Palestinians living in the area inspect the area among the rubbles of destroyed buildings following an Israeli attack on Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza City, Gaza on December 27, 2024 [Dawoud Abo Alkas – Anadolu Agency]
A group of UN experts on Monday said that Israel “must face the consequences” of its campaign to undermine the legal framework for the protection of civilians in armed conflicts as the military aggression continues unabated, Anadolu Agency reports.
“As we have repeatedly reminded Israel, international humanitarian law comprises a set of universal and binding rules to protect civilian objects and persons who are not, or are no longer, directly participating in hostilities and limits permissible means and methods of warfare,” the experts said in a statement.
“Rather than abide by these rules, Israel has openly defied international law time and again, inflicting maximum suffering on civilians in the occupied Palestinian territory and beyond,” they added.
Citing Israel’s international law violations, the experts said Tel Aviv committed “crimes against humanity including murder, torture, sexual violence, and repeated forced displacement amounting to forcible transfer, war crimes encompassing indiscriminate attacks on civilians and civilian objects, including objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population and educational institutions and cultural heritage, the use of starvation as a weapon of war, the targeting of healthcare workers and health facilities, attacks on humanitarian workers, arbitrary restrictions on access to humanitarian aid, and attacks on journalists, collective punishment and perfidy.”
“Political and judicial actors must consider the totality of such acts against the entire civilian population under Israeli occupation, who are protected persons and do not constitute military objectives under international law,” they said. “Acts aimed at their destruction in whole or in part are genocidal.”
Israel “grievously” violated its obligations as an occupying power, the experts said, regarding the situation in northern Gaza.
“Indiscriminate attacks, including on shelters for displaced persons and the Kamal Adwan Hospital and its vicinity, and the intensification of siege conditions on northern Gaza for the last three months run contrary to Israel’s legal duty to ensure the protection of the civilian population,” they said.
“We are disturbed that this siege, coupled with expanding evacuation orders, appears intended to permanently displace the local population as a precursor to Gaza’s annexation in further violation of international law.”
Although Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territory was labeled “unlawful” by the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister, the experts said: “Nonetheless, Israel continues to face no real consequences, largely due to protection offered by its allies, who have gone so far as to join Israel in delegitimizing international institutions and besmirching Special Procedures mandate-holders.”
The experts reiterated the urgency of allowing independent and thorough investigations of serious violations of international law.
“Israel’s continued impunity sends a dangerous message suggesting that parties to other conflicts around the world need not comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law,” they said. “We cannot afford to lose the force of the multilateral system. Israel and its leaders must be held accountable.”
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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/O74hZCKKdpAUK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE
5 journalists were killed in an Israeli air strike on their vehicle near Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip, on December 26, 2024. Photo: Mohammed Asad/Middle East Monitor.
Instead of condemning the massacre of the Palestinian journalists, western media outlets have attempted to whitewash Israel’s flagrant crime by adopting its narrative.
Five Palestinian journalists from Al-Quds Today TV channel were killed in an Israeli airstrike that hit their broadcasting van as they were covering events near Al-Awda Hospital, in Al-Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza strip on Thursday, December 26.
The slain journalists were identified as Faisal Abu al-Qumsan, Ayman al-Jadi, Ibrahim al-Sheikh Ali, Mohammad al-Ladah, and Fadi Hassouna.
Just hours before their van, which was marked with the word “Press” in large red letters, was hit, Ayman al-Jadi recorded a video with his slain colleagues. The video showed Ayman celebrating with them as he was awaiting the birth of his first child, who was born around the same time as he was killed in the airstrike.
Press van that was hit with an Israeli airstrike. Photo: Mohammed Asad/Middle East Monitor
Ayman’s brother Omar al-Jadi recorded and later shared a video of the moment Ayman and his colleagues were killed. In the video, a grief-stricken Omar sobs as the van carrying his brother is set ablaze.
The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS) condemned the Israeli massacre of the five journalists on Thursday, pointing out that the deadly attack took the death toll of Palestinian journalists and media workers killed by Israel since the beginning of the Israeli genocidal aggression in Gaza to more than 190.
PJS called the murder of the journalists “an attempt to obscure the truth and stifle freedom of expression,” adding that it reflects the extent of the systematic targeting of Palestinian journalists. The syndicate also urged the international community and all human rights organizations to provide urgent protection for Palestinian journalists and take practical steps to stop the crimes committed by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) against them.
