Zionism

‘A Clear-Cut War Crime’: Outrage Grows as Israel Again Bombs Gaza Refugee Camp

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

Palestinians examine the destruction in the aftermath of a deadly Israeli airstrike on Gaza’s largest refugee camp on November 1, 2023. (Photo: Bashar Taleb/AFP via Getty Images)

“The U.S. government cannot keep funding these atrocities,” said U.S. Rep. Cori Bush. “There must be a cease-fire now.”

The Israeli military bombed Gaza’s largest refugee camp for the second consecutive day on Wednesday as humanitarian groups and lawmakers called the series of attacks a blatant war crime and slammed the U.S. government for enabling such atrocities.

Wednesday’s attack reportedly killed and wounded “a number of” people at the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp, where hundreds were killed or injured roughly 24 hours earlier in bombings by the Israeli military.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) asserted that Tuesday’s strikes were aimed at a “tunnel complex” where a senior Hamas commander, Ibrahim Biari, was purportedly hiding. The IDF said the airstrikes killed Biari but denied intentionally bombing the camp’s buildings, more than a dozen of which were leveled in the attack.

“I was waiting in line to buy bread when suddenly and without any prior warning seven to eight missiles fell,” said one eyewitness. “There were seven to eight huge holes in the ground, full of killed people, body parts all over the place. It felt like the end of the world.”

A Doctors Without Borders nurse in Gaza said that after Tuesday’s strikes, “young children arrived at the hospital with deep wounds and severe burns.”

“They came without their families,” the nurse added. “Many were screaming and asking for their parents. I stayed with them until we could find a place, as the hospital was full with patients.”

Asked about the civilians who were killed in the Tuesday strikes, an IDF spokesperson told CNN that “this is the tragedy of war” and that the Israeli military instructed people in the area to “move south.”

Hamas denied the claim that one of its commanders was in the area targeted by the Israeli military.

Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of Refugees International, argued Tuesday that Israel’s assault on Gaza’s largest refugee camp “is a clear-cut war crime.”

“It shows wanton disregard for the legal obligation to minimize civilian harm in targeting military objectives. It is the latest of many such attacks by the IDF,” Konyndyk wrote. “This in turn underscores that Netanyahu is making a mockery of Biden’s repeated pleas to follow the laws of war—without any acknowledgment of that reality by the U.S. This leaves a cease-fire as the only viable path to civilian protection.”

U.S. Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), who is leading a congressional resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza, also denounced the refugee camp bombing as a war crime and said that “this unspeakable violence must end.”

“The U.S. government cannot keep funding these atrocities,” Bush added. “There must be a cease-fire now.”

U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) similarly criticized the Biden administration and Congress for backing Israel as it carries out massive crimes against humanity.

“Make no mistake: these human rights abuses are being carried out with U.S. weapons, U.S. funding, and with ‘no red lines,'” Omar wrote on social media. “And now we are set to vote on an additional $14 billion with no restrictions or conditions. The United States Congress should not fund violations of U.S. and international law.”

Israeli forces have killed at least 8,800 people in Gaza since October 7, when Hamas launched a deadly attack on Israel.

The nation’s relentless bombing campaign and siege have fueled a massive humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, displacing more than a million people, imperiling the enclave’s healthcare system, and decimating much of the territory’s civilian infrastructure—including communication and internet services.

The United Nations and human rights organizations have accused Israeli forces of committing grave war crimes in Gaza, including collective punishment, forcible transfer, and genocide.

The wave of airstrikes that hit Jabalia on Wednesday marked at least the sixth time Israel has bombed the camp since October 7, according toAl Jazeera.

“This is just the latest atrocity to befall the people of Gaza where the fighting has entered an even more terrifying phase, with increasingly dreadful humanitarian consequences,” United Nations emergency relief coordinator Martin Griffiths said of the Jabalia attack on Wednesday. “Meanwhile, the world seems unable, or unwilling, to act. This cannot go on.”

Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights, a United Kingdom-based legal charity, said in a statement Wednesday that the Jabalia strikes “should overwhelmingly signal to the U.K. Government and Labour Party that they must now call for an immediate cease-fire.”

“We urge the U.K. Government and Labour Party to urgently revise their position in light of the Jabalia mass killing, and clearly place the future preservation of civilian life as its highest objective,” the group added.

