Israel Defense Forces

IDF Storms Largest Hospital in Southern Gaza and Attacks ‘Ward Full of Patients’

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

Injured Palestinians, including children, are brought to Nasser Hospital to receive medical treatment following Israeli attacks in Khan Younis, Gaza on January 22, 2024.  (Photo: Belal Khaled/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“The situation is escalating every hour and every minute,” said a surgeon at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.

Israeli forces on Thursday stormed the largest hospital in southern Gaza, ignoring warnings from United Nations officials, humanitarian groups, and the facility’s administrators that such a raid would put the lives of patients and people sheltering there at dire risk.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reportedly destroyed the southern wall of the Nasser Hospital complex in Khan Younis and started raiding the facility, where around 10,000 people had sought shelter from Israeli airstrikes and ground attacks.

Without providing evidence, Israel has claimed Hamas is using the hospital for “military activities.” Israel also claimed to have intelligence indicating that hostages or their bodies were being held at Nasser.

Ashraf al-Qudra, a spokesman for Gaza’s health ministry, said Thursday that Israel launched a “massive incursion” into the hospital, firing on and wounding people inside and ordering the facility’s staff to move all patients who were unable to flee into a building that’s not adequately equipped, The Associated Press reported.

As of Wednesday afternoon, more than 1,500 displaced people and patients were still inside the Nasser complex, Gaza health officials said in an update on social media.

“Many cannot evacuate, such as those with lower limb amputations, severe burns, or the elderly,” al-Qudra told Al Jazeera.

Others worried that Israeli forces would shoot them if they tried to leave.

“I’m terrified to leave the hospital and get shot,” Hanin Abu Tiba, a 27-year-old English teacher sheltering at the hospital, toldThe New York Times on Wednesday.

The raid began Thursday after Israeli forces reportedly bombed a ward of the hospital that was full of patients. Gaza health officials said the IDF targeted the hospital’s orthopedic department, killing at least one person and injuring “many” more.

The Israeli military, which has encircled Nasser Hospital for weeks, began ordering civilians inside the facility to evacuate on Tuesday.

Citing one of the only remaining journalists inside the facility, The Intercept reported Wednesday that the IDF sent a handcuffed Palestinian man into Nasser to tell people sheltering inside to leave.

An Israeli soldier shot the man, later identified as Jamal Abu Al-Ola, three times in the chest and abdomen as he began walking out of the hospital after delivering the message.

Israeli snipers have also opened fire on people scrambling to flee the hospital as well as medical personnel and patients inside the facility.

Gaza health officials said Wednesday that the situation at Nasser is “catastrophic” and that Israel’s evacuation orders sparked “a state of panic among its residents.”

Dr. Ahmed Moghrabi, a surgeon at Nasser, posted video footage to Instagram that provides a glimpse of the chaos inside the hospital as it comes under Israeli attack.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3WPe8lILDa/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Dr. Khaled Alserr, another Nasser surgeon, told AP that seven people injured by Israeli attacks on Thursday were already being treated for existing wounds. Alserr said a doctor was also injured when an Israeli drone “opened fire on the upper stories of the hospital.”

“The situation is escalating every hour and every minute,” he said.

Israel’s raid began hours after Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), also known as Doctors Without Borders, condemned the evacuation orders and reiterated its call for a permanent cease-fire. MSF said some of its staff members were “still in the building” treating patients “amid near impossible conditions.”

“People have been forced into an impossible situation: stay at Nasser Hospital against the Israeli military’s orders and become a potential target, or exit the compound into an apocalyptic landscape where bombings and evacuation orders are a part of daily life,” Lisa Macheiner, MSF’s project coordinator in Gaza, said in a statement. “Hospitals should be considered as safe places and shouldn’t even be evacuated in the first place.”

In a Nasser update posted to social media Thursday morning, MSF said that “following shelling this morning, our staff reported a chaotic situation, with an undetermined number of people killed and injured.”

“Our medical staff have had to flee the hospital, leaving patients behind,” the group said. “Israeli forces set up a checkpoint to screen people leaving the compound; one of our colleagues was detained at this checkpoint. We call for his safety and the protection of his dignity.”