For its part, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) denounced the crime on Thursday. CPJ’s program director in New York, Carlos Martinez de la Serna, clarified in a statement that with the assassination of Al-Quds Today journalists “nine Gazan journalists have been killed in less than two weeks”, urging the international community to act immediately “to protect Palestinian journalists in Gaza and end Israel’s impunity for these killings.”
On December 11, Palestinian broadcaster of local Al-Aqsa RadioEman al-Shanti was killed alongside her three children and husband in an Israeli airstrike that targeted a residential building in Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, in Gaza City. Four days later, Al-Mashhad News correspondent Mohammad Baalousha was killed after an Israeli quadcopter dropped a bomb on a street within the same neighborhood.
On the same day, Palestinian journalist and editor at a local news agency, Mohammad al-Qrinawi, his wife and children were killed in an Israeli aerial attack that struck their home in Al-Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.
One day after Baalousha and al-Qrinawi were murdered, Al Jazeera cameraman Ahmad Baker al-Louh was killed in an Israeli airstrike, which targeted a Palestinian Civil Defense post in Al-Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.
While the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have been systematically targeting Palestinian journalists and media workers in a bid to cover Israel’s war crimes in Gaza, it has also blocked foreign media outlets from entering the besieged enclave.
According to a report published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) last October, Israel has implemented diverse methods to orchestrate a media blackout in Gaza. In addition to the targeted killing of journalists, and prohibiting foreign journalists from accessing Gaza, IOF sought to destroy newsrooms and cut off internet and electricity, annihilating the Palestinian media infrastructure.
Meanwhile, western media has continued to whitewash Israel’s war crimes and the slaughtering of journalists by adopting the IOF’s narrative. Echoing Israeli media, The New York Times reported on Thursday, that the five murdered journalists from Al-Quds Today were associated with a militant group.
Bodies of Palestinian, who lost their lives in Israeli attacks on the family home of journalist Mohammed al-Qirrawi in the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, are taken from Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital for burial in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on December 15, 2024. (Photo by Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)
A relentless series of assaults in central and northern Gaza by Israeli forces, according to reports on the ground, have killed numerous civilians—including children, rescue workers, and journalist—in recent days with no end in sight.
Rescue workers, children, and journalists are among the civilians killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza on Sunday, as the death toll continues to mount in a military campaign Amnesty International earlier this month said has all the markings of an active and ongoing genocide.
“Due to the rising Israeli bombings and killings in northern Gaza, we have run out of body bags to bury the dead,” said Palestinian journalist Hossam Sabath, reporting from northern Gaza on Sunday. “Now we resort to using any piece of clothing or a blanket for their burial.”
On the ground in the town of Beit Hanoun, where Israeli troops reportedly killed at least 20 people—including civilians—in a series of raids in the area on Sunday, Sabath said the the “scenes of charred bodies are too distressing for us to broadcast. However, they are part of the documented evidence of genocide involving the burning of people alive. We are ready to hand them over to any human rights organization.”
Israeli troops killed at least 22 Palestinians, most of them in the northern Gaza Strip, on Sunday in airstrikes and other attacks on targets that included a school sheltering displaced Gazans, medics and residents said.
They said at least 11 of the dead were killed in three separate Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City houses, nine were killed in the towns of Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and Jabalia camp and two were killed by drone fire in Rafah.
Residents said clusters of houses were bombed and some set ablaze in the three towns. The Israeli army has been operating in the towns for over two months.
In Beit Hanoun, Israeli forces besieged families sheltering in Khalil Aweida school before storming it and ordering them to head towards Gaza City, the medics and residents said.
Al Jazeera‘s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, quoted witnesses who reported “severe injuries” among those who survived the attacks further north.
“They have nowhere to go because the Israeli military forces are encircling the area with tanks and armored vehicles, and hammering the school with heavy artillery,” Mahmoud reported.
A family of four were among those killed, including two children, after the classroom where they were sheltering took a “direct hit” from Israeli artillery fire that arrived without prior warning, the outlet reported.
“Many of the injured are in the courtyard of the school and inside the other classrooms,” according to Mahmoud. “They can’t get any treatment because none of the hospitals in Beit Hanoon are operational.”
Separately, Al-Jazeera reports Sunday that an Israeli bombing killed three members of the Palestinian civil defense search-and-rescue team in central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp. The new agency also reported that one of its own staff, cameraman Ahmed al-Louh, was killed in the same attack.
