Palestinians receive humanitarian aid supplies brought by trucks to Gaza City on March 13, 2024. (Photo: Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“Our governments did nothing to hold Israel accountable last time it attacked desperate hungry people seeking aid in Gaza,” said one aid campaigner. “So why wouldn’t it do the exact same thing again?”
Gaza health officials said Thursday that Israeli forces killed at least 20 people and injured over 150 more as they waited for humanitarian aid in the northern part of the Palestinian enclave, where deliveries of food, medicine, and other necessities have become virtually impossible due to Israel’s persistent obstruction and attacks.
Mohammed Ghurab, the director of emergency services at a hospital in the area, told AFP that there were “direct shots by the occupation forces” at people waiting for a truck carrying food. Northern Gaza is in the grip of famine-like conditions, and desperate people there have resorted to eating weeds and livestock feed amid Israel’s suffocating blockade.
Dozens of people, including children, have died of starvation and dehydration in northern Gaza in recent weeks.
Thursday’s attack took place at the Kuwaiti Roundabout in Gaza City, according to the territory’s health ministry, which said nearby hospitals were “unable to deal with” the influx of wounded patients.
Horrific video footage posted to social media shows bloody bodies lying motionless amid debris. Middle East Eye reported that “a truck transporting aid into Gaza” later “collided with a vehicle carrying victims” of Thursday’s attack to a hospital.
“Eyewitnesses said the area was struck by what they said sounded like tank or artillery fire,” CNN reported. “The incident at the Kuwaiti Roundabout followed earlier violence at the same site on Wednesday, where large crowds were waiting for a food distribution. At least seven people were killed and 86 others injured after Israeli troops opened fire.”
A day earlier, Israel allowed an aid convoy to enter Gaza’s north directly through an Israeli border crossing for the first time since the Hamas-led October 7 attack.
Ziad Saeed Madoukh, who was shot in the foot during Thursday’s attack, told the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor that Israeli forces started “heavily firing live ammunition towards the crowd of civilians as soon as aid trucks approached” the roundabout.
“Another survivor of today’s massacre, Ibrahim Al-Najjar, was shot in the hand by Israeli forces,” the rights group said. “Al-Najjar told Euro-Med Monitor’s team that he tried to get a bag of flour for his children at the Kuwait Roundabout, but that he and others were subjected to live ammunition and artillery shells despite gathering in an area previously designated as safe by Israel’s army.”
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) denied attacking Gazans at the aid distribution point and said it was “analyzing” the incident.
Thursday’s bloodshed drew comparisons to the February 29 attack in which Israeli forces opened fire on crowds of starving Gazans trying to get their hands on bags of flour. The attack was later dubbed the “flour massacre.”
“Our governments did nothing to hold Israel accountable last time it attacked desperate hungry people seeking aid in Gaza,” said Rohan Talbot, director of advocacy and campaigns at Medical Aid for Palestinians. “So why wouldn’t it do the exact same thing again?”
Prior to Thursday’s attack—described as “another flour massacre”—Gaza authorities estimated that Israeli forces had killed at least 400 people waiting for humanitarian aid deliveries. Between mid-January and the end of February, the United Nations documented at least 14 instances of Israeli forces opening fire on crowds gathered to receive humanitarian aid.
“This is something that is preventable and shouldn’t be happening,” Shaina Low, communications adviser for the Norwegian Refugee Council, told Al Jazeera.
Asked Wednesday about Israel’s repeated attacks on Palestinians awaiting aid, U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said that “we want to see it investigated promptly, and, if appropriate, see accountability.”
“We also press them to take measures to keep it from happening again,” said Miller, who did not warn of any consequences for Israel’s military if it continues to massacre desperate civilians.
A group of senators warned earlier this week that it is a violation of U.S. law to arm a government that is obstructing the delivery of humanitarian assistance.
A U.S.-supplied guided munition is prepared to be loaded onto an American-made Israeli Air Force F-15 in this undated photo. (Photo: Israeli Air Force)
“U.S. weapons, security assistance, and blanket political support have contributed to an unparalleled humanitarian crisis and possible war crimes in Gaza,” the NGOs wrote.
More than two dozen human rights groups on Tuesday implored U.S. President Joe Biden “urgently comply” with domestic law by suspending arms sales to Israel and pressuring its far-right government to end its genocidal policy of blocking aid to starving Palestinians in Gaza.
In a joint letter to Biden, the 25 organizations asserted that his administration’s “unconditional arms transfers and other security assistance” to Israel apparently “violate Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act (22 U.S.C. § 2378-1), which prohibits the United States from providing security assistance or arms sales to any country when the president is made aware that the government ‘prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance.'”
