Gaza

Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has killed 10,000 people

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Over 26,000 people have been injured and around 1.5 million displaced out of a total population of 2.3 million since Israel started its war on Gaza on October 7. Israeli forces have also killed over 150 people in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

November 06, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch

The debris following an Israeli airstrike in Jabalya. Photo: Quds News Network

Gaza faced yet another communications black out on Monday, November 6 even as reports emerged of Israeli planes bombing more residential areas and killing dozens of civilians on the 31st day of its war. 

On Sunday night and on Monday morning, Israeli forces bombed over 450 Palestinian locations in the besieged Palestinian territory, killing dozens of Palestinians, including children and women. 

The total number of Palestinians killed has crossed the 10,000 mark and over 26,000 have been injured in Israel’s indiscriminate bombings and ground offensive. Over 1,000 Palestinians are also reported missing and are likely to be buried in the debris created by Israel’s war planes targeting residential areas, hospitals, schools, and other civilian infrastructure. 

Israel has also launched a ground offensive inside Gaza. Its forces claimed on Monday that they have divided the besieged Palestinian territory into two. They also repeated their ultimatum asking all residents to leave northern Gaza.

66 Palestinians were reportedly killed when Israel bombed residential buildings in Deir al-Balah and al-Zawayida in central Gaza on Monday.

Internet services and telecommunications shut down in Gaza for the third time since October 7. Israel on Monday once again disrupted the power supply to Al-Shifa hospital. The largest hospital in Gaza has faced repeated attacks in its vicinity and is running out of fuel, medicine, and space, caused both by the Israeli blockade and due to the surge in the number of patients. 

There are over 40,000 people seeking refuge in the hospital at the moment according to Al-Jazeera.

More killed in occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem

Israeli occupation forces have also killed 155 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since October 7, two of them on Monday.

One of the Palestinians killed was just 16 years old. Israel alleged that he attacked two of their soldiers, wounding them seriously with a knife before he was shot dead, Wafa reported.

Over 70 other Palestinians were arrested from different parts of the occupied West Bank by Israeli occupation forces in late night raids conducted on Sunday and early morning on Monday. 

The arrested include activist Ahed Tamimi who was arrested from her house near Ramallah in a raid. 

On Sunday evening, an Israeli drone attacked a car in southern Lebanon, killing three children and injuring an elderly woman, Al-Mayadeen reported. 

Hezbollah responded to the death of Lebanese children by firing rockets inside a northern Israeli town killing at least one person.

Blinken threatened countries and groups in the region against any attempts to intervene in the war in Gaza. The US also announced the deployment of a nuclear submarine in the region on Monday.

The US has already increased the presence of its armed forces in the region following Israeli aggression in Gaza and has supplied armaments to Israel for the war.

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

Continue ReadingIsrael’s genocidal war on Gaza has killed 10,000 people

Israel Bombs Pediatric Hospital as Death Toll of Children in Gaza Surpasses 4,000

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

Relatives carry the body of 8-month-old Ahmed Barhom during a funeral for members of the same family killed in Israel’s bombardment in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on November 6, 2023. (Photo: Said Khatib/AFP via Getty Images)

“These children are not worthless casualties,” said one advocate. “These children are as precious as any innocent children. They don’t just deserve to not die. They deserve to live free.”

As journalists in Gaza reported that the Israel Defense Forces bombed the cancer ward of a pediatric hospital in Gaza City on Sunday, advocates for a cease-fire in the blockaded enclave pleaded with powerful Western countries allied with Israel—including the United States—to take action to stop the bombardment that has now killed more than 4,000 children in one month.

Local news outlets Palestinian Hadath, Mayadeen, Haya Jadeeda, and Quds Networkreported that the third floor of al-Rantisi Pediatric Hospital had been hit by an Israeli airstrike, while Reutersreported that eight people had been killed in the attack.

The Daily Beast reported late last month that medical providers in the ward, which is called the Dr.Musa and Suhaila Nasir Pediatric Cancer Department and is the first and only children’s oncology department in Gaza, feared a possible bombing of the hospital, where at least 10 children were receiving in-patient treatment and could not be evacuated when Israeli officials threatened northern Gaza with imminent airstrikes.

“It’s an impossible situation,” said Dr. Zeena Salman, an American pediatric oncologist who has volunteered at the hospital, told The Daily Beast. “There’s a number of patients who are not stable enough to transfer to another hospital. And there may not be enough resources in the hospital.”

