Israel Defense Forces (IDF)

Doctors Without Borders Suspends Operations at Gaza City Clinics ‘Encircled by Israeli Forces’

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

A doctor’s office is left empty after Doctors Without Borders staff were forced to evacuate its last functioning medical facility in Gaza City, on September 26, 2025. (Photo by Doctors Without Borders on X)

“We have been left with no choice but to stop our activities,” said the humanitarian group’s Gaza coordinator. “This is the last thing we wanted.”

The humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders has been forced to suspend all its medical operations in Gaza City as its clinics have come under “escalating attacks from Israeli forces.”

In a statement published Friday, the group—officially known as Médecins Sans Frontières—said “the relentless Israeli offensive in Gaza City, Palestine, has forced [MSF] to suspend vital medical activities in the area due to the rapidly deteriorating security situation.

“The situation includes continued airstrikes and advancing tanks less than one kilometer from our healthcare facilities,” the group continued. “The escalating attacks from Israeli forces have created an unacceptable level of risk for our staff, forcing us to suspend lifesaving medical activities.”

As the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have pushed further into Gaza’s largest city in recent days, hundreds of thousands of people have been forcibly displaced, and hundreds of thousands more have been trapped in the besieged city.

Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza has destroyed much of the strip’s healthcare infrastructure and inflicted widespread disease and starvation.

Since it began in October 2023, MSF has provided over 1.1 million medical consultations, including in over 347,000 emergency cases, according to its website.

Just this week, even as Gaza City was pounded with airstrikes, the group says it carried out over 3,640 consultations and treated 1,655 people with malnutrition. They have also treated patients with severe trauma injuries and burns, as well as pregnant women and others who are unable to leave the city.

Earlier this month, Israel ordered everyone in Gaza City, over 1 million people, to evacuate or face the threat of military force. Hundreds of thousands have fled south. When the order was issued, MSF warned that it would be a “death sentence” for the many critically ill patients and newborn babies who’d be forced to abandon medical treatment.

“While large numbers of people have fled south due to evacuation orders, there are still hundreds of thousands in Gaza City, who are unable to leave and have no other option but to stay,” MSF said. “Those who are able to leave face an impossible choice: either remain in Gaza City under intense military operations and the deterioration of law and order, or abandon what’s left of their houses, their belongings, and their memories, to move to areas where humanitarian conditions are rapidly collapsing.”

The Gaza Health Ministry reported that 60 Palestinians have been killed and dozens more injured since dawn on Friday, bringing the official death toll since October 2023 to 65,549 people and the number of wounded to 167,518.

Meanwhile, at least seven hospitals have been forced to close due to heavy bombardment. Munir al-Bursh, the director general of Gaza’s Health Ministry, told Al Jazeera on Tuesday that Israeli attacks have killed at least 1,723 healthcare workers and damaged 38 hospitals since the war began in October 2023.

“We have been left with no choice but to stop our activities, as our clinics are encircled by Israeli forces,” says Jacob Granger, the emergency coordinator for MSF in Gaza. “This is the last thing we wanted, as the needs in Gaza City are enormous, with the most vulnerable people—infants in neonatal care, those with severe injuries and life-threatening illnesses—unable to move and in grave danger.”

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

Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that his active support and that of UK's air force has been essential in Israel's mass-murdering genocide.
Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that his active support and that of UK’s air force has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide.
Vote Labour for Genocide.
Vote Labour for Genocide.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza's hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
Continue ReadingDoctors Without Borders Suspends Operations at Gaza City Clinics ‘Encircled by Israeli Forces’

Israel is wiping out Gaza’s journalists – and it’s no longer even hiding it

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/15/israeli-military-unit-reportedly-tasked-with-linking-journalists-in-gaza-to-hamas

Candles being lit at a vigil on Monday outside the Fox News and NBC News headquarters in Washington DC for journalists killed in Gaza. Photograph: Mehmet Eser/Zuma Press Wire/Shutterstock

Israeli-Palestinian magazine says IDF ‘legitimisation cell’ set up to blunt global outrage over killing of media staff

A special unit in Israel’s military was tasked with identifying reporters it could smear as undercover Hamas fighters, to target them and to blunt international outrage over the killing of media workers, the Israeli-Palestinian outlet +972 Magazine reports.

The “legitimisation cell” was set up after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack to gather information that could bolster Israel’s image and shore up diplomatic and military support from key allies, the report said, citing three intelligence sources.

According to the report, in at least one case the unit misrepresented information in order to falsely describe a journalist as a militant, a designation that in Gaza is in effect a death sentence. The label was reversed before the man was attacked, one of the sources said.

Earlier this week, Israel killed the Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif and three colleagues in their makeshift newsroom, after claiming Sharif was a Hamas commander. The killings focused global attention on the extreme dangers faced by Palestinian journalists in Gaza and Israel’s efforts to manipulate media coverage of the war.

