… on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing

Tag: Gaza

  • Many Children Among Hundreds Killed, Wounded in Latest Israeli Bombings of Gaza

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

    A man carries a child wounded in an Israeli strike on a school housing forcibly displaced Palestinians in the Nuseirat refugee camp, on October 24, 2024 in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, Palestine. (Photo: Moiz Salhi/Anadolu via Getty Images)

    “Our ambulances can’t transfer wounded people,” said one overwhelmed hospital director. “Those who can arrive by themselves to the hospital receive care, but those who don’t just die in the streets.”

    A devastating wave of Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip on Wednesday and Thursday have killed or wounded hundreds of Palestinians, including many children, according to local and international media reports.

    Citing Gaza Civil Defense officials, Palestine’s Quds News Network reported Thursday that at least 150 Palestinian civilians were killed or wounded by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bombardment of around a dozen apartment towers on Al-Houja Street in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.

    Local and international media outlets earlier reported at least 17 Palestinians were killed and dozens more wounded by an IDF strike on the al-Shuhada school in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.

    Medical staff at the al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat—where many people killed and wounded in the strike were taken—told Al Jazeera that 13 children under age 18 and three women were among the dead.

    The IDF said the strike targeted a Hamas command-and-control center. However, survivors and eyewitnesses said that all of the dead were women and children.

    Gaza Notifications published the names of 16 people killed in the attack, including at least five children—the youngest of whom was a baby, just 11 months old.

    The outlet said a total of 203 Palestinian civilians have been killed so far on Thursday, and that “all medical and rescue operations have been completely halted by the military administration.”

    “The Israeli army has warned that ambulances and rescue teams will be directly targeted if they attempt to continue their operations, effectively blocking any humanitarian efforts,” the site added.

    Gaza’s Government Media Office reported 34 Palestinians including 11 children were burned alive in an IDF strike on a youth club-turned shelter in the al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza.

    Israeli forces have also reportedly attacked hospitals and healthcare workers throughout Gaza. The Palestine Chronicle reported that IDF troops opened fire on Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, “with sick children inside.”

    Hussam Abu Safia, the hospital’s director, told Al Jazeera that IDF tanks surrounded the facility and “directly targeted” it, severely damaging the intensive care unit. On Wednesday, Abu Safia said there were more than 150 wounded people in the hospital, including 14 children in the ICU or neonatal ward.

    “There is a very large number of wounded people, and we lose at least one person every hour because of the lack of medical supplies and medical staff,” he said. “Our ambulances can’t transfer wounded people. Those who can arrive by themselves to the hospital receive care, but those who don’t just die in the streets.”

    The Palestinian Ministry of Health also said several of its employees were wounded by Israeli artillery strikes on Thursday.

    Earlier this month, the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory released a report detailing how “Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.”

    Israel’s ongoing offensive in northern and central Gaza has killed or wounded more than 2,000 Palestinians this month alone, according to Gaza officials. Since last October, Israel’s war on Gaza—which is the subject of a South Africa-led genocide case at the International Court of Justice—has left more than 153,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing; millions more forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened; and most of the coastal enclave in ruins.

    Thursday’s strikes came as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to the Middle East, where he is set to take part in cease-fire negotiations with officials from Israel, Egypt, and Qatar in the Qatari capital Doha.

    “Going back to the negotiations on ceasefire and the hostages, one of the things we’re doing is looking at whether there are different options that we can pursue to get us to a conclusion, to get us to a result,” Blinken said Thursday.

    The United States is Israel’s primary international backer, providing billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic cover including multiple vetoes of United Nations Security Council cease-fire resolutions.

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

  • ‘Across the Board, We Need Peace,’ Says UN Chief as War Rages in Gaza, Lebanon, Sudan and Ukraine

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    Original artilce by Edward Carver republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

    United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, center, stands with other dignitaries at the BRICS Plus conference in Kazan, Russia, on October 24. 2024. 
    (Photo: Maxim Shipenkov/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

    “We need peace in Ukraine,” U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said, speaking before Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, speaking in Russia on Thursday, called for peace in Ukraine and “across the board” as wars also rage in Gaza, Lebanon, and Sudan.

    Guterres spoke before Russian President Vladimir Putin and other leaders from “BRICS Plus” countries gathering in Kazan, a city roughly 500 miles east of Moscow.

    “Across the board, we need peace,” Guterres said.

    “We need peace in Ukraine,” he added. “A just peace in line with the U.N. Charter, international law, and U.N. General Assembly resolutions.”

    After the speech, Guterres renewed his call for a cease-fire in Lebanon and Gaza.

