We’re Basically Being Asked To Believe That The Palestinians Are Genociding Themselves
Caitlin Johnstone, 16 Oct 24
One of the dumbest things we are asked to believe about Israel’s genocide in Gaza is that all these civilians are being butchered because the Palestinians are evil and not the Israelis. That it’s the victims doing evil things and not the perpetrators.
That’s all this gibberish about “human shields” and “self-defense” is meant to do, you know. To make it look like the victims of siege warfare and carpet bombing are the ones responsible for all the death and destruction we are seeing and not the people who are actually doing it.
Can you think of anything more insulting to your intelligence? So self-evidently counter to common sense? They’re seriously asking you to believe that the people who are being starved, shot and bombed to death are the perpetrators of their own genocide, and that the side which has attacked every hospital in Gaza are just the innocent bystanders responding to unprovoked acts of aggression in the most ethical and responsible way they can manage.
Off the top of my head I really can’t think of anything more absurd.
❖
Everyone who reacted with more sympathy or outrage over October 7 than they have over the last year of Israeli atrocities has just spent a year confessing that they don’t see Palestinians as human beings.
I am not a dog person or a cat person, but if I saw dogs or cats being treated the way Palestinian human beings are being treated I would care more than the average western liberal cares about Palestinians.
A liberal is someone who thinks the moderate position between being pro-Israel and being pro-Palestine is giving Israel everything it needs to genocide the Palestinians and then watching the genocide and saying “Oh how heartbreaking and tragic, this is all very complicated.”
Israel to continue blocking humanitarian aid from Gaza on the grounds that the aid could fall into the hands of Palestinian civilians.
❖
Imagine getting into journalism school thinking you’ll change the world for the better, finally graduating and making your family proud, getting into a prominent news outlet, spending years working your way up to editor, only to wind up spending your days writing headlines like “Gaza children perish after chance encounter with missile.”……………………………………………………… more https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/were-basically-being-asked-to-believe?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=150287267&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Israel intensifies genocide in Gaza and deepens killings in Lebanon
Mike Head @MikeHeadWSWS, 12 October 202, https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/10/12/qbdw-o12.html
Armed to the teeth by the Biden-Harris administration in the US, the Israeli regime is re-intensifying its slaughter in refugee camps, schools and hospitals in northern and central Gaza, even as it expands its invasion and bombardments in Lebanon, including the centre of Beirut.
In the most recent attacks in Gaza, at least 22 people were killed yesterday in an air strike in Jabalia—the largest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps—in northern Gaza. Dozens were injured, with some ambulances unable to help rescue efforts due to fuel shortages.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) issued virtually impossible orders for residents, hospitals and healthcare centres across the area to evacuate, placing thousands of people, including healthcare workers and their maimed patients, directly in danger.
A strike on a school sheltering displaced people in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah also killed at least 28 people, including a child and seven women, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where bodies were taken. It said several other people were wounded.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said 61 Palestinians were killed and 231 were wounded in the latest 24-hour reporting period.
Thousands of people are trapped in Jabalia as Israeli forces continue to attack the area, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said. “Nobody is allowed to get in or out, anyone who tries is getting shot,” Sarah Vuylsteke, MSF project coordinator, said in a post on X.
The Israeli army issued evacuation orders for residents in the camp on October 7, “while carrying out attacks at the same time, preventing people from leaving the area safely,” MSF said.
Forced evacuations and bombing of neighbourhoods are turning Gaza’s north into “unhabitable ruins,” MSF added.
Haydar, an MSF driver inside the camp, said: “We were staying at the Al-Yemen Al-Saeed Hospital, but they bombed it. About 20 people were killed. I don’t know what to do, at any moment we could die. People are starving. I am afraid to stay, and I am also afraid to leave.”
United Nations officials voiced concerns yesterday that the Israeli offensive, as well as evacuation orders in northern Gaza, might affect the second phase of a polio vaccination campaign set to start next week.
Aid groups carried out an initial round of vaccinations last month after a baby was partially paralysed by the Type 2 polio virus in August, the first such case in the territory in 25 years.
“I am, of course, concerned about the developments in the north, and specifically with these evacuation orders,” the World Health Organization’s representative in occupied Palestinian territory, Rik Peeperkorn, told reporters in Geneva.
Peeperkorn said three attempts by the UN health agency and its partners to assist and evacuate patients from northern Gaza hospitals under evacuation orders have been thwarted this week.
This renewed Israeli offensive, combined with systematic starvation and denial of medical access, underscores the genocidal intent of the Netanyahu government. By the official Gaza health statistics, the IDF has killed more than 42,000 people, mostly women and children over the past 12 months, but the true toll may be closer to 200,000, counting the unrecovered bodies beneath the rubble.
