Finding the Unmentionable: Amnesty International, Israel and Genocide
Binoy Kampmark, December 16, 2024, https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/12/16/finding-the-unmentionable-amnesty-international-israel-and-genocide/
It was bound to happen. With continuing operations in Gaza, and increasingly violent activities being conducted against Palestinians in the occupied territories, human rights organisations are making increasingly severe assessments of Israel’s warring cause. While the world awaits the findings of the International Court of Justice on whether Israel’s campaign, as argued by South Africa, amounts to genocide, Amnesty International has already reached its conclusions.
In a 296-page report sporting the ominous title “You Feel Like You Are Subhuman”, the human rights body, after considering the events in Gaza between October 2023 and July 2024, identified a “pattern of conduct” that indicated genocidal intent. These included, among other things, persistent direct attacks on civilians and objects “and deliberately indiscriminate strikes over the nine-month period, wiping out entire families repeatedly launched at times when these strikes would result in high numbers of casualties”; the nature of the weapons used; the speed and scale of destruction to civilian objects and infrastructure (homes, shelters, health facilities, water and sanitation infrastructure, agricultural land”; the use of bulldozing and controlled demolitions; and the use of “incomprehensible, misleading and arbitrary ‘evacuation’ orders’”.
The report does much to focus on statements made from the highest officials to the common soldiery to reveal the mental state necessary to reveal genocide. 102 statements made by members of the Knesset, government officials and high-ranking commanders “dehumanized Palestinians, or called for, or justified genocidal acts or other crimes under international law against them.” The report also examined 62 videos, audio recordings and photographs posted online featuring gleeful Israeli soldiers rejoicing in the “destruction of Gaza or the denial of essential services to people in Gaza, or celebrated the destruction of Palestinian homes, mosques, schools and universities, including through controlled demolitions, in some cases without apparent military necessity.”
From its alternative universe, the Israeli public relations machine drew from its own agitprop specialists, working on mangling the language of the report. The formula is familiar: attack the authors first, not their premises. “The deplorable and fanatical organisation Amnesty International has once again produced a fabricated response that is entirely based on lies,” came the howl from Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oren Marmorstein.
Other methods of repudiation involve detaching Hamas and its war with Israel from any historical continuum, not least the fact that it was aided, supported and backed by Israel for years as a counter to Fatah in the West Bank. Isolating Hamas as a terrorist aberration also serves to treat it as alien, artificially foreign and not part of any resistance movement against suffocating Israeli occupation and strangulation. They, so goes this argument, are genocidal, and countering such a body can never be, by any stretch, genocidal. The pro-Israeli group NGO Monitor abides by this line of reasoning, calling allegations of genocide against Israel “a reversal of the actual and clearly established intent of Hamas and its allies (including its patron, Iran), to wipe Israel off the map”.
Israel’s closest ally and sponsor, the United States, proved predictable in rejecting the findings while still claiming to respect the humanitarian line. The US State Department’s principal deputy spokesman, Vedant Patel, expresseddisagreement “with the conclusions of such a report. We had said previously and continue to find that the allegations of genocide are unfounded.” Patel did, however, pay lip service to the “vital role that civil society organizations like Amnesty International and human rights groups and NGOs play in providing information and analysis as it relates to Gaza and what’s going on.” Vital, but only up to a point.
Far less guarded assessments can be found in the American pro-Israeli chatter sphere. These follow the usual pattern. Orde Kittrie, senior fellow of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a name that can only imply that crimes committed in such a cause are bound to be justifiable, offers a neat illustration. Amnesty, he argues, “systematically and repeatedly mischaracterizes both the facts and the law.” Kittrie suggests his own mischaracterisation by parroting the IDF’s line that Hamas had “increased casualty counts by illegally using Palestinian civilian shields and by hiding weapons and war fighters in and below homes, hospitals, mosques, and other buildings.” This conveniently ignores that point that the numbers are not necessarily proof of genocidal intent, though it helps.
The report also notes that, even in the face of such tactics by Hamas, Israel was still “obligated to take all feasible precautions to spare civilians and avoid attacks that would be indiscriminate or disproportionate.”
Amnesty International’s report is yet another addition to the gloomy literature on the subject. Human Rights Watch, in November, pointed to violations of the laws of war, crimes against humanity, and the provisional measures of the ICJ issued urging Israel to abide by the obligations imposed by the UN Genocide Convention of 1948. The Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem stated in no uncertain terms in October that “Israel intends to forcibly displace northern Gaza’s residents by committing some of the gravest crimes under the laws of war”.
Battling over the designation of whether a campaign is genocidal can act as a distraction, a field of quibbles for paper pushing pedants. The “specific intent” in proof must be unequivocally demonstrated and beyond any other reasonable inference. A smokescreen is thereby deployed that risks masking the broader ambit of war crimes and crimes against humanity. But no amount of pedantry and disagreement can arrest the sense that Israel’s lethal conduct, whatever threshold it may reach in international law, is directed at destroying not merely Palestinian life but any worthwhile sense of a viable sovereignty. Amnesty Israel, while rejecting the central claim of the parent organisation’s report did make one concession: the country’s brutal response following October 7, 2023 “may amount to crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.”
Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
Finding the Unmentionable: Amnesty International, Israel and Genocide
Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.com/finding-the-unmentionable-amnesty-international-israel-and-genocide/ 14 Dec 24
It was bound to happen. With continuing operations in Gaza, and increasingly violent activities being conducted against Palestinians in the occupied territories, human rights organisations are making increasingly severe assessments of Israel’s warring cause. While the world awaits the findings of the International Court of Justice on whether Israel’s campaign, as argued by South Africa, amounts to genocide, Amnesty International has already reached its conclusions.
In a 296-page report sporting the ominous title “You Feel Like You Are Subhuman”, the human rights body, after considering the events in Gaza between October 2023 and July 2024, identified a “pattern of conduct” that indicated genocidal intent. These included, among other things, persistent direct attacks on civilians and objects “and deliberately indiscriminate strikes over the nine-month period, wiping out entire families repeatedly launched at times when these strikes would result in high numbers of casualties”; the nature of the weapons used; the speed and scale of destruction to civilian objects and infrastructure (homes, shelters, health facilities, water and sanitation infrastructure, agricultural land”; the use of bulldozing and controlled demolitions; and the use of “incomprehensible, misleading and arbitrary ‘evacuation’ orders’.”
The report does much to focus on statements made from the highest officials to the common soldiery to reveal the mental state necessary to reveal genocide. 102 statements made by members of the Knesset, government officials and high-ranking commanders “dehumanized Palestinians, or called for, or justified genocidal acts or other crimes under international law against them.” The report also examined 62 videos, audio recordings and photographs posted online featuring gleeful Israeli soldiers rejoicing in the “destruction of Gaza or the denial of essential services to people in Gaza, or celebrated the destruction of Palestinian homes, mosques, schools and universities, including through controlled demolitions, in some cases without apparent military necessity.”
From its alternative universe, the Israeli public relations machine drew from its own agitprop specialists, working on mangling the language of the report. The formula is familiar: attack the authors first, not their premises. “The deplorable and fanatical organisation Amnesty International has once again produced a fabricated response that is entirely based on lies,” came the howl from Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oren Marmorstein.
Other methods of repudiation involve detaching Hamas and its war with Israel from any historical continuum, not least the fact that it was aided, supported and backed by Israel for years as a counter to Fatah in the West Bank. Isolating Hamas as a terrorist aberration also serves to treat it as alien, artificially foreign and not part of any resistance movement against suffocating Israeli occupation and strangulation. They, so goes this argument, are genocidal, and countering such a body can never be, by any stretch, genocidal. The pro-Israeli group NGO Monitor abides by this line of reasoning, calling allegations of genocide against Israel “a reversal of the actual and clearly established intent of Hamas and its allies (including its patron, Iran), to wipe Israel off the map.”
Israel’s closest ally and sponsor, the United States, proved predictable in rejecting the findings while still claiming to respect the humanitarian line. The US State Department’s principal deputy spokesman, Vedant Patel, expressed disagreement “with the conclusions of such a report. We had said previously and continue to find that the allegations of genocide are unfounded.” Patel did, however, pay lip service to the “vital role that civil society organizations like Amnesty International and human rights groups and NGOs play in providing information and analysis as it relates to Gaza and what’s going on.” Vital, but only up to a point.