    “We need a cease-fire in Lebanon—as we need a cease-fire in Gaza and the immediate release of all hostages,” he wrote on social media. “Escalation after escalation is leading to the unimaginable for the people of the region.”

    Putin presided over the closing ceremonies of the BRICS conference on Thursday, saying the group provided a counterbalance to the “perverse methods” of the West. Brazil, Russia, India, and China formed the group in the 2000s, with South Africa joining in 2010; BRICS recently expanded to include a number of other developing countries.

    The conference drew the largest gathering of international diplomats into Russia since Putin’s forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022, escalating a conflict that had begun in 2014.

    Ukraine’s foreign ministry criticized Guterres for attending the conference and noted that he did not attend Ukraine’s global peace summit in Switzerland in June.

    “This is a wrong choice that does not advance the cause of peace,” according to the ministry’s social media account. “It only damages the U.N.’s reputation.”

    Guterres has repeatedly called for a cease-fire in Gaza in the last year. The Israeli government declared him persona non grata earlier this month, barring him from entering the country on the grounds that he had not strongly condemned an Iranian barrage of missiles into Israel—an accusation Guterres denied, saying he did forcefully condemn the Iranian attack.

    For U.N. Day, celebrated annually on October 24, Guterres issued a video statement calling for the world’s nations to keep the “beacon of hope” that is the U.N. “shining.”

    The U.N. has had only limited success in stopping or slowing the wars in Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, and Sudan, which are among many dozens of conflicts across the world and have brought mass death and destruction.

    The total number of Ukrainians and Russians who’ve died since February 2022 has reached roughly one million, The Wall Street Journalreported last month.

    In Gaza, more than 42,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces in roughly the last year, following the Hamas-led October 7 attack that killed about 1,200 Israelis. More than 2,500 people have been killed by Israeli forces in Lebanon over the same period, including 1,900 in the escalation that’s occurred in the last five weeks, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. Dozens of Israelis have also died in that conflict.

    A U.N. official said last month that the death toll in Sudan, which has been ravaged by civil war since April 2023, is at least 20,000 and could be much higher. The country is facing the prospect of a large-scale famine, with Save the Children on Tuesday raising the alarm that conditions there are worsening.

    Original artilce by Edward Carver republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

  • Spread the love
    Video: Israel targets UN peacekeepers in Lebanon with lasers and tank shells
    Sick children killed after Israel targets oxygen storage at Gaza’s Kamal Adwan hospital
    Israel murders more than 150 civilians in Jabalia refugee camp in one wave of attacks
    Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted "I support Zionism without qualification." He's asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
    Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
    UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspeding 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government's support for Israel's Gaza genocide.
    UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspeding 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide.
    Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
    Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.

  • Israel Calling Journalists Terrorists Decried as ‘An Attempt to Preemptively Justify Their Murder’

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

    Palestinian journalists stage a protest to draw attention to Palestinian press killed while covering the war in the Gaza Strip on February 26, 2024 in Rafah. 
    (Photo: Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images)

    “Israel has repeatedly made similar unproven claims without producing credible evidence,” said the Committee to Protect Journalists.

    Seasoned observers of Israeli disinformation campaigns on Wednesday responded with pointed skepticism to a claim by the country’s military that half a dozen Al Jazeera journalists are linked to militant Palestinian resistance groups.

    The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed Wednesday that intelligence recovered during the ongoing invasion of Gaza revealed that Al Jazeera journalists Anas Al-Sharif, Alaa Salama, Hossam Shabat, Ashraf Saraj, Ismail Abu Amr, and Talal Aruki are affiliated with either Hamas—which governs Palestine’s coastal enclave and led the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel—or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

    This, the IDF said, “unequivocally proves that they function as military terrorist operatives of the terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip.”

    However, critics accused Israel of targeting the six journalists for exposing Israeli war crimes to the world.

    “There’s a very clear reason why Israel has been killing journalists,” asserted U.S. investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill:

    As the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Public Accuracy noted:

    Shabat… wrote Tuesday: “I’m a reporter on the ground in North Gaza, and I’m here to tell you that no aid has entered the besieged area for the past 21 days. The Israeli and American governments are spreading inaccurate information.

    Al-Sharif yesterday posted a video of children killed, one with their head literally blown off. He just posted a video of civil defense crews working five hours to rescue a child.

    University of Edinburgh professor Nicola Perugini noted that some of the six journalists “are covering the new phase of the genocide, the complete depopulation of northern Gaza.”

    “The aim is to transform the last witnesses into killable targets,” he said.

    Al Jazeera —which is banned from operating in Israel but is the only major international media network on the ground in Gaza, as Israeli authorities prohibit foreign reporters from entering the besieged strip—denies the IDF’s claim.

