Israel Defense Forces

Palestinians Describe ‘Hell’ in Gaza’s So-Called ‘Humanitarian Zone’

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

A view of destruction in the al-Mawasi area after an Israeli attack in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on July 14, 2024. (Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images

“We live in an area that is considered humanitarian and is supposed to be safe, but it is not,” one woman said. “There is no safe place for us or our children.”

Palestinians living in the so-called “humanitarian zone” designated by Israel described extreme and worsening overcrowding on Tuesday, saying that as the Israel Defense Forces has repeatedly struck the area in recent months, displaced people living there have been left feeling they “could die any minute.”

A 37-year-old mother of four, Nisreen Joudeh, told The New York Times that al-Mawasi, a stretch of coastal land to which hundreds of thousands of people from other parts of Gaza have evacuated under Israeli orders, “is no longer a safe area.”

With materials for tents now costing hundreds of dollars instead of an average of $50 as they did before Israel began bombarding Gaza and blocking humanitarian aid last October, families now commonly share the tents that have been erected along the sandy shore area.

“A tent that used to accommodate four to seven people now houses 15 to 17 people from two or more families,” a man named Karel Mohammed told the Times, and overcrowding has intensified in recent weeks as Israel forcibly displaced tens of thousands more Palestinians and ordered them to al-Mawasi.

People face “scorching heat” with very few trees to provide shade, and have access to only “primitive bathrooms,” according to Mohammed.

With Israel continuing to block large amounts of humanitarian aid—actions that United Nations experts last month said have pushed Gaza into famine—Mohammed said there is “no drinkable water, no healthy food” in al-Mawasi.

“The truth is that this area is anything but humanitarian,” said Mohammed. “Our life in these camps is like hell.”

The Times‘ dispatch from al-Mawasi came a day after the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported that the “lack of clean water” and the destruction of Gaza’s sanitation and sewage treatment systems” have caused a surge in diseases including diarrhea and skin disorders across Gaza.

Mona al-Farra, another Palestinian who is sheltering in al-Mawasi in a tent crowded with nine other family members, said skin rashes among children have particularly become rampant due to a lack of clean water and medicine.

“We live in an area that is considered humanitarian and is supposed to be safe, but it is not,” she told the Times, adding that her family frequently hears airstrikes nearby. “There is no safe place for us or our children.”

Last month, at least 90 Palestinians were killed in a bombing within al-Mawasi, which the IDF said had targeted Hamas commander Muhammed Deif.

The so-called humanitarian zone covers 18 square miles, according to the U.N., or nearly 13% of the Gaza Strip. The IDF adjusted the area’s borders last month, shrinking it by about one-fifth.

Doctors Without Borders, also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), shared on social media on Monday drawings that had been made by children in a mental health clinic in al-Mawasi, with the artwork exemplifying the “complete psychological destruction” among Gaza’s youngest residents that a report warned of earlier this year.

“Even though the wounds are invisible, the drawings provide a glimpse into what these children have witnessed. It is beyond words,” said Samuel Johann, an emergency coordinator for MSF. “I cannot express what I feel, seeing what these children have experienced, through their eyes and the reality they are facing.”

“Today,” he said, “I heard a Palestinian colleague describe the human suffering of the war as such: ‘Only the dead have been spared this suffering.'”

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

Continue ReadingPalestinians Describe ‘Hell’ in Gaza’s So-Called ‘Humanitarian Zone’

Israeli Leaders Demand Probe of IDF Rape Video—To Find Out Who Leaked It

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

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich speaks during a rally in Sderot, Israel on October 26, 2022. (Photo: Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP via Getty Images)

“This is what Israelis rioted to protect, what the Knesset debated—the right to rape Palestinians,” said one critic.

While human rights groups called for an investigation of a leaked recording apparently showing Israel Defense Forces reservists gang-raping a Palestinian detainee at the Sde Teiman military base and detention center, Israeli leaders including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Wednesday also furiously demanded a probe of the video—not to seek justice for the victim, but rather to find and punish whoever leaked it.

Smotrich took to social media Wednesday to call for “an immediate criminal investigation to locate the leakers of the trending video that was intended to harm the reservists and that caused tremendous damage to Israel in the world, and to exhaust the full severity of the law against them.”

Israeli media on Tuesday aired footage in which Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reservists are seen attacking a Palestinian man at Sde Teiman while trying to hide their actions with shields.

According to Israeli media reports, the victim was hospitalized with a severe anal injury, ruptured bowel, broken ribs, and lung damage.

