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Israel’s biggest con trick: Hiding the true numbers it has killed in Gaza

10 December 2025, https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2025-12-10/israel-con-numbers-killed-gaza/

Israel has penned us all into a ‘debate’, one entirely divorced from reality, that relates only to those killed directly by its bombs and gunfire – not the genocide it is waging by other means

The biggest con trick Israel has managed to pull off over the past two years is imposing entirely phoney parameters on a “debate” in the West about the credibility of the death toll in Gaza, now officially standing at just over 70,000.

It is not just that we have been endlessly bogged down in rows about whether Gaza’s medical authorities can be trusted, or how many of the dead are Hamas fighters. (Despite Israeli disinformation campaigns, the Israeli military itself believes more than 80 per cent of the dead are civilians.)

Or even that these “debates” always ignore the fact that, early on, Israel wrecked Gaza’s capacity to count its dead by destroying the enclave’s governmental offices and its hospitals. The 70,000 figure is likely to be a drastic under-estimate.

No, the biggest con trick is that Israel has successfully penned us all into a “debate”, one entirely divorced from reality, that relates only to those killed directly by its bombs and gunfire.

The truth is that far, far larger numbers of people in Gaza have been actively killed by Israel not through these direct means but through what statisticians refer to as “indirect” methods.

These people were killed by Israel destroying their homes and leaving them with no shelter. By Israel destroying their water and electricity supplies and their sanitation systems. By Israel levelling their hospitals. By Israel starving them. By Israel creating the perfect conditions for disease to spread. The list of ways Israel is killing people in Gaza goes on and on.

Imagine your own societies levelled in the way Gaza has been.

How long would your elderly parents survive in this hellscape?

How well would your diabetic child fare, or your sister with asthma, or your brother with cancer?

How well would you cope with catching pneumonia, or even a common cold, if you hadn’t had more than one small meal a day for months on end?

How would your wife deal with a difficult childbirth if there were no anaesthetics, or no hospital nearby, or a barely functioning hospital overwhelmed with victims from Israel’s latest bombing run.

And what would be the chances of your baby surviving if its mother could produce no milk from her starvation diet? And if you could not give the baby formula feed because Israel was blocking supplies from entry into the enclave? And if, anyway, the contaminated water supply could not be mixed into the formula powder?

None of these kinds of deaths are included in the figure of 70,000. And all precedents show that many, many times more people are killed through these indirect methods than directly through fatal injuries from bombs and bullets.

According to a letter from experts in this field to the Lancet, studies of other wars – most of them far less destructive than Israel’s on the tiny enclave – indicate that between three and 15 times more people are killed by indirect, rather than direct, methods of warfare.

The authors conservatively estimate an indirect death toll four times greater than the direct death toll. That would mean, at a minimum, 350,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza through Israel’s actions.

The reality is likely to be even worse. That is without even mentioning the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have been left with horrific injuries and psychological trauma.

Israel’s war planners know exactly how this direct-to-indirect ratio works. Which is why they chose to destroy nearly every home in Gaza, to bomb the power, sanitation and water facilities, to level the hospitals, and to block aid month after month.

They knew this would be the way Israel could carry out a genocide while offering its allies – western governments and its army of lobbyists – a “get out of jail card” for their active complicity.

Donald Trump’s so-called “ceasefire” is just another layer of deception in this endless game of smoke and mirrors. The UN’s child protection agency, Unicef, reports that less than a quarter of aid trucks are getting into Gaza, past Israel’s continuing starvation blockade, despite Israeli commitments agreed as part of the “ceasefire”. Apparently, this doesn’t register as a gross ceasefire violation. It goes unnoticed.

Unicef reports further that in October alone, at the start of the “ceasefire”, nearly 18,000 new mothers and babies had to be hospitalised in Gaza from acute malnutrition.

The genocide isn’t over. Israel may have slowed the rate of direct killings it is committing by bombing Gaza, but the indirect killings continue unabated. And so does the Israeli-engineered “debate” in the West, one designed to obscure and excuse the mass murder of Gaza’s population.

December 12, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

‘A New Form of Genocide’: Gazans Feel Little Relief from Israeli Strangulation Since the Ceasefire.

 December 6, 2025 By Tareq S. Hajjaj Republished from Mondoweiss, https://scheerpost.com/2025/12/06/a-new-form-of-genocide-gazans-feel-little-relief-from-israeli-strangulation-since-the-ceasefire/

It’s been nearly two months since the ceasefire was reached in Gaza. Hopes were high among the 2 million Palestinians in the besieged Strip that not only would the Israeli bombings stop, but that everything they had been deprived of for the past two years – food, clean water, adequate medicine and healthcare – would flood into Gaza to ease their struggles. The hopes of regaining a fragment of the life they knew before the war, have dissipated, as the reality of a “new genocide” sets in.  

Though some aid has come into Gaza, and people have tried to restore some semblance of normalcy, the reality in Gaza is far from peacetime. Israeli bombs are still falling, people cannot return to their home, and sufficient food aid and medicines are still in short supply.  

The strain being felt by Gaza’s institutions, particularly its hospitals, and by ordinary Gazans, remains alarmingly close to wartime conditions. The Government Media Office in Gaza says that the humanitarian situation has not changed during or after the ceasefire, contrary to Israeli claims, and that the siege on Gaza has continued, with border crossings remaining effectively closed. What little goods do enter Gaza, the government says, does not meet “even the minimal needs of the population.” 

In the first month of the ceasefire, according to the UN, Israel rejected over 100 requests for the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza. Today, the World Food Programme says that dietary diversity remains low, and roughly 25 percent of households in Gaza are still reporting eating only one meal daily. 

Ismail al-Thawabteh, Director of the Government Media Office in Gaza, says Israel is trying to present a misleading image suggesting it allows the flow of goods. In reality, the amount entering Gaza does not exceed one-third of what was agreed upon in the humanitarian protocol of the ceasefire. “Instead of 600 trucks per day—the minimum needed to meet essential requirements—Israel permits only about 200 trucks, most of which carry limited-value commercial or aid items.”

