WHOEVER stays until the end, will tell the story. We did what we could. Remember us.” These were the words written by doctors on a hospital whiteboard in Gaza. It is hard to read them without a lump in your throat.

One of them, Dr Mahmoud Abu Nujaila, has since been killed, alongside two of his colleagues, and the hospital they were written in, Al-Awda, is one of many damaged by Israeli air strikes.

Earlier this week marked 100 days since the Hamas massacre on October 7, when hundreds were murdered in Israel and hundreds more taken hostage. It was a sickening and heinous act of terrorism. That pain has only been prolonged further for those whose friends and family were taken against their will.

READ MORE: Israel destroys last university in Gaza as strikes continue on civilian shelters

In the months since, Israel has responded with a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing and massacres of its own against the two million civilians in Gaza. Analysis from Oxfam has found that the daily death toll of the war is higher than that of any other 21st century conflict. More than 23,000 Palestinians have been killed, around a third of them children. Nearly 10,000 more are missing, the vast majority of them almost certainly also dead and buried under the rubble of their homes.

Entire families have been murdered, with nobody to carry on their name and legacy. More than ten children a day are forced to have their arms or legs amputated. One harrowing video shows a father forced to amputate his daughter’s leg without anaesthetic.

We are constantly told that the Israeli military is the “most moral army in the world”, but the overwhelming evidence presented to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and filling our social media feeds shows what a sinister lie that is.

Nobody can say that they didn’t know. It is hard to think of a campaign of ethnic cleansing that has taken place so openly, so brazenly, and so publicly. Israel may turn off the electricity for people in Gaza, but brave journalists and civilians have managed to expose the horrors, and share stories from the frontline of the suffering.

That is why we have seen drone footage that exposes street after street of bombed-out and uninhabitable buildings. It is how we have seen and heard the voices and stories of the thousands of families forced to leave everything, and flee to safety on the other side of Gaza, only to have their supposed safe zones – declared as such by Israel – bombed too.

Some of the most damning evidence has come from videos filmed by Israeli military personnel, as they openly flout international law and brazenly boast of the war crimes they are committing.

All of this has been cheered on, encouraged, and even celebrated by an Israeli government that has made clear its utter contempt for Palestinian lives. The language hasn’t just been callous, it has been genocidal.

READ MORE: At least 89 Palestinian journalists killed whilst reporting in Gaza

Far from a few rogue voices, it was the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, who set the tone and called for collective punishment of the whole Gazan population: “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. This rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved, it’s absolutely not true.”

He is not the only one. Senior ministers in the Israeli government have called for ethnic cleansing and a modern-day Nakba – the genocidal campaign against the Palestinians in 1948, which established the State of Israel. Government minister Amihai Eliyahu called for an end to humanitarian aid and a nuclear bomb to be dropped on Gaza.

This kind of brutality needs more than a powerful military with a contempt for international law.

It also needs the backing of complicit governments who will arm, support, and aid the war. Some, like the US and the UK, have been utterly unbending in their support, and have effectively handed Israeli forces a blank cheque for war crimes. The world will not forget the shameful role that these politicians have played in legitimising and in ultimately prolonging the suffering.

It also requires silence. That means the silence of institutions and leaders who cannot even bring themselves to condemn the crimes.

We have seen where that leads in the UK, with the pathetic spectacle of Keir Starmer and the Labour frontbench tying themselves in knots to avoid criticising Israeli forces. Starmer appears to be paying lip service to the need for a ceasefire now, after leading his MPs to abstain when Stephen Flynn brought it to a vote at Westminster.

War crimes do not justify further war crimes. The atrocities of Hamas do not justify the atrocities of Israel. That’s why the South African case to the ICJ is so important.

Across 84 pages, its lawyers have authoritatively and meticulously documented what they believe are Israel’s genocidal intent and actions. The ICJ hearing was historic, but it is a moral travesty that the crisis has been allowed to reach this level.

The last hundred days have left a trail of destruction and scars that will never heal. With the escalation of violence in the Red Sea, the conflict is taking an increasingly international dimension, underlining the urgent need for a ceasefire.

Gaza cannot take another hundred days of carnage, nor can the families who have had loved ones taken hostage. But this conflict didn’t begin 100 days ago – Palestinians have endured decades of occupation, apartheid, and systematic brutality.

We don’t have to live in a world where doctors are forced to write their last messages in damaged operating rooms before being murdered by their occupiers’ bombs.

We all have a responsibility to work for a ceasefire and a just, lasting peace.