Far less guarded assessments can be found in the American pro-Israeli chatter sphere. These follow the usual pattern. Orde Kittrie, senior fellow of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a name that can only imply that crimes committed in such a cause are bound to be justifiable, offers a neat illustration. Amnesty, he argues, “systematically and repeatedly mischaracterizes both the facts and the law.” Kittrie suggests his own mischaracterisation by parroting the IDF’s line that Hamas had “increased casualty counts by illegally using Palestinian civilian shields and by hiding weapons and war fighters in and below homes, hospitals, mosques, and other buildings.” This conveniently ignores that point that the numbers are not necessarily proof of genocidal intent, though it helps.
The report also notes that, even in the face of such tactics by Hamas, Israel was still “obligated to take all feasible precautions to spare civilians and avoid attacks that would be indiscriminate or disproportionate.”
Amnesty International’s report is yet another addition to the gloomy literature on the subject. Human Rights Watch, in November, pointed to violations of the laws of war, crimes against humanity, and the provisional measures of the ICJ issued urging Israel to abide by the obligations imposed by the UN Genocide Convention of 1948. The Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem stated in no uncertain terms in October that “Israel intends to forcibly displace northern Gaza’s residents by committing some of the gravest crimes under the laws of war.”
Battling over the designation of whether a campaign is genocidal can act as a distraction, a field of quibbles for paper pushing pedants. The “specific intent” in proof must be unequivocally demonstrated and beyond any other reasonable inference. A smokescreen is thereby deployed that risks masking the broader ambit of war crimes and crimes against humanity. But no amount of pedantry and disagreement can arrest the sense that Israel’s lethal conduct, whatever threshold it may reach in international law, is directed at destroying not merely Palestinian life but any worthwhile sense of a viable sovereignty. Amnesty Israel, while rejecting the central claim of the parent organisation’s reportdid make one concession: the country’s brutal response following October 7, 2023 “may amount to crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.”
Amnesty International investigation concludes Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza
By Amnesty International 5 Dec 24
Amnesty International’s research has found sufficient basis to conclude that Israel has committed and is continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, the organization said in a landmark new report published today.
The report, ‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza, documents how, during its military offensive launched in the wake of the deadly Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on 7 October 2023, Israel has unleashed hell and destruction on Palestinians in Gaza brazenly, continuously and with total impunity.
“Amnesty International’s report demonstrates that Israel has carried out acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention, with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza. These acts include killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction. Month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them,” said Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International.
“Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now.
“States that continue to transfer arms to Israel at this time must know they are violating their obligation to prevent genocide and are at risk of becoming complicit in genocide. All states with influence over Israel, particularly key arms suppliers like the USA and Germany, but also other EU member states, the UK and others, must act now to bring Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza to an immediate end.”
Over the past two months the crisis has grown particularly acute in the North Gaza governorate, where a besieged population is facing starvation, displacement and annihilation amid relentless bombardment and suffocating restrictions on life-saving humanitarian aid.
“Our research reveals that, for months, Israel has persisted in committing genocidal acts, fully aware of the irreparable harm it was inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza. It continued to do so in defiance of countless warnings about the catastrophic humanitarian situation and of legally binding decisions from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordering Israel to take immediate measures to enable the provision of humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza,” said Agnès Callamard.
“Israel has repeatedly argued that its actions in Gaza are lawful and can be justified by its military goal to eradicate Hamas. But genocidal intent can co-exist alongside military goals and does not need to be Israel’s sole intent.”
WHY IS THIS A GENOCIDE?
………………………………………………………………………… Amnesty International’s report examines in detail Israel’s violations in Gaza over nine months between 7 October 2023 and early July 2024. The organization interviewed 212 people, including Palestinian victims and witnesses, local authorities in Gaza, healthcare workers, conducted fieldwork and analysed an extensive range of visual and digital evidence, including satellite imagery. It also analysed statements by senior Israeli government and military officials, and official Israeli bodies. On multiple occasions, the organization shared its findings with the Israeli authorities but had received no substantive response at the time of publication.
Unprecedented scale and magnitude
Israel’s actions following Hamas’s deadly attacks on 7 October 2023 have brought Gaza’s population to the brink of collapse. Its brutal military offensive had killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, including over 13,300 children, and injured over 97,000 more, by 7 October 2024, many of them in direct or deliberately indiscriminate attacks, often wiping out entire multigenerational families. It has caused unprecedented destruction, which experts say occurred at a level and speed not seen in any other conflict in the 21st century, levelling entire cities and destroying critical infrastructure, agricultural land and cultural and religious sites. It thereby rendered large swathes of Gaza uninhabitable.
Mohammed, who fled with his family from Gaza City to Rafah in March 2024 and was displaced again in May 2024, described their struggle to survive in horrifying conditions:
“Here in Deir al-Balah, it’s like an apocalypse… You have to protect your children from insects, from the heat, and there is no clean water, no toilets, all while the bombing never stops. You feel like you are subhuman here.”
Israel imposed conditions of life in Gaza that created a deadly mixture of malnutrition, hunger and diseases, and exposed Palestinians to a slow, calculated death. Israel also subjected hundreds of Palestinians from Gaza to incommunicado detention, torture and other ill-treatment.
Viewed in isolation, some of the acts investigated by Amnesty International constitute serious violations of international humanitarian law or international human rights law. But in looking at the broader picture of Israel’s military campaign and the cumulative impact of its policies and acts, genocidal intent is the only reasonable conclusion.
Intent to destroy
To establish Israel’s specific intent to physically destroy Palestinians in Gaza, as such, Amnesty International analysed the overall pattern of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, reviewed dehumanizing and genocidal statements by Israeli government and military officials, particularly those at the highest levels, and considered the context of Israel’s system of apartheid, its inhumane blockade of Gaza and the unlawful 57-year-old military occupation of the Palestinian territory.
Before reaching its conclusion, Amnesty International examined Israel’s claims that its military lawfully targeted Hamas and other armed groups throughout Gaza, and that the resulting unprecedented destruction and denial of aid were the outcome of unlawful conduct by Hamas and other armed groups, such as locating fighters among the civilian population or the diversion of aid. The organization concluded these claims are not credible. The presence of Hamas fighters near or within a densely populated area does not absolve Israel from its obligations to take all feasible precautions to spare civilians and avoid indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks. Its research found Israel repeatedly failed to do so, committing multiple crimes under international law for which there can be no justification based on Hamas’s actions. Amnesty International also found no evidence that the diversion of aid could explain Israel’s extreme and deliberate restrictions on life-saving humanitarian aid.
In its analysis, the organization also considered alternative arguments such as ones that Israel was acting recklessly or that it simply wanted to destroy Hamas and did not care if it needed to destroy Palestinians in the process, demonstrating a callous disregard for their lives rather than genocidal intent.
However, regardless of whether Israel sees the destruction of Palestinians as instrumental to destroying Hamas or as an acceptable by-product of this goal, this view of Palestinians as disposable and not worthy of consideration is in itself evidence of genocidal intent.
Many of the unlawful acts documented by Amnesty International were preceded by officials urging their implementation. The organization reviewed 102 statements that were issued by Israeli government and military officials and others between 7 October 2023 and 30 June 2024 and dehumanized Palestinians, called for or justified genocidal acts or other crimes against them.
Of these, Amnesty International identified 22 statements made by senior officials in charge of managing the offensive that appeared to call for, or justify, genocidal acts, providing direct evidence of genocidal intent. This language was frequently replicated, including by Israeli soldiers on the ground, as evidenced by audiovisual content verified by Amnesty International showing soldiers making calls to “erase” Gaza or to make it uninhabitable, and celebrating the destruction of Palestinian homes, mosques, schools and universities.
Killing and causing serious bodily or mental harm
Amnesty International documented the genocidal acts of killing and causing serious mental and bodily harm to Palestinians in Gaza by reviewing the results of investigations it conducted into 15 air strikes between 7 October 2023 and 20 April 2024 that killed at least 334 civilians, including 141 children, and wounded hundreds of others. Amnesty International found no evidence that any of these strikes were directed at a military objective.