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA) has reported that agencies are still required to coordinate all entry of humanitarian aid convoys with Israeli authorities. For reference, between the 12th and 18th of November, OCHA said humanitarian organizations coordinated 51 missions with the Israeli authorities. Of those 51 missions, just over half (27) were actually facilitated into Gaza; five were cancelled, 15 were impeded and four were denied. 

Palestinians in Gaza tell Mondoweiss that they are feeling “suffocated,” as authorities remain unable to resolve crises such as malnutrition, shortages of food and medicine, or provide even minimal protection against harsh weather conditions.

“This is a new form of genocide,” says Khalil al-Deqran, spokesperson for the Ministry of Health in Gaza. “The policy of refusing to allow in what is necessary for people’s survival mirrors what happened earlier, when food was withheld, and malnutrition was deliberately created.”

The Ministry of Health only receives about 25% of its basic needs, causing the condition of hospitals in Gaza, according to the spokesperson, to be “deplorable and difficult”, especially in winter, when large numbers of patients, particularly children, seek care. He notes that some pediatric wards are operating at five times their bed capacity, as children live in torn tents or on the streets, leading to widespread disease. “With Israel preventing the entry of shelter materials and reconstruction supplies, the health environment becomes even more dangerous, increasing mortality and the spread of illnesses.”

The Ministry of Health said that essential medications for chronic diseases such as hypertension, heart conditions, and diabetes, which affect 350,000 patients in Gaza, are still barred by Israel from entering the Strip. Infant formula also continues to be restricted, allowed only through a few traders and in minimal quantities. Israel also prevents the entry of critical hospital supplies, including electrical generators, lab equipment, imaging devices, incubators, intensive care units, and operating room equipment – all the essential supplies needed by Gaza’s already devastated hospitals to continue functioning. “The situation remains terrible and exceedingly difficult,” the spokesperson says. Israel has not committed to the humanitarian protocol, and what has been allowed in does not amount to a drop in the ocean of the health sector’s needs.”

“There are multiple cases of malnutrition across Gaza due to the lack of infant formula and the blocking of protein-rich foods such as meat, fish, eggs, and dairy. What enters today consists mainly of non-essential food items, which perpetuates malnutrition” the health ministry said. 

“The majority of the trucks Israel allows in carry low-nutritional-value items such as processed foods, chocolate, soft drinks, and snacks, as an attempt to evade humanitarian obligations while keeping the population in a state of absolute food deprivation,” al-Thawabteh said. 

According to al-Thawabteh, the Gaza Strip requires a consistent flow of essential goods: grains, flour, proteins, livestock, red and white meat, table eggs, nutritional supplements, shelter materials, construction supplies, agricultural inputs, and raw materials for local industries. He stresses that Israel treats these goods as “prohibited or heavily restricted items.”

By his measure, there have been no real improvements on the ground since the ceasefire. Instead, he says Gaza is witnessing a “deliberate engineering of a starvation policy,” in which Israel showcases images of aid trucks to appear compliant, while “in reality blocking essential supplies and rationing aid in ways that worsen the humanitarian crisis.” This behavior, he explains, “confirms that Israel uses the agreement as a political cover to prolong crises, not as a humanitarian or legal commitment toward civilians. The siege continues, restrictions continue, and the humanitarian infrastructure remains under immense pressure.”

‘The war is not over’ 

Ordinary families in Gaza are feeling the squeeze every day. Niveen al-Sharfa, a mother of five living in a tent in Gaza City, says nothing has changed since the ceasefire. Even when some goods are available in the markets, her family still cannot afford to buy them. “We expected that once the war ended and the ceasefire began, we would see reconstruction, open border crossings, improvements in hospitals, and the entry of winter essentials such as clothing, shelter, and other necessities. But none of this happened. We are still living in torn tents, and still far from our homes.”

Al-Sharfa recalls that during the war she lived in constant fear under bombardment, but says that even now she remains afraid of hearing at any moment that someone has been killed. “Nothing has changed… everything is the same,” she says.

Even those who experienced slight improvements in daily life after the ceasefire find their hopes diminished when looking at the broader picture. 

Amer al-Sultan was displaced from his home in the Jabalia Camp in northern Gaza. He says that life has changed “a little” after the ceasefire in terms of the availability of some food— though prices remain high — unlike during the height of the war, when famine pushed people to eat the leaves off of trees. “I expected to return to my home, but unfortunately, I did not. My home lies inside the yellow zone, and this makes me feel every day that the war has not ended.”

“The world thinks the war is over, but as long as there is an army inside the yellow zone, the war is not over. Just last night, we woke up to the sound of bombardment, explosions, and gunfire in those areas. How can we believe the war has ended when we sleep and wake to the sound of bombs?”

Nidaa al-Dahdouh, a mother of two, sees no sign that the war has ended as long as her children are not living normal lives. She wants to see them going to school, instead of waking up in the morning to collect firewood or to stand in long lines for food aid. “When the war ends, I will see my children getting ready in the morning to go to school wearing warm clothes,” she says. “But so far, they are still suffering in tents and the cold that comes with it.”

“We hoped for safety after the war, that we would return to our homes, and feel that the endless killing had stopped. But none of that happened. We hoped that basic goods would return to their normal prices, but that did not happen either. Yes, some items are available—like fish, for example—but the price is extremely high, and I cannot afford it. So for me, it is as if it does not exist at all.”

Tareq S. Hajjaj is the Gaza Correspondent for Mondoweiss and a member of the Palestinian Writers Union. Follow him on Twitter/X at @Tareqshajjaj.