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

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Continue Reading‘A Clear-Cut War Crime’: Outrage Grows as Israel Again Bombs Gaza Refugee Camp

In What Is Called A War

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

Gazan father Muhammed Gouda and his baby daughter Misk lay dead at Aqsa Hospital after an Israeli airstrike hit Deir al-Balah  Photo by Mustafa Hassona/Anadolu via Getty Images

We apologize. The unprecedented human tragedy in Gaza hurtles on; we can record only pitiless catastrophe afflicting the innocent, its numbers and names. Over 3,400 Palestinian children have been killed and 6,300 wounded; Israel is hitting ravaged hospitals without fuel or light with de-facto bombings; their mad “leader” is quoting Biblical bloodbaths, declaring a “holy mission” of annihilation, and refusing to stop in the name of vengeance: “This is a time for war.” Once again: Murdering children is not “war.”

Writer Ahmed Nehad bitterly documents a grim former “normal” Gaza: Scarce food, water, electricity, hospital beds, jobs, hope. That “normal” was long met with “deafening global silence” until the Oct. 7 killings of Israeli civilians: Then, “the world sat upright and saw the horror of blood spilled in historic Palestine, when the blood took on a different hue.” In just over three weeks, Israel has dropped over 12,000 tons of bombs on Gaza; they have killed over 8,300, but their “true cost, says UNICEF’s Catherine Russell, “will be measured in children’s lives.” Over 420 children a day are killed or injured, roughly one every 10 minutes; over 2,000 children are missing under the rubble, and likely dead; 70% of the dead are children and women; frantic rescue crews must decide between retrieving dead bodies or trying to dig out wounded ones; entire families have been wiped out, leaving young survivors as orphans asking where their parents are; over 16,000 people have been wounded, with little medical help available; over 1.4 million people, more than half the population, have been displaced; and there is “no safe place in Gaza.”

Including, grotesquely, hospitals, where many have sought shelter. Over 50,000 people have taken refuge at al-Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital; perhaps 12,000 have fled to al-Quds hospital, the next biggest. But under a siege that has blocked all fuel and medicine, and with over a third of the city’s hospitals shut down, the rest are struggling. Doctors dependent on one generator are operating by flashlight, rationing anesthetics, sterilizing with vinegar or laundry detergent, cutting back on dialysis and chemo treatments, having to choose, “like God,” which of two intensive care babies to save. Meanwhile, “If the electricity goes, it just becomes a mass grave.” Israel has ordered hospitals to “evacuate,” knowing well that’s impossible; says Nebal Farsakh of the Palestinian Red Crescent, “Evacuating them means killing them.” Israel has also issued cruelly pointless “warnings” to “evacuate” before bombardments, face-saving mockeries of humanity that “do not make targeting hospitals less of a war crime,” says Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah: “A crime is a crime, even if you make it by appointment.”

On Democracy Now, Dr. Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian physician who’s helped provide emergency care in Gaza for 16 years during “very hectic periods” – Israeli assaults in 2006, 2009, 2012, 2014 – cites an “urgent fear” among colleagues Israel will move to bomb hospitals directly, as opposed to its “de facto” bombardments of nearby sites. He particularly condemns Israel’s threat to bomb the (clearly civilian) al-Shifa based on their claim Hamas’ command center is under it – a claim he’s heard since 2009, with no proof forthcoming despite having walked freely there, slept there, filmed there for years. As he anxiously waits in Cairo for entry to Gaza, he praises health workers who remain, “moral compasses” and “cornerstones of a social fabric” that’s been largely ripped away. “It’s completely absurd that (we) have a state army threatening to bomb hospitals and killing children” – 5,300 to date – “in what is called a war,” he says, blasting Biden’s refusal to demand a ceasefire. “This has to stop. I don’t need to use the word ‘genocide.’ It’s enough to say ‘mass murder of civilians.’ We need to stand up and say we don’t accept this.”

