An eternity ago, back in March, accepting his Academy Award for The Zone of Interest, director Jonathan Glazer coined the concept of an “ambient genocide.”

The Zone of Interest focuses on the everyday life of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and his wife and children in a palatial home and beautiful garden immediately adjacent to the camp walls. The only indications of the genocide going on behind the walls and out of sight lie in the film’s soundtrack, in which “the ambient noise generated by the horrors within the camp is evoked with a suffocating intensity that matches the choking pall of smoke billowing continuously from the Auschwitz furnace chimneys.”

Commenting on both the film and Glazer’s speech (which got him denounced as a kapo and antisemite by Zionists), Naomi Klein applied the concept to present-day events:

More than five months into the daily slaughter in Gaza, and with Israel brazenly ignoring the orders of the international court of justice, and Western governments gently scolding Israel while shipping it more arms, genocide is becoming ambient once more—at least for those of us fortunate enough to live on the safe sides of the many walls that carve up our world. We face the risk of it grinding on, becoming the soundtrack of modern life. Not even the main event.

After a year of bombardment, and with all eyes on the US presidential election, Gaza has become exactly what Klein feared—part of the soundtrack to everyday life, background noise we can all too easily tune out. But while life goes on as normal on our side of the walls, the genocide continues, barely within earshot.

A week is a long time in genocides

On October 15, in a letter whose convenient leaking many suspected had more to do with trying to salvage the Democrats’ electoral chances in Michigan than changing US policy on Gaza, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin put Israel on notice that if it did not take “concrete measures” to ensure the safety of Palestinian civilians in Gaza within 30 days—taking us to November 15, and therefore after the US election—its supply of American weapons might be in jeopardy.

So far, at least—assuming it was ever anything more than a cynical electoral ploy in the first place—this latest (alleged) US attempt to rein in Israeli aggression appears to have had zero effect.

The last few weeks have seen significant escalation in the Middle East conflict with Israeli assassinations of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders; bombardment and invasion of Lebanon (where at least 3,000 people have now been killed); air strikes on Syria, Yemen, and Iran; and growing settler and IDF violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

In the Gaza Strip, the last three weeks have been among the bloodiest for civilians since the early days of the war.

Writing in the Guardian on October 29, Peter Beaumont details how,

Israel’s current offensive in northern Gaza, which began on October 7, has killed more than 700 people in a little over three weeks, with nearly 300 of those deaths, mainly in the north, occurring in the past nine days alone.

By November 4, according to the Palestinian civil defence agency, that figure had risen to over 1,300 deaths. These figures are—it is always necessary to add—almost certainly a considerable underestimate. Many more bodies will be rotting beneath the rubble.

Earlier, on October 29, Beaumont filed another report on a single incident, describing how that morning the IDF had bombed apartment blocks in Beit Lahiya in Northern Gaza for the second time in nine days. In the earlier attack, on October 20, “At least 87 people were killed overnight when an Israeli airstrike hit several multi-storey buildings … Images suggested two or three big blocks of flats were demolished in the strike.” This time,

Scores of Palestinians, including many women and children, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a crowded block of flats in Beit Lahiya. Gaza’s civil defence agency said 93 people had been killed and 40 were missing, as emergency workers dug through the rubble on Tuesday looking for the dead and injured. Many of those in the block were members of the extended Abu Nasr family as well as Palestinians displaced from elsewhere.

According to the UN Human Rights Office, the airstrike “left 93 dead or missing including at least 25 children, making it one of the deadliest single attacks in Gaza in nearly three months.”

The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem demanded that “Israel’s campaign of vengeance and destruction in the Gaza Strip must cease immediately”:

Whoever gave the order to bomb a building where sheltering civilians were gathered is a war criminal. Whoever carried out this patently unlawful order is an accomplice to this crime … Dr. Husam Abu Safiyah, a physician at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, told the media: “Only two pediatricians remain in the hospital. Most of the specialized medical staff have been arrested by the Israeli army or evacuated. We’re working around the clock, performing surgeries, because otherwise, we’ll lose a wounded person every hour.” [He added] “there are no working ambulances left in Beit Lahiya and Jabalya, and without urgent aid, people will, literally, die in the streets.”