December 8, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, health | Leave a comment

Gaza Denied the Right to Heal: Ceasefire Fails, New ‘Green-Zone’ Plan Threatens Modern Ghettos and Collective Imprisonment

 December 4, 2025, By: Joshua Scheer, https://scheerpost.com/2025/12/04/gaza-denied-the-right-to-heal-ceasefire-fails-new-green-zone-plan-threatens-modern-ghettos-and-collective-imprisonment/

Anew report from Euro‑Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor warns that a proposed postwar plan for Gaza Strip — backed by United States government and Israeli government officials — could amount to “unlawful collective imprisonment” of Palestinian civilians.

The report finds that “this plan entrenches long-term illegal control and the forcible de facto annexation of territory. It imposes unlawful collective imprisonment on the civilian population, in clear violation of international law and the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.”

The report adds, “Entry and exit would be permitted only through security screening, effectively converting these sites into overcrowded detention camps that impose severe restrictions on residents’ freedom of movement and daily life.”

Euro-Med, along with anyone with eyes, ears and a heart would think that the proposed design “mirrors the historical model of ghettos,”

What is being reported demonstrates a clearly coercive environment: Palestinians displaced by war would effectively be forced into the “green-zone” communes by the denial of basic services — housing, safety, food, water — unless they relocate.

Even more troubling: once inside, residents reportedly would face severe restrictions on their freedom of movement, daily life, and access to services, raising grave concerns over human rights, forced displacement and long-term structural confinement.

This story demands our attention. After Gaza has been brutally assaulted with genocidal intent, it is now being reshaped in a way that entrenches segregation, displacement and total control. Not much less could be expected from a modern apartheid state that has been allowed to do whatever it has wanted for 77 years.

For more, here is a tweet from Ramy Abdul, Chairman EuroMedHR, detailing their report and a map in which they make it clear: “Gaza’s Yellow Line: Where Genocide is Internationally Acceptable”

The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor @EuroMedHR has obtained alarming details about a U.S.–Israeli plan—supported by several Western and Arab states and institutions—that aims to turn Gaza into a forced ghetto, a massive detention zone, and a site of land annexation and resource Show more

More on this from The Nation: in an article published two days ago, Gaza writer Hassan Abo Qamar describes the so-called “ceasefire” as changing nothing — Gaza remains a prison, and its people continue to endure unrelenting hardship.

“The world calls this ‘peace,’ yet in reality ‘peace’ here does not mean the end of anything; hunger, fear, and death remain, while the occupation continues to strangle Gaza through crossings, restrictions, and deliberate obstruction of recovery.”

“The truth is simple: Gaza has been denied the right to heal.”

There is no way to end this article or post it without acknowledging what we see every day: Nothing has changed, and the Israelis are still killing. I end with this video for those following today’s events, including Al Jazeera’s reporting on today’s violations of the ceasefire, in which five people — including children — were killed. Once again, the ceasefire has not stopped the ongoing genocide. And now, with this new plan to create modern ghettos, the Israelis are leaning further into the playbook of the Third Reich.

December 7, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

International tribunal finds Israel guilty of genocide, ecocide, and the forced starvation of the Palestinians in Gaza.

Mondoweiss, By Marianne Dhenin  November 27, 2025

The International People’s Tribunal on Palestine held in Barcelona presented striking evidence of Israel’s forced starvation of the Palestinian people and the deliberate destruction of food security in Gaza.

The International People’s Tribunal on Palestine convened on November 22 and 23 in Barcelona. The event brought together organizers, human rights advocates, and legal experts and offered a platform for survivors of the ongoing assault on Gaza to present evidence of Israel’s international crimes. After two days of testimony, jurors returned their verdict: Israel, the United States, and other Western powers are guilty of the crimes of genocide, ecocide, and the forced starvation of the Palestinian people.

“The mass killings, deliberate starvation, systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure, environmental devastation, and the targeting of hospitals, shelters, schools, and places of refuge were carried out as a matter of state policy, and with full knowledge of their fatal consequences,” said head juror Ceren Uysal, reading from the verdict as the tribunal closed.

Hosted by the International League of Peoples’ Struggle, International People’s Front, and People’s Coalition of Food Sovereignty (PCFS), the tribunal offered a quasi-judicial platform for advocates and survivors of Israel’s ongoing genocide to present evidence and legal arguments related to the crimes committed against the Palestinian people. It follows in a tradition of popular forums seeking justice and accountability where institutions have failed to provide it, including previous tribunals on recent crimes in Gaza.

It came as Israel continues to commit violence in Palestine. Israel has violated the U.S.-brokered ceasefire in effect since October 10, 2025, at least 497 times, killing more than 340 people, according to the Gaza Government Media Office. On November 17, the United Nations Security Council endorsed President Donald Trump’s plan for an international force that he will lead to oversee the continued occupation of Gaza, drawing condemnation from legal experts and rights groups, who argue the plan violates Palestine’s right to self-determination and will fail to protect Palestinians.

Against this backdrop, the International People’s Tribunal repudiated the status quo. It offered striking evidence for Israel’s guilt, particularly for the forced starvation of the Palestinian people and the undermining of their food security. “The strategy of using food as a weapon has been going on for a long time in Palestine and Lebanon, but now it is intensified,” Razan Zuayter, PCFS global co-chairperson, told Mondoweiss. Zuayter also chairs the Arab Group for the Protection of Nature (APN), which endorsed the tribunal.

Over the course of the two-day event, more than a dozen witnesses made this case. Farmers testified that Israeli forces had razed their lands, uprooting trees, killing livestock, and blackening the soil. One witness, who testified anonymously for fear of reprisal, described an attack Israeli forces committed on their land in May 2024. “A group of bulldozers and tanks attacked our area and destroyed a set of chicken farms for meat and egg production,” they said. “The stench of death and foul odors spread throughout the place, forcing us to flee.”

