Israel Defense Forces

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Continue ReadingMany Children Among Hundreds Killed, Wounded in Latest Israeli Bombings of Gaza

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With All Eyes on Gaza, Israel Bulldozed ‘Mile After Mile’ of West Bank

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

Palestinians walk around the damage in Jenin’s city center after an Israeli military raid in the occupied West Bank on September 6, 2024.  (Photo: Nasser Ishtayeh/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

“We watched their bulldozers tear up streets, demolish businesses, pharmacies, schools,” said one local leader. “They even bulldozed the town soccer field, and a tree in the middle of a road.”

As the world watched Israel’s assaults on Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, The New York Times on Wednesday also directed attention to the West Bank, detailing how “Israeli military bulldozers tore up mile after mile” of Jenin and Tulkarm in recent weeks.

While “nearly nightly raids” by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) “have become the norm” in the West Bank since the Hamas-led October 7 attack, the military last month “launched one of its most extensive and deadliest raids” in the illegally occupied Palestinian territory in years, the newspaper reported, citing videos and interviews with residents.

“We watched their bulldozers tear up streets, demolish businesses, pharmacies, schools. They even bulldozed the town soccer field, and a tree in the middle of a road,” said Kamal Abu al-Rub, governor of Jenin. “What was the point of all of this?”

In addition to ground operations in the West Bank, the IDF has increased airstrikes that critics say run afoul of international law. The military defended the strikes and told the Times that in recent raids, troops found weapon stockpiles and killed or arrested dozens of militants—but also caused some “unavoidable harm to certain civilian structures.”

In response to videos included in the reporting, freelance journalist Pete Tucker accused Israeli soldiers of “methodically laying waste to” the West Bank.

Malini Ranganathan, an associate professor at American University’s School of International Service, said on social media that “Israel’s criminality knows no limits. IDF bulldozers have been obliterating the West Bank, even tearing up roundabouts.”

Israeli forces have damaged homes, shops, and roads along with internet, electricity, phone, water, and sewage lines in the West Bank. Emergency crews have been unable to respond to hundreds of calls per day, because they can’t reach people in need.

“They are imposing conditions, materially and psychologically, that make people feel: Gaza is coming to you,” Al Haq director Shawan Jabarin told the Times. “There is a feeling among Palestinians across the West Bank that what is coming is very bad—that it will be a plan to kill and expel us.”

Since the October 7 attack on Israel that killed more than 1,100 people, Israeli forces have slaughtered at least 41,455 Palestinians in Gaza and 716 in the West Bank. Across the Palestinian territories, over 100,000 others have been injured over the past year. The bloodshed led to an ongoing genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

The ICJ in July issued a nonbinding advisory opinion that Israel’s decadeslong occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is illegal and must end “as rapidly as possible.” Instead, Israel has ramped up attacks on not only the Palestinian territories, but also Lebanon, home to the political and paramilitary group Hezbollah.

This week’s bombing campaign in Lebanon—which has killed at least 569 people—sparked fresh calls for the Biden administration to finally cut off weapons to Israel, as did the new reporting from the Times, which has been accused of pro-Israel bias in its coverage of the assault on Gaza.

Meanwhile, Israeli destruction in the West Bank continues. The International Middle East Media Centerreported that “on Wednesday, Israeli soldiers invaded the town of Beit Ula, west of Hebron in the occupied West Bank’s southern part, [and] bulldozed over 20 dunams of land, uprooting more than 600 fruit-bearing trees, and demolishing several agricultural structures and wells.”

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

Continue ReadingWith All Eyes on Gaza, Israel Bulldozed ‘Mile After Mile’ of West Bank

‘Horrific’ Video Shows Israeli Soldiers Pushing, Kicking Palestinian Bodies From Rooftop

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

Israeli soldiers are seen from a distance, appearing to throw and kick the bodies of Palestinians off a rooftop in [Qabatiya, a West Bank town.]

“There is no military need to do this,” said one rights advocate.

In the latest potential violation of international law by Israeli soldiers in the occupied Palestinian territories, footage verified by media outlets on Friday showed members of the Israel Defense Forces pushing and kicking what appeared to be the lifeless bodies of three Palestinians off a rooftop in Qabatiya, a West Bank town.

The Associated Press obtained video showing three soldiers on the roof of a building that the IDF had attacked with grenades earlier, picking up a body and dragging it toward the edge of the rooftop before pushing it off. On another nearby rooftop, the soldiers in the footage are seen swinging a body by its limbs over the edge of the building onto the ground below, where a bulldozer operated by the IDF was moving.

A third body is seen being kicked by a soldier toward the edge of a building. Ultimately, the soldier kicks the human body all the way off.

An AP journalist and other reporters in Qabatiya also told the outlet they had witnessed the incidents, while Al Jazeera reported it had verified the footage.

Al Jazeera correspondent Hamdah Salhut posted the disturbing footage on the social media platform X.

[dizzy: The link to X is not working, failing with the message “Not found” so I have substituted the following Youtube video.]

Ameed Shehadeh, a correspondent for Al-Arabi who also witnessed the incident, told CNN that “a bulldozer tried to demolish the house to bring the bodies down.”

“That didn’t work,” said Shehadeh. “Soldiers went up and kicked and pushed the bodies off the roof, as we have seen.”

Mustafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, said the video didn’t make clear whether the Israeli soldiers had verified whether the people “were still alive or not” before they kicked and pushed them off the rooftops.

Under the statute of the International Criminal Court, the war crime defined as “committing outrages upon personal dignity” prohibits soldiers from mutilating dead bodies in armed conflicts.

