Since October 2023, Israel’s bombardment and siege of Gaza has resulted in over 70,000 killed, according to the UN, with 70% of the victims being women and children.[^13] The scale of devastation is hard to fathom: neighborhoods crushed to rubble, hospitals flattened, water and electricity cut, and international journalists systematically killed-at least 250 so far.[^14] Starvation is being used as a weapon of war. Children have died from dehydration. Epidemics are emerging. People are living brutal cold and sleeping in tents flooded with sewage. And yet, in December 2025, the dominant language in international media is that of “ceasefire.” As if the violence has ended.
As if genocide, when no longer conducted by airstrike, somehow ceases to be genocide. But it continues. In slow motion. Through disease, starvation, displacement, and the deliberate destruction of civic life.
It is a war not just on people, but on the conditions for their survival. A bureaucratic genocide, unfolding under the radar of fatigue. And already, the framing has begun to shift. Western governments, having armed and supported the campaign, now call for “restraint.” The media uses passive voice: “Deadly airstrikes reported,” “Children caught in the crossfire.” Students who protest are suspended. Professors are investigated. Organizations calling for a ceasefire are labeled antisemitic. The world is being trained, in real time, to unsee what it is witnessing.
Alongside the bombs and the bureaucratic language, another layer of erasure is taking place in real time: the disappearance of evidence. Videos uploaded by Palestinians documenting airstrikes, injured children, mass graves, and the aftermath of attacks have been systematically removed, age restricted, demonetized, or algorithmically buried across platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and X. Accounts vanish without explanation. Archives break. Search results thin out. What once circulated widely is reduced to fragments, stripped of context, easy to dismiss or deny. This is not a technical glitch. It is memory management at scale. In previous wars, erasure came years later, through films and apologies. In Gaza, it is happening simultaneously with the killing itself-before history can even be written, while the witnesses are still alive, and while the crimes are still underway.
There will be films. There will be docuseries. There will be retrospectives. These films will center on brave doctors, traumatized aid workers, maybe even principled journalists. They will tell human stories, personal stories-leaving the structures of violence untouched. And they will only be allowed to be seen only once the killing is politically safe to remember.
The Playbook: Memory as a Weapon
This is the true function of the playbook. Not to deny the crime-but to shape the memory of it. To delay the truth until it no longer threatens power. To convert outrage into art. To offer apologies only when they become non-threatening. To produce movies, op-eds, and memorials that give the illusion of reckoning while ensuring that nothing fundamentally changes.
Each case-whether Iraq, Bosnia, the torture program, or Gaza-follows this rhythm:
Manufacture the threat. Commit the atrocity. Silence the dissenters. Delay the admission. Reframe through culture. Apologize when safe. Forget and erase.
The victims are remembered only when their memory is no longer dangerous. That is the final crime: the burial of bodies and truth under layers of narrative.
Gaza: The Ending They Are Already Writing
And now we return to Gaza, because Gaza has not yet been allowed the dignity of the past. It is being pushed there, forcibly, through the language of “ceasefire,” through the slow violence of hunger, disease, and abandonment. Children do not need bombs to die when water is poisoned, hospitals are empty, and borders are sealed. This is genocide not as explosion, but as administration.
And when it is finally over-when the last baby dies quietly of dehydration rather than shrapnel-there will be films. There will be awards. There will be editorials expressing regret. There will be statements beginning with “In hindsight.” And the world will be invited to feel sad, reflective, even moved-instead of responsible.
That is the final act of the playbook of amnesia: not to make us forget that it happened, but to drain the memory of all urgency, all outrage, all consequence-until what was once a crime against humanity becomes a case study, a screenplay, a line in a curriculum, a scene in a film. It teaches us not to deny the horror, but to recall it politely, at a safe distance, and with just enough sadness to avoid guilt. That is how atrocity is not just excused-but rehearsed for next time.
Coming soon to a theatre near you.
Footnotes & References
[1] BBC News. (2003). “Millions join global anti-war protests.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-24650912
[2] The New York Times. (2004). “FROM THE EDITORS; The Times and Iraq.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/international/middleeast/from-the-editors-the-times-and-iraq.html
[3] Burnham, G. et al. (2006). “Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey.” The Lancet, 368(9545), 1421-1428.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(06)69491-9