Al-Rantisi Hospital has also been providing shelter to around 1,000 civilians since Israel’s total siege in Gaza began last month.

On Sunday, United Nations agencies representing children, women, refugees, and health services issued a joint call warning that “women, children and newborns in Gaza are disproportionately bearing the burden” of Israel’s attack on the enclave, which it commenced on October 7 after Hamas launched a surprise attack on southern Israel, killing 1,400 people and taking more than 200 hostage.

While claiming to be targeting Hamas, the IDF has killed more than 10,000 Palestinians since October 7 as it has bombed hospitals, schools, and refugee camps—all while blaming Hamas for civilian casualties by saying the group is using Palestinian people as “human shields.”

“The idea that ‘they were being shielded by children so we murdered the children too’ is so absent of morality, it’s outrageous,” said author Gabrielle Alexa Noel last week in response to an MSNBC segment in which anchor Joy Ann Reid also condemned the claim.

The death toll in Gaza, said Khaled Engindy of the Middle East Institute, is now the equivalent of “killing 1.5 million Americans, including 600,000 children, in the U.S. in under a month.”

Toby Fricker, spokesperson for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), toldThe Guardian that while it can take time to verify the number of dead children and adults in Gaza as hundreds go missing under rubble after bombings, “the numbers are obviously catastrophic.”

“Verification doesn’t occur in real time, which is why we say ‘reportedly killed,’ but, generally speaking, in all conflicts we substantiate initial estimates and in Gaza they have tended to be pretty consistent,” said Fricker, rebuking claims perpetuated by U.S. President Joe Biden recently that Gaza’s health authorities, which are controlled by Hamas, release inaccurate casualty counts.

The U.N. agencies warned that with roughly 50,000 pregnant people in Gaza, children born during the war will be among the most at risk if the U.S. and other countries supporting Israel’s siege don’t join the growing call for a cease-fire. One hundred and thirty premature babies living in incubators are also at risk.

UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell also warned last week that for the children who survive the fighting in both Gaza and Israel, the consequences of the trauma they are living through, including the loss of their parents and, in some cases, their entire family will have consequences that “could last a lifetime.”

One UNICEF aid worker stationed in Gaza said last week that her children, aged seven and four, have been “begging for drinkable water and showing signs of severe psychological distress and fear.”

“Since the seventh of this month, my mission in life has become to keep them alive,” the worker, Nesma, told the agency. “I don’t have the luxury to think about my children’s mental health. As a humanitarian worker, I feel absolutely helpless as I cannot provide for my kids with the basic needs of life, let alone the children of Gaza. I keep telling myself, ‘Nesma, keep them alive.’ And when all of this ends, I will provide them with mental support and medical care.”

Sharing the sounds of constant airstrikes on social media, UNICEF said people in areas not experiencing conflict “can choose to turn off this sound. Children in conflicts can’t.”

On Sunday, Dr. Omar Suleiman of the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research posted a video of two young children desperately searching for their family members after a bombing at Bureij Refugee Camp when they were reunited with their younger brother, who tearfully told a bystander, “I need my mother.”

“These children are not worthless casualties,” said Suleiman. “These children are as precious as any innocent children. They don’t just deserve to not die. They deserve to live free.”

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

Continue ReadingIsrael Bombs Pediatric Hospital as Death Toll of Children in Gaza Surpasses 4,000

Israeli Ambassador Slammed for Claiming ‘There Is No Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza

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Palestinians inspect the damage following an Israeli airstrike on the El-Remal aera in Gaza City on October 9, 2023. Israel continued to battle Hamas fighters on October 10 and massed tens of thousands of troops and heavy armour around the Gaza Strip after vowing a massive blow over the Palestinian militants' surprise attack. Photo by Naaman Omar apaimages. licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Palestinians inspect the damage following an Israeli airstrike on the El-Remal aera in Gaza City on October 9, 2023. Israel continued to battle Hamas fighters on October 10 and massed tens of thousands of troops and heavy armour around the Gaza Strip after vowing a massive blow over the Palestinian militants’ surprise attack. Photo by Naaman Omar apaimages. licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

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

“Does he think the world is not seeing the horrific reality in Gaza? Does he think we will believe his lies?” said one peace advocate. “No, we won’t.”