As to Netanyahu, his blood lust is far from sated. On Monday, in a chilling speech experts deemed “an explicit call to genocide,” he termed Israel’s slaughter of innocents “a holy mission” and invoked their ancient foe from the Old Testament: “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible: ‘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.'” Calls for a ceasefire, he declared with stunning cognitive dissonance, are “a call for Israel (to) surrender to barbarism…The Bible says there is a time for peace and a time for war. This is a time for war.” Still, mournfully, Ahmed Nehad nonetheless pleads for the trifling mercy of a ceasefire, that “a mere handful might endure.” “Grant us the luxury of one last hug,” he writes. “Our end is nigh, rest assured.” Those already dead and documented – name, age, ID number – total 6,747; the number excludes thousands still under rubble or not yet identified. To read the list, you must keep scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. May their memories be for a blessing.

Injured child at Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital after Israeli airstrikes. Photo by Saeed Jaras/APA Images

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

Continue ReadingIn What Is Called A War

Rights Group Warns US Congress Not to Bankroll Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza

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On the night of October 27, Israel cut all communication services in Gaza and intensified the aerial bombing campaign.
On the night of October 27, Israel cut all communication services in Gaza and intensified the aerial bombing campaign.

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

“Gaslighting Americans into facilitating long-held Israeli plans to depopulate Gaza under the cover of ‘humanitarian aid’ is a cruel and grotesque hoax.”

Human rights advocates are warning that U.S. President Joe Biden’s new supplemental funding request could—under the guise of humanitarian aid—bolster, or even help finance, the far-right Israeli government’s plans for ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip.

Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) raised alarm on Monday over language in Biden’s request that says resources from the supplemental package “would support displaced and conflict-affected civilians, including Palestinian refugees in Gaza and the West Bank, and to address potential needs of Gazans fleeing to neighboring countries.”

The White House request adds that “this crisis could well result in displacement across [the] border and higher regional humanitarian needs, and funding may be used to meet evolving programming requirements outside of Gaza.”

DAWN said that “any authorization for funding activities, infrastructure, or aid outside of Israel and Palestine” should be opposed “because they effectively facilitate, fund, and reward the forced transfer of Palestinians.”

Days after the Biden White House sent its request to Congress, an Israeli newspaper reported on a leaked document from Israel’s Intelligence Ministry that proposes the forcible and permanent transfer of all of Gaza’s 2.2 million Palestinian residents to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. A full English translation of the document was published Monday by +972 Magazine.

The Israeli government has already ordered the entire population of northern Gaza to evacuate to the southern half of the strip as Israel’s military decimates the north with airstrikes and expands its ground operations there.

The internal document states that the “evacuation of the civilian population from Gaza to Sinai” would “yield positive, long-term strategic outcomes for Israel” and “is an executable option” that is preferable to alternatives, such as “the population remaining in Gaza along with the emergence of a local Arab authority” following Israel’s devastating assault on the territory.

The policy paper adds that the Israeli government’s efforts to “bring about a significant change in the civilian reality in the Gaza Strip” would require “intensive action to harness the United States and other countries to support this goal.”

“Both by word and by deed, Israeli officials are pursuing a broader strategy to permanently remove Palestinians from their native lands, and counting on the U.S. to pay for it.”

DAWN expressed grave concern Monday that, if approved by Congress, Biden’s supplemental funding proposal would provide critical support for the Israeli government’s plans for forcible transfer, which is a violation of international law.

“The Biden administration isn’t just giving a green light for ethnic cleansing—it’s bankrolling it,” said DAWN executive director Sarah Leah Whitson. “Gaslighting Americans into facilitating long-held Israeli plans to depopulate Gaza under the cover of ‘humanitarian aid’ is a cruel and grotesque hoax.”

DAWN urged Congress to vote against any supplemental funding legislation that includes humanitarian aid language mirroring the White House’s request, which also includes $14 billion in military aid for Israel on top of weaponry that the U.S. has already sent to Israel in recent weeks.

“Supporting Israeli efforts to forcibly transfer Palestinians to Egypt would make U.S. officials liable for complicity in war crimes,” the group said.

Former Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth echoed DAWN:

House Republicans introduced legislation on Monday that includes mostly military assistance for Israel—omitting Ukraine funding, disaster relief, and humanitarian aid that the Biden administration requested. The GOP bill is likely a non-starter in the U.S. Senate, where Democratic lawmakers objected to the inclusion of Internal Revenue Service cuts.

“Both by word and by deed, Israeli officials are pursuing a broader strategy to permanently remove Palestinians from their native lands, and counting on the U.S. to pay for it,” said Whitson. “Congress should vote against any aid package that could support these acts, which amount to violations of human rights and grave breaches of the laws of war.”

