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Oxfam reaction to Knesset decision

October 29, 2024, by: The AIM Network,  https://theaimn.com/oxfam-reaction-to-knesset-decision/—

Oxfam Australia

In reaction to the Knesset passing bills banning UNRWA from operating in areas under Israel’s control, Sally Abi Khalil, Oxfam Regional Director in the Middle East and North Africa said:

“Israel has bombed Palestinians to death, maimed them, starved them, and is now ridding them of their biggest lifeline of aid. Piece by piece, Israel is systemically dismantling Gaza as a land that is autonomous and liveable for Palestinians. Its banning of UNRWA today is condemnable and another step in this crime.

“The decision will further undermine the ability of the international community to provide sufficient humanitarian aid and to save lives in any safe, independent and impartial way.

“UNRWA was not only the biggest and most established agency that has been delivering aid and sustenance to the people of Gaza for years, it was also a thread that connected them in some hope of solidarity and security to the United Nations.

“We are in no doubt that Israel and its allies are fully aware of the terrible consequences that this decision will have on Palestinians living in Gaza, many of whom are already starving. We join others in warning again that this will result in more death, more suffering, and more forced displacement of people from their besieged homeland. It is impossible not to believe that this is their aim.”

October 30, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | 1 Comment

‘This is an extermination’: Israel’s assault on north Gaza’s last functioning hospital

Two weeks before Israel began the current siege, Netanyahu told Israeli lawmakers that he was considering the “Generals’ plan,” so named for the proposal put forward by senior Israeli army officials in early September based on the vision of retired Israeli general Giora Eiland, who wrote an Op-Ed a year ago explaining how northern Gaza should be emptied of the entire population through mass starvation and extermination.

Israel is emptying northern Gaza of its inhabitants during its ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign. One of the key strategies it is using to achieve this is by hospitals, and the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia has become a primary target.

By Qassam Muaddi  October 23, 2024,  https://mondoweiss.net/2024/10/this-is-an-extermination-israels-assault-on-north-gazas-last-functioning-hospital/

Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians across northern Gaza have been forced on a death march by the Israeli army since Monday, October 21. Northern Gaza is being emptied of its inhabitants, and one of Israel’s strategies in achieving this goal is to take out the area’s few remaining social institutions: hospitals.

As part of its ongoing offensive on northern Gaza, the Israeli army has been trying to clear out the entire area north of Gaza City for the past 18 days. At least 200,000 people continue to stay there, many of them fearing, according to local testimonies, that they will be targeted on the way south or in Israeli-designated “safe zones,” which have been consistently bombarded over recent months. The ongoing siege includes a second siege-within-the-siege on the Jabalia refugee camp, accompanied by a massive bombing and shelling campaign that is forcing tens of thousands of people to leave their homes. Many of them have headed to Beit Lahia, and particularly to Kamal Adwan Hospital. Over the past 18 days, the hospital has been issuing daily calls for help, warning of an imminent humanitarian catastrophe.

The Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia is one of three functioning hospitals in the northern Gaza governorate. The hospital is the only fully functional medical center in the north, with a specialized neonatal section for newborns.

The two other hospitals in Gaza are barely functional. The Indonesian Hospital in the town of Sheikh Zayed went out of services last week after Israeli troops besieged it and invaded its surroundings. Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia, smaller in size, has suspended most of its services and only functions at a limited capacity. On Tuesday, October 22, the al-Awda Hospital’s director, Bakr Abu Safiyeh, told al-Ghad TV that Israeli quadcopter drones were opening fire directly on the hospital.

Dr. Baker said that Israeli quadcopters were also opening fire on anybody moving in the streets, including ambulances. According to the hospital director, an Israeli strike targeted an ambulance carrying a mother who had just given birth. The mother was killed, Dr. Baker said, and the baby was later found alive by rescue teams and was taken to Kamal Adwan Hospital’s neonatal section.

Why targeting hospitals is the key to emptying northern Gaza

Named after Kamal Adwan, a Palestinian resistance leader assassinated by Israel in Beirut in 1973, the hospital has become a central destination for the wounded and the displaced. Like most other hospitals in Gaza over the past year of genocidal war, Kamal Adwan Hospital is the only remaining public space in northern Gaza that offers services and provides shelter, representing the backbone of Gazan civil society and social cohesion. That is why Israel is targeting it, with the aim of forcibly expelling the population in service of the Israeli plan to empty the north. This has now come to be called “the Generals’ Plan.”

Two weeks before Israel began the current siege, Netanyahu told Israeli lawmakers that he was considering the “Generals’ plan,” so named for the proposal put forward by senior Israeli army officials in early September based on the vision of retired Israeli general Giora Eiland, who wrote an Op-Ed a year ago explaining how northern Gaza should be emptied of the entire population through mass starvation and extermination.

The plan is an enhanced version of what Israel has already been doing for the past year, including targeting and forcibly evacuating hospitals. Israeli forces raided al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City for the first time in November, when the compound and its surroundings were crowded with displaced families, and forced medics, patients, and displaced people to leave. But in February, when Israeli forces began to withdraw from parts of Gaza, including Gaza City, Palestinians returned to al-Shifa and began to operate parts of it again as displaced families began to take over its spaces once more.

Then, in April, Israeli forces invaded al-Shifa a second time in a raid that lasted several weeks with the purpose of accelerating social collapse in Gaza City. The Israeli army combed the hospital building by building and floor by floor, destroying equipment and, according to survivor testimonies gathered by Mondoweiss at the time, executing hundreds of civil government employees and separating people into differently-colored bracelet. At the end of the operation, Dr. Marwan Abu Saada, Deputy Director of al-Shifa, told UN News that the destruction of al-Shifa “took out the heart of the health system in the Gaza Strip,” adding that “al-Shifa is finished forever.”

