This photo released by Dr Marawan Abu Saada shows prematurely born Palestinian babies in Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on November 12, 2023
AS THE death toll in Gaza approaches 12,000, including nearly 5,000 children, the Al-Shifa hospital came under fierce attack from Israeli forces yesterday.
While thousands have fled the bombardment of Gaza’s largest hospital, hundreds of patients, including dozens of babies, remain in the bombed out building at risk of dying because of a lack of electricity as well as a lack of medical and food supplies.
The Israeli military said that it had placed gallons of fuel near the hospital to help power its generators, but Hamas fighters had prevented staff from reaching it.
The Health Ministry in Gaza disputed that and said the fuel would have provided less than an hour of electricity.
World Health Organisation director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post on social media that Shifa has been without water for three days and “is not functioning as a hospital anymore.”
Palestinians inspect the damage following an Israeli airstrike on the El-Remal aera in Gaza City on October 9, 2023. Israel continued to battle Hamas fighters on October 10 and massed tens of thousands of troops and heavy armour around the Gaza Strip after vowing a massive blow over the Palestinian militants’ surprise attack. Photo by Naaman Omar apaimages. licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
There are 149 states party to the Genocide Convention. Every one of them has the right to call out the genocide in progress in Gaza and report it to the United Nations. In the event that another state party disputes the claim of genocide – and Israel, the United States and the United Kingdom are all states party – then the International Court of Justice is required to adjudicate on “the responsibility of a State for genocide”.
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There is, at the very least, a strong prima facie case that the actions of the United States and United Kingdom and others, in openly providing direct military support to be used in genocide, are complicity in genocide. The point of Article IV is that individuals are responsible, not just states. So Netanyahu, Biden and Sunak bear individual responsibility. So, indeed, do all those who have been calling for the destruction of the Palestinians.
It is very definitely worth activating the Genocide Convention. A judgement of the International Court of Justice that Israel is guilty of genocide would have an extraordinary diplomatic effect and would cause domestic difficulties in the UK and even in the US in continuing to subsidise and arm Israel. The International Court of Justice is the most respected of international institutions; while the United States has repudiated its compulsory jurisdiction, the United Kingdom has not and the EU positively accepts it.
If the International Court of Justice makes a determination of genocide, then the International Criminal Court does not have to determine that genocide has happened. This is important because unlike the august and independent ICJ, the ICC is very much a western government puppet institution which will wiggle out of action if it can. But a determination of the ICJ of genocide and of complicity in genocide would reduce the ICC’s task to determining which individuals bear the responsibility. That is a prospect which can indeed alter the calculations of politicians.
It is also the fact that a reference for genocide would force the western media to address the issue and use the term, rather than just pump out propaganda about Hamas fighting bases in hospitals. Furthermore a judgement from the ICJ would automatically trigger a reference to the United Nations General Assembly – crucially not to the western-vetoed Security Council.
All this begs the question of why no state has yet invoked the Genocide Convention. This is especially remarkable as Palestine is one of the 149 states party to the Genocide Convention, and for this purpose would have standing before both the UN and the ICJ.
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Any one of the 139 states party could invoke the Genocide Convention against Israel and its co-conspirators. Those states include Iran, Russia, Libya, Malaysia, Bolivia, Venezuela, Brazil, Afghanistan, Cuba, Ireland, Iceland, Jordan, South Africa, Turkey and Qatar. But not one of these states has called out the genocide. Why?
Men check the bodies of people killed in bombardment that hit a school housing displaced Palestinians, as they lie on the ground in the yard of al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on November 10, 2023. (Photo: Khoder al-Zaanoun/AFP via Getty Images)
As the death toll from Israel’s obliteration of Gaza topped 11,000, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said “far too many Palestinians have been killed”—while the United States’ armed aid to Israel continues.
Palestinian civil defense officials said Friday that more than 50 bodies were recovered from the rubble of a school in northern Gaza where civilians were sheltering when it was destroyed during overnight Israeli bombardment.
Palestine’s WAFA News Agency reported civil defense and ambulance rescue teams removed the blasted and crushed remains of victims of Thursday night’s missile and artillery strikes on the al-Buraq School in the al-Nasr neighborhood of Gaza City. The outlet said that most of those killed were women, children, and elders.
