Gaza

The siege of Kamal Adwan Hospital: When Israel made a hospital, its staff, and patients, military targets

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

Scenes from Israel’s siege on Kamal Adwan Hospital. On the left, the last photo of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya as he walks towards Israeli tanks. On the right, IOF forced health workers and patients to strip and evacuate the hospital. Photo: Screenshots

As part of its ethnic cleansing policies, Israel continues to systematically target medical facilities and health workers across the Gaza strip.

The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) set Kamal Adwan Hospital on fire on Friday, December 27, putting the largest medical facility in the northern part of the besieged enclave out of service. Kamal Adwan is located in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip and was one of the last functioning hospitals in the area.

According to the Director of Gaza’s Health Ministry, Munir al-Bursh, the IOF ordered 350 people including 75 patients and their escorts along with 185 medical staff to evacuate the hospital, and move to a nearby school sheltering displaced people.

Gaza’s Health Ministry stated that it has completely lost contact with medics inside the Kamal Adwan Hospital since the IOF stormed the facility.

The whereabouts of the hospital director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, are currently unknown. Dr. Safiya had been providing constant updates on Israel’s siege of the hospital for the last several months and pleading for international institutions to take action to stop Israel’s attacks. On December 2, 2024, he penned a column in the New York Times titled, “I’m One of the Last Doctors in This Hospital in Gaza. I’m Begging the World for Help.” In the essay, he wrote, “We feel as if the rest of the world is wrapped up in a different world from the one we are in. We are suffering and paying the price of the genocide that is happening to our people here in the northern Gaza Strip.”

Notably, in its report on Israel’s final siege on the hospital, the Times depicts the travesty at Kamal Adwan as collateral damage in Israel’s “offensive against Hamas militants” uncritically repeating Israel’s allegation that “the hospital was a stronghold for Hamas and that it was carrying out ‘targeted operations’ in the area.”

In a statement published on Friday, the World Health Organization (WHO) slammed Israel’s arson attack on the hospital, which used to serve over 400,000 Palestinian citizens. “This morning’s raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital has put this last major health facility in north Gaza out of service. Initial reports indicate that some key departments were severely burnt and destroyed during the raid,” the statement reads.

“60 health workers and 25 patients in critical condition, including those on ventilators, reportedly remain in the hospital. The patients in moderate to severe condition were forced to evacuate to the destroyed and non-functional Indonesian Hospital. WHO is deeply concerned for their safety,” the statement continues.

The WHO clarified that the raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital followed Israel’s escalating restrictions on the organization and its partners to access the hospital. The raid also came after repeated attacks on the hospital and its vicinity since early October. The organization considered the assault on the hospital as part of the systematic dismantling of the health system in Gaza, labeling it as a “death sentence for tens of thousands of Palestinians in need of health care.”

For its part, the Palestinian Presidency slammed the attack considering it as “part of Israel’s ongoing campaign of genocide and displacement against the Palestinian people”, and a “serious and blatant violation of international law and international agreements and conventions that protect medical facilities and personnel during armed conflicts.”

The Palestinian Presidency urged global health organizations, including WHO, Doctors Without Borders (MSF), and other international humanitarian bodies “to fulfill their responsibilities toward stopping this crime against the Palestinian healthcare sector.”

The Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) condemned the attack calling it a “war crime” committed amid “international inaction and full complicity from the US administration.”

In an Al Jazeera interview on Friday, Hamas official Osama Hamdan refuted Israeli claims that there were Palestinian fighters in the hospital and stated that Kamal Adwan Hospital has been subjected to a massacre for 75 days. Hamdan added that the attack on the hospital is part of an attempt by Israel “to end all manifestations of civilian steadfastness in northern Gaza.”

One day prior to setting the facility to fire, Israeli fighter jets launched an airstrike on a building opposite of Kamal Adwan Hospital. At least 50 people were killed in the attack, including three health workers. Earlier in the month, IOF placed booby trapped devices around the hospital, and eyewitnesses said they saw explosive robots and hidden bombs deployed around the facility.