In December 2023, two months into the Israeli genocide in Gaza, Israeli forces raided the Kamal Adwan hospital and forced medical staff, patients, and displaced civilians to evacuate. The hospital resumed partial services in July after joint efforts by the World Health Organization and other international parties, coupled with pressure on Israel to allow limited quantities of humanitarian aid into the north.

As Israel set its eyes on Gaza’s northernmost governorate to execute Eiland’s plan, Kamal Adwan Hospital is now the last bastion of Palestinian steadfastness in the north. This makes it a prime target in the ongoing Israeli offensive. Kamal Adwan came close to completely shutting down multiple times, mainly due to the lack of fuel for power generators, saved every time by intensified pressure by international parties on Israel to allow limited quantities of fuel to pass through

Kamal Adwan Hospital weathers siege and overcapacity

“We need blood units, shrouds for the dead, doctors, and food,” Dr. Husam Abu Safiyeh, director of Kamal Adwan hospital, told the media on Wednesday, October 23, signaling that Israeli forces had cut off internet services from the area.

The day before, on October 22, Dr. Abu Safiyeh told the media that the hospital had run out of blood units, had a shortage of medical staff, that the available staff was hungry and exhausted, and that the power generators were about to run out of fuel.

Kamal Adwan Hospital weathers siege and overcapacity

“We need blood units, shrouds for the dead, doctors, and food,” Dr. Husam Abu Safiyeh, director of Kamal Adwan hospital, told the media on Wednesday, October 23, signaling that Israeli forces had cut off internet services from the area.

The day before, on October 22, Dr. Abu Safiyeh told the media that the hospital had run out of blood units, had a shortage of medical staff, that the available staff was hungry and exhausted, and that the power generators were about to run out of fuel.

“This baby girl here arrived after her family was targeted by [an Israeli] strike,” said Abu Safiyeh while filming one particular newborn. “Her mother and father were martyred, as well as her grandmother, and she is now alone with a wound to the head and a secondary inflammation,” he explained. “If fuel doesn’t arrive [for power generators] there will be a humanitarian catastrophe for these children,” he warned.

In the hospital’s sections, the medical staff described their working conditions. “There are cases of burning, internal bleeding, skull fractures, and limb amputations,” Dr. Ameen Abu Amshah, serving at Kamal Adwan, told Mondoweiss. “Out of every 10 to 15 wounded we receive at once, an average of seven are urgent cases for surgery. We just don’t have the capacity for all this, and we are forced to prioritize the cases that can be saved” said Dr. Abu Amshah.

“The occupation army has been ordering doctors to leave, including through phone calls,” said Abu Amshah. “This is an extermination. Northern Gaza is being exterminated, Jabalia is being exterminated, and Kamal Adwan hospital is being exterminated, but we will not leave.”

Forced death march

On Tuesday, October 23, Israeli drones dropped leaflets and aired voice messages at Palestinians who remained in the surroundings of Kamal Adwan and inside its premises, ordering them to leave. Meanwhile, hundreds of Palestinians were being gathered and forced to move out of other shelters after arresting men among them. Thousands were left stranded in the street far away from the last standing public facilities and forced to take the road yet again at gunpoint, as shown by footage aired by the Israeli army.

October 26, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

US authorizes CIA mercenaries to run biometric concentration camps in Gaza Strip

A private intelligence corporation billed as “Uber for war zones” is preparing to create what Israel hopes will be the model for supplanting Hamas rule in Gaza.

Uncaptured Media, Dan Cohen, Oct 22, 2024

The Biden administration has approved the deployment of 1,000 CIA-trained private mercenaries as part of a joint U.S.-Israeli plan to turn Gaza’s apocalyptic rubblescape into a high-tech dystopia.

Starting with Al-Atatra, a village in the northwestern Gaza Strip, the plan calls to build what the Israeli daily Ynet calls “humanitarian bubbles” – turning the remains of villages and neighborhoods into tiny concentration camps cut off from their environs and surrounded and controlled by mercenaries.

This comes as Israel carries out daily massacres and ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza, enacting the proposal known as The Generals’ Plan, originally crafted by former national security chief Giora Eiland to turn Gaza into “a place where no human being can exist.”

The plan, approved by White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, calls for the Israeli military to clear out pockets of Palestinian resistance, which it has failed to achieve, demonstrated by the recent killing of Israeli Colonel Ehasn Daksa, the highest ranking officer to lose his life in the year long war.

48 hours after stamping out resistance, they plan to erect separation walls around the neighborhood, forcing its residents, and no one else, to enter and exit using biometric identification under the CIA contractors’ control. Those who do not accept the biometric regime would be refused humanitarian aid…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://open.substack.com/pub/uncaptured/p/us-authorizes-cia-mercenaries-to

October 25, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Israel Is Routinely Shooting Children in the Head in Gaza: US Surgeon & Palestinian Nurse

 SCHEERPOST, October 17, 2024 

By DemocracyNow!

