ISLAMABAD - The stars no longer depict the night sky in Gaza but displays fire. Whole neighborhoods are consumed by bombs. Hospitals lie in ruins, transformed into mass graves where the wounded wait helplessly for treatment that will never come. The parents hold the cold flesh of their martyred children.

 The reporters mumble their last words and communications go dead. Food convoys are being halted and people are doing all they can to survive by eating crumbs as they grapple with hunger that gnaws in Gaza.

At the face of it, Israel says its bombs are directed to militants but the truth says otherwise. There is the razing of schools, mosques, apartment buildings and refugee camps on top of the death toll of civil people running out of control. Tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians have been killed: over 63,000, according to Gaza Health Ministry statistics. Independent estimates put the figure at about 80,000. This was demonstrated through classified Israeli military statistics that appeared recently in the news, which revealed that 83 percent of Israeli deaths were civilians- hardly worthy of a reply. This is not a war on open borders, it is the obliteration of whole families- in their houses.

This was a foreseen misfortune and has been predicted not by the Palestinians but by the personalities who ran Israel’s security apparatus.

In 2012, Israeli filmmaker Dror Moreh released a film called The Gatekeepers, a rare documentary that profiles interviews with six former heads of the Israeli internal security service, the Shin Bet. These men could not be described as adversaries of the state; they would be functioning at the heart of its security policy and would deal with militancy. They had been involved in decades of labor developing the Israeli security policies. And when these did give their opinions at length, they were not justified by them, but were condemned.

Ami Ayalon, who was head of the Shin Bet from 1996-2000, made a prediction that sadly now rings true as the ruins of Gaza are still burning. He simply said, “We win every battle, but we lose the war.” He said the immense military muscle used by Israel, its blockades, and its airstrips cannot bring any permanent security. Other voices, including Yaakov Peri, argue that decades of relentless military dominance have failed to break the cycle of violence. Each new operation drives us deeper into that cycle; every demolished home incites fresh opposition, and every life lost draws us closer to a world where the only vocabulary left is the shattering glass of the next bomb.

Shin Bet officials who served in the 1980s and 1990s, including Avraham Shalom, who led the agency, went further. Israel is savage, he then said. “We have grown inhuman; we have grown also inhumane to ourselves. We are now in more respects, the Germans.” Such a statement by one of the top-most brass of the security hierarchy in Israel was shocking. It was one of those rare occurrences of brutally candid honesty, one of the confessions that should have jolted the soul of Israeli policy makers as well as those foreigners who stand by them. But this remarkable note so explicit and unanswerable, was unheeded.

These six Gatekeepers came out with a truth that Israelis only comment about in back rooms. The war of Gaza had nothing to do with insecurity but a power struggle. Dozens of years of fierce military operations, targeted assassinations, checkpoints and blockades have not resulted in sustainable security. Rather, such policies have denied Palestinians the fundamental respect of humanity; they have caused families to be displaced, and they have increased the Palestinians agony; all the while the Israeli people remain in a cycle of violence, resistance, and retribution that have no apparent end.

Now their cautions are entrenched in the debris of Gaza. Being backed by the support of the West, the Israeli government has discarded even the semblance of pursuing peace. It has transformed starvation into policy, bombing into normal activity and Palestinian survival into a negotiable item.

Famine has now been turned into a war weapon. There are reports by UN that more than half a million Palestinians run the risk of being starved and that one in every six children under the age of five-years is currently suffering acute malnutrition. The condition in northern Gaza has already moved to a state of famine.  At least 281 people have starved to death in hospitals with infants and babies among those who died with their naked ribs protruding through the paper-thin skin. Thousands Of people throng relief convoy hoping to be given a packet of flour or bottle of clean water. In one shocking case, 33 Palestinians have died near a food truck in their attempt to feed their families.

This has been termed as “failure of humanity” by the United Nations Secretary General. Yet the failure can be found on a deeper level, through a failure of leadership, diplomacy, and global order that favors impunity over justice.

The Gatekeepers, which is based on words spoken by former Shin Bet chief Yaakov Peri, stated that the military force is not the only way to achieve peace. The only effective path to lasting security, he noted, is dialogue and negotiation and not through rival use of force. But today it is no longer possible to speak. Israel does not seek to negotiate anymore; it seeks to control. Voices of moderation have been muted, dissent demonized, and appeals by the United States and the international community to exercise restraint have been rejected. By doing this Israel has neglected the expert advice of its own security organs and spurred on a human disaster.

Tunnels have been destroyed, houses have been demolished and whole neighborhoods have been cleared, yet Israel is no safer than it was before. It has exchanged morality with militarism, justice with vengeance and humanity with control.

In the documentary, another former Shin Bet director, Carmi Gillon, says occupation has no morality. Exclusively, it is all about control. His words hurt when considered against the current reality of the world that is seeing helpless dying children, parents digging through the rubbles with bare hands and doctors performing amputation without anesthetic.

In Tehran, Istanbul, Kuala Lumpur and Johannesburg and many other cities, where millions of people live, Gaza is no longer a field of battle but a crime scene. The outrage is intensified by the silence of Western governments which is bolstered with soft media reporting and diplomatic neglect.

The Gatekeepers did not just keep quiet and neither should we. Their words indicate how this massacre did not have to happen. Policies that are premised on occupation and force will fall on their own wickedness. They also provide the ultimate lesson that no matter how mighty a state is, it cannot create long lasting peace on the graves of children.

It is time to call on fundamental fairness. Even former masters of Israeli security apparatus acknowledge that the manifestation of constant violence can only lead to destruction. There is consequently no justification why the world should be silent.

Muhammad Akmal Khan is a Pakistani journalist and foreign affairs analyst.