Biden Admin Justifies Israel’s Assault on Gaza Hospitals With Recycled Israeli ‘Intelligence’
In November alone, official Israeli social media accounts have been forced to walk about at least a half-dozen false assertions
The same week, Israel’s main government account on Twitter had to delete its false claim that “AP, CNN, NY Times, and Reuters had journalists embedded with Hamas terrorists on October 7th massacre”
As Israel assaults Gaza’s Shifa Hospital, the Biden administration claims that “Hamas does use hospitals” as military bases. Once again, Washington appears to be relying on dubious Israeli propaganda rather than independent analysis.
By Wyatt Reed / The Grayzone, https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/19/biden-admin-justifies-israels-assault-on-gaza-hospitals-with-recycled-israeli-intelligence/
With Israeli troops storming Gaza’s Al-Shifa and Al-Rantisi hospitals, the United States and Israel are doubling down on discredited claims that Hamas has been maintaining “command centers” out of the basements of hospitals in Gaza, even after so-called evidence produced by Tel Aviv was thoroughly debunked.
“I can confirm for you that we have information that Hamas, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, used some hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including Al-Shifa, and tunnels underneath them, to conceal and to support their military operations and to hold hostages,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Tuesday.
Kirby’s claim echoed the assertion by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who maintained that “open-source reporting” shows “Hamas does use hospitals, along with a lot of other civilian facilities, for command-and-control, for storing weapons, for housing its fighters.”
On November 14, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters that US intelligence had no “boots on the ground,” nor any intelligence assets capable of independently gathering intelligence from or about Shifa. When asked if the declassified intel briefing spun out by Kirby and Sullivan arrived through Washington’s “Israeli counterparts,” she refused to answer. But she strongly suggested the intelligence dump was politically motivated.
“This is newly-downgraded information that we felt was important to get out today, because there have been a lot of questions about the hospital and how Hamas operates, and so it was important to get out there,” Singh insisted.
Hamas denies using hospitals for military purposes, and both local healthcare workers and international humanitarian organizations back that up. “I’m sick and tired of these [Israeli] claims that there are Hamas command centers [in hospitals],” Norwegian physician Dr. Mads Gilbert told Al-Jazeera on November 12. Having performed life-saving procedures for several weeks inside Shifa during Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza, Gilbert noted, “As I’ve said 100 times… we’ve never seen high-ranking Hamas people in Al-Shifa,” adding “we’ve been able to roam freely.”
But that did little to prevent Israeli troops from waging an all-out assault on the facilities. As Israeli forces surrounded Shifa hospital on Tuesday with the full-throated support of the Biden administration, arresting journalists outside the facility and violently clearing displaced people from its grounds, doctors inside were forced to move babies in intensive care from one wing of the hospital to another to save their lives. A lack of fuel had already forced many of those infants off vital oxygen supply units.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces have been unable to find any presence of hostages inside or around the hospital. As Israeli Army Radio reported on November 15, “There is no indication of the presence of abductees inside the hospital.”
Systematic Israeli misinformation campaign dismissed by US as “fog of war”
Israeli and American officials have yet to produced any proof that Hamas operates a “command center” under Al-Shifa. Video published by the Israeli military purporting to prove Hamas kept hostages in the basement of Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital, Gaza’s last remaining medical center with a pediatric cancer ward, was less than convincing.
In that video performance, top Israeli army spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari claims that what appears to be a bomb shelter for young children is actually a Hamas torture chamber, citing objects as unlikely as a baby bottle and a woman’s clothes. In one particularly memorable and widely panned moment, Hagari insisted the days of the week written in Arabic on a calendar were actually the names of the “terrorists” meant to guard captive Israelis ostensibly being held there.
The Israeli military has since attempted to downplay the deception as a “mistake in translation.”
It was hardly the first round in Tel Aviv’s fake news campaign. In the weeks since Palestinian resistance groups launched their shock assault on October 7, native Arabic speakers have taken to social media to mock the audio recordings Israel regularly publishes which purport to show Hamas members gleefully discussing carrying out war crimes.
In November alone, official Israeli social media accounts have been forced to walk about at least a half-dozen false assertions. A video showing a crying woman describing how she retrieved her son’s decomposing body from the streets of Gaza was transformed by Israel’s embassy to the US, which used fake captions to falsely claim she was blaming Hamas for the siege. When questioned, the embassy subsequently deleted the post.
The same week, Israel’s main government account on Twitter had to delete its false claim that “AP, CNN, NY Times, and Reuters had journalists embedded with Hamas terrorists on October 7th massacre” – a lie which the New York Times condemned as “reckless” and said put its journalists on the ground in Israel and Gaza “at risk.”
Days later, Israel’s official Arabic-language Twitter account deleted footage of a woman dressed in nursing scrubs who claimed to work as a nurse in Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital denounced Hamas for supposedly stealing fuel and medicine. Other doctors and nurses at the medical center reportedly told journalist Younis Tirawi: “We don’t know this woman; she has never worked here before & we’ve never seen her at the hospital.”
Social media users claimed the woman was Israeli actress Hannah Abutbul, who moonlights as a social media manager of an Israeli company named Aish International that works alongside the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Abutbul denies appearing in the video.
On November 10, Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) claimed Hamas was “INSIDE the Indonesian hospital last night,” citing a video which appeared to show a firearm being displayed. An observer who pointed out that the object was actually a billy club had their reply ‘hidden’ by the official Israeli account.
Throughout the blood-spattered onslaught on the Gaza Strip, US officials have consistently taken Israeli claims at face value, even parroting Tel Aviv’s excuses when prompted. Following Biden’s now-retracted claim to have seen “confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children,” US officials continue to exhibit a remarkable willingness to side with the Israeli government and echo its talking points.
During a November 14 press briefing, a reporter asked State Department spokesman Matthew Miller about the Israeli government’s habitual spreading of “misinformation.” Miller responded by brushing off Israel’s parade of fabrications as an inevitable feature of the “fog of war.”
Netanyahu Says Israel ‘Not Successful’ in Minimizing Civilian Casualties in Gaza
By Kyle Anzalone / Antiwar.com https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/19/netanyahu-claims-israel-not-successful-in-minimizing-civilian-casualties-in-gaza/
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed Israel was “trying to [minimize] civilian casualties. But unfortunately, we’re not successful.” The prime minister’s statement comes as the UN warns that the Israeli fuel embargo of Gaza could cause widespread starvation in the besieged enclave.
In an interview with CBS News on Thursday, the Israeli Prime Minister said Tel Aviv was trying to wipe out Hamas with minimal civilian casualties. He stated, “That’s what we’re trying to do: minimal civilian casualties. But unfortunately, we’re not successful.”
Netanyahu went on to blame Hamas for the high civilian death toll in Gaza. “Any civilian death is a tragedy. And we shouldn’t have any because we’re doing everything we can to get the civilians out of harm’s way, while Hamas is doing everything to keep them in harm’s way,” he argued.
The Israeli leader says his forces have taken steps to warn civilians of upcoming strikes. “So, we send leaflets, [we] call them on their cell phones, and we say: ‘leave’. And many have left,” Netanyahu said.
In the first weeks of the Israeli military campaign, Tel Aviv instructed Gazans to move to the southern half of the strip. However, at least some who fled their homes were killed while trying to evacuate. After fleeing, numerous Gaza residents have been unable to locate basic resources and were forced to return to their homes.
On Wednesday, Israel began instructing Palestinians in southern Gaza to evacuate. It is unclear where the people could go.
Since Israel started bombing Gaza six weeks ago, at least 11,000 civilians, including 4,500 children, have been killed. The UN reports, The UN reports “One in every 57 people living in the Gaza Strip has been killed or wounded.” Dozens of journalists and doctors are among the dead. Over 100 UN staff members have been killed.
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, told the UN Security Council the Israeli bombing and invasion of Gaza has decimated the healthcare infrastructure. “WHO has recorded at least 137 attacks on health care in Gaza, with especially severe impact on Al-Shifa Hospital in recent days, where newborns on life support are dying due to power, oxygen, and water cuts, while many other patients of all ages are at risk – as well as medics, and people sheltering on the hospital grounds,” he said.
Netanyahu attempted to justify the two-day raid on the al-Shifa Hospital by claiming Israel believed it would find hostages in the facility and that Hamas was using the building as a headquarters. He told CBS News there were “strong indications” that Israeli hostages were being held there, and this was “one of the reasons we entered.” However, none were found.