In one illustrative case, on 20 April 2024, an Israeli air strike destroyed the Abdelal family house in the Al-Jneinah neighbourhood in eastern Rafah, killing three generations of Palestinians, including 16 children, while they were sleeping.
While these represent just a fraction of Israel’s aerial attacks, they are indicative of a broader pattern of repeated direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects or deliberately indiscriminate attacks. The attacks were also conducted in ways designed to cause a very high number of fatalities and injuries among the civilian population.
Inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction
The report documents how Israel deliberately inflicted conditions of life on Palestinians in Gaza intended to lead, over time, to their destruction. These conditions were imposed through three simultaneous patterns that repeatedly compounded the effect of each other’s devastating impacts: damage to and destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure and other objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population; the repeated use of sweeping, arbitrary and confusing mass “evacuation” orders to forcibly displace almost all of Gaza’s population; and the denial and obstruction of the delivery of essential services, humanitarian assistance and other life-saving supplies into and within Gaza.
After 7 October 2023, Israel imposed a total siege on Gaza cutting off electricity, water and fuel. In the nine months reviewed for this report, Israel maintained a suffocating, unlawful blockade, tightly controlled access to energy sources, failed to facilitate meaningful humanitarian access within Gaza, and obstructed the import and delivery of life-saving goods and humanitarian aid, particularly to areas north of Wadi Gaza. They thereby exacerbated an already existing humanitarian crisis. This, combined with the extensive damage to Gaza’s homes, hospitals, water and sanitation facilities and agricultural land, and mass forced displacement, caused catastrophic levels of hunger and led to the spread of diseases at alarming rates. The impact was especially harsh on young children and pregnant or breastfeeding women, with anticipated long-term consequences for their health.
The international community’s seismic, shameful failure for over a year to press Israel to end its atrocities in Gaza, by first delaying calls for a ceasefire and then continuing arms transfers, is and will remain a stain on our collective conscience.Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International
Time and again, Israel had the chance to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza, yet for over a year it has repeatedly refused to take steps blatantly within its power to do so, such as opening sufficient access points to Gaza or lifting tight restrictions on what could enter the Strip or their obstruction of aid deliveries within Gaza while the situation has grown progressively worse.
Through its repeated “evacuation” orders Israel displaced nearly 1.9 million Palestinians – 90% of Gaza’s population – into ever-shrinking, unsafe pockets of land under inhumane conditions, some of them up to 10 times. These multiple waves of forced displacement left many jobless and deeply traumatized, especially since some 70% of Gaza’s residents are refugees or descendants of refugees whose towns and villages were ethnically cleansed by Israel during the 1948 Nakba.
Despite conditions quickly becoming unfit for human life, Israeli authorities refused to consider measures that would have protected displaced civilians and ensured their basic needs were met, showing that their actions were deliberate.
They refused to allow those displaced to return to their homes in northern Gaza or relocate temporarily to other parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory or Israel, continuing to deny many Palestinians their right to return under international law to areas they were displaced from in 1948. They did so knowing that there was nowhere safe for Palestinians in Gaza to flee to.
Accountability for genocide
“The international community’s seismic, shameful failure for over a year to press Israel to end its atrocities in Gaza, by first delaying calls for a ceasefire and then continuing arms transfers, is and will remain a stain on our collective conscience,” said Agnès Callamard.
“Governments must stop pretending they are powerless to end this genocide, which was enabled by decades of impunity for Israel’s violations of international law. States need to move beyond mere expressions of regret or dismay and take strong and sustained international action, however uncomfortable a finding of genocide may be for some of Israel’s allies.
“The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity issued last month offer real hope of long-overdue justice for victims. States must demonstrate their respect for the court’s decision and for universal international law principles by arresting and handing over those wanted by the ICC.
“We are calling on the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to urgently consider adding genocide to the list of crimes it is investigating and for all states to use every legal avenue to bring perpetrators to justice. No one should be allowed to commit genocide and remain unpunished.”
Amnesty International is also calling for all civilian hostages to be released unconditionally and for Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups responsible for the crimes committed on 7 October to be held to account.
The organization is also calling for the UN Security Council to impose targeted sanctions against Israeli and Hamas officials most implicated in crimes under international law.
Background
On 7 October 2023 Hamas and other armed groups indiscriminately fired rockets into southern Israel and carried out deliberate mass killings and hostage-taking there, killing 1,200 people, including over 800 civilians, and abducted 223 civilians and captured 27 soldiers. The crimes perpetrated by Hamas and other armed groups during this attack will be the focus of a forthcoming Amnesty International report.
Since October 2023, Amnesty International has conducted in-depth investigations into the multiple violations and crimes under international law committed by Israeli forces, including direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects and deliberately indiscriminate attacks killing hundreds of civilians, as well as other unlawful attacks on and collective punishment of the civilian population. The organization has called on the Office of the ICC Prosecutor to expedite its investigation into the situation in the State of Palestine and is campaigning for an immediate ceasefire.
For the Hebrew translation of this press release, click here. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/12/amnesty-international-concludes-israel-is-committing-genocide-against-palestinians-in-gaza/
Gaza’s Civil Defense Says Nearly 100 Killed by Israeli Attacks Over 24 Hours
A strike on a house Jabalia killed over 40 Palestinians
by Dave DeCamp December 1, 2024, https://news.antiwar.com/2024/12/01/gazas-civil-defense-says-nearly-100-killed-by-israeli-attacks-over-24-hours/
Gaza’s Civil Defense said Sunday that Israeli attacks killed nearly 100 over the previous 24 hours as Israeli strikes continued to hit targets across the Strip.
“Nearly 100 martyrs were killed in the Gaza Strip within 24 hours as a result of the continuous Israeli bombing operations on homes and citizens’ gatherings,” the agency said, according to Al Jazeera.
Gaza’s Health Ministry put out a lower death toll in its daily update, saying 47 were killed, based on the number of dead and wounded Palestinians brought to hospitals. “The Israeli occupation committed six massacres against families in the Gaza Strip, resulting in 47 martyrs and 108 injuries arriving at hospitals during the past 24 hours,” the ministry wrote on Telegram.
The ministry noted that there are a “number of victims” trapped under the rubble or in areas where rescue crews cannot reach them. The Civil Defense statement said it has been unable to work in northern Gaza, which has been under siege since early October as part of Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign.
“Until this moment, civil defense crews are prevented from exercising their duties in northern Gaza, and this has led to hundreds of citizens remaining under the rubble,” the agency said.
The Civil Defense statement said the most deaths occurred in an Israeli strike on a house sheltering displaced Palestinians in Jabalia, northern Gaza, on Saturday. More than 40 Palestinians were killed in the attack.
Also on Saturday, an Israeli strike on a vehicle in the southern city of Khan Younis killed five people, including three aid workers with the US-based World Central Kitchen. Israel claimed without evidence that one of the aid workers was a “terrorist.”
WCK said that it suspended its operations in Gaza following the strike. “We are heartbroken to share that a vehicle carrying World Central Kitchen colleagues was hit by an Israeli air strike in Gaza,” the group said in a statement.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said that its death toll since October 2023, based on its numbers, has risen to 44,429 martyrs, and the number of wounded has reached 105,250.
A group of American healthcare workers who volunteered in Gaza estimated in an open letter to President Biden in October that the US-backed Israeli onslaught has killed at least 118,908 Palestinians, a total that includes indirect deaths caused by the Israeli siege. Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, who led the letter, told Antiwar.com in a recent interview that the estimate was the bare minimum they came up with by looking at the available data.
Israeli snipers ‘shoot Palestinians for sport’
Eyewitness accounts reveal Israeli snipers are systematically targeting unarmed civilians, including children, using tactics that point to deliberate genocidal intent and a chilling policy of terror designed to annihilate a people, not just wage war.
Robert Inlakesh, The Cradle, NOV 25, 2024
Israel’s attempts to excuse the mass murder of civilians in Gaza as “collateral damage” fall apart in the face of mounting evidence that it employs deliberate sniper attacks. The targeted killing of unarmed people – using quadcopter drones and professional snipers – has restricted access to essential medical care, food, and water, exposing a chilling reality behind the occupation army’s actions.
