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Tag: IDF

  • ‘Nowhere Safe in Gaza’ as Evidence of Israeli War Crimes Mounts

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

    Injured Palestinians, including children, are taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital for treatment after Israeli airstrikes hit the school at Al Bureij Refugee Camp in Deir Al Balah, Gaza on November 20, 2023. (Photo: Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)

    Amnesty International accused Israel of committing war crimes with two recent bombings of a church and a home in a refugee camp.

    Palestinians in Gaza and human rights advocates on Monday pleaded with the international community to see the ongoing killing of thousands of people in the blockaded enclave for what it is—a massacre in which Israel has shown “a chilling indifference to the catastrophic toll on civilians,” according to Amnesty International, and has committed numerous war crimes as it bombards civilian targets.

    The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on October 19 and October 20, calling on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the bombings as possible war crimes.

    Amnesty investigators visited the sites of the bombings, Saint Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church in Gaza City and a home in al-Nuseirat refugee camp near Deir al-Balah, and interviewed 14 people, including nine survivors of the attacks and two other witnesses. The group’s Crisis Evidence Lab also analayzed satellite imagery and and audiovisual material.

    The two bombings, which killed a total of 46 civilians, including 20 children, “were indiscriminate attacks or direct attacks on civilians or civilian objects, which must be investigated as war crimes,” said Amnesty.

    “These deadly, unlawful attacks are part of a documented pattern of disregard for Palestinian civilians and demonstrate the devastating impact of the Israeli military’s unprecedented onslaught has left nowhere safe in Gaza, regardless of where civilians live or seek shelter,” said Erika Guevara Rosas, director of global research, advocacy, and policy for the U.K.-based group. “We urge the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor to take immediate concrete action to expedite the investigation into war crimes and other crimes under international law opened in 2021.”

    The group noted that on October 19, when the historic church was struck, the Israeli government released a statement saying that “IDF fighter jets struck the command and control center belonging to a Hamas terrorist involved in the launching of rockets and mortars toward Israel.”

    But the IDF later deleted a video it had posted of the strike on Saint Porphyrius, and has provided no information to substantiate the claim that the church was a “command and control center.”

    Before the strike, in the first days of Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza, church officials had publicly said hundreds of civilians were taking shelter at Saint Porphyrius.

    “Their presence would therefore have been known to the Israeli military,” said Amnesty. “The Israeli military’s decision to go ahead with a strike on a known church compound and site for displaced civilians was reckless and therefore amounts to a war crime, even if there was a belief that there was a military objective nearby.”

    One of the families sheltering in the church was that of Ramez al-Sury, whose three children—aged 14, 12, and 11—were killed in the attack.

    “We left our homes and came to stay at the church because we thought we would be protected here. We have nowhere else to go. The church was full of peaceful people, only peaceful people,” al-Sury told Amnesty. “There is nowhere safe in Gaza during this war. Bombardments everywhere, day and night. Every day, more and more civilians are killed. We pray for peace, but our hearts are broken.”

    The day after al-Sury’s children were killed, Hani al-Aydi was sitting at home with family members at al-Nuseirat refugee camp, which is within the area the Israeli military had ordered Palestinians to evacuate to from the north.

    Despite telling people the area was safe, the IDF launched a strike that destroyed the al-Aydi family home, which the military had no reason to suspect was a Hamas target, according to Amnesty.

    “All of those present in the al-Aydi house that was hit directly and in the two nearby homes were civilians,” said Amnesty. “Two members of the al-Aydi family had permits to work in Israel, which requires rigorous security checks by Israeli authorities, for those obtaining the permit and their extended family.

    Al-Aydi told the group that “everything collapsed on our head” suddenly when Israel bombed the house, killing 28 people including 12 children.

    “All my brothers died, my nephews, my nieces,” said al-Aydi. “My mother died, my sisters died, our home is gone… There is nothing here, and now we are left with nothing and are displaced. I don’t know how much worse things will get. Could it get any worse?”

