State Terrorism in the Age of Killing Zones by Henry Giroux

What sets Israel’s war on Gaza apart is not only its violent military operations, marked by the indiscriminate killing of women and children, but also its relentless assault on dissent, criticism, and even the mildest opposition to its internationally condemned human rights violations and war crimes. Israel’s ongoing and brutal military campaign, coupled with its “policies of extreme inhumanity against the Palestinian people,” is inextricably linked to a state-sanctioned effort to legitimize and normalize its actions in Gaza.[1] 

This includes waging an ideological war of censorship and defamation against any challenge—no matter its source—to what Kenneth Roth, co-founder of Human Rights Watch, condemns as “Israel’s system of apartheid,” [2]  and what Aryeh Neier, Holocaust survivor and co-founder of Human Rights Watch, describes as “genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.” [3]

The full scope of Israel’s assault on Gaza is revealed through its relentless military actions, characterized by indiscriminate violence against women, children, the elderly, and non-combatants. According to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, the scale of destruction imposed on Gaza is not only devastating but ethically unimaginable. 

Since the start of the war, and as of the end of November 2023, Israel has reportedly dropped over 25,000 tons of explosives on the Gaza Strip, a force equivalent to two nuclear bombs. This means that the destructive power of the explosives dropped on Gaza in just over two months exceed that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.[4] According to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the use of such highly destructive bombs in residential areas constitutes a war crime.

The consequences of these bombings were tragically displayed on August 10, 2024, when Israel bombed the Tab’een School in Gaza, a distressingly common occurrence. The school had provided shelter to nearly 2,500 people fleeing demolished areas, many of whom were children. The Israeli bombs targeted a prayer hall at dawn, where hundreds were praying. According to an investigation by Euro-Med Monitor, “over 100 Palestinians were killed, including several [entire] families.” The bombs’ immense destructive power reduced victims’ bodies to shredded and burned remains, leaving numerous others with severe injuries.[5] 

CNN reported that Fares Afana, director of Ambulance and Emergency Services in northern Gaza, stated that all those targeted “were civilians—unarmed children, the elderly, men, and women.”[6] Euro-Med Monitor found no evidence that the school “was being used for military objectives.”[7] Despite the documented evidence of Israel’s ongoing killings, abductions, forced starvation, and torture of Palestinians, including children,[8] Netanyahu and his cabinet members have astonishingly claimed that Israel has “the most moral army in the world.”[9]

Israel has killed over 40,000 Palestinians. Save the Children reports that “more than 15,000 children are estimated to have been killed by Israel’s relentless assault on the strip [while estimating]that up to 21,000 are missing.”[10]  The overall number of deaths may be vastly understated. Rasha Khatib, Martin McKee, and Salim Yusuf, three health officials, stated in The Lancet, a prestigious peer-reviewed British medical journal,  that as a result of deaths caused by indirect rather than direct violence it is likely that the actual number of deaths is closer to 186,000.[11] 

Andre Damon writing on the World Socialist Web Site observes that Israel is waging a war of extermination against the Palestinian people and its aim is to not only “…massacre tens of thousands but also to destroy all aspects of civilization in Gaza, contributing to the deaths of tens of thousands through malnutrition, communicable diseases and lack of healthcare.”[12]  The egregious horror of this violence is underscored by its engagement in acts of profound brutality, including the bombing of schools, the torture of prisoners,[13] the use of starvation as a weapon, and the targeting of hospitals and a large part of Gaza’s health facilities, among other barbarous policies.

Such acts have been condemned as genocide by legal groups like the Center for Constitutional Rights, over 50 governments including South Africa, and various United Nations agencies and non-governmental organizations.[14]Additionally, the International Criminal Court (ICC) is considering a request by the court’s prosecutor, Karim Khan, to issue arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for committing “war crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.”[15] Khan has also requested similar arrest warrants for certain Hamas leaders.

As Jewish scholar Judith Butler points out, Israel’s far-right leaders have been both public and unapologetic about their eliminationist plans following the Hamas attack on October 7th. Their goal has been to systematically undermine “the livelihood, the health, the well-being, and the capacity [of the Palestinians] to persist” amidst Israel’s vengeful and disproportionate military assault. [16] After the surprise Hamas terrorist attack, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called for a complete siege of Gaza, declaring, “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly.” [17] Some Israeli ministers have called for the dropping of an atomic bomb on Gaza.[18]

In a statement that defies moral and legal boundaries, Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, claimed that “no one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”[19] Smotrich’s remark not only trivializes the suffering of millions but also overlooks a critical fact: the deliberate starvation of civilians is unequivocally a war crime. 

This is the language of fascist politicians who speak with the weight of corpses in their mouths and blood on their hands. Such dehumanizing rhetoric doesn’t merely target Hamas fighters; it extends to the entire population of Gaza, effectively labeling all Palestinians as terrorists and less than human. By dehumanizing an entire group, this rhetoric facilitates and legitimizes Israel’s oppression of all Palestinians, justifying the denial of basic human needs and the commission of war crimes.