MSF demanded that the Israeli military “immediately stop this attack, as it endangers medical staff and patients who are still stuck inside the facility.”

This post has been updated with new comments from Médecins Sans Frontières.

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

Continue ReadingIDF Storms Largest Hospital in Southern Gaza and Attacks ‘Ward Full of Patients’

IDF Let Israeli Civilians Film Torture of Palestinian Detainees: Report

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

Stripped, blindfolded, and bound Palestinian civilians are taken prisoner and ordered into a line by Israeli occupation forces in Gaza in December 2023.  (Photo: Social media post by Israeli soldier)

“This is beyond military occupation, apartheid, economic exploitation, and all the rest,” asserted one journalist. “There is something extremely sickening happening here.”

Israel Defense Forces officers brought Israeli civilians into detention centers and allowed them to watch and film Palestinian prisoners being tortured, according to survivor testimonies published this week by the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.

Prisoners held at detention centers in Zikim on the northern border of the Gaza Strip and at a site in southern Israel affiliated with Naqab Prison “told Euro-Med Monitor that the Israeli soldiers had purposefully presented them before Israeli civilians, falsely claiming that they were fighters affiliated with Palestinian armed factions and that they had taken part in the October 7 attack on Israeli towns,” the group said.

The former detainees said groups of 10-20 Israeli civilians were brought in and allowed to record torture sessions in which the men, stripped nearly naked, were beaten with metal batons, electrocuted, and had hot water poured over their heads. The ex-prisoners said some of the Israelis laughed while filming their torture.

“I was arrested at the checkpoint set up near the Kuwait roundabout, which separates Gaza City from the central region, as part of the Israeli random arrest campaigns. I was subjected to all types of torture and abuse for approximately 52 days,” 43-year-old Omar Abu Mudallala told Euro-Med Monitor, adding that his IDF captors “brought Israeli civilians to watch our nude torture.”

Abu Mudallala continued:

The Israeli army brought a number of Israeli civilians into our detention centers while beating us and telling them, “These are Hamas terrorists who killed you and raped your women on 7 October,” while the Israeli civilians were filming us being beaten, abused, and tortured while making fun of us.

This happened five times while I was being held. The first time was in Barkasat Zikim, where we were blindfolded. However, one of the detainees who speaks Hebrew told us that the soldiers were interacting with Israeli civilians claiming that we were armed fighters. The other four incidents took place in the Negev detention facility, where successive Israeli groups were taken inside tents to witness our abuse and record the torture methods we were subjected to without allowing us to speak or interact with them. Since we were not wearing blindfolds at the time, I saw them all four times with my own eyes.

“One of the detainees who speaks Hebrew tried to explain to the Israeli civilians that we are civilians and we had nothing to do with any military activities, but that also did not help,” Abu Mudallala added. “However, he was subjected to severe psychological and physical torture. It was really shameful to bring Israeli citizens to record our torture for being allegedly involved in killing and rape incidents.”

Another former prisoner, identified only as 42-year-old D.H., told Euro-Med Monitor that “Israeli civilians were brought to witness the abuse and torture that we were subjected to, which the army deliberately began when they were present.”

“These Israelis sometimes brought their dogs with them to bark at us,” he added. “They also took pictures of us and posted them on social media apps, particularly TikTok, with the soldiers themselves doing the same.”

Euro-Med Monitor asserted that “the vast majority of those arrested from within the Gaza Strip have been subjected to arbitrary detention without being charged or brought to justice, with no legal measures taken against them.”

“They are also denied a fair trial and are subjected to forced disappearance, torture, and inhumane treatment,” the group added. “Israeli practices against Palestinian detainees are blatant violations of international conventions and standards, particularly the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, which forbids an occupying authority from transferring prisoners from the occupied territory to detention facilities on its territory, as well as torturing, attacking, or otherwise degrading the human dignity of those detained.”