Musheir El Farra wept on the stand on November 23, recounting Israeli attacks on his hometown of Khan Younis that killed more than 200 members of his extended family. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://mondoweiss.net/2025/11/international-tribunal-finds-israel-guilty-of-genocide-ecocide-and-the-forced-starvation-of-the-palestinians-in-gaza/

December 5, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel, Legal | Leave a comment

A Ceasefire in Name Only: Gaza’s Prolonged Purgatory

2 December 2025 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/a-ceasefire-in-name-only-gazas-prolonged-purgatory/

A ceasefire can be a strange thing. The assumption, generally speaking, is that the parties to it restrain themselves for a period of time, ordering their forces and disciplining their charges from straying. But straying happens, transgressions inevitable. Some are genuine enough: silly misunderstandings, hot headed confusion, a fear that the other side has broken it. Room for error, and a degree of death and injury, is crudely permitted.

In the case of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire, transgressions have become the lingua franca of the parties, though Israel remains, by far, the perpetrator par excellence. The latter’s departures from the agreement have been so vicious as to prompt the observation that they are pursuing a mutilated reading of the agreement, essentially a “reduce fire.” The deaths of 347 Palestinians in Gaza since October 10, including 136 children, do not point to cooling restraint.

On October 28, at least 104 Palestinians were slaughtered in a single day. This might have suggested a breach so serious as to suggest a repudiation. Not so, claimed Qatari Prime Minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul Rahman Al Thani. “Fortunately,” he told a US audience, “I think the main parties – both of them [Israel and Hamas] – are acknowledging that the ceasefire should hold and they should stick to the agreement.”

What is becoming apparent is that the ceasefire has led to a state of affairs where Israeli forces have been permitted enormous latitude in the way it inflicts violence on local Gazans. The UN Women’s Chief of Humanitarian Action, Sofia Calltorp, reveals how Gazan women told her “again and again: there may be a ceasefire, but the war is not over. The attacks are fewer, but the killings continue.” Agnès Callmard, Secretary General of Amnesty International, goes so far as to declare that the ceasefire has created “a dangerous illusion that life in Gaza is returning to normal.” What has in fact happened is a mere reduction of “the scale of [Israel’s] attacks” and the meagre allowance of humanitarian aid into the Strip.

In a briefing note released on November 27, the organisation is adamant that “Israeli authorities are still committing genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, by continuing to deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.” Expulsions continue, prosecutions of alleged atrocities and war crimes by Israeli forces non-existent. The means to build the crucial infrastructure required to sustain life is being hampered, while unexploded ordnance, contaminated rubble and sewage, remain unaddressed.

Structural realities have also intruded. The Israeli Defense Forces remain in control of over 58% of Gaza. According to a clutch of special rapporteurs and experts in the employ of the United Nations, including Francesca Albanese, Ben Saul and Irene Khan, 40 active Israeli sites continue to operate “beyond the agreed withdrawal line, in clear breach of the ceasefire terms.” They also warn that the UN Security Council resolution authorising the deployment of an International Stabilisation Force (ISF), with Egypt and Israel coordinating border matters alongside a spanking new Palestinian trained police force “risks replicating – if not aggravating – the model of security coordination that has entrenched Israel’s settler-colonial apartheid regime in the West Bank.”

Humanitarian assistance remains at a painful trickle, an obscene state of affairs given the levelling devastation wrought by the war (85% of water and sanitation facilities were damaged or destroyed; likewise 92% of homes). The charity Oxfam does not spare any details in what is needed: “The most pressing needs include food and healthcare and shelter, as well as water, sanitation and hygiene services (WASH) including menstrual products and waste management services.” While some food and goods have become more available in local markets, they remain prohibitively expensive for Gaza’s residents.

Between October 10 and 21, seventeen international non-government organisations had essential aid shipments for Gaza, including water, food, tents, and medical supplies, blocked, with Israeli authorities claiming they were not authorised to do so. Some 99 requests by international NGOs to deliver aid were rejected, along with six requests from UN agencies. “This includes,” stated Oxfam last month, “agencies that continue to have long-standing INGO registration with Palestinian and Israeli authorities and are legally permitted to operate by the latter while new registration processes are ongoing.”

A system of brutality, practised, insistent, even casual, has been entrenched against those in Gaza and, increasingly, the West Bank. The summary execution of two men in Jenin by Israeli soldiers after their surrender was lauded by Israel’s National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who thought the killings the very thing “expected of them.” Implicit is the suggestion that Palestinians are required to behave in specific, tolerated ways: humbly submit to their apparently generous oppressors, suffer ceaseless purgatorial deprivation and accept a ceasefire in name only.

December 4, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

UN Condemns ‘Brazen’ Israeli Killing of Surrendering Palestinians in West Bank

A UN official decried the incident as “yet another apparent summary execution” by Israeli forces.

Brad Reed, Nov 28, 2025, https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-kills-surrendering-palestinians

The United Nations on Friday accused Israeli security forces of carrying out a “brazen” killing of two Palestinian men who were seen surrendering in video footage.

The footage, which was first aired by the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation and reposted on X by Drop Site, shows two Palestinian men exiting with their hands raised from a building in the West Bank city of Jenin that had been surrounded by Israeli forces.

The two men then crawled out of the building entrance and knelt down with their hands still raised before apparently being instructed by Israeli forces to go back toward the entrance of the building. The two men did so, and were then shot dead by at least one Israeli officer.

According to France 24, United Nations rights office spokesman Jeremy Laurence told reporters on Friday that the incident was “yet another apparent summary execution” by Israeli forces.

“We are appalled at the brazen killing by Israeli border police yesterday of two Palestinian men in Jenin,” he emphasized.

Laurence added that UN rights chief Volker Turk was demanding “independent, prompt, and effective investigations into the killings of Palestinians,” and for those involved in the killings to “be held fully to account.”

The Palestinian Authority, which identified the two men killed by Israeli officers as 37-year-old Yussef Ali Asa’sa and 26-year-old Al-Muntasir Billah Mahmud Abdullah, accused Israeli forces of carrying out “brutal” executions that amounted to a “war crime.”

