Testimonies from the Mawasi massacre: 90 people buried in the sand
“I saw before my eyes one missile after another descending next to the tents. Missiles I have never seen in my life in all of Gaza’s wars. Isn’t this internationally forbidden? Shouldn’t the civilian population be protected and not face genocide and mass killing? Isn’t this forbidden?”
The Israeli army committed another massacre against displaced Palestinians in tent encampments, this time in the coastal Mawasi area, which Israel had designated as a “safe zone.”
BY TAREQ S. HAJJAJ , https://mondoweiss.net/2024/07/testimonies-from-the-mawasi-massacre-90-people-buried-in-the-sand/
In a crater in the ground almost larger than a schoolyard, a group of young men dig through the sand and pull out the bodies.
“His head is there! His head is there!” someone yells. A man emerges from the hole, carrying a child.
“Who knows who this child is? Who knows his family? Where are his parents?” he calls out.
Behind him are dead bodies and severed limbs scattered across the ground. Some poke out from beneath the sand, half-buried.
When the Israeli army struck the coastal displacement camp in al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis, there was no rubble. The Israeli-designated “safe zone” was little more than a sea of tents on the beach, so people were buried in the sand instead.
At 10 a.m. on Saturday, while people were starting their day, the Israeli military targeted the area with successive airstrikes, leading to a massacre that, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, has, as of the time of writing, killed 90 people and injured over 300 others. Half of them are women and children, the health ministry says.
Shaima Farwaneh, 16, was near the site of the massacre when it happened. She was preparing to make breakfast for her family when the bombs fell.
People and sand scattered everywhere, limbs that were once attached to bodies flying over their heads.
“A leg hit me, and I saw dismembered bodies a few meters away,” Shaima told Mondoweiss. “I saw a young child screaming. He lost his lower limbs and was crawling on his hands and screaming. The bombs didn’t stop, and suddenly the boy disappeared. I saw how he vanished before me while we ran and lowered our eyes to the ground, unable to do anything but run.”
Shaima describes hearing seven explosions in short succession before it was over. “What a life we live in these tents that we have to see the dismembered bodies of our siblings and families fly over our heads.”
When the ambulance and Civil Defense crews arrived near a well-known crowded market for residents of the area, their vehicles were targeted as well, according to the director of the Civil Defense in Khan Younis, Yamen Abu Suleiman. Two Civil Defense workers were killed in the strike.
Abu Suleiman said that the occupation targeted Al-Mawasi with a large barrage of missiles, which led to many casualties. “The occupation targeted the area more than once to prevent us from any rescue operation,” he tells Mondoweiss, denouncing the silence of the International Committee of the Red Cross over Israel’s prevention of rescue teams from doing their work.
Israel claims that the airstrikes were an attempt to assassinate Muhammad al-Deif, the head of the armed wing of Hamas, the al-Qassam Brigades, as well as the commander of al-Qassam’s Khan Younis District Brigade, Rafi Salama. The Gaza government media office denies the Israeli claims, emphasizing that they are nothing but a way of diverting the world’s attention from the reality of the massacre the Israeli army committed as part of the genocide of Gaza’s people.
According to local sources, over 80,000 displaced people currently reside in tents in that area.
‘No state does this’
Fawzia Sheikh Youssef, 82, was buried in the sand from the bombing but survived. She describes what she experienced during the massacre as something she had never seen in her entire life. She tells Mondoweiss that she was already displaced during the Nakba of 1948 when she was only 6 years old, coming to the Khan Younis area and staying with her family for two years in a tent. 76 years later, she found herself back where she started, but this time witnessing massacres the likes of which she had never seen even during the Nakba.
“There is no country in all the world that does this to children, women, and civilians,” she says. “This isn’t how wars are.”
Fawzia was eating her breakfast when the bomb ripped through her encampment, demolishing her tent and trapping her underneath it. She found herself covered in sand and trapped inside but was not critically injured. She began crawling on the ground and extricated herself from beneath the tent, eventually escaping to a place far away from the shrapnel and missiles, closer to the main road.
“I saw before my eyes one missile after another descending next to the tents. Missiles I have never seen in my life in all of Gaza’s wars. Isn’t this internationally forbidden? Shouldn’t the civilian population be protected and not face genocide and mass killing? Isn’t this forbidden?”
“They killed young people and old women. They do not respect humans. Aren’t we human?” she continues. “There is nothing to protect us from these missiles. The tents fell on our heads, and I was hit with two pieces of shrapnel in my leg. I may get poisoned, and I did not harm anyone.”
“These are not humanitarian actions,” Fawzia says. “A normal state would know that children have value, and women have value. Their lives are respected. Killing them is forbidden. There are wars. Some countries fight in the world, but not like this. Not like what happens with us.”
‘I left my son and fled from the horror of the bombing’
Samah al-Farra, a survivor of the massacre, says she fled from the horror of the missiles, leaving her son behind without knowing what she was doing. She describes what she saw after the incident as witnessing the horrors of the Day of Resurrection. The sound of the explosions, the panic of the people around her, the stampede in the attempt to escape, women leaving their tents without even wearing their clothes — Samah has to live with witnessing all these brutal scenes.
“People were running. There was sand in our eyes and fire over our heads. I left my son behind me and started running. I found the world turned upside down. The bodies of the martyrs were next to us, cut into pieces. It was a massacre. The fragments, sand, and bodies flew over our heads as we ran,” Samah describes.
She says that if this density of missiles had fallen on fortified buildings, it would have destroyed them. “But what about when they fall on tents whose owners are protected only by a piece of cloth?”
She describes the scene as a shower of missiles falling four times in a row, with more than one explosion occurring during each shower. “We saved ourselves. If we had stayed where we were, we would have been cut up and buried under the sand.”
Media reports have said that the bombs used in the al-Mawasi attack were JDAMs made in the U.S., which turn highly destructive unguided bombs into more precise missiles.
‘The entire area was overturned‘
Aziza Abu Tahir sits in front of the devastation after the bombing. Scattered bags of flour, gallons of water, vegetables, pillowcases, and utensils litter the area. She owns an oven and sits beside it every day. The women of the camp send their dough to her to bake for a small fee.
“When they dropped the bombs above our heads, all the people were running and screaming and saying that these were incendiary bombs, and this is the first time we have heard a sound like this,” Aziza tells Mondoweiss. “We ran away, and no one knew where to run. Some people went from one direction and were bombed, and some of them went from another direction and survived. But no one knew where they were going.”
As she speaks, a small child is hugging her, the son of her neighbor. Aziza says his mother takes care of orphans, and explains that when the attack started, his mother was bringing some dough for Aziza to bake in order to then resell to get an income for her family. “She was just here, and I baked what she wanted, and she went to sell it. As soon as she walked away, the bombing started. I don’t know where she is now, and I don’t know if she will return. The entire area she was walking in was overturned, and everything was buried.”
Hassan Suleih conducted interviews and provided photography for this report.
Tracking Dissent: US Officials Who Have Resigned Over The War on Gaza
Until Israel’s assault on Gaza ends, this page will be a resource for tracking U.S. government officials and military officers who resign in protest
Support from President Joe Biden’s administration for the Israeli government’s war on Gaza has resulted in an unprecedented surge of dissent within United States agencies.
Several officials and military officers have resigned in opposition since the Israeli military launched a massive bombardment after Hamas fighters stormed Israel on October 7, 2023.
During the week of July 4, 2024, 12 individuals who resigned released a unified statement of opposition.
“America’s diplomatic cover for, and continuous flow of arms to, Israel has ensured our undeniable complicity in the killings and forced starvation of a besieged Palestinian population in Gaza,” the dissenters declared. “This is not only morally reprehensible and in clear violation of international humanitarian law and U.S. laws, but it has also put a target on America’s back.”
While outlining the “current crisis” and what they believe should be done, the dissenters appealed to their former colleagues to “amplify calls for peace” and hold their respective institutions accountable for the violence unfolding in Palestine.
“We recognize the systemic obstacles you face, both as you perform your work, and as you consider leaving it. We particularly embrace those of you representing America’s diversity who feel that your voices have been disempowered, ignored, and tokenized. We are with you, and we know that a better way is possible, but only when we are all brave enough to challenge institutions and outdated forces that attempt to silence us.”
The dissenters further declared, “We encourage you to keep pushing. In our experience, no decision point is too minor to challenge, so while you are in government service, use your voice, write letters to leaders in your agencies, and bring up your disagreements with your team. Speaking out has a snowball effect, inspiring others to use their voice.”
