There are moments when the language of power strips away all pretense. This is one of them.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has ordered all remaining Palestinians to leave Gaza City and declared that anyone who stays will be classified as a “terrorist” — and therefore a legitimate target for Israeli military forces. Katz said explicitly: “Those who remain in Gaza will be (considered) terrorists and terror supporters.”

Let that sink in. Not combatants. Not armed fighters. Anyone. Every man, woman, child, and elderly person who cannot or will not leave their home in Gaza City has been officially designated a target by a cabinet minister of a government that receives billions of dollars in U.S. military assistance every year.

Some 400,000 Palestinians have already been forcibly displaced from Gaza City in recent weeks. Hundreds of thousands more remain — not by choice, but because they have nowhere to go, no ability to move, or because leaving means abandoning the sick, the elderly, and the dying. Under international law, the inability to evacuate does not make a civilian a combatant. Under Katz’s declaration, it makes them a target.

This is not a battlefield announcement. It is a declaration of genocidal intent made in public, on the record, by a sitting government minister. The legal standard for genocide includes the intent to destroy a group in whole or in part. Declaring an entire civilian population terrorists and approving their killing meets that threshold in plain language.

The Trump administration has not condemned this statement. The United States Congress has not convened an emergency session. The weapons shipments have not stopped. That silence and that continued support are a political choice — and history will record who made it.

United Voices is calling on the U.S. government to immediately and unequivocally condemn Katz’s declaration, halt all military aid to Israel, and force a real and permanent ceasefire before this threat is carried out. The world must not stand by while a government announces — openly, in writing — its intention to kill civilians for the crime of remaining in their homes.