On: Israel continues to commit genocide by targeting children in Gaza, UN inquiry fi

How long, O gods, shall we endure this spectacle of slaughter draped in the robes of necessity? The report comes - not from some partisan faction, but from the very body we erected to stand as arbiter between nations - and its words are damning: children, deliberately targeted. Not collateral, not accident, but policy.

They will say, of course, that war is cruel by nature, that no hand remains clean when steel meets flesh. And to this, I concede - war is indeed a butcher’s trade. But when the blade falls again and again upon the smallest and weakest, when the cry of the orphan is met not with remorse but with justification, then we must ask: is this war, or is this something darker?

The Republic - no, not Rome now, but the fragile order of nations - was built to restrain such horrors. Law exists to chain the wolf of power, to force even the mighty to answer for their deeds. Yet what use are these chains if they are shrugged off with impunity? What use is the tribunal if its verdicts are met with sneers and fresh volleys?

I have stood in courts where men were condemned for lesser crimes. I have seen tyrants unmasked by their own words. But here, the evidence mounts, the witnesses speak, and still the world averts its gaze.

If this is not genocide, then let the accusers define what is. If this is justice, then let them stand before the mothers of Gaza and explain it.

The Republic - any republic worthy of the name - cannot survive such hypocrisy. Either the law binds all, or it binds none. Either we condemn what is condemnable, or we become complicit in its repetition.

The verdict is plain. The question remains: who will enforce it?