Video: thousands rally for Global Sumud Flotilla as it sets sail for Gaza
Mass displacement from Gaza City’s northeast begins as Israeli attacks intensify
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The mass displacement of Palestinians from northeastern Gaza City began on Friday evening as Israeli forces escalated attacks from the north and south, bombarding entire neighbourhoods, Anadolu reports.
A Palestinian security source told Anadolu that the situation in the city’s eastern neighbourhoods is deteriorating “at a rapidly accelerating pace” due to Israel’s intensifying offensive.
The source said the Israeli army has increased demolitions in southern and northeastern Gaza City, using explosive-laden robots alongside artillery shelling and airstrikes.
Anadolu’s correspondent reported “mass displacement” of residents from the city’s northeastern districts toward western Gaza City or farther south in the enclave.
He also reported additional shelling in Gaza City’s southern al-Sabra neighbourhood.
READ: Gaza death toll tops 63,000 as 5 more Palestinians die of starvation
Israel declared a “dangerous combat zone” on Friday and launched one of its most intense bombardments since the war began, striking by air, land, and sea, while nearly 1 million Palestinians are still trapped inside.
The offensive is part of an Israeli plan approved earlier this month to gradually reoccupy Gaza, beginning with the enclave’s largest urban centre, which houses roughly half of the population.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) warned that the assault could force up to 1 million people to evacuate their homes again.
Israel has killed over 63,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023. The military campaign has devastated the enclave, which is facing famine.
Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.
BREAKING: 4 Israeli soldiers missing, others killed in resistance ambush in Zeitoun neighbourhood east of Gaza: Israel media
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Israeli media reported that 4 soldiers were missing, and others were killed and wounded in Gaza, as part of a large ambush to capture Israeli soldiers carried out by the Qassam Brigades in the Zeitoun neighbourhood east of Gaza City.
Sources reported that the operation began with a large ambush in the Zeitoun neighbourhood, which resulted in the deaths of several Israeli soldiers, while other reports confirmed injuries described as critical.
Hebrew media added that the Israeli army deployed 6 additional helicopters to evacuate the dead and wounded from the ambush site, while firing flares intensively into the skies over central Gaza in an attempt to secure its forces.
Reports also indicated that the Israeli army activated the Hannibal Protocol, an emergency military measure used in such situations to prevent its soldiers from being captured.
Sources confirmed that forces from the (162) Division and the (401) Armoured Brigade were the ones who fell into the ambush, and that these forces were under heavy field pressure due to fighting in the Zeitoun neighbourhood with the arrival of more Palestinian fighters to support the operation.
READ: Gaza death toll tops 63,000 as 5 more Palestinians die of starvation
Israeli media reported that Qassam fighters attempted to capture soldiers during the ambush in the Zeitoun neighbourhood, while the Israeli army continues extensive searches for the missing soldiers.
Reports also indicated that the first operation took place in the Zeitoun neighbourhood when a force from the Nahal Brigade fell into a well-planned ambush, killing one soldier and wounding others. Other forces were then subjected to a second ambush in the Sabra neighbourhood, prompting Israeli helicopters to intervene and bomb the site.
Abu Obeida, spokesman for the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), confirmed that the Palestinian resistance is on high alert to confront Israel’s plans to occupy Gaza City, which he said would be devastating for the occupation’s political and military leadership. He noted that the Israeli prisoners would be with the resistance fighters in the fighting areas.
In a series of posts on Telegram on Friday evening, Abu Obeida said that the plans to occupy Gaza “will be paid for by the enemy army in the blood of its soldiers, and will increase the chances of capturing new soldiers, God willing.”
Labelling the Palestinian resistance: Political propaganda or legal classification?
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The dominant narrative in the West portrays the Islamic Resistance Movement – Hamas – as a “terrorist group”, uncritically repeating the rhetoric of Israel and its allies. However, when analysing the issue from the perspective of international law and the history of national liberation movements, it is clear that the “terrorism” label is more a tool of political propaganda than a legal definition.
In light of international law and the United Nations Charter, Hamas should be understood as a Palestinian resistance movement in the face of more than seven decades of Israeli colonisation, ethnic cleansing, and military occupation. This also includes almost two years of uninterrupted confrontation with genocide in the Gaza Strip.
The United Nations (UN) has never declared Hamas a terrorist group. Only a few countries, such as the United States, the European Union, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia, have unilaterally adopted this classification. International law, in turn, does not criminalise resistance against occupation.
