s recent statements that Israel will permanently control Gaza reveal that the real goal is annexation, not just fighting Hamas.
Israel may not be aiming to kill all 2 million Palestinians outright, but it is creating conditions so dire that Palestinians will be forced to leave Gaza. The Strip, only 25 miles long and 4 to 7 miles wide, has seen over 50,000 civilian deaths in under two years—a scale hard to compare to any other modern war or invasion.
Despite this devastation, Israel continues to receive support from powerful Western nations like the U.S., Germany, and the U.K. Their complicity has become impossible to ignore. While they could not claim ignorance of the civilian toll, these governments still fund, arm, and politically support the Netanyahu regime—often hiding behind the rhetoric of Israel’s “right to self-defense.”
This has exposed how powerless the world is to stop war crimes and genocides, even in the 21st century. Gaza now joins Rwanda and Kosovo in the shameful list of modern genocides that were not prevented.
Instead of stepping in to stop a genocide, powerful countries have prioritized their own economic and strategic interests, supplying weapons and technology to enable the atrocities. This will go down as a dark stain in global history.
Since October 7, 2023, and especially once civilian death tolls reached the tens of thousands, legal scholars and political analysts around the world have begun calling what is happening in Gaza a genocide. Still, the U.S., Germany, and much of Europe have continued their support of Israel.
Now, as images of famine and mass suffering emerge daily, and even as Israeli forces fire into crowds of Palestinians gathering for food aid, some Western leaders have started mentioning the idea of a Palestinian state—as a belated and insincere gesture of reconciliation.
The lesson from Gaza is this: even in a hyper-connected world where events are broadcast globally within minutes, the international community has allowed over 50,000 civilians to be killed in the name of “self-defense.”
In Myanmar, as the civil war drags on, we must ask: If the world could watch Gaza burn, would it really step in to stop similar atrocities in Myanmar?
With that realization, we must understand that the resolution to Myanmar’s crisis must come from within. It’s time to stop hoping for external intervention and start focusing on what we ourselves can do to end military dictatorship and war.