Israel’s assault on Lebanon is widening and deepening at the same time. On Thursday night, 22 people were killed and 139 wounded in strikes in the heart of Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, said caretaker Prime Minister Najib Makati.
Videos published by local news channels showed chaotic scenes following the attacks on Ras el-Nabaa and al-Nuweiri in Beirut. The strikes hit densely-populated residential areas. Many residents left their apartments in the high-rise blocks in the area and gathered in courtyards as emergency services rushed to the scene.
Israel did not issue evacuation warnings ahead of the strikes, which were the deadliest on central Beirut since the IDF offensive began last month. The area is outside the city’s southern suburbs, which Israeli forces have already pulverised.
The bombardments allegedly targeted Wafiq Safa, who heads Hezbollah’s liaison and coordination unit working with the Lebanese government, and is therefore considered a political figure rather than a military one. That marks a heightening of the Israeli aggression.
A US-made munition was used in the strikes, the Guardian reported. The newspaper found remnants of a US-manufactured joint direct attack munition (JDAM) amid the debris of a building that was reduced to rubble.
According to the report, “JDAMs are guidance kits built by the US aerospace company Boeing that attach to large ‘dumb bombs’ ranging up to 2,000 lbs (900kg), converting them into GPS-guided bombs.”
Earlier in the day, Israel warned Lebanese civilians not to return to their homes in the south of the country. The IDF soldiers were pushing on with their ground “incursion” inside Lebanon, as its fighter jets attacked more than 110 targets in the country in a single day.
Israeli strikes have killed at least 2,169 people, wounded more than 10,000 and displaced more than 1.2 million people in Lebanon over the past year, the Lebanese government said in its daily update.
Israel’s flagrant assault on Lebanon, which it last invaded in 2006, was further demonstrated when an Israeli airstrike killed two Lebanese soldiers and wounded three others. That was just hours after the Israeli military fired on the headquarters of UNIFIL, the UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, for the second time in as many days.
Two UNIFIL soldiers were also injured on Friday by an Israeli strike near their monitoring watchtower.
In the statement posted to X, UNIFIL also said an IDF bulldozer knocked over barriers at a UN position near the “Blue Line,” the unofficial demarcation line between Israel and Lebanon.
“Any deliberate attack on peacekeepers is a grave violation of international humanitarian law,” the statement concluded.
UNIFIL has some 10,000 personnel, with Italy, France, Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India among the biggest contributors. It was created to oversee the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon after Israel’s 1978 invasion and was expanded after the 2006 Israeli invasion, allowing its troops to deploy along the Israeli border.
Various imperialist governments, including the US, UK, France, Italy and Spain, issued statements condemning the attacks on UNIFIL as serious violations of humanitarian international law and UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ruled that UNIFIL personnel would replace the Israeli forces occupying southern Lebanon.
But the same governments are continuing to facilitate and arm Israel’s barbarism.
US President Joe Biden reaffirmed his “ironclad” support for Israel during a 30-minute phone call with Netanyahu on Wednesday, the White House said. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, joined the call, which reportedly discussed Israel’s plans to strike Iran.
“The president affirmed Israel’s right to protect its citizens from Hezbollah, which has fired thousands of missiles and rockets into Israel over the past year alone, while emphasizing the need to minimize harm to civilians, in particular in the densely populated areas of Beirut,” the White House said.
The latter phrase is another desperate bid, in the face of widespread opposition among workers and youth in the US and globally, to cover up US imperialism’s responsibility for the ongoing slaughter in Lebanon, as well as Palestine. The US provides Israel at least $3.8 billion in military aid annually, and the Biden-Harris administration has authorised $14 billion in further assistance to its proxy to help fund the genocide and a wider war for domination over the resource-rich and strategic Middle East, directed against Iran, Russia and China.
On Wednesday, the Socialist Equality Party in the US hosted a live-streamed discussion to mark the one-year anniversary of the Gaza genocide, analysing the historical roots of the US-Israeli rampage in the Middle East and advancing a socialist strategy to stop it.
The event, featuring SEP National Secretary Joseph Kishore, WSWS Labor Editor Jerry White and WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North, referenced the centuries of colonial rule in the Middle East, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territory since 1967, and the brutal US wars throughout the region since 1991.
Patrick Lawrence: Truths That Come Out Like the Sun
This is official abuse. I am abused. You are abused. And as we are abused we watch Palestinians, other human beings, suffer.
l it makes you conclude there is simply no lower limit to the Zionists’ depravity while you wonder—as many of us have this past year—what it means to be human.
