Israel Keeps Finding New Ways To Play Victim While Committing Genocide
Caitlin Johnstone, Nov 10, 2024, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-keeps-finding-new-ways-to?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=151441702&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Israel is really struggling with how difficult its present circumstances make playing the victim. It keeps having to invent new abuses to be victimized by like the imaginary Amsterdam “pogrom” and the fake mass rape narrative that surfaced months after October 7, because it can’t sit comfortably in the role of victimizer while on trial for genocide in international courts.
Playing victim is too deeply ingrained in the narrative control strategies of Israel and its apologists, so they have to keep coming up with new and innovative ways for Israel to be victimized even when it is very clearly the last state on earth who has any business being viewed as such.
We keep seeing the word “pogrom” used to refer to Israeli hooligans getting their asses kicked for obnoxious behavior in Amsterdam even as Israeli settlers keep committing textbook pogroms in the occupied West Bank.
Just a week ago armed Israeli settlers went on a violent rampage torching Palestinian people’s houses, vehicles and olive trees in order to terrorize them and drive them away. This is the exact type of behavior that the word “pogrom” has historically been used to describe, but you never hear that word used in the mass media to describe Israeli thuggishness. Instead we’re seeing it used to describe Israeli soccer hooligans getting beat up after they tore down Palestinian flags and sang chants about murdering children in Gaza.
So we’re seeing some good news and some bad news about Donald Trump’s potential cabinet picks when it comes to US warmongering and militarism.
The good news is that Trump has publicly ruled out giving psychopathic war hawks Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo a role in his next administration, explicitly naming them in a post on Truth Social and saying they won’t be invited.
This announcement suggests that Trump is at least trying to win the favor of the more anti-interventionist faction of his base. Pundits like Tucker Carlson have been publicly crusading against both Haley and Pompeo throughout this election cycle, and I mention Carlson specifically because he reportedly has Trump’s ear and was believed to have played a role in talking Trump out of bombing Iran in 2019.
The bad news is that other professional warmongers appear to be working their way into the administration. Reports from both Bloomberg and Fox News say the horrible Mike Rogers is under consideration to be the next secretary of defense. The Ron Paul Institute’s Daniel McAdams has a good thread on Twitter calling Rogers “an utter warhawk neocon” who is “arguably worse than Pompeo and Rubio,” noting that Rogers has promoted insanely hawkish positions on Ukraine/Russia, Israel/Iran, and China.
This news, in addition to Trump’s selection of Iran hawk Brian Hook to help staff the incoming State Department, makes it clear that Trump could still easily wind up with a cabinet packed full of warmongering swamp monsters just like last time. Hopefully he keeps getting pressured not to do so.
In a new article on “the expanding ground occupation of the Gaza Strip by the IDF” about the way Israel has been carving up Gaza and seizing more and more territory, Israel’s Ynet News reports that far right elements within the Israeli government are simply waiting for the Israeli hostages held by Hamas to die so that their deaths can be used to justify continued occupation and the construction of Jewish settlements in Gaza.
It’s like a false flag conspiracy theory, except it’s definitely happening and is being done right out in the open, and is even being announced ahead of time.
Democrats: Oh no the right wing voters we again tried to win over voted Republican again and we lost again.
Leftists: So stop doing that and win over the left instead by promoting immensely popular social policies.
Democrats: No way man, if we do that we’ll lose.
‘Horrific Reality’: Nearly 70% of UN-Verified Gaza Deaths Are Women and Children
The United Nations human rights office noted the “unprecedented levels of killings, death, injury, starvation, illness, disease, displacement, detention, and destruction” wrought by Israel’s 13-month onslaught.
Brett Wilkins, Nov 08, 2024, https://www.commondreams.org/news/how-many-women-and-children-have-died-in-gaza
Nearly 7 in 10 people killed by Israeli forces in Gaza during an earlier six-month period of the ongoing assault on the Palestinian enclave were women and children, the United Nations human rights office said Friday.
The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) verified 8,119 of the more than 34,500 Palestinians killed by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bombs and bullets between November 2023 and April 2024. Among those killed were 3,588 children and 2,036 women ranging in age from newborns to nonagenarians. Minors under the age of 18 made up 44% of the victims in the analysis.
The OHCHR report noted the “unprecedented levels of killings, death, injury, starvation, illness, disease, displacement, detention, and destruction” wrought by Israel’s onslaught, as well as the “wanton disregard” by Israeli forces and Hamas of international humanitarian law.
The analysis also highlights “the Israeli government’s continuing unlawful failures to allow, facilitate, and ensure the entry of humanitarian aid, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and repeated mass displacement.”
“If committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population… these violations may constitute crimes against humanity,” OHCHR said. “And if committed with intent to destroy—in whole or in part—a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, they may also constitute genocide.”
South Africa is leading a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. On Thursday, Ireland became the latest of around 30 countries and regional blocs to announce its intent to intervene in the case on behalf of Palestine.
OHCHR found that 88% of the verified Palestinian fatalities from Israeli attacks on residential buildings were people killed in strikes that claimed at least five lives. In recent weeks, Israel’s renewed offensive in northern Gaza—which some experts believe is an attempt to ethnically cleanse the area by bombing and starving its people before forcibly expelling them to make way for Israeli recolonization—has wiped out a staggering number of civilians, including many women and children, in single strikes on homes, hospitals, and refugee camps.
“The high number of fatalities per attack was due to the IDF’s use of weapons with wide area effects in densely populated areas,” the analysis states, adding that some Palestinians may have been killed by errant projectiles launched by Hamas or other Gaza-based militants.
The new report also raises concerns over Isrsel’s forcible transfer of Palestinians, systematic attacks on medical workers, journalists, and reported use of white phosphorus munitions—which are banned in populated areas.
Israel has not yet responded to the OHCHR report but has previously said that it “will continue to act, as it always has done, according to international law.”
Since October 7, 2023, when Israeli forces launched their assault on the densely populated coastal enclave of 2.3 million people in response to the Hamas-led attack on Israel, the Gaza Ministry of Health and U.N. agencies say that more than 43,600 Palestinians have been killed and over 102,500 others wounded. More than 10,000 others are missing and believed dead and buried beneath the ruins of bombed homes and other structures.
Among those killed, say officials, are more than 18,000 children. Last month, the U.K.-based charity Oxfam International said that Israel’s yearlong assault on Gaza has been the deadliest year of conflict for women and children anywhere in the world over the past two decades.
