Israeli Snipers Routinely, Deliberately Shoot Palestinian Kids In The Head
Caitlin Johnstone, Oct 10, 2024, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israeli-snipers-routinely-deliberately?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=150036170&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
There’s yet another doctors’ testimony about Israeli forces constantly shooting Palestinian children in the head, this one published in The New York Times.
The report, titled “65 Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics: What We Saw in Gaza,” begins as follows:
“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.’”
Numerous named medical staff who worked in Gaza then testify in the report about routine encounters with children who’d been shot in the head and chest by Israeli forces, as well as children and infants suffering from severe malnutrition and easily preventable infections.
Such reports have been coming out all year. Because Israel has not been allowing foreign press into Gaza, medical staff have in many ways become the de facto western journalists on the ground in the enclave — and they are all saying the same thing.
Back in July a group of 45 doctors and nurses who’d been working in Gaza signed an open letter to President Biden testifying that “every single signatory to this letter treated children in Gaza who suffered violence that must have been deliberately directed at them.”
“Specifically, every one of us on a daily basis treated pre-teen children who were shot in the head and chest,” the letter continues.
Also in July, Politico published an article by two American surgeons named Mark Perlmutter and Feroze Sidhwa titled “‘Nothing Prepared Us for What We Saw’: Two Weeks Inside a Gaza Hospital,” which contains the following passage:
“We started seeing a series of children, preteens mostly, who’d been shot in the head. They’d go on to slowly die, only to be replaced by new victims who’d also been shot in the head, and who would also go on to slowly die. Their families told us one of two stories: the children were playing inside when they were shot by Israeli forces, or they were playing in the street when they were shot by Israeli forces.”
by Israeli snipers in Gaza” was published in The Guardian, citing nine doctors who’d worked in Gaza after October 7 who “reported treating a steady stream of children, elderly people and others who were clearly not combatants with single bullet wounds to the head or chest.”
Forensic pathologists were able to identify bullets used by the Israeli military in these attacks on children:
“The Guardian shared descriptions and images of gunshot wounds suffered by eight children with military experts and forensic pathologists. They said it was difficult to conclusively determine the circumstances of the shootings based on the descriptions and photos alone, although in some of the cases they were able to identify ammunition used by the Israeli military.”
In February the Los Angeles Times published an article titled “I’m an American doctor who went to Gaza. What I saw wasn’t war — it was annihilation”. The author, a reconstructive surgeon named Irfan Galaria, writes as follows:
“On one occasion, a handful of children, all about ages 5 to 8, were carried to the emergency room by their parents. All had single sniper shots to the head. These families were returning to their homes in Khan Yunis, about 2.5 miles away from the hospital, after Israeli tanks had withdrawn. But the snipers apparently stayed behind. None of these children survived.”
So this is happening. The evidence is undeniable, and the sourcing is as solid as it gets. There are mountains upon mountains of rock solid proof that Israeli forces routinely, deliberately shoot Palestinian children in the head in Gaza.
The only reason this isn’t being treated as an established fact by the western political-media class is because the Israeli military denies it, telling The Guardian in response to the aforementioned report that “The IDF only targets terrorists and military targets. In stark contrast to Hamas’s deliberate attacks on Israeli civilians, including men, women and children, the IDF follows international law and takes feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm.”
“Doctors say otherwise,” The Guardian wrote.
Indeed, there is no longer any fact-based reason to deny that Israel is deliberately targeting children with sniper fire. The facts are in and the case is closed. The only basis anyone can have for denying this established fact is their own personal loyalty to the state of Israel and its military, and/or their own personal disdain for Palestinian lives.
This fact punches holes in so many of the narratives used to defend Israel over the past year. That Israel is conducting itself in a more ethical way than Hamas. That Israel is waging a war against Hamas and not the Palestinian people. That the IDF are “the most moral army in the world” and are taking extraordinary measures to avoid civilian casualties. That civilians are being killed in Gaza because Hamas uses them as “human shields”. That this is a war fought for Israel’s self-defense, and not a campaign of extermination driven by racism and hate.
There is simply no way to believe any of these things are true when you acknowledge the extensively-documented fact that Israeli forces are routinely shooting children in the head throughout the Gaza Strip.
Let’s remember the 365 days of genocide as well as October 7 attack.
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coaliton, Glen Ellyn IL, 7 Oct 24
The Chicago Tribune editorial ‘Remember October 7, 2023’ was right to mourn the Israeli dead, injured and those taken hostage from the Hamas attack a year earlier.
But it’s unfortunate there was no mention of the of Israel’s genocidal ethnic cleansing that followed which has inflicted near total destruction on Gaza’s 139 square miles in the following 365 days. The Tribune ignores the over 40,000 officially dead (likely upwards of 100,000), nearly all schools universities, hospitals, homes destroyed and most food, water and medicine kept from reaching the most devastated people on earth.
It’s unfortunate that there is no mention that the year long genocide in Gaza could not be occurring without tens of billions in US weaponry flowing into Israel for their ‘defense.’ Genocide is not defense…it is genocide.
It is unfortunate there was no mention of the people Israeli genocide is designed to remove from Gaza and eventually the West Bank. Say the word Chicago Tribune Editorial Board…they are Palestinians.
For the Tribune to state that the horrors unleased over the past year “can no longer be contained” is an abrogation of the media’s role to provide a solution to the most grotesque destruction of a people in this century. To state “we suspect it (the anniversary) will not be seen as a day to discuss politics or even the ongoing conflict now raging on another front” is being blind to evil that must be confronted relentlessly.
This is precisely the day for the Chicago Tribune to engage its readership, regardless of ethnicity or religion, over the ongoing conflict. Had the Trib, along with the rest of mainstream media been doing just that for the past 365 days, this genocide might be over and negotiations for a Palestinian state underway.
Urgent Action by S. Korean Civil Society in Solidarity with Palestine.
Urgent Action by S. Korean Civil Society in Solidarity with Palestine, Facebook Page, 6 Oct 24
We Will Stand Together for Palestinian Liberation Until the Very End
One year. One year has passed as the Israeli occupation has escalated the genocide in Gaza. Throughout this past year, we saw children torn to pieces by American weapons. We saw civilians with white flags being executed. We saw the stream of refugees following evacuation orders from the occupation, only to be bombed on the road. We saw refugees burned alive in hospitals, UN-run schools, and tents in the so-called safe-zones. We saw medical staff who tended to patients, journalists who spread the truth, UN workers who provided aid, all massacred. Throughout the past year, we saw in real-time how Israel turned Gaza into an extermination camp, systematically destroying 2 percent of its population.