The ultimate aim of Israel’s war in Gaza appears to be the eradication of any possibility of a Palestinian state and the eventual expulsion of Palestinians from their land. This is evident in the “complete siege” taking place in  Gaza, and Netanyahu’s explicit opposition to the future existence of a Palestinian state. Given Israel’s current assault on Gaza, which has nearly obliterated the daily survival prospects of its inhabitants, this aim becomes clearer.  Sharon Zhang underscores this point by noting that Netanyahu has explicitly stated his intent “to quash any hope of the existence of a Palestinian state in its entirety.” [20] She writes:

“Advocates for Palestinian rights have said that this has been Israeli officials’ plan all along, as Israeli forces slaughter Palestinians en masse in Gaza while working to erase evidence that Palestinians ever existed in the region. However, this is one of the clearest statements yet from Netanyahu himself amid the current siege, suggesting his confidence that he will be able to carry it through with help from allies like the U.S.[21]” […]

 

What stands out regarding Israel’s policy of scholasticide is not only the visceral killing, suffering, and terror inflicted upon the Palestinian people in Gaza but also the calculated effort to obliterate institutions that preserve Palestinian history, educate current and future generations, and forge links between the past and a future of freedom and justice. This is not just an assault on memory; it is an attack on the very essence of education as a liberating force—indispensable for a society where informed judgment, civic courage, and critical agency are essential to upholding the ideals of freedom and justice through mass resistance.

It is crucial for critical educators and anti-war activists to acknowledge that this war on education in Gaza parallels the ongoing assault on higher education in the United States and other authoritarian regimes, revealing a disturbing global alignment in the attack on intellectual freedom and historical truth. The strategy of scholasticide is both a violent structural project and a calculated ideological and pedagogical effort to silence dissent within and outside of higher education, particularly dissent that holds Israel’s genocidal war and its apparatuses of ideological indoctrination and repression accountable.

The horrors unfolding in Gaza represent the extreme endpoint of a broader, insidious campaign aimed at crushing dissent across universities in the United States, Europe, and beyond, including nations like Hungary. In the U.S., schools and cultural institutions may not be bombed, but they are systematically defunded and turned into fortresses of academic repression. Books are banned, student protesters face police brutality, faculty are purged, and history is whitewashed. Meanwhile, billionaire elites and administrative enforcers ruthlessly work to “engineer the intellectual, social, and financial impoverishment of the educational sector,” silencing anyone who dares to challenge their pursuit of national and ideological conformity.[45]

Scholasticide is a modern form of McCarthyism that intensifies from silencing opposition to the outright destruction of academic and cultural institutions that enable both individual and collective resistance. It begins by targeting informed judgment, historical memory, and dissent, and then escalates to obliterating civic infrastructures like schools and museums. In its wake, it leaves a trail of bloodshed, broken limbs, wounded women and children, and a chilling legacy of violence, mass deaths, and ethical emptiness. Scholasticide is the canary in the coal mine, signaling an imminent and grave threat to academic freedom, free speech, critical education, and democracy itself.

Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and is the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy. His most recent books include: The Terror of the Unforeseen (Los Angeles Review of books, 2019), On Critical Pedagogy, 2nd edition (Bloomsbury, 2020); Race, Politics, and Pandemic Pedagogy: Education in a Time of Crisis (Bloomsbury 2021); Pedagogy of Resistance: Against Manufactured Ignorance (Bloomsbury 2022) and Insurrections: Education in the Age of Counter-Revolutionary Politics (Bloomsbury, 2023), and coauthored with Anthony DiMaggio, Fascism on Trial: Education and the Possibility of Democracy (Bloomsbury, 2025). Giroux is also a member of Truthout’s board of directors.

Notes.

[1] Gerald Sussman, “The US-Israeli Regime of Despair,” Counter Punch (July 21, 2024). Online: https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/07/21/the-us-israeli-regime-of-despair/

[2] Kenneth Roth, “Crimes of War in Gaza” The New York Review of Books [July 18, 2024]. Online: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2024/07/18/crimes-of-war-in-gaza-kenneth-roth/

[3] Aryeh Neier, “Is Israel Committing Genocide?” The New York Review of Books[June 6, 2024]. Online: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2024/06/06/is-israel-committing-genocide-aryeh-neier/

[4] HuMedia, “Israel hits Gaza Strip with the equivalent of two nuclear bombs,” Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor (November 2, 2023). Online: https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/5908/Israel-hits-Gaza-Strip-with-the-equivalent-of-two-nuclear-bombs#:~:text=Geneva%20%2D%20Israel%20has%20dropped%20more,a%20press%20release%20issued%20today