Despite the abundance of evidence to the contrary, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations claimed in a televised interview Sunday that “there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” and was swiftly rebuked by people around the world.

Challenged by CNN‘s Dana Bash, Ambassador Gilad Erdan doubled down on his position: “I’m not saying that the life in Gaza is great. And, obviously, Hamas is the only one that should be held accountable for any situation in Gaza. But there’s a standard, due to international humanitarian law.”

“What does it mean, a humanitarian crisis? And I’m saying, again, there is no humanitarian crisis, based on the international humanitarian law, right now in Gaza,” added Erdan, who also cast doubt on the death toll being shared by local officials.

U.S. Congressman Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) called Erdan’s comments “unbelievable,” given the current conditions in Gaza a month into the war Israel launched after a Hamas-led attack on October 7, and urged the ambassador to resign from his position.

Also responding to Erdan’s appearance on “State of the Union,” Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the anti-war group CodePink, said: “Does he think the world is not seeing the horrific reality in Gaza? Does he think we will believe his lies? No, we won’t.”

As of Sunday, Israel’s air and ground assault of the besieged enclave—enabled by billions in U.S. military support—has killed at least 9,770 people, including over 4,000 children, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza. The ministry last month publicly identified thousands of the dead as Israeli officials and others, including U.S. President Joe Biden, questioned the figures.

Those who have so far survived the Israeli assault are facing limited power, water, and communication services as well as dwindling supplies of food and medicine. The United Nations World Food Program stressed Sunday that the aid entering Gaza “is nowhere near enough to meet the exponentially growing needs.”

“Right now, parents in Gaza do not know whether they can feed their children today and whether they will even survive to see tomorrow,” said Cindy McCain, the U.N. program’s executive director, as she returned from the Rafah border crossing in Egypt. “The suffering just meters away is unfathomable standing on this side of the border.”

Erdan’s interview Sunday was not the first time during the war that the Israeli government has contested conditions in Gaza. During a Sky News appearance in Mid-October, Israeli diplomat Tzipi Hotovely also said that “there is no humanitarian crisis.”

As The New York Timesreported Wednesday:

Israel’s agency overseeing policy for the Palestinian territories, known as COGAT, maintained in a statement on Tuesday that there is “currently no humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip” despite the mounting evidence to the contrary from aid agencies, journalists, and people living there.

The statement said the Israeli government was monitoring the supply of water, food, fuel, and energy in Gaza and asserted that “the situation is far from crisis.”

The newspaper added that “asked on Tuesday why Israel had cut off water supplies, in particular, to Gaza, the agency said that ‘according to international law, Israel has no obligation to provide goods and services to the terrorist organization Hamas—especially in cases where the enemy uses them for war purposes (for example, with respect to electricity and fuel).'”

Former U.S. Ambassador David Satterfield, recently appointed by Biden as the special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues, told reporters in Jordan on Saturday that “there is no evidence that Hamas is seizing or blocking aid entering the Gaza Strip.”

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

Continue ReadingIsraeli Ambassador Slammed for Claiming ‘There Is No Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza

Democratic Establishment Seems Ready to Lose With Biden in 2024

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Zionist president Joe Biden. 27 July 2021 image by Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz. Original public domain image from Flickr
Zionist president Joe Biden. 27 July 2021 image by Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz. Original public domain image from Flickr

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

It looks as though there is only one scenario that offers hope for November 2024: the increasingly unpopular Democratic president announces in the coming weeks that he won’t seek reelection.

If you get your news from Biden-protecting outlets (MSNBC is just the most extreme of many), you’ve been warned daily that the Trump movement is preparing to steal the 2024 election. It’s a totally legitimate worry – given that MAGA forces nearly stole the 2020 election.

But there’s another totally legitimate worry that Biden-friendly media don’t like to discuss – that Joe Biden is such a weak candidate, he’s likely to lose a fair-and-square election in 2024. And likely to lose even to the discredited, unstable, repeatedly indicted Trump.

The New York Times/Sienna College poll of registered voters released Sunday should cause alarm: Biden is trailing Trump in head-to-head match-ups in five of the six most crucial battlegrounds states – all of which Biden won in 2020. The president trails Trump in Nevada by more than 10 points. He trails Trump in Georgia by six points, in Arizona and Michigan by five points, and in Pennsylvania by four points. (Only in Wisconsin does Biden lead, and that’s by only two points.)

