Al Awda Association and the People’s Health Movement launched a campaign for the release of Dr. Ahmed Muhanna, director of Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza
Dr. Ahmed Muhanna appeared on numerous international news stations calling for an end to Israel’s attacks on health workers. Photo: Screenshot
Al Awda Health and Community Association and the People’s Health Movement (PHM) have launched a campaign calling for the release of Dr. Ahmed Muhanna, the director of Al Awda’s hospital in the area of Tal Al-Zaatar in Jabalya, northern Gaza. PHM has also called for an end to Israeli attacks on health workers in Palestine, warning that the “deliberate targeting of the healthcare system by Israel is a blatant war crime.”
Dr. Muhanna was detained by Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) following a raid on Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalya that began on December 17. While other staff members were detained by Israeli soldiers, they were released after several hours of questioning. On the other hand, Dr. Muhanna was not released, and his current status remains unknown.
The director of Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalya became an unofficial spokesperson for health workers in Palestine since Israel started its latest round of attacks on October 7. From the very beginning of the Israeli war on Gaza, Dr. Muhanna kept contact with regional and international organizations, sharing situation reports to illustrate the dire state of hospitals in the Gaza Strip.
Along with other members of the staff, Dr. Muhanna was also one of the health workers who refused to abandon the hospital after receiving evacuation orders from the Israeli occupation in the earlier phases of the war. At the time, Dr. Muhanna said the evacuation “is not possible,” given the serious conditions of several patients. “The hospital staff is determined to stay and provide health care to patients,” he asserted at the time.
Shortly before his arrest, Dr. Muhanna sent a new message to Al Awda’s network of contacts, saying: “No one can move in the hospital because of the [Israeli] sniper. The situation in the hospital is terrible. We have 38 patients, some of them lacking medicine. We have no oxygen and only very little fuel for a small generator. We have food for 2 to 3 days tops. The situation is critical.”
Al Awda Association and PHM have called on health workers and activists around the world to denounce Dr. Muhanna’s arrest and apply pressure on their governments to push Israeli authorities to free him. The organizations are also inviting health workers to organize actions in support of Dr. Muhanna and his comrades in the Gaza Strip, making their struggle visible in their workplaces.
People’s Health Dispatchis a fortnightly bulletin published by thePeople’s Health Movementand Peoples Dispatch. For more articles and subscription to People’s Health Dispatch, clickhere.
U.S. President Joe Biden arrives for a meeting at the White House on December 13, 2023 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
A New York Times/Sienna College survey found that the U.S. president’s handling of the Gaza crisis is unpopular with voters across the political spectrum.
The New York Times suggested Tuesday that U.S. President Joe Biden has “few politically palatable options” after a survey the newspaper conducted with Siena College showed that his handling of Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip is broadly unpopular with the American electorate.
Matt Duss, a former foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), responded that Biden’s choice is clear.
“He should choose the option that upholds human rights and international law, which is what he promised during his campaign,” wrote Duss, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy. “Support a cease-fire.”
The Times/Siena College poll of U.S. voters found that Biden’s current approach—which has consisted of unconditional military support for Israel accompanied by mild calls for the protection of Gaza civilians and opposition to a lasting cease-fire—has just 33% support and 57% opposition.
Among young voters who were critical to Biden’s 2020 victory over former President Donald Trump, the opposition is even more pronounced, with 73% of those between the ages of 18 and 29 saying they disapprove, according to the new survey. Forty-seven percent of young voters said they believe Biden is too supportive of Israel, while just 6% said he’s too supportive of the Palestinians.
The survey’s findings amplified concerns that, in addition to rendering himself complicit in genocide, Biden is alienating key elements of the Democratic base by arming the Israeli military as it carries out mass atrocities in the Gaza Strip.
“Yet another major poll finds that Biden is killing his own reelection bid with his inhumane and strategically nonsensical Gaza policy,” Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote on social media.
Yet another major poll finds that Biden is killing his own re-election bid with his inhumane and strategically non-sensical Gaza policy.
The survey was released ahead of an expected United Nations Security Council vote on a resolution calling for a “suspension of hostilities.” A previous version of the resolution called for a “cessation of hostilities,” but the text was reportedly watered down in an effort to prevent the U.S. from once again wielding its veto power.
As the Biden administration’s opposition to a sustained cease-fire leaves the U.S. increasingly isolated on the world stage, the Times/Siena College poll found that 44% of U.S. voters—including 59% of Democrats—believe Israel should “stop its military campaign in order to protect against civilian casualties, even if not all Israeli hostages have been released.”
