… on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing

Category: Israel

  • Fate of Palestinian health workers kidnapped by Israeli forces remains uncertain

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    Original article by Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

    Al-Awda Hospital Manager Dr. Ahmed Muhanna was arrested by Israeli Forces on December 17, 2023 and his whereabouts are unknown. Photo: People’s Health Movement

    The status of health workers arrested by Israeli Occupying Forces in northern Gaza remains uncertain as attacks on health infrastructure continue

    One month ago, Ahmed Muhanna, the director of Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalya, northern Gaza, was detained by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). According to the most recent information made available to Awda Association, the anesthetist is currently being held in Naqab prison in the Negev desert, with other details about his status remaining unknown.

    Dr. Muhanna’s fate is shared by many other health workers who were arrested during the ongoing Israeli war on the Gaza Strip. Mohammed Al-Ran, a surgeon who worked at the Indonesian, Kamal Adwan, and Al-Ahli hospitals since October 7, is currently also imprisoned by the Israeli authorities, although he had been granted permission to leave for Bosnia.

    Sparse information about his health conditions and location, much like that of Dr. Muhanna, is communicated through friends and relatives who have either witnessed the arrest or met Dr. Al-Ran while in prison. The IOF has remained silent unless faced with pressure, usually from abroad.

    The arrest of several directors of Gaza’s hospitals has mostly been interpreted as a sign of the next phase of Israel’s attacks on healthcare in the Strip. Some, like surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sittah, predict that this will lead to a series of show trials to further the criminalization and persecution of the sector. Others, including sources close to Awda, consider it possible that the doctors will be held in prison for a prolonged period of time, with their post-war destiny unknown.

    Different interpretations converge on one point, though. They all note that the health workers taken by the IOF were strong voices speaking from northern Gaza and had refused to leave the area and abandon their patients. In other words, they constituted a thorn in the side of the army that breaks international law every time it targets health infrastructure in Palestine.

    While arresting and targeting health workers to silence them, Israeli soldiers continue to attack hospitals and health centers in Gaza. As a result of the ongoing attacks, many international organizations have been forced to abandon their operations for good or move to the southern regions. Among them were the Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams.

    “Drone strikes, sniper fire and bombardments in the close vicinity of the hospital made the space too unsafe to work in. The volatile conditions leave us feeling incapacitated; there’s virtually no secure space to provide even minimal medical care to people,” said Enrico Vallaperta, MSF Project Medical Referent, commenting on the organization shifting its operations from Al-Aqsa Hospital.

    Yet, health workers are not giving up on protecting health infrastructure in Gaza, including in Al-Awda centers in Nuseirat and Rafah. In fact, safeguarding and reactivating the local health system remains a priority for international organizations, including the World Health Organization (WHO).

    The WHO also continues to conduct visits to the remaining hospitals in Gaza. Although the situation can change in a matter of hours – with hospitals going from partially operational at 10 am to completely out of function by 2 pm – generally they are all working multiple times over their capacity as well as trying to shelter thousands of forcibly displaced people.

    During a visit conducted on January 13, the WHO team found Al-Aqsa Hospital and Nasser Medical Complex short-staffed and crowded. In Al-Aqsa, there were only 12 health workers remaining, providing care to 140 people and sharing space with over 1,000 displaced people. Nasser held twice the number of patients it was supposed to accommodate. “The hospital continues to receive a high volume of trauma and burn cases but the ICU and burns unit are severely understaffed, delaying lifesaving treatment for many,” the WHO team reported back.

    Read more: Israel is destroying Gaza’s food system and weaponizing food, say UN experts

    Unsurprisingly, the situation continues to be ripe for the spread of communicable diseases. Before October 7, “immunization levels in Gaza were among the best globally,” according to Rana Ahmad Hajjeh from the WHO Eastern Mediterranean office. Now, without coolers and fuel to operate them, there is little hope in rolling out vaccination campaigns that could help curb major outbreaks.

    Even when the WHO and other international organizations are able to get vaccines into Gaza, the IOF does not allow them to distribute them in the northern areas. Multiple missions over the past weeks had to be canceled due to the lack of security guarantees on the Israeli side. This has meant that medicines, as well as fuel needed to operate generators, are simply not where they should be.

    “In the 21st century, most medical equipment operates on electricity. Unfortunately, electricity has become a scarce commodity [in Gaza],” observed Ayadil Saparbekov from WHO’s Health Emergencies program.