As the official death toll in Gaza passes more than 42,400, the true number may be impossible to know until Israel’s war is over. But medical workers who witnessed the carnage in Gaza’s hospitals are speaking out. We speak with Dr. Feroze Sidhwa about his op-ed in The New York Times that features harrowing stories from dozens of healthcare workers and CT scans of children shot in the head or the left side of the chest. The Times called the corresponding images of the patients too graphic to publish. “I personally wish that Americans could see more of what it looks like when a child is shot in the head, when a child is flayed open by bombs,” says Sidhwa. “I think it would make us think a little bit more about what we do in the world.” We also speak with Palestinian nurse Rajaa Musleh, who worked at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. “I will never forget the dogs were eating the dead body inside Shifa Hospital at the front of the emergency department. This will be stuck on my mind for my whole life,” says Musleh. “My message for the whole world: We are human beings. We are not numbers. We have the right to receive healthcare inside Gaza.”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: As the official death toll in Gaza passes more than 42,400, the true number may be impossible to know until Israel’s war is over. But medical workers who witnessed the carnage in Gaza’s hospitals are speaking out.

We begin today’s show with a surgeon who volunteered at the European Hospital in Khan Younis and wrote a devastating opinion piece in The New York Times headlined “65 Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics: What We Saw in Gaza.”

In a minute, we’ll be joined by Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, who begins the piece writing, quote, “I worked as a trauma surgeon in Gaza from March 25 to April 8. I’ve volunteered in Ukraine and Haiti, and I grew up in Flint, Mich. I’ve seen violence and worked in conflict zones. But of the many things that stood out about working in a hospital in Gaza, one got to me: Nearly every day I was there, I saw a new young child who had been shot in the head or the chest, virtually all of whom went on to die. Thirteen in total.

“At the time, I assumed this had to be the work of a particularly sadistic soldier located nearby. But after returning home, I met an emergency medicine physician who had worked in a different hospital in Gaza two months before me. ‘I couldn’t believe the number of kids I saw shot in the head,’ I told him. To my surprise, he responded: ‘Yeah, me, too. Every single day,’” he said.

The piece quotes dozens of healthcare workers and includes three X-rays or CT scans of pediatric patients who were shot in the head or the left side of the chest. The person who provided the scans was Dr. Mimi Syed, who worked in Khan Younis from August 8th to September 5th and said the children usually arrived at the hospital either dead or in critical condition after suffering a single shot.

On Tuesday, The New York Times opinion section editor issued a statement refuting claims circulating online that the images were altered, saying the editors had, quote, “photographs to corroborate the CT scan images,” but, quote, “because of their graphic nature, we decided these photos — of children with gunshot wounds to the head or neck — were too horrific for publication.”

For more, we’re joined by Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, the trauma and general surgeon who wrote this piece. He also spearheaded an open letter to President Biden and Vice President Harris signed by 99 U.S. medical professionals who served in Gaza, testifying to the unprecedented scale of the healthcare catastrophe and calling for an immediate ceasefire and the end to all U.S. support for Israel.

We are also joined in Chicago by Rajaa Musleh, the country representative in Gaza of MedGlobal, a medical humanitarian aid group. She previously worked as a nurse at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… more https://scheerpost.com/2024/10/17/israel-is-routinely-shooting-children-in-the-head-in-gaza-us-surgeon-palestinian-nurse/

October 19, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

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

October 17, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

“The First Live-Streamed Genocide”: Al Jazeera Exposes War Crimes Filmed by Israeli Troops Themselves

SCHEERPOST, By Amy Goodman / Democracy Now!  October 9, 2024 

Anew documentary from Al Jazeera takes a look at evidence of war crimes in Gaza in the form of social media posted by Israeli soldiers recording and celebrating their own attacks on Palestinians. We play excerpts from the film Investigating War Crimes in Gaza, now available online, and speak to two of the journalists involved in its production, director Richard Sanders and Gaza-based correspondent Youmna ElSayed. “Israelis themselves were telling us precisely what they were doing and why they were doing it,” says Sanders about the evidence the team reviewed. “They don’t think it’s complicated. They don’t think it’s nuanced. Their rhetoric is often overtly genocidal.” ElSayed adds, “They’ve had all the courage to do that because they know that they are not even going to be condemned.”

Transcript

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Health officials in Gaza say the death toll from Israel’s war has now topped 42,000, though many fear the actual death toll is far higher. We begin today’s show looking at how Israeli troops have repeatedly filmed themselves committing and celebrating war crimes in Gaza.

Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit has just released a documentary on Israeli war crimes, based in part on social media posts from Israeli soldiers themselves. The documentary begins with the Palestinian novelist Susan Abulhawa, as well as footage of the Al-Awda school massacre in July, when Israeli troops killed at least 31 people at a school sheltering displaced Palestinians. The moment the bomb exploded was captured on video by someone recording a youth soccer game in the Al-Awda school courtyard…………………………………………………

This is another clip from the documentary. We hear from Human Rights Watch’s associate director for the Middle East and North Africa, Bill Van Esveld [sic]. The clips begin with video posted online by the Israeli 202nd Paratroopers Battalion that shows a possible war crime of the shooting of unarmed Palestinians in Gaza. This is a graphic warning…………………………………………………………

We’re joined now by two guests. Youmna ElSayed is a correspondent for Al Jazeera who is based in the Gaza Strip. And Richard Sanders is the director of Al Jazeera I-Unit’s new feature-length documentary, Investigating War Crimes in Gaza.

Youmna, let’s begin with you, as you narrate this film. If you can talk about the video footage that we see, that is actually taken by Israeli soldiers themselves?

YOUMNA ELSAYED: Yes. Thank you for having me on your show again, Amy.