    Amnesty noted that even if it had found in its investigation that there were plausible military targets in the vicinity of the two sites—which it did not—”these strikes failed to distinguish between military objectives and civilian objects. The evidence collected by Amnesty International also indicates that the Israeli military failed to take feasible precautions to minimize damage to civilians and civilian property, including by not providing any warning—at minimum to anyone living in the locations that were hit—before launching the attacks.”

    The Geneva Conventions require parties in a conflict to take measures to protect the lives of civilians and prohibit collective punishment of a population for acts committed by a particular group.

    “The harrowing accounts from survivors and relatives of victims describing the devastating human toll of these bombardments offer a snapshot of the mass civilian suffering being inflicted daily across Gaza by the Israeli military’s relentless attacks, underscoring the urgent need for an immediate cease-fire,” said Guevara-Rosas.

    Amnesty made the request of the ICC as the death toll in Gaza surpasses 13,300 people in just over six weeks. At least 5,500 children have been killed.

    Al-Mezan, a Gaza-based human rights group, also addressed the ICC on Monday, calling on the body to issue warrants for Israeli officials responsible for crimes against Palestinian children.

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

  • Probe Demanded Over ‘Absurd’ Israeli Narrative About Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital

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    2023.10.08 Pro-Palestinian Rally, Washington DC. Ted Eytan, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
    2023.10.08 Pro-Palestinian Rally, Washington DC. Ted Eytan, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

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

    “Israel needs to offer the outside world more than a few rifles and other armaments to justify its attacks on Gaza’s hospitals and ill and injured civilians,” said Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.

    A human rights monitor in Geneva on Friday called on the United Nations to help get to the bottom of Israel’s claim that its bombing and raid of Gaza’s largest medical complex this week was necessary to stop Hamas from running a vast military compound beneath it—an allegation that more than two days after the attack began, has been backed up only by images Israel released of a small cache of weapons.

    Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said the time has come for an independent international investigation into “Israel’s absurd narrative” about al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City, and noted that administrators at the facility are also demanding a probe “that includes a United Nations inspection.”

    Israel did extensive damage to al-Shifa’s cardiac care department, surgical ward, and a pharmaceutical warehouse when it began bombing the hospital at dawn on Wednesday in just one of more than 245 attacks on medical facilities in Gaza since October 7. Israeli officials said they expected to find “the beating heart” of Hamas’ military operations in the hospital.

    But after searching basement areas and several health departments as well as conducting a “violent interrogation campaign” targeting displaced people and medical personnel, Euro-Med said, Israel has so far produced only a video showing a small number of weapons.

    “The absence of any neutral international party’s involvement in the Israeli military raids and searches of al-Shifa Medical Complex and other hospitals in the strip raises widespread doubts about the Israeli narrative,” said Euro-Med. “Israel needs to offer the outside world more than a few rifles and other armaments to justify its attacks on Gaza’s hospitals and ill and injured civilians.”

    “We are left with nothing—no power, no food, no water. With every passing minute, we are losing a life. Overnight, we lost 22 persons.”

    Separately, the BBC aired a segment on Friday in which the network noted the Israel Defense Forces first released a seven-minute video displaying the weapons it found—a video that appeared to be edited despite IDF claims that it was filmed in a single shot with no edits, and that raised several other questions.

    “This IDF video was posted, then deleted, then reposted, this time without a section referring to an Israeli soldier who’d been held hostage,” reported the BBC.

    Reporters from the network arrived at al-Shifa a few hours after the IDF released the original video, and were shown a different selection of weapons than those that appeared in the military’s video.

    https://twitter.com/_RichardHall/status/1725498963174752490?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1725498963174752490%7Ctwgr%5E625d358c2e3a367d9e3d245bbf052640ce85b5c6%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fisraeli-claims-al-shifa

    “What we see in this IDF video doesn’t equate Israel’s description of an ‘operational command center for Hamas,’” the BBC reported.

    The footage, released late at night “after long hours of searches and fruitless inspections,” said Euro-Med, “raises a lot of questions, especially since no gunman has been arrested and no evidence has been found to back the previous claims about the presence of tunnels beneath the hospital.”