“U.S. weapons, security assistance, and blanket political support have contributed to an unparalleled humanitarian crisis and possible war crimes in Gaza,” the groups wrote. “We demand that you urgently comply with U.S. law, end U.S. support for catastrophic human suffering in Gaza, and use your leverage to protect civilians and ensure the impartial provision of humanitarian assistance.”
We joined 24 other organizations to urge @POTUS to comply with U.S. law and stop military assistance to #Israel. Biden must use his leverage to protect civilians in #Gaza and ensure the provision of humanitarian aid.
Gaza’s Health Ministry reports that more than 30,000 Palestinians—at least two-thirds of them women and children—have been killed in Gaza and over 70,000 wounded, with thousands more estimated to be buried under the rubble. Over 90% of people in Gaza are acutely food insecure, with a growing number of children dying of starvation and dehydration. Over 75% of Gaza’s population is already displaced, and the level of damage to shelter and infrastructure means people increasingly have nowhere safe to go nor reliable provisions if and when they move. As civilians face bombardment, disease, and starvation, lifesaving healthcare is increasingly inaccessible.
The letter acknowledges the Biden administration’s efforts at providing very limited humanitarian relief to Gazans, as well as its public admission that “Israel is obstructing the delivery of humanitarian aid to starving Palestinians.”
“But since October 7, the government of Israel has failed to facilitate the entry of sufficient humanitarian aid, including through additional border crossings into Gaza and northern Gaza in particular; blocked the entry of many humanitarian aid trucks; denied humanitarian access requests; enforced arbitrarycustoms restrictions on humanitarian goods; and attacked humanitarian workers and their facilities as well as civilians seeking aid,” the groups said.
The letter points out that these acts are part of a stated Israeli policy of “complete siege” on Gaza, which experts say constitutes an act of genocide. In January, the International Court of Justice issued a preliminary ruling in a South Africa-led case that found Israel was “plausibly” committing genocide. The ICJ ordered Israel to “take all measures within its power” to prevent genocidal acts, an order that rights groups say it has failed to obey.
On Tuesday, a group of U.S. senators led by Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) also wrote a letter to Biden stressing that his administration is compelled by law to end arms sales to Israel if it keeps blocking aid to Gaza.
The U.S. provides Israel with around $4 billion in annual military aid. Since October 7, the Biden administration has requested an additional $14.3 billion in assistance for Israel, while repeatedly circumventing Congress to fast-track emergency armed aid.
The groups’ letter urges Biden to “use your leverage” with Israel “to protect civilians and ensure the impartial provision of humanitarian assistance.”
Biden administration officials have dubiously insisted that they have no such leverage.
Ireland’s SDLP confirms full Washington boycott for St Patrick’s week in Gaza protest
SDLP leader Colum Eastwood speaking during the Social Democrat and Labour Party (SDLP) spring conference at St. Columb’s Hall in Derry, March 25, 2023
THE Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) has said it would not be sending any representatives to Washington DC for St Patrick’s Day due to the conflict in Gaza.
The party had already announced a boycott of celebratory St Patrick’s events at the White House, in protest against the situation in Palestine and the Biden administration’s support for Israel, but it was still planning to send a delegation to Washington to raise its concerns.
Announcing the plan in January, the party said its delegation would “engage with senior lawmakers, Irish Americans and Palestinian Americans to make the case for an end to violence.”
However, party leader Colum Eastwood has confirmed the party is no longer planning to send a delegation.
“The situation in Gaza has continued to deteriorate,” he said.
“More children have been killed, communities obliterated and thousands of people displaced as a result of this horrifying conflict. And now, during the holy month of Ramadan, we have clear warnings that starvation is being used as a weapon of war against the Palestinian people.
THREE refugee rescue organisations announced today that they are taking legal action against the Italian authorities for the unlawful detention of their rescue ships.
SOS Humanity, Sea-Watch and Sea-Eye released a joint statement today blasting the authorities’ reasoning for keeping their ships in port for a total of 100 days.
The Humanity 1 and Sea-Watch 5 have are being kept in port for 20 days each, while the Sea-Eye 4 is being held for 60 days.
The crews of the three ships rescued a total of 390 people in the central Mediterranean last week, but the authorities allege their crews were uncooperative with the Libyan coastguard.
“Each of the three current detentions is based on false accusations and unlawful demands,” reads the organisations’ joint statement.
“The Italian authorities falsely refer to uncooperative behaviour by the ships’ crews towards the so-called Libyan coastguard.