The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are further testament to this not being a conventional war; it is a systematic targeting of civilians that points directly to genocidal intent.
Over the past year, debates have raged over what constitutes an “acceptable” level of collateral damage in Gaza. In July, the West Point US Military Academy’s Modern War Institute even published a piece that argued for a more surgical approach to be taken by the Israelis.
Similar discussions that also surround what constitutes a “disproportionate use of force” are all predicated on Tel Aviv’s approach being one of a conventional war. However, if Israel’s intention is not to wage war against Hamas and is instead to intentionally commit genocide and ethnic cleansing, these conversations prove meaningless. And no clearer evidence exists than the cold-blooded targeting of civilians by sniper fire.
Sniping civilians on live TV
Though there have been instances when sniper attacks on civilians captured the international media’s attention, this grim element of Israel’s military strategy is largely ignored, likely because of the damning implications.
The first major case to break headlines in the western media was the murder of two Christian women at Gaza City’s Holy Family Church on 16 December 2023. The incident even received condemnation from the Pope over the murder of the Palestinian Catholic mother and her daughter, who were deliberately killed while seeking refuge inside the church compound.
But today, these kinds of shootings are so commonplace that they even occur during live TV interviews with western news outlets. For example, in January, British broadcaster ITV captured the moment when 51-year-old Ramzi Abu Sahloul was shot through the chest, only moments after he had spoken on air. Sahloul was part of a group of civilians who were fleeing to Rafah in Gaza’s south while holding white flags on the orders of the Israeli military.
Another innocent civilian murdered while fleeing and with a white flag was Hala Khreis; she was shot and fatally wounded while holding her grandson’s hand as they were walking. The incident was also caught on camera. A CNN investigation was able to prove that Israeli soldiers stationed nearby were responsible.
Intimidation by assassination
Palestinian correspondent Motasem Dalloul, who is based in northern Gaza, testifies to The Cradle that his own son Yahya was murdered by an Israeli sniper on 29 May, after which the soldiers ran over his child’s body with a tank.
“I took my sons to our destroyed house, in Al-Sabra neighborhood, in order to pick up some clothes from under the rubble. When we were there, I saw my son fall to the ground and he started bleeding from his head. I got close to him and found that his head had exploded.”
He explains that although he couldn’t see the Israeli soldiers, he knew that they were positioned nearby with sniper weapons and states that when he approached little Yahya’s body, he was struck by the fact that he was motionless. He adds:
“Israeli tanks began shooting and firing everywhere. I knew that my son was dead … so I had to leave him on the ground and flee with my other sons to safety. I couldn’t return back to this place for 10 days, where I later found that an Israeli tank had run over his body and dismembered it, we could only collect some of his flesh and bones, which had been smashed by the Israeli tanks, and we put them in a piece of fabric, like a shirt, and took them, burying them in a makeshift cemetery.”
During Dalloul’s conversation with The Cradle, bombs exploding in the background are heard as he recounts:
“I think the reason Israeli occupation [word muffled by the sound of explosions] killed my son was to frighten the rest of us and warn us not to return to this area … as that area was later on destroyed and all the buildings were erased, turning it into a military buffer zone. This put much pressure on the residents of Gaza City who do not have homes and a lot of these displaced people were murdered.”
Psychological warfare and denial of medical care
The calculated targeting of civilians is not limited to sniper fire. On 20 September, a UN special committee reported to the General Assembly that there has also been a “deliberate denial of healthcare access by Israeli snipers” to lactating and pregnant Palestinian women.
After countless testimonies of deliberate shootings committed against civilians have been emerging, in December 2023, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) issued a press release urging accountability and an investigation. The press release also highlighted the execution of 11 men in front of their families in the Remal Neighbourhood of Gaza City…………………………….. more https://thecradle.co/articles/israeli-snipers-shoot-palestinians-for-sport
Israel Has Killed Over 1,000 Doctors and Nurses in Gaza
“These people, they target everyone, but I swear, this will not stop us from continuing our humanitarian work,” said a Gaza hospital director injured in an Israeli strike.
Jessica Corbett, Nov 24, 2024, https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-has-killed-over-1000-doctors-and-nurses-in-gaza
More than 1,000 doctors and nurses are among at least 44,211 people killed in Israel’s 13-month assault on the Gaza Strip, officials in the Hamas-governed Palestinian enclave said Sunday.
“Over 310 other medical personnel were arrested, tortured, and executed in prisons,” Gaza’s Government Media Office also said in a statement, according to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency. “The Israeli army also prevented the entry of medical supplies, health delegations, and hundreds of surgeons into Gaza.”
“Hospitals have been a declared target for the Israeli army, which bombed, besieged, and stormed them, killing doctors and nurses, injuring others after directly targeting them,” the office said. The statement came after the director of the main partially functioning hospital in northern Gaza was injured in an Israeli strike.
Hussam Abu Safiyeh is the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital—which, according toAl Jazeera, Israeli forces have repeatedly attacked, damaging “the facility’s generators, fuel tanks, and main oxygen station.”
The wounded director said: “These people, they target everyone, but I swear, this will not stop us from continuing our humanitarian work. We will keep on providing this service no matter what it costs us.”
Since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, in addition to killing tens of thousands of Palestinians, Israeli forces have injured at least 104,567 others. Along with attacking hospitals, they have destroyed many homes, schools, and religious sites, and displaced most of the enclave’s 2.3 million people.
More than 1,000 doctors and nurses are among at least 44,211 people killed in Israel’s 13-month assault on the Gaza Strip, officials in the Hamas-governed Palestinian enclave said Sunday.
“Over 310 other medical personnel were arrested, tortured, and executed in prisons,” Gaza’s Government Media Office also said in a statement, according to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency. “The Israeli army also prevented the entry of medical supplies, health delegations, and hundreds of surgeons into Gaza.”
“Hospitals have been a declared target for the Israeli army, which bombed, besieged, and stormed them, killing doctors and nurses, injuring others after directly targeting them,” the office said. The statement came after the director of the main partially functioning hospital in northern Gaza was injured in an Israeli strike.
Hussam Abu Safiyeh is the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital—which, according toAl Jazeera, Israeli forces have repeatedly attacked, damaging “the facility’s generators, fuel tanks, and main oxygen station.”
The wounded director said: “These people, they target everyone, but I swear, this will not stop us from continuing our humanitarian work. We will keep on providing this service no matter what it costs us.”
Since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, in addition to killing tens of thousands of Palestinians, Israeli forces have injured at least 104,567 others. Along with attacking hospitals, they have destroyed many homes, schools, and religious sites, and displaced most of the enclave’s 2.3 million people.
Israel—which has been armed by the Biden administration and bipartisan U.S. Congress—faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice over its conduct in Gaza. Additionally, the International Criminal Court earlier this week issued arrest warrants for Israel’s current prime minister and former defense minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, as well as Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri.
Last month, 99 U.S. healthcare providers who have volunteered in Gaza since last fall sent U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris a letter detailing “the massive human toll from Israel’s attack” and urging them to “end this madness now!”
“It is likely that the death toll from this conflict is already greater than 118,908, an astonishing 5.4% of Gaza’s population,” the Americans wrote. “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.”
“We quickly learned that our Palestinian healthcare colleagues were among the most traumatized people in Gaza, and perhaps in the entire world,” they continued. “All were acutely aware that their work as healthcare providers had marked them as targets for Israel. This makes a mockery of the protected status hospitals and healthcare providers are granted under the oldest and most widely accepted provisions of international humanitarian law.”
They added that “we wish to be absolutely clear: Not once did any of us see any type of Palestinian militant activity in any of Gaza’s hospitals or other healthcare facilities. We urge you to see that Israel has systematically and deliberately devastated Gaza’s entire healthcare system, and that Israel has targeted our colleagues in Gaza for torture, disappearance, and murder.”
Despite such appeals and accounts, the outgoing Biden-Harris administration has declined to cut off weapons to the Israeli government and earlier this week most U.S. senators from both major parties rejected a trio of resolutions from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) that would have blocked some American arms sales to Israel.