The Israeli Prime Minister went on to say Tel Aviv had “concrete evidence” that there were “terrorist chieftains and terrorists” in the hospital, but that these fled as Israel’s forces advanced. Israeli forces who entered Al-Shifa found a small number of guns and uniforms.
After a Hamas attack in southern Israel on October 7, Tel Aviv cut off all food, aid, water, and fuel into Gaza. The Israeli government has relaxed the embargo and allowed small amounts of food and water into the besieged enclave. However, the lack of fuel has now completely halted all aid shipments. While Netanyahu says he is attempting to take a moral path and save Palestinians’ lives when possible, the international aid agencies warn that there is now a risk of mass starvation in Gaza.
Smearing Photojournalists as Hamas Collaborators – Gets Them Added to a Hit List
Israel’s killings of journalists in Gaza, combined with legal attempts to silence media critics within Israel, are a threat to the public’s ability to know about the nature of the ongoing violence, which is financed with US tax dollars.
ARI PAUL 17 Nov 23, https://fair.org/home/smearing-photojournalists-as-hamas-collaborators-gets-them-added-to-a-hit-list/
During Israeli military offensives in the Occupied Territories, it is common for the Israeli government and its supporters to claim media are biased in favor the Palestinians, often by invoking that there is “no moral equivalence” between the Israeli government and Palestinian militant organizations like Hamas (American Jewish Committee, 10/17/23). Akin to Alex Jones falsely smearing grieving parents of school shooting victims as “crisis actors,” pro-Israel advocates sometimes dismiss media images of Palestinian suffering as staged fakery they call “Pallywood” (France24, 10/27/23).
Now Israeli government officials are accusing major news media of coordinating with Hamas, essentially painting Palestinian stringers as terrorist operatives. At least one Israeli official threatened to “eliminate” anyone involved in the October 7 attacks, and indicated that some journalists were included included on that list.
The pro-Israel media advocacy organization HonestReporting (11/8/23) raised questions about the presence of AP, Reuters, New York Times and CNN photographers near the sites Hamas attacked in southern Israel on October 7:
“What were they doing there so early on what would ordinarily have been a quiet Saturday morning? Was it coordinated with Hamas? Did the respectable wire services, which published their photos, approve of their presence inside enemy territory, together with the terrorist infiltrators? Did the photojournalists who freelance for other media, like CNN and the New York Times, notify these outlets?”
‘No different than terrorists’
Israeli officials are taking the group’s words seriously, going hard against these news agencies and individual Palestinian stringers. These accusations were featured throughout the corporate media.
The Financial Times (11/10/23) reported that Benny Gantz, who has held numerous Israeli military and ministerial roles, said “journalists found to have known about the massacre, and [who] still chose to stand as idle bystanders while children were slaughtered, are no different than terrorists and should be treated as such.” Knesset member Danny Danon (Twitter, 11/9/23), Israel’s former ambassador to the UN, said that Israel would “eliminate all participants of the October 7 massacre,” adding that “the ‘photojournalists’ who took part in recording the assault will be added to that list.” Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu called these journalists “accomplices in crimes against humanity” (New York Post, 11/9/23).
Politico (11/9/23) reported that Israel’s “Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi accused the foreign media of employing contributors who were tipped off on the Hamas attacks.” It added that Nitzan Chen, director of Israel’s government press office, had asked the four media outlets “for clarifications regarding the behavior” of their photographers.
‘Mobilized by Hamas’
The affair was covered in many other outlets, including the New York Times (11/9/23), The Hill (11/9/23), Newsweek (11/9/23) and the Daily Beast (11/9/23). The Jerusalem Post (11/10/23) took the government and watchdog’s allegations as fact and said in an editorial:
“These so-called photojournalists made no effort to stop or distance themselves from the barbaric events. On the contrary: They were mobilized by the Hamas terrorists to glorify their acts, help promote their terrorism and spread fear among their enemies—Israel and the West. In this way, too, Hamas recalls ISIS, which deliberately recorded its beheadings and other barbaric murders.”
In a statement, Reuters (11/9/23) “categorically denies that it had prior knowledge of the attack or that we embedded journalists with Hamas on October 7.” Al Jazeera (11/9/23) reported that “AP also rejected allegations that its newsroom had prior knowledge of the attacks”; the agency said in a statement that the
“first pictures AP received from any freelancer show they were taken more than an hour after the attacks began…. No AP staff were at the border at the time of the attacks, nor did any AP staffer cross the border at any time.”
Neither HonestReporting nor Israeli officials raising a stink about this have provided any evidence of unethical behavior by these media outlets or their stringers (Reuters, 11/11/23). HonestReporting has shrouded its rhetoric with the disclaimer of “just asking questions.” The AP (11/9/23) reported that “Gil Hoffman, executive director of HonestReporting and a former reporter for the Jerusalem Post, admitted…the group had no evidence to back up” its suggestion that the photographers had “prior coordination with the terrorists.” Hoffman “said he was satisfied with subsequent explanations from several of these journalists that they did not know.”
Nevertheless, CNN and the AP stopped working with Hassan Eslaiah, one of the freelancers mentioned in the HonestReporting report, who in fact “got extra emphasis in the HonestReporting story, which resurfaced a several-years-old photo of him posing with Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar,” according to the Washington Post (11/9/23).
Deadly time for journalists
Any journalist who read HonestReporting’s questions had to smirk a bit. Journalists all over the world are tipped off by all sorts of sources to get somewhere at a certain time, with the undetailed promise of some hot footage. This is just the nature of the job, and doesn’t mean that a journalist’s relationship with a source is the same as working together on a common message.
have already written at FAIR (10/19/23) that Israel’s killings of journalists in Gaza, combined with legal attempts to silence media critics within Israel, are a threat to the public’s ability to know about the nature of the ongoing violence, which is financed with US tax dollars. The Committee to Protect Journalists (11/15/23) said that 42 journalists have been killed in the month since fighting broke out, making that period “the deadliest for journalists since it began gathering data in 1992” (UPI, 11/8/23).
Now Israeli officials have insinuated that if you are too physically close to a Palestinian fighter and get a good photo in the process, their government may consider you an enemy combatant. That is another chilling escalation of a troubling trend in Israel’s relationship with the press.
Information stranglehold
It’s all part of the Israeli government’s attempt to keep a tight stranglehold on information coming out in the press. Recently, the government used the tried and true method of embedding journalists within military units; in exchange for on-the-ground access, the military gets to review the footage journalists’ obtain (New Arab, 11/8/23). Israel also moved to criminalize the “consumption of terrorist materials” (Al Jazeera, 11/8/23) and to shut down media deemed a threat to national security (International Federation of Journalists, 10/20/23). NBC (11/11/23) reported that the Israeli government has “cracked down on broadcasts, reports and social media posts that” are deemed “a threat to national security or in support of terror organizations since Hamas’ October 7 assault.”
As the Israeli publication +972 (9/18/23) pointed out, before the outbreak of the current war, Israeli government censorship had actually declined, but it still found that in 2022, the
Israeli military censor blocked the publication of 159 articles across various Israeli media outlets, and censored parts of a further 990. In all, the military prevented information from being made public an average of three times a day—on top of the chilling effect that the very existence of censorship imposes on independent journalism that seeks to uncover government failings.
While Israel likes to think of itself as a bastion of Western enlightenment in a sea of backward nations, this anti-media trend in the country makes it more like its neighbors than its supporters would like to believe.
In the case of the death of famous British correspondent Marie Colvin, a judge ruled that she was intentionally targeted by the Assad regime for giving a voice to opposition factions (BBC, 1/31/19). Egypt frequently detains journalists for the supposed crime of collaboration with subversive organizations and foreign powers (Reporters Without Borders, 6/30/23). The rate of the Turkish government’s jailing of journalists has accelerated (Voice of America, 12/15/22), and last year the government “detained 11 journalists affiliated with pro-Kurdish media for their alleged links to Kurdish militants” (AP, 10/25/22).
This is the club Israel belongs to. And such hostility toward the free press makes it harder for journalists to deliver clear, fair reporting about the Middle East conflict. And that’s the point. The insinuation that media organizations who report freely on the Israel/Palestine conflict are anti-Zionist agents is meant to keep the situation shrouded in haze.