With over 17 million subscribers, the Morning, the New York Times’ flagship newsletter, is by far the most popular newsletter in the English-speaking world. (It has almost three times as many subscribers as the next most popular newsletter.)
Since October 7, as Israel has waged an unprecedented war on Palestinian children, journalists, hospitals and schools, the New York Times’ highly influential newsletter has bent over backwards to blame everyone but Israel for the carnage.
Waging a legitimate war
According to the Morning—led by head writer David Leonhardt—Israel’s war on Gaza is a targeted operation designed to eliminate Hamas. The Morning propagates this narrative despite well-documented declarations of collective punishment and even genocidal intent by high-ranking Israeli officials—a tendency that South Africa has forcefully documented in their case before the ICJ (UN, 12/29/23). Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s comments on October 12, 2023, are typical: “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true, this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved.”
This sentiment has been echoed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, multiple cabinet-level ministers and senior military officials. Speaking from a devastated northern Gaza, one top Israeli army official said (UN, 12/29/23): “Whoever returns here, if they return here after, will find scorched earth. No houses, no agriculture, no nothing. They have no future.”
The Morning (10/13/23) expresses what it sees as the main problem with mass death in Gaza: “The widespread killing of Palestinian civilians would damage Israel’s global reputation.”
Despite these statements and the body of supporting evidence, the Morning has consistently portrayed the war on Gaza as a focused campaign targeting the military infrastructure of Hamas.
For instance, in one October edition (10/13/23), Leonhardt and co-writer Lauren Jackson explained, “Israel’s goals are to prevent Hamas from being able to conduct more attacks and to reestablish the country’s military credibility.”
In similar fashion, in a late January edition (1/28/24), the Morning argued that Israel’s 17-year-long blockade of Gaza is primarily designed to debilitate Hamas—rather than to collectively punish Gazan civilians, as many analysts and human rights groups have argued:
For years, Israel has limited the flow of goods into Gaza, largely to prevent Hamas from gaining access to military supplies.
The Morning did, in the same edition (1/28/24), quote Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s comments in the immediate aftermath of October 7:
After the Hamas-led October 7 terrorist attacks, Israel ordered what its defense minister called a “complete siege” of Gaza. The goal was both to weaken Hamas fighters and to ensure that no military supplies could enter.
This is, however, a downright fictional interpretation of Gallant’s quote (Al Jazeera, 10/9/23), given that the Morning failed to quote the next words out of his mouth:
There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything will be closed. We are fighting against human animals, and we are acting accordingly.
Blame the terrorists
The Morning (10/30/23) insists that “Hamas is responsible for many of the civilian deaths” caused by Israel—a division of responsibility it would never apply to civilians killed by Hamas on October 7.
The Morning consistently has argued that Hamas makes densely populated civilian areas legitimate targets for Israeli attacks by conducting military operations nearby. This deflects blame from Israel and frames civilian casualties as a necessary evil, as in the October 30 edition of the newsletter:
Hamas has hidden many weapons under hospitals, schools and mosques so that Israel risks killing civilians, and facing an international backlash, when it fights. Hamas fighters also slip above and below ground, blending with civilians.
These practices mean that Hamas is responsible for many of the civilian deaths, according to international law.
Similar rhetoric was deployed in this December edition (12/20/23):
Hamas has long hidden its fighters and weapons in and under populated civilian areas, such as hospitals and mosques. It does so partly to force Israel to make a gruesome calculation: To fight Hamas, Israel often must also harm civilians.
The Morning has not yet found it pertinent to report on, for instance, the Israeli soldiers who dressed as doctors to gain access to the Ibn Sina Hospital in the West Bank, and proceeded to assassinate three Palestinian militants in their hospital beds.
To the Morning (11/14/23), Israel’s mass slaughter of civilians is unavoidable:
The battle over Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza highlights a tension that often goes unmentioned in the debate over the war between Israel and Hamas: There may be no way for Israel both to minimize civilian casualties and to eliminate Hamas.
It repeats this line again in a late January edition (1/22/24), once again framing the mass murder of civilians as a “difficult decision”:
The Israeli military faces a difficult decision about how to proceed in southern Gaza…. Israel will not easily be able to eliminate the fighters without killing innocent civilians.
Longer term, there will be more difficult choices. Many steps that Israel could take to reduce civilian casualties in Gaza, such as advance warnings of attacks, would also weaken its attempts to destroy Hamas’s control.