In a joint statement, Israeli police and the military said that the “incident is under review by the commanders on the ground, and will be transferred to the relevant professional bodies,” and they claimed that the two men killed were “wanted individuals who had carried out terror activities, including hurling explosives and firing at security forces.”

Despite pledges for a review of the incident, BBC reports that Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has already given a thumbs-up to officers’ actions and he responded to footage of the incident by saying, “Terrorists must die.”

December 2, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Israel | Leave a comment

Amnesty: So-Called Gaza ‘Ceasefire’ becoming Smokescreen for continued Israeli Genocide

Juan Cole11/28/2025, https://www.juancole.com/2025/11/ceasefire-smokescreen-continued.html

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Amnesty International concludes that, over a month after a ceasefire was agreed upon in Gaza and all living Israeli hostages were returned, the Israeli authorities continue to pursue the textbook definition of genocide “by continuing to deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.” Moreover, Israeli leaders continue openly to affirm that this course of action is intentional on their parts.

Dan Steinbock here at Informed Comment recently made a similar argument, calling what the Israelis are doing “ecocide.”

The Secretary General of Amnesty International, Agnes Calmard, observed that “Palestinians remain held within less than half of the territory of Gaza, in the areas least capable of supporting life, with humanitarian aid still severely restricted.” Amnesty says that the Israeli military continues to occupy on the order of 55% of the Gaza Strip. There has been no move to rehabilitate the farmland that has been deliberately destroyed by the Israelis over two years or rebuild livestock. The Israelis routinely shoot at Palestinian fishing boats, preventing them from harvesting protein from the sea. The report concludes, “Palestinians are left virtually totally deprived of independent access to forms of sustenance.”

Ms. Calmard warned that: “The ceasefire risks creating a dangerous illusion that life in Gaza is returning to normal. But while Israeli authorities and forces have reduced the scale of their attacks and allowed limited amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza, the world must not be fooled. Israel’s genocide is not over.”

Amnesty observes that Israeli fighter pilots and troops have killed about 350 people in Gaza since the so-called ceasefire was trumpeted on October 9. Moreover, Israelis are deliberately obstructing the process of rebuilding “life-sustaining infrastructure.” This cruel behavior is also illegal, directly violating “multiple orders from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for Israel to ensure that Palestinians have access to humanitarian supplies.”

Let me just say that Israeli authorities agreed as part of the ceasefire to allow 600 trucks of food and other aid into Gaza daily. It is only allowing in about 200 trucks per day, only a third of what was pledged. As a result, the World Food Program says it is only able to reach about 100,000 households with food parcels and wheat, and even then it can only get them 75% of full rations. Its target is 320,000 households or 1.6 million needy people.

Again, this is me speaking: These limitations are not natural. They are the result of deliberate Israeli policies. Israeli troops at checkpoints are deliberately slow-rolling the entry of aid into Gaza on orders from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extreme-right cabinet. They are restricting overall humanitarian throughput, creating “major bottlenecks, including de-prioritization of humanitarian cargo, low offloading rates, scanning capacity, and suspended

December 1, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Trump Gaza Plan Condemned as ‘Concentration Camps Within a Mass Concentration Camp’

After previous plans by Israel for the mass expulsion of Palestinians, onlookers fear the proposal to house some displaced Palestinians in “compounds” they may not be allowed to leave.

Stephen Prager, Comon Dreams, Nov 26, 2025

A new Trump administration plan to put Palestinians living in the Israeli-occupied parts of Gaza into “residential compounds” is raising eyebrows among international observers, who fear it could more closely resemble a system of “concentration camps within a mass concentration camp.”

Under the current “ceasefire” agreement—which remains technically intact despite hundreds of alleged violations by Israel that have resulted in the deaths of over 300 Palestinians—Israel still occupies the eastern portion of Gaza, an area greater than 50% of the entire strip. The vast majority of the territory’s nearly 2 million inhabitants are crammed onto the other side of the yellow line into an area of roughly 60 square miles—around the size of St Louis, Missouri, or Akron, Ohio.

As Ramiz Alakbarov, the United Nations’ deputy special coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, explained Monday at a briefing to the UN Security Council: “Two years of fighting has left almost 80% of Gaza’s 250,000 buildings damaged or destroyed. Over 1.7 million people remain displaced, many in overcrowded shelters without adequate access to water, food, or medical care.”

The New York Times reported Tuesday that the new US proposal would seek to resettle some of those Palestinians in what the Trump administration calls “Alternative Safe Communities,”on the Israeli-controlled side of the yellow line.

Based on information from US officials and European diplomats, the Timessaid these “model compounds” are envisioned as a housing option “more permanent than tent villages, but still made up of structures meant to be temporary. Each could provide housing for as many as 20,000 or 25,000 people alongside medical clinics and schools.”

The project is being led by Trump official Aryeh Lightstone, who previously served as an aide to Trump’s first envoy to Jerusalem. According to the Times: “His team includes an eclectic, fluctuating group of American diplomats, Israeli magnates and officials from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—the sweeping Washington cost-cutting effort overseen earlier this year by Elon Musk.”

The source of funding for the project remains unclear, though the cost of just one compound is estimated to run into the tens of millions. Meanwhile, the newspaper noted that even if ten of these compounds were constructed, it would be just a fraction of what is needed to provide safety and shelter to all of Gaza’s displaced people. It’s unlikely that the first structures would be complete for months.

While the Times said that “the plan could offer relief for thousands of Palestinians who have endured two years of war,” it also pointed to criticisms that it “could entrench a de facto partition of Gaza into Israeli- and Hamas-controlled zones.” Others raised concerns about whether the people of Gaza will even want to move from their homes after years or decades of resisting Israel’s occupation.