If your news diet is provided by MSNBC or other pro-Biden corporate outlets, you may have heard Biden likened to the second coming of FDR, a savior to the working classes. That’s not how the working classes see him. They see him as economically ineffectual, especially in dealing with inflation. “Bidenomics” may be a success story in the studios of MSNBC or CNN or NPR; it’s not seen that way by the voting masses.

The “not-as-bad-as-Trump” pitch is obviously not satisfying many Democratic-leaning voters and activists, especially young progressives who are angry with Biden over Gaza civilian deaths and other failings.

In fairness to Biden-allied media, many of those who voted for Biden in 2020 – but now tell pollsters they won’t do so in 2024 – are “low-information voters.” While some are misinformed by right-wing outlets, most don’t pay close attention to news or politics. You can tell that from the ill-informed quotes they gave to the Times.

But in my view, the new poll actually understates the problems for Biden. The president has lost many of the activists who are needed to inform the ill-informed, to organize get-out-the-vote campaigns and mobilize occasional voters. These activists are often highly informed. Indeed, they are so well-informed that they know all too well about Biden’s policy reversals and broken promises. For example, thousands of climate activists mobilized in swing states to help Biden defeat Trump in 2020. Will they in 2024?

As civilians in Gaza are being massacred day after day, Biden’s one-sided “I stand with Israel” policy is losing him countless young activists and racial justice organizers who mobilized for him against Trump in 2020. In Michigan and other swing states, Arab and Muslim activists who detest Trump have said they won’t vote for Biden, let alone mobilize for him

Let me be clear about my own position: On every issue where Biden’s policies are mediocre (like on climate or the corporate greed that has fed inflation) or awful (like Israel-Palestine), Trump’s policies are even worse. Far worse. That’s not debatable.

But the “not-as-bad-as-Trump” pitch is obviously not satisfying many Democratic-leaning voters and activists, especially young progressives who are angry with Biden over Gaza civilian deaths and other failings.

As my RootsAction colleagues and I have been pointing out for the last year via the Don’t Run Joe and then Step Aside Joe campaign, there’s a major split between Democratic Party leaders and donors on the one hand, and Democratic voters on the other. Polls have long shown that the Democratic base does not want Biden to run in 2024. But Democratic leaders and officials have ignored the party’s core constituencies.

As for the big donors who’ve funded Biden for years (some of whom donate to both parties), they’d rather lose with Joe than risk the election of a change-oriented Democrat they don’t know well or can’t control.

There is only one scenario that offers hope for November 2024: the increasingly unpopular Joe Biden announces in the coming weeks that he won’t be seeking reelection (President Johnson took that step in March 1968). This would lead to a wide-open primary process featuring competition between Vice President Harris (with approval levels even lower than Biden’s) and various senators, Congress members, governors and activists.

In an open primary process, the activist base of the party—which is more progressive than the party leadership on every issue from racial justice and economics to climate and foreign policy—could exert its influence and make demands on the candidates. For example: given that most activist Democrats don’t believe “self-defense” justifies the day-in day-out massacre of Palestinian civilians, there’s a real possibility that the winning Democrat would have a more even-handed approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

What’s needed is a democratic and transparent primary process. Such a process could enable the party to unify and rally behind a Democratic nominee who is capable of soundly defeating Trump and Trumpism.

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

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‘Let Gaza Live!’: A Month Into Israeli War, Massive US Protests Demand Cease-Fire

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

Demonstrators gathered in front of the White House during a rally in support of Gaza in Washington, D.C. on November 4, 2023.  (Photo: Oliver Doulliery/AFP via Getty Images)

“We came here to let our voices be heard,” said one demonstrator in Washington, D.C. “Every human is entitled to basic human rights, not killing kids, not torturing people.”

This is a developing story… Please check back for possible updates…

Huge crowds of protesters filled the streets of Washington, D.C. and other U.S. cities on Saturday to demand a cease-fire in Israel’s war on Hamas, which has killed and wounded thousands of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip over the past month.

“We came here to let our voices be heard and our hearts and hoping we’ll change the way people see this conflict,” 70-year-old Manar Ghanayem toldThe Washington Post in the nation’s capitol, where demonstrators gathered in and around Freedom Plaza.