Israel Attacks Kill 155 Palestinians in Gaza Over 72 Hours
Israel again targeted the Kamal Adwan Hospital and injured its director
by Dave DeCamp November 24, 2024, https://news.antiwar.com/2024/11/24/israel-attacks-kill-155-palestinians-in-gaza-over-72-hours/
Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip killed at least 155 Palestinians over 72 hours, according to death toll updates released by Gaza’s Health Ministry.
On Saturday, the Health Ministry said Israeli forces killed 120 Palestinians and wounded over the previous 48-hour period. On Sunday, the ministry said 35 Palestinians were killed and 94 were wounded in the past 24 hours.
The ministry’s figures are based on the number of dead and wounded Palestinians brought to hospitals and morgues. “There are still a number of victims under the rubble and on the streets, and ambulance and civil defense crews cannot reach them,” the ministry wrote on Telegram.
Israeli strikes on Sunday included attacks on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza and in the Jabalia refugee camp in the north, which has been under a total siege since early October as part of an ethnic cleansing campaign. The Israeli military issued a new evacuation order for Shejaiya, an eastern suburb of Gaza City, resulting in more forced displacement of Palestinian civilians.
Israeli forces again targeted the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beith Lahia, another city that’s been under total siege. The shelling wounded the hospital director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safia, who has been drawing attention to the siege by releasing video statements and talking to media outlets.
According to Al Jazeera, Gaza Civil Defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal said that Abu Safia suffered an injury to his back and left thigh due to metal fragments but was now in a “stable” condition in hospital.
From his hospital bed, Abu Safia said the attack won’t stop him and other hospital staff from “completing our humanitarian mission, and we will continue to do this job at any cost.”
Gaza’s Health Ministry said the latest violence brought its death toll since October 2023 to 44,211 and the number of wounded to 104,567. A group of American healthcare workers who volunteered in Gaza estimated in an open letter to President Biden in October that the US-backed Israeli onslaught has killed at least 118,908 Palestinians, a total that includes indirect deaths caused by the Israeli siege.
Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, who led the letter, told Antiwar.com in a recent interview that the estimate was the bare minimum they came up with by looking at the available data.
A massacre within a massacre: How journalists reporting on Gaza deaths are being targeted
Over 160 media workers have been killed and 60 detained as the methodical destruction of the brutalized Strip continues.
Eva Bartlett, 9 Nov 24 https://www.rt.com/news/606860-journalists-killed-reporting-gaza/
In spite of experiencing two Israeli wars on Gaza, I never imagined the horrific scenes coming out of northern Gaza now: Israel is exterminating the population in broad daylight, broadcast for all the world to see.
And no one is doing a damn thing to stop it.
Israel has besieged northern Gaza for weeks, preventing most humanitarian aid from entering, putting the population of 400,000 already starving Palestinian civilians in the north at severe risk of full starvation. The Israeli parliament has voted to ban UNRWA, the United Nations agency for humanitarian aid, which has been the sole lifeline for many Palestinians.
Israeli forces have also bombarded water stations and wells, as well as cutting off communications with the outside world, depriving people of access to water, and leaving them trapped and isolated.
According to Euro-Med Monitor, in the last two weeks, 500 Palestinians have been confirmed dead in northern Gaza, “and thousands more have sustained injuries. Many remain unaccounted for, either in the streets or buried under the debris.”
As they have done elsewhere throughout the Gaza Strip during more than one year of genocide, Israeli forces are targeting hospitals in Gaza’s north. Euro-Med reported that, “Israeli army forces surrounded the Indonesian Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahia. They fired two artillery shells at the hospital, cut off its electricity, and targeted anyone moving in the area.”
The army is firing on medics and other rescuers, as they’ve done throughout 2023-2024, and as they did in 2009, when medics I was with came under Israeli sniper fire, and another medic I knew was killed by a flechette (dart) bomb. By killing the rescuers and destroying the hospitals, Israel ensures maimed Palestinians will go without medical care and probably die.
This is, of course, illegal under international law. But as Israel’s genocidal actions have shown the world, the Israeli government, army and settlers believe laws don’t apply to them. Take the horrific video of an Israeli drone precision-targeting a Palestinian child, killing it, and then bombing the civilians who ran to try to rescue the child. Par for the course for the Israeli army. Were the perpetrator one of the United States’ enemies, there would be calls for no-fly zones, sanctions and corporate media howling 24/7
Not content to merely murder Palestinian civilians by bombing, sniping and starvation, the Israeli army has reportedly been deploying robots with explosives and leaving booby trapped barrels to remotely detonate.
The scenes which journalists have been able to publish are surreal, like science fiction, with quadcopters policing the streets. A week ago, a friend told me in a message that he had to choose between starving or risking being shot dead by Israel soldiers or quadcopters if he tried to get bread.
Some days ago, he messaged me at 4 in the morning: Israeli tanks were outside his home, the audio he sent was terrifying. He chose to stay in his home rather than endure another Nakba.
I don’t know if he is alive now.
War on journalists
Earlier this month, Palestinian cameraman Fadi al-Wahidi was shot in the neck by an Israeli quadcopter, leaving him paralyzed. Aside from Al Jazeera, for which Fadi worked, most Western media and journalist projection organizations are unsurprisingly silent.
Reporters Without Borders, which I previously wrote about for its downplaying the number of Palestinian journalists killed by Israel, has no entry on Fadi. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CJP), at least, does. Its entry notes:
“Al Wahidi was critically injured in the neck by a bullet fired from an Israeli reconnaissance aircraft while Al Wahidi and correspondent Anas Al-Sharif were covering an Israeli siege on northern Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp. Both men were wearing “Press” vests and clearly identifiable as journalists.”
Anas al-Sharif – who continues to courageously report from northern Gaza – told CJP they’d been in an area “completely far from the areas of operations of the Israeli occupation forces,” and full of residents when, “an Israeli reconnaissance drone fired at us. After the shooting, we tried to move to another safer place and hide from any danger, but a bullet from the plane hit our colleague Fadi Al-Wahidi in the neck, which led to his complete paralysis.”
Wahidi has since fallen into a coma. His colleagues and friends are pleading for some sort of international intervention to allow him to be taken abroad for medical care, to save his life.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported, citing the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS), that between 7 October 2023 and 10 October 2024 168 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed in the Gaza Strip, including 17 women, 360 were injured, and 60 were detained.
The extermination campaign continues
It’s absolutely devastating to watch every day pass with alarming new updates from or on northern Gaza. Like Anas al-Sharif, Palestinian journalist Hossam Shabat courageously reports apocalyptic scenes of Israeli bombarding in northern Gaza.
In a live update on X recently, he said:
“We are witnessing genocide and ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza, specifically in Jabalia, which is under siege from all directions. Israeli occupation forces are bombing displaced civilians, detaining them, and attempting to ethnically cleanse them. They are targeting shelters for displaced civilians, and bodies are scattered everywhere in the north, along the roads. Thousands of civilians are being forcefully displaced (ethnically cleansed) from the north.”
Meanwhile, in a bout of meaningless theatrics, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin have “demanded Tel Aviv improves the humanitarian situation in Gaza within 30 days or risk losing US military aid and face possible legal action.”
But clearly Israel’s biggest backer is spouting nonsense: there will be no cut to military aid, there will be no legal action, the US will never take a position to force Israel to cease the massacre in Gaza. In fact, giving Israel one month before any supposed repercussion is, in my opinion, giving Israel a green light to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza as quickly as possible.
Israel seems hell-bent on implementing former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s ‘Five Fingers’ project, which envisioned carving Gaza into segments, all under Israeli security control. If this is Israel’s intent, we will see the same bloody scenes from northern Gaza repeated block by block Israel all over the rest of the already brutalized Strip.
Israel Keeps Finding New Ways To Play Victim While Committing Genocide
Caitlin Johnstone, Nov 10, 2024, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-keeps-finding-new-ways-to?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=151441702&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Israel is really struggling with how difficult its present circumstances make playing the victim. It keeps having to invent new abuses to be victimized by like the imaginary Amsterdam “pogrom” and the fake mass rape narrative that surfaced months after October 7, because it can’t sit comfortably in the role of victimizer while on trial for genocide in international courts.