“There is strength in numbers, and we urge you to not be complicit. We encourage you to consult with your Inspectors General, with your legal advisors, with appropriate Members of Congress, and via other protected channels, to question the veracity and/or legality of specific actions or policies. There are resources, and you have advocates, including all of us, who can support you in speaking your truth,” they concluded.
Several of the dissenters are whistleblowers with firsthand knowledge of how Biden administration officials have enabled the Israeli government’s atrocities. All of them are courageous individuals, who have sacrificed their careers for peace, justice, and human rights.
Until the war ends, The Dissenter will keep this page updated and track U.S. officials and military officers who resign in protest. (If anyone is missing, please email newsletter@thedissenter.org)
Below is a list of all the people who have resigned from the U.S. government or military during the war on Gaza as of July 5 and in reverse chronological order.……………………………………………………………………………………
and more videos …………………………………………………more https://thedissenter.org/tracking-dissent-us-officials-resigned-over-war-on-gaza/
‘Horrific Massacre’: Israel Bombs Gaza School Used as Refugee Camp, Killing Dozens.
“Schools have gone from safe places of education and hope for children to overcrowded shelters and often ending up a place of death and misery,” said UNRWA’s commissioner-general.
JAKE JOHNSON, Jul 10, 2024 https://scheerpost.com/2024/07/10/horrific-massacre-israel-bombs-gaza-school-used-as-refugee-camp-killing-dozens/
Israeli forces killed dozens of people Tuesday in an airstrike on a school-turned-refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip, the fourth school Israel’s military has bombed in as many days as the country continues its massive assault on the enclave’s starving population.
At least 29 people were killed and dozens more were wounded in Tuesday’s attack, including women and children—who have made up roughly two-thirds of those killed in Israel’s latest assault on Gaza, which began following a Hamas-led attack in October. The death toll from Tuesday’s attack is expected to rise, as many of those injured were reportedly in critical condition and taken to the under-resourced and overwhelmed Nasser Hospital.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) acknowledged carrying out the airstrike—which hit the entrance of the school—but claimed to be targeting a Hamas militant “adjacent” to the complex. The IDF, whose internal investigations rarely result in accountability for atrocities, said the “incident is under review.”
Video footage posted to social media shows displaced Palestinians playing in the schoolyard when the airstrike hit, sparking panic and chaos. [Video on original –Warning: The footage is graphic]
Citing witnesses, the BBC reported that “the area was teeming with displaced people at the time” of the airstrike, which “resulted in widespread destruction and the deaths of women and children.”
“Body parts were scattered across the site and many people staying in tents outside the school were also injured,” the British outlet reported. “Ayman Al-Dahma, 21, told the BBC there had been as many as 3,000 people packed into the area at the time, which he said housed a market and residential buildings. Describing the number of casualties as ‘unimaginable,’ he said he had seen people whose limbs had been severed by the blast.”
Tuesday’s attack marked the fourth time in four days that the IDF has attacked a school in the Gaza Strip, according to Agence France-Presse. Over the weekend, Israeli forces killed more than a dozen Palestinians in an attack on a United Nations-run school in central Gaza.
Most of Gaza’s education infrastructure has been damaged or completely destroyed by Israeli forces, and the schools still standing are being used to shelter those displaced by the IDF assault, which is now in its 10th month. The United Nations estimates that 90% of Gaza’s population has been internally displaced since October, with some displaced up to 10 times.
Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East called the IDF’s latest attack “a horrific massacre,” adding, “Annihilation is the point.”
“Nothing can justify Canada’s failure to act,” the group wrote on social media.
Canada is one of a number of major countries that have supplied weaponry to the Israeli government as it has carried out its utter devastation of the Gaza Strip, nearly all of which is now uninhabitable.
The United States and Germany together provided 99% of the arms Israel imported last year, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Germany’s Foreign Office called Wednesday’s attack “unacceptable” and demanded a swift investigation.
“People seeking shelter in schools getting killed is unacceptable. Civilians, especially children, must not get caught in the crossfire,” the foreign office said. “The repeated attacks on schools by the Israeli army must stop.”
Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), said Wednesday that “schools have gone from safe places of education and hope for children to overcrowded shelters and often ending up a place of death and misery.”
“Nine months in, under our watch, the relentless, endless killings, destruction, and despair continue. Gaza is no place for children,” he added. “The blatant disregard of international humanitarian law cannot become the new normal… Cease-fire now before we lose what is left of our common humanity.”
The Lancet study estimates death toll in Gaza 186,000 or even more
Maktoob Staff, 8 July 24, https://maktoobmedia.com/gaza-genocide/the-lancet-study-estimates-death-toll-in-gaza-186000-or-even-more/
Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death reported in Gaza, a new study published respected medical journal The Lancet said it is “not implausible” to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the genocidal war in Gaza.
The paper titled ‘Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential’, published on 05 July, stated that using the 2022 Gaza Strip population estimate of 2,375,259, the estimated death toll would translate to 7·9% of the total population in the besieged enclave.
On Sunday, the Palestinian health ministry said that at least 38,153 Palestinians have been killed by Israel in Gaza since October 07 while more than 87,828 have been wounded in the besieged enclave. 15,983 of them are children.
The study by Rasha Khatib, Martin McKee and Salim Yusuf, used the data from June 19, with the official death toll of 37, 396. The official record maintained by the Gaza Health Ministry doesn’t include over 10,000 people missing or buried under the rubbles.
“The Ministry has had to augment its usual reporting, based on people dying in its hospitals or brought in dead, with information from reliable media sources and first responders. This change has inevitably degraded the detailed data recorded previously. Consequently, the Gaza Health Ministry now reports separately the number of unidentified bodies among the total death toll. As of May 10, 2024, 30% of the 35,091 deaths were unidentified,” observed the paper.
It also pointed out that armed conflicts have “indirect health implications beyond the direct harm from violence”.
“Even if the conflict ends immediately, there will continue to be many indirect deaths in the coming months and years from causes such as reproductive, communicable, and non-communicable diseases,” the paper read.
A report from Feb 7, 2024, at the time when the direct death toll was 28,000, estimated that without a ceasefire there would be between 58260 deaths (without an epidemic or escalation) and 85750 deaths (if both occurred) by Aug 6, 2024.
The interim measures set out by the International Court of Justice in January, require Israel to “take effective measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence related to allegations of acts within the scope of … the Genocide Convention”.
“An immediate and urgent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip is essential, accompanied by measures to enable the distribution of medical supplies, food, clean water, and other resources for basic human needs,” the paper read.
Israel Has Forcibly Displaced 1.9 Million Palestinians in Gaza
Israel’s assault has displaced over 1 million people just since May, a UN human rights official said.
SCHEERPOST, By Sharon Zhang , TRUTHOUT, July 2, 2024
srael’s ongoing assault in Gaza has now forcibly displaced 1.9 million Palestinians, a UN humanitarian official reported on Tuesday as Israel forced another round of evacuations for hundreds of thousands of people across southern and central Gaza.
Israel’s brutal assault and humanitarian blockade has turned Gaza into an “abyss of suffering” and a “maelstrom of human misery,” said Sigrid Kaag, UN Senior Humanitarian and Reconstruction Coordinator for Gaza, in an address to the UN Security Council.
“Following the Israeli offenses against Rafah, since the sixth of May, over 1 million people have been displaced once again, desperately seeking shelter and safety,” said Kaag. “One point nine million people are now displaced across Gaza.”
This amounts to over 86 percent of the 2.2 million person population of Gaza displaced — though the proportion may be larger when the number of Palestinians who have been killed, are missing under the rubble or have died in ways that officials aren’t recording are subtracted from the population estimates. The number of displaced people is up from 1.7 million Palestinians who UN officials said had been forced out of their homes in earlier estimates……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Meanwhile, Israeli forces are also fiercely attacking Gaza City in the north. This has sparked an “exodus” from the eastern part of the city, the UN reported, after days of intense bombardments and tanks entering the region.
According to the UN, about 84,000 Palestinians have been displaced by this massacre, with most families having already fled areas multiple times, their supplies and energy dwindling amid Israel’s intensified famine campaign.