The relentless death and destruction has caused the “complete psychological destruction” of Gaza’s youth, according to the charity Save the Children. The same has been said of many Gazans of all ages.
Last December, the U.N. Children’s Fund called Gaza “the world’s most dangerous place to be a child.” Earlier this year, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres for the first time added Israel to his so-called “List of Shame” of countries that kill and injure children during wars and other armed conflicts.
The ICJ—which is a U.N. body—has issued three provisionsal orders in the ongoing genocide case, including directives for Israel to prevent genocidal acts, stop its assault on Rafah, and allow humanitarian aid into Gaza. Israel has been accused of flouting all three orders.
The trends and patterns of violations, and of applicable international law as clarified by the International Court of Justice, must inform the steps to be taken to end the current crisis,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said in a statement Friday.
“The violence must stop immediately, the hostages and those arbitrarily detained must be released, and we must focus on flooding Gaza with humanitarian aid,” he added.
Report Details Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing Campaign in Beit Lahia, Northern Gaza
There is no longer a single house people can live in, and the Israeli military fires artillery rounds to ensure any remaining civilians leave
by Dave DeCamp November 6, 2024, https://news.antiwar.com/2024/11/06/report-details-israels-ethnic-cleansing-campaign-in-beit-lahia-northern-gaza/
A report from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published on Wednesday detailed the situation in Beit Lahia, a city in northern Gaza near the Israeli border where Israeli forces are implementing an ethnic cleansing campaign.
At the beginning of October, Israel ordered hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in northern Gaza to head south. Many ignored the order since there was nowhere safe to go, and the Israeli military focused its renewed assault on the north on Beith Lahia and neighboring Beit Hanoun and Jabalia, where it imposed a full siege to starve out civilians.
The Israeli military has said it forcibly expelled 55,000 Palestinians from the Jabalia refugee camp, and it has no intention of allowing them back. According to Haaretz, only a few thousand civilians remain in Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun.
“There is no intention of allowing the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to return to their homes,” IDF spokesman Brig Gen Itzik Cohen told reporters on Tuesday.
The Haaretz reporters traveled to Beit Lahia and al-Atatra, a neighborhood northwest of the city, and described the destruction they saw. “In [al-Atatra] and Beit Lahia, there isn’t a single house that people can return to and live in. The area looks like it was hit by a natural disaster. There are no civilians to be seen among the ruins,” the report says.
As an attempt to remove any remaining civilians, the Israeli military fires artillery into Beit Lahia at night. “Those who want to return can’t do so, because the army prevents it. The bottom line is that it makes no difference what the IDF calls its actions. The army has begun the stage of cleansing the northern Strip while it prepares to hold onto the area for a long time to come,” the report reads.
Israeli media has reported that the Israeli military is carrying out a version of the “general’s plan,” an outline for ethnic cleansing drawn up by retired IDF generals. The plan calls for the complete evacuation of all Palestinian civilians from northern Gaza to below the Netzarim Corridor, a strip of land controlled by the Israeli military. Under the plan, if civilians don’t leave, they are to be treated as combatants and killed either by military action or starvation.
While the Israeli military claims its cleansing campaign is about removing Hamas, the IDF commander in charge of Beit Lahia, Col. Yaniv Barot, acknowledged they found no significant militant infrastructure in the area. “Barot says his mission is to continue to locate and eliminate terror infrastructure and Hamas activists. But he says that in the course of the most recent operation, no underground infrastructure, heavy war materiel or weapons production sites were found,” the report says.
The Haaretz report said the activity on the ground proves that the Israeli military is bisecting northern Gaza, potentially to pave the way for the construction of Jewish settlements, an idea strongly supported by many Israeli ministers and members of the Knesset.
The Biden administration has claimed it opposes any implementation of the “general’s plan” and the advancement of settlements but has continued to provide military aid for the ethnic cleansing campaign.
Israeli Scholar Lays Out ‘True Brutality’ of Ethnic Cleansing Now Underway in Gaza
“Such dehumanization cannot help but trigger our associations with scenes depicting the Nazis loading Jews into cattle cars.”
Jake Johnson, Nov 01, 2024, https://www.commondreams.org/news/israeli-scholar-northern-gaza
Much alarm has been raised over the so-called “Generals’ Plan,” an ethnic cleansing proposal for northern Gaza that has reportedly garnered attention in the highest reaches of the Israeli government.
But Israeli scholar Idan Landau argued in a column published in English by +972 Magazine on Friday that what the Israeli military is actually doing in northern Gaza “is even more appalling” than the plan outlined by a group of retired generals. Landau argued that focus on the details of the Generals’ Plan has served to obscure the “true brutality” of Israel’s deadly operations in northern Gaza, which has been rendered a hellscape of death and destruction by the military assault and siege.
Landau, a professor of linguistics at Tel Aviv University, opened his column—first published in Hebrew on his blog—by pointing to two photos: one showing a celebratory event at a camp built by an Israeli settler organization just outside of the Gaza Strip, and the other showing displaced Palestinians lined up at gunpoint amid the ruins of northern Gaza.
“These photos tell a story that is unfolding so rapidly that its harrowing details are already on the brink of being forgotten,” wrote Landau. “Yet this story could start from any point during the past 76 years: the Nakba of 1948, the ‘Siyag Plan‘ that followed it, the Naksa of 1967. On one side, displaced Palestinians with all the belongings they can carry, hungry, wounded, and exhausted; on the other, joyful Jewish settlers, sanctifying the new land that the army has cleared for them.”
The Israeli military’s dehumanization of the people of Gaza, Landau wrote, “cannot help but trigger our associations with scenes depicting the Nazis loading Jews into cattle cars.”
Landau wrote that what the Israeli army has been implementing in northern Gaza in recent weeks is “not quite” the Generals’ Plan, which entails giving Palestinians still in the region a week to leave before declaring the area a closed military zone—and designating everyone who remains a militant who can be denied humanitarian assistance and killed.
The actual strategy Israeli soldiers have been deploying in northern Gaza is “an even more sinister and brutal version” of the Generals’ Plan “within a more concentrated area.”
“The first, most immediate distinction is the abandoning of provisions for reducing harm to civilians, i.e. giving residents of northern Gaza a week to evacuate southward,” Landau wrote. “The second departure concerns the real purpose of emptying the area: while portraying the military operation as a security necessity, it was, in fact, an embodiment of the spirit of ethnic cleansing and resettlement from day one.”
