Israel's Untold Environmental Genocide
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On September 23rd, the UN published a little-noticed report highlighting a barely-acknowledged facet of the 21st century Holocaust in Gaza. Namely, the Zionist entity’s genocide is wreaking a devastating environmental toll not merely on occupied Palestine, but West Asia more widely - including Israel. The damage is incalculable, with air, food sources, soil, and water widely polluted, to a fatal extent. Recovery may take decades, if at all. In the meantime, Gaza’s remaining population will suffer the cost - in many cases, with their lives.
In June 2024, the UN issued a preliminary assessment on the Gaza genocide’s “environmental impact”. It found the Zionist entity’s barbarous aggression had “exerted a profound impact” on “people in Gaza and the natural systems on which they depend.” Due to “security constraints” - namely, Israel’s continuing assault - the UN was unable “to assess the full extent of environment [sic] damage.” Nonetheless, the body was able to collate information indicating “the scale of degradation is immense,” and has “worsened significantly” since October 7th.
For example, Tel Aviv’s 21st century Holocaust has “significantly degraded water infrastructure leading to severely limited, low-quality water supply to the population.” The UN finds this “is contributing to numerous adverse health outcomes, including a continuous surge in infectious diseases.” Groundwater contamination is rampant, with catastrophic implications “for environmental and human health.” None of Gaza’s wastewater treatment facilities are operational, while “heavy destruction of piped systems, and increasing use of cesspits for sanitation, have increased contamination of the aquifer, marine and coastal areas.”
Resultantly, the genocide “has all but eliminated Gazan fishing livelihoods.” Israel’s “destruction of institutional capacity” in the sphere means “there are no effective controls of contamination in the food chain from fish supply, leading to consumption of poisonous fish” by starving Palestinians. “Marine ecosystems have clearly been contaminated with munitions, sewage and solid waste,” the UN gravely concludes. The situation demands “urgent re-installation” of the Strip’s water supply and wastewater collection capacity “to prevent further human health impacts and prevent future outbreaks of communicable diseases.”
Elsewhere, “remote sensing assessments” conducted by the UN indicate that by May, 97.1% of Gaza’s tree crops, 95.1% of its shrubland, 89% of its grass/fallow land and 82.4% of its annual crops had “been damaged.” As such, “production of food is not possible at scale,” and “soil has been contaminated by munitions, solid waste and untreated sewage.” The UN concludes the Zionist entity’s “military activity” has resulted in the “degradation of soils through loss of vegetation and compaction,” with disastrous results.
The Gaza genocide’s consequences reverberate in Israel itself. Tel Aviv’s Health Ministry calculates that in 2023 alone, pollution produced by Benjamin Netanyahu’s blitzkrieg caused at least 5,510 premature deaths locally. Given the Zionist entity’s industrial-scale carnage - primarily inflicted via air - subsequently intensified to unprecedented levels, we can only speculate how much the situation has worsened today. Israeli officials were hesitant to release the 2023 report, and more recent figures are unavailable. The rationale for this omertà is obvious.
‘Safe Movement’
The UN report details how destruction in Gaza “is extensive”, with an estimated 78% of the Strip’s “total structures destroyed or damaged,” including homes, hospitals, mosques and schools. Locally, debris “is now 20 times greater than the combined total debris generated by all previous conflicts in Gaza since 2008.” Current estimates suggest “more than 61 million tons of debris will require clearing, sorting and recycling or disposal.” Much of this detritus “is contaminated with asbestos, and industrial chemicals.”
Littered throughout the rubble will be untold human remains, recovery of which naturally requires “sensitivity”. In the meantime, surviving Gazans must endure “significant volumes of dust” created by Zionist entity bombing and demolition, which have “contributed to increased cases of respiratory infection,” with over 37,000 cases reported in June 2025 alone. Unexploded ordnance also poses a high risk in urban areas, with safe removal necessary “to mitigate risks of future explosion, damage, traumatic injuries and loss of life.”
The UN nonetheless acknowledges its findings significantly underrate the true situation on-the-ground, as “limited data is available on air quality, due to minimal air-quality monitoring” locally. Still, “known challenges” include “pollution from explosions and resultant fires during bombing campaigns, and emissions from explosions of munitions and resultant fires in bombed structures, including industrial facilities, which will also have likely released toxic chemicals into the air.” Moreover, the “repetitive nature” of Israel’s attacks “will likely have a cumulative impact on the environment” in Gaza:
“Repairing such extensive damage to land, soil, trees, watercourses and marine ecosystems will be essential for sustainable recovery of the Gaza Strip. Restoration will require a cessation of hostilities. The first phase of recovery will necessarily focus on saving lives, through restoration of essential services (notably freshwater) and removal of debris to facilitate safe movement.”