October 13, 2024 , https://scheerpost.com/2024/10/13/patrick-lawrence-truths-that-come-out-like-the-sun/
I read the other day the latest paper put out by those good people who run the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute. It is called “United States Spending on Israel’s Military Operations and Related U.S. Operations in the Region, October 7, 2023–September 30, 2024” and has all sorts of information in it. Since the Zionist state began its latest assault on the Palestinians of Gaza a year ago, the Biden regime has spent $22.76 billion financing it, and this is a very conservative figure even by the three authors’ reckoning.
That same paper has a remarkable graph showing the growth of U.S. military aid to Israel (grants and loans, in constant 2024 dollars) during the 65 years from 1959, when it was zero, to this year, when it reached $18 billion. There was a sharp spike in the years following the 1967 war, when the policy cliques in Washington began to consider the Zionist state a strategic asset in the region.
And then I read a related paper the people at Watson finished recently. “The Human Toll: Indirect Deaths from War in Gaza and the West Bank, October 7, 2023 Forward” measures and analyzes, as the introduction explains, “the impact on population health of the destruction of public infrastructure, livelihood sources, reduced access to healthcare, water, and sanitation, and environmental damage.” Then, beginning with the next sentence, the paper starts to hit you hard:
For instance, 96 percent of Gaza’s population (2.15 million people) faces acute levels of food insecurity. According to an October 2, 2024, letter to President Biden from a group of U.S. physicians, 62,413 people in Gaza have died of starvation.
As it happens I had already read the letter the Watson report mentions, an open letter that 99 physicians and other American medical professionals wrote to President Biden and Vice–President Harris after serving in Gaza this past year. It reads in part:
This letter and the appendix show probative evidence that the human toll in Gaza since October is far higher than is understood in the United States. It is likely that the death toll from this conflict is already greater than 118,908….
With only marginal exceptions, everyone in Gaza is sick, injured, or both. This includes every national aid worker, every international volunteer, and probably every Israeli hostage: every man, woman, and child.
The physicians’ letter seems to be one of numerous put out by this group under the title, “Gaza Healthcare Letters.” Among the organizers is Feroze Sidhwa, a West Coast trauma surgeon who has been energetically getting out the truth of the Gaza crisis for some time. This newest letter arrived (and my thanks to both) via John Whitbeck, an American attorney who puts out an informative blog from his home in Paris, and Dave DeCamp’s excellent piece in Antiwar.com.
Well, right after I read the physicians’ letter and the DeCamp piece and the Costs of War material, I watched the documentary Al Jazeera’s investigative unit put out Oct. 3 as a sort of one-year-on project. “Investigating war crimes in Gaza” is an hour and 20 minutes of gut-turning footage so powerful it makes you conclude there is simply no lower limit to the Zionists’ depravity while you wonder—as many of us have this past year—what it means to be human.
My advisory: The Al Jazeera documentary is very difficult to watch but we must, as a matter of conscience and, for those who have spent the year flinching, as a rite of passage. We must let the truth push itself in our faces. My partner’s advisory: Don’t watch it before you go to bed.
Read more: Patrick Lawrence: Truths That Come Out Like the SunA day or so after I saw the Al Jazeera film, having already read the Watson reports, the open letter, and the DeCamp commentary, I read Brett Murphy’s latest piece in ProPublica. “Inside the State Department’s Weapons Pipeline to Israel” lays out the whole awful tale: Here, by way of leaked diplomatic cables, email, and Murphy’s interview work, we see how obsessed all those corrupt flunkies at State were (and are) to get weapons and more weapons to terrorist Israel, at times under pressure from the arms lobbies, while ignoring vast accretions of evidence that these supplies should have been blocked by law because of the Israelis’ genocidal crimes. By the time I read of this I had already seen Murphys’ earlier report that Secretary of State Blinken had suppressed and then lied to Congress about two State Department reports on some of these derelictions.
This is official abuse. I am abused. You are abused. And as we are abused we watch Palestinians, other human beings, suffer.
You have to admire Brett Murphy for his perspicacity in delivering these truths to us. Even a few years ago I would have said I hope The New York Times picks this guy up. No more of that. I hope for Murphy’s sake, and the sake of his readers, The Times keeps its befouled hands off a fine journalist—and for the sake, I will add, of his fineness.
A day or so after I saw the Al Jazeera film, having already read the Watson reports, the open letter, and the DeCamp commentary, I read Brett Murphy’s latest piece in ProPublica. “Inside the State Department’s Weapons Pipeline to Israel” lays out the whole awful tale: Here, by way of leaked diplomatic cables, email, and Murphy’s interview work, we see how obsessed all those corrupt flunkies at State were (and are) to get weapons and more weapons to terrorist Israel, at times under pressure from the arms lobbies, while ignoring vast accretions of evidence that these supplies should have been blocked by law because of the Israelis’ genocidal crimes. By the time I read of this I had already seen Murphys’ earlier report that Secretary of State Blinken had suppressed and then lied to Congress about two State Department reports on some of these derelictions.