Of course, Israeli soldiers in Gaza taking these videos and posting them on different social media platforms, they haven’t been — they’ve had all the courage to do that because they know that they are not even going to be condemned by posting these videos. They are showing off how much they dehumanize Palestinians, how much they kill. They destroy their properties. They completely torture them and dehumanize them in different ways, whether they’re children, they’re men, they’re women. They brag about it, and they’re very proud of their doings.

And all this comes back to the fact that the Israeli army acts with complete impunity, and they know that even these videos being posted online, they won’t even be shown in other Western news outlets to point out how horrific these videos have actions committed by the Israeli army towards the civilians. On the contrary, Benjamin Netanyahu comes out and says, “We are the most moral army in the world,” when in reality they are the most inhumane army in the world.

As a journalist, as a civilian in any war zone, I am supposed to have the guarantee that a soldier from any other — any other place in the world, any other nationality in the world, as long as he carries that term, that definition that he is a soldier, he must have morals, he must have ethics that he would not hurt me as an unarmed civilian, as a journalist, as a paramedic. But in Gaza, for them, every single Palestinian, as long as you are a Palestinian, you are a legitimate target………………………………………………………

RICHARD SANDERS: Well, thank you for having me, Amy.

Yes, and that’s precisely why we begin the film with those comments from Susan Abulhawa. The essential point of the whole film is no one can hide. The Israelis themselves were telling us precisely what they were doing and why they were doing it. The film is rooted in these soldiers’ videos, of which there are thousands and thousands. And we didn’t pick particularly damaging examples. They’re all like that. I mean, one thing that’s very striking is, what you don’t see in these videos is combat, or very rarely. There’s very little combat. Every now and then you see soldiers expending an enormous amount of ammunition, but they’re frequently standing up, and there’s clearly no incoming. So, that’s what you would think soldiers would want to post online, but they don’t.

…………………………………………….Listen to Israelis. They don’t think it’s complicated. They don’t think it’s nuanced. Their rhetoric is often overtly genocidal. It’s certainly frequently all about ethnic cleansing. They couldn’t have been clearer about what they were doing. And if we are ignorant, we’re willfully ignorant.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Richard Sanders, how do you interpret the fact that these videos were made and posted so liberally by Israeli soldiers themselves?………………………………….. what do you make of the fact that soldiers themselves so openly, transparently and widely distributed their own acts that could be construed as war crimes?

RICHARD SANDERS: They clearly felt this would be popular in Israel. They were competing for clicks, you know. And they were right. These videos were popular. You know, they were using some of the photos they took of themselves on dating apps. And yes, as you say, it speaks to an astonishing sense of impunity. I mean, the clip you’ve played there, where you actually see unarmed men being shot, that’s fairly unusual, but even so, that was put on YouTube by the people who did it…………………………………

AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to another clip from your new Al Jazeera Investigates documentary, when we see Israeli soldiers, in footage that they themselves shared, talking about the complete destruction of the Shuja’iyya refugee camp in Gaza.

ISRAELI COMMAND: [translated] Butterfly station, this is command. We’re launching Operation 8th Candle of Hanukkah, the burning of Shuja’iyya neighborhood. Let our enemies learn and be deterred. This is what we’ll do to all our enemies, and not a memory will be left of them. We will annihilate them to dust. Command out.

………………………….RICHARD SANDERS:………………………. One of — the only thing, I would say, that surprises me — I’m not surprised that the Israeli soldiers feel complete impunity and so on, but the fact that higher up the chain of command and in the government, they clearly feel the same impunity, as well. No one has come down the line and cracked down on this and said, “Stop doing it.” It’s quite clear that Israeli politicians and Israeli military commanders feel that they enjoy complete impunity for what they’re doing in the Gaza Strip, as well.

……………………………………………………………………………………………. YOUMNA ELSAYED: …………………………………………………………………………….. the violation, the aggression against the Palestinian journalists, because we are Palestinian and we are inside the Gaza Strip, has been unprecedented, the killing. One hundred seventy-five Palestinian journalists, until today, have been killed. How many others, dozens others have been injured, and our families threatened and killed and injured? Unimaginable numbers…………………. more https://scheerpost.com/2024/10/09/the-first-live-streamed-genocide-al-jazeera-exposes-war-crimes-filmed-by-israeli-troops-themselves/—

October 11, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, media | Leave a comment

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.

October 10, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

‘Genocide Can and Should Never Be Just a Normal Story’CounterSpin interview with Gregory Shupak on Palestinian genocide

Janine Jackson, https://fair.org/home/genocide-can-and-should-never-be-just-a-normal-story/ 19 Sept 24

Janine Jackson interviewed the University of Guelph-Humber’s Gregory Shupak about the Palestinian genocide for the September 13, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

Janine Jackson: The September 11 New York Times reports a fatal Israeli airstrike hitting part of the Gaza Strip that Israel had declared a humanitarian zone. On a separate matter, we read that Secretary of State Antony Blinken rebuked Israel for the killing in the West Bank of 26-year-old US human rights activist Aysenur Eygi.

While it relayed terrible news, the Times story also contained the mealy-mouthing we’re accustomed to. Blinken rebuked Israel’s killing Aysenur Eygi “after the Israeli military acknowledged that one of its soldiers had probably killed her unintentionally.” People did dig with their bare hands through bomb craters in the dark to search for victims, but “health officials in Gaza do not distinguish between civilians and combatants when reporting casualties.” And while it notes that the UN and other rights organizations have said “there is no safe place in Gaza,” the Times repeats that “Israel insists that it will go after militants wherever it believes them to be.”

What’s happening in Gaza and the West Bank is horrific, the possibility of an expanded war in the Middle East is terrifying, but for elite US news media, it’s as though war in the Middle East, and Palestinians being killed, is such a comfortable story that there’s no urgency in preventing the reality.