The survivors of the bombardment are dying of starvation and disease. Since last October 7, Israel escalated the 16-year-long blockade of Gaza, calling its residents “human animals” and cutting off all access to water, food, medicine, electricity and fuel. Children, sole survivors of their families, suffer through amputation without anesthetics, and find that they have no home to go back to. Those who cannot follow Israeli evacuation orders, such as patients, the disabled and the elderly, are taken to concentration camps where they are tortured, raped, or murdered. Israeli politicians are already planning to build illegal settlements over the ruin, and Israeli soldiers are singing and dancing over the murder of Gazans, while fake news endlessly tries to legitimize the genocide. Israel is escalating its ethnic cleansing in its other illegal occupations in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, preparing for forceful annexation of these territories.
The US and the European powers are colluding with the Israeli genocide at an unprecedented level. They exponentially increased their weapons supply to Israel, and blatantly defended Israel’s war crimes. On top of this, they imprisoned and punished their own citizens who condemned the genocide. Throughout this past year, as the genocide unfolded in Gaza, the international community failed to stop the Israeli war crimes, and failed to stop Israel from escalating the war across the Middle East. From September 23, Israel started bombing southern and eastern Lebanon, and on September 29, over the course of 24 hours, Israel bombed Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen and Syria. On September 30, Israel began the ground invasion against Lebanon, and now they are threatening to start a war with Iran as well.
However, the Palestinian struggle is changing the course of history. Palestinians still shout that existence is resistance, and the refugees still vow to return to their homes, even after 76 years of displacement. The new generations are inheriting the resistance struggle, without breaking under the oppression. Palestinians everywhere expose and shatter the hypocrisy and double standards of this world. All over the world, students occupied their campuses demanding their universities to stop their collusion in the genocide and colonial rule, while dockworkers refused to service ships headed to Israel, stopping them from leaving port. Protests of unprecedented scale are filling the streets, shouting from the river to the sea Palestine will be free. This solidarity with the Palestinian struggle led to the ICJ ordering Israel to stop its genocide, and to the ICC seeking arrest warrants for the Israeli war criminals. The UN General Assembly resolution not only demanded Israel to end its illegal occupation of Palestine within a year, but also obligated member states to sanction Israel. Slowly but surely, the Zionist Israeli entity is being isolated.
We stand together with the Palestinian resistance. October 7 changed everything. To end Israeli genocide, military occupation and colonial rule have become our own problem as well. We will bring Palestinian liberation forward with even stronger solidarity. We will pressure the Korean government to issue a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel. We will hold Korean companies accountable, when their machines destroy Palestinian lives. We will reject all attempts at whitewashing that seeks to normalize the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Until Palestinians reclaim their lands, and all refugees return to their homes, we will stand with the Palestinian resistance to the very end.
The Looming Catastrophe in the Middle East (w/ Gideon Levy) | The Chris Hedges Report
September 28, 2024
It has become quite rare to hear any meaningful accountability for Israel’s actions from Israeli citizens themselves. Israeli journalist Gideon Levy is an anomaly in Israel by today’s standards, as for his entire career he has challenged the apartheid and occupation of the Israeli state. On today’s episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Levy joins host Chris Hedges to discuss his book, The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe, and explain the spiritual destruction, both of Israel and Palestine, that the current genocide in Gaza is causing as well as the implications of new military operations in Lebanon.
The worst change, according to Levy, is that Israel has lost its humanity. “Everything is acceptable,” Levy tells Hedges as he describes the ongoing slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, the brutal killing of prisoners, the censorship at the hands of the state and the overall indifference to it all.
“There is practically only one camp in Israel, the camp which supports apartheid and occupation,” Levy says.
There isn’t even any room left for empathy of the innocent victims in Gaza, according to Levy. Teachers have been subject to interrogation and termination because they “express[ed] empathy with the children of Gaza, with the victims of Gaza. Even this is not legitimate anymore in Israeli society 2024,” Levy contends.
Although the horrors following October 7 are devastatingly unprecedented, Levy asserts that this entire catastrophe was years in the making and the meaningless gestures of advocating for a two-state solution, for example, will perpetuate it further.
In the first years following the war in 1967, the occupation of Palestinians as a way of life quickly became normalized, according to Levy. “[Palestinians] clean our streets, they build our buildings, they pave our roads and they will never have citizenship. The only people in the world without any citizenship of any state,” Levy says.
As Israeli society attempts to continue this way of living, only disruptive movements and moments, such as the First Intifada, the Yom Kippur war and now October 7, will bring meaningful attention to the Palestinian struggle most of the world is okay with ignoring.
As Levi writes in his book,
“The way of terror is the only way open to the Palestinians to fight for their future. The way of terror is the only way for them to remind Israel, the Arab states and the world, of their existence. They have no other way. Israel has taught them this. If they don’t use violence, everyone will forget about them, and then a little later, only through terrorism will they be remembered. Only through terrorism will they possibly attain something. One thing is certain, if they put down their weapons, they are doomed.”
Levy says that history has told the Palestinians and the world something crucial about Israel: “the message is, if you want to achieve anything from us, only by force. And the message for the world is the same, if you want the world to care about you, raising your voice is not enough. You have to take measures. You have to take actions, and unfortunately, many times violent ones, aggressive ones, and many times even barbarian ones, like on the seventh of October.”……………………………………………more https://scheerpost.com/2024/09/28/the-looming-catastrophe-in-the-middle-east-w-gideon-levy-the-chris-hedges-report/
Israel’s Tally of War Crimes in Lebanon Increases in Wake of Exploding Pagers
The Israeli bombing of a residential neighborhood in Beirut is also a war crime.
By Marjorie Cohn , Truthout, September 23, 2024
Israel escalated attacks against Lebanon on September 23, marking the deadliest day of Israeli bombings in that country since 2006. Israel’s strikes in southern and eastern Lebanon, as well as the capital city of Beirut, left a death toll of at least 274, including women, children and paramedics. The Israeli military targeted “medical centres, ambulances and cars of people trying to flee,” according to Al Jazeera, which cited Lebanon’s Health Minister Firass Abiad as the source for the information. Israel also targeted civilian homes, which it claimed were housing Hezbollah weapons.