This is official abuse. I am abused. You are abused. And as we are abused we watch Palestinians, other human beings, suffer.
You have to admire Brett Murphy for his perspicacity in delivering these truths to us. Even a few years ago I would have said I hope The New York Times picks this guy up. No more of that. I hope for Murphy’s sake, and the sake of his readers, The Times keeps its befouled hands off a fine journalist—and for the sake, I will add, of his fineness.
On Friday morning I awakened to a report in Middle East Monitor—again courtesy of John Whitbeck, who likes to make sure we get off to a bushy-tailed start—that one Matthew Brodsky, a former adviser to the White House, has just called for the Israelis to carpet-bomb an Irish contingent of U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon “and then drop napalm over it.” Altogether sound. And in keeping, too: The day of the Middle East Monitor’s report the Israelis shelled—knowingly, with intent—buildings in southern Lebanon from which U.N. peacekeepers operate.
Matthew Brodsky now survives in the Zionist reaches of Think Tank Land in Washington. He is said no longer to advise the White House. Whether he still briefs Congress, the State and Defense Departments and the National Security Council, as he has in the past, is unclear. Either way, as Chas Freeman, the distinguished former ambassador, points out, this is the kind of person who climbs through the bureaucratic scene in Washington and ends up in advisory roles by dint of extremism dressed up as expertise.
After thinking about all this reading and viewing in so short a time I didn’t want to think about anything for a while. Then I thought of a famous adage of Aeschylus that I used to keep on my desk: “He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain, which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”
Suffering, pain, despair. Then I thought of something else. Failing in my recall, I thought of whoever it was who said “The truth is like the sun.. It always comes out.”
The Israelis are not at war with the Palestinians of Gaza, just as the Reich was not at war with the Jews of Europe. Genocide is something different, and it is always important to name things properly if we are to understand them as they are. But there has indeed been a war raging this past year. It is not as bloody as what Palestinians now endure, and what the Lebanese now seem to be in for, but it is arguably just as consequential. This is our war for the truth against those who would bury it in the cause of distorting events, burying reality itself and, specifically, of shielding those who conduct the genocide in Gaza. It is a war in the cause of lifting a heavy lid so that the truth can do its work, the work it always does, its work in defense of the human cause.
“Our war,” “we.” I am wary of these words. Who are “we” in any given case? But there is a “we” now, a very big, crowded “we.” And we are getting there. We are winning our war. This is what I draw from the past week’s journalism as I have reviewed it. A solidly documented true story takes shape out of all the day-to-day reporting of the past year. It is all in the record now, or will be, a coherent whole—this while all the official lies and the corporate media lies are exposed. Let us not miss the significance here. Can we not conclude the truth is proving once again as persistent as the sun?
A case in point: On Oct. 10, The Times published a piece I found reviving of the spirit under the headline, ‘Relentless’ Israeli Attacks on Gaza Medical Workers Are War Crime, U.N. Panel Says. Beneath this was an account of a U.N. commission’s report that found Israel guilty of “relentless and deliberate attacks” on hospitals and other medical facilities, on doctors and other medical professionals, and on civilian patients. The pithy passage in the statement of Navi Pillay, formerly the U.N.’s high commissioner for human rights and the director of the commission:
Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s health care system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.
This is the truth rising to the surface. Do you think Pillay’s commission would have studied conditions in Gaza and drawn its conclusions without the prompt of the medical people now speaking out, chiefly via independent media? Do you think The Times would have published this piece if circumstances, an accumulation of truths too large to inter or ignore, had not forced it to do so?
At the end of Atrocity Inc., Max Blumenthal urges those who viewed the footage to speak out and to continue doing so as long as this is possible—until the law, he means to say, prohibits free speech. Implicit in this, if I read him correctly, is the conclusion I have just suggested: It matters, our war is going well, and it is no use waiting for The Times to tell us so.
Will the truths now emerging at an increasing and encouraging rate reach some critical mass such that either Israel or the U.S. will change policy? It may seem bitter to ask this question, given Israel’s escalating barbarities and Washington’s indifference even to common decency. But we must not miss the extent to which Israel is destroying itself before our eyes and dragging the U.S. down with it—both in large part because the truth of this crisis has turned world opinion against these two rogue states.