UNRWA’s communications head Louise Wateridge reported from a recent trip to Gaza that the region is “apocalyptic — most people have lost their homes, either completely or partially, and have to flee with very few belongings; essentially what they can carry in their hands.” https://scheerpost.com/2024/07/03/israel-has-forcibly-displaced-1-9-million-palestinians-in-gaza/
The Suspect Body Count: The Death Toll in Gaza is Much Higher Than We’re Being Told
Seymour Hersh Substack Thu, 27 Jun 2024 https://www.sott.net/article/492600-The-Suspect-Body-Count-The-Death-Toll-in-Gaza-is-Much-Higher-Than-We-re-Being-Told
The number of slain Palestinians in Gaza, including those believed to be Hamas cadres, has gone through a series of public recalibrations in recent weeks, as Israel’s reshuffled war cabinet has struggled to minimize international rage at the slaughter there. The reduced body count was little more than a sideshow because the Israeli offensive is continuing in Gaza with no signs of the ceasefire that the Biden administration has been desperately seeking.
Hamas triggered the war last October 7 with a surprise attack — there is so far no official explanation for Israel’s security failure that day — that killed 1,139 Israelis and injured 3,400 more. Some 250 soldiers and civilians were taken hostage.
Comment: There is plenty of evidence to strongly suggest that Israel allowed the incursion on Oct. 7th to happen and that parties unknown carried out most of the killing. This strategy fits with Israel’s decades-long goal of creating the right ‘conditions’ to justify implementing a final solution to their ‘Palestinian problem’.
The expected Israeli response began within days, with the bombing of the Gaza Strip. Some Israeli ground operations inside Gaza began on October 13, and two weeks later the expected full-scale offensive began. The war still rages, with one estimate concluding that by the beginning of April 70,000 tons of explosives had been dropped on targets throughout the 25-mile long Gaza, more tonnage than was dropped by Germany on London and by America and the United Kingdom on Dresden and Hamburg in World War II, combined.
The Gaza Health Ministry, which is under Hamas control, estimated as of Tuesday that the death toll from the Israeli attacks stood at 37,718, with more than 86,000 Gazans wounded. Last month the Israeli government issued a much lower estimate of the casualties, stating that its planes and troops had killed 14,000 “terrorists” — Hamas fighters — and no more than 16,000 civilians.
The Biden administration, on the eve of the first presidential debate, has said nothing about the new numbers, but there are many senior analysts in the international human rights and social science community who consider these numbers to be hokum: a vast underestimate of the damage that has been done to a terrorized civilian population living in makeshift tents and shelters amid disease and malnutrition, with a lack of sanitation, medical care, and medicines as well as increasing desperation and fatigue.
In days of telephone and email exchanges with public health and statistical experts in America I found a general belief that the civilian death toll in Gaza, both from the bombings and their aftermath, had to be significantly higher than reported, but none of the scientists and statisticians — appropriately — was willing to say so in print because of a lack of access to accurate data. I also asked one well-informed American official what he thought the actual civilian death count in Gaza might be and he answered, without pause: “We just don’t know.”
One public health expert acknowledged: “No clear and definite body count is possible, given the continuing Israeli bombing.” He added, caustically, “How many bombs does it take to kill a human being?”
Gaza was an ideal target for an air attack, he said. “No functioning fire department. No fire trucks. No water. No place to escape. No hospitals. No electricity. People living in tents and bodies stacked up all over . . . being eaten by stray dogs.
“What the fuck is wrong with the international medical community?” he asked. “Who are we kidding? Without a ceasefire, a million people are going to starve. This is not a debating point. How can you count something when the system is biting its own tail.” He was referring to the fact that the health system in Gaza — its hospitals and service agencies — “is being targeted and shattered” by Israeli aircraft and those responsible for the counting of the dead and injured “are themselves dead.”
The expert added that the lack of better casualty statistics is not only the fault of Israel. “Hamas has a vested interest in consistently minimizing the number of civilians killed “because of a lack of planning over the years when it was in charge of Gaza.” He was referring to ordinary Gazan citizens’ lack of access to Hamas’s vast underground tunnel complex that could have served as a bomb shelter for all. In Gaza during the Israeli bombing raids, “Is Hamas going to say that Israel” was able to kill all in Gaza “because we started a war without being able to fully protect our people?” His point was that Hamas has every reason, as does Israel, to minimize the extent of innocent civilians who have become collateral damage in the ongoing war.
Comment: Hamas did not start this most recent round of mass slaughter by Israel on Oct 7th. Hamas has never provided Israel with the justification it always sought to massacre Gazans wholesale. On Oct. 7th, Israel provided itself with that justification.
A prominent American public health official who spoke to me acknowledged that he was also concerned about the numbers of unreported dead in Gaza. In a crisis, he said, “we can start with a name-by-name count, but pretty soon the numbers of killed and missing exceed the capacity of any such approach, especially when the counters are being killed and the records [are] at risk.” He said that various postwar academic studies of mortality during the siege of Mosul — when a US-led coalition fought a door-to-door fight in 2017 against the Islamic State in Iraq, killing as many 11,000 civilians — “showed the large loss of life from the use of high-velocity weapons in urban areas. So we should expect similar in Gaza.”
Other data suggest that the published death figures are seriously misleading. Save the Children, an international child protection agency, issued a report this month estimating that as many as 21,000 children in Gaza are “trapped beneath rubble, detained, buried in unmarked graves, or lost from their families.” Other children, the agency said, “have been forcibly disappeared, including an unknown number detained and forcibly transferred out of Gaza” with their whereabouts unknown to the families “amidst reports of ill-treatment and torture.”
Comment: As if the mass slaughter and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza is not enough, it is highly likely that a large number of Palestinian children have been abducted by Zionist state forces, likely to be tortured and killed or otherwise used for the depraved pleasures of some of the people that inhabit that “shitty little country”.
Jeremy Stoner, the charity’s regional director for the Middle East, said: “Gaza has become a graveyard for children, with thousands of others missing, their fates unknown. . . . We desperately need a ceasefire to find and support the missing children who have survived, and to prevent more families from being destroyed.”
Warnings about the inevitability of far more deaths among the ordinary citizens of Gaza have been around since last winter. In December, Devi Sridhar, the chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, wrote in the Guardian that the Gaza war was “the deadliest conflict for children in recent years” with as many as 160 children being killed daily. The surviving children do not have “the basic needs that any human, especially babies and children, need to stay healthy and alive. . . . Unless something changes, the world faces the prospect of almost a quarter of Gaza’s 2 million population — close to half a million human beings — dying within a year.
“It’s a crude estimate,” Sridhar wrote, “but one that is data-driven, using the terrifying real numbers of death in previous and comparable conflicts.”
The New York Times and the Washington Post reported Wednesday that a new study endorsed by the United Nations found that as many as half a million Gaza residents are facing imminent starvation because of “a lack of food.” The study also said that more than one half of the surviving residents of Gaza “had to exchange their clothes for money and one-third resorted to picking up trash to sell.”)
One of the most avid early critics of the official statistics published by the Gaza Health Ministry and accepted by most in the American media, has been Ralph Nader. On March 5, he wrote a column in the Capitol Hill Citizen, a monthly newspaper he founded, about what he called “the undercount” of Palestinian casualties in Gaza. He quoted Martin Griffiths, the United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs: “Life is draining out of Gaza at terrifying speed.”
In my years as a journalist, I have often found an oddball story that says more with each retelling. Something like that happened in February when Al Jazeera ran an interview with a 64-year-old Gazan undertaker named Saadi Hassan Sulieman Baraka, whose nickname is Abu Jawad. He complained of working almost constantly since the Israeli invasion of Gaza began.
“I’ve buried about ten times more people during this war than I did across my entire 27 years as an undertaker,” he said. “The least was 30 people and the most was 800. Since October 7, I’ve buried more than 17,000 people.” He especially remembered the day he buried the 800 dead. “We collected them in pieces; their bodies so riddled with holes it was like Israeli snipers used them for target practice; Others were crushed like . . . like a boiled potato, and many had huge facial burns.
“We couldn’t really tell one person’s body from the other, but we did our best. We made one big deep grave, probably 10 meters (30 feet) deep and buried them together.”
It could be propaganda — of course, it could. But Abu Jawad made no mention of anyone from the Gaza Health Ministry coming to collect the names of the dead. He made no mention of any government official being involved in the process at all.
Can Israel defeat Hamas? Its own military doesn’t seem to think so, clashing with Netanyahu
The Israel Defense Forces’ top spokesman said “Hamas is an idea” that can’t be eliminated and that saying it could be was “throwing sand in the eye of the public.”