Kamal Adwan was not the only major medical facility to be targeted by IOF in Gaza during the past two weeks. Israel also intensified its attacks on the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahiya, and the Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia refugee camp north of Gaza city, which has prompted doctors and authorities in Gaza to request immediate intervention by the international community.

Yet, despite the numerous cries for help and warnings of dangerous escalation by Gaza’s health workers, Israel has been able to proceed with the destruction of healthcare and its genocide of the Palestinian people thanks to the full backing it enjoys by the United States government.

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

Experiencing issues with this image not appearing. I suspect because it's so critical of Zionist Keir Starmer's support of and complicity in Israel's genocides.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpA
UK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE
UK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE

Continue ReadingThe siege of Kamal Adwan Hospital: When Israel made a hospital, its staff, and patients, military targets

UNICEF Says Deaths of More Gaza Children ‘Tragically Foreseeable’ as Israeli Assault Continues

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

A Palestinian girl cries as Palestinians who escaped from the attacks of the Israeli army and took shelter in the Khan Yunis, located in the south of the Gaza Strip and who are struggling with hunger wait in line to receive meals distributed by charities in Khan Yunis, Gaza on December 27, 2024. (Photo: Doaa Albaz/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“These preventable deaths lay bare the desperate and deteriorating conditions facing families and children across Gaza,” said the humanitarian aid organization.

UNICEF, the United Nations agency tasked with providing humanitarian aid for children, released a statement Thursday decrying the recent deaths of Gazan children, particularly those who have perished because of cold and lack of adequate shelter.

“Cold injuries, such as frostbite and hypothermia, pose grave risks to young children in tents and other makeshift shelters that are ill-equipped for freezing weather. For newborns, infants, and medically vulnerable children, the danger is even more acute,” said UNICEF regional director for the Middle East and North Africa Edouard Beigbeder.

“With temperatures expected to drop further in the coming days, it is tragically foreseeable that more children’s lives will be lost to the inhumane conditions they are enduring, which offer no protection from the cold,” he added.

https://twitter.com/UNICEF/status/1872384846846431492?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1872384846846431492%7Ctwgr%5E6f1a792901315a3f1c8e39691b87095191875d39%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fgza-children-deaths-unicef

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The Quds News Network reported Thursday, citing the head of pediatrics and obstetrics at Nasser Hospital in Gaza, that four Gazan newborns have died in the past few days because of low temperatures and lack of shelter.

“These preventable deaths lay bare the desperate and deteriorating conditions facing families and children across Gaza,” said Beigbeder.

One of those babies was Sila Mahmoud Al-Faseeh, a 3-week-old girl, who died Sunday “from the extreme cold” in a tent where her forcibly displaced family is sheltering on a beach in al-Mawasi, an Israeli-designated “safe zone” for displaced Palestinians that has repeatedly come under attack.

Sila’s father, Mahmoud al-Faseeh, told The Associated Press that the family attempted to keep the baby warm as the temperatures fell to 48°F (9°C)—below the fatal threshold for hypothermia—in their unsealed tent on cold ground.

“It was very cold overnight and as adults we couldn’t even take it,” al-Faseeh said. “We couldn’t stay warm.”

Over 14,500 children have reportedly been killed since October 7, 2023 as of mid-December, according to UNICEF, though the Gaza Government Media Office cites a higher figure.

The U.S. government successfully sought the retraction of a report from an organization monitoring food crises that warned of looming famine in north Gaza under what the report called Israel’s “near-total blockade,” according to Thursday reporting from The Associated Press. The move drew concern from aid groups, per AP.

In November, more than two dozen international relief groups operating in Gaza warned that humanitarian assistance entering the enclave had “fallen to an all-time low” due to Israel’s continued blockade.