There are the yet-to-be-written histories of our time to be considered. We all know George Orwell’s line in “1984”: “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” It is essential, then, to get the record of our time set down accurately, truthfully, such that the way can open to proceeding in a new direction. Let us appreciate the power of the truthful work being done now, some of which I have reviewed, with this in mind.
Israel Jails US Journalist, Fires On UN Peacekeepers, Bombs Beirut, Kills More Kids, Etc
If past behavior is a reliable indicator, the US will now dismiss these accusations, and Israel will promptly accuse the United Nations of antisemitism.
Caitlin Johnstone, Oct 11, 2024, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-jails-us-journalist-fires?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=150080118&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
I used to be able to write individual articles about the individual bad things the US empire is involved in around the world. These days I’m increasingly finding it necessary to cram a bunch of them into a single daily write-up to touch on as many of them as I can, just to stay on top of things.
Israel has arrested The Grayzone’s Jeremy Loffredo, an American journalist who had recently done some on the ground reporting on last week’s Iranian missile strikes in Israel.
Israeli news outlet Ynet reports that the charges against Loffredo “include aiding the enemy during wartime and providing information to the enemy,” which, as his fellow Grayzone reporter Kit Klarenberg notes, can be punished by the death penalty in Israel.
The Grayzone has further clarified in a statement that officially Israeli police are holding the reporter “on suspicion of serious security offenses for publicly publishing… the locations of missile drops near or inside sensitive security facilities, with the aim of bringing this to the notice of the enemy and thereby assisting them in their future attacks.”
Loffredo’s report on the missile strikes features footage of explosions at the IDF’s Nevatim Airbase, as well as shots of the location where a missile landed near the headquarters of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. Imagine if an Iranian missile landed right next to the CIA headquarters and the US said was forbidden on pain of death to report anything about this major news story, even for foreign journalists.
Interestingly, these same things have been reported on by other foreign news outlets without any arrests being made. As journalist Dan Cohen noted on Twitter, a report from Nick Schifrin of PBS News also featured footage of the blast site near Mossad headquarters, but Schifrin has not been arrested. Perhaps Loffredo is being singled out more because The Grayzone has been reporting on Israel’s lies and criminality than because of his work in this specific instance.
As of this writing, Loffredo is still jailed.
In other news, Axios reports that the US and Israeli governments have moved closer to a consensus on Israel’s coming “major attack” on Iran, with the Biden administration accepting that this enormous escalation is going to happen despite fears that it will spark a large-scale war.
“The Biden administration accepts that Israel will soon launch a major attack on Iran, but it fears that strikes on certain targets could dramatically escalate the regional war,” writes Axios’ Barak Ravid.
A UN inquiry has accused Israel of “extermination” because of its systematic destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system via “relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.”
“The report found that Israeli security forces have deliberately killed, detained and tortured medical personnel and targeted medical vehicles while tightening their siege on Gaza and restricting permits to leave the territory for medical treatment,” a UN press release reads. “These actions constitute the war crimes of willful killing and mistreatment and of the destruction of protected civilian property and the crime against humanity of extermination.”
If past behavior is a reliable indicator, the US will now dismiss these accusations, and Israel will promptly accuse the United Nations of antisemitism.
Israeli forces repeatedly fired on UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon on Thursday, injuring two UN workers by causing them to fall from a tower that was struck. Israel has killed hundreds of UN humanitarian workers in Gaza over the past year, but extending these attacks to the UN Interim Force in Lebanon is a significant new addition to the list of Israeli criminality.
Israeli airstrikes in a densely populated residential area of central Beirut have reportedly killed at least 22 people, injuring at least 117.
Israel killed at least 28 people in an airstrike on a school where civilians have been sheltering in Gaza, reportedly including many women and children as per usual. Al Jazeera reports that they’re having trouble identifying and counting the dead because the bodies are so unrecognizably shredded. Dozens more were killed elsewhere in Gaza over the last 24 hours.
And then there’s the New York Times report we discussed yesterday adding to the mountains upon mountains of evidence that Israeli forces are routinely, deliberately shooting Palestinian children in the head throughout the Gaza Strip. There is too much evidence that this is happening for anyone to legitimately deny it at this point.
Today the US State Department did not hold a press briefing, which is understandable. If I were in charge of justifying the behavior of the US government and its allies, I wouldn’t want to face the press today either.
UPDATE: The Grayzone reports that Jeremy Loffredo has been released after three days in jail. Israeli police are still holding his passport and forbidding him to leave the country until October 20th while they look through his phone. Further updates to follow.
Israel: Simply no red lines at all
SOTT. Craig Murray, craigmurray.org.uk, Fri, 11 Oct 2024
There is literally no act so vile that the UK, US and Germany will not support if perpetrated by the terrorist state of Israel.