Since 1967, Israel has maintained its occupation of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, in flagrant violation of the UN Charter and Security Council resolutions. According to International Humanitarian Law, peoples subjected to foreign occupation have the legitimate right to resist, including by armed means, against the occupying power.
This principle is supported by Article 51 of the UN Charter, as well as Resolutions No. 2649/1970, 2787/1971, 3070/1973, and 3103/1974, which explicitly recognise the inalienable right of peoples to fight against colonial domination, foreign occupation, and apartheid. Furthermore, the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the Additional Protocols of 1977, along with the practice of the International Criminal Court (ICC), distinguish between armed resistance and terrorism.
Ceasefire intransigence: Palestinian prisoners and Israeli reluctance
Therefore, the existence of an armed struggle against occupation does not constitute terrorism, but rather a legitimate exercise of resistance.
Founded in 1987 during the First Intifada, Hamas is not just an armed group; it is also a political, social, and religious movement deeply rooted in Palestinian society.
Its surprising victory in the 2006 legislative elections, which were recognised as free and democratic by international observers, demonstrates its popular representation. It won 76 of the 132 seats, while its main rival, Yasser Arafat’s Fatah, won 43 seats.
Over the decades, Hamas has administered social institutions, hospitals, schools, and assistance programmes, playing a similar role to liberation movements in Algeria (FLN), Vietnam (Viet Minh), or South Africa (ANC), all of which were also labelled terrorists at some point in history. Today, many of these movements are recognised as legitimate builders of their national states.
The classification of Hamas as “terrorist” serves the clear objectives of Israeli policy: To silence the debate on occupation, apartheid, and genocide, diverting attention from the root cause of the conflict; to justify massive attacks against civilians in Gaza, presented as “the fight against terrorism”; to criminalise all forms of Palestinian resistance, whether armed or peaceful – from NGOs to journalists and students.
Judith Butler, an American philosopher from the University of Berkeley, observes that armed resistance under occupation cannot be reduced to terrorism, as this ignores the structural causes of violence: colonialism, supremacism, and military occupation.
Since 2007, Israel has imposed a land, air, and sea blockade on the Gaza Strip, which the UN classifies as collective punishment – a practice prohibited by international law. Millions of Palestinians live without freedom of movement, drinking water, electricity, and medicines. With each Israeli offensive, thousands of civilians are massacred, homes and hospitals are destroyed, and entire neighbourhoods are razed.
The current scenario of indiscriminate attacks on hospitals, schools, and refugee camps is described by international law experts and UN rapporteurs as ongoing genocide, due to the scale of the destruction and the explicit intention to expel or exterminate the original Palestinian population of Gaza.
“Greater Israel”: A huge challenge to Arab national security
In the face of this reality, Hamas’s armed resistance should be understood not as terrorism, but as the exercise of a people’s right to self-defence under occupation and ethnic cleansing. The Palestinian struggle is, in essence, a struggle for physical and cultural survival in the face of a colonial project to eliminate all forms of life in Palestine.
The framing of Hamas as a terrorist group is a political construct of Israel and its Western allies, without a basis in international law. Palestinian resistance, whether armed or not, is recognised as legitimate by the UN, the BRICS countries, and international treaties whenever it is intended to confront foreign occupation and colonial oppression.
Calling Hamas “terrorist” is an attempt to delegitimise the struggle of a people seeking freedom, justice, and self-determination. The truth is that Israel, as the occupying power, systematically violates international law, practices apartheid, and commits war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Hamas is an integral part of the Palestinian resistance and must be understood as a national liberation movement, not as terrorism. Recognising this fact is a fundamental step towards a fair and honest reading of the conflict and for seeking a solution based on historical truth, justice, and the right of peoples to self-determination.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
Western Media Manufactured Consent for Israel’s Murder of Palestinian Journalists
Original article by Emma Lucia Llano repblished from FAIR under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
In his last dispatch for Al Jazeera (8/10/25), journalist Anas al-Sharif reported, “For the past two hours, the Israeli aggression on Gaza City has intensified.”
Israel’s targeted assassination of six Palestinian media members in the Gaza Strip on August 10 sent shockwaves through the journalism community. Though the murder of journalists has been a common tool of the Israeli’s government’s suppression of information coming out of Gaza, the loss of Al Jazeera‘s Anas al-Sharif was particularly harrowing.
