The Decade of Reckoning

​Dyab Abou Jahjah


Now that the killing has paused in Gaza, we must be even sharper than before. The first question we must ask is simple yet decisive: has the genocide ended?

No — it has not.
Genocide is not defined solely by mass killing. It also consists of the deliberate imposition of conditions on a people — in whole or in part — intended to bring about their destruction. Those conditions remain brutally in place for the Palestinian people in Gaza. As long as they persist, the genocide continues. Only when they are fully and permanently lifted can we say it has ended.
This is not an opinion; it is the legal position under international law.
Let us hope this genocide will finally cease. But when it does, a new battle must begin — the battle for accountability.
After a genocide, those responsible cannot be thanked or normalized simply because they stopped committing it. They must be held accountable for having done it. The state that committed it — Israel — must face legal, political, and cultural consequences for being genocidal. Responsibility extends from the highest echelons of power to the foot soldiers who executed the crimes. The entire apparatus that enabled them must be dismantled.
This requires more than a change of government; it demands regime change in Israel. The regime that committed genocide — the Zionist regime — must be changed. And until that happens, Israel should remain isolated, boycotted, and treated as the rogue state it is.
This genocide is not that of Netanyahu alone. It is the genocide of Zionism. Zionism, like Nazism, like ISIS, like the Khmer Rouge, like Hutu nationalism — like every genocidal regime in history — must end.
The battle for this is manyfold. The legal battle we wage is essential, but another battle is equally vital: the battle for memory and narrative.
What happened in Gaza goes far beyond what the world has seen. In my work as Director of the Hind Rajab Foundation, I meet victims and review evidence. The stories I hear and the material I see belong in a horror-apocalyptic series. Gaza was a killing field.
Zionism, like Nazism, like ISIS, like the Khmer Rouge, like Hutu nationalism — like every genocidal regime in history — must end.
The global awareness that now exists can change the world — and it can put an end to Zionism. That is precisely why Zionism will counterattack. It will try to silence and intimidate those who seek accountability. But even more dangerously, it will attempt to reconquer the narrative.
This can only happen by attacking memory and planting negationism of the Gaza genocide everywhere — on social media, in the press, in movies, in cartoons, in songs. This counterattack is already underway: massive, well-funded, and coordinated. Money is being poured in, platforms are being bought or subdued, and networks around the world are being revived.
The coming struggle over memory, facts, narrative, and truth will be decisive. We must not allow history to be rewritten or this monumental crime erased.
This genocide is a defining moment for the future. What happened in Gaza is not merely a tragedy — it is a model that must be stopped, and it must recoil against those who conceived and executed it. If it does not, it will become the playbook of empire and power worldwide: a tech-genocide, AI-driven, and Orwellianly denied.
This is the battlefield of the coming decade.
For Gaza’s victims, for humanity, and for the very meaning of justice itself — this battle must be won.