Joining us now to talk about this is media critic, activist and teacher Gregory Shupak. He teaches English and media studies at the University of Guelph-Humber in Toronto, and he’s author of the book The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel and the Media, from OR Books. He joins us now by phone. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Gregory Shupak.

Gregory Shupak: Hi.

JJ: So the New York Times September 10 had a story about how health workers are trying to vaccinate children in northern Gaza against polio, but supplies of fuel and medicine are being obstructed by Israeli forces, including one convoy of UN groups that was held at gunpoint for eight hours. So the meat of the Times story is here:

The Israeli military said in a statement that it had intelligence suggesting that there were “Palestinian suspects” with the convoy, but did not say what they were suspected of doing. In another statement on Tuesday, it said that “Israeli security forces questioned the suspects in the field and then released them.” The episode highlighted the challenges facing humanitarian efforts, like the vaccination campaign, and what UN officials say is increasing Israeli obstruction of aid deliveries to Gaza.

So Israel holds up a humanitarian group at gunpoint for eight hours, and they don’t offer anything resembling a reason, and the upshot is “this highlights challenges”; “UN officials say” that this is an obstruction of aid. Knowing reporters, we know that some of them are saying, “Look how we pushed back against Israel here. We said they couldn’t say what the suspects were suspected of.”

But it doesn’t read as brave challenging of the powerful to a reader. And of course we know that that language is a choice, right? So what are you making of media coverage right now?

GS: Two main observations come to mind, not specifically with regard to the story you’re talking about–although that does continue, as you said, the longer-term trends of this mealy-mouthed refusal to just report what has flatly and plainly and obviously happened, and who’s responsible for it. But setting that aside, I would note a couple of other things that have troubled me.

One is that I think so much of the Palestinian issue right now has just been metabolized into US election coverage, so that most of what the public is getting on the issue is “how is the political theater going to be affected by the fact that a genocide is occurring in which the US is a direct participant?” rather than more urgent questions, such as “how can this genocide be immediately stopped?” So I think that that’s a real case of focusing on the wrong question.

I think, likewise, you get some attention to, “Well, how is the Harris campaign going to suffer because the Biden administration, of which she’s a part, has alienated so many Arab and/or Muslim voters in the United States because of the Gaza genocide?” Again, that just reduces the Palestinians and their supporters amongst Arabs and Muslims–not to say that there aren’t many other segments of American society that do support Palestinians to one extent or another–they’re just here reduced to, “Well, how’s this going to factor into the electoral calculation?”

And so that, I think, is, again, really not at all adequate to the challenge of responding to one of the worst series of massacres that we’ve seen since World War II. In fact, the UN special rapporteur just the other day, said that this is the worst campaign of deliberate starvation since World War II. So just treating this as a subset of US domestic politics is not proportional to the severity of what’s unfolding.

The second observation I was going to make is that I think, to a really, really depressing extent, the mass murder of Palestinians, the mass starvation of Palestinians, the total destruction of essentially every structure in Gaza by this point, it’s becoming a “dog bites man” story, in that it’s just become, and I hate to use the word “normalized,” because I think it’s totally overused these days, but this is sort of a case study where it’s barely even newsworthy, that really just shocking atrocities are dropping day by day.

So last week, Israel bombed a shelter within the compound of the Al-Aqsa hospital, I believe it’s the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital in Deir al-Balah, and this has, as far as I can tell, effectively zero coverage in major English-language American or Western media broadly. But, again, that is a real travesty to just allow this to not be a leading story every day because it keeps happening; in fact, the fact that it keeps happening ought to be in itself proof of how dire and urgent these matters are.

JJ: You wrote for Electronic Intifada back in July about how even after credible source after credible source confirms that Israel is carrying out a genocide against Palestinians, you said “we find ourselves living through a mass public genocide denial,” and without at all trying to be coy, I wonder, are we now at acceptance?

GS: Yeah.

JJ: Now it’s just kind of a factor. And I wrote down “dog bites man” because it very much gives that feeling of, “Oh, well, these folks are at war with one another. That’s just a normal story.”

GS: Yeah, and first of all, genocide can and should never be just a normal story, but that is very much what it’s being treated like. And second of all, it’s also: yes, brutal, violent oppression of Palestinians has been the case since Israel came into existence in 1948, and, in fact, in the years leading up to it, there were certainly steps taken to create the conditions for Israel. So it is a decades-old story, but there is a kind of hand-waving that creeps into public discourse, and I think does underlie some of this lack of attention to what continues to happen in Gaza and the West Bank.

In reality, this is a very modern conflict, right? It’s a US-brokered, settler-colonial insurgency/counterinsurgency. It’s got very little to do with religion and everything to do with geopolitics and capitalism and colonialism. But it’s easier to just treat it as, “Oh, well, these backwards, savage barbarian and their ancient, inscrutable blood feuds are just doing what they have always done and always will. So that’s not worthy of our attention.” But that, aside from being wildly inaccurate, just enables the slaughter and dispossession, as well as resistance to it, to continue.

JJ: Finally, to promote the idea or to support the idea that this genocide is kind of OK, or par for the course, anyway, and that protesting it is misguided, or worse–that requires mental gymnastics, including charges of antisemitism against Jewish people. Jewish people are leaders in the opposition to Israel’s actions, including on college campuses. And I would encourage folks to read Carrie Zaremba’s piece on Mondoweiss about the lengths that university administrators are going to right now to crack down on and impossibleize dissent and political expression.