NBC News, June 20, 2024, By Chantal Da Silva
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may still be leading the country into its 258th day of war in Gaza, but on Thursday he stood increasingly alone — and at odds with his own military.
Long criticized at home as well as abroad, Netanyahu’s approach is now the subject of a deepening disagreement with his top brass, as well as his country’s top ally, the U.S.
Netanyahu dissolved his war Cabinet this week after former Defense Minister Benny Gantz, a political rival, stepped down, accusing Netanyahu of standing in the way of “real victory.”
Comment: Four politicians resigned recently, and, over recent months, various IDF officials have resigned.
And on Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces’ top spokesman seemed to lay bare the rift at the top of the country’s leadership. The central stated goal of the war in Gaza — to destroy Hamas — was not possible, and to maintain it was meant “throwing sand in the eyes of the public,” Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said.
“Hamas is an idea. Anyone who thinks we can eliminate Hamas is wrong,” Hagari said in an interview with Israeli broadcaster Channel 13. “The political echelon needs to find an alternative — or it will remain,” he said, referring to Hamas.
Netanyahu’s office quickly rebuffed the comments, saying in a statement that “the political and security cabinet headed by Prime Minister Netanyahu defined as one of the goals of the war the destruction of Hamas’ military and governmental capabilities.”…………………………………………………………..
Hagari’s comments reflected a growing push for Netanyahu to present an actionable plan for the day after the war in Gaza…………..
The absence of a postwar plan for Gaza was at the heart of Gantz’s reasoning for quitting Netanyahu’s war Cabinet, and it has also driven criticism from Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Comment: This idea of a post-war plan seems to be operating on the premise that there will be any Palestinians left in Gaza, whereas various officials have been clear that they intend to genocide all Palestinians that dare to remain.
Israeli forces pushed deeper into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, continuing a monthslong assault that local officials say has killed more than 37,000 people.
Comment: That estimate was valid months ago and it hasn’t increased much since then, which has led various analysts to put the number of, mostly women and children, slaughtered by Israel, at over 100,000.
……………………………………………… The U.S. sent an envoy to the region in a bid to prevent all-out war in Lebanon, but Netanyahu also sparked dismay in Washington when he accused it of “withholding weapons and ammunition.”
Comment: It seems that Israel intends to escalate the fighting between Hezbollah because it considers that as one way to drag the US into the conflict, which might be why the US sent an envoy to try to deter them (for the time being, anyway).
……………………………………………….. more https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-military-spokesman-hamas-defeated-netanyahu-war-gaza-rcna157991
‘Immense’ scale of Gaza killings amount to crime against humanity, UN inquiry says
Emma Farge, Wed 12 June 2024 https://uk.news.yahoo.com/news/immense-scale-gaza-killings-amount-070247585.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc290dC5uZXQv&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAE8HPcr-FwxjYBWBJjOvPs18KXTim4RNcN-godsX5YX41fMC7lw_jrtVU1-MxuWmywfp-JHc32RWkZntx35DRzp2lMCfrDUJBO9ZfyUj4cQQq1esBhASwVICNpPKfwUP3lrA83XfKI-Wh39AA2ZFjDPO2WQdeLFwaXz4qUyEPAva
GENEVA (Reuters) – Both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes in the early stages of the Gaza war, a U.N. inquiry found on Wednesday, saying that Israel’s actions also constituted crimes against humanity because of the immense civilian losses.
The findings were from two parallel reports, one focusing on the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and another on Israel’s military response, published by the U.N. Commission of Inquiry (COI), which has an unusually broad mandate to collect evidence and identify perpetrators of international crimes committed in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
Israel does not cooperate with the commission, which it says has an anti-Israel bias. The COI says Israel obstructs its work and prevented investigators from accessing both Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
Israel’s diplomatic mission to the U.N. in Geneva rejected the findings. “The COI has once again proven that its actions are all in the service of a narrow-led political agenda against Israel,” said Meirav Eilon Shahar, Israel’s Ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva.
Hamas did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
By Israel’s count more than 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage in the Oct. 7 cross-border attacks that sparked a military retaliation in Gaza that has since killed over 37,000 people, by Palestinian tallies.
The reports, which cover the conflict through to end-December, found that both sides committed war crimes including torture; murder or willful killing; outrages upon personal dignity; and inhuman or cruel treatment.
Israel also committed additional war crimes including starvation as a method of warfare, it said, saying Israel not only failed to provide essential supplies like food, water, shelter and medicine to Gazans but “acted to prevent the supply of those necessities by anyone else”.
Some of the war crimes such as murder also constituted crimes against humanity by Israel, the COI statement said, using a term reserved for the most serious international crimes knowingly committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against civilians.
“The immense numbers of civilian casualties in Gaza and widespread destruction of civilian objects and infrastructure were the inevitable result of a strategy undertaken with intent to cause maximum damage, disregarding the principles of distinction, proportionality and adequate precautions,” the COI statement said.
Sometimes, the evidence gathered by such U.N.-mandated bodies has formed the basis for war crimes prosecutions and could be drawn on by the International Criminal Court.
MASS KILLINGS, SEXUAL VIOLENCE AND HUMILIATION
The COI’s findings are based on interviews with victims and witnesses, hundreds of submissions, satellite imagery, medical reports and verified open-source information.
Among the findings in the 59-page report on the Oct. 7 attacks, the commission verified four incidents of mass killings in public shelters which it said suggests militants had “standing operational instructions”. It also identified “a pattern of sexual violence” by Palestinian armed groups but could not independently verify reports of rape.
The longer 126-page Gaza report said Israel’s use of weapons such as MK84 guided bombs with a large destructive capacity in urban areas were incompatible with international humanitarian law “as they cannot adequately or accurately discriminate between the intended military targets and civilian objects”.
It also said Palestinian men and boys were subject to the crime against humanity of gender persecution, citing cases where victims were forced to strip naked in public in moves “intended to inflict severe humiliation”.
The findings will be discussed by the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva next week.
The COI composed of three independent experts including its chair South African former U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay was set up in 2021 by the Geneva council. Unusually, it has an open-ended mandate — a fact criticised by both Israel and some of its allies.
Israel committed crime of ‘extermination’ in Gaza, says UN investigation
Commission accuses Israel and Hamas of both engaging in acts of torture and sexual violence
By MEE staff, 12 June 2024, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-committed-crime-extermination-gaza-says-un-body
Israel is guilty of a committing the crime of “extermination” in Gaza, as well as the crimes of sexual violence, torture, and starvation as a weapon of war, along with other war crimes and crimes against humanity, UN investigators have found.
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel also said Palestinian groups were guilty of war crimes, particularly over the taking of hostages.
The report covers the period between the 7 October Hamas-led attack on Israeli communities and 31 December. During those 12 weeks Israel began a ferocious war on the Gaza Strip that has now killed more than 37,000 people.
Among the war crimes that the COI said Israel was guilty of since 7 October were:
- Extermination
- Gender persecution targeting Palestinian men and boys
- Murder
- Forcible transfer
- Torture
- Inhuman and cruel treatment
It also found that Israeli security forces had enforced “public stripping and nudity intended to humiliate the community at large and accentuate the subordination of an occupied people.”
“It is imperative that all those who have committed crimes be held accountable,” said Navi Pillay, chair of the commission.
“The only way to stop the recurring cycles of violence, including aggression and retribution by both sides, is to ensure strict adherence to international law.”
Pillay said Israel must “immediately stop its military operations and attacks in Gaza, including the assault on Rafah”.
The report also found widespread abuses by Palestinian armed groups, including torture, hostage-taking and acts of gender-based and sexual violence against civilians and security personnel.
“Hamas and Palestinian armed groups must immediately cease rocket attacks and release all hostages,” said Pillay.
“The taking of hostages constitutes a war crime.”
Israel does not cooperate with the commission, which it says has an anti-Israel bias.
The COI says Israel obstructs its work and prevented investigators from accessing both Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
Israel condemned the report and accused the commission of “systematic anti-Israeli discrimination”.
The COI “has once again proven that its actions are all in the service of a narrow-led political agenda against Israel”, said Meirav Eilon Shahar, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva.
Hamas did not immediately comment.
Famine risk
Rights groups have warned that the blocking of aid combined with the destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure means there is a high risk of famine.