Nine alleged assailants—who include members of Force 100, the military unit tasked with guarding Sde Teiman prisoners—were arrested last week in connection with the attack. A mob of far-right Israelis including senior government officials subsequently stormed two military bases in an attempt to free the suspects.

While many Israelis condemned the alleged rape, others rallied around the accused reservists. Smotrich described them as “heroic warriors.” National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called them “our best heroes.”

Far-right Israeli lawmaker Zvi Sukkot—who took part in last week’s riot—joined Smotrich in demanding an investigation of the video leak.

“Leaking and disclosure of investigative materials is a criminal offense that harms the proper legal process, the rule of law, public trust, and the principle of justice,” he said Wednesday.

Israeli media reported Wednesday that two of the accused reservists lied on polygraph tests when asked if they had sodomized the prisoner.

Numerous Israelis continued to express support for the accused rapists. Israel Today political reporter Yehuda Schlesinger said Wednesday on a popular morning show that “I don’t give a rat’s ass what they do to Hamas man.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1821121616094412908

“First of all, they deserve it,” Schlesinger said of the abuse at Sde Teiman and other Israeli military prisons. “It’s great revenge that we need to give them.”

“It’s just a shame that we don’t do it in an institutionalized way, as part of regulations for torture of prisoners,” he added, “because then the next guys who think about doing another October 7 will say, ‘Do you see what they’re doing to [us] in Israel?'”

Etan Nechin, the New York correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, accused the media of being the “main culprit” that “has normalized the most extreme voices, letting genocidal brutes, racists, and messianic zealots into Israeli’s TV sets.”

Some American media critics drew attention to the scant coverage of abuse at Sde Teiman in the U.S. corporate media.

“U.S. taxpayers continue to support this military and its torture camps,” Palestinian American author and political analyst Yousef Munayyer wrote on social media. “How is this not front-page news?”

In the United States—which supports Israel’s war on Gaza with billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic cover—State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said during a Wednesday press conference that “there ought to be zero tolerance for sexual abuse, rape of any detainee. Period.”

“It is appropriate that the IDF in this case, has announced an investigation, has arrested a number of people who are alleged to have been involved, and I won’t speak to the outcome of that investigation, but it ought to proceed swiftly,” Miller added.

Critics noted the IDF’s chronic failures to credibly investigate its alleged crimes. The Israeli rights group Yesh Din said in late 2022 that less than 1% of Israeli soldiers accused of harming Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza were indicted over the previous five years.

The Israeli Supreme Court on Wednesday took up a petition by rights groups seeking to close Sde Teiman, where widespread—and sometimes deadly—torture has been reported. Last month, Israel’s High Court issued a conditional order seeking to shut down the prison in response to the flood of reports of torture there.

Former prisoners including children and Israeli whistleblowers at Sde Teiman—often called “Israel’s Guantánamo Bay”—have described rampant torture and abuse at the facility, which is used to imprison Palestinians captured in the Gaza Strip. According to their testimonies, prisoners have been raped, electrocuted, mauled by dogs, burned with cigarettes, severely beaten, starved, and subjected to 24-hour shackling sometimes leading to amputations.

The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said this week that at least 60 Palestinians have died in Israeli custody since October.

More than 1,100 Israelis and others died during the Hamas-led attack on October 7, during which more than 240 other people were kidnapped. Israel’s response—which is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case—has left more than 142,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, according to local and international officials.

Smotrich suggested earlier this week that it is “moral and justified” to starve 2 million Palestinians to death. So far, at least dozens, mostly children, have died from malnutrition, dehydration, and lack of medical care in Gaza amid Israel’s crippling assault and siege.

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

Continue ReadingIsraeli Leaders Demand Probe of IDF Rape Video—To Find Out Who Leaked It

‘A Full-Fledged War Crime’: Israel Condemned Over New Human Shield Footage

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

Footage shows a Palestinian man being used by the Israel Defense Forces as a human shield. (Photo: Al Jazeera)

“These crimes, and dozens of similar cases, require urgent intervention from the international justice system,” said one human rights group.

The latest video evidence of Israel’s use of Palestinians as “human shields” during combat was condemned by one human rights advocate on Monday as “horrifying but not surprising,” as campaigners emphasized that the Israel Defense Forces has long used civilians in Palestine to shield their own soldiers from harm while bombarding Gaza and the West Bank.