Many of us had been moved by al-Sharif’s heart-wrenching coverage, from watching him remove his press vest in relief when a ceasefire was announced (1/19/25), to seeing a languid al-Sharif reporting on the famine (7/21/25) as people fainted around him. “Keep going, Anas, don’t stop,” said a voice off-camera. “You are our voice.”
Three of the victims were al-Sharif’s colleagues at Al Jazeera, one of the few media outlets that was able to keep journalists reporting in Gaza despite Israel’s blockade. As millions around the world grieved not just for al-Sharif but for his colleagues Mohammed Qreiqeh, Mohammed Noufal and Ibrahim Zaher, and freelancers Moamen Aliwa and Mohammad al-Khaldi, we were also gravely concerned about the vacuum their murders created of on-the-ground coverage of the genocide.
Establishment media, however, used these courageous journalists’ murders as an opportunity to continue parroting the same Zionist talking points that contributed to manufacturing consent for their killings. FAIR looked at 15 different news outlets’ initial coverage of the murders: the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox, BBC, Politico, Newsweek, Associated Press and Reuters.
We found that they overwhelmingly centered Israel’s narrative, attempted to delegitimize pro-Palestinian sources, and failed to contextualize the killings within the larger context of the genocide.
Prioritizing Israel’s pretext
Fox News (8/11/25) went farthest in embracing Israel’s “terrorist” narrative.
All of the articles mentioned Israel’s allegation that al-Sharif was a member of Hamas posing as a journalist, a claim that the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the Foreign Press Association and the United Nations have all found to be baseless.
Four of the 15 articles (New York Times, 8/10/25; NBC, 8/10/25; Fox, 8/11/25; Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25) mentioned the allegations in either the headline or subhead. “Israel Kills Al Jazeera Journalists in Airstrike, Claiming One Worked for Hamas,” was NBC‘s headline, with Israel’s smear that al-Sharif “posed as a journalist” in the subhead. Fox offered “Israel Says Al Jazeera Journalist Killed in Airstrike Was Head of Hamas ‘Terrorist Cell.’”
Reuters’ original headline (8/11/25) was “Israel Kills Al Jazeera Journalist It Says Was Hamas Leader,” only later changed to “Israel Strike Kills Al Jazeera Journalists in Gaza.”
Al-Sharif had been targeted and smeared by the Israeli Defense Forces for months prior to his murder, and had written a statement in anticipation of his killing. “If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice,” he wrote. He asked the world to continue fighting for justice in Palestine: “Do not forget Gaza.”
Six of the articles (ABC, 8/11/25; BBC, 8/11/25; New York Times, 8/10/25; NBC, 8/10/25; Fox, 8/11/25; Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25) completely omitted references to or quotes from al-Sharif’s final statement. Of those six articles, the New York Times, BBC, NBC and Fox did include quotes from Israeli government representatives—perplexingly choosing to prioritize the voices of al-Sharif’s killers over his own.
The New York Times (8/10/25) gave the Israeli government ample space to smear one of the journalists it had just killed, claiming he was “the head of a terrorist cell” who was “responsible for advancing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians.”
Coverage by the Wall Street Journal and New York Times devoted the most space to advancing Israel’s pretext for the killings. The Journal’s Anat Peled dedicated the first three paragraphs of her article to detailing al-Sharif’s supposed Hamas affiliation. Ephrat Livni of the Times also spent three paragraphs on the bogus allegations, allowing only one paragraph for a rebuttal from Al Jazeera and CPJ.
Every article except the ones from the New York Times (8/10/25) and Fox (8/11/25) cited the historically high number of Palestinian journalists that have been killed since October 7, 2023. The death toll currently stands at 192, according to the CPJ. However, only four articles (ABC, 8/11/25; CNN, 8/10/25; Politico, 8/11/25; Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25) listed Israel as the primary perpetrator of these murders. More typically, the AP (8/11/25) wrote that “at least 192 journalists have been killed since Israel’s war in Gaza began,” leaving the identities of both these journalists and their killers unmentioned.
Six (ABC, 8/11/25; BBC, 8/11/25; Newsweek, 8/10/25; Fox, 8/11/25; CBS, 8/11/25; Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25; LA Times, 8/11/25) of the 15 articles failed to mention Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and none mentioned the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant against him for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder and intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population.