+972 Magazine reported Monday that the Israeli Intelligence Ministry document “proposes promoting a campaign targeting Palestinian civilians in Gaza that will ‘motivate them to accept this plan’ and lead them to give up their land.”

“The messages should revolve around the loss of land, making it clear that there is no hope of returning to the territories Israel will soon occupy, whether or not that is true,” the document states. “The image needs to be, ‘Allah made sure you lose this land because of Hamas’ leadership—there is no choice but to move to another place with the assistance of your Muslim brothers.”

A similar plan has been outlined by an Israeli think tank with ties to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

As his government continues its bombardment of Gaza and ramps up its ground attack, Netanyahu has reportedly lobbied European leaders to pressure Egypt to accept refugees from Gaza. More than a million Gazans have been internally displaced since October 7, when Israel launched its latest assault on the Palestinian territory in the wake of a deadly Hamas attack.

An unnamed Western diplomat told the Financial Times that Netanyahu “pushed quite hard that the solution was for Egyptians to take Gazans at least during the conflict.”

“But we didn’t take it very seriously,” the diplomat added, “because the Egyptian position is and has always been very clear and they just won’t do it.”

The Israeli government’s actions and rhetoric since October 7 have sparked international warnings that Palestinians are “in grave danger of mass ethnic cleansing,” as United Nations expert Francesca Albanese put it earlier this month.

“What we are witnessing may be a repeat of the 1948 Nakba, and the 1967 Naksa, yet on a larger scale,” Albanese said. “The international community must do everything to stop this from happening again.”

Israel’s attack on Gaza has killed more than 8,000 people—including more than 3,400 children—in just over three weeks. The Israeli military’s bombing campaign has destroyed or damaged at least 45% of Gaza’s housing units.

Around 40% of Gaza’s schools have also been damaged by Israeli bombs, according to the United Nations.

“The best way to protect Palestinian civilians from the wrath of war is to announce and enforce a cease-fire,” Raed Jarrar, DAWN’s advocacy director, said Monday. “Rather than pushing Palestinians to Egypt, Israel should allow Palestinian civilians to cross the apartheid fence into Israel. Maybe Palestinians can set up tent cities in the same towns and villages they were displaced from during the first Nakba 75 years ago.”

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

Continue ReadingRights Group Warns US Congress Not to Bankroll Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza

Hundreds reported dead after Israel wipes out entire neighborhood in Gaza

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

Jabayla refugee camp’s most populated neighborhood is razed using six US-made bombs, each weighing one ton

Jabalya Refugee Camp Gaza 31 October 2023 Photo: Quds News Network
Jabalya Refugee Camp Gaza 31 October 2023 Photo: Quds News Network

On October 31, Israel dropped six US-made bombs (each weighing one ton) on the most populated neighborhood of Jabayla refugee camp in Gaza, killing and injuring 400, reports the Palestinian Ministry of Health. The death toll is likely to increase as more information becomes known. 

According to the Quds News Network, Jabalya is one of the most populated areas of Gaza, with 60,000 residents in only 1.4 square kilometers. 

The United States funds Israel to the tune of USD 4 billion each year. As Israel carries out its genocide in Gaza, the US Congress is set to approve USD 14.3 billion in emergency funds for Israel. 

US activists have argued that Israel’s heavy funding and military support from the US is due to the state’s unique position as a Western military outpost in West Asia. As current US President Joe Biden himself said in 1986, “It’s the best three billion dollar investment we made. Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region.”

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

Continue ReadingHundreds reported dead after Israel wipes out entire neighborhood in Gaza

Over 420 Palestinian children are killed every day in Israeli war on Gaza, says UNICEF chief

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

Israel has intensified its bombings inside the besieged Palestinian territory, repeatedly targeting shelters for the displaced and hospitals which are crowded due to the large number of people injured

United Nations Security Council discusses war in Gaza
United Nations Security Council discusses war in Gaza

Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner General of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), stated that Israel is carrying out “collective punishment” against Palestinians across the occupied territories and asked the world to ensure that women and children do not become “collateral damage.” 

Lazzarini was speaking at an emergency session of the UN Security Council on Monday, October 30, called by the UAE and China to yet again push for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. 