Footage released by Al Jazeera on Sunday night showed Israeli forces attaching body cameras to handcuffed Palestinians who they had detained, dressing them in IDF uniforms, and sending them into buildings and tunnels to ensure the locations weren’t rigged with explosives.

The footage presented “evidence of a systematic tactic of the army,” said the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.

“The leaked horrific scenes that were obtained and published by Al Jazeera reveal how the Israeli army uses civilians, including injured detainees, as human shields and forces them into hazardous combat zones after installing cameras on their bodies and binding them with rope,” said Euro-Med. “Each of the aforementioned acts of criminal, brutal, and inhumane behavior constitutes a grave violation of the rules of international humanitarian law, and is a full-fledged war crime. These crimes, and dozens of similar cases, require urgent intervention from the international justice system to ensure the protection of civilians, prevent their use as human shields, and hold the Israeli political and military perpetrators.”

The Israeli government has long blamed Hamas’ use of “human shields” for deaths in Gaza, which now number at least 37,900, saying the group operates out of civilian infrastructure and places Palestinians in harm’s way.

Journalist Dan Cohen pointed out that the IDF has used what it calls “the neighbor procedure” for decades, forcing Palestinian “messengers” to approach the homes of suspected fugitives alone and unarmed while Israeli soldiers announce over a loudspeaker that they are surrounding the building.

The procedure “is so commonplace that the military tried to justify it as a lifesaving measure in use since the 1980s,” said Cohen. “The images… show the reality of this criminal practice.”

In its statement on the new footage, Euro-Med detailed numerous instances in which Israel has appeared to use human shields as defined by the Geneva Conventions: “cases where persons were actually taken to military objectives in order to shield those objectives from attacks.”

As Euro-Med reported:

During the Shifa Medical Complex raid in March 2024, Israeli forces used civilians, including patients and displaced individuals sheltering inside the complex, as human shields. To protect their military operations within the hospital and its vicinity, Israeli forces exploited Palestinian civilians by making them form human barriers to surround Israeli soldiers and military vehicles, or sending them under threat to residential homes and buildings to either help arrest or forcibly evacuate other civilians before army raids and the subsequent destruction of many of these buildings.

[…]

Furthermore, several families residing near the Shifa Medical Complex reported that Israeli forces arrested young men from inside the medical facility, then used them to enter the families’ homes and demand that they immediately evacuate to the central and southern Strip.

The group also cited a recent example from June 22 in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, where Israeli forces placed a wounded Palestinian man on the hood of a military vehicle and drove through the Jabariya neighborhood, and “a compound and comprehensive crime” against a civilian family in Gaza City on June 27.

“A family comprising an elderly woman and her four children, including three young women and a one-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter, was attacked with gunfire and bombs by Israeli forces who stormed their house in the Gaza City neighborhood of Al-Shujaiya,” said the group. “They were later taken outside and detained for over three hours near Israeli tanks in a dangerous combat zone, despite the injuries they sustained in the initial attack on their home, and were used as human shields. The 65-year-old mother, identified as Safiya Hassan Musa Al-Jamal, was run over by an Israeli tank and killed in front of her son.”

On Monday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) condemned the footage released Sunday from the incident in Gaza while noting that Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir was recorded over the weekend calling for Palestinian prisoners to be executed and fed reduced food rations as a “deterrence” tactic.

Almost 10,000 Palestinians have been arrested by Israeli forces, including women and children, CAIR said, demanding that the U.S. end its military support for Israel.

“Israeli war crimes, and calls for more war crimes, are occurring daily in Gaza and the West Bank, while the Biden administration rushes more American bombs to Israel to complete the genocide,” said CAIR communications director Ibrahim Hooper. “The U.S.-Israeli partnership in genocide, ethnic cleansing, and forced starvation will shape the international community’s image of America for generations to come. The Biden administration must change course to uphold universal human rights and recognize Palestinian humanity.”

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

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Continue Reading‘A Full-Fledged War Crime’: Israel Condemned Over New Human Shield Footage

Conditions ‘Unspeakable’ as Israeli Onslaught Forces Over 1 Million to Flee Rafah

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

A truck is used to evacuate the International Medical Corps American field hospital in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on June 2, 2024.
 (Photo: Eyad Baba/AFP via Getty Images)

“Public health concerns are beyond crisis levels” in the areas where Palestinians have been forced to shelter, and “the sounds, the smells, the everyday life, are horrific and apocalyptic,” a U.N. official said.

More than 1 million Palestinians have fled Rafah as the city comes under a continued Israeli assault, forcing many to shelter in badly damaged buildings in the nearby city of Khan Younis, according to the United Nations.