“As opposed to the picture painted by the army, implying that residents in the northern areas were free to move south and get out of the danger zone, local testimonies presented a frightening reality: Anyone who so much as stepped out of their home risked being shot by Israeli snipers or drones, including young children and those holding white flags,” Landau noted. “Rescue crews trying to help the wounded also came under attack, as well as journalists trying to document the events.”
The scholar cites one “particularly harrowing video” in which a Palestinian child is seen “on the ground pleading for help after being wounded by an airstrike; when a crowd gathers to help him, they are suddenly hit by another airstrike, killing one and wounding more than 20 others.”
“This is the reality amid which the people of northern Gaza were supposed to walk, starved and exhausted, into the ‘humanitarian zone,” Landau wrote. “Since the Israeli army began its operation in northern Gaza, it has killed over 1,000 Palestinians. The Israeli Air Force usually bombs at night while the victims are sleeping, slaughtering entire families in their homes and making it more difficult to evacuate the wounded. And on October 24, rescue services announced that the intensity of the bombardment left them with no choice but to cease all operations in the besieged areas.”
The deadly military assault, Landau stressed, has been accompanied by a “starvation policy” that has severely hindered the flow of humanitarian assistance to northern Gaza.
The heads of prominent United Nations agencies and human rights organizations warned Friday that conditions on the ground in the region are “apocalyptic” and that “the entire Palestinian population in North Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine, and violence.”
Landau noted that on October 16, following pressure from the Biden administration, the Israeli government reportedly allowed 100 aid trucks to enter northern Gaza.
“But journalists in the north were quick to correct the record: Nothing at all had entered the besieged areas,” Landau wrote. “On October 20, Israel denied a further request by U.N. agencies to bring in food, fuel, blood, [and] medicines. Three days later, in response to a request for an interim order by the Israeli human rights group Gisha, the state admitted to the High Court that no humanitarian aid had been allowed into northern Gaza up to that point. By this time, we are already talking about a three-week-long food siege.”
Addressing the question of “what is left for us to do” in the face of such a catastrophe, Landau wrote that “the consensus concerning the war of extermination poisons Israeli society and blackens its future so profoundly that even small pockets of resistance can proliferate stamina and hope to those who have not yet been carried away by the currents of madness.”
“We can also look for partners in this fight abroad, where the critical lever of pressure is the pipeline of American weapons,” he added. “The struggle to end this intensifying war of extermination and transfer in Gaza, particularly in the north, is first and foremost a human fight. It is a fight for life, both in Gaza and Israel: for the very chance that life can continue to exist in this blood-soaked land. Nothing could be more patriotic.”
+972 Magazine published Landau’s column a day after Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, warned in a statement that “time is running out” to stop the far-right Israeli government’s attempt to “erase the Palestinians from their own land and allow Israel to fully annex Palestinian territory.”
“Genocide and a man-made humanitarian catastrophe are unfolding in front of us and in Gaza,” said Albanese. “I regret to see so many member states are avoiding acknowledging the suffering of the Palestinian people and instead look away.”
Israel Killed Over 50 Children in Jabalia in 48 Hours: UN
Four children were wounded by an Israeli strike on a vaccination center in northern Gaza
by Dave DeCamp November 3, 2024, https://news.antiwar.com/2024/11/03/israel-kills-over-50-children-in-jabalia-within-48-hours-un/
Israeli strikes in Jabalia, northern Gaza, killed over 50 children in just 48 hours, the UN’s child relief agency, UNICEF, said in a statement on Saturday.
“This has already been a deadly weekend of attacks in North Gaza. In the past 48 hours alone, over 50 children have reportedly been killed in Jabalia, where strikes leveled two residential buildings sheltering hundreds of people,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell.
Jabalia has been the focus of an Israeli ethnic cleansing campaign in northern Gaza that began in early October. The campaign has involved a starvation blockade and massive strikes on civilians, and Israeli troops are preventing the approximately 50,000 Palestinians who have been forced out of Jabalia from returning.
Russell said Israeli strikes included an attack on UNICEF staff working on a polio vaccination campaign for children and an attack on a vaccination center. The World Health Organization said at least six people, including four children, were wounded in the Israeli strike on the vaccination center.
“The attacks on Jabalia, the vaccination clinic, and the UNICEF staff member are yet further examples of the grave consequences of the indiscriminate strikes on civilians in the Gaza strip,” Russell said. “Taken alongside the horrific level of child deaths in North Gaza from other attacks, these most recent events combine to write yet another dark chapter in one of the darkest periods of this terrible war.”
Israeli strikes continued to pound northern, central, and southern Gaza on Sunday. Medical sources told Al Jazeera that at least 35 Palestinians were killed, including 16 in the north. An Israeli attack on a residential building in the southern city of Khan Younis killed seven members of the same family, including four children.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said in its death toll update on Sunday that at least 27 Palestinians were killed and 86 were injured in the previous 24-hour period. The latest violence brought the ministry’s death toll since October 2023 to 43,341 and the number of wounded to 102,105.
The Health Ministry’s numbers are considered an undercount since they don’t account for Palestinians missing and presumed dead under the rubble or indirect deaths caused by the Israeli siege. A group of American healthcare workers who volunteered in Gaza have estimated the US-backed Israeli bombing campaign and siege has killed at least 118,908 Palestinians, including over 60,000 who have starved to death.
The genocidal slaughter would not be possible without US military aid, as Israeli officials have acknowledged they couldn’t sustain operations in Gaza for more than a few months without US support. The Israeli news site Calcalist has estimated the US has funded about 70% of Israel’s military operations over the past year.
Banning United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is a new way to kill children, aid groups warn
Electronic Intafada, Maureen Clare Murphy 30 October 2024
Palestinian human rights groups say that new Israeli legislation banning a UN agency from providing services to Palestinians under occupation “aligns with a broader pattern of Israel’s genocidal intent.”
On Monday, Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, passed into law – with near unanimity – two bills that would effectively ban UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, from operating in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
One of the laws bars state authorities from having any contact with UNRWA, which provides health, education and other basic services to millions of Palestinian refugees in the occupied Palestinian territories as well as Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
“The legislation also terminates the 1967 agreement between Israel and UNRWA with immediate effect,” according to three prominent Palestinian human rights groups: Al-Haq, Al Mezan and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.
The second law bans the agency from operating in so-called Israeli territory and “will go into effect three months after the passing of the laws – approximately by the end of January 2025,” the rights groups said.