But the point is, we still see the dissent. So even the problems that we’re talking about, that media are ratifying and pushing out day after day, people are seeing through them, and there is dissent. And I just wonder what your thoughts are, in terms of, maybe not to use the word hope, but where do you see the resistance happening? You’re a college professor.

JJ: Finally, to promote the idea or to support the idea that this genocide is kind of OK, or par for the course, anyway, and that protesting it is misguided, or worse–that requires mental gymnastics, including charges of antisemitism against Jewish people. Jewish people are leaders in the opposition to Israel’s actions, including on college campuses. And I would encourage folks to read Carrie Zaremba’s piece on Mondoweiss about the lengths that university administrators are going to right now to crack down on and impossibleize dissent and political expression.

But the point is, we still see the dissent. So even the problems that we’re talking about, that media are ratifying and pushing out day after day, people are seeing through them, and there is dissent. And I just wonder what your thoughts are, in terms of, maybe not to use the word hope, but where do you see the resistance happening? You’re a college professor.

GS: Certainly on campuses and many other places as well. Labor organizations: there was a coalition here called Labor for Palestine, and I know there are similar outfits in the United States and other parts of the world. Religious organizations of all sorts, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, likely others as well.

I would, in addition, say that certainly, in terms of just getting out analysis and information, that one of the very few advantages or bright spots that we have, I think now as compared to the past, is that it is easier for independent sources like FAIR, Electronic Intifada, Mondoweiss and others to circulate quickly to wide audiences. And that, I think, has been a big reason why the Palestinian counternarrative has been able to puncture, I think, the public consciousness more so than it could in the past. I think it’s totally the independent educational efforts by the Palestine solidarity movement that has done that.

And one major tool at their–perhaps I will dare say our–disposal is independent media, because this is where you’re getting much more information, much more accurate information, and much more rigorous analysis than the fluff and pablum that you get on the editorial pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post, much less the blood-curdling racism you get on the Wall Street Journal and its editorial pages. So I think that this era does have one serious advantage, and that’s that outlets like those that I’ve mentioned have

a much greater capacity to reach people who might not otherwise be exposed to this anti-Zionist narrative.

JJ: We’ve been speaking with Gregory Shupak. He teaches English and media studies at the University of Guelph-Humber, and his book The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel and the Media is still out now from OR Books. Greg Shupak, thanks so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

September 21, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, media | Leave a comment

Israel Admits It Probably Killed Israeli Hostages in Gaza Airstrike in November

The Israeli military told the captives’ families at the time that they were killed by Hamas forces.

By Sharon Zhang , Truthout, September 17, 2024, https://truthout.org/articles/israel-admits-it-probably-killed-israeli-hostages-in-gaza-airstrike-in-november/

he Israeli military has admitted that one of its own airstrikes is likely responsible for killing three Israeli captives whose bodies were recovered from Gaza last year, confirming what Hamas officials had said about the hostages’ deaths at the time.

In a release on Sunday, the Israeli military said that an investigation into the deaths of the three captives found there was a “high probability” that they were killed by an Israeli strike carried out on November 10. This finding is based on the location of their bodies in relation to that of the strike and analysis of the strike itself. The military claims the strike targeted and killed a Hamas commander.

Two of the captives were soldiers, Corporal Nick Beiser and Sergeant Ron Sherman. The military also recovered the body of Eliya Toledano. They were all captured amid the October 7 attack, and their bodies were recovered in December.

At the time, Israeli forces told the captives’ families that they were killed by Hamas. But the results of the investigation confirms Hamas’s assertion that they were killed by the Israeli military.

Israeli forces have killed numerous hostages amid their genocide in Gaza, and released hostages have said that their top fear while in captivity was that they would be killed by Israeli strikes.

In December, Israeli forces shot and killed three Israeli captives who were traveling together in northern Gaza. Though the captives were shirtless and waving a white flag, Israeli soldiers opened fire on them. The military later claimed that the soldiers acted correctly to the best of their understanding, as they interpreted the captives’ cries for help as a ruse.

These captives could have been alive today if Israel had agreed to ceasefire agreements early on. Just days after Israel’s genocidal assault of Gaza commenced, Hamas had offered to release all of the captives if the Israeli military didn’t enter Gaza, former political adviser and leader of an advocacy organization for the captives’ families Haim Rubinstein told Times of Israel earlier this year.

Since then, Israel has rejected ceasefire deal after ceasefire deal, with Israeli leaders openly expressing their contempt for the very idea of stopping their genocide in Gaza at any point. There is widespread unrest among Israelis for the government’s failure to secure a hostage release, but Israeli leaders’ actions in the ceasefire negotiations have made it clear that a hostage release is not a top priority for them.

Just earlier this month, Israeli media reported that three captives whose bodies were recently recovered from Gaza were actually slated for release in a ceasefire deal discussed in July. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu effectively single handedly killed that deal, introducing a number of last-minute demands that he knew Hamas and other countries’ negotiators would reject — like a permanent Israeli occupation of Gaza’s border with Egypt.

Additionally, Israeli media have reported this week that Netanyahu is reportedly considering dismissing his defense minister Yoav Gallant and replacing him with a political leader whose party has helped cement Netanyahu’s power amid the genocide. Gallant has been a critic of Netanyahu, and recently called for a ceasefire after being in favor of the genocidal invasion last year.

Netanyahu’s insistence that Israel continue its genocide, even at the expense of the lives of Israeli captives, has led many in Israeli society to conclude that Netanyahu doesn’t care about the captives; rather, he relishes in their deaths as new opportunities to demonize Hamas and justify his genocide of Palestinians, as some commentators have noted.