A new food security report issued last week by an independent group of experts known as the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, or Fews Net, warned that it is possible Gaza has suffered famine since April, and this assessment is likely to continue until July at least, “if there is not a fundamental change in how food assistance is distributed and accessed” after it enters the enclave.
Meanwhile, Israel continues to block the Rafah crossing with Egypt and restrict aid entry via the Kerem Shalom crossing with southern Gaza.
On Tuesday, UN Relief chief Martin Griffiths posted on X that in Gaza “delivering aid has become almost impossible”. He called for an immediate reopening of all border crossings, and safe and unimpeded access.
On 29 May, Palestinian NGOs and professional unions declared that the besieged Gaza Strip is now a “famine-stricken zone”, at a conference held in Ramallah by Amjad Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGOs Network (PNGO) in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah.
He said the deteriorating situation in Gaza is made worse by the “ruthless, merciless bombardment by the Israeli warplanes”.
The head of Gaza’s media office, Salama Marouf, has also said the threat of famine has returned to northern Gaza as Israel continues to restrict the entry of aid from all crossings.
He added that relief efforts remain well below the minimum needs.
UN Security Council Adopts Gaza Ceasefire Resolution
The US claims Israel has accepted the proposal, but Netanyahu continues to reject the idea of a permanent ceasefire
by Dave DeCamp June 10, 2024, https://news.antiwar.com/2024/06/10/un-security-council-adopts-gaza-ceasefire-resolution/
On Monday, the UN Security Council adopted a US-drafted ceasefire resolution for Gaza based on a proposal recently outlined by President Biden. Fourteen members of the 15-member body voted in favor, and Russia abstained.
The US claims Israel has accepted the proposal, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly rejected it and continues to rule out the idea of a permanent ceasefire. Russia said it couldn’t support the resolution because it wasn’t clear what Israel had agreed on and that the language was too “vague.”
While Hamas hasn’t formally responded to President Biden’s proposal, it welcomed the ceasefire resolution and released a statement showing strong support. The Palestinian group said it was ready to “enter into indirect negotiations on the implementation of these principles.”
The resolution outlines a three-phase deal. The first phase includes an “immediate, full, and complete ceasefire with the release of hostages including women, the elderly, and the wounded, the return of the remains of some hostages who have been killed, and the exchange of Palestinian prisoners.”
The first phase would also involve an Israeli withdrawal from densely populated areas of Gaza, the return of displaced Palestinians, and a significant increase in humanitarian aid.
The two sides are supposed to negotiate a permanent ceasefire during the first phase, and the second phase would see a permanent end to hostilities “in exchange for the release of all other hostages still in Gaza, and a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.” The third phase would start “a major multi-year reconstruction plan for Gaza, and the remains of any Israelis in Gaza would be returned to Israel.
The resolution calls on Israel and Hamas to implement the deal “without delay and without condition.” US officials are claiming Hamas is the only thing standing in the way of a deal despite Netanyahu reaffirming his opposition to a permanent ceasefire.
“My message to governments throughout the region, to people throughout the region, is – if you want a ceasefire, press Hamas to say ‘yes,’” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters during a visit in Cairo.
US officials told NBC News that the Israeli operation in Nuseirat that killed over 200 Palestinians and freed four Israeli hostages makes a ceasefire deal less likely since it has emboldened Netanyahu. While claiming it has been pushing for a ceasefire, the US supported the massacre by providing intelligence.
‘I heard all of my friends’ last breath’: Testimonies from the Nuseirat massacre
The Israeli massacre in Gaza’s Nuseirat camp killed over 270 Palestinians and injured many more. Survivors say the horrors they witnessed will stay with them for the rest of their lives.
BY TAREQ S. HAJJAJ https://mondoweiss.net/2024/06/i-heard-all-of-my-friends-last-breath-testimonies-from-the-nuseirat-massacre/
The Israeli massacre in the Nuseirat camp to liberate four Israeli prisoners held by resistance factions in the Gaza Strip started at 11:00 in the morning on June 8. Although the scenes of Palestinians running for safety may have seemed sadly familiar, this invasion was different from others that have been carried out across the Gaza Strip.
This time, the Israeli military wore civilian clothes, rode in Palestinian cars, and moved among the people in disguise. There were no warnings to evacuate, or orders from the army to move elsewhere, and people were surprised by the Israeli special forces and tanks. A large number of special forces hidden among the people only revealed themselves once the deadly operation began as other special forces stormed the area traveling in cars loaded with luggage, the same luggage that the displaced people carry with them, such as mattresses, pillows, blankets, and bags. When the Palestinians detected them, the soldiers quickly called for support, and helicopters, fighter planes, artillery, and tanks descended. Reconnaissance aircraft and foot solders then began committing massacres against the civilian population.
The intensity of shelling and gunfire soon warned the residents that a massacre was unfolding. They left their homes and took to the streets running in search of safety, which could not be found.
The Israeli operation killed 274 Palestinians, including 64 children, and injured 689 Palestinians in total. “Some of the bodies that arrived at the hospital were body parts, as well as dismembered bodies,” the Gaza Ministry of Health reported when announcing the casualty numbers.
As the world celebrates the liberation of four Israeli hostages from the Gaza Strip, and the media focuses on their lives, freedom, and the happiness of their families there is barely a mention of the number of Palestinian casualties or consideration that each of those killed are also leaving behind a bereaved family.
Issam Hajjaj, 27, survived the massacre and spoke to Mondoweiss. “We were running away from bombing and killing. In all directions, there was either bombing, an Israeli tank, or Israeli gunmen shooting at anyone in their path,” he explained. “While we were running away from death, I saw dismembered bodies on the road as a result of the bombing, and I saw those who left their loved ones under the rubble and fled to save the rest of the family.”
“We did not know from which direction death would come for us.”
Anatomy of a massacre
Following the attack the Israeli army announced that the element of surprise had been crucial. This is why the military operation took place during daylight hours and in a densely populated area. This is also why there was such a high number of Palestinian casualties.
Hajjaj says that within minutes of the invasion starting, Israeli forces surrounded the targeted location from all sides and did not leave any route for people to escape except one road, Al-Zuhur Road connecting Nuseirat and Deir Al-Balah. However, just at the same time that the Nuseirat massacre took place, people near Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir Al-Balah were fleeing to Nuseirat, and people were using this street to arrive. The intense crowding in the street during the continuous bombing spread panic, and bodies soon began to fly as a result of the direct targeting of everything in that area.
“During our escape, we saw bodies being loaded into cars heading to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. Women were screaming in the streets, and children were crying and screaming,” Hajjaj recounted. “I saw a family that was fleeing together. A shell fell on the father and killed him in front of his wife and young daughter. After the mother got up and carried her daughter, she discovered that her husband was killed; she left him on the ground and fled to save her daughter and herself.”
Hajjaj explained that the targeted location was two buildings near Al Awda Hospital in the Nuseirat camp, but to reach these two buildings, the Israeli army destroyed an entire residential square. He says that while the Israeli army liberated more than four hostages, the intensity of fire from the Palestinian resistance stopped them from getting out more captives.
The Al-Qassam Brigades, the military arm of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, seemed to confirm this account in a video it published declaring that three Israeli prisoners were killed by the Israeli bombing of the Nuseirat camp.
“We inform you that in exchange for these, your army killed three prisoners in the same camp, one of whom held American citizenship,” Al-Qassam announced in the video. The resistance group stressed that the remaining Israeli prisoners would not be liberated until the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons were freed as well.
Several Palestinians published photos and video from the scene in Nuseirat that confirmed the firsthand accounts collected by Mondoweiss showing an Israeli special force vehicle entering the camp at the beginning of the invasion which was followed by indiscriminate bombing as a form of support cover. Other videos show a car loaded with luggage entering the Block 5 area in the Nuseirat camp and killing a person at the door of one of the buildings. Israeli forces then used iron ladders to reach the upper floors, as shown in one of the pictures that spread on social media. Other details of the invasion are still being established. Many on social media have circulated photos that seem to indicate the floating pier constructed by the United States on the Gaza coast was used as a launching point for the operation, a claim the U.S. Central Command denied.
Clashes continued for more than three hours. During this time, the Israeli army used excessive force to demolish homes and kill hundreds of residents in the vicinity of the operation.
“I did not think for a moment that I might survive”
Tawfiq Abu Youssef, an 11-year-old child, sits in Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis where he was referred to for treatment. His face is bloodied and his eyes are swollen blue after he was pulled from under the rubble of their home in Nuseirat. He says he doesn’t know how he escaped death.
