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Nearly All 600,000 Kids in Rafah ‘Injured, Sick, Malnourished,’ Says UNICEF

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

Palestinians, including children, collect remaining belongings from the rubble of destroyed houses after Israeli attacks on May 1, 2024 in Rafah, Gaza.
 (Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images)

A full-scale Israeli assault on the crowded southern Gaza city “would bring catastrophe on top of catastrophe for children.”

“The children in Gaza need a cease-fire.”

That’s how Catherine Russell, executive director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), concluded a brief video Wednesday about the harrowing conditions across the Gaza Strip, particularly in Rafah, where about 1.5 million of the besieged enclave’s 2.3 million residents have sought refuge from Israel’s devastating assault.

The video was released nearly seven months into Israel’s retaliation for the Hamas-led October 7 attack—which has killed at least 34,596 Palestinians in Gaza, wounded another 77,816, and left thousands more missing—and as a full-scale Israeli assault of Rafah looms.

The war has already taken “an unimaginable toll,” and a major military operation against the crowded southern Gaza city “would bring catastrophe on top of catastrophe for children,” Russell warned. “Nearly all of the some 600,000 children now crammed into Rafah are either injured, sick, malnourished, traumatized, or living with disabilities.”

“Many have been displaced multiple times and lost homes, parents, and loved ones,” the UNICEF chief noted. “There is nowhere safe to go in Gaza. Homes throughout the Gaza Strip lie in ruin. Roads are destroyed and the ground littered with unexploded ordnances.”

“Rafah is also the main hub for the humanitarian response, which includes UNICEF, and the city has some of the last functioning healthcare facilities,” she explained.

Israeli forces launched at least 435 attacks on health facilities or personnel during the first six months of the war, and just 10 of the enclave’s 36 hospitals remain partially functional, according to the World Health Organization. As Common Dreams reported Wednesday, thousands of Palestinian child amputees are struggling to recover due to the destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system.

“UNICEF continues to call for the protection of all women and children in Rafah and throughout the Gaza Strip—and the protection of the infrastructure, services, and humanitarian aid they rely on,” said Russell. “We repeat our calls for the unconditional release of all hostages in Gaza who need to be home with their children and families. The violence must end.”

The agency’s five core demands for Gaza are:

  1. An immediate and long-lasting humanitarian cease-fire;
  2. Safe and unrestricted humanitarian access;
  3. The immediate, safe, and unconditional release of all abducted children, and an end to any grave violations against all children;
  4. Respect and protection for civilian infrastructure; and
  5. Allow patients with urgent medical cases to safely access critical health services or leave.

As Russell called for peace in video form, James Elder, UNICEF’s global spokesperson, penned a Wednesday opinion piece for The Guardian following his recent trips to Gaza. He began with a startling anecdote:

The war against Gaza’s children is forcing many to close their eyes. Nine-year-old Mohamed’s eyes were forced shut, first by the bandages that covered a gaping hole in the back of his head, and second by the coma caused by the blast that hit his family home. He is nine. Sorry, he was nine. Mohamed is now dead.

“From looming famine to soaring death tolls, the latest fear is the much-threatened offensive in Rafah in southern Gaza,” he wrote. “Can it get any worse? It always seems to.”

“Rafah will implode if it is targeted militarily,” Elder stressed. “Water is in desperately short supply, not just for drinking but sanitation. In Rafah there is approximately one toilet for every 850 people. The situation is four times worse for showers. That is, around one shower for every 3,500 people. Try to imagine, as a teenage girl, or elderly man, or pregnant woman, queueing for an entire day just to have a shower.”

On October 31, just weeks after the start of what the International Court of Justice has since determined is Israel’s plausibly genocidal assault, UNICEF called Gaza a “graveyard” for children.

“Can it get any worse? It always seems to.”

“Last month I saw new graveyards in Rafah being constructed. And filled,” wrote Elder. “Every day the war brings more violent death and destruction. In my 20 years with the United Nations, I have never seen devastation like that I saw in the Gaza Strip cities of Khan Younis and Gaza City. And now we are told to expect the same via an incursion in Rafah.”

Elder recalled that “in the north of the territory, close to where a UNICEF vehicle came under fire last month, a woman clutched my hand and pleaded, over and over, that the world send food, water, and medicine. I will never forget how, as I felt her grasp, I tried to explain we were trying, and she continued to plead.”

“Why? Because she assumed the world did not know what was happening in Gaza. Because if the world knew, how could they possibly let this happen?” he continued. “How, indeed. The world has certainly been warned about Rafah. It remains to be seen how many eyes stay, or are forced, shut.”