Israeli forces, with their long history of torturing Palestinian prisoners, have been accused during the current war on Gaza of torturing civilian detainees before executing them. Photos and videos of Israeli troops abusing Palestinians—both alive and dead—have been published by perpetrators on social media. Human rights defenders point to such images and their proud display as evidence of Israeli genocide in a war in which more than 100,000 Palestinians have been killed, maimed, or gone missing.

The International Court of Justice found last month in a preliminary ruling that Israel is “plausibly” committing genocide in Gaza, while ordering Israeli forces to “take all measures” to avoid perpetrating genocidal acts.

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

Continue ReadingIDF Let Israeli Civilians Film Torture of Palestinian Detainees: Report

Amnesty Condemns Israeli Military’s ‘Shocking’ Violence Against West Bank Civilians

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

“These unlawful killings are in blatant violation of international human rights law,” said the rights group.

While Israeli officials continue to claim, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the Israel Defense Forces are targeting Hamas in their bombardment of occupied Palestine, a new report from Amnesty International on Monday details the extent to which the military has frequently used lethal force against civilians across the West Bank in addition to the more than 27,000 people it has killed in Gaza.

Calling for an investigation into possible war crimes, the group said it had analyzed four cases in which the IDF has used “unlawful lethal force” against people in the occupied West Bank and blocked medical professionals from reaching injured residents, with Amnesty’s Crisis Evidence Lab verifying 19 videos and four photos of the incidents.

The events documented in the report account for the deaths of 20 Palestinians, including seven children. Since October 7, when the IDF began attacking the West Bank and Gaza in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, at least 360 people have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank, including 94 children, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty’s director of global research, advocacy, and policy, said the surge in unlawful deadly attacks in the West Bank have been perpetrated “under the cover of the relentless bombardment and atrocity crimes in Gaza.”

“These unlawful killings are in blatant violation of international human rights law and are committed with impunity in the context of maintaining Israel’s institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination over Palestinians,” said Guevara-Rosas. “These cases provide shocking evidence of the deadly consequences of Israel’s unlawful use of force against Palestinians in the West Bank. Israeli authorities, including the Israeli judicial system, have proven shamefully unwilling to ensure justice for Palestinian victims.”

The report was released days after a team of Israeli forces disguised themselves as medical staff and civilians and raided Ibn Sina Hospital in the West Bank city of Jenin, killing three Palestinians who they claimed—without evidence—were planning an attack on Israel.

OCHA has recorded a sharp increase in “search and arrest operations” by the IDF in the occupied West Bank since October 7, with 54% of the 4,382 Palestinians injured in Israel’s assault sustaining their injuries during raids.

In the early days of the Israeli onslaught, 13 people, including six children, were killed during a raid on Nour Shams refugee camp in Tulkarem that began on October 19 and went on for 30 hours. IDF soldiers “stormed more than 40 residential homes, destroying personal belongings and drilling holes in the walls for sniper outposts” during the operation, which Israel said was in response to an improvised explosive device that was thrown at border police by Palestinians.

Israeli authorities cut off water and electricity to the camp and used bulldozers to destroy infrastructure, while stopping at least two ambulances from reaching people who were injured.

One person killed in the raid was 15-year-old Taha Mahami, who was “unarmed and posed no threat to the soldiers at the time he was shot, based on witness testimony and videos reviewed by Amnesty International.”

“They did not give him a chance. In an instant, my brother was eliminated,” said Fatima Mahamid, the victim’s sister. “Three bullets were fired without any mercy. The first bullet hit him in the leg. The second—in his stomach. Third, in his eye. There were no confrontations… there was no conflict.”

When the children’s father, Ibrahim Mahamid, tried to carry his injured son out of the line of fire, he was shot in the back by the IDF, sustaining damage to his internal organs.

“Neither Taha nor Ibrahim Mahamid posed a threat to security forces or anyone else when they were shot,” said Amnesty. “This unnecessary use of lethal force should be investigated as possible war crimes of wilful killing and willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health.”

In another “egregious” incident in October in Tulkarem, two eyewitnesses interviewed by Amnesty described Israeli forces opening fire from a watch tower on a crowd of at least 80 people who were holding a peaceful protest in solidarity with Gaza.