“Suddenly, the situation in the area changed, and people started running in fear, saying that special forces had stormed the area,” the boy recounted to Mondoweiss. “All of this was happening in front of our house, and we were stuck inside under fire and bombing. We tried to get out, but drones opened fire on us until the house was bombed and fell over our heads.”
“Before our house was bombed, we saw people in the street across from our house on the ground cut up. We saw missiles hitting the people fleeing in the streets, how they cut them off, and how the planes bombed everything moving in the streets – cars and people. The street was full of people, and suddenly, all of them… They were on the ground, and smoke and blood filled the place. Everywhere we looked, shelling and shrapnel were flying.”
As Tawfiq leaned his back against the hospital wall and sat on the floor to receive treatment, he said that he did not expect to survive this massacre. The scenes he saw were too difficult to believe.
“I stayed under the rubble for hours. I did not think for a moment that I might survive and see life again. I had lived through death enough while I was under the rubble. That was death. I do not think I will forget or get over these moments.”
The operation was carried out near a central market, where Amjad Abu Laban, 43, was selling some food items on the road. He survived death but suffered various injuries to his hand and foot.
He says that everything started at once: planes, tanks, shooting, and people were in the middle of bombing and death and did not know how to react or where to turn.
“Intense bombardment began in several areas in front of us, around us, and behind us, and people began falling to the ground by the dozens near Al-Awda Hospital in the Nuseirat camp. Before our eyes, we saw bodies being torn apart and scattered on the roads, and we saw soldiers hidden in civilian clothes and in people’s cars running and killing everyone they met on their way without distinguishing between a child, a woman, a young person, or an old person. We saw the bodies of our brothers cut up, without heads, lying on the ground,” Abu Laban told Mondoweiss.
“These massacres that occurred before my eyes cannot be described.”
In the same hospital, Mahmoud Al-Hawar, 27, lies on his back as a result of an injury to his leg. Al-Hawar witnessed the massacre as he bravely attempted to save his family and neighbors from the bombing.
“The planes bombed our neighbors’ house, and there was a girl under the rubble screaming to be saved. I went with my friends to try to save her, but the rubble was heavy, and we could not dig her out or even lift it to reach that girl, so we waited until the civil defense team arrived. A large number of young men gathered to try to rescue them. But the planes bombed us,” he told Mondoweiss.
Al-Hawar recounted that he felt the missile hit him and his group of friends and they were thrown to the ground. Minutes later, Mahmoud regained consciousness and found himself covered in blood and saw his friends next to him, on the verge of death.
“Before we were bombed, if I told you that I saw more than 10 drones above our heads, you would not believe it. We were looking at the sky and did not know what was happening.”
After the bombing, Al-Hawar tried to stand up to save himself and his friends. “I tried to stand up, but I couldn’t. I was covered in blood. I looked at my leg and it was cut off. I looked at my best friend next to me, and I found him taking his last breath.”
Their injuries were all severe, and when someone arrived who could take them to the hospital, the five friends were placed on top of each other in a small transport truck, with Al-Hawar underneath them all.
“I was in pain from my injury, but I was feeling more pain because I could hear my friends pronouncing their martyrdom and taking their last breaths. All my friends were dying above me, and I was hearing and feeling everything. They were all killed. Some of them were martyred on the road before my eyes, and some of them died later.”
Al-Hawar agreed that the scenes he saw of the dead in the streets will never be forgotten. “I have not slept since the incident. I cannot sleep. I cannot forget anything I witnessed and saw. I cannot forget the people who were running in panic and fear, searching for their relatives and families amidst the destruction and dismembered bodies.”
Rescue operations continue
Rescue teams are still working in Nuseirat with limited capabilities in an attempt to recover the bodies that remained under the rubble. Many residents remain missing due to the massive bombing in the area, and the many homes that were demolished, some on top of their residents. Many others were killed in the market as they tried to meet the needs of their families.
Anees Ghanima, an activist in the Nusreiat refugee camp, summarized the senseless killing on social media, ““This is what happens when we say that we are at risk of being killed at any moment. Imagine that most of those who just left were only in the market, trying to meet their families’ needs. Put yourself in the place of the child who spent all night deceiving his mother to buy him some necessities, and she was killed today during raids. How could we tell him about peace in this world?”
Hassan Sleieh contributed to this report.
US Drone Flights Over Gaza Supported Israeli Operation That Killed Over 200 Palestinians in Nuseirat
A team of US special operations soldiers and intelligence personnel based in Israel assisted in the operation
by Dave DeCamp June 9, 2024 , https://news.antiwar.com/2024/06/09/us-drone-flights-over-gaza-supported-israeli-operation-that-killed-over-200-palestinians-in-nuseirat/
Israel received intelligence support from the US in its Saturday operation in central Gaza’s Nuseirat camp that killed over 200 Palestinians and freed four Israeli hostages.
The intelligence support included information provided by US drone flights over Gaza. The US began flying MQ-9 Reaper drones over Gaza days after October 7 and deployed special operations forces to Israel, demonstrating that US military support for Israel goes beyond providing weapons.
The Washington Post reported that a team of US special operations soldiers and intelligence personnel based at the US Embassy in Jerusalem provided the intelligence support. Besides the drone flights, the US provided communications intercepts, and Israel also received intelligence support from the UK.
Local residents said the Israeli special forces who carried out the raid were disguised as displaced Palestinians from Rafah, and others entered the camp in an aid truck. The Israeli military denied it used an aid truck, but Israeli media reported Israeli soldiers meant to blend in as Arabs were part of the attack. Israeli warplanes pounded Nuseirat as the Israeli commandos on the ground moved to locate the hostages.
According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, 274 Palestinians were killed in the attack on Nuseirat, and 678 were wounded. Gaza’s Media Office said 64 of the dead were children, and 57 were women. The total death toll in Gaza since October 7 has surpassed 37,000.
Israel claimed it killed less than 100 people in the assault, while the US said it didn’t know how many people died. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan celebrated the assault and also acknowledged that “innocent people” were killed.
“We, the United States, are not in a position today to make a definitive statement about that. The Israeli defense forces have put out one number. The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry has put out another number,” Sullivan said. “But we do know this … Innocent people were tragically killed in this operation.”
Hamas alleged that the Israeli attack killed three other Israeli hostages, including an American citizen. The Palestinian group released a video of three corpses, but they were unidentifiable.
Saving Gaza Is About More Than Saving Gaza. It’s Also About Saving Ourselves.
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, JUN 10, 2024 https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/saving-gaza-is-about-more-than-saving?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=145499466&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Saving Gaza is about more than saving Gaza. It’s also about saving ourselves.
Saving ourselves as individuals. Saving ourselves as a society. Saving ourselves as a species.
Saving ourselves from what we’ll become if we just watch this happening right in front of our eyes without doing everything we can to stop it.
Saving ourselves from what the sociopaths who rule over us are trying to turn us into.
Saving ourselves from the way the propagandists are trying to twist and train our minds.
Saving ourselves from the kind of future humanity will have if our rulers can get away with such a brazen act of extreme depravity.
Saving ourselves from the other horrors that will be unleashed upon our world if this kind of thing becomes normalized and accepted.
Saving ourselves from the dark dystopia we are plunging into at breakneck speed.
Saving ourselves from a world where journalism is dead and dissent is forbidden.
Saving ourselves from a world where the bastards will do the worst things imaginable without even having to hide it, and just stare us in the eyes daring us to do something.
Saving ourselves from a world where the powerful have decided to respond to the public’s widespread access to information and raw video footage by just committing their evil deeds right out in the open and forcing us to get used to it.
Saving ourselves from this relentless push by propagandists and politicians to amputate that sacred part of our humanity which screams “NO” to all this.
Saving our hearts.
Saving our compassion.
Saving our tenderness.
Saving our children.
Saving our humanity.
Saving our world.
Gaza has become a humanitarian catastrophe and Israel will have to answer tough questions
By global affairs editor John Lyons, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-10/israel-tough-questions-war-in-gaza/103956848?utm_campaign=abc_news_web&utm_content=twitter&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_source=abc_news_web
“Frozen“ children — it’s an unusual description of an appalling reality.
They’re the words Sydney clinical psychologist Scarlett Wong used after a recent trip to Gaza with Doctors Without Borders.
“When you see a starving child, they are apathetic, they have no response,” she told SBS News. “This is the kind of thing we were seeing from a medical view … children have become frozen, with no emotion, and apathetic.”