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

Continue ReadingNearly All 600,000 Kids in Rafah ‘Injured, Sick, Malnourished,’ Says UNICEF

Elites in the global North are scared to talk about Palestine

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/elites-global-north-are-scared-talk-about-palestine

FREE SPEECH NATION? Arrests are made as pro-Palestinian students and protesters are pushed off campus at the University of Texas, Wednesday April 24

While people across the world have been taking bold action in support of Palestine, the global North ruling class has used all tools at its disposal to support Israel’s genocide and criminalise solidarity writes VIJAY PRASHAD

ISRAELI BOMBS continue to fall on Gaza, killing Palestinian civilians with abandon. Al-Jazeera published a story about the destruction of 24 hospitals in Gaza, each of them bombed mercilessly by the Israeli military. Half of the 35,000 Palestinians killed by Israel were children, their bodies littering the overwhelmed morgues and mosques of Gaza.

The former UN assistant secretary-general for human rights, Andrew Gilmour, told BBC Newsnight that the Palestinians are experiencing “collective punishment” and that what we are seeing in Gaza is “probably the highest kill rate of any military, killing anybody, since the Rwandan genocide of 1994.”

Meanwhile, in the West Bank section of Palestine, Human Rights Watch shows that the Israeli military has participated in the displacement of Palestinians from 20 communities and has uprooted at least seven communities since October 2023. These are established facts.

Yet, these facts — according to a leaked memorandum — cannot be spoken about in the “newspaper of record” in the US, the New York Times. Journalists at the paper were asked to avoid the terms “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing” and “occupied territory.”

Indeed, over the past six months, newspapers and television shows in the US have generally written about the genocidal violence using passive voice: bombs fell, people died.

Even on social media, where the terrain is often less controlled, the axe fell on key phrases; for instance, despite his professions of commitment to free speech, Elon Musk said that terms such as “decolonisation” and phrases such as “From the river to the sea” would be banned on X.

…

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/elites-global-north-are-scared-talk-about-palestine

Continue ReadingElites in the global North are scared to talk about Palestine

UN Rights Chief Demands International Probe of Mass Graves Near Gaza Hospitals

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

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk speaks during a press conference in Cairo, Egypt on November 8, 2023.
 (Photo: Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images)

“Hospitals are entitled to very special protection under international humanitarian law,” said Volker Türk, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights.

The United Nations’ human rights chief on Tuesday called for an international investigation into mass graves discovered at two Gaza hospitals that Israeli forces recently assailed and destroyed, further imperiling the enclave’s barely functioning healthcare system.

Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said in a statement that he was “horrified” by the discovery of mass graves at the Nasser and al-Shifa medical complexes, which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reduced to ruins.

More than 300 bodies were reportedly discovered in the mass grave near the Nasser facility in Khan Younis, Gaza, and eyewitnesses said Israeli soldiers executed civilians during their two-week-long raid of al-Shifa last month.

Türk demanded an “independent, effective, and transparent” probe into the killings and mass graves, adding that “given the prevailing climate of impunity, this should include international investigators.”

“Hospitals are entitled to very special protection under international humanitarian law,” he added. “And the intentional killing of civilians, detainees, and others who are hors de combat is a war crime.”

“Every 10 minutes a child is killed or wounded. They are protected under the laws of war, and yet they are ones who are disproportionately paying the ultimate price.”

The IDF’s destructive attacks on Nasser and al-Shifa were part of a broader Israeli assault on Gaza’s healthcare system. An analysis released Monday by Save the Children found that the rate of monthly Israeli attacks on healthcare in Gaza since October has exceeded that of any other conflict around the world since 2018.

The group estimated that Israel has launched an average of 73 attacks per month on healthcare in Gaza—and at least 435 attacks total since October.

“After six months of unimaginable horror, the healthcare system in Gaza has been brought to its knees,” said Xavier Joubert, Save the Children’s country director in the occupied Palestinian territory. “Healthcare workers are risking their lives daily to give Palestinian children a chance at survival. The constant attacks on healthcare are simply unjustifiable and must stop. Palestinian children must have unimpeded access to services, including healthcare and education.”

Türk also used his statement Tuesday to condemn Israeli forces’ killing of women and children in airstrikes on the southern Gaza city of Rafah in recent days. The human rights official noted that Gaza doctors rescued a baby from the womb of her mother as the latter succumbed to head injuries from an Israeli strike.

“The latest images of a premature child taken from the womb of her dying mother, of the adjacent two houses where 15 children and five women were killed—this is beyond warfare,” said Türk. “Every 10 minutes a child is killed or wounded. They are protected under the laws of war, and yet they are ones who are disproportionately paying the ultimate price in this war.”