If enacted, the new laws will shutter UNRWA’s headquarters in eastern Jerusalem, which Israel has unlawfully occupied since 1967 and annexed in violation of international law. UNRWA’s Jerusalem headquarters are the administrative hub for its operations across the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
According to media reports, Israel plans to build settlements on the site of UNRWA’s headquarters, which state authorities ordered vacated in May.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has the authority to block the legislation. But he is unlikely to do so, despite international pressure, especially after his foreign minister declared António Guterres, the UN secretary-general, persona non grata.
Israel’s unbridled hostility toward the United Nations will only escalate with every attempt towards accountability through the world body’s organs.
On Wednesday, the UN Security Council issued a statement declaring its support for UNRWA and warning “against any attempts to dismantle or diminish UNRWA’s operations and mandate.”
“Criminalization of humanitarian aid”
Three prominent Palestinian human rights groups – Al-Haq, Al Mezan and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights – said that the passage of the laws is part of a “calculated, decades-long campaign to dismantle UNRWA and undermine the inalienable right of return” of Palestinian refugees.
“Now more than ever, amid Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, UNRWA’s role is not only essential but irreplaceable,” the groups added.
The new legislation “amounts to the criminalization of humanitarian aid and will worsen an already catastrophic humanitarian crisis,” Agnès Callamard, the head of Amnesty International, said on Tuesday………………………………………………
UNRWA is the agency with the largest humanitarian footprint in the West Bank and Gaza and one of the largest employers in the occupied Palestinian territories.
“Dismantling UNRWA will have a catastrophic impact on the international response to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, told the president of the General Assembly in a letter on Tuesday. “It will also sabotage any chance of recovery.”
In the absence of any other entity to provide government-like services, the effective ban on UNRWA will leave more than 660,000 children in Gaza without an education. “An entire generation of children will be sacrificed,” Lazzarini said.
The Palestinian rights groups observe that 2.4 million Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and Gaza “will be deprived of essential services – particularly education and healthcare – that only UNRWA has the mandate and capacity to deliver.”
UNRWA staff killed and tortured
Addressing Israel’s allegations, Lazzarini said that UNRWA provided Israel with a list of its staff on an annual basis for 15 years. Personnel that Israel never raised concerns over are now included in its lists of alleged fighters, he said.
Repeated requests to the Israeli government appealing for evidence regarding its allegations against UNRWA staff have gone without a reply, he added.
“UNRWA is therefore in the invidious position of being unable to address allegations for which it has no evidence, while these allegations continue to be used to undermine the agency,” Lazzarini said.
He added that at least 237 UNRWA staff have been killed in Gaza and more than 200 of its facilities have been damaged or destroyed in attacks that have killed more than 560 people “seeking UN protection.” Meanwhile, “dozens of UNRWA staff have been detained and report being tortured,” Lazzarini said.
Israel has abused UNRWA employees detained in Gaza in order to extract forced confessions incriminating the agency.
Israel’s attacks on UNRWA “are an integral part” of the crumbling of “the rules-based international order … in a repetition of the horrors that led to the establishment of the United Nations,” Lazzarini added………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
At the time that Israel’s Knesset voted to ban UNRWA, some 100,000 Palestinians were under siege in the northern Gaza areas of Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya and Jabaliya refugee camp without food, water or medical supplies.
“The entire population of north Gaza is at risk of dying,” Joyce Msuya, the acting UN relief chief, stated two days before the vote. https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/banning-unrwa-new-way-kill-children-aid-groups-warn
Entire northern Gaza population at risk of dying – UN
Ongoing Israeli military operations in the region disregard basic humanity and the laws of war, a top humanitarian official has said
27 Oct, 2024 , https://www.rt.com/news/606581-un-northern-gaza-dying-population/
What Israeli forces are doing in besieged Gaza during their ongoing war against Hamas cannot be allowed to continue, the United Nation’s top humanitarian official has said.
“The entire population of north Gaza is at risk of dying,” Joyce Msuya, acting Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, warned on Saturday, in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
Israel has struck hospitals in the region, detained health workers and prevented first responders from rescuing people trapped under the rubble, according to the official.
“Shelters have been emptied and burned down…families have been separated, and men and boys taken away by the truckload,” she said, adding that “such blatant disregard for basic humanity and for the laws of war must stop.”
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, echoed the warning, having voiced deep concerns over the “catastrophic” situation in Gaza. He also highlighted the severe impact of the ongoing hostilities on healthcare in the region.
“Intensive military operations unfolding around and within healthcare facilities and a critical shortage of medical supplies, compounded by severely limited access, are depriving people of life saving care,” Ghebreyesus wrote on X on Saturday.
The WHO Director-General added that Kamal Adwan Hospital in the city of Jabalia, one of the few functioning medical facilities in northern Gaza, has been severely impacted, with only a limited number of staff remaining to care for nearly 200 patients after the detention of 44 male personnel.
Earlier this week, the Health Ministry in the Palestinian enclave claimed that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) stormed the hospital, detaining hundreds of staff, patients and displaced people.
The IDF insisted it was operating in and around the facility based on “intelligence information regarding the presence of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure in the area”.
“In the weeks preceding the operation, the IDF facilitated the evacuation of patients from the area while maintaining emergency services,” it added in a post on social media on Friday.
West Jerusalem has been repeatedly accused of indiscriminately targeting civilians in Gaza. According to the enclave’s health officials, over 42,000 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 97,000 wounded since the fighting between Hamas and Israel erupted in October 2023. The IDF has dismissed allegations of committing war crimes, arguing that Hamas is using Palestinian civilians as human shields.
More than a year into the conflict, around 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million population has been displaced, most of them multiple times, according to UN estimates.
UN rapporteur: Israel carrying out ‘settler-colonial genocide’ against Palestinians
October 29, 2024, https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241029-un-rapporteur-israel-carrying-out-settler-colonial-genocide-against-palestinians/
The UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine issued a report late yesterday accusing Israel of a systematic campaign of forced displacement, destruction and acts of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
In the report, which was submitted to the UN General Assembly, Francesca Albanese described the “long-term, intentional, state-organised forced displacement and replacement” of Palestinians, particularly following 7 October, 2023.
The report focused on “genocidal intent, contextualising the situation within a decades-long process of territorial expansion and ethnic cleansing aimed at liquidating the Palestinian presence in Palestine.”
“The violence that Israel has unleashed against the Palestinians post-7 October is not happening in a vacuum, but is part of a long-term intentional, systematic, state-organised forced displacement and replacement of the Palestinians,” Francesca Albanese warned.