    Amid ongoing communication blackouts, it is not only electricity that has become a scarce commodity. The same is true for information coming directly from health workers in Gaza; without that information, the fate of Dr. Muhanna, Dr. Al-Ran, and others remains difficult to predict.

    Original article by Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

  • EU Gaza Resolution Slammed as ‘Green Light for Butchery to Continue’

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    Original article by at Common Dreams republished under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

    European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell gestures as he speaks during a debate on the humanitarian situation in Gaza, at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, eastern France on November 22, 2023.  (Photo by Frederick Florin/AFP via Getty Images)

    The final text advocated for a “permanent cease-fire and to restart efforts towards a political solution provided that all hostages are immediately and unconditionally released and the terrorist organisation Hamas is dismantled.”

    For the first time since Israel’s assault on Gaza began on October 7, the European Parliament called for a cease-fire Thursday—but not without significant conditions that critics said strip the resolution of all meaning.

    The measure passed 312 to 131, with 72 abstaining.

    Instead of endorsing an unconditional cease-fire, the text backed “a permanent cease-fire and to restart efforts towards a political solution provided that all hostages are immediately and unconditionally released and the terrorist organisation Hamas is dismantled,” as Agence France-Pressereported

    “It is not a call for a cease-fire. It is an open-ended license for genocide, and will be understood by Israel as such.”

    The Members of European Parliament (MEPs) expressed sorrow over all civilian deaths.

    “While condemning in the strongest possible terms the despicable terrorist attacks committed by Hamas against Israel, they also denounce the disproportionate Israeli military response, which has caused a civilian death toll on an unprecedented scale,” the parliament said in a statement.

    Hamas’ October 7 attack on southern Israel killed about 1,100 people and resulted in the taking of 240 hostages. Israel’s bombardment and invasion of Gaza has now killed 24,620 people and wounded 61,830, according to Thursday’s update from Gaza’s Ministry of Health.

    The resolution also called for humanitarian access to the Gaza Strip, restarting the peace process with a goal of implementing a two-state solution, ending Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, and accountability for all who carried out terrorist attacks or violated international law.

    The vote comes the week after South Africa presented a case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) arguing that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The text reiterates the E.U.’s support for the work of both the ICJ and the International Criminal Court.

    The resolution was the result of a compromise between different parties in the parliament. The socialist, centrist, and green parties had all supported a resolution calling for a cease-fire, a political solution to the conflict, the release of the hostages, and the dismantling of Hamas, Reuters explained. However, the largest party in the body—the European People’s Party (EPP)—hesitated to join them and added an amendment that conditioned the cease-fire and restarting of the peace process on the release of hostages and the dismantling of Hamas.

    “Sustainable peace cannot exist as long as Hamas and other terrorist groups hijack the Palestinian cause and threaten the existence of Israel, the only democracy in the region,” EPP MEP Antonio López-Istúriz told the body on Tuesday, as Euronews reported.

    However, Manus Carlisle, the policy and press officer for Green MEP Grace O’Sullivan, said on social media that EPP had “sabotaged” the resolution by making the cease-fire conditional on the ending of Hamas, “which arguably makes the call entirely meaningless.”

    O’Sullivan herself wrote on social media that EPP’s amendment “hands Israel a blank cheque to continue the massacre for as long as they want.”

    “We need a braver E.U. than this,” she said.

    Independents 4 Change MEPs Mick Wallace and Clare Daly denounced the text of the resolution.

    “Reporting characterizing it as ‘the European Parliament calls for a permanent ceasefire’ is a misrepresentation of the text that has actually been passed,” they wrote in a statement. “Under no circumstances should it be allowed to go unchallenged.”

    The MEPs pointed out that the parliament’s conditions for a cease-fire were the same as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s.

    “This is Israel’s repeatedly stated pretext for genocide, plain and simple, adopted by the European Parliament,” Wallace and Daly wrote in a statement. “It is not a call for a cease-fire. It is an open-ended license for genocide, and will be understood by Israel as such. The people of Gaza who are being murdered in their thousands by Israel are not responsible for the actions of Hamas.”

    “In every respect, this resolution is the opposite of what is needed,” they added. “While the text claims to be a call for a cease-fire, it is a green light for butchery to continue.”

    The resolution as a whole is non-binding, Reuters explained, though European Parliament resolutions can sometimes have an influence on foreign governments. The final text will be sent to other E.U. institutions, E.U. members, Israel, Palestinian officials, Egypt, and the United Nations.