Yesterday Israel:
- deliberately attacked UN peacekeepers in three separate bases;
- bombed residential central Beirut killing and maiming hundreds;
- abducted, beat up and held an American journalist;
- slaughtered 30 Palestinian refugees in an UNRWA school;
- was found by an official UN Commission Report to be guilty of the crime against humanity of “extermination” in Gaza.
Any single one of these outrages would be roundly condemned if committed by any country at all except Israel, and would lead to repercussions.
But Israel can commit them all in a single day and suffer not one word of obloquy from the leading Western powers (although it does appear that the attack on UN peacekeepers may have snapped Macron’s subservience – whether it’s just a blip remains to be seen).
The UNReport of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, dated 11 September but released yesterday, is incredibly damning and will be a key document for the ICJ Genocide case against Israel brought by South Africa et al.
It notes 498 Israeli attacks on healthcare facilities in the Gaza strip and – much less known – 500 attacks on healthcare facilities in the West Bank, although individually less severe.
Here are some highlights of the report:……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. more https://www.sott.net/article/495403-Israel-Simply-no-red-lines-at-all
US-Backed Israeli Military Forces Have Executed Numerous Journalists Since October 7
The Israeli military’s campaign of genocidal violence, carried out with the full support of President Joe Biden’s administration, has killed 138-175 journalists.
thedissenter, Kevin Gosztola, Oct 7, 2024
On October 6, Israeli military forces reportedly targeted and killed Hassan Hamad, a 19-year-old Palestinian journalist in Gaza, in his home in the Jabalia refugee camp.
Maha Hussaini, a Middle East Eye reporter in Deir al-Balah in the occupied Palestinian Territories, reported that Hamad had received threatening phone calls and text messages months ago.
Hamad had been covering an attack by Israeli troops on a residential home when he returned to his bedroom around dawn. “It’s clear [a] shell was fired directly and specifically at Hassan’s bedroom to intentionally target him,” said Ashraf Mashharawi, who manages the Media Town Production Company where Hamad worked.
As Mashharawi told Middle East Eye, his colleague had taken many photos and videos that had made headlines. “Apparently, this bothered [the Israelis]—the fact that his coverage gained attention.”
Barry Malone, the deputy editor-in-chief for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, responded, “Just saw the remains of [19-year-old] Palestinian journalist Hassan Hamad reduced to a plastic bag and a shoebox. According to a fresh tally from CPJ [Committee to Protect Journalists], 123 journalists have now been k
Record Number of Journalists Killed, Several Of Them Targeted For Execution
Over the past year, the Israeli military has carried out a campaign of genocidal violence with the full support of President Joe Biden’s administration, including a seemingly unlimited flow of weapons. Officials from the U.S. and Israeli governments ask the world to excuse the carnage because Palestinian fighters led by Hamas launched an attack on October 7, and to them, Hamas must be entirely eliminated.
Yet a coalition of American medical professionals who have volunteered in Gaza estimate that “the death toll from this conflict is already greater than 118,908, an astonishing 5.4% of Gaza’s population.” That estimate includes a record number of journalists killed, making it the deadliest conflict for members of the press. illed in Israeli strikes. If you’re a journalist and you’re not speaking out in solidarity…why?”………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The Highest Number Of Detained Journalists In The World’
The Israeli government has also detained at least 69 Palestinian journalists, with 43 still in detention, according to CPJ. Most of the journalists detained are from the West Bank, and ten journalists have been confined under an “administrative detention law” that allows for “indefinite renewal of detention orders.” At least five journalists have been allegedly tortured and abused.
CPJ reported, “On a per capita basis, Israeli authorities now hold the highest number of detained journalists in the world in a given year over the past two decades, followed by Turkey, Iran, and China.”
A censorship regime imposed by the Israeli government has prohibited nearly 4,000 journalists from entering Gaza to report on the war, and as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu encouraged, the country’s legislature passed a law to ban foreign media organizations that are deemed a “national security” threat.
The most prominent media organization to be banned was the Arabic news media organization Al Jazeera. In September, Israeli soldiers illegally raided Al Jazeera’s West Bank bureau and shut it down. But Lebanese broadcaster Al Mayadeen TV, Radio Dream, a local radio station in Hebron, and the West Bank-based J-Media were all ordered to cease their operations.
Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, who was behind the media censorship law that targeted Al Jazeera, threatened to sanction the Israeli newspaper Haaretz for “false propaganda” The Times of Israel reported that Karhi proposed a government resolution to block “any new commercial agreements with the newspaper, halt all advertising in it even if it has been paid for, and halt any outstanding payments from being made.” But Karhi backed away from his proposal after it was denounced.