…

Article continues at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/15/israeli-military-unit-reportedly-tasked-with-linking-journalists-in-gaza-to-hamas

Experiencing issues with this image not appearing. I suspect because it's so critical of Zionist Keir Starmer's support of and complicity in Israel's genocides.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpA
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza's hospitals and universities,mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities,mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel's Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don't do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
Continue ReadingIsrael is wiping out Gaza’s journalists – and it’s no longer even hiding it

Reporters Without Borders Urges UN Action After Israel Massacres Gaza Journalists

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

People honor the more than 200 journalists killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, including Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif and his team, outside the Dutch Foreign Ministry in The Hague on August 11, 2025.  (Photo: Mouneb Taim/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“This massacre and Israel’s media blackout strategy, designed to conceal the crimes committed by its army for more than 21 months in the besieged and starving Palestinian enclave, must be stopped immediately.”

The international advocacy group Reporters Without Borders on Monday called on the United Nations Security Council to convene an emergency meeting following the massacre of six Palestinian media professionals in an Israeli strike on the Gaza Strip.

Al Jazeera reporters Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh, camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal, and Moamen Aliwa, and independent journalist Mohammed al-Khaldi were killed Sunday in a targeted Israel Defense Forces (IDF) strike on their tent outside al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

The IDF claimed that al-Sharif—one of the most prominent Palestinian journalists—”was the head of a Hamas terrorist cell,” repeating an allegation first made last year. However, independent assessments by United Nations experts, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, and Reporters Without Borders (RSF) concluded that Israel’s allegations were unsubstantiated.

Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill warned last year that the IDF’s portrayal of al-Sharif and other Palestinian journalists as Hamas members was “an assassination threat and an attempt to preemptively justify their murder” for showing the world the genocidal realities of Israel’s U.S.-backed war.

“Tonight Israel murdered the bravest journalistic hero in Gaza, Anas al-Sharif,” Scahill said Sunday on social media. “For nearly two straight years, he documented the genocide of his people with courage and principle. Israel put him on a hit list because of his voice. Shame on this world and all who were silent.”

Al Jazeera condemned Sunday’s massacre as “a desperate attempt to silence the voices exposing the impending seizure and occupation of Gaza.”

RSF issued a statement accusing the IDF of killing the six men “without providing solid evidence” of Hamas affiliation, a “disgraceful tactic” that is “repeatedly used against journalists to cover up war crimes.”

The Paris-based nonprofit noted that Israeli forces have “already killed more than 200 media professionals”—including at least 19 Al Jazeera workers and freelancers—since the IDF began its annihilation and siege of Gaza in retaliation for the October 7, 2023 attack led by Hamas.

These include Al Jazeera reporter Ismail al-Ghoul and photographer Rami al-Rifi, who were killed in a targeted strike on the al-Shati refugee camp in July 2024 following an IDF smear campaign alleging without proof that al-Ghoul took part in the October 7 attack. The IDF claimed that al-Ghoul received Hamas military training at a time when he would have been just 10 years old.

“RSF strongly condemns the killing of six media professionals by the Israeli army, once again carried out under the guise of terrorism charges against a journalist,” RSF director general Thibaut Bruttin said in a statement. “One of the most famous journalists in the Gaza Strip, Anas al-Sharif, was among those killed.”

“This massacre and Israel’s media blackout strategy, designed to conceal the crimes committed by its army for more than 21 months in the besieged and starving Palestinian enclave, must be stopped immediately,” Bruttin continued. “The international community can no longer turn a blind eye and must react and put an end to this impunity.”

“RSF calls on the U.N. Security Council to meet urgently on the basis of Resolution 2222 of 2015 on the protection of journalists in times of armed conflict in order to stop this carnage,” he added.

Israel’s latest killing of media professionals sparked international condemnation. On Monday, Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesperson for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, called for an investigation into the massacre, saying that “journalists and media workers must be respected, they must be protected and they must be allowed to carry out their work freely, free from fear and free from harassment.”

Recognizing the possibility that he would become one of the more than 61,500 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since October 2023, al-Sharif, like many Palestinian journalists, prepared a statement to be published in the event of his death.

“This is my will and my final message. If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice,” he wrote. “I urge you not to let chains silence you, nor borders restrain you. Be bridges toward the liberation of the land and its people, until the sun of dignity and freedom rises over our stolen homeland.”

“Make my blood a light that illuminates the path of freedom for my people and my family,” al-Sharif added.

Since October 2023, RSF has filed four complaints with the International Criminal Court—which last year issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes—requesting investigations into IDF killings of journalists in Gaza and accusing Israel of a deliberate “eradication of the Palestinian media.”

The six journalists’ killings came as Israeli forces prepared to ramp up the Gaza invasion with the stated goal of occupying the entire coastal enclave and ethnically cleansing much of its Palestinian population.

The Gaza Health Ministry said Monday afternoon that at least 69 Palestinians, including at least 10 children and 29 aid-seekers, were killed in the past 24 hours. An IDF strike on Gaza City reportedly killed nine people, including six children. Five more Palestinians also reportedly died of starvation in a burgeoning famine that officials say has claimed at least 222 lives, including 101 children.