    Previously, the parliament had called for a humanitarian pause to allow aid into Gaza, but had not gone further and demanded a cease-fire, according to Euronews. The leaders of E.U. member states have not agreed to call for a cease-fire as a bloc and still endorse “humanitarian pauses and corridors.”

    Original article by at Common Dreams republished under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

  • Rishi Sunak’s legitimacy deficit

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    Rishi Sunak is UK’s Prime Minister following the appalling former Tory Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Johnson was elected in the 2019 general election despite wide recognition that speaking truth was alien to him. He got kicked out over the Partygate scandal – that he was partying at number 10 and repeatedly denying it during the Covid lockdowns. There is a further scandal still developing about enriching Tories with government contracts for excessively expensive inaquate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) during Covid. Liz Truss was deposed following her ‘bonkers’ budget* that took from the poor to give to the rich and forced the Bank of England to intervene.

    Rishi Sunak, UK's janitor prime minister.
    Rishi Sunak, UK’s janitor prime minister.

    Rishi Sunak was quickly installed by the Conservatives as a ‘caretaker’, janitor or interim prime minister to replace Liz Truss. Not elected as prime minister he doesn’t have a mandate to do anything. He’s a Neo-Con climate denier providing huge fossil fuel subsidies for foreigners to take North Sea oil and a Zionist actively supporting and therefore very complicit in Israel’s genocide of Gaza.

    * It wasn’t called a budget. Liz Truss and her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng called it a statement to avoid scrutiny by the Office of Budget Responsibility.

  • ‘This Is Not Self-Defense… This Is Ethnic Cleansing’: Israel Blows Up Gaza University

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    Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

    The Israeli military used hundreds of mines to blow up Israa University in Gaza on January 17, 2024.  (Photo: Screengrab)

    “All the universities in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed,” said one international relations expert.

    The Israel Defense Forces’ detonation of more than 300 mines planted at Israa University in Gaza on Wednesday provided the latest evidence that Israel’s objective in its bombardment of the enclave is not self-defense, rights advocates said.

    “This is not self-defense,” said Chris Hazzard, an Irish member of the United Kingdom’s Parliament. “This is not counter-insurgency. This is ethnic-cleansing.”

    The International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC) called the destruction of Israa University Israel’s latest attempt to carry out a “cultural genocide” along with the slaughter of at least 24,620 people in just over three months—people who Israeli officials have claimed are legitimate military targets despite the fact that roughly half of those killed have been children.

    The wiping out of cultural landmarks was included in South Africa’s International Court of Justice case accusing Israel of genocidal acts in Gaza last week, with the complaint noting that “Israel has damaged and destroyed numerous centers of Palestinian learning and culture,” including libraries, one of the world’s oldest Christian monasteries, and the Great Omari Mosque, where an ancient collection of manuscripts was kept before the building was destroyed in an airstrike last month.

    “The crime of targeting and destroying archaeological sites should spur the world and UNESCO into action to preserve this great civilizational and cultural heritage,” Gaza’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said after the mosque was bombed.

    Now, international relations professor Nicola Perugini of the University of Edinburgh said, “all the universities in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed.”

    On its Facebook page, the university said the IDF had occupied the campus for about 70 days before planting 315 mines and detonating the institution’s main building, its museum, a university hospital, and other buildings.

    The IDF occupied Israa University, said administrators, “and used it as a military base for its mechanisms and a center for [the] snatching of isolated civilians in the areas of Rashid, Maghraqa, and Zahraa streets, and temporarily detained [them] to investigate with citizens before moving them.”

    Mitchell Plitnick, president of Rethinking Foreign Policy, said the fact that 315 mines were detonated meant that “by definition… it was not a legitimate military target.”

    “Israel would have to have full control to plant so many mines,” said Plitnick. “This is a clear example of a war crime and destruction for the fun of it.”

    Eight universities in Gaza have now been targeted since the IDF began its bombardment on October 7, according to the IMEMC.

    Birzeit University, in the occupied West Bank, condemned the destruction of the school and accused Israel of stealing 3,000 rare artifacts from Israa’s museum.

    “Birzeit University reaffirms the fact that this crime is part of the Israeli occupation’s onslaught against the Palestinians,” said the school on social media. “It’s all a part of the Israeli occupation’s goal to make Gaza uninhabitable; a continuation of the genocide being carried out in Gaza Strip.”

    Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

  • 400,000 marched in Washington DC against Biden’s complicity in Israel’s genocide

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    Original article by Natalia Marques republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

    Hundreds of thousands marched in Washington, DC to demand an immediate ceasefire and protest Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza

    Hundreds of thousands marched in Washington DC to protest Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. Photo: Adrian Antonioli / ANSWER Coalition

    On January 13, a crowd of 400,000 gathered in Washington, DC’s Freedom Plaza to take the Palestine solidarity movement straight to Biden’s doorstep. Hundreds of thousands then marched, holding Palestinian, Yemeni, South African, and Puerto Rican flags, through DC and straight to the gates of the White House.

    The mobilization was organized by the American Muslim Task Force on Palestine, which includes American Muslims for Palestine, Council on American-Islamic Relations, Islamic Circle of North America, Muslim American Society, Muslim Student Association-National, Muslim Legal Fund of America, Muslim Ummah of North America, and Young Muslims, and the ANSWER Coalition.

    Frustrated with Biden’s support and bankrolling of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, protesters surrounded the President’s residence and chanted “Hands off Yemen!” and “Yemen, Yemen, make us proud, turn this invasion around!” in reference to the US-UK bombing campaign against Yemen in response to the country’s blockade of Israel-bound ships. Protesters also left bloody baby dolls at the gates of the White House to condemn the genocide in Gaza and the over 10,000 children that have been killed to date. As the crowd demonstrated, several snipers were seen on the roof of the White House.

    The hundreds of thousands who showed up in DC were joined by millions across the world who participated in a global day of action in solidarity with Palestine to mark nearly 100 days of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Rallies, strikes, and mass mobilizations were held in major cities of South Africa, Japan, Turkey, the UK, South Korea, Indonesia, Ireland, New Zealand, Ivory Coast, Sweden, Italy, Germany, Austria, Australia, Finland, as well as throughout the United States. Thousands shut down the Port of Oakland in California at 5 am on Saturday morning.

    Before marching, the crowd of hundreds of thousands in Freedom Plaza heard from a diverse array of speakers from the US Muslim community and anti-imperialist organizations. “So long as the genocide in Gaza is being funded by this administration,” said Ismahan Abdullahi of the Muslim American Society, “we will not relent in our efforts to demand justice and the liberation of the Palestinian people.”

    “Just as South Africa courageously rose to rightfully charge Israel with genocide, we the people of the United States of America will rise and continue these efforts,” she continued.

    “You Genocide Joe, you Blinken the butcher, and your Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. You will be haunted by the screams of the children in Gaza,” said Taher Herzallah of American Muslims for Palestine, who, like many other speakers, placed the blame for the ongoing Gaza genocide directly onto the United States government. “You will be haunted by the prayers, the agonizing prayers of the elderly and the women of Gaza. And we, this new generation, will be the answer to their prayers.”

    Protesters demanded an end to all US funding of Israel. Photo: Wyatt Souers / ANSWER Coalition

    2024 is an election year, and Biden, who is running for reelection, has been hounded by Pro-Palestine demonstrators at several campaign events already. Mainstream media outlets openly worry about Biden’s chances in 2024, with the aging President losing key demographics of Democratic Party support such as young people and Arab-Americans.

    “Instead of focusing on the American people, our tax money is being used to spread hatred, to spread warfare, to support criminal activity, frankly speaking, to support a genocide,” Mohamed Sabri, who traveled from Chicago to attend the march in DC, told Peoples Dispatch about why he will not be voting for Biden.

    As a result of Biden’s unpopularity, third party candidates running for president in 2024 have gained new prominence. Both Jill Stein and Cornel West, running platforms to the left of the ruling Democratic Party, spoke at the March for Gaza.

    Peoples Dispatch spoke to presidential and vice presidential candidates Claudia De La Cruz and Karina Garcia, who were on the ground, marching among the crowd of hundreds of thousands, and are running jointly on an explicitly socialist platform. “We know it’s significantly important for any presidential candidate running for the 2024 election to prioritize the freedom, liberation of Palestine. Anyone who does not do that is standing in support of genocide,” said De La Cruz, the presidential candidate for the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

    “Democratic politicians, they like to pay a lot of lip service during the year, especially around domestic issues, and they never want to talk about imperialism, which is at the center, it’s the core of all of the problems faced by the entire world,” added Garcia.

    The PSL presidential ticket of Claudia de la Cruz and Karina Garcia participating in the March for Gaza in Washington DC. Photo: Craig Birchfield / ANSWER Coalition

    Original article by Natalia Marques republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.