How a hasbara group’s sham investigation put Gaza journalists in the firing line
Honest Reporting’s claims against Palestinian photographers were echoed by Israeli leaders and media. But they’re factually and journalistically unfounded.
+972 Magazine, ByOren Ziv, November 13, 2023
On Nov. 8, Honest Reporting, an organization that claims to monitor “anti-Israel” bias in the media, published an “investigation” accusing Palestinian photojournalists in the Gaza Strip of having advance knowledge about Hamas’ lethal October 7 attack on southern Israel. ……………………..
The report quickly gained traction, with Israel’s Foreign Ministry and the Government Press Office both sharing the report on their official X pages (the former has since deleted the post). Israeli leaders rushed to put out their own condemnations of the journalists, equating them with those responsible for the massacres…………………………………..
However, even a cursory examination of the investigation’s claims revealed major discrepancies……………………………………
Indeed, the allegations against the Palestinian journalists appear to be completely baseless. Gil Hoffman, Honest Reporting’s director and a former longtime correspondent at the Jerusalem Post, admitted as much two days after the report’s publication, in response to refutations issued by the four outlets implicated by the claims: Associated Press, Reuters, CNN, and The New York Times.
…………………………………………………………………….. Claims debunked
In order to properly respond to the dangerous claims made by Honest Reporting, it is necessary to understand how both photo agencies and international media outlets work with photographers.
First, these organizations usually use staff photographers, independent photographers, and/or photographers who either approach agencies and outlets to sell their photos or are contacted by these bodies to buy their work.
On October 7, there were no international photographers in Gaza (who would require permits from the Israeli authorities to enter the Strip), and since Hamas’ attack and the start of Israel’s intensified siege and bombardment, none have been able to enter. Therefore, for the purpose of covering the events of that day, the media relied on their permanent local Palestinian staff as well as additional Palestinian photographers.
The Israeli media, which parroted Honest Reporting’s allegations unquestioningly, claimed that the Palestinian photographers “documented the massacre.” This is false: while one journalist photographed a mob attacking the body of a dead soldier that had been removed from an Israeli tank along the Gaza fence, none of them documented killing. The photographs mentioned in the report went online in real time, with full credit to the photographers, and Israeli media outlets themselves used these photos extensively. Some of them have become iconic, such as the image of a commandeered tank that was set on fire next to the Gaza fence.
Nonetheless, the international outlets mentioned in the report took Honest Reporting’s claims seriously, and conducted their own investigations. CNN, The New York Times, AP, and Reuters all looked into the allegations and offered responses. AP, for example, emphasized that it did not know in advance about the attack, and that the initial photographs — taken by freelancers — were taken more than an hour after the attack began. The other outlets published similar clarifying statements.
………………………………………………………………………………………………….. Even after Honest Reporting admitted they had no proof that the photographers were complicit in the attack, most of the Israeli media that reported on the initial findings did not bother to publish anything about the organization’s sudden change in tune. The claim that Palestinian journalists were responsible for Hamas’ war crimes has already taken root and become just one more example in the wave of attacks by the Israeli public against Palestinian journalists.
A flawed logic
Like photojournalists all over the world, the Gaza-based photographers arrived to fulfill their journalistic duty and document a difficult, painful, and cruel event, of which they did not know all the details at the time………………………………………………………………………
The Palestinian photographers set out to document an event that took place near their homes. That same morning, Israeli photojournalists — myself included — set out to document the events in the south. We filmed the wounded, the bodies lying on the ground, and the gun battles at the Sderot police station between Palestinian fighters and Israeli security forces. Does this mean we had a hand in the events or could have helped? Of course not.
………………………………………………………… It is difficult to accept that an unfounded investigation was accepted by large parts of the Israeli media as fact, went viral on social media, was quoted without reservation, and strengthened the incitement against those who are trying in impossible conditions to document the reality on the ground. Israel has killed at least 39 journalists in Gaza since the war began. The accusations made by Honest Reporting serve to legitimize their deaths and the bloodletting of others.
Had the organization bothered to contact the various media outlets for a response before publishing their claims, the damage could have been avoided. But as Hoffman told AP, Honest Reporting doesn’t “claim to be a news organization,” and thus, it seems, the traditional journalistic standards of asking for comment before publication does not apply to them. Honest Reporting is a right-wing, hasbara organization with a clear agenda, and should be treated as such by all who interact with it.
A version of this article was first published in Hebrew on Local Call. Read it here. https://www.972mag.com/honest-reporting-gaza-journalists/
Time’s Up for Netanyahu and Biden
The question for today is what the world will do to enable the Palestinian people to live in peace and security in a nation where their children enjoy the opportunities most Americans and Europeans take for granted.
By Dan Siegel ScheerPost 17 Nov 23 https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/17/times-up-for-netanyahu-and-biden/
We can tell the world is changing when tens of thousands of Texans rally in the capital of America’s most important red state to demand a ceasefire in Gaza and freedom for Palestine. No longer can the Israeli government enforce its deadly calculus of 10 (or 50? or 100?) Palestinian lives for each Israeli killed in its futile effort to suppress Palestine’s struggle for self-determination. No longer can an American President assume that the public will support propping up an Israeli government whose constant, murderous violations of international law bring us daily exposure to the violence and deprivation imposed on the Palestinian population.
The issues are no longer whether Israel should survive and whether Hamas’ murders must be condemned. Those are the easy questions. Countless millions of us have moved on.
The question for today is what the world will do to enable the Palestinian people to live in peace and security in a nation where their children enjoy the opportunities most Americans and Europeans take for granted. No one suggests that this challenge can be easily resolved, but the first step is for the U.S. to stop supporting the most right-wing government in Israel’s history from imposing unlimited violence and deprivation on Gaza while accelerating violent settler expansion in the West Bank.
Israel’s strategies to ensure its survival and the means it chooses to defend itself should no longer enjoy unquestioned American support. Netanyahu’s government has exhausted its legitimate right to defend itself against the Hamas attack. It has already killed 11,000 Palestinians and provided no evidence that any of them were responsible for Hamas’ violence.
Israel’s air campaign against Gaza relies on the “emergency” American appropriation of $14 billion in military aid. American weapons have been designated for Israeli settlers stealing Palestinian land in the West Bank. U.S. officials know that Israel’s actions will not lead to peace. So do Israeli leaders, including many in the military. Netanyahu and his government survive because they have American support, including Jews who continue to maintain that criticism of the Israeli government is the equivalent of antisemitism. Many of us disagree. Recent polling demonstrates that the American public is evenly divided on support for the Israeli bombing of Gaza.
Organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace and J Street represent ever growing numbers of American Jews. We are no longer cowed from describing Israel’s actions against the people of Gaza as genocide or its policies in the West Bank as apartheid. We are no longer intimidated by an American Jewish establishment that wields specious and exaggerated accusations of antisemitism and harassment to silence critics of the Netanyahu government.
America’s Jewish establishment does its best to suppress the contentious history of Zionism within the Jewish community worldwide. My grandfather grew up in the late 1800s in a small town in Belarus and became a student and political activist in Minsk. The intellectual life of his community focused on the debate about whether socialism or Zionism best served Jews’ long term interests.
Much public debate focuses on “who started it?,” and the simplistic answer given by Israel’s defenders points to the Hamas attack of October 7 as justification for Israel’s excesses. But the war between Israel and Palestine did not begin on Oct. 7, or even in 1979 or 1967 or 1948, and it was not created in the Holocaust. It makes more sense to say that the roots of the current conflict go back to the Crusades, a campaign that began around 1095 when Europe’s Christian kings raised and sent armies to the Middle East to overthrow its Muslim leaders and take their land. As they marched across Europe, the Crusaders attacked Jewish communities, murdering their populations and stealing their wealth. Almost 1,000 years later the descendants of those Arab and Jewish people contend for the land conquered by the Crusaders.
History will not tell us which side has right on its side. The search for peace must be forward-looking and requires a commitment to the welfare of both the Palestinian and Israeli people. American officials are far from powerless to stop the Netanyahu government. The problem is that they refuse to do so. The current crisis has created a demand for leadership with a vision of a world at peace.