This latest targeting of Lebanese civilians comes on the heels of Israel’s detonation of hand-held electronic devices in civilian areas of Lebanon on September 17 and 18, when Israeli forces remotely triggered multiple explosions of electronic pagers and walkie-talkies that killed at least 37 people, including a 9-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy, and maimed or injured 3,250 people, 200 critically. About 500 people suffered severe eye wounds and others received grave injuries to their hands, faces and bodies. The blasts occurred in residential buildings, barber shops, grocery stores, cars and at funerals. Many civilians, including government and hospital workers, were killed.
Elias Warrak, an ophthalmologist at Mount Lebanon University Hospital in Beirut, treated several of those injured by the blasts. He told the BBC that between 60 percent and 70 percent of the patients he attended had to have at least one eye removed. “Some of the patients, we had to remove both eyes. It kills me. In my past 25 years in practice, I’ve never removed as many eyes as I did yesterday [September 17].”
Israel’s weaponization of 3,000 to 4,000 pagers and walkie-talkies programmed to explode simultaneously constituted “terrifying” violations of international law, according to 22 independent United Nations experts, including 13 special rapporteurs.
The radios and pagers were reportedly distributed to people associated with Hezbollah, which includes both military and civilian individuals. “At the time of the attacks there was no way of knowing who possessed each device and who was nearby,” the experts noted. “Simultaneous attacks by thousands of devices would inevitably violate humanitarian law, by failing to verify each target, and distinguish between protected civilians and those who could potentially be attacked for taking a direct part in hostilities.”
A booby-trap is defined as something designed to kill or injure unexpectedly when a person performs an apparently safe act like answering a pager. International humanitarian law prohibits the use of booby-traps that are disguised as harmless objects when they are constructed and designed with explosives. They breach the principles of distinction, proportionality and precautions.
War Crimes of Murder, Attacking Civilians, Indiscriminate Attacks, Violence to Spread Terror
“These attacks violate the human right to life, absent any indication that the victims posed an imminent lethal threat to anyone else at the time,” the U.N. experts wrote. “Such attacks could constitute war crimes of murder, attacking civilians, and launching indiscriminate attacks.”
The U.N. experts declared, “It is also a war crime to commit violence intended to spread terror among civilians, including to intimidate or deter them from supporting an adversary,” adding, “A climate of fear now pervades everyday life in Lebanon.”
Amal Saad, an expert on Hezbollah, told Drop Site News, “Everyone’s scared to send text messages, to make calls, and they’re afraid to open laptops. It’s definitely led to some level of complete disorientation, fear, confusion, paranoia. It has huge psychological effects.” Saad noted that the purpose behind the explosions “was to terrorize and paralyze and demoralize.”………………………………………………………………………………………………..more https://truthout.org/articles/israels-tally-of-war-crimes-in-lebanon-increases-in-wake-of-exploding-pagers/?utm_source=feedotter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=FO-09-23-2024&utm_content=httpstruthoutorgarticlesisraelstallyofwarcrimesinlebanonincreasesinwakeofexplodingpagers&utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=097274f518-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_09_23_08_53&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-097274f518-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D
22,500 Palestinians Now Have Life-Changing Injuries Due to Israel’s Genocide
At least 3,000 Palestinians have had their limbs amputated as a result of Israeli attacks, WHO estimates.
By Sharon Zhang , Truthout, September 12, 2024, https://truthout.org/articles/22500-palestinians-now-have-life-changing-injuries-due-to-israels-genocide/
srael’s genocide has inflicted permanent, life-changing injuries to about a quarter of the nearly 100,000 Palestinians reported injured by Israeli attacks in the last 11 months, according to an analysis by the World Health Organization (WHO).
According to a report using data up until July, roughly 22,500 Palestinians who have been wounded in Israeli attacks have sustained life-changing injuries that will require medical care for years into the future, WHO has estimated.
The majority of these are severe limb injuries, which are affecting roughly between 13,500 and 17,500. Of these, between 3,100 and 4,000 are limb amputations, the report says, though it notes that “anecdotal reports indicate this number may be higher.” It also notes that there will need to be an increase in prosthetic services in the region as a result.
The report also finds that there are likely about 2,000 spinal cord and traumatic brain injuries and at least 2,000 burn injuries, all of which require long-term and specialized care that is largely unavailable in Gaza, due to Israel’s systematic dismantling of Gaza’s health system.
The WHO made the estimates based on medical data reported from Gaza, and the types of injuries identified from those reports.
WHO says that the analysis is a show of the dire need for health care services in Gaza.
“The huge surge in rehabilitation needs occurs in parallel with the ongoing decimation of the health system,” said Richard Peeperkorn, a WHO representative for Palestine. “Patients can’t get the care they need. Acute rehabilitation services are severely disrupted and specialized care for complex injuries is not available, placing patients’ lives at risk.”
The report is a show of the severe impact of Israel’s genocide beyond just the death toll, and one of the myriad ways Israel’s campaign has permanently scarred the Palestinian population.
Because Israel is injuring more people every day in its relentless bombardments and attacks on Palestinians, it is likely that the number of severe injuries is higher now. And, because the report relies on data from emergency sources, there is likely much more life-changing physical harm from things like Israel’s starvation or disease campaigns that are not included in the count.
According to counts by the Gaza Ministry of Health, at least 95,000 people have been injured amid Israel’s genocide, while over 41,000 have been killed. The true death toll, as many experts have noted, is likely far higher; UN Special Rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese has warned that Israel is on track to exterminate the entire population of Gaza if international powers do not intervene to stop their genocide.
The report does not specify how many children have suffered severe injuries. But children make up nearly half of the population of Gaza, and Save the Children has previously noted that, in the first three months of the genocide, Israel caused over 10 children a day to lose one or both legs.
United Nations relief agency Says 6 Workers Among at Least 18 Killed in Israeli Strikes on Gaza School
“This school has been hit five times since the war began. It is home to around 12,000 displaced people, mainly women and children. No one is safe in Gaza. No one is spared.”
