HOW could they do that? How often over the last few tragic months of the war on Gaza have we heard that said? As the body count escalates and the tally of wounded surges, disbelief mounts as to how the Israeli soldiers could continue to act in the way they do — remorselessly killing children, women and men without any semblance of doubt or hesitancy.   

Of course, they are acting on the orders of their superiors, the faceless generals for whom the fighting appears as a routine of their fantasies of total war — the relentless murder of people as if they were mere animated figures in some computer game — lacking any real humanity or individuality. 

Above them, however, are the politicians whose comments were so forensically dissected by the South African lawyers at the International Court of Justice in January. Among them former Israeli Defence Forces general, Likud member and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant who on October 9 described the Palestinians as “human animals”; Benjamin Netanyahu who referenced the biblical narrative invoking the wholesale slaughter and destruction by the Israelites of the “Amalek” to spare “no-one, but kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and asses.”