Site where starving Palestinians were gunned down while trying to get flour by Israeli forces, their bodies later bulldozed into a mass grave. Still from footage posted to social media by the IDF.

A synecdoche is a figure of speech where an individual event is used to represent the whole story. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more exact and unnerving synecdoche for the Israeli genocide in Gaza than turning the strip’s largest hospital into an unmarked mass grave.

Palestinian Civil Defense teams in Gaza announced this week that they had recovered and transferred the bodies of 98 Palestinians from Al-Shifa Hospital, including 55 unidentified victims who had been buried inside the hospital grounds, in the shattered enclave’s courtyards and makeshift graves, during the height of the Israeli occupation’s genocide. Forensic authorities say dozens more bodies remain inside the Al-Shifa complex.

The bodies were deeply buried under dirt, debris and garbage. Some were elderly. Some young. Some showed signs of being shot at close range. The bodies from earlier mass grave sites at Al-Shifa and Nasser hospitals had evidence that the victims’ hands had been bound. Some showed signs of being shot at close range. Several had bullet holes in the skull. The bodies from earlier mass grave sites at Al-Shifa had evidence that the victims’ hands had been bound. The horrors of Gaza continue to unfold in ever more depraved chapters.

A CNN investigation found that the IDF gunned down starving Palestinians trying to collect flour in Gaza. Then they bulldozed the corpses into unmarked graves, where they were left to rot and be scavenged by ravenous dogs. Their deaths were never recorded, and the location of their bodies was never disclosed to their families.

Hossam Shaker: “How do you explain to the world that your army bulldozed a cemetery and uprooted the dead from their graves?”

The rubble in Gaza now exceeds 60 million tons, including 4 million tons of hazardous waste, according to the Environmental Quality Authority. This includes: 50,000 tons of asbestos, and around 100,000 tons of explosives and unexploded ordnance, posing severe long-term safety, environmental and public health risks. At least 700,000 tons of solid waste have........

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