The UN report notes, “such air quality issues will not improve substantially until the conflict ceases.” There is no such end of sight at time of writing. Even a ceasefire would inevitably be extremely brief, given Tel Aviv’s unconscionable record of prompty breaking such agreements throughouts its history. Meanwhile, Zionist entity officials are hell-bent on reproducing the Gaza genocide in the illegally-occupied West Bank, having made abundantly clear their intention to annex further territory via brute force, and mass civilian displacement.
A July 2025 study by academic journal Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability concluded Israel’s rape of Gaza has created at least 39 million tonnes of rubble, removal of which could generate over 90,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, and take up to four decades to complete. Simply clearing the wreckage would equate to dump trucks traversing the Earth’s circumference 737 times, or 2.1 million separate vehicles driving 29.5 kilometres to disposal sites.
‘Alarming Levels’
Environmental obliteration wrought by the Zionist entity since October 7th 2023 is far from restricted to Gaza. Ensuing missile exchanges between Hezbollah and Tel Aviv culminated in Israel’s criminal invasion of Lebanon in October 2024. The fighting produced widespread agricultural desolation. Cross-spectrum Zionist Occupation Force assaults burned over 10,800 hectares of Lebanese land - an area four times the size of Beirut - incinerating tens of thousands of trees, dozens of farms and orchards.
Israel’s widespread use of illegal white phosphorous munitions against Lebanon also ravaged the country’s southern agricultural heartlands. Laboratory analysis by the American University of Beirut found that already in January 2024, soil locally had been contaminated to “alarming levels” with heavy metals. Some samples showed phosphorous concentrations of 97,000 milligrams per kilo - over 120 times the substance’s globally-accepted safe concentration. Crops and water have likewise been dangerously infected, “posing threats to livestock and human health” that will persist for many years.
Meanwhile, “extensive environmental damage affecting natural ecosystems” is rife. Of the estimated $214 million in damage inflicted on Lebanon during the conflict, $198 million (95.2%) was suffered by Beirut’s natural resources. In all, Tel Aviv launched roughly 7,000 aerial attacks throughout Lebanon, while its navy conducted more than 2,500 bombardments of the country’s coast. Over 10,000 homes and close to 1,000 private buildings were targeted, along with bridges, factories, roads and other infrastructure.
A similarly horrendous story played out during the Zionist entity’s failed 12 Day War against Iran in June 2025. Tehran estimates the conflict produced 150,000 tons of rubble locally, while Israeli strikes on the capital’s Rey and Kan oil depots incinerated 19.5 million liters of fuel, pumping 47,000 tons of greenhouse gases and 578 tons of air pollutants into the skies. Deliberate targeting of South Pars, one of the world’s largest gas fields, burned 5.5 million cubic meters of gas.
This broadside released over 12 million tons of greenhouse gases and 437 tons of pollutants. Air quality in multiple provinces across Iran has deteriorated hazardously since, while sewage overflowed and access to clean water was disrupted in numerous areas due to Tel Aviv’s attacks on associated infrastructure. Mercifully, despite Israel and the US repeatedly targeting nuclear energy sites throughout the country during the pair’s botched bombardment, there is as yet no indication of ensuing radiation leakage menacing not just Iranians, but West Asia more widely.
Presently, the amount of deadly chemicals and dust released into the local atmospheres of Iran and Lebanon due to Israel’s indiscriminate savagery cannot be quantified. However, history shows the impact of such offensives is enduringly lethal. NATO’s illegal 78-day-long bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 primarily targeted civilian and industrial sites. A subsequent Council of Europe report concluded over 100 toxic substances circulated widely throughout the region due to the campaign. Not coincidentally, the former Yugoslavia ranks highly in global cancer rates today.
Perversely, even if the Zionist entity was to uphold its brittle ceasefires with Beirut and Tehran, and cease annihilating Palestinians, Tel Aviv’s genocide would continue apace - invisibly, through the putrified air civilians breathe, food they eat, and water they drink. Yet, in a bitter twist, the environmentally ruinous legacy of Tel Aviv’s deranged bloodlust has rendered Benjamin Netanyahu’s ultimate goal of eradicating Gaza to make way for Greater Israel null and void. Any Zionist settlement of the area would be literally suicidal.
The precipitous rise in cancer rates in the former Yugoslavia, appear to have been largely caused by the deliberate use of 'depleted' uranium munitions, that pose a threat of persistent and widely dispersed radiological pollution, in addition to the toxic heavy metal aspect.
Despite claiming that there's nothing wrong with using such weapons, it appears that the Empire refrains from using them, in places that it wants to seize and occupy, after the fighting is over. This shows not only the mendacity of their claims about the safety of using depleted uranium weapons - but also the intent of the Zionists to seize, re-occupy and annex Gaza, underlying this Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing campaign.
Greta was totally justified in her highlighting the connection between genocide/environmental collapse/colonialism and human rights.