A victim of an Israeli attack receives treatment inside Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza on December 6, 2024. (Photo: AFP via Getty Images)
“We have called on the world to protect both the healthcare system and its workers, yet we have not received any response from anyone globally,” said the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital.
The director of one of the few partially functioning hospitals in northern Gaza said Sunday that Israeli attacks have put the facility’s remaining patients—including more than a dozen children—in grave danger and pleaded with the international community to intervene.
“Following the recent attack on Kamal Adwan Hospital, which involved over 100 shells and bombs indiscriminately targeting the facility, the damage has been severe,” Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the hospital’s director, said in a statement. “As of now, one of the hospital buildings remains without electricity, oxygen, or water. The shelling continues to occur randomly in the vicinity, preventing us from conducting repairs on the oxygen, electricity, and water networks.”
Abu Safiya said the overwhelmed and under-resourced hospital is currently treating 112 wounded patients, including six people in intensive care and 14 children.
“This is a critical situation,” he said Sunday morning. “The bombardment and gunfire have not ceased; planes are dropping bombs around the clock. We are uncertain of what lies ahead and what the army wants from the hospital.”
“We have called on the world to protect both the healthcare system and its workers, yet we have not received any response from anyone globally,” Abu Safiya added. “This represents a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding against the healthcare workers and patients. Unfortunately, there seems to be no effort to halt this relentless assault on Kamal Adwan Hospital and the broader health system.”
The hospital director’s statement came after Israeli attacks near the facility killed scores of people on Friday. Photos taken from the scene showed bodies on the ground amid building ruins.
(Photo: AFP via Getty Images)
A day earlier, an Israeli airstrike on the Kamal Adwan Hospital compound killed a 16-year-old boy in a wheelchair and wounded a dozen others, The Associated Press reported.
According to Drop Site, the boy “was struck as he entered the X-ray department.”
Northern Gaza has been under intense Israeli assault for two months, and the humanitarian situation there and across the Palestinian enclave is worse than ever, according to U.N. agencies and aid organizations.
“The catastrophe in Gaza is nothing short of a complete breakdown of our common humanity,” said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres. “The nightmare must stop. We cannot continue to look away.”
Abu Safiya said Sunday that his hospital is facing outages of electricity and water amid Israel’s incessant attacks.
“We urgently appeal to the international community for assistance,” he said. “The situation is extremely dangerous.”
A woman reacts as she checks the body of a two-year-old child who was killed from an Israeli bomb in Gaza City, at Al-Ahli Arab hospital, also known as the Baptist hospital on December 5, 2024.(Photo by Omar Al-Qatttaa/AFP via Getty Images)
And no amount of Israeli or U.S. government propaganda will change that.
The ongoing war and genocide in Gaza is unprecedented. Nothing that Israel and its supporters can say or do will avoid the historical accountability of the extermination of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.
The above assertion is critical, both for ending the Israeli occupation of Palestine and achieving Palestinian freedom. This is why.
In all past wars and adjoining war crimes, Israel managed to push the reset button in its relationship with occupied Palestinians.
Following each war, the Israeli hasbara, propaganda machine, would start – utilizing the always-willing western mainstream media – to paint Palestinians in a negative light and to present Israel, a country that is supposedly in a permanent state of self-defense, as the victim, or even the lone defender of western civilization.
This campaign is always paralleled with the whitewashing of Israel in popular entertainment, from Hollywood movies to TV sit-coms, to magazine covers with such titles as “Gorgeous Photos Capture The Unseen Lives Of Female Soldiers In Israel”.
Generally, Western politicians of varied ideologies, along with intellectuals, news talking heads and church leaders all praise, in tandem, the miracle that is Israel.
At the beginning of Israel’s genocidal war in October 2023, for example, British playwright Tom Stoppard said that “before we take up a position on what’s happening now, we should consider whether this is a fight over territory or a struggle between civilization and barbarism.” He, of course, leaned towards the latter.
This Israeli tactic always includes the demonization of Palestinians as well, where the victim becomes the ‘terrorist’ and those under siege become the besiegers. This last claim, in particular, was expressed in the words of former US Secretary of State Madeline Albright who said, in an interview with NBC in August 2000, that “the Israelis feel under siege from the Palestinian rock throwers and the various gangs that have been roaming around.”
Why will those same Israeli tactics fail this time? Indeed, they will fail, not due to Israel’s lack of trying. In fact, Israel is already bracing for the fight of a lifetime.
One new tactic that Israel is already employing in ‘friendly’ countries, like the United States, is the passing of laws to block the mere conversation on the Israeli genocide in Gaza, so that it will have exclusive access to the American public.
On November 14, the US House of Representatives passed two bills: H.R.6408 and H.R.9495. The latter, in particular, aimed at giving the Treasury Secretary the authorization to revoke an organization’s tax-exempt status and decide when the designation would end.
Now, there can be no reset buttons. Rather, the global momentum of Palestine’s liberation will accelerate in the coming months and years.
Once these bills pass the Senate and are approved by the president, the most democratic and peaceful expressions of rejecting the Israeli occupation of Palestine and demanding sensible US foreign policy will be equated to a direct violation of the law and, in some cases, to terrorism – as defined by the Department of Treasury, at the behest of the pro-Israeli lobby.