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The UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine issued a report late yesterday accusing Israel of a systematic campaign of forced displacement, destruction and acts of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
In the report, which was submitted to the UN General Assembly, Francesca Albanese described the “long-term, intentional, state-organised forced displacement and replacement” of Palestinians, particularly following 7 October, 2023.
The report focused on “genocidal intent, contextualising the situation within a decades-long process of territorial expansion and ethnic cleansing aimed at liquidating the Palestinian presence in Palestine.”
“The violence that Israel has unleashed against the Palestinians post-7 October is not happening in a vacuum, but is part of a long-term intentional, systematic, state-organised forced displacement and replacement of the Palestinians,” Albanese warned.
The report also accused Israel of obstructing international investigation efforts, including denying the entry of fact-finding teams from the UN and the International Criminal Court (ICC).
“The persistent denial of access to United Nations mechanisms and investigators of the International Criminal Court (ICC) may constitute obstruction of justice, in defiance of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) order that Israel allow international investigators to enter Gaza and take measures to ensure the preservation of evidence,” it said.
She noted that the ongoing “genocide is doubtlessly the consequence of the exceptional status and protracted impunity that has been afforded to Israel.”
“Israel has systematically and flagrantly violated international law, including (UN) Security Council resolutions and ICJ orders,” she said. “This has emboldened the hubris of Israel and its defiance of international law.”
“As the world watches the first live-streamed settler-colonial genocide, only justice can heal the wounds that political expedience has allowed to fester,” she added.
‘Gaza has been made unfit for human life’
The report also drew attention to the magnitude of destruction in Gaza, saying it has prompted allegations of “domicide, urbicide, scholasticide, medicide, cultural genocide and ecocide.”
It estimated that nearly 40 million tonnes of debris, including unexploded ordnance and human remains, contaminate the ecosystem.
Additionally, more than 140 temporary waste sites and 340,000 tonnes of untreated wastewater and sewage overflow have created breeding grounds for diseases such as hepatitis A, respiratory infections, diarrhoea and skin diseases.
“As Israeli leaders promised, Gaza has been made unfit for human life,” the report said.
The report also mentioned Israeli-imposed restrictions on resources essential for Palestinian survival, such as food, water and medical supplies.
“Systematic attacks on Gaza food sovereignty indicate an intent to destroy its population through starvation,” it said, recalling Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s remarks in August stating that starving the entire Gaza population was “justified and moral.”
Escalating genocidal risk in West Bank
The report warned that violence and systematic targeting are spreading beyond Gaza, raising serious concerns of genocidal risk in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
Since October 2023, Israeli occupation forces have reportedly conducted over 5,500 raids in the West Bank, with hundreds of Palestinians killed and thousands injured.
Albanese noted that this surge in violence has been fuelled by violent settlers, often supported by Israeli forces, and said these patterns echo the severity of Gaza’s devastation.
She cited alarming instances of Palestinian children being systematically targeted, with at least 169 children killed since October 2023, nearly 80 per cent of whom were shot in the head or torso.
“The devastation inflicted on Gaza is now metastasising to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem,” she warned, adding that some officials, including Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, have publicly supported harsh treatment and mass arrests of Palestinians, with 9,400 currently detained under severe conditions.
States ‘must intervene now’
Albanese called on the international community to act decisively, saying “member states must intervene now to prevent new atrocities that will further scar human history.”
She urged states to use all their political leverage – commencing with a full arms embargo and sanctions – so that Israel stops the assault against the Palestinians, accepts a cease-fire and fully withdraws from the occupied Palestinian territory in line with the ICJ advisory opinion of 19 July.
She asked them to formally recognise Israel as an “apartheid state and persistent violator of international law” while supporting independent and thorough investigations.
The rapporteur also called on states to ensure unhindered humanitarian assistance to Gaza and full financing and protection of UNRWA.
Lastly, she urged the ICC Prosecutor to investigate the commission of the crimes of genocide and apartheid by Israel.
Israeli Knesset Passes Bill To Ban UN Palestinian Relief Agency
The collapse of UNRWA’s aid efforts in Gaza would ensure the starvation of more Palestinian civilians
by Dave DeCamp October 28, 2024 , https://news.antiwar.com/2024/10/28/israeli-knesset-passes-bill-to-ban-un-palestinian-relief-agency/#gsc.tab=0
The Israeli Knesset on Monday passed a bill banning the UN’s Palestinian relief agency, UNWRA, from operating inside Israel and another that will severely limit its ability to operate in Gaza and the West Bank. The legislation is expected to take effect in 90 days.
The first bill banning UNWRA in Israel passed in a vote of 92-10. The second bill aimed at ending UNWRA’s operations in the Israeli-occupied territories passed in a vote of 97-9.
The second bill prohibits Israeli authorities from having any contact with UNRWA, making it impossible for the relief agency to coordinate with the Israeli military on aid deliveries. The legislation does not outline any plan to replace UNRWA’s relief efforts in Gaza, which millions of Palestinian civilians rely on to survive.
Israel has waged war against UNWRA over the past year, killing over 200 of its staff members in Gaza. Israel has claimed a significant number of UNWRA’s staff are members of Hamas but has offered no evidence for the allegations, which have been strongly rejected by the UN agency.
The US took Israel’s claims at face value and cut off funding to UNWRA at the beginning of the year. Now, the US is warning Israel against implementing the bills banning UNRWA since it would starve Palestinian civilians.
“If UNRWA goes away, you will see civilians — including children, including babies — not be able to get access to food and water and medicine that they need to live. We find that unacceptable,” State Department spokesman Matt Miller said ahead of the Knesset vote.
“We continue to urge the government of Israel to pause the implementation of this legislation. We urge them not to pass it at all, and we will consider next steps based on what happens in the days ahead,” Miller added.
UNWRA was formed in 1949 to provide aid to about 750,000 Palestinians who were displaced when the state of Israel was founded in 1948, an ethnic cleansing known to the Palestinians as the “Nakba.” Today, Israeli ministers are calling for a new Nakba in Gaza to pave the way for Jewish settlements, and the Israeli military is currently imposing a starvation siege on northern Gaza to forcibly displace hundreds of thousands of civilians.
Oxfam reaction to Knesset decision
October 29, 2024, by: The AIM Network, https://theaimn.com/oxfam-reaction-to-knesset-decision/—
Oxfam Australia
In reaction to the Knesset passing bills banning UNRWA from operating in areas under Israel’s control, Sally Abi Khalil, Oxfam Regional Director in the Middle East and North Africa said:
“Israel has bombed Palestinians to death, maimed them, starved them, and is now ridding them of their biggest lifeline of aid. Piece by piece, Israel is systemically dismantling Gaza as a land that is autonomous and liveable for Palestinians. Its banning of UNRWA today is condemnable and another step in this crime.