IDF soldiers opened fire on journalists wearing clearly visible “Press” markings as well as on a Palestinian man who was riding past the protest on a bike.

By carrying out such attacks, said Amnesty, Israel is violating international standards including the U.N. Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials.

“These standards prohibit the use of force by law enforcement officials unless strictly necessary and to the extent required for the performance of their duty and require that firearms may only be used as a last resort—when strictly necessary for military personnel or police to protect themselves or others against the imminent threat of death or serious injury,” said the group. “Willful killings of protected persons and willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to protected persons are grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention and war crimes.”

Guevara-Rosas said the incidents documented in the report, and the Israeli onslaught in the West Bank and Gaza as a whole, “is a litmus test for the legitimacy and reputation” of the International Criminal Court, which prosecutes war crimes, and that “it cannot afford to fail it.”

“In this climate of near total impunity, an international justice system worth its salt must step in,” said Guevara-Rosas. “The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court must investigate these killings and injuries as possible war crimes of willful killing and willfully causing great suffering or serious injury.”

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

Continue ReadingAmnesty Condemns Israeli Military’s ‘Shocking’ Violence Against West Bank Civilians

‘This Is Not Self-Defense… This Is Ethnic Cleansing’: Israel Blows Up Gaza University

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

The Israeli military used hundreds of mines to blow up Israa University in Gaza on January 17, 2024.  (Photo: Screengrab)

“All the universities in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed,” said one international relations expert.

The Israel Defense Forces’ detonation of more than 300 mines planted at Israa University in Gaza on Wednesday provided the latest evidence that Israel’s objective in its bombardment of the enclave is not self-defense, rights advocates said.

“This is not self-defense,” said Chris Hazzard, an Irish member of the United Kingdom’s Parliament. “This is not counter-insurgency. This is ethnic-cleansing.”

The International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC) called the destruction of Israa University Israel’s latest attempt to carry out a “cultural genocide” along with the slaughter of at least 24,620 people in just over three months—people who Israeli officials have claimed are legitimate military targets despite the fact that roughly half of those killed have been children.

The wiping out of cultural landmarks was included in South Africa’s International Court of Justice case accusing Israel of genocidal acts in Gaza last week, with the complaint noting that “Israel has damaged and destroyed numerous centers of Palestinian learning and culture,” including libraries, one of the world’s oldest Christian monasteries, and the Great Omari Mosque, where an ancient collection of manuscripts was kept before the building was destroyed in an airstrike last month.

“The crime of targeting and destroying archaeological sites should spur the world and UNESCO into action to preserve this great civilizational and cultural heritage,” Gaza’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said after the mosque was bombed.

Now, international relations professor Nicola Perugini of the University of Edinburgh said, “all the universities in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed.”

On its Facebook page, the university said the IDF had occupied the campus for about 70 days before planting 315 mines and detonating the institution’s main building, its museum, a university hospital, and other buildings.

The IDF occupied Israa University, said administrators, “and used it as a military base for its mechanisms and a center for [the] snatching of isolated civilians in the areas of Rashid, Maghraqa, and Zahraa streets, and temporarily detained [them] to investigate with citizens before moving them.”

Mitchell Plitnick, president of Rethinking Foreign Policy, said the fact that 315 mines were detonated meant that “by definition… it was not a legitimate military target.”

“Israel would have to have full control to plant so many mines,” said Plitnick. “This is a clear example of a war crime and destruction for the fun of it.”

Eight universities in Gaza have now been targeted since the IDF began its bombardment on October 7, according to the IMEMC.

Birzeit University, in the occupied West Bank, condemned the destruction of the school and accused Israel of stealing 3,000 rare artifacts from Israa’s museum.

“Birzeit University reaffirms the fact that this crime is part of the Israeli occupation’s onslaught against the Palestinians,” said the school on social media. “It’s all a part of the Israeli occupation’s goal to make Gaza uninhabitable; a continuation of the genocide being carried out in Gaza Strip.”