It is clear, then, that Israel’s main goal in Gaza is death and occupation. UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine Francesca Albanese has warned that Israel is on track to wipe out the entire population of Gaza if it continues along this path, and that the true death toll of Palestinians could be estimated at 335,500 as of this month — with no end to Israel’s invasion in sight.

September 20, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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.

September 18, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

How Corporate News Has Tried To Numb Americans To The Horrors In Gaza

“a consistent bias against Palestinians.” Those highly influential news outlets “disproportionately emphasized Israeli deaths in the conflict” and “used emotive language to describe the killings of Israelis, but not Palestinians.”

eurasia review    By Norman Solomon

As the Gaza war enters its 12th month with no end in sight, the ongoing horrors continue to be normalized in U.S. media and politics. The process has become so routine that we might not recognize how omission and distortion have constantly shaped views of events since the war began in October.

During the first five months of the war, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post applied the word “brutal” or its variants far more often to actions by Palestinians (77 percent) than to Israelis (23 percent). The findings, in a study by Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), pointed to an imbalance that occurred “even though Israeli violence was responsible for more than 20 times as much loss of life.” News articles and opinion pieces were remarkably in the same groove; “the lopsided rate at which ‘brutal’ was used in op-eds to characterize Palestinians over Israelis was exactly the same as the supposedly straight news stories.”

Despite exceptional coverage at times, what was most profoundly important about the war in Gaza—what it was like to be terrorized, massacred, maimed, and traumatized—remained almost entirely out of view. Gradually, surface accounts reaching the American public came to seem repetitious and normal. As death numbers kept rising and months went by, the Gaza war diminished as a news topic, while most interview shows seldom discussed it.

Gaps widened between the standard reporting in media terms and the situation worsening in human terms. “Gazans now make up 80 percent of all people facing famine or catastrophic hunger worldwide, marking an unparalleled humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip amid Israel’s continued bombardment and siege,” the United Nations reported in mid-January 2024. The UN statement quoted experts who said: “Currently every single person in Gaza is hungry, a quarter of the population are starving and struggling to find food and drinkable water, and famine is imminent.”

President Biden dramatized the disconnect between the Gaza war zone and the U.S. political zone in late February when he spoke to reporters about prospects for a “ceasefire” (which did not take place) while holding a vanilla ice-cream cone in his right hand. “My national security adviser tells me that we’re close, we’re close, we’re not done yet,”……………………………………………………… more https://www.eurasiareview.com/10092024-how-corporate-news-has-tried-to-numb-americans-to-the-horrors-in-gaza-oped/

The Gaza war received a vast amount of U.S. media attention, but how much the media actually communicated about the human realities was a whole other matter. Easy assumptions held that the news enabled media consumers to see what was really going on. But the words and images reaching listeners, readers, and viewers were a far cry from experiences of being in the war zone. The belief or unconscious notion that news media were conveying of the war’s realities ended up obscuring those realities all the more. And journalism’s inherent limitations were compounded by media biases.

In-depth content analysis by the Intercept found that coverage of the war’s first six weeks by the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times “showed a consistent bias against Palestinians.” Those highly influential news outlets “disproportionately emphasized Israeli deaths in the conflict” and “used emotive language to describe the killings of Israelis, but not Palestinians.” For example: “The term ‘slaughter’ was used by editors and reporters to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 60 to 1, and ‘massacre’ was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 125 to 2. ‘Horrific’ was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 36 to 4.”

September 16, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, media, USA | Leave a comment

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.

September 14, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza | Leave a comment

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

September 13, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Israel’s Plan for Gaza Comes Into View

The Unz Review Mike Whitney • August 28, 2024

Unit 601 of the IDF’s Combat Engineering Corps is clearing a vast swath of land across central Gaza splitting the 25-mile-long territory into two parts. The so-called Netzarim corridor (Highway 749)—which crosses Gaza from east to west—will provide faster transport for IDF troops operating in the area and will also function as vital part of Israel’s security cordon separating the north from the south. There is no doubt that military outposts will be established along the corridor as well as in locations along the western coast. The aim of these actions is to protect the development of new settlements that will be built north of the corridor. In short, the Israeli government is using its war on Hamas to divert attention from its real objective which is the expansion of the Jewish state on Palestinian land.

Not surprisingly, Israel’s activities in the north have resulted in mass evacuations that have intensified the suffering of the traumatized population. According to the Palestinian Chronicle:

The United Nations announced on Tuesday that Israel issued three fresh evacuation orders for over 19 neighborhoods in the north of Gaza and Deir Al-Balah, bringing the number of massive evacuation orders to 16 in August alone, which leaves only 11 percent of the Gaza Strip untouched by the evacuation orders.

Only 11% of Gaza Spared – 16 Israeli Evacuation Orders in August Alone, Palestinian Chronicle

As we noted earlier, the Palestinians are being driven from the north to make room for new settlements that will be built sometime in the near future. The Netzarim corridor serves as a critical buffer zone separating these new colonies from potential attack by Palestinian militants. Israel intends to maintain control over Gaza by putting restrictions on movement and by designating areas where Palestinians can gather. In other words, Palestinians will be refugees in their own country. This is an excerpt from an article at the World Socialist Web Site:

Gaza’s population, which stood at over 2 million before the start of the genocide, is now crammed into an area that is just 41 square kilometers, or 11 percent of Gaza’s total area, with the remaining 89 percent being placed on evacuation orders by the Israeli Defense Forces.