This is Joe Biden’s Lyndon Johnson moment, the time for him to follow LBJ’s 1968 decision to withdraw from the campaign for reelection. The issue is not that Biden is too old. His policies are too old. The American Empire is no more. We need leaders ready to engage the emerging multipolar world, who do not imagine that the U.S. is going to war over Taiwan, who welcome sharing power with the nations of Europe and the BRICS countries. The end of America’s uncritical support of the Israeli government can be the first step in creating leadership for a world at peace.
Israel demolishes Gaza parliament (VIDEO)
Rt.com 17 Nov 23
IDF troops posed inside the Palestinian Legislative Council before blowing it up
Israeli troops destroyed the Palestinian parliament building in Gaza on Wednesday, describing the act as part of the war against Hamas.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Arabic-language spokesman, Ofir Gendelman, posted a minute-long video of the demolition on X (formerly Twitter). It showed the heavily damaged building exploding in a pillar of smoke and dust, as Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops in nearby trenches laughed and cheered.
“Today, our ground forces blew up the headquarters of the Hamas Legislative Council in the Gaza Strip as part of destroying the Hamas regime of oppression and terrorism,” wrote Gendelman.
The Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) building was located on Omar al-Mukhtar Street in central Gaza City.
On Monday, soldiers of the IDF’s Golani Brigade posed inside with Israeli flags, “after conquering the area,” according to the Israeli news outlet i24NEWS.
The PLC has been largely inactive since 2007, when Hamas took power in Gaza and split from the Fatah movement in the West Bank……………………………more https://www.rt.com/news/587354-israel-demolishes-gaza-parliament/
Herzog: Israel will maintain ‘very strong force’ in Gaza, Translation: We’re not leaving. Ever.
James Shotter and Andrew England, Financial Times, Thu, 16 Nov 2023 https://www.sott.net/article/486055-Herzog-Israel-will-maintain-very-strong-force-in-Gaza-Translation-We-re-not-leaving-Ever
Israeli President Isaac Herzog has said that his country cannot leave a vacuum in Gaza and would have to maintain a “very strong force” in the coastal enclave for the near future to prevent Hamas re-emerging in the besieged strip.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Herzog said the government was discussing many ideas about how Gaza would be run once the war between Israel and Hamas ended, adding that he assumed the US and “our neighbours in the region” would have some involvement in the post-conflict order.
“If we pull back, then who will take over? We can’t leave a vacuum. We have to think about what will be the mechanism; there are many ideas that are thrown in the air,” Herzog said. “But no one will want to turn this place, Gaza, into a terror base again.”
Herzog’s comments come as international pressure mounts on Israel over the soaring death toll in Gaza and the deepening humanitarian crisis in the strip, which is home to 2.3mn people and has been controlled by Hamas since 2007.
Western officials are also concerned that Israel has no clear plan for what comes next in Gaza after vowing to eliminate Hamas, which is deeply embedded in Palestinian society and has political and military wings.
The Biden administration has said there might be a need for a transition period, but it has also warned Israel not to reoccupy the strip — from which it withdrew in 2005 — or to reduce the size of the territory with new security barriers or buffer zones.
Comment: Good luck with that. The Zionists are off the leash and they know it.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has previously said Israel would maintain indefinite “overall security responsibility” over Gaza.
Herzog, who has no executive powers but is briefed on the war effort, said: “In order to prevent terror from coming up again, we have to have a very strong force to make sure that it’s committed enough and it [the attack] doesn’t happen [again].”
Herzog was speaking hours before Israeli forces launched a raid on al-Shifa hospital, Gaza’s largest medical facility, which is home to patients and thousands of Palestinians who have sought sanctuary from Israel’s bombardment.
The Israel Defense Forces described its raid on al-Shifa as a “precise and targeted operation” in a “specified area” of the hospital. The IDF accuses Hamas of using hospitals for military operations, and the White House on Tuesday supported Israel’s claims that Palestinian militants stored weapons in medical facilities.
Comment: Precise and targeted means we won’t drop a missile right on your head, but bomb you right up to the front door:
Hamas has denied these claims. A spokesman for the government in Gaza described the raid on al-Shifa as a war crime.
The UN has said that the health system in Gaza has collapsed, with all but one of the hospitals in northern Gaza no longer functioning.
Asked about Israel’s military operations around hospitals, Herzog said: “We are doing it in a very, very cautious way.”
He also insisted that Israel was seeking to protect civilians.
Israeli forces launched an air and land offensive on Gaza after Hamas’s October 7 attack killed about 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials, in its most ferocious ever assault on the strip.
More than 11,200 people have been killed in Israel’s bombardment, according to Palestinian health officials, and the UN says more than 1.5mn people have been displaced.
Israel has repeatedly ordered Palestinians to leave the densely populated north of Gaza, which is the focus of its military operations, and to move south.
“I care about the Palestinian deaths . . . it breaks my heart,” Herzog said. “But I always remember, I have first and foremost [to ensure] the security to defend our people.”
Even Israel’s staunchest allies have raised concerns about the death toll in Gaza, with US secretary of state Antony Blinken saying last week that “far too many Palestinians have been killed”.
This week, French President Emmanuel Macron told the BBC that Israel must “stop the bombing”.
Herzog said Israel respected its allies and listened to the US “very carefully”. But he added that “at the end of the day, we have a duty to protect our people”.
The president said “first and foremost” Israel wanted to secure the release of about 240 hostages that Hamas captured during its October 7 attack on southern Israel.
He said the international community understood that, and supported Israel’s right to defend itself. But he said: “How do I have the right to defend myself if I cannot eradicate the military capabilities of Hamas? It’s right there. It’s right there in the [Gaza] city.”
Qatar, which hosts Hamas’s political office, has been facilitating indirect talks between Israel and the militant group to secure a deal to release civilian hostages.
Herzog blamed Hamas for the lack of an agreement, saying “we haven’t even received one piece of information about our hostages”.
“So we have to fight and get them,” he said.
He said Israel, which has laid siege to Gaza and allowed only a limited amount of aid into the strip — triggering acute shortages of food, water and fuel — was working to allow more humanitarian assistance into the enclave.
Herzog added that the government was discussing “a major effort” with Cyprus to deliver aid via the sea, saying Cypriot officials would be visiting Israel on Thursday to follow up on the initiative.
“It’s under serious negotiations with the Cypriot government,” he said.
“It’s true there are areas in Gaza that are in a very dire situation. That’s because it’s a war zone,” he said. “But we are trying.”
Biden and Israel Refuse to Provide Proof of Hamas Base at Gaza Hospital
my comment:
Even if there were Hamas base, Hamas officials, underneath the hospital – that does not justify the mass killing of children women, men in the hospital
Neither Israel nor the U.S. have put forth concrete evidence that Hamas set up its headquarters under al-Shifa, Gaza’s largest medical facility.
By Jake Johnson / Common Dreams https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/16/biden-refuses-to-provide-proof-of-hamas-base-at-gaza-hospital/—
U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday repeated the Israeli government’s claim that Hamas located its headquarters under Gaza’s largest hospital but refused to provide any evidence when pressed by a reporter amid Israel’s raid of the facility, which drew international alarmand condemnation.
During a press conference in California, Biden said that “you have a circumstance where the first war crime is being committed by Hamas by having their headquarters, their military hidden under a hospital.”
“And that’s a fact,” the president added. “That’s what’s happened.”
But at the end of the press conference, Biden declined when asked to detail the evidence the U.S. has seen showing that Hamas has a command center beneath al-Shifa, which is been under assault by Israeli forces for weeks.
“No, I can’t tell you,” Biden replied. “I won’t tell you.”
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote in response to Biden’s remarks that “a U.S. official tells me that the ‘U.S. intel’ is simply based on what Israel has provided, i.e. ISRAELI intel.”
“This may be why a dissent cable accused Biden of misleading the American public,” Parsi added, referring to an internal memo signed by dozens of U.S. foreign service officials.
Gaza health officials have repeatedly denied that Hamas has a command center inside or beneath al-Shifa, where thousands of patients, medical workers, and displaced people remain. Israel has used the claim to justify its attacks on the hospitals, which human rights groups have called a war crime.
Following its initial raid on Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) released photos and video footage purporting to show Hamas weapons and combat equipment at al-Shifa, but Israel has yet to provide any evidence of a secret Hamas base or tunnels under the hospital.
As The Washington Postreported, Israel said “no further evidence of Hamas activities in the hospital was scheduled to be made public for now” following the Wednesday release of the photos and video footage.