The situation has also exacted a punishing psychological toll on the children of Gaza. A report from the Community Training Centre for Crisis Management released in November found that, of the more than 500 Palestinian children it surveyed in Gaza last summer, 96% of them fear imminent death, 92% are not accepting of reality, 79% suffer from nightmares, and 49% wish to die because of the war, and many more “show signs of withdrawal and severe anxiety, alongside a pervasive sense of hopelessness.”

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

UK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE
UK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE
Experiencing issues with this image not appearing. I suspect because it's so critical of Zionist Keir Starmer's support of and complicity in Israel's genocides.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpA
Continue ReadingUNICEF Says Deaths of More Gaza Children ‘Tragically Foreseeable’ as Israeli Assault Continues

Morning Star Editorial: The West won’t rein in Israel, because its savagery is ours

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Original article republished from https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/west-wont-rein-israel-because-its-savagery-ours

Relatives and friends mourn over the bodies of five Palestinian journalists who were killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City at the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, December 26, 2024

ISRAEL bombing the airport in Yemen’s capital Sana’a when World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was actually at it shows a brazen contempt for the United Nations.

It is not new. Israel has expressed this contempt repeatedly. Most dramatically when its ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan used a miniature shredder to shred the UN Charter after the general assembly voted in favour of giving Palestine full membership in May.

But it is seen too in the bombardment of UN peacekeepers in Lebanon. In the evidence-free assertion that the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA harbours Hamas fighters and subsequent decree banning the agency from operating in Israel-controlled territory — meaning the whole of Palestine.

Benjamin Netanyahu accuses the United Nations of intrinsic hostility to Israel, calling it an “anti-Israel flat Earth society” which has “an automatic majority willing to demonise the Jewish state.”

The siege mentality is deliberate: only by presenting this fortress state, so extravagantly armed by its Washington sponsors that it can extend its bombing campaigns across Lebanon, Syria and Yemen after over a year of carpet-bombing Gaza, as under constant existential menace can he justify its frenetic aggression.

Enforcing this narrative is why Israel has become more authoritarian in step with its increasing belligerence, codifying institutional racism through measures like the Nation-State Law and pending legislation that could bar parties representing Palestinian citizens of Israel (and the Communist Party of Israel to boot) from standing in elections.

As its suspended communist MP Ofer Cassif warns, there is no positive outcome possible from this vicious cycle: an unendable, unwinnable war against the world will bring Israelis neither security nor peace.

Israel is a rogue state, a danger to itself and others, but it will not be stopped by other rogue states. Just as the agony of the Palestinians continues due to the US policy of unlimited support for Israel, we cannot expect the so-called “free world” to step in on Yemen’s behalf.

Least of all Britain. When evidence of Saudi Arabia deliberately bombing Yemeni schools and hospitals became undeniable, even the United States paused arms sales — but Britain did not.

Expecting our government to be persuaded or even shamed into upholding international law is a fool’s errand.

There is much to criticise in the United Nations: its undemocratic structure, the way the veto power can be wielded to shield perpetrators of war crimes.

Even so, since the beginning of the 21st century a clear division has emerged between the US-led West, awarding itself the right to violate international law by invading, bombing and assassinating whoever it likes, and emerging powers which support the United Nations — a creation of the Allied victory over fascism, intended to prevent the lawless aggression that characterised Nazi Germany and its allies.

China brokered peace in Yemen through a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran. China continually makes the case too for UN recognition of a Palestinian state, and hosted talks between 14 Palestinian factions last year in an attempt to forge a united Palestinian leadership capable of taking that project forward.

China, like most of the global South, is not happy with an international system designed in Western capitals 80 years ago, and calls for a more equitable international order. Yet China, unlike the Western founders of that system, is acting to uphold its principles and prevent the world descending into the kind of “might is right” violence the UN was supposed to stop.

We need to recognise how the world looks from outside the West. The “rules-based international order” is not threatened by emerging powers, but by the US-led imperialist camp. We don’t rein in Israel, because its violence is ours.