Sixty-five percent of Democratic voters believe Israel should stop its assault on Gaza to prevent additional civilian deaths “even if Hamas has not been fully eliminated” in line with the Israeli government’s stated objective.
During a meeting last week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan reportedly urged the far-right leader to transition to a “lower intensity” form of warfare in Gaza “in a matter of weeks, not months,” the latest signal that the Biden administration is feeling domestic and international pressure as the humanitarian catastrophe worsens and the death toll climbs.
“I don’t want to see any baby die. So, first of all, we’ve got to take that on. We’ve got to get a cease-fire. This has to stop.”
Shira Lurie, assistant professor of American History at Saint Mary’s University, warned in an op-ed for the Toronto Star on Monday that Biden’s continued arming of Israel and opposition to a permanent cease-fire “could have severe ramifications in the electoral college” in 2024 “as several key states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, have significant Muslim populations.”
A lawmaker from one of those states, Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), said in an NBC News interview on Sunday that “there’s a lot that has to be done” for Biden to win back the votes of those who are furious over his support for Israel’s decimation of Gaza.
“All of us in this country need to understand what’s happening in Gaza right now. You can fight about how many thousands of people have been killed, but 6,000 to 8,000 children have been killed,” said Dingell. “Eighty-five percent of the people in Gaza have had to leave their homes. They’re living in shelters. Disease is going up. There’s one toilet for 220 people, one shower for 4,500 people. They don’t have food. They don’t have medicine. They don’t have utilities.”
“I can’t tell you the number of families that I’ve spoken to who’ve lost entire families,” she continued. “We’ve got to show some empathy and compassion. A Jewish baby and a Palestinian baby are babies. I don’t want to see any baby die. So, first of all, we’ve got to take that on. We’ve got to get a cease-fire. This has to stop.”
Demonstrators demanding a Gaza cease-fire protest outside Penn Station in New York City on December 18, 2023. (Photo: caren/X)
“We must stand up and not be silent to this injustice,” said one rabbi taking part in the demonstration.
A coordinated wave of demonstrations against what activists called Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza targeted New York City transit hubs Monday afternoon, with protesters demanding an immediate cease-fire as heavy Israeli bombardment of the besieged strip pushed the death toll from 73 days of attacks to nearly 20,000.
Protesters marched from Grand Central Station to the Port Authority Bus Terminal and then on to Penn Station, where at least hundreds of activists gave police the slip and occupied Moynihan Hall. Many participants prayed for peace before leaving the station.
“We must stand up and not be silent to this injustice,” Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss toldamNewYork Metro outside Grand Central Station. “We hurt and cry with the people who are dying and suffering under the stranglehold of the Zionist occupation. We want the world to know that we hurt because we are Jews, we will not be silent because we are Jews.”
#BREAKING Pro-Palestinian Protesters rushed the entrance of Penn Station as cops ran closely behind them, they are now occupying Moynihan Hall inside.
Independent photojournalist Katie Smith followed the entire demonstration—which was coordinated by the group Within Our Lifetime—documenting incidents including police “violently engaging with protesters” and a confrontation between the actor Alec Baldwin and activists.
According to Smith, activists later marched to a building in Greenwich Village where a fundraiser for the Israel Defense Forces was reportedly being held.
Monday’s actions followed recent protests in New York, including a Manhattan march led by artists remembering the life and work of Refaat Alareer—a Gaza poet and professor killed last week in an Israeli airstrike—and calling on Israel to free political prisoners including the members of Freedom Theater recently arrested in Jenin in the illegally occupied West Bank.
In recent days, large protests for Gaza have also taken place in U.S. cities including Houston, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., as well as in cities in countries including the U.K., Canada, France, Belgium, Norway, and Germany.
In California, workers at Google and allies held a Thursday die-in at the tech giant’s San Francisco office “to demand the company stop powering Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza” through the $1.2 billion Project Nimbus cloud computing contract.
More protests are planned for this week, including a nationwide action by Mennonites on Tuesday and a rally by over 80 groups on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. that same day.
Sponsored by the Action Center on Race and Economy, Adalah Justice Project, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, and the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Tuesday’s D.C. event is being held to “demand a permanent cease-fire in Gaza and oppose the Biden administration’s proposed military aid package sending billions of taxpayer dollars to Israel, U.S. southern border militarization, and immigration enforcement.”