But even these desperate attempts will not quell the anger or distract from the conversation, for the following reasons:
One, not only did Israel commit genocide in the Gaza Strip, but this genocide and extermination are being investigated and are acknowledged by the world’s largest legal institutions, namely the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Two, unlike previous investigations, for example, the Goldstone Report probing the 2008-09 war on Gaza, the international community has already taken some practical steps to hold Israeli war criminals accountable, including an arrest warrant issued on November 21 against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Three, those who routinely come to Israel’s defense, the US and other Western governments, are now directly clashing with the very international law they helped articulate after World War II, depriving them of any credibility as ‘neutral’ parties in this conflict.
For example, Biden said that the warrants were “outrageous” while the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs claimed that Netanyahu and other ministers enjoy immunity since Israel is not a party to the ICC.
Four, despite the inherent bias of western media, Palestinian journalists, isolated and killed in large numbers, managed to communicate the genocide to the rest of the world, making it impossible for Israel to hide its crimes.
Five, the impact of the Israeli genocide on Gaza has already penetrated the various layers of public opinion, unprecedented in history.
Typically, the conversation on Palestine is confined to specific strata of society, reaching academics, social justice activists and other groups interested in politics and global issues.
Today, ordinary people have been made aware of the conversation, to the extent that it is widely believed that anger over Gaza has contributed in determining the outcome of the latest US elections.
In Africa, the growing political and public interest in the Palestinian struggle have re-enlivened the spirit of anti-colonial, liberation struggles on the continent, bringing many countries, from South Africa to Algeria, back to the frontlines of global solidarity.
No amount of Israeli propaganda, unjust laws, unfair categorizations of Palestinians or the hardly-clad models of the IDF, will ever succeed in reversing these realities.
Now, there can be no reset buttons. Rather, the global momentum of Palestine’s liberation will accelerate in the coming months and years.
The price exacted from the Palestinian people for this earth-shattering moment has been high and painful, but the history of all national liberation struggles, Palestine included, demonstrates that the price for freedom is always high.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) building is pictured on November 21, 2024 in The Hague. [LAURENS VAN PUTTEN/ANP/AFP via Getty Images]
US officials have sparked controversy by invoking the so-called “Hague Invasion Act” in response to the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his former Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, Anadolu Agency reports.
Matthew Hoh, Associate Director of the Eisenhower Media Network – a group of former US military, intelligence and national security officials that provides analysis of Washington’s foreign policy — criticised the threats for Anadolu, highlighting their implications for international law.
Hoh reflected on the origins of the act and its renewed relevance following the decision by the ICC.
The 2002 law, officially titled the “American Service-Members’ Protection Act,” was enacted during President George W. Bush’s administration to shield the US and its allied nationals from ICC prosecution.
Known informally as the “Hague Invasion Act”, it authorises the US to use all means, including force, to protect its nationals from ICC jurisdiction.
Hoh explained that the legislation was originally designed to block ICC investigations into potential US war crimes.
The ICC’s past investigations into US personnel in Afghanistan drew similar threats, with the US imposing sanctions on the Court and its officials.
He said the law resurfaced in the American Congress after the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant.
‘Decision-makers within the US are doing to hasten the end of the US Empire’
Hoh criticised the US response as an overreach to protect Israel.
“The US has, within its own law, the authorisation to use military force against institutions like the ICC,” he said. “Certainly this action […] contravenes the US’ own stated desires, its own slogans [..]. that it believes in such things as international law.”
Hoh also noted the broader implications of the US’ confrontational approach toward the ICC.
“By doing this, by reacting this way to the International Criminal Court and by requiring its allies to do so, it is giving more credence, more validity, more reason for alternative institutions, alternative mechanisms, alternative alliances to grow and expand against the American Empire,” he said. “Decision-makers within the US are doing to hasten the end of the US Empire.”
Double standards in the US approach to the ICC have drawn further scrutiny. Hoh pointed out the stark contrast in US reactions to ICC warrants against Russian President, Vladimir Putin, and Netanyahu.
“When the ICC issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, the Americans across the board, political class, media class, military class, so on and so forth, were excited about that development and they were very pleased to see the arrest warrants,” he said.
When it comes to Israel, the response is different, he noted.
Hoh said the West sees international law as a tool not to be used against those in power. He argued it is there to be used against those in the “developing world, those who do not have power, those who are not within the upper levels in the imperial world order.”
He added that international law is meant to keep people other than “white people” in check, to keep nations out of power and under the subjugation of the existing world order.
An F-35 arriving back at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, June 24, 2019
THE government has been forced to review its decision to export F-35 fighter jet components to Israel, legal groups announced today.
Global Legal Action Network (Glan) and Al-Haq wrote to the government last month, threatening to file an emergency injunction over its failure to revoke licences for all arms to the country as it continues its genocide in Gaza.
Labour eventually moved to suspend just 30 out of 350 arms exports in September, but components for F-35s, which have dropped 2,000lb bombs on Gaza, were exempt.
In the High Court last month, the government admitted that there was a “clear risk” that the components could be used by Israel to violate international humanitarian law.
But it continued to export them anyway after Defence Secretary John Healey warned that it would disrupt the global supply programme they are part of and “undermine US confidence in the UK.”
Glan and Al-Haq said that they have now been notified that the government is reconsidering its decision.
Glan lawyer Dearbhla Minogue said: “The position they took is, in our estimation, legally untenable and we hope they will finally do the only reasonable thing — stop the transfer of any British weapons for use by Israel against Palestinians.”
Genocide denying UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspending 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide and the UK government and military’s active participation in genocide.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