This is why solidarity with Palestine means fighting for peace and disarmament in Britain, and resisting the constant militarist propaganda pretending our country is under threat.

Original article republished from https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/west-wont-rein-israel-because-its-savagery-ours

Continue ReadingMorning Star Editorial: The West won’t rein in Israel, because its savagery is ours

US Doctor Warns of ‘End of Humanity’ in Northern Gaza as Israel Assails Hospitals

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

The director of Kamal Adwan Hospital was treated by colleagues for injuries caused by an Israeli strike on the medical compound in northern Gaza on November 23, 2024. (Photo: AFP via Getty Images)

The comments from emergency physician Mimi Syed came as the Israeli military forcibly evacuated Kamal Adwan Hospital, endangering patients and medical workers.

An American emergency and trauma physician currently working in Gaza warned Friday that the Israeli military’s evacuation order at a barely functioning hospital in the northern part of the enclave means “the end of humanity” there, as the dozens of patients receiving treatment at the besieged facility have nowhere safe to go and the healthcare system in the region has collapsed.

Mimi Syed, who is based in Olympia, Washington and is on her second stint in Gaza since Israel’s latest assault began last year, told Al Jazeera that she “can totally imagine deaths taking place as a result” of Israel’s evacuation order at Kamal Adwan Hospital, given that patients who are reliant on electrical appliances cannot easily be transported.

Syed’s comments came as the head of Gaza’s health ministry said he has lost contact with Kamal Adwan, one of several northern Gaza hospitals that Israeli forces have encircled and attacked in recent weeks.

Citing a nurse and a journalist inside Kamal Adwan, CNN reported Friday that everyone inside the facility has “been ordered to leave the hospital and go to the yard of the compound.”

“Earlier on Friday, a video shared by nurse Walid Al Budi, who is also inside the hospital, showed a fire burning in the archive department of the hospital,” the outlet added. “Heavy gunfire can be heard in the background.”

Video footage posted to social media by Quds News shows patients and medical personnel walking south following the evacuation order at Kamal Adwan:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1872593797408059807

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The forced evacuation came hours after an Israeli airstrike near Kamal Adwan killed dozens of people, including medical workers.

Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan, wrote in a social media post early Friday that Israeli forces are “burning all the operating departments in the hospital while we are still here.”

“The army evacuated the entire medical staff and the displaced people and arrested a number of the medical staff,” he added. “There are a large number of injuries among the medical staff.”

In an interview released earlier this week, Syed issued an “urgent plea for help,” saying Israel’s assault on Gaza’s overwhelmed and underresourced hospitals and other civilian infrastructure “needs to stop.”

“I’m seeing civilian casualties on a regular basis,” said Syed. “Camps and tents are being struck with airstrikes routinely. We’re seeing children with traumatic amputations shrapnel injuries, open skull wounds with brain matter out.”

“We’re seeing so many children with kidney failure and gastritis that it’s leading to significant dehydration,” Syed added. “All of this is unnecessary.”

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

Continue ReadingUS Doctor Warns of ‘End of Humanity’ in Northern Gaza as Israel Assails Hospitals

Israel threatens all-out war on Yemen

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

Protesters in the million man march in Yemen on December 27. Photo: Screenshot

Israel has escalated its attacks against Yemen, most recently launching airstrikes on civilian infrastructure at Sanaa Airport which almost resulted in the death of the WHO Director.

The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) intensified aerial attacks on Yemen in the last several days, as Ansar Allah-led Yemeni Armed Forces continued operations against Israel in retaliation for the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, and against Israel’s allies who attempt to bypass the blockade imposed by Ansar Allah of Israel.

On Thursday, December 26, Israeli warplanes targeted civilian facilities of Yemen’s Sanaa International Airport, including the airports’ main runway, control tower, and an aircraft, according to the Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post.