“Israel had hoped the controversial raid would turn up firm evidence of substantial militant activity in al-Shifa, a European diplomat told the Poston Thursday,” the newspaper added. “But the absence of clear proof to date has already led Western allies, including the United States, to increase pressure on Israel to accept a pause in fighting, said the diplomat.”
On Thursday, Israeli troops raided al-Shifa from the south, according to Al Jazeera, destroying a wall and interrogating the hospital’s workers.
Mohammed Zaqout, the director-general of Gaza’s hospitals, told Al Jazeera that “there is no member of Hamas in al-Shifa Hospital.”
“There is no military activity in al-Shifa,” Zaqout added. “All that happened is around the hospital but inside the hospital, all of the people are civilians.”
An IDF spokesperson claimed Wednesday that Hamas “knew we were coming” and “tried to hide evidence of their war crimes,” but analysts have expressed growing skepticism about the government’s insistence that Hamas used al-Shifa as a major command center.
“Did 200 Hamas forces, who IDF intelligence claims were present at Shifa Hospital after Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, vanish out of thin air?” Yonah Jeremy Bob, the Jerusalem Post‘s senior military correspondent, asked Wednesday.
“All of the following could change radically if the IDF finds a larger smoking gun overnight Wednesday or on Thursday, but at press time, the IDF had presented a much weaker case to the world about Hamas’ presence at the hospital than expected,” he added. “The IDF announced zero arrests and even foreign media only mentioned two arrests, with five Hamas terrorists being killed just outside the hospital, but none inside—not even a single gunfight.”
Don’t be fooled. Biden is fully signed up to genocide in Gaza
what the Biden administration really needs is a cover story to justify the fact that it is continuing to supply the weapons and funding needed by Israel to carry out its crimes in broad daylight
The White House needs a cover story to obscure its complicity. In desperation, it is once again resurrecting the long-dead two-state solution
JONATHAN COOK, NOV 15, 2023, [First published by Middle East Eye]
The White House faces a dilemma. It has the power to stop the death and destruction in Gaza in its tracks, at any time of its choosing. But it chooses not to.
The US is determined to back its client state to the hilt, giving Israel licence to wreck the tiny coastal enclave, seemingly whatever the cost in Palestinian lives.
But the optics – and that is all that concerns Washington – are disastrous.
TV images have shown hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fleeing their destroyed homes, on a scale unseen since Israel’s earlier mass ethnic cleansing operations of 1948 and 1967.
Even the western media is struggling to obscure the veritable mountain of crushed and bleeding bodies in Gaza. The known death toll has now surpassed 11,000, with thousands more buried under rubble. Those who survive face a genocidal policy, starving them of food, water and power.
By the weekend, Israel’s declared war on Hamas had shifted into an open war on Gaza’s hospitals. Medicins San Frontieres reported that al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City had been bombed repeatedly and its power cut off, with horrific scenes of premature babies dying after their incubators had stopped functioning. Staff who tried to evacuate, as Israel had ordered them to, were shot at. Similar scenes unfolded at al-Rantisi hospital.
Western publics are growing increasingly incensed. Protest marches have attracted numbers not seen since the mass demonstrations against the Iraq war 20 years ago.
Western allies are finding it harder to obscure and justify their complicity in what are indisputable Israeli crimes against humanity. French President Emmanuel Macron broke ranks at the weekend. His message was summed up bluntly by the BBC: “Macron calls on Israel to stop killing Gaza’s women and babies.”
In private, US allies in the Middle East are pleading with the US to use its leverage to restrain Israel.
Meanwhile, Washington is only too aware of how quickly Israel’s regional opponents could get dragged in, dangerously expanding and escalating the conflict.
Its immediate response has been desperate, and preposterous, stop-gaps to ease the criticism, including from 500 administration staff who submitted a letter to Biden on Tuesday protesting the White House’s blanket support for Israel.
Those measures have included the president calling for “less intrusive action” from Israel towards the hospitals, shortly before Israeli forces were reported storming al-Shifa, and rumours that Tony Blair, the former British prime minister who joined the US attack on Iraq in 2003 in violation of international law, might serve as the West’s “humanitarian coordinator” in Gaza.
Never-ending occupation
But what the Biden administration really needs is a cover story to justify the fact that it is continuing to supply the weapons and funding needed by Israel to carry out its crimes in broad daylight.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken set out his stall last week at the G7 summit. The goal is to shift the focus away from Israel’s genocidal policies in Gaza, and Washington’s backing for them, to a purely theoretical discussion about what might happen after the fighting ends…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The no-state solution
The truth is that Washington formally abandoned the so-called two-state solution years ago, aware that Israel would never allow even the most circumscribed of Palestinian states.
Over the past three decades, Israel has gone from the pretence – maintained during the Oslo process – that it might one day concede a sham, demilitarised Palestinian state, cut off from the rest of the Middle East, to outright rejection of Palestinian statehood on any terms at all. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
The goal is transparent: to expel Gaza’s population into the neighbouring Egyptian territory of Sinai. And given Israel’s previous form, the only reasonable conclusion to draw is that Gaza’s refugee families – some of them about to be exiled by Israel for a second or third time – will never be allowed to return to the ruins.
The Biden administration can pretend to be resurrecting a non-existent two-state solution. But the reality is that Israel has had just such an expulsion plan – called the Greater Gaza Plan – on the drawing board for decades.
According to reports, Washington has been signed up to the creation of a Palestinian enclave in Sinai since at least 2007…………………………………………………………………………………………………..
No eradicating Hamas
But perhaps the most fraudulent of the White House deceptions is the assumption that Hamas – and by extension, all Palestinian resistance – can be eradicated from Gaza……………………………………………………………………….
Israel’s genocidal policies – unless it intends to wipe out every Palestinian in Gaza – will not moderate that impulse for resistance. Israel will simply inflame more anger and resentment, and a stronger motive for vengeance. ……………………………………………..
Israel and the US know all this, too. History is crammed full of such lessons taught to greedy, arrogant colonisers and occupiers.
But their goal, whatever they claim, is not a solution or a resolution. It is permanent war. It is perpetuating the “cycle of violence”. It is greasing the tank treads of the West’s profitable war machine by spawning the very enemies that western publics are told they need protecting from.
Whether Palestinians are returned to the Stone Age in Gaza, as Israeli military commanders have long desired, or expelled to live in refugee camps in Sinai, they will not accept a fate in which they are treated as “human animals”.
Their fight will go on. And Israel and Washington will have to keep inventing new, ever more fanciful stories to try to persuade us that the West’s hands are clean. https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/dont-be-fooled-biden-is-fully-signed?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=476450&post_id=138886737&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&utm_medium=email
US Is Quietly Sending Israel More Ammunition, Missiles
- Supplying shells for Apache gunships, bunker-buster munitions
- Arms arrive on a ‘near-daily basis,’ Defense Department says
Bloomberg, By Anthony Capaccio,
The Pentagon has quietly ramped up military aid to Israel, delivering on requests that include more laser-guided missiles for its Apache gunship fleet, as well as 155mm shells, night-vision devices, bunker-buster munitions and new army vehicles, according to an internal Defense Department list
The military aid to Israel goes beyond the widely known provision of Iron Dome interceptors and Boeing Co. smart bombs. Despite increasing caution from Biden administration officials, advising Israel to minimize civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip, the supply of weapons continues.
The document reviewed by Bloomberg News indicates that the arms requested by Israel in its conflict with Hamas, designated as a terrorist group by the US and European Union, are either in the process of being shipped or the Defence Department is working to make them available from stockpiles in the US and Europe…………….. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-14/pentagon-is-quietly-sending-israel-ammunition-laser-guided-missiles#xj4y7vzkg
Patrick Lawrence: ‘The Hinge of History’- Palestine and the New World Order
What we are seeing at the moment in Palestine is the end of settler colonialism. Settler colonialism is a phenomenon of the last two centuries or so, and it is always accompanied by genocide.
November 14, 2023, By Patrick Lawrence , https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/14/patrick-lawrence-the-hinge-of-history/—
Bombing hospitals was, just a few days ago, an undeclared red line the Israel Defense Forces dared not cross without provoking international disgust and condemnation. At writing, the IDF is bombing hospitals and, I read, its soldiers are shooting patients, invalids among them, as they attempt to evacuate buildings soon to be demolished.