    Others noted that Israeli forces have killed numerous Al Jazeera workers as part of a war on journalists in which at least 128 media professionals have been killed, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The United Nations says more than 170 media workers have been killed by Israeli forces.

    “This is an assassination threat and an attempt to preemptively justify their murder,” Scahill said of Israel’s claim against the six Al Jazeera journalists.

    “Anyone claiming Israel has offered ‘irrefutable’ proof to back up these allegations is either ignorant of the systematic campaign of lies, propaganda, and fake news unleashed by Israel or is trying to aid and abet the murder of more journalists,” he added. “That is what is irrefutable.”

    CPJ said on social media that it “is aware of accusations made by the Israel Defense Forces against several journalists in Gaza accusing them of being members of militant groups.”

    “Israel has repeatedly made similar unproven claims without producing credible evidence,” the group noted. “After killing Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail Al Ghoul in July, the IDF previously produced a similar document, which contained contradictory information, showing that Al Ghoul, born in 1997, received a Hamas military ranking in 2007—when he would have been 10 years old.”

    The Paris-based international press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has filed multiple complaints at the International Criminal Court alleging “war crimes against journalists in Gaza,” including the apparently intentional targeting of media professionals.

    In one filing, RSF said it “has reasonable grounds for thinking that some of these journalists were deliberately killed and that the others were the victims of deliberate IDF attacks against civilians” and accused Israel of “an eradication of the Palestinian media.”

    “You don’t shut down the media unless you have something to hide.”

    In June, the Gaza Project—an investigative journalism initiative led by the Paris-based nonprofit Forbidden Stories—”analyzed nearly 100 cases of journalists and media workers killed in Gaza, as well as other cases in which members of the press have been allegedly targeted, threatened, or injured.”

    The project found “a chilling pattern” of journalists who “may have been targeted even though they were identifiable as press.”

    In one case that enraged journalists and others around the world, at least one IDF member sent 19-year-old Palestinian reporter Hassan Hamad text messages threatening him and his family if he did not stop documenting Israel’s assault on Gaza, which has left more than 152,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, millions more starved or sickened, and much of the territory in ruins.

    Hamad refused. Earlier this month, Israeli forces assassinated him in a drone strike on his home in the Jabalia refugee camp.

    U.S. citizens working in media have also been harmed by Israeli forces while on the job in Gaza and Lebanon, where IDF bombardment and invasion have killed and wounded thousands of people.

    On Tuesday, a dozen members of U.S. Congress led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) urged the Biden administration—which supports Israeli with billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic cover—to investigate Israeli attacks on journalists including Dylan Collins, who was with a group of six other reporters covering cross-border clashes between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon when an IDF tank opened fire on their position despite their clear identification as press. Collins and five others were injured, and Lebanese Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah was killed.

    Israel’s targeting of American journalists predates the current war and includes the 2022 killing of renowned Palestinian American Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh. Multiple probes have concluded Abu Akleh was deliberately targeted by an IDF sniper as she was covering a raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the illegally occupied West Bank.

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

    Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted "I support Zionism without qualification." He's asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
    Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
    UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspeding 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government's support for Israel's Gaza genocide.
    UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspeding 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide.
    Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
    Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.

  • British bases in Cyprus aid the Israeli war effort against the people’s will

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    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/british-bases-cyprus-aid-israeli-war-effort-against-people’s-will

    Demonstrators outside the entrance of RAF Akrotiri, near the southern port city of Limassol, Cyprus, January 2024

    CHARIS PASHIAS, general secretary of the Cyprus Peace Council, has called for the dismantling of British bases in Cyprus, which are being used to aid Israeli genocide against the wishes of a majority of Cypriots.

    In an exclusive interview, he told the Morning Star: “Cyprus is a living example of how military bases do not solve problems, do not provide stability and security, but instead exacerbate militarisation and permanently increase tension.

    “In the most blatant way in the last year, the US and Britain have turned Cyprus into a launch pad for war against the peoples of the region.”

    Revealing press reports indicate that US war materials have been transferred from the military base in Akrotiri to support the Israeli army’s operations in the Gaza Strip.

    Frequent air missions have been carried out from Cyprus over the Gaza Strip and in Lebanon, informing the Israeli army of the location of possible bombing targets. Air strikes were carried out in Yemen using the military base in Akrotiri.

    “We also know that the Israeli army, under the framework of military co-operation with Cyprus, carried out exercises on the territory of Cyprus, testing a similar operation that they executed afterwards in Gaza,” Pashias added.

    …

    Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/british-bases-cyprus-aid-israeli-war-effort-against-people’s-will