At least three people were killed in the assault and 16 others injured including the assistant to the captain of a United Nations’ plane. The plane had landed in Sanaa International Airport to transport the Director-General of World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and the UN resident coordinator in Yemen, Julian Harnis, shortly before the airstrike was launched.

The Yemeni Foreign Minister Jamal Amer considered the timing of the attack as a “direct affront and a mockery of the UN”, particularly as the co-pilot of the UN aircraft was injured.

For his part Ghebreyesus issued a statement on Thursday, explaining the circumstances of the airstrike on the airport, and confirming his presence along with other WHO and UN colleagues there at the time of the attack.

“As we were about to board our flight from Sanaa, about three hours ago (around 5 pm local time), the airport came under aerial bombardment. One of our plane’s crew members was injured. At least two people were reported killed at the airport,” the statement reads.

“The air traffic control tower, the departure lounge — just a few meters from where we were — and the runway were damaged. We will need to wait for the damage to the airport to be repaired before we can leave,” the statement continues.

Israeli fighter jets also targeted other sites in Hodeidah governorate in western Yemen including Hezyaz and Ras Kanatib power stations, and military infrastructure located in the ports of Hodeidah, according to IOF.

The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed his deep concern “about the risk of further escalation and has urged all parties to cease military actions and exercise restraint.” Guterres also warned “that airstrikes on Red Sea ports and Sanaa airport pose grave risks to humanitarian operations at a time when millions of people are in need of life-saving assistance.”

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) strongly condemned the aggression on Yemen, which it said “proves the Zionist-Western alliance’s bankruptcy in facing Yemen’s resistance.” Meanwhile, the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) called the onslaught “a flagrant violation of sovereignty and acts of terrorism”.

Israel claimed that it escalated its aggression on Yemen after the Yemeni Armed Forces stepped up its missile and drone attack on Israel during the past few weeks. Speaking to local media on Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to launch an open war on Yemen. “We’re just getting started with them,” Netanyahu said. “We won’t allow them [to attack Israel] these days, today and any other day. We will strike them to the bitter end until they learn. As I said, Hamas learned, Hezbollah learned, and Syria learned. The Houthis will learn too,” he added.

However, the Yemeni Armed Forces defied Netanyahu’s threats by carrying out three significant military operations against the Zionist entity on Friday, December 27. The operations included targeting Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv with a hypersonic missile, striking a military site in Jaffa with a drone, and the interception of a ship in the Arabian Sea after it violated the blockade imposed on Israeli ports.

The spokesperson of the Yemeni Armed Forces Brigadier General Yahya Sare’e said in a televised statement on Friday, that these operations were carried out as part of the fifth phase of support for Gaza, and in response to Israeli aggression in Yemen, including recent airstrikes on civilian infrastructure in Sanaa and Hodeidah. Saree further emphasized that Israel’s aggression on his country “will only increase the resolve and determination of the great Yemeni people to continue supporting the Palestinian people, fulfilling their religious, moral, and humanitarian duty.”

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement praised the Yemeni missile strike on Lod (Ben Gurion) Airport, considering it “a legitimate response to the aggression on Sana’a Airport and Yemeni civilian facilities.”

Since the genocidal aggression on Gaza began in the aftermath of October 7, Israel has launched sporadic attacks on Yemen viewing it as one of seven fronts alongside Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, which represent the Axis of Resistance.

During the last couple of months, the Axis of Resistance received heavy blows after Gaza’s support front in Lebanon had to temporarily stop its confrontations with Israel as per the fragile interim ceasefire agreement reached last November. Following the overthrow of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad earlier this month, Israel destroyed the country’s military infrastructure and the transitional government showed its willingness to establish “peace” with Israel.

All these factors made Netanyahu more determined than ever to demolish the military capabilities of Yemen, even if this would mean expanding the genocidal aggression to other parts of the West Asia region at the expense of civilians.

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

Continue ReadingIsrael threatens all-out war on Yemen