There is disgust and condemnation now, and they find expression not only on the streets of many cities but also in governing circles. Axios reported Monday that an internal State Department memo, signed by 100 officials at State and its aid agency, USAID, accuses President Biden of lying about Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and of complicity in war crimes. On Tuesday, The New York Times put the signatories of another letter to Biden at 400 representing 40 government departments and agencies, including the National Security Council — this in addition to an open letter to Secretary of State Blinken signed by more than 1,000 Agency for International Development employees. So far as I know, this measure of dissent in policy and governing circles is more or less unprecedented.
Beyond our purple mountains and fruited plains, the Irish Dáil will vote this week on expelling the Israeli ambassador, throwing Israel out of a European Union trade accord for breaching its human-rights clauses, and—a Sinn Féin motion—referring Israel to the International Criminal Court. Emmanuel Macron came out last weekend calling for a ceasefire, the first Western leader to do so. Given Biden’s defiant refusal even to consider asking Israel to accept a ceasefire, the French president has implicitly issued a rejection of Israeli violence and the U.S. policy supporting it.
We cannot make too much of events such as these, but we must not make too little of them, either. These are signs on the surface of much deeper movements a few meters down in our civilization’s soil. Things are gradually coming apart in consequence of Israel’s savagery and America’s abetment of it, at home in the U.S., in the Atlantic world altogether and certainly between the West and the world beyond it. Now it is time to look forward to see what we can see of the world to come.
Christopher Lydon, who produces Radio Open Source for WBUR in Boston, suggested over the weekend we have reached “a hinge in history—outcomes wildly uncertain.” He made this remark at the start of a long interview with Chas Freeman, the retired ambassador for whom I share with Lydon great admiration. Freeman agreed with the hinge-of-history thought. So do I. All is changing, changing utterly, if you will let me borrow and bend Yeats’s famous line.
Here is Chas on our moment:
This is clearly what Chancellor Scholz of Germany calls a Zeitenwende—that is, an epic-changing moment, a time of major change in a new direction in history. We’ve talked before about the fact that 500 years of global dominance by the Euro–American culture, the Atlantic culture, has come to an end.
The only exception I can think of is New Zealand, where Māori power countered the British sufficiently to preserve their culture as a separate one….What we are seeing at the moment in Palestine is the end of settler colonialism. Settler colonialism is a phenomenon of the last two centuries or so, and it is always accompanied by genocide.
It may seem unlikely that the Palestinians will do as well resisting the hegemonic West as the Māori in the 19th century, although outcomes, as Chris Lydon says, are wildly uncertain. In any case, one does not want to see a separate, even segregated Palestinian entity emerge from the Israel–Palestine catastrophe so much as a single, secular nation in which cultures of all sorts are integrated and, more than tolerant, wholly accepting of one another. So I argued recently in this space.
‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 37: Al-Shifa Hospital No Longer Functioning as Israeli Ground Troops Surround the Hospital
Thousands of lives are at risk as Al-Shifa Hospital becomes non-operational, with ICUs and incubators shutting down due to lack of fuel, and medical staff and patients trapped waiting to die. Israeli forces continue to shell hospitals in north Gaza.
SCHEERPOST, By Mustafa Aby Sneineh / Mondoweiss, November 13, 2023
Casualties
- 11,078 killed*, including 4,506 children, and 27,490 wounded in Gaza
- 184 Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem
- Israel revises its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,200
*The casualty numbers from Gaza have not been updated in at least 2 days, as the “collapse of services and communications” has made it nearly impossible for the health ministry to document and update the numbers
Key Developments
- Israeli heavy fire targeting Al-Shifa trapped thousands of people who were displaced, wounded, sick, and medical staff inside it, without electricity, food, water, or fuel.
- Al-Jazeera reported that Israeli forces are located approximately 700 meters from the Al-Shifa hospital’s gates, and firing, and armed clashes could be heard in the distance.
- WHO: “There are reports that some people who fled the hospital have been shot at, wounded and even killed.”
- Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City stopped working completely after running out of fuel to generate electricity.
- Doctors at al-Ahli Arab Hospital say it is now the last functioning hospital in Gaza City and the northern areas and that it is “overwhelmed” with casualties.
- Israeli forces are surrounding the medical quarter in the center of Gaza City, where three major hospitals are located, including Al-Nasr Medical Complex, Al-Rantisi, and St John of Jerusalem Eye Hospital.
- Israel said 43 soldiers were killed since October 28, and Hamas released footage of targeting tanks in Gaza.
- Hamas’s Izz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades spokesperson said that fighters documented the destruction, completely or partially, of 160 Israeli military vehicles, which includes tanks, bulldozers and personnel carriers.
- The Israeli army said that it killed 150 Hamas fighters last week during battles in the Al-Shati refugee camp northwest of Gaza City, and claimed that it captured a station of Hamas’s Badr unit.
- Thousands protest worldwide while Israel carries on arrest campaign in the occupied West Bank.
Al-Shifa Hospital ‘completely out of service’: Patients dying, bodies piling up outside
Following days of relentless attacks from the air and land on northern Gaza’s hospitals, the healthcare system in the north has seen a near-complete collapse, with only one hospital, the previously-bombed Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, remaining functional.
Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa Hospital, is“completely out of service”, Gaza’s health ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qudra told Al Jazeera. Several people, including at least two premature infants and five ICU patients, have already died due to a lack of oxygen, medical supplies, and the inability of doctors and medical staff to perform life-saving surgeries as a result of power outages and no fuel.
The Ramallah-based Palestinian Ministry of Health spokesperson Mai al-Kaila released a statement on Sunday detailing the desperate conditions at the Al-Shifa hospital.
“The Israeli occupation army does not evacuate hospitals, but rather throws the wounded and sick into the street to certain death,” al-Khaila said, referring to reports and eyewitness testimony that Israeli forces were shooting at people inside the hospitals, as well as those attempting to evacuate.
“This is not an evacuation, but an expulsion at gunpoint,” she said.
Among the patients dying or facing imminent death, al-Kaila said, are children and adults on kidney dialysis who “die in their homes without receiving dialysis sessions.”
Al-Kaila confirmed the death of 12 patients inside the Al-Shifa Medical Complex so far. She added that all 3,000 cancer patients who were being treated at the Al-Rantisi and Al-Turki Hospital in Gaza “have now been left to die” after they were forcibly expelled from the hospitals due to Israeli bombardment.
“All pregnant women and those with dangerous pregnancies are at risk, as women do not find anyone to provide them with treatment and medical services in Gaza. Every woman about to give birth will not find anyone to provide her with any medical service,” Al-Kaila went on to say.
Early on in Israel’s bombardment, medical officials reported that there were an estimated 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza, including around 5,000 expecting mothers due to deliver at any moment. Over the weeks, several reports have emerged of pregnant women among those killed by Israeli airstrikes, causing doctors to have to cut out their unborn fetuses in an attempt to save the babies.
In addition to sick patients in the hospital who can’t be treated, as well as chronically ill patients being left to die, hundreds of Palestinians who are becoming wounded and sick as a result of Israeli bombardment cannot reach the hospital itself. Over the past month of Israeli bombardment, Gaza’s infrastructure, including roads around hospitals, have been decimated, making it nearly impossible for ambulances to move to and from the hospital to reach bombed-out buildings and the wounded.
Additionally, medical staff inside the hospital cannot physically move inside the hospital, as Israeli drones and ground forces “fire at everyone who moves inside the complex.” Doctors and staff, as well as the sick and displaced, have little to no food, while water has been completely cut off in the complex.
Medical waste is piling up inside the departments, while the hospital’s blood reserves have spoiled due to power outages, meaning that needy patients can no longer receive life-saving blood transfusions.
Outside the hospital, bodies of Palestinian martyrs are piling up, with medical teams unable to reach them safely without coming under Israeli fire.
According to al-Kail, the bodies have begun to decompose in the hospital courtyard. She added that stray dogs have “mauled” some of the bodies.
Wafa news agency’s correspondent reported Sunday that dozens of martyrs’ bodies were still lying in the hospital’s courtyard and the surrounding area. Paramedics could not reach them due to the intensity of Israeli fire, and since 9 p.m. local time on Saturday, up until 9 a.m. on Sunday, no ambulances were seen leaving or arriving at Al-Shifa Hospital.