Brett Wilkins, Sep 11, 2024, https://www.commondreams.org/news/unrwa-school-bombed-again
The United Nations relief agency for Palestine said Wednesday that six of its workers are among the at least 18 people killed in a pair of Israeli airstrikes targeting a U.N. school in the Gaza Strip where thousands of forcibly displaced Palestinians were sheltering.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said the Israeli strikes on one of its schools, located in Nuseirat in central Gaza, resulted in “the highest death toll among our staff in a single incident” since Israeli forces began bombarding the strip following last October’s Hamas-led attack on Israel.
“Among those killed was the manager of the UNRWA shelter and other team members providing assistance to displaced people,” the agency said. “Sincere condolences to their families and loved ones. This school has been hit five times since the war began. It is home to around 12,000 displaced people, mainly women and children.”
Victims of the strikes included women and children.
Earlier on Wednesday the United Nations said the school had been “previously deconflicted with the Israeli forces.”
“No one is safe in Gaza. No one is spared,” UNRWA stressed. “Schools and other civilian infrastructure must be protected at all times, they are not a target.”
Responding to the attacks, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said on social media that “these dramatic violations of international humanitarian law need to stop now.”
Israel is currently on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice, a U.N. body. International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan is also seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders—at least one of whom, Ismail Haniyeh, has been assassinated.
Over the past 341 days, Israel’s assault on Gaza has left more than 145,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, according to Palestinian and international officials. Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been forcibly displaced, while Israel’s “complete siege” of Gaza has starved and sickened millions of Palestinians, dozens of whom have died of malnutrition, dehydration, and lack of medical care.
UNRWA says around 200 of its staff members have been killed in more than 450 Israeli attacks on agency facilities since October. More than 500 Palestinians have been killed while seeking shelter under the U.N. flag.
Responding to Israeli claims—reportedly extracted from Palestinian prisoners in an interrogation regime rife with torture and abuse—that a dozen of the more than 13,000 UNRWA workers in Gaza were involved in the October 7 attack, numerous nations including the United States cut off funding to the agency. Almost all of them have restored funding as Israeli lies have been debunked.
Bucking this trend, U.S. President Joe Biden in March signed a bill prohibiting American funding for UNRWA.
Israel kills 40 in Gaza “humanitarian zone”
Electronic Intafada Maureen Clare Murphy, 10 September 2024
Israel massacred at least 40 Palestinians by bombing tents housing people displaced from other areas of Gaza in al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis, early Tuesday, according to the government media office in the territory.
The health ministry in Gaza recorded the deaths of 19 individuals whose bodies were brought to hospitals. The media office explained that its higher fatality count includes 21 people whose bodies were not recovered because they were totally obliterated by the heavy weapons dropped on them.
Crews were still searching for missing persons, the government media office added. Video of the aftermath of the strike in al-Mawasi shows a 30-foot-deep crater in the sand where tents once stood:
Israel claimed without proof that it targeted a command center belonging to Hamas, which denied that any of its fighters were present.
This is a clear lie that aims to justify these ugly crimes,” Hamas stated. The resistance has denied several times that any of its members exist within civilian gatherings or use these places for military purposes.”
UN “deplores” attack
The UN human rights office stated that it “deplores” the attack on al-Mawasi, which Israel had unilaterally designated as a “humanitarian zone.”
Instead of ensuring the safety of displaced Palestinians, the Israeli military “continues to choose to use weapons with wide area effects in these increasingly densely populated areas … suggesting a complete disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians.”
The vast majority of Gaza’s population, which stood at 2.3 million before the genocide, has been displaced from their homes. Many people have been displaced multiple times, with no safe place to go.
Even if Israel’s claims that Hamas fighters had embedded themselves in the camp were true, the UN office said, this would not relieve its military of its obligation “to comply with the fundamental international humanitarian law principles of distinction, proportionality and precautions in attack.”
Israel has instructed civilians to move to al-Mawasi, an open coastal area lacking infrastructure to meet the needs of displaced people, when issuing evacuation orders in other areas of Gaza. Israel most recently ordered Palestinians to evacuate to al-Mawasi on 24 August, the UN human rights office said.
In July, Israeli warplanes dropped bombs on al-Mawasi, killing dozens of Palestinians. Israel claimed that it had targeted Muhammad Deif, the head of the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, and the commander of Qassam’s Khan Younis Brigade.
Hamas has not confirmed whether Deif, who survived several previous attempts on his life, was killed.
American officials may have been involved in the July massacre in al-Mawasi. The New York Times reported last month that the US has been involved with intercepting the communications of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and has also “provided ground-penetrating radar to Israel to help in the hunt for him and other Hamas commanders.”
Attacks on shelters in north
Israel has repeatedly struck facilities being used as shelters for displaced people in Gaza, often claiming without evidence that they were being used as command centers by Hamas and other resistance groups, despite the vast tunnel networks used by Palestinian fighters.
On 7 September, the Israeli military attacked the Halima al-Sadia school sheltering hundreds of displaced Palestinians in Jabaliya al-Nazla, northern Gaza. The attack, which occurred without warning, killed four people and injured several others, according to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.
That same day, four Palestinians, including a child, were killed when Israeli warplanes bombed the Amr Ibn al-Aas school north of Gaza City, which was also being used as a shelter.
“Since the beginning of August, the Israeli occupation army has bombed 16 schools being used as shelters in the Gaza Strip,” Euro-Med Monitor stated. All but one of the targeted schools are in the northern half of Gaza.
More than 215 Palestinians were killed in those attacks and hundreds more were injured, the rights group added, noting that Israel has escalated its targeting of civilians in Gaza City and the northern governorates of the territory.
The deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure in Gaza’s north, including facilities serving as shelters, is part of Israel’s strategy to create a coercive environment in order to forcibly transfer the population to central and southern Gaza, according to Euro-Med Monitor.
Israeli plan to depopulate northern Gaza
The rights group pointed to reports in Israeli media about a plan drafted by Israeli reservist commanders and soldiers to depopulate northern Gaza.
The scheme, reportedly presented to Israel’s cabinet and other senior officials, was spearheaded by Giora Eiland, the retired major general and close advisor to Israel’s defense minister who called for creating conditions for the spread of epidemics in Gaza as a form of biological warfare.
It calls for an estimated 300,000 civilians to evacuate northern Gaza in a one-week period, after which the area would be besieged and Hamas fighters would be made to surrender or be killed.
According to Aluf Benn, chief editor of the Tel Aviv daily Haaretz, Israel has entered the second phase of its war, during which it “will strive to complete its takeover of the northern Gaza Strip.”