But digging deeper into the report, critics have noted troubling language. For one thing, Israeli officials have the final say over which Palestinians are allowed to enter the “compounds” and will heavily scrutinize the backgrounds of applicants, likely leading many to be blacklisted.

In one section, titled “Freedom of Movement,” the Times report noted that “some Israeli officials have argued that, for security reasons, Palestinians should only be able to move into the new compounds, not to leave them, according to officials.”

This language harkens back to a proposal earlier this year by Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, who called for the creation of a massive “humanitarian city” built on the ruins of Rafah that would be used as part of an “emigration plan” for hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians in Gaza.

Under that plan, Palestinians would have been given “security screenings” and once inside would not be allowed to leave. Humanitarian organizations, including those inside Israel, roundly condemned the plan as essentially a “concentration camp.”

Prior to that, Trump called for the people of Gaza—“all of them”—to be permanently expelled and for the US to “take over” the strip, demolish the remaining buildings, and construct what he described as the “Riviera of the Middle East.” That plan was widely described as one of ethnic cleansing.

The new plan to move Palestinians to “compounds” is raising similar concerns.

“What is it called when a military force concentrates an ethnic or religious group into compounds without the ability to leave?” asked Assal Rad, a PhD in Middle Eastern history and a fellow at the Arab Center in Washington, DC.

Sana Saeed, a senior producer for AJ+, put it more plainly: “concentration camps within a mass concentration camp.”……………………………………………

……………………………………….. there is a conspicuous lack of any clear plan for what happens to those Palestinians who continue to live outside the safe communities, warning that Israel’s security clearances could serve as a way of marking them as fair targets for even more escalated military attacks.

“Those who remain outside of the alternative communities, in the ‘red zone,’” he said, “risk being labelled ‘Hamas supporters’ and therefore ineligible for protection under Israel’s warped interpretation of international law and subject to ongoing military operations, as already seen in past days.” https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-gaza-compounds

November 29, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Over 92 Percent of Homes in Gaza Are Rubble. How Do We Even Start Rebuilding?

To resurrect Gaza, the world must reckon with the genocide. Despite the ceasefire, Israel is blocking access to cement.

By Hend Salama Abo Helow , Truthout, November 22, 2025

n the wake of the United Nations Security Council rubber-stamping Donald Trump’s plans for Gaza — including the creation of a so-called “board of peace” and a militarized “international stabilization force” — the very notion of rebuilding is slipping through the cracks, overshadowed by what is framed as the more urgent need to keep the peace in place. But peace manufactured this way is nothing but an expansion and deepening of the humanitarian crisis already unfolding.

Gaza City was already in a perpetual state of destruction and rebuilding long before the current genocide erupted. It has endured relentless aggression that reduced residential homes to rubble, wiped out entire neighborhoods, and massacred civilians. Five wars — 2008, 2012, 2014, 2021, and May 2023 — brutally dismantled Gaza’s infrastructure, economy, agriculture, education, and culture, leaving behind a consumed cycle of devastation.

Yet each time, once the bombardment stopped, reconstruction began, even if it was in a slow rhythm. Gaza would rise again — recovering, thriving even, in forms more vibrantly echoing and picturesque than before. But this genocide has unleashed an unprecedented scale of destruction, so vast and unrelenting that stumbling upon an intact home today feels like witnessing one of life’s seven miracles………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://truthout.org/articles/over-92-percent-of-homes-in-gaza-are-rubble-how-do-we-even-start-rebuilding/

November 27, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza | Leave a comment

Thanks to US, in Gaza it’s death by a thousand planes

25 November 2025 AIMN Editorial, By Walt Zlotow, https://theaimn.net/thanks-to-us-in-gaza-its-death-by-a-thousand-planes/  

In 1948 the US launched an airlift of food and supplies to keep Berliners fed and healthy during the Soviet blockade of allies from Berlin. During the airlift’s 15 months, US planes delivered over 1,800,000 tons of life sustaining material…a humanitarian gesture for the ages.

Twenty-six months ago the US embarked on another airlift. Alas, this one was not humanitarian. It was to further Israeli genocide that has largely obliterated Gaza’s 139 square miles. Even with the not so peaceful ceasefire, America keeps airlifting in supplies to keep killing and degrading hapless Palestinians trapped in the ruins. Over 300 slaughtered and 900 wounded since ceasefire began 45 days ago. Israel just received planeload number 1,000. Along with 150 cargo ships, the US air/sea lift has poured into Israel over 120,000 tons of advanced munitions, weapons, armored vehicles, medical equipment, communications systems, and personal protective equipment.

Besides destroying Gaza, US war material supports Israel’s destruction of Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Yemen, West Bank; even bombing imagined bad guys in US ally Qatar.

Whew! That takes a lot of US treasure that could be used to provide health care for all, end food insufficiency for 50 million sufferers, rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, convert to green energy, among other critically needed uplifting of the commons. How much treasure squandered on all that death and destruction? Over $21 Billion for Gaza alone with another $12 billion for Israel’s other bombing and terror campaigns.

Back in 1948 the beleaguered Berliners proclaimed the US Berlin airlift heaven sent. Seventy-seven years on, desperately starving and sick Palestinians not yet killed under American bombs dropped from US plans view the US genocidal airlift as arising from the lowest level of hell.

November 27, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities | Leave a comment

When medics become targets: Ukrainian strikes on Russian rescue workers and the silence of western media.

Eva Karene Bartlett, November 20, 2025, https://evakarenebartlett.substack.com/p/when-medics-become-targets-ukrainian?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3046064&post_id=179646211&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Since Russia began its SMO in 2022, Western media have repeatedly accused Russia of an “unprovoked invasion” and of “war crimes”.

Honest observers, however, state that Russia has acted with considerable restraint in Ukraine—targeting military and logistics sites, not civilians—and remind of Ukraine’s eight years of warring on the civilians in the Donbass prior to the commencement of the SMO in 2022. Further, they emphasize that once again, in December 2021, Russia made clear its concerns in hopes of a diplomatic solution. These were, again, steadily ignored by Western governments and media.