Playing victim is too deeply ingrained in the narrative control strategies of Israel and its apologists, so they have to keep coming up with new and innovative ways for Israel to be victimized even when it is very clearly the last state on earth who has any business being viewed as such.
We keep seeing the word “pogrom” used to refer to Israeli hooligans getting their asses kicked for obnoxious behavior in Amsterdam even as Israeli settlers keep committing textbook pogroms in the occupied West Bank.
Just a week ago armed Israeli settlers went on a violent rampage torching Palestinian people’s houses, vehicles and olive trees in order to terrorize them and drive them away. This is the exact type of behavior that the word “pogrom” has historically been used to describe, but you never hear that word used in the mass media to describe Israeli thuggishness. Instead we’re seeing it used to describe Israeli soccer hooligans getting beat up after they tore down Palestinian flags and sang chants about murdering children in Gaza.
So we’re seeing some good news and some bad news about Donald Trump’s potential cabinet picks when it comes to US warmongering and militarism.
The good news is that Trump has publicly ruled out giving psychopathic war hawks Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo a role in his next administration, explicitly naming them in a post on Truth Social and saying they won’t be invited.
This announcement suggests that Trump is at least trying to win the favor of the more anti-interventionist faction of his base. Pundits like Tucker Carlson have been publicly crusading against both Haley and Pompeo throughout this election cycle, and I mention Carlson specifically because he reportedly has Trump’s ear and was believed to have played a role in talking Trump out of bombing Iran in 2019.
The bad news is that other professional warmongers appear to be working their way into the administration. Reports from both Bloomberg and Fox News say the horrible Mike Rogers is under consideration to be the next secretary of defense. The Ron Paul Institute’s Daniel McAdams has a good thread on Twitter calling Rogers “an utter warhawk neocon” who is “arguably worse than Pompeo and Rubio,” noting that Rogers has promoted insanely hawkish positions on Ukraine/Russia, Israel/Iran, and China.
This news, in addition to Trump’s selection of Iran hawk Brian Hook to help staff the incoming State Department, makes it clear that Trump could still easily wind up with a cabinet packed full of warmongering swamp monsters just like last time. Hopefully he keeps getting pressured not to do so.
In a new article on “the expanding ground occupation of the Gaza Strip by the IDF” about the way Israel has been carving up Gaza and seizing more and more territory, Israel’s Ynet News reports that far right elements within the Israeli government are simply waiting for the Israeli hostages held by Hamas to die so that their deaths can be used to justify continued occupation and the construction of Jewish settlements in Gaza.
It’s like a false flag conspiracy theory, except it’s definitely happening and is being done right out in the open, and is even being announced ahead of time.
Democrats: Oh no the right wing voters we again tried to win over voted Republican again and we lost again.
Leftists: So stop doing that and win over the left instead by promoting immensely popular social policies.
Democrats: No way man, if we do that we’ll lose.
‘Horrific Reality’: Nearly 70% of UN-Verified Gaza Deaths Are Women and Children
The United Nations human rights office noted the “unprecedented levels of killings, death, injury, starvation, illness, disease, displacement, detention, and destruction” wrought by Israel’s 13-month onslaught.
Brett Wilkins, Nov 08, 2024, https://www.commondreams.org/news/how-many-women-and-children-have-died-in-gaza
Nearly 7 in 10 people killed by Israeli forces in Gaza during an earlier six-month period of the ongoing assault on the Palestinian enclave were women and children, the United Nations human rights office said Friday.
The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) verified 8,119 of the more than 34,500 Palestinians killed by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bombs and bullets between November 2023 and April 2024. Among those killed were 3,588 children and 2,036 women ranging in age from newborns to nonagenarians. Minors under the age of 18 made up 44% of the victims in the analysis.
The OHCHR report noted the “unprecedented levels of killings, death, injury, starvation, illness, disease, displacement, detention, and destruction” wrought by Israel’s onslaught, as well as the “wanton disregard” by Israeli forces and Hamas of international humanitarian law.
The analysis also highlights “the Israeli government’s continuing unlawful failures to allow, facilitate, and ensure the entry of humanitarian aid, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and repeated mass displacement.”
“If committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population… these violations may constitute crimes against humanity,” OHCHR said. “And if committed with intent to destroy—in whole or in part—a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, they may also constitute genocide.”
South Africa is leading a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. On Thursday, Ireland became the latest of around 30 countries and regional blocs to announce its intent to intervene in the case on behalf of Palestine.
OHCHR found that 88% of the verified Palestinian fatalities from Israeli attacks on residential buildings were people killed in strikes that claimed at least five lives. In recent weeks, Israel’s renewed offensive in northern Gaza—which some experts believe is an attempt to ethnically cleanse the area by bombing and starving its people before forcibly expelling them to make way for Israeli recolonization—has wiped out a staggering number of civilians, including many women and children, in single strikes on homes, hospitals, and refugee camps.
“The high number of fatalities per attack was due to the IDF’s use of weapons with wide area effects in densely populated areas,” the analysis states, adding that some Palestinians may have been killed by errant projectiles launched by Hamas or other Gaza-based militants.
The new report also raises concerns over Isrsel’s forcible transfer of Palestinians, systematic attacks on medical workers, journalists, and reported use of white phosphorus munitions—which are banned in populated areas.
Israel has not yet responded to the OHCHR report but has previously said that it “will continue to act, as it always has done, according to international law.”
Since October 7, 2023, when Israeli forces launched their assault on the densely populated coastal enclave of 2.3 million people in response to the Hamas-led attack on Israel, the Gaza Ministry of Health and U.N. agencies say that more than 43,600 Palestinians have been killed and over 102,500 others wounded. More than 10,000 others are missing and believed dead and buried beneath the ruins of bombed homes and other structures.
Among those killed, say officials, are more than 18,000 children. Last month, the U.K.-based charity Oxfam International said that Israel’s yearlong assault on Gaza has been the deadliest year of conflict for women and children anywhere in the world over the past two decades.
The relentless death and destruction has caused the “complete psychological destruction” of Gaza’s youth, according to the charity Save the Children. The same has been said of many Gazans of all ages.
Last December, the U.N. Children’s Fund called Gaza “the world’s most dangerous place to be a child.” Earlier this year, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres for the first time added Israel to his so-called “List of Shame” of countries that kill and injure children during wars and other armed conflicts.
The ICJ—which is a U.N. body—has issued three provisionsal orders in the ongoing genocide case, including directives for Israel to prevent genocidal acts, stop its assault on Rafah, and allow humanitarian aid into Gaza. Israel has been accused of flouting all three orders.
The trends and patterns of violations, and of applicable international law as clarified by the International Court of Justice, must inform the steps to be taken to end the current crisis,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said in a statement Friday.
“The violence must stop immediately, the hostages and those arbitrarily detained must be released, and we must focus on flooding Gaza with humanitarian aid,” he added.
Report Details Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing Campaign in Beit Lahia, Northern Gaza
There is no longer a single house people can live in, and the Israeli military fires artillery rounds to ensure any remaining civilians leave
by Dave DeCamp November 6, 2024, https://news.antiwar.com/2024/11/06/report-details-israels-ethnic-cleansing-campaign-in-beit-lahia-northern-gaza/
A report from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published on Wednesday detailed the situation in Beit Lahia, a city in northern Gaza near the Israeli border where Israeli forces are implementing an ethnic cleansing campaign.
At the beginning of October, Israel ordered hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in northern Gaza to head south. Many ignored the order since there was nowhere safe to go, and the Israeli military focused its renewed assault on the north on Beith Lahia and neighboring Beit Hanoun and Jabalia, where it imposed a full siege to starve out civilians.
The Israeli military has said it forcibly expelled 55,000 Palestinians from the Jabalia refugee camp, and it has no intention of allowing them back. According to Haaretz, only a few thousand civilians remain in Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun.
“There is no intention of allowing the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to return to their homes,” IDF spokesman Brig Gen Itzik Cohen told reporters on Tuesday.