The situation, Dr Wong said, was “the worst humanitarian disaster I have ever seen”.
Gaza has become one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes of our time. The UN’s World Food Programme has said parts of Gaza are now gripped by “a full-blown famine”.
One of the few countries denying this is Israel. Not only is there not a famine, said Ron Dermer, a member of Israel’s war cabinet, but there is an abundance of food.
He told a startled Yalda Hakim on Sky UK recently that there were in fact “bustling markets” with fruit and vegetables.
Dermer’s claim defies all available evidence. Given the Israeli army has drones flying constantly across the tiny enclave, Dermer could have provided photographs of the “bustling markets”. Where are the photos?
According to Foreign Policy magazine, 30 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals have been bombed — many repeatedly — even while medical staff, patients and civilians seeking shelter remained inside. Satellite imagery shows vast sections of Gaza in rubble.
The Wall Street Journal reported that from October 7 to December 15, Israel dropped 29,000 bombs, munitions and shells on Gaza. This means that, on average, Israel hit every square kilometre of Gaza with 79 bombs, munitions or shells.
After just nine weeks of the war, the newspaper said the destruction of homes, schools and other buildings resembled “some of the most devastating campaigns in modern history”.
When the war does finish, the rebuilding of Gaza could take a generation. The Washington Post reported that the head of the UN’s Mine Action Program, Mungo Birch, said the number of unexploded missiles and bombs lying under the rubble was “unprecedented” since World War II and that Gaza was now the site of about 37 million tons of rubble — more than what had been generated across all of Ukraine during Russia’s war — and 800,000 tons of asbestos and other contaminants.
Has the response been proportional?
Over the weekend, Israel rescued four hostages captured on October 7 from a heavily populated refugee camp. Gazan authorities said at least 210 Palestinians were killed and 400 wounded during the rescue, which involved heavy bombardment.
Hamas has had its day of reckoning; the videos from October 7 would be, for any reasonable observer, proof of atrocities and war crimes. The videos and photos not released to the public are even more appalling. Hamas has kept hostages for more than eight months.
But Israel’s day of reckoning for its eight-month-long response is still to come. The question is, has its response been proportional?
Every country that engages in war has a day, or years, of reckoning. America had such a day after the Vietnam and Iraq wars. Australia has had — and continues to have — days of reckoning after its involvement in Afghanistan, with continuing investigations into possible war crimes.
Israel will argue that for self-defence it needed to ensure that Hamas was never again in a position to commit an attack. They will argue that throughout the war, Hamas has used civilians as human shields and that, therefore, a large number of civilians were killed.
But there will be very specific allegations that Israel will be under pressure to answer. Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported this week that the Israeli military has been using white phosphorous in Gaza and south Lebanon. HRW noted that white phosphorous causes severe burns, often down to the bone, and burns to only 10 per cent of the body are often fatal. It said it can cause respiratory damage and organ failure.
“Using airburst white phosphorous is unlawfully indiscriminate in populated areas and otherwise does not meet this legal requirement to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian harm,” the group said.
The HRW report also referenced the Israel-Lebanon border. It said Israel had engaged in “widespread” use of white phosphorous since October, including at least five municipalities where white phosphorous munitions were unlawfully airburst over populated residential areas. It said Lebanon should turn to the International Criminal Court and enable the prosecution of grave international crimes.
The ABC put these allegations to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), who said that like many western militaries, the IDF possesses “smoke-screen shells that include white phosphorous that are legal under international law”.
“These shells are used by the IDF for creating smoke screens and not for targeting or causing fires and are not defined under law as incendiary weapons.”
Tough questions are being asked
As the war drags on, some media outlets are increasingly asking difficult questions of Israel.
CNN has conducted a major investigation of one of Israel’s “black site” prison facilities, where they claimed systemic torture of hundreds of Palestinians taken from Gaza is occurring.
The US media outlet spoke to three Israeli whistleblowers from the facility who revealed atrocities ranging from doctors amputating prisoners’ limbs due to injuries sustained from constant handcuffing and medical procedures sometimes performed by underqualified medics, which earned the facility a reputation for being “a paradise for interns” and a place “where the air is filled with the smell of neglected wounds left to rot”.
One medic from the facility said beatings of Palestinians were not done to gather intelligence but out of revenge for the October 7 attack.
He said he was ordered to perform medical procedures on Palestinians for which he was not qualified: “I was asked to learn how to do things on the patients, performing minor medical procedures that are totally outside my expertise.”
When Israel Burned Refugees Alive, Establishment Media Called It a ‘Tragic Accident’
ROBIN ANDERSEN, https://fair.org/home/when-israel-burned-refugees-alive-establishment-media-called-it-a-tragic-accident/ 10 June 24
As the world watched on social media and responded in outrage, US corporate media, once again, provided cover for the perpetrators of Israel’s genocide.
Over the Memorial Day weekend, Israel bombed starving Gazan refugees crowded in tents in Rafah, where Israel had told them to go. As Jeffrey St. Clair (CounterPunch, 5/31/24) wrote, leaflets dropped in Rafah a few days before told them to go to “Tel al-Sultan through Beach Road,” an area set up by the UNRWA refugee agency and designated a UN humanitarian safe zone. The leaflet added, “Don’t blame us after we warned you.”
Nevertheless, without warning, Israel hit the camp with at least eight missiles spreading fire though the encampment of plastic tents (Quds News, 5/26/24). Some refugees burned to death, mostly women and children, leaving them dismembered and charred.
The world saw the terror of the massacre on international and social media. Images showed the area of the strike engulfed in flames as Palestinians screamed, cried, ran for safety and sought to help the injured. “They told people to move there then killed them,” Richard Medhurst (5/28/24) posted.
A boy cries in horror and fear as he watches his father’s tent burn with him inside. A man holds up the body of his charred, now-headless baby, wandering around, not knowing what to do or where to go. An injured, starving child convulses in pain as a medic struggles to find a vein for an IV in her emaciated arm (Al Jazeera, 5/27/24).
Al Jazeera (cited by Quds News, 5/26/24) quoted a Civil Defense source: “We believe that the occupation army used internationally prohibited weapons to target the displaced in Rafah, judging by the size of the fires that erupted at the targeted site.”
US news media reported the tent massacre, some more truthfully than others. But most establishment media repeated Israel’s false claims that it was an accident, weaving disinformation messaging into toned-down descriptions of the scene. With confused syntax, they omitted words like “genocide,” “massacre” and “starvation.” Most left out the language of international law that is best able to explain the unprecedented crimes against humanity that Israel is committing. Corporate reporting left the tent massacre devoid of context and empathy, ignored actions that need to be taken, and ultimately facilitated the ongoing Israeli genocide of Palestinians.
Embedded with an illegal invasion
When NBC News (5/28/24) reported from Gaza that “Israeli tanks reached the city center for the first time, according to NBC News‘ crew on the ground,” it failed to say that the NBC crew was embedded with Israel’s invading force.
The same sentence continued that Israel was “defying international pressure to halt an offensive that has sent nearly 1 million people fleeing Rafah.” But Israel was not just “defying…pressure”; it was in violation of a direct order from the International Court of Justice ICJ to halt its attack on Rafah. Yet NBC reporters rode into Rafah with an army that was ignoring international law to commit further genocide in Gaza.
Compare NBC’s words to those used by Ramy Abdu (5/26/24), chair of Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, who posted: “In the deadliest response to the International Court of Justice’s decision, the Israeli army targeted a group of displaced persons’ tents in Rafah, killing approximately 60 innocent civilians so far.”
In a post, Francesca Albanese (5/26/24), UN special rapporteur for human rights in Palestine, included International actions that needed to be implemented:
The #GazaGenocide will not easily end without external pressure: Israel must face sanctions, justice, suspension of agreements, trade, partnership and investments, as well as participation in int’l forums.
Such sanctions are rarely discussed in establishment media, but are becoming more urgent, given the New York Times report (5/29/24) that Israel intends to extend the genocide through the remainder of 2024. Though the Times reported on the global outrage and demonstrations against the Rafah massacre, the words “genocide” and “massacre” were not used, nor was there any mention of the possibility of sanctions against Israel.
