On Thursday, Israeli forces killed Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, during a firefight in Rafah. The killing of Sinwar prompted statements of unrestrained support for the Netanyahu government by the leaders of the United States, France, Germany and the UK, who used the occasion to openly endorse Netanyahu’s campaign of extermination and ethnic cleansing against a population of 2.2 million people.

Sinwar died while resisting his killers, but the fact that he resisted does not make his death any less a murder. His killing is part of an illegal imperialist-backed war whose aim is the extermination of the population of Gaza and the annexation of the territory illegally occupied by Israel since 1967.

Sinwar’s murder follows a campaign of illegal assassinations targeting all of the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as leading Iranian figures, as the US and Israel expand their military onslaught throughout the region. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed by more than 80 2,000-pound bombs in Lebanon last month, and Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran in July.

Sinwar was born on October 29, 1962 in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in Gaza. His family had been expelled from Majdal Asqalan, also known as Ashkelon, in southern Israel, during the 1948 imperialist-backed ethnic cleansing of Arabs from what became Israel. When Sinwar was just five years old, Gaza was illegally occupied by Israel as part of the occupation of all of the Palestinian territories. For virtually his entire life, Israel subjected the population of Gaza to a total blockade, turning it into the world’s largest concentration camp and denying its residents every fundamental human right. Israel kidnapped, killed and tortured Gazans with impunity.

President Joe Biden called Netanyahu on Thursday “to congratulate him on the mission,” the White House said in a statement. The statement declared that “Hamas [will] never again [be] able to control Gaza.”

On Thursday, Biden issued a statement saying that “With our intelligence help, the IDF relentlessly pursued Hamas’s leaders, flushing them out of their hiding places and forcing them onto the run... Today, however, proves once again that no terrorists anywhere in the world can escape justice, no matter how long it takes.”

The president continued, “Israel has every right to eliminate the leadership and military structure of Hamas.”

Biden’s remarks hailing the killing of Sinwar could have been made by a fascist leader. They exemplify the repudiation of democratic principles at the highest levels of the American state. Assassinations and genocide are being embraced by the leaders of “democratic” countries as legitimate policies in a disintegration of democratic forms of government and international law and a descent into ever deeper levels of criminality.

In subsequent statements in Berlin, Biden said the killing of Sinwar provided “an opportunity to seek a path to peace.” But his earlier statement made clear that what he meant by “peace” was ensuring that Hamas would “never again [be] able to control Gaza,” i.e., peace on the terms dictated by the genocidal Netanyahu government.

Biden’s statements were echoed by the leaders of France, Germany, the UK, and Italy, as well as the entire political spectrum in the United States, including Senator Bernie Sanders, who declared Sinwar a “war criminal who masterminded the brutal October 7th terrorist attack.”

The statements of support for Israel by the imperialist powers constitute an endorsement of the Gaza genocide as it moves to a critical new phase, in which Israel is making clear that the mass starvation and ethnic cleansing of the population of Gaza is its explicit aim.

Israel is implementing what has become known as the “generals’ plan,” coined by Giora Eiland, the former head of Israel’s National Security Council.

Since November, Eiland has publicly argued for the adoption of starvation as a method of war, not just in practice, as Israel has in fact done, but as a matter of official doctrine.

Last year, Eiland wrote:

Who are the “poor” women of Gaza? They are all the mothers, sisters, or wives of Hamas murderers... The international community warns us of a humanitarian disaster in Gaza and of severe epidemics. We must not shy away from this, as difficult as that may be. After all, severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer and reduce casualties among IDF soldiers.

Now, major US media publications are admitting that Israel is putting this plan into effect. An article published Friday in the Washington Post cited a statement by Israeli political scientist Gayil Talshir, who declared, “Part of what is happening in north Gaza now was a trial of the Eiland plan.”

The article reported, “For the first two weeks of October, no food reached the 400,000 people in war-battered northern Gaza.”

It continued:

What has played out in this stretch of the enclave mirrors, at least in part, a controversial siege plan conceived by a former Israeli general to gain full control of northern Gaza and then larger swaths of the enclave. It envisions systematically emptying areas of civilians and starving out—or shooting down—anyone who stays.

The implementation of Eiland’s plan to starve the population of Gaza and kill or displace every Palestinian man, woman, and child in northern Gaza forms the background to the deployment of 100 US ground troops to Israel to support a planned massive Israeli strike against Iran.

The escalation of war throughout the world is the essential content of the open embrace of assassination, terrorism and genocide by the imperialist powers.

This week, Washington Post columnist George Will declared that “World War III is already underway.” The target of this war is “today’s axis: China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea,” and it is being waged by the imperialist powers. Under conditions of global war, the imperialist states are declaring that all measures are permitted, including murder and genocide, to achieve their geopolitical aims.

A warning must be made. The methods of assassination and the extermination of civilian populations being legitimized amid this global war will be used against domestic political opposition, including against resistance by the working class to the measures demanded as part of the “war effort.”

The rampage of genocide, terrorism and military violence being unleashed by the imperialist powers throughout the Middle East points to the urgent need to build a mass movement against war, based on the working class and aimed at overthrowing the capitalist system, which gives rise to imperialist violence all over the world.