Benn added that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government will subject Palestinians in northern Gaza to “the fate of the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh: They were expelled from the region a year ago, overnight, in a rapid move by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Israel’s close ally.”
According to Benn, steps taken toward this new phase include Israel’s recent tapping of a colonel to head the Gaza equivalent of the Civil Administration in the West Bank and Netanyahu’s instruction for the military to prepare to distribute aid in lieu of humanitarian organizations.
“The motive is obvious: whoever distributes the food and medicine has their hand on the power switch,” Benn said.
He added that Netanyahu’s “relinquishment of the return of the Israeli hostages” is intended to deprive Sinwar of leverage in negotiations. Meanwhile, their continued captivity in Gaza will provide “Israel’s justification for continued warfare, siege and occupation.”
The ongoing warfare and siege in turn will compel Palestinians to leave Gaza for good, Benn projects…………………………….
At least 41,020 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since 7 October 2023, and some 94,925 have been injured, according to the health ministry in the territory.
Thousands more are missing and an unknown number of people have died as a result of Israel’s blockade and systematic attacks on Gaza’s hospitals and sanitation and water infrastructure. https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israel-kills-40-gaza-humanitarian-zone
Israel Launches Major West Bank Raid as Israeli Minister Vows Gaza-Like Attack
it is clear that Israel is aiming to do what it has done in Gaza to the occupied West Bank.
Israel is cutting off the northern West Bank, destroying roads, surrounding hospitals and implementing curfews there.
By Sharon Zhang , Truthout, August 28, 2024
Israel has embarked on its largest raid of the occupied West Bank in decades, launching attacks from the land and air against areas home to 80,000 Palestinians as Israel’s foreign minister is pledging “war” using the same genocidal tactics the Israeli military has used on Gaza.
Israel has attacked the West Bank with drone strikes and deployed military vehicles on the ground, with troops opening fire on Palestinians. Israeli forces are shutting down and destroying roads with bulldozers leading to Jenin, Tulkarem and Tubas in the northern West Bank, effectively cutting the cities off from the rest of the West Bank. Jenin has a population of roughly 39,000 Palestinians.
The raid is especially sinister as it comes amid Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which experts say has been an opportunity for Israeli forces to test and hone violence against Palestinians. Alarmingly, Foreign Affairs Minister Israel Katz pledged that Israeli forces would handle the occupied West Bank the same way it has Gaza — where it has isolated the population and then carried out a genocide and ethnic cleansing campaign of unprecedented proportions.
………………….Experts warn it is clear that Israel is aiming to do what it has done in Gaza to the occupied West Bank. “What’s happening is absolutely horrifying, because what we see here is Israel trying to transfer the genocide war that is conducted in Gaza and the war of ethnic cleansing from Gaza to the West Bank,” Mustafa Barghouti, Palestinian physician, general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative and West Bank resident, told Democracy Now!. “Their goal is very clear. It’s as the Israeli minister of foreign affairs said: it’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.”…………………………………….. more https://truthout.org/articles/israel-launches-major-west-bank-raid-as-israeli-minister-vows-gaza-like-attack/
The Fajr massacre: Every 70 kg bag of human remains is considered a martyr
The bodies of Palestinians killed in the latest Israeli massacre in Gaza were destroyed so far beyond recognition that doctors have only been able to give grieving families an anonymous bag of human remains to bury.
Mondoweiss, By Tareq S. Hajjaj August 11, 2024
Zainab al-Jaabari, 79, sits a few dozen meters in front of the scene of the massacre. She is waiting for her family members to return from checking for her seven sons and grandchildren, who were in the prayer hall praying Fajr at the time it took place.
Her family members arrived to see the reality of the massacre with their own eyes: more than a hundred people were killed, and their bodies were now scattered and mixed in the prayer hall in the Daraj neighborhood in Gaza City. It is possible their delay in returning now is due to their horror at what they found, or perhaps because they can’t imagine how to tell Zainab that her seven sons and grandchildren have been killed.
At dawn on Saturday, August 10, the Israeli army bombed a mosque while dozens of displaced people were praying the Fajr prayer, the daily Islamic prayer offered in the early morning. The bombing killed more than a hundred people, most of whom were dismembered or destroyed beyond recognition. For this reason the identification of the bodies has so far been incomplete……………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Every 70 kilograms of remains is considered a martyr
In the mosque, people stand in a row close to each other as they pray, and after the bombing, the worshipers remained intermingled as well, as remains and corpses. Large numbers of martyrs were not able to be identified, and entire families were wiped out.
Survivors of this massacre are describing a new and horrifying experience they are being forced to endure in aftermath of Israeli bombing in the Gaza Strip: they cannot even identify the remains of their loved ones.
Because the rescue teams couldn’t identify many of the human remains collected due to the intensity of the bombing, the doctors at Baptist Hospital were not able to identify each martyr individually. Instead, the doctors have started collecting body parts in plastic bags and giving 70 kilos of remains to the family of a martyr who has gone missing.
Hassan Ahmad told Mondoweiss that he searched extensively for the body of his 6-year-old son Ali, and after hours of searching, he did not find a trace of him. He then went to the Baptist Hospital to ask about his son, or to find any part of his body so I could identify him and bury him. After a long search that did not yield any results, the doctors at the Baptist Hospital gave him a plastic bag containing 18 kilograms of human remains and told him, “This is your son; go and bury him.”………………………………………………………..
I saw my father’s carnage
Muhammad Hamida, 12, recounted to Mondoweiss how he found his father, who had been torn apart in the Israeli attack. He says that he went with his older brother to the prayer hall after the bombing to rescue their father, who was praying at the time.
When we arrived, we couldn’t enter because of the intensity of the fire, blood, and body parts, but we wanted to check on my father. Moments later, we could enter the prayer hall but we couldn’t bear the scene.”
“People were cut up, there was a lot of blood on the ground, and body parts and small pieces of worshipers’ bodies were scattered everywhere. We found my father lying on the ground there. We recognized him, and our relatives helped us drag him out of the prayer hall. We found a human head stuck between his feet when we took him out. I was stunned with fear. I have never seen scenes like this in my life. I hope I never see them again.”
“They will kill us all; we are here alone; no one cares about us. They killed my father, and a month ago, they killed my two uncles, and they will kill everyone who remains in Gaza.”