The Times of Israel reports that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officials have not yet commented on the attack.
Injured survivors of the attack were rushed to al-Shifa Hospital, which was hit by Israeli airstrikes at least four times over the past 24 hours.
As Common Dreams reported earlier Friday, Israeli strikes targeted the courtyard and obstetrics department of the hospital, where doctors have been forced to operate on patients without anesthesia after running out of critical supplies to treat an overwhelming number of wounded victims. Gaza officials said 13 people died in the attacks on al-Shifa.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, al-Shifa general director Muhammad Abu Salmiya called Friday “a day of war against hospitals.”
Israeli officials have made unsubstantiated claims of Hamas fighters operating from inside or under al-Shifa and other Gaza hospitals.
Message to Biden – and all who are complicit – by Norwegian doctor, specialist in anesthesiology, Mads Gilbert @DrMadsGilbert who has been working at the Al-Shifa hospital on and off for 16 years pic.twitter.com/niYh7hg6gs
On Friday Israeli warplanes bombed in the vicinity of the Indonesian Hospital in Bait Lahia—where doctors announced a cessation of surgeries—while Mustafa al-Kahlout, director of the al-Nasr hospital and al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital in northern Gaza, told CNN that Israeli tanks had “surrounded” the complex.
Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said Friday that northern Gaza resembles “hell on Earth” due to Israel’s bombardment and a lack of aid.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Friday that at least 11,078 Palestinians—including more than 3,000 women and over 4,500 children—have been killed and upward of 27,000 injured by Israeli bombs and bullets since October 7, when Hamas-led attacks on Israel killed around 1,200 civilians and soldiers, with another 240 or so people taken hostage. Israeli officials on Friday revised down their death toll, which they previously said was higher than 1,400.
According to Gaza officials, around 70% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been forcibly displaced, while half the homes in the besieged strip have been destroyed. Officials also said 238 schools, 67 mosques, and 88 government buildings have been wiped out by Israeli attacks.
In the illegally occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem—whose residents were already suffering the deadliest year since the second intifada, or uprising, a generation ago—Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed at least 182 Palestinians while wounding thousands more since October 7.
After 35 days of relentless and indiscriminate bombing—an IDF spokesperson acknowledged early in the war that “the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy”—U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday during a visit to India that “far too many Palestinians have been killed.”
However, the U.S. continues to stand staunchly behind its number one Middle Eastern ally, with the Biden administration and Congress working on a $14.3 billion military aid package to Israel, atop the nearly $4 billion the country already receives from Washington annually. The U.S. also provides diplomatic cover for Israel, including a recent veto of a Brazil-led United Nations Security Council cease-fire resolution.
While Israel on Thursday agreed to daily four-hour humanitarian pauses for at least three days so that civilians have a chance to flee the constant bombardment and advancing IDF ground forces, Israeli officials—and U.S. President Joe Biden—stress that no cease-fire is imminent.
Doctors Without Borders once again begging for a ceasefire
Here is the head of Doctors Without Borders mocking the idea of a “humanitarian pause” a few days ago. This placebo bullshit is what Warren, Sanders, Biden, etc are trying to pass off as a bold progressive gesture. https://t.co/KrEjiX484Hpic.twitter.com/yg14jkaBnS
Israeli leaders have said a cease-fire is off the table until all hostages held by Gaza-based militants are freed. Abu Hamza, the military spokesperson of the al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, said Thursday that the group was preparing to release an elderly woman and teenage boy in its custody.
United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini wrote in an opinion piece published Thursday by The Washington Post that “the present course chosen by the Israeli authorities will not bring the peace and stability that both Israelis and Palestinians want and deserve.”
“Razing entire neighborhoods to the ground is not an answer for the egregious crimes committed by Hamas,” Lazzarini asserted. “To the contrary, it is creating a new generation of aggrieved Palestinians who are likely to continue the cycle of violence. The carnage simply must stop.”
An injured toddler cries as she awaits treatment at the emergency ward of the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on November 5, 2023. (Photo: Bashar Taleb/AFP via Getty Images)
“When are you going to stop this?” Dr. Mads Gilbert asked U.S. President Joe Biden and the leaders of European nations.
A Norwegian 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.”
BREAKING: Israel commits new horrible hospital massacres! Shifa hospital bombed this morning! pic.twitter.com/VrpF38Zgi5
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.