The Haaretz reporters traveled to Beit Lahia and al-Atatra, a neighborhood northwest of the city, and described the destruction they saw. “In [al-Atatra] and Beit Lahia, there isn’t a single house that people can return to and live in. The area looks like it was hit by a natural disaster. There are no civilians to be seen among the ruins,” the report says.
As an attempt to remove any remaining civilians, the Israeli military fires artillery into Beit Lahia at night. “Those who want to return can’t do so, because the army prevents it. The bottom line is that it makes no difference what the IDF calls its actions. The army has begun the stage of cleansing the northern Strip while it prepares to hold onto the area for a long time to come,” the report reads.
Israeli media has reported that the Israeli military is carrying out a version of the “general’s plan,” an outline for ethnic cleansing drawn up by retired IDF generals. The plan calls for the complete evacuation of all Palestinian civilians from northern Gaza to below the Netzarim Corridor, a strip of land controlled by the Israeli military. Under the plan, if civilians don’t leave, they are to be treated as combatants and killed either by military action or starvation.
While the Israeli military claims its cleansing campaign is about removing Hamas, the IDF commander in charge of Beit Lahia, Col. Yaniv Barot, acknowledged they found no significant militant infrastructure in the area. “Barot says his mission is to continue to locate and eliminate terror infrastructure and Hamas activists. But he says that in the course of the most recent operation, no underground infrastructure, heavy war materiel or weapons production sites were found,” the report says.
The Haaretz report said the activity on the ground proves that the Israeli military is bisecting northern Gaza, potentially to pave the way for the construction of Jewish settlements, an idea strongly supported by many Israeli ministers and members of the Knesset.
The Biden administration has claimed it opposes any implementation of the “general’s plan” and the advancement of settlements but has continued to provide military aid for the ethnic cleansing campaign.
Israeli Scholar Lays Out ‘True Brutality’ of Ethnic Cleansing Now Underway in Gaza
“Such dehumanization cannot help but trigger our associations with scenes depicting the Nazis loading Jews into cattle cars.”
Jake Johnson, Nov 01, 2024, https://www.commondreams.org/news/israeli-scholar-northern-gaza
Much alarm has been raised over the so-called “Generals’ Plan,” an ethnic cleansing proposal for northern Gaza that has reportedly garnered attention in the highest reaches of the Israeli government.
But Israeli scholar Idan Landau argued in a column published in English by +972 Magazine on Friday that what the Israeli military is actually doing in northern Gaza “is even more appalling” than the plan outlined by a group of retired generals. Landau argued that focus on the details of the Generals’ Plan has served to obscure the “true brutality” of Israel’s deadly operations in northern Gaza, which has been rendered a hellscape of death and destruction by the military assault and siege.
Landau, a professor of linguistics at Tel Aviv University, opened his column—first published in Hebrew on his blog—by pointing to two photos: one showing a celebratory event at a camp built by an Israeli settler organization just outside of the Gaza Strip, and the other showing displaced Palestinians lined up at gunpoint amid the ruins of northern Gaza.
“These photos tell a story that is unfolding so rapidly that its harrowing details are already on the brink of being forgotten,” wrote Landau. “Yet this story could start from any point during the past 76 years: the Nakba of 1948, the ‘Siyag Plan‘ that followed it, the Naksa of 1967. On one side, displaced Palestinians with all the belongings they can carry, hungry, wounded, and exhausted; on the other, joyful Jewish settlers, sanctifying the new land that the army has cleared for them.”
The Israeli military’s dehumanization of the people of Gaza, Landau wrote, “cannot help but trigger our associations with scenes depicting the Nazis loading Jews into cattle cars.”
Landau wrote that what the Israeli army has been implementing in northern Gaza in recent weeks is “not quite” the Generals’ Plan, which entails giving Palestinians still in the region a week to leave before declaring the area a closed military zone—and designating everyone who remains a militant who can be denied humanitarian assistance and killed.
The actual strategy Israeli soldiers have been deploying in northern Gaza is “an even more sinister and brutal version” of the Generals’ Plan “within a more concentrated area.”
“The first, most immediate distinction is the abandoning of provisions for reducing harm to civilians, i.e. giving residents of northern Gaza a week to evacuate southward,” Landau wrote. “The second departure concerns the real purpose of emptying the area: while portraying the military operation as a security necessity, it was, in fact, an embodiment of the spirit of ethnic cleansing and resettlement from day one.”
“As opposed to the picture painted by the army, implying that residents in the northern areas were free to move south and get out of the danger zone, local testimonies presented a frightening reality: Anyone who so much as stepped out of their home risked being shot by Israeli snipers or drones, including young children and those holding white flags,” Landau noted. “Rescue crews trying to help the wounded also came under attack, as well as journalists trying to document the events.”
The scholar cites one “particularly harrowing video” in which a Palestinian child is seen “on the ground pleading for help after being wounded by an airstrike; when a crowd gathers to help him, they are suddenly hit by another airstrike, killing one and wounding more than 20 others.”
“This is the reality amid which the people of northern Gaza were supposed to walk, starved and exhausted, into the ‘humanitarian zone,” Landau wrote. “Since the Israeli army began its operation in northern Gaza, it has killed over 1,000 Palestinians. The Israeli Air Force usually bombs at night while the victims are sleeping, slaughtering entire families in their homes and making it more difficult to evacuate the wounded. And on October 24, rescue services announced that the intensity of the bombardment left them with no choice but to cease all operations in the besieged areas.”
The deadly military assault, Landau stressed, has been accompanied by a “starvation policy” that has severely hindered the flow of humanitarian assistance to northern Gaza.
The heads of prominent United Nations agencies and human rights organizations warned Friday that conditions on the ground in the region are “apocalyptic” and that “the entire Palestinian population in North Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine, and violence.”
Landau noted that on October 16, following pressure from the Biden administration, the Israeli government reportedly allowed 100 aid trucks to enter northern Gaza.
“But journalists in the north were quick to correct the record: Nothing at all had entered the besieged areas,” Landau wrote. “On October 20, Israel denied a further request by U.N. agencies to bring in food, fuel, blood, [and] medicines. Three days later, in response to a request for an interim order by the Israeli human rights group Gisha, the state admitted to the High Court that no humanitarian aid had been allowed into northern Gaza up to that point. By this time, we are already talking about a three-week-long food siege.”
Addressing the question of “what is left for us to do” in the face of such a catastrophe, Landau wrote that “the consensus concerning the war of extermination poisons Israeli society and blackens its future so profoundly that even small pockets of resistance can proliferate stamina and hope to those who have not yet been carried away by the currents of madness.”
“We can also look for partners in this fight abroad, where the critical lever of pressure is the pipeline of American weapons,” he added. “The struggle to end this intensifying war of extermination and transfer in Gaza, particularly in the north, is first and foremost a human fight. It is a fight for life, both in Gaza and Israel: for the very chance that life can continue to exist in this blood-soaked land. Nothing could be more patriotic.”
+972 Magazine published Landau’s column a day after Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, warned in a statement that “time is running out” to stop the far-right Israeli government’s attempt to “erase the Palestinians from their own land and allow Israel to fully annex Palestinian territory.”
“Genocide and a man-made humanitarian catastrophe are unfolding in front of us and in Gaza,” said Albanese. “I regret to see so many member states are avoiding acknowledging the suffering of the Palestinian people and instead look away.”
Israel Killed Over 50 Children in Jabalia in 48 Hours: UN
Four children were wounded by an Israeli strike on a vaccination center in northern Gaza
by Dave DeCamp November 3, 2024, https://news.antiwar.com/2024/11/03/israel-kills-over-50-children-in-jabalia-within-48-hours-un/
Israeli strikes in Jabalia, northern Gaza, killed over 50 children in just 48 hours, the UN’s child relief agency, UNICEF, said in a statement on Saturday.
“This has already been a deadly weekend of attacks in North Gaza. In the past 48 hours alone, over 50 children have reportedly been killed in Jabalia, where strikes leveled two residential buildings sheltering hundreds of people,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell.
Jabalia has been the focus of an Israeli ethnic cleansing campaign in northern Gaza that began in early October. The campaign has involved a starvation blockade and massive strikes on civilians, and Israeli troops are preventing the approximately 50,000 Palestinians who have been forced out of Jabalia from returning.