Critically, only two articles (Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25; Washington Post, 8/11/25) even noted the fact that the other five slain journalists had not been accused of belonging to Hamas. With this omission, the other outlets accepted and transmitted to audiences Israel’s premise that any number of bystanders can legitimately be killed in order to target a supposed Hamas member.
Unnecessary qualifiers
Including the October 7, 2023, breakout as background for the killing of journalists, NBC (8/10/25) specified that “many of the targets of those attacks were civilians, including people attending a music festival.” Palestinians killed subsequently by Israel, by contrast, were just described as “people…in the Hamas-run enclave.”
A common practice for Western media has been the use of unnecessary qualifiers to delegitimize information that comes from Palestinian sources. The coverage of al-Sharif’s assassination was no exception.
The BBC (8/11/25) wrote, “More than 61,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the Israeli military operation began, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.” Western media have taken it upon themselves to seemingly rename the Gaza Health Ministry (GHM) in order to cast doubt on the extent of Israel’s atrocities. They rarely note that a Lancet study (2/8/25) has found that the death toll could be up to 40% higher than what the GHM is reporting. The New York Times (8/10/25) and Reuters (8/11/25) also utilized “Hamas-run” to describe figures from the Gazan government.
These outlets also showed a clear bias as to how they characterize casualties. The New York Times (8/10/25), when reporting on the death toll in Gaza, wrote that the GHM doesn’t “distinguish between civilians and combatants.” Later on, the Times reported on Israeli deaths—and failed to distinguish between Israeli civilian and combatant deaths.
The implication is that some Palestinian deaths might be considered to be of lesser importance, or even justified, based on victims’ potential “combatant” status. Israeli deaths, meanwhile, are to be counted simply as human beings. The Washington Post (8/11/25) exhibited the same double standard in its reporting.
NBC (8/10/25) wrote, “Many of the targets of [the October 7] attacks were civilians, including people attending a music festival.” When reporting Palestinian deaths, NBC made no mention that over half of those killed by Israel have been women, children and the elderly. A more recent investigation found that civilians make up 83% of deaths, according to the IDF’s own data. The report also didn’t describe what Palestinian victims might have been doing when they were killed, such as the almost 1,400 who have been shot while seeking aid.
In addition to the usual rhetoric, eight of the 15 articles cast doubt on Al Jazeera by repeatedly mentioning its ownership by the Qatari government. (Qatar, like Israel, is one of 20 countries worldwide officially designated as a “major non-NATO ally” by the United States.) Three of the articles (New York Times, 8/10/25; Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25; LA Times, 8/11/25) mention the Israeli government’s adversarial relationship with Al Jazeera, with the New York Times and the Journal dedicating several paragraphs to the outlet’s alleged ties to Hamas as the presumed basis for the conflict, rather than Al Jazeera‘s critical coverage of Israeli actions.
False equivalences
Reuters‘ original headline (8/11/25) was written from the point of view of al-Sharif’s killers.
Only three of the articles use the word “famine” (Financial Times, 8/10/25; CNN, 8/10/25; Newsweek, 8/10/25), and only the Financial Times mentions the word outside of quotes. Reuters (8/11/25) and the Wall Street Journal (8/11/25) called the situation “a hunger crisis” and “a humanitarian crisis that has pushed many Palestinians toward starvation,” respectively.
Media outlets continue to push the narrative that this so-called conflict began less than two years ago, as when NBC (8/10/25) wrote, “Israel launched the offensive in Gaza, targeting Hamas, after the Hamas-led terror attacks against Israel on October 7, 2023.”
Though the rate of killing greatly escalated after the October 7 operation, Israeli violence against Palestinians goes back to before the founding of the state, as many historians have carefully explained. In the decades immediately prior to the Hamas operation, the Israeli human rights group B’tselem counts more than 10,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces between September 2000 and September 2023—most of them noncombatants, over 2,400 of them children under 18. (Over the same period, some 1,300 Israelis—civilians and military—were killed by Palestinians.)
The Financial Times (8/10/25) described the ongoing genocide as “triggered” by the October 7 attacks, as if the al-Aqsa Flood operation were a random act of violence unrelated to the apartheid system that Israel imposes on Palestinians. The BBC (8/11/25) described Israeli violence as a “response to the Hamas-led attack,” completely erasing Israel’s history of occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians that long precedes the existence of Hamas. Obscuring this sort of context is part of the motivation for Israel’s systematic murder of Palestinian journalists, including al-Sharif and his colleagues.
Original article by Emma Lucia Llano repblished from FAIR under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