Addressing the session, Catherine Russell, Executive Director of UNICEF, said that over 3,400 children had been killed and over 6,300 injured. “This means that more than 420 Palestinian children are being killed or injured in Gaza each day—a number which should shake each of us to our core,” she added.

Israeli forces have been indiscriminately bombing the Gaza strip for the last 25 days. Its forces also launched a ground offensive on Saturday. 

The number of total Palestinians killed so far in the Israeli bombings in Gaza crossed 8,300 on Tuesday morning, with over 20,000 Palestinians injured. According to reports, Israel once again used banned white phosphorus on civilians in Gaza on Monday.  

According to Lazzarini, more than 70% of all those killed are either children or women. He claimed that an “unprecedented human tragedy is unfolding under our watch” in Gaza which is “unbearable.”

He blamed Israel for forcing millions of Palestinians out of their homes which led to overcrowding in UNRWA shelters. Lazzarini claimed that over 67,0000 Palestinians are forcibly displaced and are now living in schools which have been converted into shelters. 

More than half of the population of Gaza, over 1.4 million Palestinians, have been forced out of their homes due to the Israeli offensive since October 7. More and more Palestinians are under threat of losing their homes as Israel continues to target civilian residential areas. 

Lazzarini claimed that over 65 staffers with the UNRWA have been killed in Israeli strikes inside the Gaza strip since October 7. 

Several relief and rescue staff working with other humanitarian missions in the war-affected region have also been killed in the Israeli bombings which have targeted hospitals, schools, aid distribution centers, and even ambulances.   

Israel has also blockaded the supply of food, fuel and medicines into the besieged Palestinian territories since October 9, which has intensified the humanitarian situation there as hundreds of thousands of people are being forced to live without adequate medicines and food. Due to lack of fuel, all essential services such as water supply, cleaning and transportation are blocked, leading to a very dangerous situation. 

“No place is safe in Gaza”  

The handful of aid allowed through the Rafah border is not enough for the over 2 million Palestinians trapped in Gaza. Basic necessities such as water, medicine, food and fuel are running out, adding to the panic among the people, Lazzarini said during his presentation to the UN Security Council. 

He claimed that no place is safe from Israeli bombings in the small Palestinian enclave. 

“My UNRWA colleagues are the only glimmer of hope for the entire Gaza strip, a ray of light as humanity sinks into its darkest hour,” Lazzarini stated.  

Lazzarini added that the condition in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem is also getting worse everyday. He claimed that Palestinians fatalities in those territories are already highest since 2005, when the UN started recording them. 

Over 115 Palestinians including 33 children have been killed by the occupation forces in these territories since October 7, Lazzarini said. 

According to the latest figures provided by the Palestinian ministry of health, the total number of Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem crossed 124 on Tuesday with the Israeli forces shooting of a 70-year-old man in Tubas. 

He claimed that the restrictions imposed on the movement of Palestinians and aid workers in the occupied Palestinian territories are impacting basic services such as education and health care.   

UNICEF head Russell also noted that Gaza has reported 34 attacks on health facilities, including 21 hospitals, due to which 12 of them can no longer function. She underlined that the Israeli bombings have destroyed 221 schools and over 177,000 housing units so far. 

She called for an immediate ceasefire, saying that we need to “put their [children] safety and security at the forefront of our efforts.”

Chinese ambassador to the UN Zhang Jun pointed out that Israel must implement the UN General Assembly resolution passed by over 120 countries on Friday demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. 

Jun claimed that Israel has been holding around 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza under a blockade for over 16 years and asked it to fulfill its responsibilities as the occupying power. Jung warned that if the current war continues, it can spiral out of control and a greater catastrophe would be inevitable.  

Russian ambassador Vasily Nebenzya also blamed Israel, saying that “despite unambiguous reaction around the world” Israel has begun its plan to clear the Palestinian enclave by launching ground offensive. He noted that because of the US position to shield Israel at any cost, “the council has been paralyzed.” 

Other members of the UN Security Council and the Israeli ambassador also addressed the emergency meeting. Palestinian ambassador Riyad Mansour claimed that “Gaza is now hell on earth” and underlined that “saving humanity from hell today means the UN to save Palestinians in Gaza.” 

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

Continue ReadingOver 420 Palestinian children are killed every day in Israeli war on Gaza, says UNICEF chief