    The IDF has also claimed that Hamas “knew we were coming” and had likely “made off with or hidden traces of their presence” at al-Shifa, The New York Times reported.

    Israel’s narrative about al-Shifa has also drawn scrutiny from Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, who said that even if the hospital were being used as a command center for Hamas, “protecting [patients] is paramount.”

    “Even if health facilities are used for military purposes, the principles of distinction, precaution, and proportionality always apply,” Tedros said.

    The director of al-Shifa, Muhammed Abu Salmiya, toldAl Jazeera Friday that staff are still trying to save as many of the 7,000 patients and refugees in the hospital as they can amid Israel’s ongoing siege, but they “lost all those who were in the intensive care unit” following the attack on Wednesday.

    “We are left with nothing—no power, no food, no water,” said Abu Salmiya. “With every passing minute, we are losing a life. Overnight, we lost 22 persons.”

    The Biden administration, which has continued supporting Israel’s bombardment of Gaza as the death toll has grown to at least 11,470 in less than six weeks, said this week it believed the IDF’s claims about al-Shifa, with President Joe Biden saying it was a “fact” that Hamas has “their headquarters, their military hidden under a hospital.”

    A day after the bombing, as observers awaited evidence of an extensive command center beneath the hospital, U.S. State Department spokesperson Matt Miller appeared less confident in Israel’s narrative, telling reporters that the White House “never said there were command posts in every hospital in Gaza.”

    “We don’t want to see hospitals struck from the air,” said Miller. “We understand that Hamas continues to use hospitals in places where they embed their fighters.”

    After the BBC reported on the IDF’s changing video documentation of its findings, Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft called Israel’s “propaganda” supporting its onslaught in Gaza “increasingly clownish.”

    “Only Joe Biden seems to believe it,” said Parsi.

    Journalist Jeremy Scahill pointed out that Israel itself is known to have built “an underground operating room and tunnels under the hospital” in 1983.

    “This is not a secret,” Scahill wrote on social media, noting that Israel has claimed Hamas expanded the tunnels in recent years.

    Allegations of a Hamas command center, supported by the U.S., said Scahill, “should be backed up by clear evidence, not a Geraldo Rivera/Al Capone’s vault-style video presentation featuring an English-speaking IDF soldier.”

    “No matter what is or is not found, there is no justification for the repeated attacks against civilian hospitals—in fact al-Shifa is the largest hospital treating the most vulnerable people in Gaza, including NICU babies,” he added. “The mere existence of tunnels, originally built by Israel, does not prove the specific allegations made by the U.S. or Israel. The standard for such evidence should be very, very high.”

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

  • Probe Shows 126+ Civilians Killed by Israeli Airstrike Targeting ‘Just One Guy’

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

    The bodies of victims of the October 31, 2023 Israeli bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip are lined up outside the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza City.  (Photo: Fadi Alwhidi/Anadolu via Getty Images)

    Airwars noted that this is “the most named victims we have ever monitored in a single event.”

    Israel’s war on Gaza has killed more than 11,000 Palestinians, including over 100 civilian victims of a single Israeli bombing in the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp on October 31 who were publicly identified on Thursday by the U.K.-based watchdog Airwars.

    The group identified 116 names of civilians killed in the strike—including 10 cases with the death of multiple family members, three of which reportedly involved entire families being wiped out. The estimated civilian death toll is 126-136, including 69 children.

    Airwars noted on social media that this is “the most named victims we have ever monitored in a single event,” and “almost every named victim we found died along with at least one other family member.”
    The analysis is just for the Israeli attack on October 31, but the group is separately reviewing a strike from the following day. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed both bombings and claimed to be targeting “a very senior Hamas commander.”

    As Guardian reporting cited by Airwars detailed:

    A spokesperson for the Israeli military said the attack had been authorized to assassinate a senior Hamas commander and destroy his base. IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari named the target as Ibrahim Biari, commander of Central Jabaliya Battalion, who he said had been leading fighting in northern Gaza from a network of tunnels under the camp.