The assault on Rafah, a city in the southern Gaza Strip, has left the displaced in “unspeakable” conditions, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said on social media. Approximately 1.7 million displaced people are now in Khan Younis and “Gaza Middle Areas,” according to UNRWA.

Khan Younis, which saw sustained fighting earlier in the war, still does not appear to be a safe zone: Israeli military vehicles entered the city in recent hours after advancing to two towns just east of Khan Younis with “heavy gunfire and artillery shelling,” Al Jazeerareported.

Since early May, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has issued evacuation orders for parts of Rafah, telling people to go to an “expanded humanitarian zone” in Al-Mawasi, located roughly 12 miles from the city.

Israeli forces subsequently launched attacks on designated safe zones, including in Al-Mawasi. Two strikes killed 45 and 21 people last week, mostly women and children. The first of the attacks, known as the “tent massacre,” was carried out with U.S. weapons, later analysis showed.

Many of the people fleeing Rafah are having to move for at least the second time during the war. Roughly 1 million Palestinians who’d been displaced elsewhere had gone to Rafah for refuge earlier in the war. They began to leave Rafah nearly four weeks ago as Israeli started its assault on the city. Before the war, Rafah’s population was about 275,000, but the governorate reached a population of 1.4 million by February as Israel ordered Palestianians to move there from northern Gaza. This meant squeezing more than half of Gaza’s prewar population of 2.3 million into one governorate, NPR reported.

More than 18,500 pregnant women have been forced to leave Rafah, while about 10,000 pregnant women remain in the city in “desperate conditions,” the U.N. reported.

“They’re exhausted, traumatized, dehydrated, and malnourished,” the U.N. Population Fund wrote on social media of pregnant women dealing with “Israel’s terrifying military operation in Rafah.”

“Pregnant women in Gaza are living in an unrelenting nightmare,” the agency added.

After successive operations last month, Israel now controls the entire Gaza-Egypt border. Humanitarian corridors have shut down, with many agencies and aid groups pausing operations in Rafah due to lack of supplies and security concerns.

“We are living and working precariously in the south,” Matthew Hollingsworth said, World Food Program (WFP) country director in Palestine, said late last week, the U.N. reported. The areas where the displaced have been forced to shelter are nightmarish, he said.

“Public health concerns are beyond crisis levels” and “the sounds, the smells, the everyday life, are horrific and apocalyptic,” Hollingsworth added.

More than half of the structures in the Gaza Strip have been damaged, destroyed, or possibly destroyed during the eight-month Israeli assault, the United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT) concluded, in findings released Monday.

The mass displacement from Rafah continued as the Biden administration sought to arrange a cease-fire after after being pressured for months to end its military support for Israel’s onslaught. President Joe Biden called for an end to the war on Friday and backed a roadmap to a deal, which drew praise from Palestine defenders—the Council on American-Islamic Relations called it “long overdue” and a “positive step”—as well as criticism that it did not address the root causes of the conflict.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that the deal would not stop the war, which could not end until “total victory” had been achieved, according to Israeli National News.

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

Continue ReadingConditions ‘Unspeakable’ as Israeli Onslaught Forces Over 1 Million to Flee Rafah

‘War Criminals’: IDF Strikes Rafah After Hamas Agrees to Cease-Fire

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[This article remains relevant despite having been published 2 days ago]

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

Smoke rises from buildings after Israeli strikes on Rafah, Gaza on May 6, 2024.  (Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“Why?” asked Israeli lawmaker Ofer Cassif. “Because killing Palestinians is more important for the Israeli government than saving Israelis.”

Israel on Monday launched long-awaited strikes on Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip despite Hamas publicly confirming it agreed to a cease-fire and hostage release proposal from Egyptian and Qatari mediators.

The Israel Defense Forces said on social media that “the IDF is currently conducting targeted strikes against Hamas terror targets in eastern Rafah,” the city to which over a million Palestinians have fled since October 7, when Israel launched a retaliatory war that has already killed at least 34,735 people in Gaza and wounded another 78,108.

Earlier Monday, the IDF had dropped leaflets directing residents and refugees in that part of Rafah to relocate to a strip along Gaza’s coast, ignoring warnings from the international community and humanitarian groups that a full-scale Israeli attack on the crowded city would further endanger civilians and relief efforts.

“It is obvious Netanyahu wants this genocidal war to continue indefinitely so that he can remain in power.”