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

Continue ReadingUN Rights Chief Demands International Probe of Mass Graves Near Gaza Hospitals

‘It’s death there’: babies and children hit hardest as famine tightens hold on Gaza

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/15/babies-children-gaza-famine

Estimated 27 children killed by famine, with fears many more will suffer lifelong effects, despite Israel’s promise of more aid

Even if the war in Gaza ended tomorrow, for some of the Palestinian territory’s children, it would not help. Hunger and malnutrition have already claimed an estimated 27 young lives, and for many more, it may be too late to reverse the excruciating toll that starvation takes on small, growing bodies.

Nuzha Awad’s triplets, Malek, Khader and Moustafa, born two months before the war began when Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, did not stop crying as she spoke to the Guardian. She fled Gaza City when food and formula for her babies began to run out; in their new home, a makeshift tent in the central town of Deir al-Balah, she is still desperately afraid for their futures.

“At this age a child should weigh 8 kilos. They weigh 2 kilos … They don’t have thighs yet. At this stage they are supposed to be crawling and preparing to walk. And now you can see the state they’re in,” she said.

“Are these the arms of an eight-month-old child? … It’s death there, death, death. Death in the literal meaning of the word.”

UN-backed food insecurity experts assessed in mid-March that famine n Gaza could set in between later that month and mid-May. Last week, Samantha Power, the head of the US humanitarian and development agency, USAid, became the first American official to confirm publicly that in some areas, famine had already taken hold.

…

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/15/babies-children-gaza-famine

Continue Reading‘It’s death there’: babies and children hit hardest as famine tightens hold on Gaza

Israel killed three sons of lead Hamas negotiator Ismail Haniyeh in an airstrike

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

Ismail Haniyeh speaks in Gaza in 2012 (Photo: Joe Catron/CC)

Israel continues to carry out targeted assassinations against non-combatants, this time murdering three sons and four grandchildren of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh

On April 10, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh announced that Israel murdered three of his sons in a targeted airstrike. The killing of Haniyeh’s children coincides with the Muslim Holy Day of Eid al-Fitr. 

Hamas, as well as various other Palestinian resistance groups, released statements decrying the killings of Hazem, Amir, and Mohammad, as well as four of Haniyeh’s grandchildren who were also killed in the attack. Haniyeh’s three sons and three grandchildren were making family visits in Gaza City for Eid, when Israel bombed the car they were traveling in.

These killings took place as Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders are involved in pushing Israel for a ceasefire at the negotiating table. Haniyeh himself is among the chief negotiators on the side of the resistance. According to a Hamas statement from April 8, “While Hamas appreciates the significant efforts made by the mediators, and while the movement is keen to reach an agreement that ends the aggression against our people, the Israeli position remains obstinate and has not responded to any of the demands of our people and our resistance.”

An unnamed Palestinian official who spoke to the Lebanese Al Mayadeen news network said that all attempts and efforts by mediators to reach an agreement have encountered Israeli inflexibility and at present, there is no progress in negotiations. The official stated that any progress will be announced through official channels and emphasized that Hamas adheres to its demands, which include a ceasefire, Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, the entry of aid, the return of displaced Gazans, and a prisoner exchange.

“The blood of my sons is not more precious than the blood of our martyred people in Gaza, for they are all my sons.,” said Haniyeh. “The occupation’s threats to invade Rafah do not frighten our people or our resistance. We will not submit to the blackmail practiced by the occupation, for those who surrender will not be spared. We will not compromise and we will not neglect, no matter how great our sacrifices are.”

Condemnations were issued by various Axis of Resistance forces, including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Mujahideen Movement, and Ansar Allah. 

“We extend our condolences to the head of the Political Bureau of Hamas for the martyrdom of three of his sons and several of his grandchildren due to an aggressive Israeli airstrike that reveals the extent of the Israeli failure in the field,” said Ansar Allah, which has been waging a struggle in solidarity with the Palestinian people through its Red Sea blockade. “These great sacrifices, alongside the rest of the sons of Gaza and the occupied West Bank, indeed strengthen the steadfastness of the Palestinian people in the face of this Israeli arrogance.” 

“We condemn, in the strongest terms, the barbaric massacre committed by the criminal Nazi entity, which targeted a number of the children of the head of the Political Bureau of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), the fighter brother Ismail Haniyeh, and his grandchildren,” stated the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which has been fighting Israeli forces in Gaza alongside Hamas. “We come forth from the sons of our Palestinian people everywhere, from the brothers in the Hamas Movement, and from the fighter brother Ismail Haniyeh, with the highest blessings for this martyrdom, asking Allah to cover the martyrs with His vast mercy.”

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

Continue ReadingIsrael killed three sons of lead Hamas negotiator Ismail Haniyeh in an airstrike