The IDF has been accused of “necroviolence” against the bodies of Palestinians they’ve killed in the past, including in 2020 when a journalist shot a video showing an IDF soldier running over a lifeless body with a bulldozer.

“The footage we’ve seen is horrific and it’s making the rounds here in Palestine. But ultimately, Palestinians are not surprised. Israel has a track record of disrespecting the bodies of the Palestinians they kill,” said Leila Warah, an independent journalist in Palestine.

The Israeli military released a statement saying the footage showed “a serious incident that does not coincide with IDF values and the expectations from IDF soldiers.”

Other attacks and incidents in Gaza and the West Bank over the past year that the IDF has claimed were accidents or were not in accordance with its rules and values include, but are not limited to, the killing of U.S. activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi in the West Bank this month, the bombing of a so-called “safe zone” in Rafah, and air strikes that killed seven aid workers with World Central Kitchen in Gaza.

Following a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel last October, Israeli officials also said they were releasing all “restraints” on the IDF in Gaza and referred to the enclave’s 2.3 million people as “human animals.”

The Palestinian Health Ministry reports that the IDF has killed at least 700 Palestinians in the West Bank since last October.

Shawan Jabarin, director of Palestinian rights group Al-Haq, said of the video released Friday, “there is no military need to do this. It’s just a savage way of treating Palestinian bodies.”

He added that the IDF will likely not hold anyone accountable for the abuse of the dead bodies.

“The most that will happen is that soldiers will be disciplined,” said Jabarin, “but there will be no real investigation and no real prosecution.”

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

Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted "I support Zionism without qualification." He's asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Continue Reading‘Horrific’ Video Shows Israeli Soldiers Pushing, Kicking Palestinian Bodies From Rooftop

Amnesty War Crimes Probe Exposes Israel’s ‘Wanton Destruction’ in Gaza

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Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

A Palestinian woman surveys the destruction by Israeli forces of her home and neighborhood in Khuza’a, which is located near Gaza’s border with Israel, on November 25, 2023. (Photo: Mustafa Hassona/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“The creation of any ‘buffer zone’ must not amount to the collective punishment of the Palestinian civilians who lived in these neighborhoods,” warned one Amnesty campaigner.

Amnesty International said Thursday that the Israeli military should be investigated for the “war crimes of wanton destruction and of collective punishment” over its destruction of entire communities along Gaza’s border with Israel.

“Using bulldozers and manually laid explosives, the Israeli military has unlawfully destroyed agricultural land and civilian buildings, razing entire neighborhoods, including homes, schools, and mosques,” the London-based rights group said in a new investigation.

Amnesty analyzed satellite imagery, as well as photos and videos posted online by invading Israel Defense Forces troops between October and May, and found that the IDF has cleared wide swathes of land up to 1.2 miles (1.8 km) wide along Gaza’s eastern border.

“In some videos, Israeli soldiers are seen posing for pictures or toasting in celebration as buildings are demolished in the background,” the report states.

Israeli forces laid waste to much of Khuza’a in Khan Younis governate, under the pretext that Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel from the town on October 7.

Salem Qudeih, a teacher who lived in Khuza’a about a mile from the border, told Amnesty that “around my family home we had a three dunam (0.7 acre) orchard full of fruit trees. They were all destroyed. Only an apple tree and a rose were left.”

“I had bees and produced honey. All of it is gone now,” he added. “Out of the 222 houses of my relatives in the area, only about a dozen remain. My home—where I lived with my wife, my five daughters, and one son—was completely destroyed.”

Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty’s senior director for research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns, said in a statement: “The Israeli military’s relentless campaign of ruin in Gaza is one of wanton destruction. Our research has shown how Israeli forces have obliterated residential buildings, forced thousands of families from their homes, and rendered their land uninhabitable.”

“Our analysis reveals a pattern along the eastern perimeter of Gaza that is consistent with the systematic destruction of an entire area,” she continued. “These homes were not destroyed as the result of intense fighting. Rather, the Israeli military deliberately razed the land after they had taken control of the area.”

“The creation of any ‘buffer zone’ must not amount to the collective punishment of the Palestinian civilians who lived in these neighborhoods,” Guevara-Rosas added. “Israel’s measures to protect Israelis from attacks from Gaza must be carried out in conformity with its obligations under international law, including the prohibition of wanton destruction and of collective punishment.”

“The Israeli military deliberately razed the land after they had taken control of the area.”

Other experts—including United Nations officials and scholars—have previously highlighted what Robert Pape, a U.S. military historian and University of Chicago professor, described as “one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history.”

In the 335 days since October 7, Israeli forces have killed or maimed more than 145,000 Palestinians in Gaza while forcibly displacing almost all of the embattled strip’s 2.3 million people and destroying hundreds of thousands of homes and other structures, according to Palestinian and international officials. Rebuilding after Israel’s obliteration of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure is expected to cost over $18.5 billion, or nearly Palestine’s entire annual gross domestic product.

Israel is currently on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Meanwhile, International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan has applied for warrants to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leaders for alleged war crimes including extermination.

“International humanitarian law, which applies in situations of armed conflict, including during military occupation, is comprised of rules whose central purpose is to limit, to the maximum extent feasible, human suffering in times of armed conflict,” Amnesty explained Thursday.

The group noted that under the Fourth Geneva Convention, “extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly,” is a war crime.

Additionally, the treaty bans collective punishment of civilians, stating that “no protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed.”

Amnesty has repeatedly accused Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza and has urged the ICC to open investigations into multiple “indiscriminate” and “disproportionate” IDF massacres, as well as torture and other alleged human rights violations.

Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

Continue ReadingAmnesty War Crimes Probe Exposes Israel’s ‘Wanton Destruction’ in Gaza