“Every human is entitled to basic human rights, not killing kids, not torturing people,” added Ghanayem, who traveled from North Carolina to march in D.C. with more than a dozen friends and family members, including young grandchildren.

Ghanayem also said that she voted for U.S. President Joe Biden in 2020 but was outraged by his response to the war. As she put it, “I can’t believe Biden is turning a blind eye to this and gave Israel the green light.”

Rather than advocating for a cease-fire, the Biden administration has pushed for “humanitarian pauses” in what critics are calling Israel’s “genocidal” air and ground assault of Gaza—launched after a Hamas-led surprise attack on Israel on October 7.

After speaking with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the beginning of the war, Biden said that “my administration’s support for Israel’s security is rock solid and unwavering.” He quickly asked Congress for $14.3 billion for the Israeli war effort, on top of the typical $3.8 billion in annual U.S. military aid.

“Americans do not support the genocide in Palestine, we do not support the occupation, yet we are being robbed of our own resources in order to fund this oppression,” said CodePink organizer Nour Jaghama earlier this week. Her anti-war group is a part of a broad coalition that supported Saturday’s demonstrations in the United States.

“We need to show our government that we are outraged at them for forcing us to participate in such a disgusting and devastating attack on humanity,” Jaghama continued. “As Americans, we have a responsibility to our brothers and sisters in Palestine to fight for them however we can.”

Jaghama also delivered a speech on Saturday. According to CodePink:

“One of the most prominent questions we need to ask ourselves is: Why we can hear these words and firsthand accounts from Gaza yet the genocide still continues? Why do only 18 representatives and ONLY ONE senator support a cease-fire? And why does President Biden insist on funding Netanyahu’s genocide?” she asked the crowd…

She then aimed her questions directly at President Biden: “Is this how you want to be remembered? A genocidal, destructive, warmonger? Shame! Look at this crowd, clearly the American people do not agree with your genocidal plans. You must call for a cease-fire now or solidify your position as one of the most inhumane presidents in American history. The American people demand a cease-fire, an end to the occupation, and the full liberation of Palestine.”

Demonstrators in D.C. carried signs with messages like “Stop U.S.-funded genocide,” “Cease-Fire Now,” and “Let Gaza Live!”

Sharing a photo from the D.C. gathering on social media, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) said: “Solidarity with the hundreds of thousands of people nationwide who marched in support of a #CeasefireNOW. Our pro-peace, pro-humanity movement is strong and it is growing daily.”

The Saturday actions followed weeks of protests at places including congressional offices and major transit stations. Jewish Voice for Peace noted Monday that “Jewish people all throughout the United States are protesting in unprecedented numbers against Israel’s destruction of Gaza and the United States’ unwavering support.”

Protesters, supporters, and journalists shared updates on social media.

New York, New York:

Minneapolis, Minnesota:

Olympia, Washington:

San Francisco, California:

(Photo: Brett Wilkins)

(Photo: Brett Wilkins)

(Photo: Brett Wilkins)

The Associated Press reported that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Saturday “met with Arab foreign ministers in Jordan a day after talks in Israel with… Netanyahu, who insisted there could be no temporary cease-fire until all hostages held by Hamas are released.”

Officials in Israel say Palestinian militants are holding around 240 hostages and more than 1,500 Israelis have been killed over the past four weeks. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, Israel’s war on the besieged enclave has killed over 9,400 Palestinians. Amid a surge in settler violence, 133 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank.

Israel has faced global criticism for cutting off the people of Gaza from food, water, fuel, and medicine as well as bombing homes, schools, medical facilities, religious buildings, and a refugee camp. Some citizens of Israel have joined in worldwide demands for International Criminal Court action on “escalating Israeli war crimes and genocide.”

Pro-Palestinian protests were also held around the world on Saturday, including in Berlin, Germany; Dhaka, Bangladesh; London, England; Paris, France; Milan, Italy; Santiago, Chile; and Tokyo, Japan. Scientist and organizer Lucky Tran said on social media that “we are witnessing the biggest global anti-war protests since the Iraq War in 2003.”

In the United Kingdom, tens of thousands of people blocked London’s Oxford Circus and Piccadilly Circus, then marched to Trafalgar Square. Al Jazeera reported that “protesters held ‘Freedom for Palestine’ placards and chanted ‘cease-fire now’ and ‘in our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians.'”

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

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