“The decision will further undermine the ability of the international community to provide sufficient humanitarian aid and to save lives in any safe, independent and impartial way.
“UNRWA was not only the biggest and most established agency that has been delivering aid and sustenance to the people of Gaza for years, it was also a thread that connected them in some hope of solidarity and security to the United Nations.
“We are in no doubt that Israel and its allies are fully aware of the terrible consequences that this decision will have on Palestinians living in Gaza, many of whom are already starving. We join others in warning again that this will result in more death, more suffering, and more forced displacement of people from their besieged homeland. It is impossible not to believe that this is their aim.”
‘This is an extermination’: Israel’s assault on north Gaza’s last functioning hospital
Two weeks before Israel began the current siege, Netanyahu told Israeli lawmakers that he was considering the “Generals’ plan,” so named for the proposal put forward by senior Israeli army officials in early September based on the vision of retired Israeli general Giora Eiland, who wrote an Op-Ed a year ago explaining how northern Gaza should be emptied of the entire population through mass starvation and extermination.
Israel is emptying northern Gaza of its inhabitants during its ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign. One of the key strategies it is using to achieve this is by hospitals, and the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia has become a primary target.
By Qassam Muaddi October 23, 2024, https://mondoweiss.net/2024/10/this-is-an-extermination-israels-assault-on-north-gazas-last-functioning-hospital/
Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians across northern Gaza have been forced on a death march by the Israeli army since Monday, October 21. Northern Gaza is being emptied of its inhabitants, and one of Israel’s strategies in achieving this goal is to take out the area’s few remaining social institutions: hospitals.
As part of its ongoing offensive on northern Gaza, the Israeli army has been trying to clear out the entire area north of Gaza City for the past 18 days. At least 200,000 people continue to stay there, many of them fearing, according to local testimonies, that they will be targeted on the way south or in Israeli-designated “safe zones,” which have been consistently bombarded over recent months. The ongoing siege includes a second siege-within-the-siege on the Jabalia refugee camp, accompanied by a massive bombing and shelling campaign that is forcing tens of thousands of people to leave their homes. Many of them have headed to Beit Lahia, and particularly to Kamal Adwan Hospital. Over the past 18 days, the hospital has been issuing daily calls for help, warning of an imminent humanitarian catastrophe.
The Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia is one of three functioning hospitals in the northern Gaza governorate. The hospital is the only fully functional medical center in the north, with a specialized neonatal section for newborns.
The two other hospitals in Gaza are barely functional. The Indonesian Hospital in the town of Sheikh Zayed went out of services last week after Israeli troops besieged it and invaded its surroundings. Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia, smaller in size, has suspended most of its services and only functions at a limited capacity. On Tuesday, October 22, the al-Awda Hospital’s director, Bakr Abu Safiyeh, told al-Ghad TV that Israeli quadcopter drones were opening fire directly on the hospital.
Dr. Baker said that Israeli quadcopters were also opening fire on anybody moving in the streets, including ambulances. According to the hospital director, an Israeli strike targeted an ambulance carrying a mother who had just given birth. The mother was killed, Dr. Baker said, and the baby was later found alive by rescue teams and was taken to Kamal Adwan Hospital’s neonatal section.
Why targeting hospitals is the key to emptying northern Gaza
Named after Kamal Adwan, a Palestinian resistance leader assassinated by Israel in Beirut in 1973, the hospital has become a central destination for the wounded and the displaced. Like most other hospitals in Gaza over the past year of genocidal war, Kamal Adwan Hospital is the only remaining public space in northern Gaza that offers services and provides shelter, representing the backbone of Gazan civil society and social cohesion. That is why Israel is targeting it, with the aim of forcibly expelling the population in service of the Israeli plan to empty the north. This has now come to be called “the Generals’ Plan.”
Two weeks before Israel began the current siege, Netanyahu told Israeli lawmakers that he was considering the “Generals’ plan,” so named for the proposal put forward by senior Israeli army officials in early September based on the vision of retired Israeli general Giora Eiland, who wrote an Op-Ed a year ago explaining how northern Gaza should be emptied of the entire population through mass starvation and extermination.
The plan is an enhanced version of what Israel has already been doing for the past year, including targeting and forcibly evacuating hospitals. Israeli forces raided al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City for the first time in November, when the compound and its surroundings were crowded with displaced families, and forced medics, patients, and displaced people to leave. But in February, when Israeli forces began to withdraw from parts of Gaza, including Gaza City, Palestinians returned to al-Shifa and began to operate parts of it again as displaced families began to take over its spaces once more.
Then, in April, Israeli forces invaded al-Shifa a second time in a raid that lasted several weeks with the purpose of accelerating social collapse in Gaza City. The Israeli army combed the hospital building by building and floor by floor, destroying equipment and, according to survivor testimonies gathered by Mondoweiss at the time, executing hundreds of civil government employees and separating people into differently-colored bracelet. At the end of the operation, Dr. Marwan Abu Saada, Deputy Director of al-Shifa, told UN News that the destruction of al-Shifa “took out the heart of the health system in the Gaza Strip,” adding that “al-Shifa is finished forever.”
In December 2023, two months into the Israeli genocide in Gaza, Israeli forces raided the Kamal Adwan hospital and forced medical staff, patients, and displaced civilians to evacuate. The hospital resumed partial services in July after joint efforts by the World Health Organization and other international parties, coupled with pressure on Israel to allow limited quantities of humanitarian aid into the north.
As Israel set its eyes on Gaza’s northernmost governorate to execute Eiland’s plan, Kamal Adwan Hospital is now the last bastion of Palestinian steadfastness in the north. This makes it a prime target in the ongoing Israeli offensive. Kamal Adwan came close to completely shutting down multiple times, mainly due to the lack of fuel for power generators, saved every time by intensified pressure by international parties on Israel to allow limited quantities of fuel to pass through
Kamal Adwan Hospital weathers siege and overcapacity
“We need blood units, shrouds for the dead, doctors, and food,” Dr. Husam Abu Safiyeh, director of Kamal Adwan hospital, told the media on Wednesday, October 23, signaling that Israeli forces had cut off internet services from the area.