    Hagari declined to comment on how many munitions, or which types, were used to target the camp, or identify which craters were caused by tunnel collapses. He said Israel would provide some of these details at a later date.

    But a visual analysis by The Guardian has identified at least five craters in the densely populated refugee camp, which weapons experts said were left by the use of multiple JDAMs—joint direct attack munitions—in the airstrike.

    “Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem denied any senior commander there and called the claim an Israeli pretext for killing civilians,” according toReuters.

    Ahmad al-Kahlout, a spokesperson for the Hamas-controlled Gaza Interior Ministry in Gaza, told reporters at the time that “these buildings house hundreds of citizens. The occupation’s air force destroyed this district with six U.S.-made bombs. It is the latest massacre caused by Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip.”

    Hagari claimed the IDF killed “scores” of militants alongside Biari.

    “With ambiguity around the exact number of militants killed, Airwars has applied a 12-24 combatant casualty range to account for comments such as ‘dozens’ of targets killed,” the watchdog said.

    Those in the camp remain at risk. Middle East Eye reported Wednesday that “renewed heavy Israeli shelling has targeted residential homes in the Jabalia refugee camp. Footage showed blocks falling to the ground and survivors digging in the rubble with their hands to retrieve dead bodies.”

    The IDF strikes on Jabalia have been globally condemned as war crimes—as have various other Israeli actions since October 7, when the nation launched what experts are calling a “genocidal” war in response to a Hamas-led attack.

    Throughout Israel’s bombing campaign and ground operations in Gaza—which along with killing and wounding thousands of civilians have destroyed civilian infrastructure and displaced around three-quarters of the population—global calls for a cease-fire have mounted.

    There have also been growing demands for International Criminal Court action. Rutgers Law School professor and Just Security executive editor Adil Haque tagged the ICC prosecutor, Karim A. A. Khan, in a social media post about the Airwars analysis.

    Khan last month asked civil society groups “to send us any and all evidence that underpins their reports or their communiques or their notices that they issue” on Gaza, explaining that “reports by themselves are, of course, not evidence and I cannot and will not act pursuant to my oath of office without reliable evidence that we can validate that can stand up in a court of law.”

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

  • Amid War Crimes Charges, Human Rights Watch Says Israel Must ‘End Attacks on Hospitals’

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

    Wounded people receive treatment at the Aqsa Indonesia Hospital after an Israeli attack on the Jibalia refugee camp on November 13, 2023. (Photo: Fadi Alwhidi/Anadolu via Getty Images)

    “Israel’s broad-based attack on Gaza’s healthcare system is an attack on the sick and the injured, on babies in incubators, on pregnant people, on cancer patients. These actions need to be investigated as war crimes.”

    Human Rights Watch on Tuesday demanded that the Israeli government immediately cease its deadly attacks on Gaza’s hospitals, arguing they’re part of a far-reaching and unlawful assault on the territory’s crumbling healthcare system.

    In a new report, HRW examines the impacts of the Israeli bombing campaign, ground invasion, and siege on Gaza’s medical personnel and facilities, a majority of which have stopped functioning due to airstrike damage or lack of critical supplies, from fuel to anesthetics.

    “Israel’s repeated attacks damaging hospitals and harming healthcare workers, already hard hit by an unlawful blockade, have devastated Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure,” said A. Kayum Ahmed, special adviser on the right to health at Human Rights Watch. “The strikes on hospitals have killed hundreds of people and put many patients at grave risk because they’re unable to receive proper medical care.”

    Over the past week, Israeli forces have surrounded and intensified their bombardment of several hospitals in northern Gaza including al-Shifa, the enclave’s largest medical facility. Israel has also bombed ambulances and people desperately attempting to flee hospitals as they’ve come under attack.

    “On November 3, the Israeli military struck a marked ambulance just outside of Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital,” HRW said. “Video footage and photographs taken shortly after the strike and verified by Human Rights Watch show a woman on a stretcher in the ambulance and at least 21 dead or injured people in the area surrounding the ambulance, including at least 5 children.”