Patients, medical staff unable to evacuate al-Shifa
Al-Shifa Hospital saw a mass exodus of Palestinians over the weekend, including patients, their families, some medical staff, and thousands of Palestinians who were seeking shelter at the hospital.
It remained unclear exactly how many people, including patients, medical staff, and internally displaced persons, remained inside the hospital, but several reports put that number around several thousand. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Al-Qudra said the only safe way to evacuate the 650 patients at al-Shifa would be to Egypt, not to southern Gaza, as the hospitals there are overwhelmed and are also under imminent threat of shutting down due to fuel shortages.
According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, among the patients still at Al-Shifa are nearly 60 patients in ICUs, dozens of premature babies in incubators, and more than 500 patients in the dialysis department.
Calling for an immediate ceasefire, the WHO said: “Patients seeking health care should never be exposed to fear, and health workers who have taken an oath to treat them should never be forced to risk their own lives to provide care.”……………………………………………………………………………
Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City stopped working completely
On Sunday morning, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) announced that Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City stopped working completely after running out of fuel to generate electricity………………………………………………………………………………………………
Israeli forces shell UN agency headquarters as thousands of Palestinians take shelter
On Sunday morning, Israeli forces shelled the compound of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), where thousands of Palestinians are sheltering in Gaza City, in the northern Gaza Strip.
UNDP said that it was “deeply distressed” upon hearing the development. It vacated its staff from the location on 13 October.
“The shelling has reportedly resulted in a significant number of deaths and injuries,” the UNDP said in a statement. Wafa reported that at least five were killed till Sunday afternoon. ……………
Israel says 43 soldiers killed, Hamas releases footage targeting tanks in Gaza………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Thousands protest worldwide while Israel carries on arrest campaign in occupied West Bank
Hundreds of thousands of people marched in Europe’s major cities and in the U.S., calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, and showing their support and solidarity with the Palestinians.
Pro-Palestine protests rallied near U.S. President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, as frustration grew at his administration’s failure to call for a ceasefire and the unwavering support of Israel……………………………………………………………………………..
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, tweeted on Saturday that “the relentless bombardment of hospitals and civilians in Gaza is intolerable. It’s against international humanitarian law – it must stop and stop now.”…………..
Arrests continue in the West Bank
In the occupied West Bank, Israel has continued its mass arrest campaign. ……………………………………………………………………………………………… more https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/13/operation-al-aqsa-flood-day-37-al-shifa-hospital-no-longer-functioning-as-israeli-ground-troops-surround-the-hospital/
Israel Wages War Against Gaza’s Remaining Hospitals
The Al-Shifa hospital ran out of fuel due to the ongoing siege by Israeli forces. Occupation snipers and drones have been positioned all around the hospital complex, opening fire at any sign of movement.
By Tanupriya Singh and Ana Vračar / Peoples Dispatch, https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/12/israel-wages-war-against-gazas-remaining-hospitals/
The Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, the largest medical facility in the besieged strip, was forced to suspend its operations on the morning of November 11 after it ran out of fuel. Patients have already begun to die as Israeli occupation forces have laid siege to the hospital.
Israeli snipers and drones positioned all around the hospital have opened fire at any sign of movement.
Abed Ghazal, a health activist from Palestine with the People’s Health Movement, said on Saturday, that it is “astounding that hospitals are being treated as legitimate targets.” As Ghazal provided updates, the people working at Al-Shifa, as well as those sheltering there, remained under direct attack.
Health workers at Al-Shifa are now forced to provide care with access to virtually no medical supplies at all, and patients are forced to cram in the corridors, Ghazal said. As many nurses and doctors have spent weeks in the hospitals without stopping, with little news about families and friends, the pressure is now getting worse.
While Al-Shifa’s health workers vowed to remain as long as patients needed care, they have criticized the international response to what has been happening around the hospital. The international reaction to the attacks on Al-Shifa and other hospital complexes in Gaza is far from enough, Ghazal said, and it should be denounced for what it is.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Al-Shifa’s director, Muhammad Abu Salmiya had said, “Patients are dying by the minute, victims and wounded are also dying”, confirming that one baby in an incubator had died, as well as a young man in the intensive care unit.
Gaza’s Deputy Health Minister, Dr. Youssef Abu Alreesh later told the news publication that all generators and power sources in the hospital were off. There are 39 newborn babies in incubators at Al-Shifa, now kept alive by manual support as both generators and solar panels have become non-operational.
Shortly after the power blackout on Saturday, Al-Shifa’s yard was also struck by shelling, causing a fire. Ambulances have been prevented from entering or leaving the hospital complex.
The IOF has cordoned off the hospital complex, while buildings in its vicinity have been shelled non-stop for over 12 hours as of Saturday morning. “Any moving person within the compound is targeted”, Salmiya said, adding that one member of the medical personnel had been shot and killed by a sniper as he tried to reach the babies in the incubator.
“A few families tried to leave but they were targeted, now they are lying dead outside the hospital”, Alreesh told Al Jazeera, adding that the hospital’s intensive care unit had also been hit by mortar fire.
Al-Shifa no longer has electricity and internet, and has been left without fuel, food, water, and medical supplies. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) stated early on Saturday that it was unable to contact any of its staff inside Al-Shifa, adding that there were patients in the hospital who were in critical condition and unable to move.
Tens of thousands of people displaced by the Israeli bombardment who were seeking shelter in the hospital yard are currently also trapped.
Palestinian Health Ministry’s Director-General, Mounir Al-Barsh has stated that a mass grave would have to be dug at Al-Shifa on Saturday to bury the bodies of 100 people who have died at the hospital– “We cannot move within or outside the perimeter of the hospital. We are surrounded, we cannot bury our dead.”
Israel had bombed the Al Shifa Hospital at least five times between November 9 and 10, as confirmed by the spokesperson of the Palestinian Health Ministry, Ashraf al-Qudra. At least 13 people were killed after Israel bombed Al-Shifa’s obstetrics department and courtyard early on Friday.
The Israeli forces also dropped internationally-banned white phosphorus bombs on neighborhoods around Al-Shifa on Friday, the Wafa News Agency reported.
Two people were also killed in an attack in the vicinity of the Al-Nasr Medical Center. The attack forced the closureof the facility’s children’s hospital which is the sole remaining specialized pediatric care unit in North Gaza, according to the World Health Organization.
In a separate statement on Friday night, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) condemned a direct attack by occupying forces on Al-Quds hospital, including the direct firing of live ammunition at its intensive care unit (ICU). The attack killed one displaced person and injured 28 others.
As of Friday, the hospital had remained isolated for the fifth consecutive day amid shortages of food, water and medical supplies, due to continuous Israeli shelling destroying buildings and streets in the vicinity, and cutting off access routes to Al-Quds.
The head of the Al-Nasr hospital and the Al Rantisi Pediatric Hospital, Mustafa al-Kahlout, told CNN that the facilities were “completely surrounded” and that Israeli tanks were positioned outside. Al-Rantisi Hospital was also directly hit on November 9, which caused fires and damage, according to an update by the UN OCHA. The Al Awda hospital in Jabalia was also bombarded on November 10, in what is being called a “day of war against hospitals”.
According to an update published by the UN OCHA on November 10, 20 out Gaza’s 36 hospitals are no longer functioning because of Israel’s attacks. Israel has killed at least 11,078 Palestinians since the start of its genocidal bombardment of Gaza on October 7. Another 27,490 people have been injured during this period.
Chris Hedges: The Horror, The Horror
Israel and Washington’s cynicism is breathtaking. There are no differences in intent. Washington only wants it done quickly. Humanitarian corridors? Pauses in the shelling? These are vehicles to facilitate the total depopulation of northern Gaza. The handful of aid trucks allowed through the border at Rafah with Egypt? A public relations gimmick. There is only one goal – kill, kill, kill. The faster the better
Israel’s genocidal attacks, which are killing hundreds of Palestinians a day, including some 160 children, have expanded to shelling the remaining hospitals in Gaza.
By Chris Hedges ScheerPost , https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/11/chris-hedges-the-horror-the-horror/
DOHA, Qatar: I am in the studio of Al Jazeera’s Arabic service watching a live feed from Gaza City. The Al Jazeera reporter in northern Gaza, because of the intense Israeli shelling, was forced to evacuate to southern Gaza. He left his camera behind. He trained it on Al-Shifa hospital, Gaza’s largest medical complex. It is night. Israeli tanks fire directly towards the hospital compound. Long horizontal red flashes. A deliberate attack on a hospital. A deliberate war crime. A deliberate massacre of the most helpless civilians, including the very sick and infants. Then the feed goes dead.