Targeting ‘Hamas,’ not civilians
Instead of sourcing the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice or any humanitarian actors in the region, NBC (5/28/24) quoted a UN National Security Council spokesperson:
Israel has a right to go after Hamas, and we understand this strike killed two senior Hamas terrorists who are responsible for attacks against Israeli civilians…. But as we’ve been clear, Israel must take every precaution possible to protect civilians.
The dead were connected to Hamas whenever possible. At the bottom of the video, the subtitles listed numbers of dead, followed with, “according to the emergency services in Hamas-run Gaza.”
CounterPunch (5/31/24) quoted Jeremy Konyndyk, former head of disaster relief for US Agency for International Development, saying, “Bombing a tent camp full of displaced people is a clear-cut, full-on war crime” who added, “Even if Hamas troops were present, that does not absolve the IDF of the obligation to protect civilians. It does not turn a tent camp into a free fire zone.”
‘A tragic incident’
On NBC (5/28/24), under the footage of the burning horrors of Rafah, the chyron read, “Netanyahu: Deadly Strike a Tragic Incident.”
In response to Israel’s “accident” claim, journalists, activists and social media users, including Rep. Rashida Tlaib, reacted with incredulity and withering criticism of those who asserted it. That was the reaction Axios reporter and CNN analyst Barak Ravid (5/27/24) received when he posted, “Breaking: Netanyahu says the airstrike in Rafah on Sunday was ‘a tragic mistake,’ and adds that it will be investigated.” Katie Halper (5/27/24) replied to Ravid with, “Nice to see you using your position as a journalist to do comms for the Israeli government.”
And Tlaib (5/27/24) commented:
This was intentional. You don’t accidentally kill massive amounts of children and their families over and over again and get to say, “It was a mistake.” Genocidal maniac Netanyahu told us he wants to ethnically cleanse Palestinians.
She ended with the question, “When are you going to believe him?”
Sana Saeed (5/27/24), media critic for Al Jazeera+, posted the front pages of four print publications that repeated Netanyahu’s accident claim. The New York Times used “Tragic Accident,” while “Tragic Mistake” was preferred by Time magazine, Forbes and the AP. Over the headlines, she called them “propagandists for genocide masquerading as journalists.”
‘What Israel shared with us’
But CNN (5/28/24) seemed to be vying for Most Valuable Propagandists by elaborating on the unlikely details offered by the IDF to describe the official Israeli version of what happened. It began with Netanyahu speaking to the Knesset: “Despite our best effort not to harm those not involved, unfortunately a tragic error happened last night. We are investigating the case.”
After four paragraphs of details of the massacre—“burned bodies, including those of children, could be seen being pulled by rescuers from the wreckage”—CNN returned to the justifications. The long, breathless chain of details began:
A US official told CNN Monday that Israel had told the Biden administration it used a precision munition to hit a target in Rafah, but that the explosion from the strike ignited a fuel tank nearby and started a fire that engulfed a camp for displaced Palestinians and led to dozens of deaths.
But the claims could not be confirmed; “It’s what Israel shared with us,” the official said.
But the attack on Rafah was in no way a single “precision” “hit,” as numerous sources reported that multiple bombs hit the camp. And Al Jazeera (5/27/24) reported that Israeli drone strikes also hit the Kuwaiti Hospital, the only functioning hospital in the area, killing two medics. It also pointed out that no notice to evacuate came before the strike.
Ever-changing disinformation
In an X post (5/27/24), Intercept co-founder Jeremy Scahill noted the shifting narrative coming from Israel:
Netanyahu now admits Israel carried out the horrifying bombings that incinerated human beings in Rafah last night and turned a refugee camp into hellfire. I assume all the people who claimed it was actually a failed Hamas rocket attack will now rush to correct themselves.
As we observed after the flour massacre (FAIR.org, 3/22/24), Israel’s string of differing false statements immediately following a massacre is an IDF propaganda strategy designed to confuse and delay. Focusing on changing falsities distracts from the massacre and turns the cameras away from the horrible images of US-supplied weapons slaughter. In this way, massacres become normalized.
Repeating and discussing the ever-changing Israeli disinformation of denial, discussing weapons and official statements, also allows US corporate media to avoid easily observed patterns of Israel’s ongoing massacres, in addition to drawing public attention away from the suffering. But on social media, the raw footage and cries of outrage by users indicate that the manufactured emotional distance collapses online.
Some users expressed extreme distress after prolonged viewing of such imagery. One Palestinian organizer (5/27/24) said:
I’m shaking uncontrollably since last night. I can’t get the beheaded baby that was burned alive. The woman’s screaming out of my head. The decomposed bodies of babies out of my head. The girl whose body was stuck to a wall. Hind’s final message to PRCS…. And now. How do you watch all this and not feel your soul dead?
The daughter of Palestinian refugees posted (5/27/24):
The flour massacre, the tents massacre, the hospital massacre, the refugee camp massacre, the “safe corridor” massacre, the endless massacres, in homes, on the streets, in tents, on foot— eight months of massacre after massacre after massacre.
Another user (5/27/24) asked, “Why do so many Israeli mistakes involve launching multiple missiles at people they’ve assured are in safe zones?”
‘Willful media blackout’
It was the Israeli newspaper Haaretz (2/29/24) that exposed US corporate media reporting as repeated propaganda in a piece titled, “In Netanyahu’s Israel, the Rafah Horror Was Neither ‘a Mishap’ nor Exceptional.” The editorial scoffed at the use of “tragic mishap” to describe the “horrific incident.” It observed that “it took Netanyahu 20 hours to produce the disgraceful statement, which, as usual, lacked any shred of regret over the death of ‘noncombatants.’”
Haaretz derided the “willful media blackout regarding the scope of death and destruction over the last eight months.” Skeptical about the assertion that “it was not expected to cause damage to noncombatant civilians,” the paper observed that, if true, “this involves an ongoing failure at the strategic level.”
By May 29, US corporate media began to report extensively that the Israeli bombs dropped on Rafah that burned Palestinian refugees alive were made in the US. A munitions fragment was filmed by Palestinian journalist Alam Sadeq, and was posted on X (5/27/24) by former US Army explosive expert Trevor Ball two days earlier. Much was made of the fact that the ordinance was smaller than the usual 2,000-pound bombs used to destroy Gaza, and were the preferred bombs the Biden administration had sent to Israel.
As the New York Times (5/29/24) put it, “US officials have been pushing Israel to use more of this type of bomb, which they say can reduce civilian casualties.” The lengthy report included a drawing of the bomb, the details of its manufacture, and assertions that its use by Israel indicated they tried to kill fewer civilians. Gone were any mention of the “tragic mistake,” and the “exploded fuel tank,” forgotten as yesterday’s fake news.
But a lengthy back-and-forth about how the fire could have started failed to point out the obvious, which comes only at the very end when a retired US Air Force sergeant observes, “When you use a weapon that’s intended as precision and low–collateral damage in an area where civilians are saturated, it really negates that intended use.”
As Israel’s atrocities continue to mount in Gaza, the LA Progressive (6/7/24) wrote that though Biden claimed to care about the loss of civilian life in Gaza, and that an Israeli attacked on Rafah would be a “red line,” “events of the past weeks have demonstrated that none of these claims are in fact true.” It added that a month ago, Hamas agreed to an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire agreement “that looked a lot like the ceasefire agreement now being promoted by the Biden administration,” but Israel responded by rejecting that agreement as well.
In addition, Israel closed off the border area between Israel and Egypt, cutting off any aid or supplies from coming into famine-ravaged Gaza. The authors concluded, “What has transpired is a horrifying series of massacres against civilians, which the Biden administration continues to try to downplay, excuse and explain away.”
Over the last eight months, US establishment media have helped Biden “explain away” such atrocities. They have not stopped repeating Israel’s propaganda, and have acted as willing conduits for Israeli disinformation. It is past time they stopped doing so, and started reporting on what is actually happening on the ground in Gaza, not through the eyes of the IDF.
1 This Month
29 Jan. Thursday 7-8 p.m. Webinar – World’s Largest Nuclear Station in Port Hope, ON?
31st January – Challenging the War Machine – a DECLASSIFIED UK SUMMIT
Website of the Week
Now until to February 10, 2026 Radioactive waste storage in France: the debate is finally open! How to participate?
-
Archives
- January 2026 (227)
- December 2025 (358)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (377)
- September 2025 (258)
- August 2025 (319)
- July 2025 (230)
- June 2025 (348)
- May 2025 (261)
- April 2025 (305)
- March 2025 (319)
- February 2025 (234)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
nuclear-news 