In its first response to the incident, Gaza’s government media office condemned the killing of al-Louh and called on the international community to act against the systematic crimes against Palestinian journalists. “The number of martyred journalists has now risen to 195 with the martyrdom of colleague Ahmed al-Louh,” the office stated.
Al Jazeera reiterated its condemnation of the attack, describing al-Louh’s death as part of a broader assault on press freedom in Gaza. “Ahmed al-Louh was dedicated to documenting the realities of the ongoing conflict under the most dangerous conditions,” the network said.
“The unprecedented killing of journalists by the Israeli military continues with impunity,” said fellow reporter Sharif Kouddous.
On Dec. 5, Amnesty International released a 296-page report—featuring interviews with survivors and witnesses of Israel’s large-scale campaign of bombing, displacement, arbitrary detention, and destruction of Gaza’s agricultural land and civilian infrastructure—that conclude what Israel has been doing in Gaza amounts to genocide.
“Month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty’s secretary-general, upon release of the document. “Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now.”
As the weekend’s latest catalog of death and injuries suggests, it has not stopped.
The British Palestinian Committee (BPC) and UK Gaza Community (UKGC) convened a press conference in London yesterday, bringing together healthcare workers and British-Palestinian voices to expose the scale of Israel’s systematic destruction of Gaza amid an enforced media blackout.
The event, held metres away from BBC Broadcasting House, aimed to break through the information vacuum created by Israel’s targeting of journalists and closure of the besieged Gaza Strip from the world. With 193 journalists killed since 7 October 2023 and systematic restrictions on media access, particularly in northern Gaza, evidence of massacres, mass executions and widespread destruction has largely fallen out of the news cycle.
The attacks in northern Gaza represent the most violent and brutal assaults in the history of Israel’s colonial occupation of Palestine, the organisers pointed out, as speakers prepared to share harrowing testimonies of death and devastation in the Gaza Strip.
Mai Annan, speaking via video link from Gaza where she leads the Reviving Gaza mutual aid project, provided a chilling account of Israeli military tactics. “We started hearing loudspeakers asking the men in the building to come out naked, then they asked the women and children to come out. They lined up the men, and the soldiers began firing at them randomly,” she recounted. “Many were killed, and some were wounded and left to bleed to death. Then they put all the women and children in one room and threw a gas grenade inside. It’s very clear to us that everyone is a target, and the plan is just to kill and kill more.”
They lined up the men, and the soldiers began firing at them randomly. Then they put all the women and children in one room and threw a gas grenade inside.
Dr Mahim Qureshi, a London-based vascular surgeon who recently returned in November after volunteering in Gaza detailed the catastrophic medical situation. “The types of injuries are predominantly blast injuries,” she explained, “but the degree of overcrowding and lack of hygiene, lack of antibiotics and high level of antibiotic resistance means people cannot fight basic infections.” She described how young girls arrived with gunshot wounds to the head, while doctors, lacking basic neurosurgical equipment, were forced to drill through skulls with inadequate tools in desperate attempts to save lives.
Hala Sabbah, the London-based coordinator of the Sameer Project aid group, explained how aid has been weaponised through systematic starvation. “Prior to the genocide 400-500 trucks entered Gaza, starting from October only 50 trucks were permitted,” she explained. “Zionists are collaborating with people on the ground to make sure these trucks are stolen. Not only are the number of trucks limited they are making sure it’s not reaching the victims. Palestinians pay thousands to buy the basic necessities.”
Dr Mohamed Ashraf, who worked in northern Gaza during the initial phase of Israel’s assault, shared devastating evidence of the targeting of medical personnel. He displayed photographs of murdered colleagues, speaking of Dr Mosab Sama, abducted from Nasser Hospital with no information about his whereabouts, and Dr Maisara Rais, killed and still buried under rubble with his family. Of his own family’s fate, he explained how he has been contacting hospitals to see if they received the bodies of his wife and daughter – their silence the only indication they might still be alive.
Ahmed Najjar, born in Jabaliya refugee camp, provided testimony of living there for 55 years before this assault. “This wasn’t just another military campaign,” he said, “this was an attempt to erase an entire people. North of Gaza is stripped of its humanity and its home.” His sister was told at gunpoint to abandon her son, while his brother watched helplessly. His father, older than the state of Israel, initially refused to move, saying he was tired of being displaced, before Israel’s relentless bombardment finally forced him to flee to Gaza City.
