[By Zhai Haijun/China.org.cn]

I have not yet felt it necessary to use that terrible word, but what the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) is doing in Gaza comes pretty close. One of Israel's largest-circulation newspapers, the Times of Israel, actually published an article entitled "When Genocide is Permissible." Though the article was later withdrawn, and an apology was issued, it shows that some influential Israelis are thinking about a "final solution" to the Palestinian problem.

A spokesman for Fatah, Dr. Husam Zomlot, has told BBC News that Israeli PM Netanyahu is guilty of the "liquidation of an entire nation." What the IDF has been doing in Gaza is disturbing to say the least. It has shelled UN schools, killing many refugees taking shelter there. It has bombarded hospitals again and again. It attacked a market during a ceasefire when it knew Gazans would take advantage of the ceasefire to stock up supplies, and so killed many shoppers. It bombed the sole power plant in the area so that the area's water purification plant cannot operate properly. It razed 5,000 homes, flattening the entire Khuzaa district and strewing it with rotting corpses. So far, it has killed 1,680 Gazans and counting, with over 9,000 wounded.

The author of the Times of Israel article on genocide, Yochanan Gordon, claims that Hamas calls for the destruction of Israel, and that therefore the only way to deal with Hamas is to obliterate them entirely. He actually used the words "obliterate entirely."

His accusation about Hamas's objective was inaccurate. Hamas did say that it wants to see the Israeli government overthrown, but it never spoke of wiping Jews off the face of the earth. Besides, Hamas does not have the wherewithal to destroy Israel, which is armed to the teeth with hundreds of nuclear bombs.

It stands to reason that the Palestinians want to recover their country, which was stolen from them in 1948, and which has been constantly nibbled away ever since.