Likewise ignored is Ukraine’s deliberate, shelling and drone striking of medical and rescue personnel. Under international law, medical and rescue personnel and their vehicles are protected and must not be targeted. Ukraine and its ally Israel are guilty of routinely, deliberately, targeting medics and other rescuers, maiming and killing them. These are war crimes, but the West remains mute, instead concocting stories of “Russian war crimes” in the face of Ukraine’s very real ones.

In September 2019, when I first visited the Donbass, in a village in the Gorlovka region I met an elderly resident of living alone in a home falling apart from previous Ukrainian shelling. During our conversation she said that ambulances wouldn’t be able to reach her if she was injured by the shelling, it would be too dangerous for them to try.

I was likewise told by Zaitsevo administration that ambulances could not reach the villagers.

“The paramedics don’t go farther than this building; it’s too dangerous. If somebody needs medical care near the front lines, someone has to go in their own car and take them to a point where medics can then take them to Gorlovka. The soldiers also help civilians who are injured.
A woman died due to huge blood loss because no one could reach her house to take her away in time. She was injured in the shelling and bled to death.”

This is one sordid reality for civilians living in villages heavily bombarded by Ukraine.

But the medics heroically do go to potentially dangerous areas to rescue civilians, and they have for years been deliberated targeted by Ukrainian forces when doing so.

In 2022, I interviewed numerous medics and Emergency Services workers in Donetsk regions, and subsequently made a short video about Ukraine’s deliberate targeting of rescue personnel.

Speaking with Emergency Services in Donetsk’s Kievsky district, for the two hours I was there we came under heavy Ukrainian shelling.

The windows of the building had already been blown out and were sand-bagged to attempt to protect the workers. The Chief of the centre, Andrey Levchenko, told me how five days prior his office had been impacted with shrapnel from the shelling. He thankfully had just stepped of his office before the blast and was not injured or killed.

The day prior to my visit, when out on a call to rescue civilians trapped in a building set ablaze by Ukrainian shelling, rescuers were shelled, resulting in one of them being hospitalized in critical condition.

The survivors told me that, prior to the shelling, they saw a drone overhead, which makes it credible to believe that Ukraine deliberately targeted the rescuers.

Levchenko told me that Ukraine routinely double and triple strikes rescuers.

“As soon as we go out to help people the shelling resumes.” The double or triple strike tactic often means that rescuers who have come to help those injured in the first strike are then themselves targeted, depriving civilians in need of urgent medical assistance as a result.

I also spoke with Sergei Neka, Director of the Department of Fire and Rescue Forces of the Ministry of Emergency Situations. He reiterated what I’d been told.

“Our units arrive at the scene of the accident and Ukraine begins to shell it. A lot of equipment has been damaged and destroyed.”

Two female medics I interviewed told me coming under repeated Ukrainian shelling is normal. They spoke of their fear, bu said, “How about the patients? They’re hurt and even more scared, they’re waiting for our help. If I don’t help, who will help if everyone runs away?”

By September 2022, Ukrainian forces targeted and killed 19 Donbass rescuers, injuring over 50 more.

Ukraine continues killing medics

Fast forward to the present. Following are just some of Ukraine’s more recent attacks on medics and other rescue workers.

On August 11, a Ukrainian drone targeted an ambulance in Gorlovka, killing two medics and seriously injuring the driver.

In May, a Ukrainian drone strike killed two Emergency workers who had come to the site of a first drone strike in Lugansk. In an Israeli-style second strike, Ukraine targeted the rescuers deliberately after the arrived at the scene.

In March, Russian Emergencies Ministry employees came to extinguish a car on fire following a Ukrainian drone strike in Gorlovka. A Ukrainian drone targeted them, injuring the deputy head of the firefighting service and damaging a fire truck.

There are tragically many more such instances which I could list. However, the point is that it is beyond clear that Ukraine’s shelling and drone targeting of Russian medics, firefighters and other rescuers has been a deliberate policy since before 2022.

It is also clear that Western concern for medics allegedly targeted elsewhere (think the fake rescuers of the al-Qaeda aligned White Helmets in Syria during the global war on Syria) will never extend to any concern for Russian rescuers actually targeted by Ukraine.

November 25, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Israel Launches Major Attacks Across Gaza, Killing at Least 28 Palestinians, Including Many Children.

by Dave DeCamp | November 19, 2025  https://news.antiwar.com/2025/11/19/israel-launches-major-attacks-across-gaza-killing-at-least-24-palestinians-including-many-children/

The Israeli military launched strikes across Gaza on Wednesday, killing at least 28 Palestinians, including 17 women and children, as it continues to violate the US-backed ceasefire deal.

The Israeli military claimed that its forces came under fire in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, but provided no evidence, and according to Israeli media, there were no casualties among IDF troops, and the attack occurred on the Israeli-occupied side of the yellow line. Hamas later denied that its fighters fired on Israeli troops, and called the claim “a weak and exposed attempt to justify their ongoing crimes and violations.” Following the alleged incident, the IDF unleashed strikes on Gaza City.

The Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that one Israeli strike targeted the Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs in southeastern Gaza City, killing at least 10 people, including two women and three children. Al Jazeera reported that a family of five in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood was wiped out by Israeli strikes.

In southern Gaza, WAFA reported that at least four Palestinians were killed by Israeli strikes on the al-Mawasi tent camp on the coast. The news agency also said that an Israeli attack on a neighborhood of Khan Younis killed two children.

The Israeli escalation came two days after the UN Security Council passed a resolution affirming President Trump’s so-called “ceasefire deal” that places the Gaza Strip under the control of the US-led board. Since the ceasefire was supposed to go into effect on October 10, the Trump administration has backed Israel’s continued attacks on Palestinians.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said earlier in the day that since October 10, Israeli forces have killed 280 Palestinians and injured 670. The strikes on Wednesday bring the total death toll during the “ceasefire” to more than 300.