We sit in front of the monitors. We are silent. We know what this means. No power. No water. No internet. No medical supplies. Every infant in an incubator will die. Every dialysis patient will die. Everyone in the intensive care unit will die. Everyone who needs oxygen will die. Everyone who needs emergency surgery will die. And what will happen to the 50,000 people who, driven from their homes by the relentless bombing, have taken refuge on the hospital grounds? We know the answer to that as well. Many of them, too, will die.
There are no words to express what we are witnessing. In the five weeks of horror this is one of the pinnacles of horror. The indifference of Europe is bad enough. The active complicity by the United States is unfathomable. Nothing justifies this. Nothing. And Joe Biden will go down in history as an accomplice to genocide. May the ghosts of the thousands of children he has participated in murdering haunt him for the rest of his life.
Israel and the United States are sending a chilling message to the rest of the world. International and humanitarian law, including the Geneva Convention, are meaningless pieces of paper. They did not apply in Iraq. They do not apply in Gaza. We will pulverize your neighborhoods and cities with bombs and missiles. We will wantonly murder your women, children, elderly and sick. We will set up blockades to engineer starvation and the spread of infectious diseases. You, the “lesser breeds” of the earth, do not matter. To us you are vermin to be extinguished. We have everything. If you try and take any of it away from us, we will kill you. And we will never be held accountable.
We are not hated for our values. We are hated because we have no values. We are hated because rules only apply to others. Not to us. We are hated because we have arrogated to ourselves the right to carry out indiscriminate slaughter. We are hated because we are heartless and cruel. We are hated because we are hypocrites, talking about protecting civilians, the rule of law and humanitarianism while extinguishing the lives of hundreds of people in Gaza a day, including 160 children.
Israel reacted with indignation and moral outrage when it was accused of bombing the al-Ahli Arab Christian hospital in Gaza, which left hundreds of dead. The bombing, Israel claimed, came from an errant rocket fired by Palestine Islamic Jihad. There is nothing in the arsenal of Hamas or Islamic Jihad that could have replicated the massive explosive power of the missile that struck the hospital. Those of us who have covered Gaza have heard this Israel trope so many times it is risible. They always blame Hamas and the Palestinians for their war crimes, now attempting to argue that hospitals are Hamas command centers and therefore legitimate targets. They never provide evidence. The Israeli military and government lie like they breathe.
Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), which has staff working in Al-Shifa, issued a statement saying patients, doctors and nurses are “trapped in hospitals under fire.” It called on the “Israeli government to cease this unrelenting assault on Gaza’s health system.”
“Over the past 24 hours, hospitals in Gaza have been under relentless bombardment. Al-Shifa hospital complex, the biggest health facility where MSF staff are still working, has been hit several times, including the maternity and outpatient departments, resulting in multiple deaths and injuries,” the statement read. “The hostilities around the hospital have not stopped. MSF teams and hundreds of patients are still inside Al-Shifa hospital. MSF urgently reiterates its calls to stop the attacks against hospitals, for an immediate ceasefire and for the protection of medical facilities, medical staff and patients.”
Three other hospitals in northern Gaza and Gaza City are encircled by Israeli forces and tanks, in what a doctor told Al Jazeera was a “day of war against hospitals.” The Indonesian Hospital has reportedly also lost power. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that 20 of 36 hospitals in Gaza no longer function.
Israel and Washington’s cynicism is breathtaking. There are no differences in intent. Washington only wants it done quickly. Humanitarian corridors? Pauses in the shelling? These are vehicles to facilitate the total depopulation of northern Gaza. The handful of aid trucks allowed through the border at Rafah with Egypt? A public relations gimmick. There is only one goal – kill, kill, kill. The faster the better. All Biden officials talk about is what comes next once Israel has finished its decimation of Gaza. They know Israel’s slaughter will not end until Gazans are living in the open without shelter in the southern part of the strip and dying because of a lack of food, water and medical care.
Gaza before Israel’s ground incursion was one of the most densely populated spots on the planet. Imagine what will happen with 1.1 million Gazans from the north piled on top of over 1 million in the south. Imagine what will take place when infectious diseases such as cholera become an epidemic. Imagine the ravages of starvation. The pressure will build to do something. And that something, Israel hopes, will be to push the Palestinians over the border into the Sinai in Egypt. Once there, they will never return. Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza will be complete. Its ethnic cleansing of the West Bank will begin.
That is Israel’s demented dream. To achieve it, they will make Gaza uninhabitable.
Ask yourself, if you were a Palestinian in Gaza and had access to a weapon what would you do? If Israel killed your family, how would you react? Why would you care about international or humanitarian law when you know it only applies to the oppressed, not the oppressors? If terror is the only language Israel uses to communicate, the only language it apparently understands, wouldn’t you speak back with terror?
Israel’s orgy of death will not crush Hamas. Hamas is an idea. This idea is fed on the blood of martyrs. Israel is giving Hamas an abundant supply.
‘Can You Hear the Screams?’ Physician Says Western Leaders Complicit in Israeli Attacks on Gaza Hospitals
November 12, 2023, https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/12/can-you-hear-the-screams-physician-says-western-leaders-complicit-in-israeli-attacks-on-gaza-hospitals/
“When are you going to stop this?” Dr. Mads Gilbert asked U.S. President Joe Biden and the leaders of European nations.
By Jake Johnson / Common Dreams
ANorwegian physician who has volunteered in Gaza for decades said Friday that Western leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden, are complicit in Israel’s intensifying assault on the Palestinian enclave’s hospitals, which are overwhelmed with airstrike victims and displaced people seeking refuge.
In a video message posted to social media as Israeli forces bombarded al-Shifa—Gaza’s largest hospital—and other medical facilities, Dr. Mads Gilbert asked, “Can you hear the screams from innocent people, refugees sheltering, trying to find a safe place, being bombed by the Israeli attack forces this morning inside the hospital, hospitals that are the temples of humanity and protection?”
“When are you going to stop this?” Gilbert added, with audio of screams from Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital playing in the background. “You’re all complicit.”
Gilbert’s plea for immediate action from world leaders who are supporting and arming Israel’s military came as Israeli forces surrounded al-Shifa and other hospitals in northern Gaza, claiming that Hamas is using the facilities as command centers—an assertion that hospital directors have denied.
Targeting hospitals is a war crime under international law.
Israeli airstrikes and sniper fire on Gaza hospitals have forced thousands of people who were sheltering at the facilities to flee, but many others “remain trapped inside,” the U.K.-based humanitarian group Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) said Saturday.
The charity said it has heard “chilling testimony from inside Gaza’s largest hospital, al-Shifa,” including reports that “the intensive care unit has been bombed and damaged.”
“Staff moving between buildings have been shot at and critically wounded,” said MAP, which is calling for a cease-fire. “Those who have tried to flee have come under fire, and lie dead or wounded in the street as rescue is impossible. With the mortuary shut down, a hundred bodies are piled up and cannot be buried.”
“Power has gone out, and staff are having to hand ventilate critically ill patients to keep them alive,” the group continued. “At least one patient in intensive care has already died. Babies in the neonatal intensive care unit which MAP has supported over many years are beginning to die from lack of oxygen. More will die soon unless the power supply is restored. Day after day, week after week, we have been warning of catastrophic consequences if world leaders fail to protect healthcare in Gaza. Our worst fears are coming true.”
Doctors Without Borders, which has been providing emergency assistance in the Gaza Strip, offered a similarly harrowing account.
“We are currently unable to contact any of our staff inside al-Shifa, and we are extremely concerned about the safety of patients and the medical staff,” the group said late Friday. “Patients are still in the hospital, some in critical condition and unable to move.”
Mohammed Obeid, a Doctors Without Borders physician at al-Shifa, said that “there is a patient who needs surgery. There is a patient who’s already asleep in our department. We cannot evacuate ourselves and [leave] these people inside. As a doctor, I swear to help the people who need help.”
Early Saturday, the group wrote on social media that its staff “are witnessing people being shot at as they attempt to flee the al-Shifa hospital.”
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