A view of empty shelves are seen at a supermarket amidst Israel’s bombardments as Palestinians have trouble finding necessary food in Khan Yunis, Gaza on November 11, 2023. (Photo: Mustafa Hassona/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“It’s critical to understand this is not simply a byproduct of the conflict, an unfortunate result of a terrible situation,” said one campaigner. “It is Israeli government policy.”
From bombing food production hubs and systematically razing crop fields to halting aid deliveries, Israel is waging a multi-pronged effort to starve the people of Gaza amid the Israel Defense Forces’ bombardment of the enclave, Human Rights Watch said in a report Monday—with evidence drawn from the Israeli government’s own statements as well as survivors’ accounts.
The group demanded that countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and others that have provided Israel with military aid and other support since the country began its latest escalation against Gaza in October speak out against the use of starvation as a weapon of warfare—a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
“For over two months, Israel has been depriving Gaza’s population of food and water, a policy spurred on or endorsed by high-ranking Israeli officials and reflecting an intent to starve civilians as a method of warfare,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch (HRW). “World leaders should be speaking out against this abhorrent war crime, which has devastating effects on Gaza’s population.”
The Israeli government is using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in the Gaza Strip.
HRW pointed to satellite imagery it has collected in northern Gaza since the IDF began its air and ground assault in retaliation for an attack by Hamas on southern Israel on October 7.
The images have shown orchards, greenhouses, and farmland that have been razed over the last two months, “apparently by Israeli forces, compounding concerns of dire food insecurity.”
Only sand and dirt have been left behind where farmers in northeastern Gaza grew citrus, potatoes, dragon fruit, and prickly pear since Israeli forces took control of the area in mid-November and “systematically razed” the fields, said the group.
🚨The 🇮🇱Israeli government is using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in the occupied Gaza Strip.
Palestinians in Gaza, home to about 2.3 million people, have lost the ability to grow their own food as Israel has refused to allow food, water, and fuel deliveries into the enclave, leaving bakeries and grocery store shelves empty.
Before the Israeli bombardment began, about 500 aid trucks filled with food and other goods entered Gaza on a daily basis to provide sustenance amid Israel’s unlawful occupation and its land, air, and sea blockade that began 16 years ago. Israel has allowed only 100 aid trucks to cross through Egypt’s Rafah crossing since October 7. The U.N. humanitarian coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Lynn Hastings, said earlier this month that fuel deliveries—needed for farming, cooking, water desalination, healthcare operations, and other necessities—have been “utterly insufficient.”
Prior to the current escalation, about half of Gaza’s population was facing acute food insecurity and 80% were reliant on humanitarian aid.
The World Food Program (WFP) at the U.N. said earlier this month that 9 in 10 households in northern Gaza and 2 in 3 homes in the south had been without food for at least one full day and night since Israel’s assault. It also warned that 38% of families who had been displaced from their homes in northern Gaza were experiencing “severe levels of hunger” and that the enclave faces a “high risk of famine.”
“It’s critical to understand this is not simply a byproduct of the conflict, an unfortunate result of a terrible situation. It is Israeli government policy,” said Andrew Stroehlein, European media and editorial director for HRW.
In addition to the halting of aid and the destruction of Gaza’s agricultural sector, the last operational wheat mill was bombed on November 15 ensureing “that locally produced flour will be unavailable in Gaza for the foreseeable future,” said HRW.
The group interviewed 11 civilians who described their struggles with finding sufficient food in recent weeks.
A man identified as Taher said that after his family fled south to Gaza City in November, they resorted to eating “just once a day to survive.”
“The city was out of everything, of food and water,” he told HRW. “If you find canned food, the prices were so high… We were running out of money. We decided to just have the necessities, to have less of everything.”
Majed, who left his home in the north after his house was bombed, killing his six-year-old son, said he, his wife, and their four surviving children had no way of making bread for more than a month when they temporarily stayed in Gaza City.
“In those 33 days we didn’t have bread because there was no flour,” he said. “There was no water—we were buying water, sometimes for $10 a cup. It wasn’t always drinkable. Sometimes, [the water we drank] was from the bathroom and sometimes from the sea. The markets around the area were empty. There wasn’t even canned food.”
HRW noted that the Israeli government itself has made numerous statements in recent weeks pointing to the deliberate destruction of Gaza’s food access and the starvation of civilians.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant infamously called Palestinians in Gaza “human animals” when he announced the “complete siege” and cutting off of aid into the enclave on October 9.
“No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel—everything is closed,” Gallant said.