The day before, on October 22, Dr. Abu Safiyeh told the media that the hospital had run out of blood units, had a shortage of medical staff, that the available staff was hungry and exhausted, and that the power generators were about to run out of fuel.
Kamal Adwan Hospital weathers siege and overcapacity
“We need blood units, shrouds for the dead, doctors, and food,” Dr. Husam Abu Safiyeh, director of Kamal Adwan hospital, told the media on Wednesday, October 23, signaling that Israeli forces had cut off internet services from the area.
The day before, on October 22, Dr. Abu Safiyeh told the media that the hospital had run out of blood units, had a shortage of medical staff, that the available staff was hungry and exhausted, and that the power generators were about to run out of fuel.
“This baby girl here arrived after her family was targeted by [an Israeli] strike,” said Abu Safiyeh while filming one particular newborn. “Her mother and father were martyred, as well as her grandmother, and she is now alone with a wound to the head and a secondary inflammation,” he explained. “If fuel doesn’t arrive [for power generators] there will be a humanitarian catastrophe for these children,” he warned.
In the hospital’s sections, the medical staff described their working conditions. “There are cases of burning, internal bleeding, skull fractures, and limb amputations,” Dr. Ameen Abu Amshah, serving at Kamal Adwan, told Mondoweiss. “Out of every 10 to 15 wounded we receive at once, an average of seven are urgent cases for surgery. We just don’t have the capacity for all this, and we are forced to prioritize the cases that can be saved” said Dr. Abu Amshah.
“The occupation army has been ordering doctors to leave, including through phone calls,” said Abu Amshah. “This is an extermination. Northern Gaza is being exterminated, Jabalia is being exterminated, and Kamal Adwan hospital is being exterminated, but we will not leave.”
Forced death march
On Tuesday, October 23, Israeli drones dropped leaflets and aired voice messages at Palestinians who remained in the surroundings of Kamal Adwan and inside its premises, ordering them to leave. Meanwhile, hundreds of Palestinians were being gathered and forced to move out of other shelters after arresting men among them. Thousands were left stranded in the street far away from the last standing public facilities and forced to take the road yet again at gunpoint, as shown by footage aired by the Israeli army.
When The Holocaust Returned It Came Denouncing Anti-Semitism And Wearing A Star Of David
People assume what’s happening in Gaza can’t be an actual genocide, because the news media keep assuring everyone that’s not what we’re looking at, and so do the politicians in both parties.
“This can’t possibly be what it looks like,” people say. “If it was, we would have heard about it in the news.”
Caitlin Johnstone, Oct 23, 2024
It was never going to look how we were expecting. It wasn’t going to show up in its old familiar costume with the bent cross and the tiny mustache, blaming all the problems on the Jews.
It had to look different. If it didn’t look different, we never would have let it in the door.
And that’s still what’s throwing a lot of people off: it looks different. It doesn’t look like what all all the World War II movies and Holocaust novels conditioned us to watch out for. In fact, it looks so different that the victims in the last story have the same religion as the antagonists in the new one.
That old aphorism “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes” is true because people don’t tend to make the exact same mistake in the same way twice, but the conditioning which led them to make the first mistake will often lead them to make a second similar one.
We’ve all been made far too familiar with the Nazi extermination program to ever consent to Jews being rounded up and loaded onto trains again, but we also didn’t purge from our civilization all the murderousness, hatred and tyranny which made it possible. That’s why this new Holocaust has been allowed to happen.
We’ve all been conditioned to watch out for the next Hitler, but there’s never going to be another Hitler. We’ve been so focused on looking out for the Hitler who never comes that many of us missed when we started singing verses that rhyme with the ones we were hearing in Germany eight decades ago.
People assume what’s happening in Gaza can’t be an actual genocide, because the news media keep assuring everyone that’s not what we’re looking at, and so do the politicians in both parties.
“This can’t possibly be what it looks like,” people say. “If it was, we would have heard about it in the news.”
The villains in this new story don’t look like the villains in the old story, and, if you are a properly indoctrinated westerner, they might not look like villains at all. They might just look like Jews defending themselves from terrorists and western governments rightly defending their dear ally — which is exactly what they should do if they want to prevent another Holocaust!
But it’s that very misperception which is making today’s Holocaust possible. This mass atrocity is being tolerated by huge parts of the population exactly because we see it as intolerable for large numbers of Jews to be killed by those who hate them, not understanding that the people who were killed on October 7 were killed not because of their religion, but because they were part of a settler-colonialist project which is premised on the perpetual abuse of a preexisting indigenous population.
People defend Israel’s actions on the grounds that Israel has reasons for doing things the way it’s doing them. They have to bomb Gaza — they suffered an unprovoked attack from a bunch of evil terrorists. They have to bomb all the hospitals and schools and mosques — that’s where Hamas are hiding. They have to bomb areas that are packed full of children — Hamas are using those children as human shields.
But those who commit mass atrocities always justify their actions. They always have reasons for doing them. They always frame it as a necessary act of self-preservation.
That was always what the next Holocaust was going to look like. It was never going to feature new bad guys who cackle and twist their mustaches saying “Haha, we are evil! Let’s kill a bunch of people because we are evil!” They were always going to frame themselves as the heroes and victims, and the other side as the villains and victimizers. They were always going to offer a bunch of reasons why what they’re doing is actually good and righteous, even though it looks evil on its face.
If we are to prevent genocidal atrocities, we need to be able to recognize what’s happening in real time, and we can’t do that if we’re expecting them to show up in familiar and instantly recognizable packaging. We need to be able to see through the manipulations and justifications in the here and now so we can stop it in its tracks instead of waiting for history to judge it in our rearview mirror after it’s already happened.
This is important to recognize when it comes to saving Gaza, and it’s important to recognize when it comes to preventing the Holocausts of the future as well. They will never look identical to the Holocausts of the past. Their form will be unprecedented, and they will have different justifications for their orchestration. But they will rhyme. And we need to be able to pick up on that as it happens.
The Gazafication of Lebanon: Israel Blows up Nabatieh City Hall, kills Mayor and Aid Workers
Juan Cole, 10/17/2024
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Israeli military has begun giving southern Lebanon the Gaza treatment. Some 25% of Lebanese are under “evacuation orders,” which is to say that Israel is expelling them from their homes in preparation for further military operations against the Hezbollah Party-Militia.
The U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Lebanon, Imran Riza, said Wednesday, “Health care facilities, mosques, historical markets, residential complexes, and now government buildings are being reduced to rubble. Displaced families continue to feel at risk, even after fleeing to safe areas.”