Russell said Israeli strikes included an attack on UNICEF staff working on a polio vaccination campaign for children and an attack on a vaccination center. The World Health Organization said at least six people, including four children, were wounded in the Israeli strike on the vaccination center.
“The attacks on Jabalia, the vaccination clinic, and the UNICEF staff member are yet further examples of the grave consequences of the indiscriminate strikes on civilians in the Gaza strip,” Russell said. “Taken alongside the horrific level of child deaths in North Gaza from other attacks, these most recent events combine to write yet another dark chapter in one of the darkest periods of this terrible war.”
Israeli strikes continued to pound northern, central, and southern Gaza on Sunday. Medical sources told Al Jazeera that at least 35 Palestinians were killed, including 16 in the north. An Israeli attack on a residential building in the southern city of Khan Younis killed seven members of the same family, including four children.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said in its death toll update on Sunday that at least 27 Palestinians were killed and 86 were injured in the previous 24-hour period. The latest violence brought the ministry’s death toll since October 2023 to 43,341 and the number of wounded to 102,105.
The Health Ministry’s numbers are considered an undercount since they don’t account for Palestinians missing and presumed dead under the rubble or indirect deaths caused by the Israeli siege. A group of American healthcare workers who volunteered in Gaza have estimated the US-backed Israeli bombing campaign and siege has killed at least 118,908 Palestinians, including over 60,000 who have starved to death.
The genocidal slaughter would not be possible without US military aid, as Israeli officials have acknowledged they couldn’t sustain operations in Gaza for more than a few months without US support. The Israeli news site Calcalist has estimated the US has funded about 70% of Israel’s military operations over the past year.
Banning United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is a new way to kill children, aid groups warn
Electronic Intafada, Maureen Clare Murphy 30 October 2024
Palestinian human rights groups say that new Israeli legislation banning a UN agency from providing services to Palestinians under occupation “aligns with a broader pattern of Israel’s genocidal intent.”
On Monday, Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, passed into law – with near unanimity – two bills that would effectively ban UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, from operating in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
One of the laws bars state authorities from having any contact with UNRWA, which provides health, education and other basic services to millions of Palestinian refugees in the occupied Palestinian territories as well as Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
“The legislation also terminates the 1967 agreement between Israel and UNRWA with immediate effect,” according to three prominent Palestinian human rights groups: Al-Haq, Al Mezan and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.
The second law bans the agency from operating in so-called Israeli territory and “will go into effect three months after the passing of the laws – approximately by the end of January 2025,” the rights groups said.
If enacted, the new laws will shutter UNRWA’s headquarters in eastern Jerusalem, which Israel has unlawfully occupied since 1967 and annexed in violation of international law. UNRWA’s Jerusalem headquarters are the administrative hub for its operations across the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
According to media reports, Israel plans to build settlements on the site of UNRWA’s headquarters, which state authorities ordered vacated in May.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has the authority to block the legislation. But he is unlikely to do so, despite international pressure, especially after his foreign minister declared António Guterres, the UN secretary-general, persona non grata.
Israel’s unbridled hostility toward the United Nations will only escalate with every attempt towards accountability through the world body’s organs.
On Wednesday, the UN Security Council issued a statement declaring its support for UNRWA and warning “against any attempts to dismantle or diminish UNRWA’s operations and mandate.”
“Criminalization of humanitarian aid”
Three prominent Palestinian human rights groups – Al-Haq, Al Mezan and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights – said that the passage of the laws is part of a “calculated, decades-long campaign to dismantle UNRWA and undermine the inalienable right of return” of Palestinian refugees.
“Now more than ever, amid Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, UNRWA’s role is not only essential but irreplaceable,” the groups added.
The new legislation “amounts to the criminalization of humanitarian aid and will worsen an already catastrophic humanitarian crisis,” Agnès Callamard, the head of Amnesty International, said on Tuesday………………………………………………
UNRWA is the agency with the largest humanitarian footprint in the West Bank and Gaza and one of the largest employers in the occupied Palestinian territories.
“Dismantling UNRWA will have a catastrophic impact on the international response to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, told the president of the General Assembly in a letter on Tuesday. “It will also sabotage any chance of recovery.”
In the absence of any other entity to provide government-like services, the effective ban on UNRWA will leave more than 660,000 children in Gaza without an education. “An entire generation of children will be sacrificed,” Lazzarini said.
The Palestinian rights groups observe that 2.4 million Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and Gaza “will be deprived of essential services – particularly education and healthcare – that only UNRWA has the mandate and capacity to deliver.”
UNRWA staff killed and tortured
Addressing Israel’s allegations, Lazzarini said that UNRWA provided Israel with a list of its staff on an annual basis for 15 years. Personnel that Israel never raised concerns over are now included in its lists of alleged fighters, he said.
Repeated requests to the Israeli government appealing for evidence regarding its allegations against UNRWA staff have gone without a reply, he added.
“UNRWA is therefore in the invidious position of being unable to address allegations for which it has no evidence, while these allegations continue to be used to undermine the agency,” Lazzarini said.
He added that at least 237 UNRWA staff have been killed in Gaza and more than 200 of its facilities have been damaged or destroyed in attacks that have killed more than 560 people “seeking UN protection.” Meanwhile, “dozens of UNRWA staff have been detained and report being tortured,” Lazzarini said.
Israel has abused UNRWA employees detained in Gaza in order to extract forced confessions incriminating the agency.
Israel’s attacks on UNRWA “are an integral part” of the crumbling of “the rules-based international order … in a repetition of the horrors that led to the establishment of the United Nations,” Lazzarini added………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
At the time that Israel’s Knesset voted to ban UNRWA, some 100,000 Palestinians were under siege in the northern Gaza areas of Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya and Jabaliya refugee camp without food, water or medical supplies.
“The entire population of north Gaza is at risk of dying,” Joyce Msuya, the acting UN relief chief, stated two days before the vote. https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/banning-unrwa-new-way-kill-children-aid-groups-warn
Entire northern Gaza population at risk of dying – UN
Ongoing Israeli military operations in the region disregard basic humanity and the laws of war, a top humanitarian official has said
27 Oct, 2024 , https://www.rt.com/news/606581-un-northern-gaza-dying-population/
What Israeli forces are doing in besieged Gaza during their ongoing war against Hamas cannot be allowed to continue, the United Nation’s top humanitarian official has said.
“The entire population of north Gaza is at risk of dying,” Joyce Msuya, acting Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, warned on Saturday, in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
Israel has struck hospitals in the region, detained health workers and prevented first responders from rescuing people trapped under the rubble, according to the official.
“Shelters have been emptied and burned down…families have been separated, and men and boys taken away by the truckload,” she said, adding that “such blatant disregard for basic humanity and for the laws of war must stop.”
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, echoed the warning, having voiced deep concerns over the “catastrophic” situation in Gaza. He also highlighted the severe impact of the ongoing hostilities on healthcare in the region.
“Intensive military operations unfolding around and within healthcare facilities and a critical shortage of medical supplies, compounded by severely limited access, are depriving people of life saving care,” Ghebreyesus wrote on X on Saturday.
The WHO Director-General added that Kamal Adwan Hospital in the city of Jabalia, one of the few functioning medical facilities in northern Gaza, has been severely impacted, with only a limited number of staff remaining to care for nearly 200 patients after the detention of 44 male personnel.
Earlier this week, the Health Ministry in the Palestinian enclave claimed that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) stormed the hospital, detaining hundreds of staff, patients and displaced people.
The IDF insisted it was operating in and around the facility based on “intelligence information regarding the presence of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure in the area”.
“In the weeks preceding the operation, the IDF facilitated the evacuation of patients from the area while maintaining emergency services,” it added in a post on social media on Friday.
West Jerusalem has been repeatedly accused of indiscriminately targeting civilians in Gaza. According to the enclave’s health officials, over 42,000 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 97,000 wounded since the fighting between Hamas and Israel erupted in October 2023. The IDF has dismissed allegations of committing war crimes, arguing that Hamas is using Palestinian civilians as human shields.
More than a year into the conflict, around 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million population has been displaced, most of them multiple times, according to UN estimates.
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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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