Col. Yogev Bar-Shesht, deputy head of the Civil Administration, said in an interview that eliminating Palestinians’ ability to grow food is a deliberate tactic.
“Whoever returns here, if they return here after, will find scorched earth,” he said. “No houses, no agriculture, no nothing. They have no future.”
HRW’s report came as the death toll in Gaza hit at least 19,453, with more than 50,800 injured and thousands believed to be buried underneath rubble.
Article 54(1) of the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions and Article 14 of the Second Additional Protocol both prohibit starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.
“Although Israel is not a party to Protocols I or II, the prohibition is recognized as reflective of customary international humanitarian law in both international and noninternational armed conflicts,” said HRW.
The worsening humanitarian catastrophe, and Israel’s refusal to operate within the bounds of international law, “calls for an urgent and effective response from the international community,” said Shakir.
“The Israeli government is compounding its collective punishment of Palestinian civilians and the blocking of humanitarian aid,” he said, “by its cruel use of starvation as a weapon of war.”
While the ‘physical element’ of genocide is being documented and broadcast daily, the ‘mental element’ – i.e the intent behind the mass killing – which is more difficult to establish, has been repeatedly clarified by the leaders of Israeli government and military.
Israeli forces in Gaza. Photo: IDF
Amid the growing international consensus that the atrocities Israel has been committing in Gaza amount to genocide, a UN panel ahead has also concluded that “genocide is already happening” in Gaza.
The UN-mandated Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP) convened this panel at UN headquarters in New York City on December 12, ahead of the vote in the General Assembly on the resolution calling for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire”.
Tasked to “examine the legal implications of Israel’s military offensive against Gaza since 7 October and shed light on the applicability of key legal frameworks including those defining Genocide”, the panel was titled “2023 War on Gaza: The Responsibility to Prevent Genocide”.
“But sadly it is clear that genocide is already happening, so our question now is the responsibility to stop the ongoing genocide,” Hari Prabowo, Indonesia’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN who chaired the panel discussion, said at its conclusion.
On the same day, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) also adopted a resolution recognizing that “Israel’s actions against the Palestinian people constitute an unfolding genocide.”
From November onwards UN experts, including several Special Rapporteurs and members of Working Groups on various issues, have been warning that there was “a genocide in the making” in Gaza.
Consensus on the genocidal nature of Israel’s war on Gaza has been consolidating since its early days. As early as October 15, just over a week after Israel started its bombardment, nearly 900 “scholars and practitioners of international law, conflict studies and genocide studies” from around the world had warned of a “potential genocide in Gaza.”
In the two months since this warning, the death toll has increased by over seven-fold, with over 19,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, killed by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) as of December 17. Thousands more remain buried under the rubble of the buildings Israel has bombed.
But the number of the killed is not the factor determining whether or not the mass killing amounted to genocide, Katherine Gallagher, Senior Staff Attorney at the US-based Center for Constitutional Rights, explained in her presentation at the UN panel discussion.
Pointing out that several Bosnian Serb political and military leaders were convicted of genocide for the “killing of over 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica” in 1995, she added that it is the deliberate nature of the targeting of a group, “the intent, coupled with action”, that determines that a mass killing amounts to genocide.
By “killing” and “causing serious bodily or mental harm”, and “deliberately inflicting” on Palestinians in Gaza “conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”, Israel has committed three of the five acts listed under the Genocide Convention.
These acts, which constitute the “physical element” of the genocide, have been documented thoroughly, shared widely on social media and broadcast on television daily – even hourly. However, these acts qualify as genocide only when the “mental element” is also demonstrated – namely that they were “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.
“The intent is the most difficult element to determine,” explains the UN Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect.
“But in this case, the intent” has been made “explicit” in the statements “by the Prime Minister, the President, by senior cabinet members and by the military leaders. These statements clearly constitute the mental element of the crime of genocide,” Hannah Bruinsma, a legal advisor at Law for Palestine, said at the panel discussion.
“We have collected so far 500 statements that demonstrate” the genocidal intent, “often of those in the chain of command,” she added. Such statements of genocidal intent have been made since the early days of the war on Gaza and systematically repeated time and again.
“Not mere rhetoric, but an admission of criminal intent”
Army’s spokesperson Daniel Hagari, who bragged of dropping “thousands of tons of munitions” on Gaza within the first couple of days of Israel’s campaign, had no qualms admitting that “we’re focused on what causes maximum damage”, rather than “accuracy”.