The appeal fell on deaf ears. For the IDF the assaults on Beit Latiya were just another day at the office. This is what the brave boys and girls of the most moral army in the world have been doing in Gaza every day for a year. Massacres of the innocent are par for the course.

?BREAKING: The Israeli army has issued a threat to the residents of Beit Lahiya, warning that the area will be detonated while they are inside their homes if they do not evacuate immediately. This town in northern Gaza is home to approximately 70,000 people. pic.twitter.com/8aFJ3lrV2X

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) October 22, 2024

According to various UN agencies, two days later “the third floor of Kamal Adwan Hospital was bombed, destroying medical supplies delivered just five days ago during a joint mission led by the World Health Organization” … “Rescue teams are unable to work due to the arrests of personnel and the confiscation of essential equipment, including ambulances and a fire truck” … “Attacks on hospitals in the north—including Kamal Adwan, which is the main provider of obstetric care—have shut down the last functioning neonatal intensive care unit in the region” … “Only two out of 20 health service points in the north are partially functioning. The same applies to two hospitals there, with the Al-Awda Hospital inaccessible due to damaged roads and the Israeli army presence.“

In the meantime, “Almost no aid operations have been permitted into North Gaza … and the humanitarian crisis is being worsened by dwindling supplies, high casualties, frequent strikes on healthcare facilities and widespread displacement.”

Forced displacement continues to be reported. According to humanitarian partners, some 300 Palestinians—including women, children and the elderly—were displaced today [Oct 31] from the north to the south through the Al Rashid checkpoint. Within northern Gaza, Palestinians staying around the Indonesian hospital and Tal Al Arabi school in the Al Fakhoura area were displaced today to Beit Lahiya.

Since the start of this latest ground operation in the north on 6 October, about 100,000 people have been displaced from North Gaza Governorate to Gaza city.

Meantime, back in Tel Aviv

Blinken and Austin’s letter went on to warn that the passage of legislation before the Knesset aimed at effectively preventing the UN’s Palestine refugee agency, UNRWA, from operating in Israel or the occupied Palestinian territories, including Gaza, “would be devastating for the humanitarian effort in the Gaza Strip at a critical time and would prevent education and welfare services for tens of thousands of Palestinians in Jerusalem.” The Americans demanded that “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exercise his powers and influence over Knesset members so the bill doesn’t pass.”

On October 26, the foreign ministers of Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Republic of Korea and the United Kingdom weighed in with a joint statement expressing their “grave concern” over the upcoming Knesset vote. In considerably stronger language, they affirmed that “We once again condemn in the strongest possible terms the brutal and unjustified terror attacks by Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023.”

They might as well have given Israel a green light. It was pretty clear that just as on earlier occasions, Israel’s Western allies might offer mild criticisms of Israeli excesses but they would not take any significant practical actions to defend Palestinian lives, like an arms embargo or other sanctions. This remained the case even after the IDF fired on UN peacekeepers who refused to leave their posts in southern Lebanon.

Just as Israel had previously defied Joe Biden’s publicly stated “red line” with impunity and gone ahead with its invasion (and wholesale destruction) of Rafah, in this case too, it thumbed its nose at its US ally and principal arms supplier.

On October 28—the day before the second Beit Lahiya attack—the Knesset passed two bills designating UNRWA as a “terrorist organization,” banning it from operating in Israel or the occupied territories, and prohibiting Israeli authorities from having contact with it.

The bills passed by majorities of 92 to 10 and 87 to nine, with the only opposition coming from Arab MPs.

This legislation has since been condemned not only by UN and UNWRA personnel, but by among others the European Union (“This legislation stands in stark contradiction to international law and the fundamental humanitarian principle of humanity, and will only exacerbate an already severe humanitarian crisis”), the governments of Ireland, Norway, Slovenia and Spain (“The legislation … sets a very serious precedent for the work of the United Nations and for all organizations of the multilateral system”), and NGOs.