November 23, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Israel Moved Gaza’s Yellow Line And Then Shelled Palestinians For Being On The Wrong Side.

Caitlin Johnstone, Nov 22, 2025

Drop Site News reports that the IDF quietly moved part of the “yellow line” which divides Gaza 300 meters forward, and then started shelling Palestinians for being on the “wrong side” of the line.

They just keep finding new ways to carve off more pieces of Gaza and murder more Palestinians.

❖

Haaretz has a disturbing story out about a 14 year-old Palestinian boy who was waiting for his school bus in the West Bank on a quiet street eating a cookie, when suddenly a bunch of IDF vehicles pulled up and a soldier shot him directly in the face with a teargas canister. Then they sped off.

The boy lost his right eye in the attack………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-moved-gazas-yellow-line-and?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=179610682&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

November 23, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Israel | Leave a comment

At Least 13 Palestinians, ‘Mostly Children,’ Killed by Israel in Lebanon Massacre

Despite a November 2024 truce between Israel and Hezbollah, Israeli forces have killed at least 121 civilians, including 21 women and 16 children, in Lebanon.

Brett Wilkins, 19 Nov 25, https://www.commondreams.org/news/israeli-airstrikes-lebanon

A series of Israeli airstrikes on targets in southern Lebanon have killed at least 17 people and wounded more than 100 others in recent days, including 13 people—mostly children, according to local officials—massacred Tuesday at a camp for Palestinian refugees.

Officials and residents said that the Israeli strike on Ain al-Hilweh near Sidon struck an area where children were playing soccer. Ain al-Hilweh is the largest camp in Lebanon housing refugees from the Nakba—the ethnic cleansing and terror campaign through which the modern Israeli state was founded—and their descendants.

The Israel Defense Forces said it targeted members of the Palestinian resistance group Hamas “operating in a training compound” in the camp.

Hamas rejected the IDF claim as “fabrication and lies.”

The strike was the deadliest IDF attack in Lebanon since Israeli troops shot and killed at least 24 people including 6 women and injured 134 others in January.

The IDF carried out subsequent attacks, including a Wednesday morning drone strike on a vehicle in Al-Tayri that reportedly killed two civilians including the town’s treasurer and wounded at least 10 university students. Israeli forces also bombed a residential area of the town of Tair Filsay in Tyre district. It is unknown if anyone was harmed in the strike.

Often overshadowed by its genocidal war on Gaza—which has left at least 249,600 people dead, maimed, or missing; millions more forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened; and the coastal strip in ruins—Israel’s bombardment and invasion of Lebanon has killed more than 4,000 people since October 2023, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health. This figure includes at least 790 women and 316 children. More than 16,600 others have been wounded. Upward of 1.2 million Lebanese were also forcibly displaced by Israel’s attacks and invasion.

This, despite a November 2024 truce between Israel and Lebanon-based Hezbollah. Since then, Israeli forces have killed at least 121 civilians, including 21 women and 16 children, in its northern neighbor—which Israel has invaded or bombed numerous times since 1948, killing and wounding tens of thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians.

Israeli forces also bombed the Qizan an-Najjar area, south of Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, killing at least one Palestinian and wounding a mother and her child, according to local officials, who said at least 280 Palestinians have been killed and 650 others wounded in nearly 400 Israeli violations of the October ceasefire with Hamas.

November 22, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Israel | Leave a comment

Israel’s unrelenting, underreported ethnic cleansing of West Bank Palestinians

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL  , 20 Nov 25

Israel’s genocidal ethnic cleansing of Gaza is obvious to all with a moral conscious. Killing upwards of 100,000 Palestinians under 50,000 tons of US bombs obliterating Gaza’s 139 square miles is easy to process. Denying food, water, medicine causing degradation and death to the remaining 2,200,000 Palestinians reinforces that genocidal reality.

But many remain unaware of Israel’s relentless policy of ethnically cleansing the 3.3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem annexed by Israel in 1967. Israel is positively gleeful about bringing the West Bank entirely into Greater Israel for Israelis only. In July the Israeli Knesset passed a symbolic motion that the West Bank is “an inseparable part of the Land of Israel, the historical, cultural and spiritual homeland of the Jewish people” and that “Israel has the natural, historical and legal right to all of the territories of the Land of Israel.”

Folding the West Bank and East Jerusalem into Greater Israel, with or without (preferably without) those pesky Palestinians, has been the Israeli dream since that illegal 1967 annexation. A decade later Prime Minister Began initiated an inexorable settlement policy to implement that dream. Jewish settlement rose from just a few thousand in the late 70’s, to over half a million by the October, 2023 Hamas attack in Gaza.

The now two year Gaza genocide coincided with accelerated settlements, attacks on Palestinians, their homes, villages, harvests making life horrendous for the West Bank and East Jerusalem’s 3,300,000 Palestinians. Israeli settlement now approaches 750,000. With the world fixated on the horror perpetrated in Gaza, West Bank ethnic cleaning proceeds under the radar.

Israel pretends to oppose Israeli settler violence when in fact they both ignore an encourage it. Case in point is Zvi Sukkot, former head of settler terrorist organization The Revolt who had been marginalized by the Israeli government. Sukkot was arrested in 2010 for possible involvement in a mosque arson in the West Bank but released. By early 2023 he joined the Israeli Knesset. After the Hamas attack Prime Minister Netanyahu appointed him chair of the Knesset Subcommittee for Judea and Samara (Israel’s name for the West Bank). The leap from heading up a terrorist group to heading up a governmental agency tasked with Palestinian removal tells you everything about Israel’s agenda for the West Bank.

 Is Israel determined to drive out West Bank Palestinians to fold that Palestinian land into Greater Israel? With America’s unrelenting support you can bank on it.

November 21, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Israel | Leave a comment

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