Referring to Palestinians as “human animals”, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who prided in having “released all the restraints” on the military, had said in the early days of the war that “we will eliminate everything” in Gaza.
Israeli tank in Gaza.
Doubling down that “human animals must be treated as such”, the army’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian told Palestinians in Gaza that, “there will be no electricity and no water, there will only be destruction.”
Legitimizing the mass killing of civilians in Gaza, Israeli President Isaac Herzog had declared that “an entire nation out there is responsible” for the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, arguing that the “rhetoric” about innocent civilians is “absolutely not true.”
“This practice of casting an entire population as enemies, as legitimate military targets, is a common genocidal mechanism,” Raz Segal, a prominent Jewish Israeli scholar of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, said in his remarks at the panel discussion.
Late in October, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went on to compare Palestinians with the biblical enemy of the Jews. “You must remember what Amalek has done to you,” he quoted from the Old Testament which prescribes, “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”
These statements, which “have been given effect” must be understood to be “not mere rhetoric, but an admission of criminal intent”, Gallagher argued. “Israeli officials have done what they said they would do.”
Journalists guilty of inciting genocide
“These expressions of intent need to be understood also in relation to the widespread incitement to genocide in Israeli media since 7 October,” said a statement on December 9 by over 55 scholars in Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
From the calls to turn Gaza “into a slaughterhouse” and “violate all norms on the way to victory” to saying “let there be a million bodies” of dead Palestinians, there are “dozens and dozens of examples of incitement in Israeli media”, said Segal, one of the signatories of the statement.
“It is worth reminding” that in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide, journalists who had been encouraging the crime when it was unfolding were “put on trial and convicted.. of incitement to genocide, which is a separate crime under Article 3 of the UN Genocide Convention,” he added.
“US is complicit in Genocide”
Also listed as a separate crime in the same article is “complicity in genocide”, of which the US is guilty, argued Gallagher. The Center for Constitutional Rights, which she represented in the panel discussion, has filed a legal complaint in a California District Court against US President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, for their complicity in Israel’s genocide.
“This unfolding genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza has so far been made possible because of the unconditional support given” to Israel by the US in breach of its “responsibilities under customary international law…to prevent, and not further, genocide,” states the complaint.
The US, which is Israel’s “largest provider of military, economic and political assistance, and I would argue, political cover.. has the ability to use its considerable influence and unique position to take all measures to stop Israel’s unfolding genocide,” Gallagher argued.
“Instead”, she said, it “has done the opposite.” Biden, Blinken and Austin have “pledged and continue to pledge all support to Israel. They have rushed military support, ammunition, precision-guided munitions, 2,000-pound bunker bombs, and they’ve been flying drones overhead. The US military advisers have been in (Israel’s) war cabinet sessions.”
US is Israel’s biggest financial and military backer. Photo: IDF
In addition to the annual 3.8 billion dollars it hands out to Israel every year, it is now coughing up “an additional 14.5 billion dollars, without conditions.” US officials have reiterated in multiple press conferences that “there are no red lines or conditions for these weapons”, she said.
The Washington Postreported earlier this month that Israel has dropped more than 22,000 US-supplied bombs on Gaza within the first month and a half of the war. This amounts to almost one US bomb per every 100 of the 2.3 million Palestinians who are practically imprisoned in the 365 sq. km strip of land that Israel has held under siege for 17 years, which itself has been described by Jewish Israeli historian Ilan Pappe as an “Incremental Genocide”.
“Forced displacement…has figured in genocidal processes”
Situating “the ongoing genocide in Gaza” in the “broader context of Israel’s violent settler colonialism and occupation of Palestinian land,” Jehad Abusalim, Executive Director of The Jerusalem Fund, said “this process began in 1948” with the establishment of Israel.
The Nakba, the Arabic word meaning catastrophe, refers to the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their land within a year of the establishment of this settler colonial state on 78% of Palestine. The process of the Nakba, he said at the panel discussion, never stopped.
“The Nakba was not just an event in the distant past”, but “continues to unfold in Gaza today. It is a process of continuous displacement and ethnic cleansing.”
“Forced displacement, what is commonly called ethnic cleansing, is not in itself an act of genocide, but we know that historically it has figured in genocidal processes,” added Segal, who describes Israel’s actions in Gaza as “a textbook case of genocide”.
“It took the Nazis two and a half years… of experimenting with various schemes of forced displacement of Jews” before implementing the “Final Solution”, he said.