    “An IDF spokesperson said in a televised interview that day: ‘Our forces saw terrorists using ambulances as a vehicle to move around. They perceived a threat and accordingly we struck that ambulance,’” the group added. “Human Rights Watch did not find evidence that the ambulance was being used for military purposes.”

    HRW similarly questioned Israeli assertions that Hamas is using Gaza’s hospitals, including al-Shifa, for military operations.

    Targeting hospitals is a war crime under international law, but medical facilities can lose their protected status if they’re used to commit an “act harmful to the enemy,” according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

    HRW argued that Tuesday that “no evidence put forward” by the Israeli government thus far “would justify depriving hospitals and ambulances of their protected status under international humanitarian law.”

    “When a journalist at a news conference showing video footage of damage to the Qatar Hospital sought additional information to verify voice recordings and images presented, the Israeli spokesperson said, ‘Our strikes are based on intelligence,’” HRW said. “Even if accurate, Israel has not demonstrated that the ensuing hospital attacks were proportionate.”

    The group said Israel “should end attacks on hospitals” and urged the United Nations’ Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and the International Criminal Court to investigate.

    “Israel’s broad-based attack on Gaza’s healthcare system is an attack on the sick and the injured, on babies in incubators, on pregnant people, on cancer patients,” said Ahmed. “These actions need to be investigated as war crimes.”

    The new analysis came amid horrific reports of the impact that Israel’s assault is having on healthcare workers, patients, and displaced people seeking refuge from near-constant airstrikes.

    Reuters reported that people trapped inside al-Shifa Hospital “plan to start burying bodies within the hospital compound” on Tuesday “because the situation has become untenable.” The World Health Organization said over the weekend that the facility is “not functioning as a hospital anymore” due to power outages and a lack of supplies, which have caused the deaths of a number of patients—including premature babies.

    Dr. Ahmed Al Mokhallalati, a surgeon at al-Shifa, told Reuters that “the bodies were generating an unbearable stench and posing a risk of infection.”

    “Unfortunately there is no approval from the Israelis to even bury the bodies within the hospital area,” he said. “Today … civilians started digging within the hospital to try and bury the bodies on their own responsibility without any arrangements by the Israeli side. Burying 120 bodies needs a lot of equipment, it can’t be by hand efforts and by single-person efforts. It will take hours and hours to be able to bury all these bodies.”

    Doctors Without Borders, known internationally as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), said that on Tuesday morning, “bullets were fired into one of three MSF premises located near al-Shifa hospital and sheltering MSF staff and their families—over 100 people, including 65 children, who ran out of food last night.”

    “Thousands of civilians, medical staff, and patients are currently trapped in hospitals and other locations under fire in Gaza City; they must be protected and afforded safe passage if they wish to leave,” the group added. “Above that, there must be a total and immediate cease-fire.”

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

  • Over 50 Bodies Pulled From Rubble of Gaza School Bombed Amid Israeli Assault

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

    Men check the bodies of people killed in bombardment that hit a school housing displaced Palestinians, as they lie on the ground in the yard of al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on November 10, 2023.  (Photo: Khoder al-Zaanoun/AFP via Getty Images)

    As the death toll from Israel’s obliteration of Gaza topped 11,000, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said “far too many Palestinians have been killed”—while the United States’ armed aid to Israel continues.

    Palestinian civil defense officials said Friday that more than 50 bodies were recovered from the rubble of a school in northern Gaza where civilians were sheltering when it was destroyed during overnight Israeli bombardment.

    Palestine’s WAFA News Agency reported civil defense and ambulance rescue teams removed the blasted and crushed remains of victims of Thursday night’s missile and artillery strikes on the al-Buraq School in the al-Nasr neighborhood of Gaza City. The outlet said that most of those killed were women, children, and elders.

    The Times of Israel reports that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officials have not yet commented on the attack.