These themes are repeated across all editions of the Morning, and echo throughout the New York Times’ reporting on Israel. Israel’s motivations in the war (beyond eliminating Hamas) go unquestioned, while the openly genocidal statements made by high-ranking politicians and military leaders go unacknowledged.
And when Israeli mass murder of Palestinian civilians is mentioned, it is constantly qualified by the line that Hamas is fully or partially to blame.
‘Civilian death toll in Gaza’
David Leonhardt assures readers of the Morning (12/7/23) that “military experts say that there is probably no way for Israel to topple Hamas without a substantial civilian toll.” The possibility that this means that Israel should therefore not try to “topple Hamas” is not addressed.
Let’s break down one emblematic newsletter (12/7/23) written by Leonhardt in December, in which he “puts the [civilian death] toll in context and explains the reason for it.”
Leonhardt began by qualifying the Palestinian death toll—around 17,000 at time of writing in early December. First, he delegitimized the Gaza Health Ministry, which, he wrote, “seems to have spread false information during the war.” Though he acknowledged that “many international observers believe that the overall death toll is accurate…as do some top Israeli officials,” he wrote that “there is more debate about the breakdown between civilian and combatant deaths.” Leonhardt went on:
A senior Israeli military official told my colleague Isabel Kershner this week that about a third of the dead were likely Hamas-allied fighters, rather than civilians. Gazan officials have suggested that the combatant toll is lower, and the civilian toll higher, based on their breakdown of deaths among men, women and children.
Leonhardt only informs readers that Hamas has spread false information, while neglecting to mention Israel’s documented history of lying to the press (IMEU, 10/17/23; Intercept, 2/27/24). He also declined to investigate the implausibility of his source’s figure: At this point in the war, about 30% of Palestinian fatalities were adult men, meaning the Israeli figure implies that essentially every adult man killed by Israel was a Hamas fighter—all civilian men being miraculously spared.
Next, Leonhardt attempted to explain “who is most responsible for the high civilian death toll”—concluding, even before describing them, that “different people obviously put different amounts of blame on each.”
First he named Israel, and contextualized and rationalized Israel’s war crimes:
After the October 7 attacks—in which Hamas fighters killed more than 1,200 people, while committing sexual assault and torture, sometimes on video—Israeli leaders promised to eliminate Hamas. Israel is seeking to kill Hamas fighters, destroy their weapons stockpiles and collapse their network of tunnels. To do so, Israel has dropped 2,000-pound bombs on Gaza’s densely populated neighborhoods.
Note that Leonhardt framed the war as a campaign only to “kill Hamas fighters, destroy their weapons stockpiles and collapse their network of tunnels,” despite the evidence that Israel has targeted civilian infrastructure, journalists, healthcare workers and aid workers—actions backed by the aforementioned statements of genocidal intent.
Though Leonhardt briefly mentioned that Israel’s war has drawn international criticism, he made no mention of international law and concluded with his refrain that Israel can hardly avoid causing the deaths of “substantial” numbers of civilians:
Nonetheless, military experts say that there is probably no way for Israel to topple Hamas without a substantial civilian toll. The question is whether the toll could be lower than it has been.
Next, Leonhardt turned to his condemnation of Hamas:
The second responsible party is Hamas. It hides weapons in schools, mosques and hospitals, and its fighters disguise themselves as civilians, all of which are violations of international law.
This approach both helps Hamas to survive against a more powerful enemy — the Israeli military—and contributes to Hamas’s efforts to delegitimize Israel. The group has vowed to repeat the October 7 attacks and ultimately destroy Israel. Hamas’s strategy involves forcing Israel to choose between allowing Hamas to exist and killing Palestinian civilians.
Hamas is simply not prioritizing Palestinian lives.
It is notable that—unlike with Israel—Leonhardt did not attempt to contextualize Hamas’ actions by noting the horrifying conditions that Israel has imposed on Gaza for years, or the over 900 Palestinian children killed by Israel in the decade preceding October 7. To Leonhardt, history is only relevant when it justifies Israeli aggression.
While Leonhardt states unequivocally that Hamas is violating international law, he does not find it worthwhile to investigate Israel’s flagrant and abundantlydocumented violations of international law. He also does not mention the Palestinian right to resist occupation, a right enshrined under international law.
This unequal treatment leads straight to the jarringly contrasting conclusions, in which he essentially excuses Israel’s genocidal war as unavoidable, while he condemns Hamas for “simply not prioritizing Palestinian lives.”
Leonhardt’s December 7 piece is not an aberration: It is emblematic of the language, selective contextualization and framing that the Times‘ Morning newsletter wields to provide ideological cover for Israel’s crimes.