Fatima Hassona conducted the interviews for this report from Gaza. https://mondoweiss.net/2024/08/the-fajr-massacre-every-70-kg-bag-of-human-remains-is-considered-a-martyr/?ml_recipient=129461487750088454&ml_link=129461453864305971&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2024-08-12&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines+RSS+Automation
Why We Must Oppose Israel’s Dangerous Gamble Before It’s Too Late
Failure to stop Israel’s genocide of Palestinians gambles with the fate of humanity as a whole.
Kathy Kelly, Aug 10, 2024,
https://www.laprogressive.com/foreign-policy/israels-dangerous-gamble
Following World War II, Albert Camus posed a “formidable gamble” to those who had survived a tragedy of immense proportions. “We’re in history up to our necks,” he observed, yet we must wager that “words are more powerful than munitions.”
“Leave or die” are the horrid words threatening largely unprotected Palestinian civilians in Gaza as dismayed populations around the world demand moral decency, or at least some indication of sanity, from their non-responsive governments.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. For decades, Israel has flouted international norms by refusing to acknowledge its nuclear weapons arsenal. Nor has it signed relevant treaties governing the biological weapons it possesses. For years, Israel has flagrantly violated the Geneva Conventions and basic principles of customary international law through its forcible acquisition of territories in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and through its transfer of Israeli settlers into the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Now, Israel’s genocidal attacks against Palestinians living in Gaza have cost the lives of at least 39,677 people. Tens of thousands more are believed to be buried beneath the rubble, with at least 90,000 wounded and the overwhelming majority of its displaced 1.9 million population facing starvation.
Israel’s failure to comply with international treaties and humanitarian law signal an acute need for other countries to organize weapons embargoes, cease trade deals, and provide support for civilian peacekeepers to bring about a permanent ceasefire.
Instead of unwavering adherence to international law, the United States continues to arm and protect Israel’s genocidal campaign against Palestinians, which now includes using starvation as a weapon of war.
We must try to absorb what it means to live as a refugee in an open-air concentration camp—already one of the most densely populated areas on Earth, even before 70 percent of its housing was destroyed. More than 341 mosques and three churches have been destroyed. 2,000-pound bombs have been dropped on tents in places deemed safe areas.
Innocent civilians are being killed by snipers. Thirty-one out of thirty-six hospitals have been damaged or destroyed. Escape routes are cut off. Persistent restrictions on the flow of humanitarian aid into and around Gaza are driving a desperate shortage of food, fuel, and medicine. As access to humanitarian relief is deliberately choked off, children are being collectively punished while Israeli leaders denounce them as animals. The world watches in horror as surgeons are forced to amputate the limbs of wounded children with no available anesthetics.
A new polio epidemic emerges while Israel vaccinates its soldiers but leaves the Palestinian civilian population vulnerable. Newly released prisoners have said they were subjected to torture, including being waterboarded and raped.
Rather than bring suspects before international courts, Israel has resorted to assassinations of the very negotiators with whom it purports to be seeking peace, and in a manner clearly intended to expand the conflict into a global war involving multiple nuclear-armed nations.
In its July 19, 2024, authoritative Advisory Opinion on Israel’s Settlement Policy and Practices, the World Court clearly declared the Israeli settlement project in the Occupied Territories to be illegal. The Court outlined the obligation of all parties to the Geneva Convention and the Genocide Convention to discontinue any economic or trade dealings with Israel which might help perpetuate Israel’s occupation and unlawful presence in the territory. Countries that signed or ratified these agreements are obligated to immediately stop arms exports to Israel and to use political, military, and economic influence to stop Israel’s flagrant, escalating violations of international humanitarian law.
The World Court has provided strong, clear words denouncing Israel’s genocide against Palestinians. As during the Vietnam War, ordinary citizens can no longer abide with the lawless barbarism of continuing assaults against Palestinians.
“Rolling the bones” is a slang expression for gambling. With a regional war perhaps now unavoidable in the Middle East, the genocidal derangement of the United States and Europe over Israel’s actions may well lead to a nuclear war that ends the human species. Failing to use our words at this most crucial juncture for humanity would be, as Camus said, a formidable gamble indeed.
‘Heinous’: Children Among 100 Killed by Israel Bombing of Gaza School Just Hours After US Weapons Approval
“It is hard to comprehend how the Biden administration can justify rewarding Israel with new weapons, despite Israel’s persistent defiance of every single plea the Biden administration has made urging a modicum of restraint.”
Yanis Varoufakis, former finance minister of Greece and co-founder of Progressive International, asked the same on Saturday.
“Israel has now killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and wounded well over 92,000 others,” said Varoufakis. “Thousands more lie, uncounted, under the debris. Some 10,000 Palestinians have been abducted by Israel’s occupying forces. Question: Where is the ICC indictment?”
Jon Queally, Aug 10, 2024 https://www.commondreams.org/news/gaza-massacre-us-weapons
The Palestinian Authority’s Fatah government in the Occupied West Bank released a statement Saturday describing the attack on the al-Tabin school in Gaza City as a “heinous bloody massacre” that represents the “peak of terrorism and criminality” by the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Just hours after the Biden administration Friday announced approval of $3.5 billion in military funds for Israel and shipments for new weaponry, an Israeli bombing of a school-turned-shelter in Gaza has killed 100 people or more, including scores of civilian men, women, and children in what was described as a “bloody massacre” that struck during morning prayers, leaving body parts scattered “in pieces” and healthcare workers overwhelmed with the dead and wounded.
“Committing these massacres confirms beyond a shadow of a doubt its efforts to exterminate our people through the policy of cumulative killing and mass massacres that make living consciences tremble,” said the PA.
Footage taken by volunteers working alongside Palestinian medical units in Gaza City showed wounded small children and adults being taken to local hospitals as well as scenes of carnage from the scene of the bombing [Warning: Images are graphic]. Gaza journalist Motasem A. Dalloul also posted his reporting from the scene, including footage of the carnage [Also graphic].
Al-Jazeera spoke with witnesses at the scene of the massacre, one of whom said many of the dead—which included women, children, and old people who had been praying and others sleeping when the missiles struck—were collected afterward “in pieces”:
Tamer Kirolos, a regional director for Save the Children, called Israel’s attack on al-Tabin the “deadliest attack on a school since last October.”