    Injured survivors of the attack were rushed to al-Shifa Hospital, which was hit by Israeli airstrikes at least four times over the past 24 hours.

    https://twitter.com/PalestineChron/status/1722988640320516470?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1722988640320516470%7Ctwgr%5Eb7a1a887a55b4dcb904301bcc9c73e5116d2a6e4%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fisrael-bombing-schools-and-hospitals

    As Common Dreams reported earlier Friday, Israeli strikes targeted the courtyard and obstetrics department of the hospital, where doctors have been forced to operate on patients without anesthesia after running out of critical supplies to treat an overwhelming number of wounded victims. Gaza officials said 13 people died in the attacks on al-Shifa.

    In an interview with Al Jazeera, al-Shifa general director Muhammad Abu Salmiya called Friday “a day of war against hospitals.”

    Israeli officials have made unsubstantiated claims of Hamas fighters operating from inside or under al-Shifa and other Gaza hospitals.

    https://twitter.com/HorvatSrecko/status/1723074428232224890?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1723074428232224890%7Ctwgr%5Eb7a1a887a55b4dcb904301bcc9c73e5116d2a6e4%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fisrael-bombing-schools-and-hospitals

    On Friday Israeli warplanes bombed in the vicinity of the Indonesian Hospital in Bait Lahia—where doctors announced a cessation of surgeries—while Mustafa al-Kahlout, director of the al-Nasr hospital and al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital in northern Gaza, told CNN that Israeli tanks had “surrounded” the complex.

    Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said Friday that northern Gaza resembles “hell on Earth” due to Israel’s bombardment and a lack of aid.

    Nearly 200 health workers, over 100 United Nations personnel, and dozens of journalists have been killed by Israeli forces during the war.

    The Gaza Health Ministry said Friday that at least 11,078 Palestinians—including more than 3,000 women and over 4,500 children—have been killed and upward of 27,000 injured by Israeli bombs and bullets since October 7, when Hamas-led attacks on Israel killed around 1,200 civilians and soldiers, with another 240 or so people taken hostage. Israeli officials on Friday revised down their death toll, which they previously said was higher than 1,400.

    According to Gaza officials, around 70% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been forcibly displaced, while half the homes in the besieged strip have been destroyed. Officials also said 238 schools, 67 mosques, and 88 government buildings have been wiped out by Israeli attacks.

    In the illegally occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem—whose residents were already suffering the deadliest year since the second intifada, or uprising, a generation ago—Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed at least 182 Palestinians while wounding thousands more since October 7.

    A growing number of legal experts, activists, and other observers are calling Israel’s war on Gaza “genocidal”—a characterization rejected by Israeli and U.S. leaders, with a handful of exceptions.

    (Image: Andalou via Getty Images)

    After 35 days of relentless and indiscriminate bombing—an IDF spokesperson acknowledged early in the war that “the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy”—U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday during a visit to India that “far too many Palestinians have been killed.”

    However, the U.S. continues to stand staunchly behind its number one Middle Eastern ally, with the Biden administration and Congress working on a $14.3 billion military aid package to Israel, atop the nearly $4 billion the country already receives from Washington annually. The U.S. also provides diplomatic cover for Israel, including a recent veto of a Brazil-led United Nations Security Council cease-fire resolution.

    While Israel on Thursday agreed to daily four-hour humanitarian pauses for at least three days so that civilians have a chance to flee the constant bombardment and advancing IDF ground forces, Israeli officials—and U.S. President Joe Biden—stress that no cease-fire is imminent.

    Israeli leaders have said a cease-fire is off the table until all hostages held by Gaza-based militants are freed. Abu Hamza, the military spokesperson of the al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, said Thursday that the group was preparing to release an elderly woman and teenage boy in its custody.

    United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini wrote in an opinion piece published Thursday by The Washington Post that “the present course chosen by the Israeli authorities will not bring the peace and stability that both Israelis and Palestinians want and deserve.”

    “Razing entire neighborhoods to the ground is not an answer for the egregious crimes committed by Hamas,” Lazzarini asserted. “To the contrary, it is creating a new generation of aggrieved Palestinians who are likely to continue the cycle of violence. The carnage simply must stop.”

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