Continue ReadingReporters Without Borders Urges UN Action After Israel Massacres Gaza Journalists

Why Labour REALLY Supports Genocide

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Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone obect to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza's hospitals and universities,mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone obect to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities,mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.

Continue ReadingWhy Labour REALLY Supports Genocide

Gunfire Communication with “Zombie Hordes”: The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and the IDF

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This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 

Palestinians flock to the aid center set up by the US and Israeli-led Gaza Humanitarian Relief Foundation on the Coastal Road in the Sudaniya area to receive food package in northern Gaza City, Gaza on June 17, 2025. [Saeed M. M. T. Jaras – Anadolu Agency]

by Dr Binoy Kampmark

It’s made to order.  First, eliminate the aid system after creating circumstances of enormous suffering.  Then, kill, starve, vanquish and displace those in need of that aid.  Finally: give the pretence of humanity by ensuring some aid to those whose suffering you created in the first place. 

As things stand, the system of aid distribution in the Gaza Strip is intended to cause suffering and destruction to recipients.  Since 26 May, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an opaquely structured entity with Israeli and US backing, has run the distribution of parcels from a mere four points, a grim joke given the four hundred or so outlets previously operated by the United Nations Palestinian relief agency.  The entire process of seeking aid has been heavily rationed and militarised, with Israeli troops and private contractors exercising murderous force with impunity. Opening times are not set, rendering the journey to the distribution points even more precarious.  When they do open, they do so for short spells.  

Haaretz has run reports quoting soldiers of the Israeli Defence Forces claiming to have orders to deliberately fire upon unarmed crowds on their perilous journey to the food sites.  In a 27 June piece, the paper quotes a soldier describing the distribution sites as “a killing field.”  Where he was stationed, “between one and five people were killed every day.”  Those seeking aid were “treated like a hostile force – no crowd-control measures, no tear gas – just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars.  Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they can approach.  Our form of communication is gunfire.” 

The interviewed soldier could recall no instance of return fire. “There’s no enemy, no weapons.”  IDF officers also told the paper that the GHF’s operations had provided a convenient distraction for continuing operations in Gaza, which had been turned into a “backyard”, notably during Israel’s war with Iran.  In the words of a reservist, the Strip had “become a place with its own set of rules.  The loss of human life means nothing.  It’s not even an ‘unfortunate incident’, like they used to say.”

An IDF officer involved in overseeing security at one of the distribution centres was full of understatement.  “Working with a civilian population when your only means of interaction is opening fire – that’s highly problematic, to say the least.”  It was “neither ethically nor morally acceptable for people to have to reach, or fail to reach, a [humanitarian zone] under tank fire, snippers and mortar shells.”

READ: More than 700,000 people displaced in Gaza since March: UN

Much the same story can be found with the security contractors, those enthusiastic killers following in the footsteps of predecessors who treat international humanitarian law as inconvenient if not altogether irrelevant.  Countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq can attest to the blood-soiled record of private military contractors, with the killing of 14 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad city’s Nisour Square by Blackwater USA employees in September 2007 being but one spectacular example.  While those employees faced trial and conviction in a US federal court in 2014 on an assortment of charges – among them murder, manslaughter and attempted manslaughter – such a fate is unlikely for any of those working for the GHF.

On 4 July, the BBC published the observations of a former contractor on the trigger-happy conduct of his colleagues around the food centres.  In one instance, a guard opened fire on women, children and elderly people “moving too slowly away from the site.”  Another contractor, also on location, stood on the berm overlooking the exit to one of the GHF sites, firing 15 to 20 bursts of repetitive fire at the crowd.  “A Palestinian man dropped on the ground motionless.  And then, the other contractor who was standing there was like, ‘damn, I think you got one’.  And then they laughed about it.”

The company had also failed to issue contractors any operating procedures or rules of engagement, except one: “if you feel threatened, shoot – shoot to kill and ask questions later.”  No reference is made to the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Service Providers.  To journey to Gaza was to go to a land unencumbered by laws and rules.  “Do what you want,” is the cultural norm of GHF operatives.  And this stands to reason, given the reference of “team leaders” to Gazans seeking aid as “zombie hordes”.

The GHF, in time honoured fashion, have denied these allegations.  Ditto the IDF, that great self-proclaimed stalwart of international law.  It is therefore left to such contributors as Anas Baba, NPR’s producer in the Gaza Strip, to enlighten those who care to read and listen.  As one of the few Palestinian journalists working for a US news outlet in the strip, his observations carry singular weight.   In a recent report, Baba neatly summarised the manufactured brutality behind the seeking of aid in an enclave strangled and suffering gradual extinction.  “I faced Israeli military fire, private US contractors pointing laser beams at my forehead, crowds with knives fighting for rations and masked thieves – to get food from a group supported by the US and Israel called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation”.  

If nothing else, it is high time that the GHF scrap any pretence of being humanitarian in its title and admit to its true role: an adjutant to Israel’s program of extirpating Gaza’s Palestinian population.  

OPINION: An economy of genocide: Israel and the Albanese Report

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 

Continue ReadingGunfire Communication with “Zombie Hordes”: The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and the IDF