“It is devastating to see the toll this has taken, including so many children and people at the school for dawn prayers,” Kirolos said. “Civilians, children, must be protected. An immediate definitive ceasefire is the only foreseeable way that will happen.”
Just hours before the bombing, the U.S. State Department announcement that a $3.5 billion tranche of funds—part of a larger $14.1 billion in overseas military aid approved by Congress earlier this year—would be released to the Israeli government for weapons procurement.
As CNNreported, while some of those weapons purchases made possible by the fund may take years, the “supplemental funding also allocated billions of dollars’ worth of equipment that the Pentagon can draw from its own stockpiles to send directly to Israel on a much faster timeline.”
Unverified reporting indicated that at least one of the missiles dropped on the al-Tabin school overnight may have been a U.S.-made MK-84 bomb weighing 2,000 pounds.
On Friday night, after the State Department announcement but before news of the latest bombing in Gaza broke, Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the human rights and advocacy group Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), was among those confounded by the U.S. government’s continued determination to arm the Israelis in the face of the human suffering in Gaza and the repeated massacre of civilians, day after day and month after month.
“It is mind-boggling that despite the overwhelming evidence of the IDF’s unprecedented crimes in Gaza that has shocked the conscience of the entire world, the Biden administration is greenlighting the transfer of additional lethal weapons to Israel,” said Whitson in a Friday night statement following news that the State Dept. had greenlit the release of taxpayer funds for a new round of weapons destined for Israel.
Making a similar argument in a Saturday morning post on X, Sami Abou Shehadeh, leader of Israel’s leftist Balad Party, said that while President Joe Biden “could have stopped the genocide” by using his leverage of military aid to force the Israelis in a different direction, instead “he just released $3.5 billion for more weapons to kill civilians.”
Shehadeh warned that without any internal opposition “to the genocide” by Israel’s Zionist political parties, Netanyahu’s policies would continue, even as the region inches toward further destabilization over the crisis in Gaza that has also spread to Lebanon and beyond. Calling for the International Criminal Court to intervene, he asked, “If the ICC doesn’t take action now, then when?”
Yanis Varoufakis, former finance minister of Greece and co-founder of Progressive International, asked the same on Saturday.
“Israel has now killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and wounded well over 92,000 others,” said Varoufakis. “Thousands more lie, uncounted, under the debris. Some 10,000 Palestinians have been abducted by Israel’s occupying forces. Question: Where is the ICC indictment?”
It is truly horrific,” Raed Jarrar, DAWN’s policy director told Common Dreams via email Saturday. “Last night’s massacre was another example of how Blinken and Biden have blood on their hands.”
Referencing a separate decision by the State Department to suspend an investigation into documented abuse violations by the “notorious” Netzah Yehuda Unit within the IDF, Jarrar said the “decisions of sending weapons to Israel and not sanctioning Israeli human rights abusers are not just corrupt policy decisions, they are criminal acts.”
Nothing’s changed since 1948 – except now Israel’s excuses don’t work
8 August 2024 https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2024-08-08/1948-israel-excuses/
We have been lied to for decades about the creation of Israel. It was born in sin, and it continues to live in sin
A headline about community displacements is about yet another Israeli operation to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians in the tiny, besieged and utterly destroyed enclave of Gaza, was published in yesterday’s Middle East Eye.
When I began studying Israeli history more than a quarter of a century ago, people claiming to be experts proffered plenty of excuses to explain why Israelis should not be held responsible for the 1948 ethnic cleansing of some 750,000 Palestinians from their homes – what Palestinians call their Nakba, or Catastrophe.
1. I was told most Israelis were not involved and knew nothing of the war crimes carried out against the Palestinians during Israel’s establishment.
2. I was told that those Israelis who did take part in war crimes, like Operation Broom to expel Palestinians from their homeland, did so only because they were traumatised by their experiences in Europe. In the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, these Israelis assumed that, were the Jewish people to survive, they had no alternative but to drive out the Palestinians en masse.
3. From others, I was told that no ethnic cleansing had taken place. The Palestinians had simply fled at the first sign of conflict because they had no real historical attachment to the land.
4. Or I was told that the Palestinians’ displacement was an unfortunate consequence of a violent war in which Israeli leaders had the best interests of Palestinians at heart. The Palestinians hadn’t left because of Israeli violence but because they has been ordered to do so by Arab leaders in the region. In fact, the story went, Israel had pleaded with many of the 750,000 refugees to come home afterwards, but those same Arab leaders stubbornly blocked their return.
Every one of these claims was nonsense, directly contradicted by all the documentary evidence.
That should be even clearer today, as Israel continues the ethnic cleansing and slaughter of the Palestinian people more than 75 years on.
1. Every Israeli knows exactly what is going on in Gaza – after all, their children-soldiers keep posting videos online showing the latest crimes they have committed, from blowing up mosques and hospitals to shooting randomly into homes. Polls show all but a small minority of Israelis approve of the savagery that has killed many tens of thousands of Palestinians, including children. A third of them think Israel needs to go further in its barbarity.
Today, Israeli TV shows host debates about how much pain soldiers should be allowed to inflict by raping their Palestinian captives. Don’t believe me? Watch this from Israel’s Channel 12: [on original]
2. If the existential fears of Israelis and Jews still require the murder, rape and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians three-quarters of a century on from the Holocaust, then we need to treat that trauma as the problem – and refuse to indulge it any longer.
3. The people of Gaza are fleeing their homes – or at least the small number who still have homes not bombed to ruins – not because they lack an attachment to Palestine. They are fleeing from one part of the cage Israel has created for them to another part of it for one reason alone: because all of them – men, women and children – are terrified of being slaughtered by an Israeli military, at best, indifferent to their suffering and their fate.
4. No serious case can be made today that Israel is carrying out any of its crimes in Gaza – from bombing civilians to starving them – with regret, or that its leaders seek the best for the Palestinian population. Israel is on trial for genocide at the world’s highest court precisely because the judges there suspect it has the very worst intentions possible towards the Palestinian people.
We have been lied to for decades about the creation of Israel. It was always a settler colonial project. And like other settler colonial projects – from the US and Australia to South Africa and Algeria – it always viewed the native people as inferior, as non-human, as animals, and was bent on their elimination.
What is so obviously true today was true then too, at Israel’s birth. Israel was born in sin, and it continues to live in sin.