The United Nations warned, “The area is lacking critical infrastructure and basic services, while aid provision is limited due to access and security issues. The severe overcrowding, with a density of 30,000 to 34,000 individuals per square kilometer has exacerbated the dire shortage of essential resources such as water, sanitation and hygiene supplies, health services, protection and shelter.” UN forced to suspend food distribution as Israel places 89 percent of Gaza under evacuation orders, World Socialist Web Site

This is Netanyahu’s plan in a nutshell:

  1. Shrink the Gaza concentration camp to a mere 11 percent of its original size.
  2. Transfer the population to the designated location.
  3. Partition the territory to allow for settlement activity and the expropriation of gas reserves off the coast.
  4. Neutralize any opposition to Israeli expansion

Surprisingly, an article posted Wednesday at CNN confirms our analysis and admits that Israel’s postwar plans involve “cutting the strip in two” and maintaining a permanent “operational foothold in the area”. And while the author does not verify our theory on settlement development, readers can draw their own conclusions. Israel would never put so much money and effort into an operation that didn’t extend the borders of the Israeli state. Here’s CNN:…………………………………………………………………

Keep in mind, that these developments are taking place while Israeli diplomats are currently conducting ceasefire negotiations in Cairo. Why would Hamas agree to a deal with Israel when Israel is in the process of seizing more Palestinian land and tightening the occupation?

They won’t, which means the bloodbath will continue for the foreseeable future. Hamas has no other choice. Here’s an excerpt from a post by author Anthony Lowenstein:

…. Israel’s goal in Gaza is long-term occupation and the building of small settlements, slowly building into something far more substantial. The editor of @haaretzcom outlines the grim state of play:

“The public discourse in Israel is focused on the hostages and their fate, but Netanyahu considers them to be a media nuisance, a battering ram by his political opponents, and a distraction from the goal: A prolonged occupation of the Gaza Strip, or – as he has repeatedly declared since the outbreak of the war – “Israeli security control. “Control of the Philadephi route and the “security corridor” along the border allows Israel to surround Gaza’s land borders and isolate it from Egypt. Control of the Netzarim road route in practice divides northern Gaza, where few Palestinian remain with destroyed homes and infrastructures, from the southern part of the coastal enclave, overflowing with refugees from the entire Strip.

“In practice, a long-term arrangement for “the day after” is being drawn up. Israel will control the northern Gaza Strip and drive out the 300,000 Palestinian still there. Maj.-Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland, the war’s ideologue, proposes starving them to death, or exiling them, as a lever with which to defeat Hamas. The Israeli right envisions a Jewish settlement of the area, with vast real estate potential of convenient topography, a sea view, and proximity to central Israel.

“The 57-year experience of the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem indicates that this is a long process that requires a lot of patience and diplomatic maneuvering capability. No large Jewish city will be built in Gaza tomorrow, but progress will be made acre by acre, mobile home by mobile home, outpost by outpost – just like in Hebron, Elon Moreh, and Gilad Farm. “The southern Gaza Strip will be left for Hamas, which will have to care for the destitute residents under Israeli siege, even after the international community loses interest in the story and moves on to other crises. Netanyahu believes with certainty that, after the U.S. elections, the influence of pro-Palestinian demonstrators on American politics will wane, even if Vice President Kamala Harris wins.” Haaretz

………………………………….. So, maybe, Netanyahu scrapped his original ethnic cleansing plan in order to avoid a full-blown conflagration with Egypt? We don’t know for sure. But what we do know is that Israel’s endgame for Gaza is now in full view. The area north of the corridor will be occupied by Israeli settlers committed to the Zionist ideal while the native population will be left to languish in grinding poverty in makeshift tent cities cut off from the outside world.  https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/israels-plan-for-gaza-comes-into-view/

September 8, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, politics | Leave a comment

Israeli Official: Without US Aid, Israel Couldn’t Sustain Gaza Operations for More Than a Few Months

The US has sent over 50,000 tons of weapons to Israel since the genocidal war began and increased shipments over the past month

by Dave DeCamp September 3, 2024 ,  https://news.antiwar.com/2024/09/03/israeli-official-without-us-aid-israel-couldnt-sustain-gaza-operations-for-more-than-a-few-months/

A senior Israeli Air Force official has told Haaretz that without US military aid, Israel would not have been able to sustain military operations in Gaza for more than a few months, demonstrating how crucial US support is for the genocidal slaughter of Palestinians.

The support is especially crucial for the Israeli Air Force. The report said the US provides the IAF with “all of its fighter planes and some of its bombs, missiles and intelligence equipment.” The US also helps Israel develop “joint weapons systems for all three layers of air defense.”

Since October 7, the US has shipped Israel over 50,000 tons of weapons and other military equipment. Weapons shipments have increased over the past month, with flight tracking data showing that August was the busiest month for US deliveries since October 2023.

President Biden also signed a bill into law that included $17 billion in additional military aid for Israel on top of the $3.8 billion it receives in annual military assistance. The administration recently approved $20 billion in new arms deals for Israel, which includes a new fleet of F-15 fighter jets.

The official speaking to Haaretz said the IAF is crafting a recommendation to increase the domestic production of bombs, missiles, and other ammunition to reduce reliance on the US. But any changes would take years to implement, meaning Israel will continue to be almost entirely reliant on US support.

Israel’s reliance on the US gives the Biden administration enormous leverage over the Israeli government. The administration has refused to use that power to force a ceasefire despite claims that US officials are working for one.

September 6, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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