[5] Editorial, “Initial Euro-Med Monitor investigation finds no evidence of military presence at site of Tab’een School massacre in Gaza,” Countercurrents.org (August 24, 2024). Online: https://countercurrents.org/2024/08/initial-euro-med-monitor-investigation-finds-no-evidence-of-military-presence-at-site-of-tabeen-school-massacre-in-gaza/

[6] Irene Nasser, Abeer Salman, Ibrahim Dahman, Mohammed Tawfeeq, Lex Harvey and Allegra Goodwin, “Israeli strike on mosque and school in Gaza kills scores, sparking international outrage,” CNN World (August 11, 2024).  Online: https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/10/middleeast/israeli-school-strike-gaza-intl-hnk/index.html

[7] HuMedia, “Initial Euro-Med Monitor investigation finds no evidence of military presence at site of Tab’een School massacre in Gaza,” Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor (August 11, 2024). Online: https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6432/Initial-Euro-Med-Monitor-investigation-finds-no-evidence-of-military-presence-at-site-of-Tab%E2%80%99een-School-massacre-in-Gaza

[8] Miranda Cleland, “Why Israel can torture detained Palestinian children with impunity,” Middle East Eye (December 1, 2023). Online: https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-war-torture-detained-palestinian-children-impunity

[9] Greg Shupak, “Israel may have the least ‘moral army’ in the world: The rate of civilian death during Israel’s assault on Gaza has few precedents this century,” Canadian Dimension (February 17, 2024). Online: https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/israel-may-have-the-least-moral-army-in-the-world

[10] Arwa Mahdawi, “Nearly 21,000 children are missing in Gaza. And there’s no end to this nightmare” The Guardian [June 27, 2024]. Online: https://www.theguardian.com/global/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/27/gaza-missing-children

[11] Rasha Khatib, Martin McKee, Salim Yusuf, “Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential” The Lancet [July 5, 2024]. Online: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01169-3/fulltext

[12] Andre Damon, “Lancet warns Gaza death toll could be over 186,000,” World Socialist Web Site (July 7, 2024). Online: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/07/08/xgqe-j08.html

[13] Press Release, “UN report: Palestinian detainees held arbitrarily and secretly, subjected to torture and mistreatment,” United Nations Human Rights (July 31, 2024). Online: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/07/un-report-palestinian-detainees-held-arbitrarily-and-secretly-subjected

[14] Gerald Imray, “Genocide case against Israel: Where does the rest of the world stand on the momentous allegations?,” Associated Press (January 14, 2024). Online: https://apnews.com/article/genocide-israel-palestinians-gaza-court-fbd7fe4af10b542a1a4e2c7563029bfb;

[15] Mike Corder, “International Criminal Court judges mulling arrest warrants consider legal arguments on jurisdiction,” Associated Press(August 9, 2024). Online: https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-icc-court-warrants-jurisdiction-12df89805cf654df030a56264ad38bb8#:~:text=THE%20HAGUE%2C%20Netherlands%20(AP),attacks%20by%20Hamas%20in%20Israel.

[16] Amy Goodman, “Palestinian Lives Matter Too: Jewish Scholar Judith Butler Condemns Israel’s “Genocide” in Gaza.”  Democracy Now[October 26, 2023]. Online: https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/26/judith_butler_ceasefire_gaza_israel

[17] Sanjana Karanth, “Israeli Defense Minister Announces Siege On Gaza To Fight ‘Human Animals’,” The Huff Post (October 9, 2023). Online: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/israel-defense-minister-human-animals-gaza-palestine_n_6524220ae4b09f4b8d412e0a

[18] Patrick Kingsley, “Top U.N. Court Decision Adds to Israel’s Growing Isolation”  New York Times [May 24, 2024]. Online: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/24/world/middleeast/icj-israel-rafah-isolation.html

[19] Guardian Staff and Agencies, “Israel minister condemned for saying starvation of millions in Gaza might be ‘justified and moral’,” The Guardian (August 8, 2024). Online: https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/08/israel-finance-minister-bezalel-smotrich-gaza-starve-2m-people-comments

[20] Sharon Zhang, “Netanyahu Says Israel’s Goal Is to Wipe Out All Possibility of Palestinian State,” Truthout (January 18, 2024). Online: https://truthout.org/articles/netanyahu-says-israels-goal-is-to-wipe-out-all-possibility-of-palestinian-state/#:~:text=War%20%26%20Peace-,Netanyahu%20Says%20Israel’s%20Goal%20Is%20to%20Wipe%20Out%20All%20Possibility,amid%20Israel’s%20genocide%20in%20Gaza.&text=Honest%2C%20paywall%2Dfree%20news%20is,a%20donation%20of%20any%20size.

[21] Ibid.

[45] Ruth Ben-Ghiat, “How Authoritarians Target Universities,” Lucid  (July 11, 2023). Online: https://lucid.substack.com/p/from-fascism-to-hungary-and-the-us