Destroying All Media Institutions
“Since October 7, 2023,” according to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS), “Israeli forces have destroyed all media institutions in the Gaza Strip. Airstrikes have demolished 73 media facilities, including 21 local radio stations, 15 local and international news agencies, 15 TV stations, 6 local newspapers, 3 broadcasting towers, 8 printing presses, and 13 journalistic service institutions.”
PJS additionally recalled, “In the early days of the genocidal war on Gaza, the Israeli military targeted most of the high-rise buildings in Gaza that housed both local and international media offices. For example, the Al-Shawa and Al-Haseeri towers in Gaza City, which contained 15 floors of media offices, were completely destroyed by an Israeli airstrike on December 18, 2023, causing extensive damage to the surrounding area.”…………………………………………………………………………………….
IFJ Secretary General Anthony Bellanger concluded, “The vast majority of the world’s media are effectively cut off from a huge news story whose daily horrors pass them by. Their only available sources are the journalists who are members of the PJS and the IFJ, who take all the risks to film and photograph with their phones.”
“Gazan journalists are determined to tell their story, and for so long as that is the case, it is the IFJ’s duty to support them doing this in whatever way we can.” https://thedissenter.org/us-backed-israeli-military-forces-have-executed-numerous-journalists-since-october-7/
As Israel Extends Its Genocide Into the West Bank, It Targets and Kills Children
By Marjorie Cohn , Truthout, 8 Oct 24, https://truthout.org/articles/as-israel-extends-its-genocide-into-the-west-bank-it-targets-and-kills-children/
Israel is killing scores of Palestinian children, Defense for Children International-Palestine’s Miranda Cleland says.
The Israeli occupation forces have extended their genocidal campaign in Gaza to the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Using drone strikes, troops in armored vehicles and bulldozers, their regular raids since October 7, 2023, have escalated into extensive and deadly attacks. Between August 28 and September 6, Israel launched “Operation Summer Camps,” a major military invasion, in the northern West Bank. “We watched their bulldozers tear up streets, demolish businesses, pharmacies, schools. They even bulldozed the town soccer field, and a tree in the middle of a road,” Kamal Abu al-Rub, the governor of Jenin, told The New York Times.
Since October 7, 2023, Israeli forces have killed at least 722 Palestinians, including at least 164 children, in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
In Jenin city, within the governorate, approximately 70 percent of the roads have been damaged or destroyed in the attacks, according to the city’s mayor, Nidal Obeidi. Electricity, internet and telephone lines were shut down. Water and sewage lines were cut, leaving about 80 percent of Jenin with no running water, including the main hospital.
“They are imposing conditions, materially and psychologically, that make people feel: Gaza is coming to you,” Shawan Jabarin, director of Al Haq, a human rights group based in the West Bank, reported to the Times. “There is a feeling among Palestinians across the West Bank that what is coming is very bad — that it will be a plan to kill and expel us.”
UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territory Francesca Albanese warns that “Apartheid Israel is targeting Gaza and the West Bank simultaneously, as part of an overall process of elimination, replacement and territorial expansion.” Likewise, European Union Foreign Affairs Chief Josep Borrell said, “Without action, the West Bank will become a new Gaza. And Gaza will become a new West Bank, as settlers’ movements are preparing new settlements.”
We documented 10 cases where Palestinian children were shot and killed by Israeli forces in October 2023, during demonstrations in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. Four of these children were shot with expanding bullets, which expand inside the body upon impact and cause massive internal bleeding. The use of expanding bullets is a war crime.
What happened to their bodies after they died? Did the Israeli forces allow medical aid to reach the injured children?
In 43 percent of cases documented in the report, Israeli forces deliberately prevented injured Palestinian children from receiving medical care by detaining and firing live ammunition toward ambulances, paramedics and civilians attempting to provide aid. In many cases, these were children who sustained gunshot wounds from Israeli soldiers to the head or chest, or sometimes multiple locations on their bodies. In some cases, Israeli drone-fired missiles struck a child, leaving them with burns and shrapnel wounds all over their body. Israeli forces fired at ambulances and paramedics, and even civilian bystanders who tried to run and offer help to the child. Israeli soldiers surrounded a wounded child just long enough to confirm they were dead. This is an act of incredible cruelty, to ensure that a child dies alone and in immense pain, bleeding out on the ground.
Israeli forces enter refugee camps and kill Palestinians, including children. They have targeted refugee camps in the past. How does the current campaign differ from prior incursions? Why do you think they target refugee camps?