We in the West abetted its crimes in 1948, and we’re still abetting them today. Nothing has changed, except the excuses no longer work.
Israeli soldiers tell story of savage cruelty in Gaza – one given blessing by the West
Israel has learned that, the more routine its war crimes become, the less coverage they receive – and the less outrage they provoke.
Last week, western doctors who had volunteered in Gaza said Israel was packing its weapons with shrapnel to maximise injuries to those caught in the blast radius. Children, because of their smaller bodies, were being left with much more severe wounds.
In recent days, Israel has struck several United Nations schools serving as shelters, killing dozens more Palestinians. On Tuesday, another strike in the “safe zone” of al-Mawasi killed 17.
According to the UN refugee agency, Unrwa, more than 70 percent of its schools – almost all of them serving as refugee shelters – have been bombed.
Middle East Eye, Jonathan Cook, 19 July 2024
Women and children are being targeted intentionally, say Israeli whistleblowers. From ground troops to commanders, the rules of war have been shredded
hey just keep coming. On the weekend, Israel launched another devastating air strike on Gaza, killing at least 90 Palestinians and wounding hundreds more, including women, children and rescue workers.
Once again, Israel targeted refugees displaced by its earlier bombs, turning an area it had formally declared a “safe zone” into a killing field.
And once more, western powers shrugged their shoulders. They were too busy accusing Russia of war crimes to have time to worry about the far worse war crimes being inflicted on Gaza by their Israeli ally – with weapons they supplied.
The atrocity committed at al-Mawasi camp, packed with 80,000 civilians, had the usual Israeli cover story – one rolled out to reassure western publics that their leaders are not the utter hypocrites they appear to be for supporting what the World Court has described as a “plausible genocide”.
Israel said it was trying to hit two Hamas leaders – one of them Mohammed Deif, head of the group’s military wing – although Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemed uncertain as to whether the strike was successful.
No one in the western media appeared to wonder why the pair preferred to make themselves a target in an overcrowded, makeshift refugee camp, where they were at huge risk of being betrayed by an Israeli informant, rather than sheltering in Hamas’s extensive tunnel network.
Or why Israel deemed it necessary to fire a multitude of massive bombs and missiles to take out two individuals. Is that Israel’s new, expansive redefinition of a “targeted assassination”?
Or why its pilots and drone operators continued the strikes to hit emergency rescue crews dealing with the initial destruction. Was there intelligence that Deif was not just hiding in the camp, but had hung around to dig out survivors, too?
Or how killing and maiming hundreds of civilians in an attempt to hit two Hamas fighters could ever possibly satisfy the most basic principles of international law. “Proportion” and “distinction” require armies to weigh the military advantage of an attack against the expected toll on civilian life.
Biblical vengeance
But Israel has torn up the rulebook on war. According to sources within the Israeli military, it now considers it acceptable to kill more than 100 Palestinian civilians in the pursuit of a single Hamas commander – a commander, let us note, who will simply be replaced the moment he is dead.
Even if the two Hamas leaders were assassinated, Israel could not have been in any doubt that it was perpetrating a war crime. But it has learned that, the more routine its war crimes become, the less coverage they receive – and the less outrage they provoke.
In recent days, Israel has struck several United Nations schools serving as shelters, killing dozens more Palestinians. On Tuesday, another strike in the “safe zone” of al-Mawasi killed 17.
According to the UN refugee agency, Unrwa, more than 70 percent of its schools – almost all of them serving as refugee shelters – have been bombed.
Last week, western doctors who had volunteered in Gaza said Israel was packing its weapons with shrapnel to maximise injuries to those caught in the blast radius. Children, because of their smaller bodies, were being left with much more severe wounds.
Aid agencies cannot properly treat the wounded, because Israel has been blocking the entry of medical supplies into Gaza.
Committing war crimes, if western publics have not worked it out by now, is the very point of the “military operation” Israel launched in Gaza in the wake of Hamas’s one-day attack on 7 October.
That is why there are more than 38,800 known deaths from Israel’s 10-month assault – and likely at least four times that number unrecorded, according to leading researchers writing in the Lancet medical journal this month.
That is why it will take at least 15 years to clear the rubble strewn across Gaza by Israeli bombs, according to the UN, and as much as 80 years – and $50bn – to rebuild homes for the remnants of the enclave’s 2.3 million people still alive at the end.
Israel’s twin goals have been biblical vengeance and the elimination of Gaza – a genocidal rampage to drive the terrified population out, ideally into neighbouring Egypt.
Shoot-everyone policy
If that was not clear enough already, six Israeli soldiers recently stepped forward to speak out about what they had witnessed while serving in Gaza – a story the western media has entirely failed to report.
Their testimonies, published by the Israel-based publication 972 last week, confirm what Palestinians have been saying for months.
Commanders have authorised them to open fire on Palestinians at will. Anyone entering an area the Israeli military is treating as a “no-go zone” is shot on sight, whether man, woman or child.
After months of an Israeli aid blockade that has created a man-made famine, Israel’s military has turned the people of Gaza’s ever-more frantic search for food into a game of Russian roulette.
This perhaps explains, in part, why so many Palestinians are unaccounted for – Save the Children estimates some 21,000 children are missing. The soldiers quoted in 972 say the victims of their shoot-everyone policy are bulldozed out of view along routes where international aid convoys pass.
A reserve soldier, identified only as S, said a Caterpillar bulldozer “clears the area of corpses, buries them under the rubble, and flips [them] aside so that the convoys don’t see it – [so that] images of people in advanced stages of decay don’t come out”. The soldier also noted: “The whole area [of Gaza where the army operates] was full of bodies… There is a horrific smell of death.”
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… A whistleblower from the Netzah Yehuda battalion who spoke to CNN said the commanders, drawn from Israel’s religious extremist ultra-Orthodox sector, stoked a culture of violence towards Palestinians, including vigilante-style attacks…………………………………………………………………………….more https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israeli-soldiers-tell-story-savage-cruelty-gaza-west-gives-blessing?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
1 This Month
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12 February – Webinar The Big Push: New Nuclear Projects in Canada
Thursday, February 12, 7 pm Eastern | 2nd of 4 sessions in the 2026 Nuclear Waste Online webinar series
Join a webinar on the push for new nuclear generation in Canada. Go to Northwatch.org to register or use the registration link https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ZfWOf1GITqSRIZX8CB-A9w
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