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

Continue Reading‘This Is Not Self-Defense… This Is Ethnic Cleansing’: Israel Blows Up Gaza University

Israel is decimating Gaza’s health infrastructure as disease threatens the majority of its population

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The public health situation among people displaced by Israeli attacks worsens by the day, as targeting of health workers and infrastructure continues

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

Healthcare workers at Al-Awda hospital. Photo: Al-Awda

The number of people infected with contagious diseases in Gaza continues to rise. The latest data from the World Health Organization (WHO) warns that 180,000 people are currently suffering from respiratory infections. Additionally, the UN’s health agency reports that 55,000 people have lice and scabies, 42,000 are experiencing various forms of skin rashes, and 136,000, half of whom are children under 5 years old, have contracted diarrhea.

While these diseases would not be deadly under conditions with a functioning health system and adequate living conditions, in the current situation, they could be life-threatening. “Unless something changes, the world faces the prospect of almost a quarter of Gaza’s 2 million population – close to half a million human beings – dying within a year. These would be largely deaths from preventable health causes and the collapse of the health system,” estimated Devi Sridhar, Chair in Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh, at the end of 2023.

If a permanent ceasefire does not take immediate effect, though, things are unlikely to change, as reiterated by WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a statement. WHO teams, now participating in fairly regular missions on the ground, are sending reports about overcrowding in Gaza’s hospitals and shelters. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, on January 4, only 9 out of 36 hospitals were partially functioning in the Strip, resulting in an average bed occupancy of 351% and 261% occupancy in intensive care units.

Israel’s attacks on healthcare in Palestine are affecting everyone, especially the most vulnerable. Cancer and dialysis patients cannot access the specific care they need, and most have not yet been transferred to hospitals abroad as announced. The Ministry of Health estimates that 5,300 patients need to be transferred abroad for treatment, but until January 5, less than 1,000 were moved. This number includes 571 people injured in the attacks and 401 patients who required distinct forms of care, including cancer patients.

Children and pregnant women are also groups most at risk from the attacks and their consequences. Over 5,000 babies were born in Gaza just last month, all requiring adequate care and nutrition. With mothers and families going hungry, it is evident that some of them are also lacking proper food. Among the newborns are about 130 premature babies dependent on incubators, yet most incubators are located in northern Gaza, which, in terms used by the WHO, has become a medical disaster zone.

In addition to going hungry and sleeping in overcrowded tents, newborns and children are also not getting vaccinated. Recounting the experience of a woman who recently gave birth, Nareman, who was “taken from her tent in a temporary camp by horse-drawn carriage to a hospital to give birth to her daughter, before returning to her makeshift home straight after,” the WHO warned that the health system in Gaza is struggling to ensure standard immunization routines. Nareman’s baby is among those who are yet to receive planned vaccines, and she is staying with her sisters and brothers at the camp, who are reportedly in ill health themselves.

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has managed to deliver 600,000 key vaccines into Gaza in the period between December 25-29, 2023, and is planning to deliver some 960,000 more together with WHO and UNICEF. Yet, this is no easy feat as Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) continue to target health infrastructure and health workers. Since the beginning of the attacks on October 7, 326 health workers in Palestine were killed by Israeli attacks, 764 were injured, and 65 were arrested, according to Ministry of Health data.

Many more experienced violence and intimidation by the IOF, including ambulances and partners of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS). On January 4, Israeli soldiers attacked a PRCS ambulance. Not long before that, the organization reported attacks targeting the house of Anwar Abu Holi, Director of the Central Gaza Ambulance Center, as well as multiple attacks on the Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis.

As shelling in the proximity of the hospital began, Al-Amal offered shelter to approximately 14,000 forcibly displaced people. The attacks, said the PRCS, endangered the lives of thousands. “The displaced persons are living in an atmosphere of horror and panic.”

The attacks that have taken place since the beginning of January killed 7 people, including a days-old baby, injured 11 more, and were reported by the PRCS to be ongoing on January 5, without a meaningful indication they would stop anytime soon.

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

Continue ReadingIsrael is decimating Gaza’s health infrastructure as disease threatens the majority of its population