In addition to sparking outrage around the world, the Israeli government’s Rafah attack and rejection of the Hamas-backed proposal was met with criticism from people across Israel. The Associated Press reported that “thousands of Israelis rallied around the country Monday night calling for an immediate deal to release the hostages still held in the Gaza Strip.”

Ofer Cassif, a member of the Knesset who was almost expelled by fellow Israeli lawmakers earlier this year for backing South Africa’s ongoing genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), again called out his own government.

“Israeli tanks and infantry enter east Rafah while planes bomb from above, just hours after Hamas’ decision to accept the hostages/prisoners exchange deal,” Cassif said Monday. “Why? Because killing Palestinians is more important for the Israeli government than saving Israelis. War criminals!”

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that “the War Cabinet unanimously decided this evening Israel will continue its operation in Rafah, in order to apply military pressure on Hamas so as to advance the release of our hostages and achieve the other objectives of the war.”

Along with the prime minister, Israel’s War Cabinet includes Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Benny Gantz, former IDF chief of the general staff, along with three observers.

Netanyahu added that “while the Hamas proposal is far from meeting Israel’s core demands, Israel will dispatch a ranking delegation to Egypt in an effort to maximize the possibility of reaching an agreement on terms acceptable to Israel.”

Reuters reported that “an Israeli official said the deal was not acceptable to Israel because terms had been ‘softened.'”

According to the news outlet, the first part of a three-phase plan that Hamas—which has controlled Gaza for nearly two decades—agreed to includes a 42-day pause in fighting, the release of 33 hostages held by the group and some Palestinians in Israeli jails, a partial IDF withdrawal, and free movement in the besieged enclave.

Phase two would be “another 42-day period that features an agreement to restore a ‘sustainable calm’ to Gaza, language that an official briefed on the talks said Hamas and Israel had agreed in order to take discussion of a ‘permanent cease-fire’ off the table,” Reuters detailed. This phase also includes withdrawing most Israeli troops and Hamas releasing some soldiers and reservists.

The third phase would involve the exchange of bodies; reconstruction of Gaza overseen by Egypt, Qatar, and the United Nations; and ending the complete blockade on the strip, the outlet added.

Shortly before Israel’s Monday night strikes on Rafah began, Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, said that the U.N. chief “reiterates his pressing call to both the government of Israel and the leadership of Hamas to go the extra mile needed to make an agreement come true and stop the present suffering.”

Expressing concern about the then-imminent Israeli operation in Rafah, the spokesperson said that “we are already seeing movements of people—many of these people are in desperate humanitarian condition and have been repeatedly displaced. They search safety that has been so many times denied. The secretary-general reminds the parties that the protection of civilians is paramount in international humanitarian law.”

Other U.N. officials have been warning of what an assault on Rafah will mean for the over 1.4 million Palestinians there, among them 600,000 children. So have humanitarian and political leaders, including U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—who on Monday urged President Joe Biden to stand by his earlier position that attacking the city was a “red line” and “end all offensive military aid to Israel.”

Council on American-Islamic Relations national executive director Nihad Awad issued a similar call Monday evening, warning that “the Israeli government is hellbent on using American financial, military, and diplomatic support to ethnically cleanse what remains of Gaza and commit another massacre.”

“President Biden must stand up to Benjamin Netanyahu and take concrete action to end the genocide now,” Awad continued, nodding to the Israeli leader’s legal trouble. The prime minister faces not only potential consequences on a global scale for what the ICJ has deemed a “plausibly” genocidal war on Gaza but also a corruption trial in his own country.

“It is obvious Netanyahu wants this genocidal war to continue indefinitely so that he can remain in power, avoid jail, and fulfill his racist, far-right Cabinet’s demands for the complete destruction of Gaza and the massacre of its people,” Awad said. “It is long past time for President Biden to end our nation’s complicity in this 21st-century genocide.”

Biden spoke with Netanyahu by phone ahead of the IDF strikes on Monday and “reiterated his clear position on Rafah,” according to a White House readout. They also discussed the hostage negotiations, humanitarian aid, the Holocaust, and antisemitism.

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, also suggested that the Israeli prime minister wants the bloodshed in Gaza to continue for personal reasons.

“Netanyahu does not want an end to the war because the moment the war ends, his political career ends as well. And his prison sentence will commence,” said Parsi. “Yet, Biden has for seven months deferred to Netanyahu.”

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

Continue Reading‘War Criminals’: IDF Strikes Rafah After Hamas Agrees to Cease-Fire