Israeli forces carry out incursions into Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank, including refugee camps, on a daily basis. In recent incursions, Israeli forces have seriously escalated their efforts to not only kill and arrest Palestinians, including children, but also to damage and destroy civilian infrastructure like roads and power lines. They also besiege hospitals, like we witnessed in Jenin. And it’s not just Israeli ground forces carrying out these incursions; they are accompanied by military bulldozers, tanks and heavily armored military vehicles, in addition to drones and Apache attack helicopters.
Do Israeli forces use U.S.-provided weapons in the killing of Palestinians and destruction of infrastructure in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem?
The United States provides $3.8 billion in military assistance to Israel every year, and since October 7, it has provided tens of millions more in funding as well as weapons. The U.S. places virtually no restrictions on how this funding and these weapons are used, so they are certainly used in the Israeli military’s campaign to target and kill Palestinian children.
What role do Israeli settlers play in the violence against children? Do Israeli forces restrain or enable settler violence?
Israeli settlers have been emboldened by the current right-wing Israeli government, and there have been more and more cases of Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank since October 7. In two cases of Palestinian child fatalities cited in our report, we could not determine who shot the bullet that killed the child, since Israeli soldiers and settlers were firing toward the child simultaneously. Of course, this is a difference without a distinction. In some cases, Israeli soldiers stand by and watch as Israeli settlers attack Palestinians; in other cases, they attack alongside one another.
Does Israel’s escalation of violence in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, correspond to the increased construction of illegal Jewish settlements there?
Absolutely — in many parts of the occupied West Bank, illegal Israeli settlements surround Palestinian villages and communities and encroach on Palestinian land, leading to Israeli settler attacks in these Palestinian communities.
How does targeting children violate international law?
Targeting children with live ammunition is first and foremost a violation of their basic right to life as outlined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Israel has ratified along with nearly every other country in the world. It is also a violation of international humanitarian law as well as international criminal law.
Israel has an obligation as the “Occupying Power” under international humanitarian law to protect the Palestinian population living under Israeli military occupation. Yet Israeli forces overwhelmingly fail to intervene to stop or prevent settler attacks and instead protect the settlers, empowering them to perpetuate violent attacks against the Palestinian civilian population in the occupied West Bank.
Has there been legal accountability for those responsible for the deaths of these children?
No. Israeli authorities, which are able to hold Israeli military officials and soldiers responsible, are clearly unwilling to hold perpetrators accountable, which is why we believe the international community must intervene and enact an arms embargo as well as sanctions to force accountability.
What evidence would you cite that Israel maintains an apartheid system in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem?
The Israeli military legal system is applied only to Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank. This means that Palestinians, including children, who are arrested by the Israeli military are prosecuted in the Israeli military court system, where the judge and prosecutor are soldiers and the conviction rate is upwards of 95 percent. Israeli settlers living in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank never come into contact with the military legal system and instead are subject to the Israeli civil legal system. That’s what apartheid is: Different legal systems and statuses applied to different populations based on ethnicity in the same territory.
Do you think Israel is extending its nearly yearlong genocidal campaign in Gaza into the West Bank, including East Jerusalem?
Absolutely. As with Gaza, the Israeli government and military has made very clear its intentions to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their land until there is no Palestinian life to speak of.
What actions does DCIP demand that the international community take to prevent additional violence against children and to hold those responsible accountable?
In our report, we list three demands for the international community, which includes many countries and actors that have either watched, or turned away entirely, as Israeli forces have slaughtered Palestinian children at an unprecedented rate from Gaza to the occupied West Bank:
- Enact an immediate and comprehensive arms embargo alongside diplomatic and financial pressure to pressure Israeli authorities and forces to end the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, the Israeli apartheid regime and the Israeli military occupation of the occupied Palestinian territory.
- Investigate allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity and support investigations by the International Criminal Court, in order to hold perpetrators accountable.
- Use all available means, including those listed above, to demand that Israeli authorities uphold Palestinian children’s rights as outlined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Israel has ratified.
On September 18, the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution initiated by the State of Palestine, demanding an end to the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory in accordance with international law, as recently established by the International Court of Justice. The resolution calls for sanctioning Israel and forbidding member states from conducting business with Israel or promoting the legitimacy of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory.
Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, dean of the People’s Academy of International Law and past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She sits on the national advisory boards of Assange Defense and Veterans For Peace. A member of the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, she is the U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues.
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
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
-
Archives
- April 2026 (181)
- March 2026 (251)
- February 2026 (268)
- January 2026 (308)
- December 2025 (358)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (376)
- September 2025 (257)
- August 2025 (319)
- July 2025 (230)
- June 2025 (348)
- May 2025 (261)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
nuclear-news 