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.”
People take part in the National March for Palestine in London on Saturday November 11, 2023. (Photo: Victoria Jones/PA Images via Getty Images)
“In our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians,” demonstrators chanted at Saturday’s march, described as one of the largest political protests in U.K. history.
Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of London on Saturday to demand an immediate cease-fire in Gaza as Israeli forces ramped up their aerial and ground assault on the Palestinian enclave’s hospitals and other civilian infrastructure, intensifying the territory’s humanitarian crisis.
Described as one of the largest political demonstrations in U.K. history, the march moved ahead despite criticism from British Home Secretary Suella Braverman and Tory Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who suggested earlier in the week that the protest should have been banned by London police given that it coincided with Armistice Day. Braverman accused the police of giving favorable treatment to “pro-Palestinian mobs.”
“I am horrified by the tone, language, and incitement our own government is using to whip up hatred against its own citizens—citizens who are standing up in solidarity with the besieged and bombed citizens of Gaza,” British Army veteran and march participant Nadia Mitchell wrote for OpenDemocracy. “Personally, I cannot think of a more appropriate day to demand a cease-fire than on the day we remember the mother of all cease-fires, to remember and honor those who sacrificed their lives in pursuit of peace and an end to war.”
Some U.K. lawmakers, including former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Labour MP John McDonnell, joined Saturday’s march alongside hundreds of thousands of peace activists, union members, and people of all faiths.
“In our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians,” demonstrators chanted.
(Photo: Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images)
Reuters reported that “police said far-right groups opposing the march were present in central London in ‘significant numbers,’ leading to skirmishes with officers near the Cenotaph war memorial, close to the Houses of Parliament and in Westminster.”
“Officers in riot gear sought to contain the far-right protesters, some of whom threw bottles at them, and police vehicles sped around the city to respond to reports of tensions in the streets,” the outlet added.
Participants in the mass demonstration, meanwhile, marched from London’s Hyde Park to the U.S. Embassy to protest the Biden administration’s unwavering military and political support for the Israeli government as the death toll in Gaza continues to climb.
The head of the World Health Organization told the United Nations Security Council on Friday that Israel’s bombing and siege are killing one child on average every 10 minutes in Gaza.
“Nowhere and no one is safe,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Mohammed Abu Mughaisib, deputy medical coordinator for Doctors Without Borders in Gaza, toldThe Washington Post on Saturday that hospitals in northern Gaza have become “a graveyard” due to mounting Israeli attacks.
Medical workers at al-Nasr pediatric hospital were forced to leave babies in incubators behind as they evacuated south, Abu Mughaisib said.
“The medical staff evacuated because of the shelling on the pediatric hospital, and they couldn’t save the babies to take them out, so they left five babies alone in the intensive care on the machines and the ventilators,” he told the newspaper. “That’s the situation: leaving babies now alone on the ventilators.”
(Photo: Victoria Jones/PA Images via Getty Images)
Saturday’s march was organized by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), Stop the War Coalition, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and other advocacy groups.
“We march to call for an end to the indiscriminate bombing of civilians and a #CeasefireNOW,” PSC director Ben Jamal wrote on social media. “We march in respect of the rights of all to live in freedom and with dignity.”
The demonstration is part of a growing international movement supporting a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip as Western leaders, including Sunak and U.S. President Joe Biden, refuse to demand an end to Israel’s siege and relentless bombing campaign.
Earlier this week, as Israeli forces encircled northern Gaza, Biden told reporters that there is “no possibility” of a cease-fire. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly rejected a proposed five-day cease-fire in exchange for the release of some of the hostages held by Hamas.
(Photo: Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images)
Video footage of Saturday’s march shows the streets of central London packed with demonstrators expressing solidarity with the people of Gaza and demanding an end to Israel’s assault, which began after a deadly Hamas-led attack in southern Israel last month.
An estimated 300,000 people took part in Saturday’s march, according to London authorities.
“This footage shows the true will of the British people,” wrote Ahmed Alnaouq, a London-based Palestinian journalist and co-founder of the nonprofit We Are Not Numbers. “Hundreds of thousands are protesting peacefully despite rounds of vicious smear campaigns and intimidation. “All say in one word: CEASE-FIRE NOW!”