Dr Loai Nasir reported that 400,000 people remain besieged in northern Gaza, facing severe food insecurity as Israeli authorities consistently deny food deliveries. Ibrahim Assalia testified about the use of unknown chemical agents, describing how his father died after inhaling an Israeli substance. Speaking recently with his family, they told him “they are dying of hunger. People in north Gaza are feeding on grass and trees.”
The conference also unveiled new evidence of British complicity in Israel’s military campaign. A comprehensive report launched by the BPC detailed how British military infrastructure actively supports Israel’s assault on Gaza. Khem Rogaly explained that Britain’s military collaboration “goes far beyond licensing exports.” Britain’s global F35 programmes and export of components are essential for Israel to fly the F35 and bomb Gaza. British parts are central to the regular repairs needed to maintain Israel’s bombing campaign.
The human cost of Britain’s military support was further illustrated through testimony about the devastating medical situation in Gaza. Qureshi described how chronic illnesses are killing Gazans but their numbers are not added to the death toll. She noted that what she witnessed in the south could not compare to the horror unfolding in the north. Healthcare workers shared accounts of performing surgeries without anaesthesia, while Ashraf recounted doctors watching helplessly as patients died from treatable conditions due to lack of basic medical supplies. The toll on medical staff has been both physical and mental, with many forced to work through their own trauma while treating an endless stream of casualties
The systematic targeting of healthcare workers emerged as a recurring theme. According to figures presented at the conference, some 1,800 healthcare workers have been killed since October 2023, with 319 health workers currently detained by Israeli occupation forces. Ashraf spoke of being trained to deal with crises, but never having faced anything like this current situation, with no medical supplies reaching Gaza.
Sabbah detailed how the starvation of Gaza is being systematically engineered. To buy vegetables in northern Gaza now costs hundreds of dollars, she explained. “It’s not a famine,” she emphasised. “It’s manufactured starvation by Israel.”
“I’m not asking western leaders to see us as humans,” Najjar stated in his closing remarks. “Stop pretending, stop lecturing. We see through your hypocrisy. You think you can erase us – you will not, you will fail.”
The testimonies presented paint a harrowing picture of systematic destruction aimed at making Gaza uninhabitable. Speakers emphasised that while mainstream media attention has shifted elsewhere, the situation in northern Gaza continues to deteriorate, with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians facing what the UN has described as catastrophic hunger.
The evidence presented of British military support for Israel’s campaign comes as legal experts increasingly warn that Israel’s actions constitute genocide. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is currently investigating genocide charges against Israel following South Africa’s legal action, while the UN’s recent report found Israel’s military actions in Gaza to be consistent with genocidal intent. Amnesty International has joined a growing chorus of human rights organisations in concluding that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide.
The press conference highlighted how Israel’s media blackout serves to conceal the scale of destruction in Gaza from international scrutiny. Through harrowing firsthand testimonies, damning evidence of British military support and documented accounts of systematic starvation and medical deprivation, the event provided a devastating glimpse of the genocide unfolding in Gaza.
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Palestinians line up to receive free meals at Jabaliya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip on March 18, 2024
ISRAEL is systematically killing healthcare workers and journalists in Gaza, doctors said today, in a direct plea for British media to scrutinise their country’s complicity in genocide.
At a London press conference on Gaza’s media blackout, hospital doctors gave first-hand accounts of how colleagues and reporters have been abducted, tortured and killed.
The British Palestinian Committee (BPC) and the UK Gaza Community (UKGC) hosted the event hours after Reporters Without Borders (RSF) revealed that Israeli armed forces were behind a third of the 54 journalists killed worldwide because of their work in 2024.
“Palestine is the most dangerous country for journalists, recording a higher death toll than any other country over the past five years,” the organisation said in its annual report, describing the number of killings as “an unprecedented bloodbath.”
RSF has filed four complaints with the International Criminal Court for “war crimes committed against journalists by the Israeli army.”
It said more than 145 journalists had been killed by the Israeli army in Gaza since October 2023.
At least 1,000 health workers have also been killed there during the Israeli onslaught.
At the conference, Dr Mohamed Ashraf showed photos of several colleagues who have been killed or abducted by Israeli forces since October 7.
“These are real people, these are real stories,” he said, describing how Dr Mosab Samman was abducted from Nasser Hospital in March, saying that the only offence he committed was volunteering to help his people inside the hospital.
UK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWREGenocide 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