Lebanon is a small country of perhaps 4 million citizens and nearly 2 million refugees. The UN says that some 1.2 million people have been displaced, with 275,000 people leaving for Syria. This latter number includes both Lebanese leaving their own country and Syrian refugees in Lebanon returning to the Baathist dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad. The equivalent of such a vast displacement of residents in the United States would be 51 million internal refugees. It is unimaginable.
We saw this movie in Gaza. It is total war.
Even the humanitarian aid workers attempting to help people get through the violence and displacement are being targeted by the Israeli military. Humanitarian Coordinator Riza added, “This morning a devastating attack claimed the lives of yet more civilians and local authorities working to provide relief, with the strike occurring just as a crisis meeting was convening at the municipality of Nabatieh in South Lebanon. I deplore and mourn the deaths of Ahmad, Sadeq, Mohammed, Qassem – members of a relief team with whom the UN and humanitarian partners have been working for more than a year – and all other victims of this conflict that must stop, urgently.”
The attack referenced by the UN official was an Israeli airstrike on the City Hall of the Lebanese city of Nabatieh, which is a civilian object, not a military one. The Israelis killed the mayor, Ahmed Kaheel, council member Sadeq Ismail, photographer Mohammad Baytar, and employees Qasem Hijazi and Mohammad Zohri. Sadeq Ismail and Qasem Hijazi, along with Mayor Kaheel, were the humanitarian relief team to which the UN official referred to above. The Lebanese Ministry of Health (and no, it isn’t “Hezbollah controlled”) said that the strike killed 16 persons in total and wounded 52.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Miqati condemned the bombing, noting that the city council had been meeting about humanitarian aid issues before they were blasted to smithereens……………………………….
Nabatieh is majority Shiite Muslim, and Israel’s targeting of its municipal building may be a manifestation of the increasing hatred of Shiites visible in Israeli social media, which sometimes sound like Sunni extremists such as ISIL. The city, however, also has substantial Maronite Christian and Eastern Orthodox Christian communities and many churches and mosques………………….https://www.juancole.com/2024/10/gazafication-lebanon-nabatieh.html
Gabor Mate: ‘It’s like we’re watching Auschwitz on TikTok’
October 20, 2024 https://scheerpost.com/2024/10/20/gabor-mate-its-like-were-watching-auschwitz-on-tiktok/
Had there been YouTube and Instagram and TikTok around Auschwitz, this is what we would have seen, people burning alive. And it’s beyond horrendous, it’s beyond comprehension.”
In an online meeting with French activist and film producer Frank Barat on Monday, Canadian physician Gabor Mate explored the psychological complexities of witnessing atrocities in Gaza and Palestine, saying: “It’s like we’re watching Auschwitz on TikTok.”
They delve into the emotional and historical roots of violence and oppression, highlighting the trauma, guilt, and helplessness experienced by observers. Mate stresses the need to acknowledge these emotions and examines the normalisation of violence, while contemplating the future implications for Gaza and global society.
Israel Is Routinely Shooting Children in the Head in Gaza: US Surgeon & Palestinian Nurse
SCHEERPOST, October 17, 2024
As the official death toll in Gaza passes more than 42,400, the true number may be impossible to know until Israel’s war is over. But medical workers who witnessed the carnage in Gaza’s hospitals are speaking out. We speak with Dr. Feroze Sidhwa about his op-ed in The New York Times that features harrowing stories from dozens of healthcare workers and CT scans of children shot in the head or the left side of the chest. The Times called the corresponding images of the patients too graphic to publish. “I personally wish that Americans could see more of what it looks like when a child is shot in the head, when a child is flayed open by bombs,” says Sidhwa. “I think it would make us think a little bit more about what we do in the world.” We also speak with Palestinian nurse Rajaa Musleh, who worked at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. “I will never forget the dogs were eating the dead body inside Shifa Hospital at the front of the emergency department. This will be stuck on my mind for my whole life,” says Musleh. “My message for the whole world: We are human beings. We are not numbers. We have the right to receive healthcare inside Gaza.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: As the official death toll in Gaza passes more than 42,400, the true number may be impossible to know until Israel’s war is over. But medical workers who witnessed the carnage in Gaza’s hospitals are speaking out.
We begin today’s show with a surgeon who volunteered at the European Hospital in Khan Younis and wrote a devastating opinion piece in The New York Times headlined “65 Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics: What We Saw in Gaza.”
In a minute, we’ll be joined by Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, who begins the piece writing, quote, “I worked as a trauma surgeon in Gaza from March 25 to April 8. I’ve volunteered in Ukraine and Haiti, and I grew up in Flint, Mich. I’ve seen violence and worked in conflict zones. But of the many things that stood out about working in a hospital in Gaza, one got to me: Nearly every day I was there, I saw a new young child who had been shot in the head or the chest, virtually all of whom went on to die. Thirteen in total.
“At the time, I assumed this had to be the work of a particularly sadistic soldier located nearby. But after returning home, I met an emergency medicine physician who had worked in a different hospital in Gaza two months before me. ‘I couldn’t believe the number of kids I saw shot in the head,’ I told him. To my surprise, he responded: ‘Yeah, me, too. Every single day,’” he said.
The piece quotes dozens of healthcare workers and includes three X-rays or CT scans of pediatric patients who were shot in the head or the left side of the chest. The person who provided the scans was Dr. Mimi Syed, who worked in Khan Younis from August 8th to September 5th and said the children usually arrived at the hospital either dead or in critical condition after suffering a single shot.
On Tuesday, The New York Times opinion section editor issued a statement refuting claims circulating online that the images were altered, saying the editors had, quote, “photographs to corroborate the CT scan images,” but, quote, “because of their graphic nature, we decided these photos — of children with gunshot wounds to the head or neck — were too horrific for publication.”
For more, we’re joined by Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, the trauma and general surgeon who wrote this piece. He also spearheaded an open letter to President Biden and Vice President Harris signed by 99 U.S. medical professionals who served in Gaza, testifying to the unprecedented scale of the healthcare catastrophe and calling for an immediate ceasefire and the end to all U.S. support for Israel.
We are also joined in Chicago by Rajaa Musleh, the country representative in Gaza of MedGlobal, a medical humanitarian aid group. She previously worked as a nurse at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… more https://scheerpost.com/2024/10/17/israel-is-routinely-shooting-children-in-the-head-in-gaza-us-surgeon-palestinian-nurse/
1 This Month
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
of the week–London Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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