A statement by Doctors without Borders (MSF) is representative of the latter:

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) denounces this legislation, which represents an inhumane ban on vital humanitarian aid. The Knesset’s vote is propelling Palestinians towards an even deeper humanitarian crisis. It is imperative that the world acts to safeguard Palestinians’ fundamental rights. Immediate international intervention is needed to pressure Israel to allow unhindered access to humanitarian aid, implement a ceasefire and bring to an end the current campaign of destruction in Gaza.

Unlike Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, Keir Starmer and David Lammy (who recently informed the UK parliament that that using the word genocide about Gaza “undermines the seriousness of that term”), Antony Albanese and Penny Wong, Justin Trudeau and Mélanie Joly, MSF have first-hand knowledge of that of which they speak.

The Israeli government has since confirmed that it has formally notified the UN that the country will ban UNRWA from operating inside Israel within 90 days.

Apocalypse now

Founded in 1991, the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) is “the longest-standing and highest-level humanitarian coordination forum of the United Nations system”—an international body, in other words, whose pronouncements should not be taken lightly.

On 1 November IASC issued a statement titled “Stop the assault on Palestinians in Gaza and on those trying to help them.” It makes for bleak reading:

The situation unfolding in North Gaza is apocalyptic. The area has been under siege for almost a month, denied basic aid and life-saving supplies while bombardment and other attacks continue. Just in the past few days, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed, most of them women and children, and thousands have once again been forcibly displaced.

Hospitals have been almost entirely cut off from supplies and have come under attack, killing patients, destroying vital equipment, and disrupting life-saving services. Health workers and patients have been taken into custody. Fighting has also reportedly taken place inside hospitals.

Dozens of schools serving as shelters have been bombed or forcibly evacuated. Tents sheltering displaced families have been shelled, and people have been burned alive.

Rescue teams have been deliberately attacked and thwarted in their attempts to pull people buried under the rubble of their homes.

The needs of women and girls are overwhelming and growing every day. We have lost contact with those we support and those who provide lifesaving essential services for sexual and reproductive health and gender-based violence.

And we have received reports of civilians being targeted while trying to seek safety, and of men and boys being arrested and taken to unknown locations for detention.

Livestock are also dying, crop lands have been destroyed, trees burned to the ground, and agrifood systems infrastructure has been decimated.

The entire Palestinian population in North Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence.

Two other recently published reports document Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza in chilling detail and on a monumental scale.

Compiled by the Goldsmiths College, University of London Forensic Architecture team, A Cartography of Genocide: Israel’s Conduct in Gaza Since October 2023 comprises an incredibly detailed 826-page report and an “interactive cartographic platform” that “compiles evidence of thousands of acts of violence, destruction, or obstruction committed by the Israeli military against all aspects of civilian life in Gaza.” A summary of the group’s findings can be found here. I recommend it to anyone who wants to face the facts, as distinct from deluding themselves with platitudes or propaganda.

Complementing this is the report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese. Genocide as colonial erasure, which runs to 387 pages. This is Albanese’s summary:

In the present report, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese, examines the unfolding horrors in the occupied Palestinian territory. While the wholesale destruction of Gaza continues unabated, other parts of the land have not been spared. The violence that Israel has unleashed against the Palestinians post-7 October is not happening in a vacuum, but is part of a long-term intentional, systematic, State- organized forced displacement and replacement of the Palestinians. This trajectory risks causing irreparable prejudice to the very existence of the Palestinian people in Palestine. Member States must intervene now to prevent new atrocities that will further scar human history.

It is not beside the point to record here that as I was writing this article, authorities at McGill University in Montréal (according to student union representatives) “fought to shamelessly shut down” a talk by Albanese organized by several student law groups and the university’s chapter of Independent Jewish Voices. Having been excluded from the law faculty—there is a nice symbolism in that, given Israel’s flagrant contempt for international humanitarian law—Albanese was heard by a rapt audience in a packed ballroom in the students’ union building. There may yet be hope in the young.

Listen to the sounds from behind the walls of complicity, of doublethink, of evasion, of repression, of denial. Whoever wins the US presidential election, in Palestine it is apocalypse now.

Derek Sayer is professor emeritus at the University of Alberta and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. His most recent book, Postcards from Absurdistan: Prague at the End of History, won the 2023 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Scholarship and was a finalist for the Association of American Publishers PROSE Award in European History.