Last week we passed the 100th day of Israel’s latest episode of aggression against the people of Gaza. It was a depressing milestone to think about. For a hundred days, Palestinians were exterminated mercilessly and in all manner of brutal ways: Israeli bombs tore them apart, Israeli bullets pierced their skulls, and the Israeli-imposed siege left them starving or killing them from otherwise treatable infections.

A hundred days in which the countries that said “never again” almost 80 years ago did nothing to stop our destruction. A hundred days of us pleading, humanitarian organizations pleading, the United Nations pleading, people pleading in the streets around the world, but we were all ignored.

Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised by the silence. Ultimately, Israel’s brutal and illegal occupation was allowed to continue for decades until it broke all records and reached the longest duration in modern history.

During this time, the Israeli occupying state, its governments and its army have controlled virtually every aspect of Palestinian life: political, economic, social and – you may not believe it, but – love lifeto.

Israel has told us what we can eat, what we can drink, what we can buy, where we can go, where we can travel, where we can live, where we can garden, where we can graze our livestock, where we can fish, where we can go to school, where we can access health services (if any) and yes, who we can fall in love with, marry and settle down with.

Israel has even tried to tell us who we are as a nation. Palestinians were told that they were Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Druze or Circassians, but not Palestinians. They have done anything and everything to destroy the Palestinian social fabric.

Israel has also persistently sowed divisions between political forces in Palestine; Over the past 15 years, it has ensured that every mediation seeking a unity government between the two largest Palestinian parties, Hamas and Fatah, has failed. Political disunity has caused enormous damage to the Palestinian community, ultimately leading to conflict and internal weakness.

Israel has also ensured that we remain poor and vulnerable, not only through constant dispossession – land grabs, evictions and home demolitions – but also through economic dependence.

It has deliberately kept the Palestinian economy on the brink of collapse and stifled economic activity and private enterprise. This has led to high unemployment rates and forced many Palestinians to work for the occupiers – sometimes even in illegal Jewish settlements literally built on their stolen land.

Israel has also consistently undermined Palestinian agriculture – traditionally one of the strongest economic sectors in Palestine. Limited access to land and water resources has led to a dramatic decline in Palestinian agricultural production and fundamentally destroyed traditional livelihoods.

In Gaza, the economic devastation is even worse due to Israel’s 17-year blockade. It severely restricted imports and exports, effectively halting most trade with the outside world and ruining manufacturing and agriculture. Israel even counted the calories of the food it allowed into Gaza to ensure we barely had enough to survive.

When we resisted – peacefully or otherwise – the Israeli occupation showed no mercy. It has killed, maimed, imprisoned, tortured and punished collectively.

As the aggression against the Gaza Strip continues, this drive to decimate the Palestinian people has reached genocidal proportions.

Within 100 days, Israel managed to slaughter at least 31,000 Palestinians in Gaza’s killing fields – 23,000 were officially counted and at least 8,000 could not be counted because their bodies still lie under the rubble and no one is retrieving them.

The rest of us who survived experienced the deadly combination of fear, hunger and thirst under the indiscriminate bombardment and total siege of Israel.

For the past 100 days, the Israeli occupation has denied the entry of food, water and medicine into the Gaza Strip. Furthermore, Israeli airstrikes have targeted every source of life. From water wells and water treatment plants to bakeries, farms, power generators and solar panels, Israel has systematically targeted every opportunity to help the people of Gaza.

It is important to note that the aid currently entering Gaza cannot meet the needs of even a small portion of the population. People are so desperate with hunger and thirst that arriving aid trucks are sometimes attacked and looted. These goods are then sold on the street for three to five times the regular price, never reaching the most vulnerable people who urgently need them.

This is, of course, one of the intended outcomes of the siege. Another concept was outlined in October by Knesset representative Tali Gottlieb.

“Without hunger and thirst among the population of Gaza, we will not be able to recruit collaborators, we will not be able to recruit intelligence services, we will not be able to provide people with food, drink and medicine bribe to obtain intelligence information.” She said, showing how emboldened Israeli officials have become to publicly flaunt their genocidal goals and how secure they feel in their impunity, guaranteed by support from the United States .

To aid in the “intelligence gathering” process, Israeli occupation forces have regularly dropped leaflets from the sky, offering food, medicine and security to Palestinians in exchange for “cooperation.”

But there is another, even more sinister goal that Israel pursues. The unpredictability and harshness of daily life in Gaza create a feeling of helplessness and desperation. Many Palestinians, especially children, suffer from depression, anxiety and stress disorders; Many had not healed from the trauma of previous aggression before this began. Israel doesn’t just want to destroy and destroy our bodies; it wants to break and destroy our spirit and our soul.

If we delve a little into history, we will find that these brutal tactics have been used before. The ancestors of part of the Israeli population experienced it during the Holocaust.

In the 1940s, Jews across Europe were forced into ghettos and concentration camps, where they experienced starvation, abuse and mass death. The Nazis used hunger as a means of control and dehumanization. The constant threat of violence, deportation and death destroyed bodies and souls.

Stories we heard about the ghettos and concentration camps resonate today in Gaza, where 2.3 million of us are crammed into ever-shrinking areas and forced to endure inhumane conditions. If you juxtapose the accounts of the atrocities these two peoples faced, you will see that history is repeating itself, only this time the entire world is watching and doing nothing to stop it.

The solemn vow of “Never Again,” born from the ashes of the Holocaust, was intended to prevent its horrors from being repeated. Embedded in the world’s collective consciousness, the commitment was a promise to vulnerable peoples around the world that they would be protected and their tormentors stopped.

But when we focus on the ongoing Palestinian struggle, this promise rings hollow. The shadows of past atrocities remain in the contemporary experiences of the Palestinian people.

Still, there was a glimmer of hope as we endured 100 days of relentless carnage. South Africa espoused the principle of “Never Again” and sued the State of Israel before the eyes of the entire world, accusing it of genocide. South Africa has our eternal love and gratitude for standing up for what is right and for giving us hope when we were in despair.

“Never again” cannot remain a mere phrase of memory in these dark times; It has to be a call to action. The world must fulfill its promise to uphold the dignity and rights of all people in every corner of the world and prevent another genocide.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.