As Rishi Sunak arrived in Tel Aviv on Thursday, Israel’s military murdered people across Gaza.

After midnight on Wednesday, Israel stepped up its bombing. Rafah—where Palestinians in Gaza had been told to flee from the north—was the most heavily targeted area, with dozens killed.

A medical source told Al Jazeera news that Israel had killed 121 people and injured 540 in the Gaza Strip between Wednesday evening and Thursday morning.

“Before the blood of the victims of the Baptist hospital massacre has had a chance to dry the British prime minister arrives to offer support and impunity for future slaughter,” said surgeon Ghassan Abu Sitta.

He added that Israel’s blockade means crucial medical supplies have run out. He said he’s resorted to using “vinegar from the corner shop” to treat bacterial wounds to prevent infection.

In Khan Younis, in the south of Gaza, Israeli bombing on Wednesday reduced an area of shops to rubble as far as the eye could see. Rafat Al-Nakhala, who had sought shelter there after obeying Israel’s order to leave the north, said nowhere was safe.

“I’m over 70 years old, I’ve lived through several wars, it’s never been like this, it has never been this brutal, no religion and no conscience,” Rafat said. “We only have hope in God, not in any Arab or Muslim country or anyone in the world.”

Israeli forces also flattened five residential towers in al-Zahra in the centre of Gaza. Nearly 100 families evacuated the buildings before they were targeted. They are now on the streets looking for shelter.

Sunak met Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who disgustingly claimed his state’s brutality was an enlightened mission to defend progress.

“This is a battle of western civilisation, the battle of the free world, the battle for the future,” he said. “We have here two forces. One is an axis of evil, led by Iran through Hezbollah, Hamas and others, that want to bring back the Middle East to the Middle Ages, to an age of bondage and war and slavery and annihilation.” He contrasted this with the supposed  “forces of humanity”.

But it is Netanyahu, Sunak and the US who are wading through blood and plunging millions into a world of pain and dispossession. They are the forces of backwardness.

US president Joe Biden’s trip to Israel on Wednesday was designed to show imperialism’s backing for Israel. But he also shared a warning about the danger of Israel’s brutality.

On the one hand the US vetoed an anodyne UN Security Council resolution. It condemned Hamas’ attack on Israel, but also called for a pause in the fighting to allow humanitarian assistance into Gaza.

That was too much for Israel—and the US therefore vetoed the motion. Immediately after the trip, the Times newspaper claimed that Biden had also given Netanyahu a green light to invade Gaza.

He also underlined the importance of Israel for imperialism. “I have long said that If Israel didn’t exist, we would have to invent it,” Biden underlined.

In 1986, Biden told the US Senate, “Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region.”

But Biden also said this week, “After 9/11, we were enraged in the United States. And while we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.”

There was no justice for the million Iraqis who died as a result of the US and British war. But Biden was acknowledging that imperialist wars can meet resistance. Although he didn’t spell it out, he knows the US lost in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He fears now that revulsion at Israeli killings can unseat compliant Arab regimes that play a vital role in policing the Middle East for the US.

The Israeli bombing of the al Ahli hospital led to the cancellation of what was supposed to be the second leg of Biden’s mission. This was meant to include a meeting in Jordanian capital Amman with Jordan’s King Abdullah, Egyptian president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi and Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas.

But these leaders were terrified of the reaction if they met the man who has blood on his hands.

Top Israeli politician wants Palestine Authority to hold down Gaza’s resistance

Israeli “opposition” leader and former prime minister Yair Lapid says “the endgame is, there will be no Hamas in Gaza”.

He added that the best option for Gaza afterwards is for the enclave to go under the control of Palestinian leaders who’ve sold out. “I think in the end the best thing is that the Palestinian Authority (PA) goes back into Gaza,” he said.

The PA was created as a cover for continuing oppression under the 1993 Oslo Accords between the Palestine Liberation Organisation and Israel. It was supposed to lead to an independent Palestinian state consisting of the occupied territories of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

But today it retains largely administrative control over only 18 percent of the occupied West Bank. Many Palestinians also rightly see it as irredeemably corrupt and ineffective.

Hamas won the 2006 elections in Gaza following Israeli soldiers’ and settlers’ withdrawal from the enclave in 2005.

Israel police boss threatens to send anti-war protesters to Gaza

Israel’s police chief said there will be “zero tolerance” for pro-Palestinian protests inside Israel’s official borders, threatening to send anti-war demonstrators to Gaza.

Kobi Shabtai’s comments came in a video on the Israeli police’s TikTok channel on Tuesday. Police broke up a very small rally in Haifa in support of Gaza on Wednesday, arresting six people.

“Whoever wants to become an Israeli citizen, welcome,” Shabtai said. “Anyone who wants to identify with Gaza is welcome. I will put him on the buses heading there now.”