A systematic effort appears underway to silence Dr. Abu Sitta for his vocal condemnation of Israeli atrocities with Berlin authorities forcefully barring his entry into the country in April to attend a conference.
Renowned British-Palestinian doctor and humanitarian, Ghassan Abu Sitta, who volunteered in Gaza hospitals during the first weeks of the Israeli genocide, was reportedly barred from entering France while at Charles De Gaulle Airport.
Abu Sitta, scheduled to speak before the French Senate, expressed frustration as authorities cited a purported one-year ban imposed by Germany on his entry to Europe.
In a social media post, he said, “I am at Charles De Gaule airport. They are preventing me from entering France. I am supposed to speak at the French Senate today. They say the Germans put a 1 year ban on my entry to Europe.”
I am at Charles De Gaule airport. They are preventing me from entering France. I am supposed to speak at the French Senate today. They say the Germans put a 1 year ban on my entry to Europe.
— Ghassan Abu Sitta (@GhassanAbuSitt1) May 4, 2024
In another post, Abu Sitta lamented what he described as “Fortress Europe” silencing witnesses to the ongoing genocide, while “Israel” continues to target and kill them even within prison walls.
Fortress Europe silencing the witnesses to the genocide while Israel kills them in prison.
— Ghassan Abu Sitta (@GhassanAbuSitt1) May 4, 2024
Simultaneously, human rights activist Salah Hamouri affirmed to Al Mayadeen that Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta was informed at Charles De Gaulle Airport of a German decision to prohibit his entry. Hamouri further stated that Dr. Abu Sitta has been notified of a comprehensive ban on his entry to European countries. In further detail, he informed Al Mayadeen that Abu Sitta’s phone had been seized.
The detention of Dr. Abu Sitta, as reported by Hamouri, comes in the wake of Germany’s recent decision to bar him from entering the Schengen area for one year.
In April, authorities in Berlin raided a conference titled the Palestine Congress, where Dr. Abu Sitta was scheduled to participate, abruptly cutting off electricity and terminating the weekend-long event.
The conference was aimed at addressing various issues, such as German arms exports to “Israel” and expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian cause.
Dr. Abu Sitta reported that after prolonged questioning, the German government forcefully barred his entry into the country.
Germany’s expulsion of Dr. Abu Sitta instigated widespread condemnation from activists and human rights groups.
Slow death, no anesthesia; Abu Sitta recalls horrors he saw in Gaza
Palestinian doctor Ghassan Abu Sitta spent 43 days under fire in Gaza. What he witnessed during his voluntary work in the besieged Strip’s hospitals left him with a lot to tell about the Israeli atrocities committed against civilians.
When he left Gaza because he could no longer perform surgeries due to a shortage of medical equipment, he decided to advocate for the Strip through other means.
Speaking to AFP last January, Abu Sitta detailed the testimony he provided to the British police regarding attacks against civilians and the types of weapons used, hoping it would lead to trials for war crimes.
Having worked for weeks in hospitals in #Gaza during the Israeli aggression on the Strip, renowned British-Palestinian plastic surgeon, Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta bore witness to the horrific crimes that were committed there.#PalestineGenocide#GazaUnderAttackpic.twitter.com/aOVCQuh0lF
The results of the Israeli aggression on Gaza, where Abu Sitta arrived on October 9 as part of the Doctors Without Borders team, surpassed the horrors of all the wars he had worked in before, including Gaza, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and southern Lebanon.
“It’s like the difference between a flood and a tsunami; the scale is entirely different,” he expressed, emphasizing the large number of casualties, martyred children, the magnitude of the disaster, and the intensive bombings, causing the Gaza healthcare system to be overwhelmed within days of the war’s start.
The Palestinian doctor pointed out that from the beginning, the capacity was lower than the number of patients that had to be treated, adding that doctors had to make difficult decisions about whom to treat.
He recounted the case of a 40-year-old man with a head shrapnel injury who needed X-rays and examination by a neurosurgeon, but those were not available as told to the patient’s family who stayed around the stretcher he was placed on that night until his martyrdom in the morning.
Anesthesia and painkillers quickly ran out in hospitals, forcing Abu Sitta to perform painful cleaning procedures for wounds on injured individuals without the possibility of relieving their pain. He made it clear that this was the only available option, or else see the wounded succumb to widespread inflammation in the blood.
Abu Sitta also confirmed that he treated people with burns caused by white phosphorus, which is prohibited by international law, explaining that it is an injury that can be distinguished from other injuries and that phosphorus continues to burn into the deeper parts of the body until it reaches the bones.
Since leaving Gaza, the Palestinian doctor has spent most of his time alerting political leaders and humanitarian organizations to the genocide in the Gaza Strip. In this regard, he said that he is trying to help the patients in Gaza as much as he can by conveying their voices abroad.
He also noted that he informed the London police about the injuries he witnessed, the types of weapons used, and the use of white phosphorus, as well as the attacks against civilians.
Elsewhere, Abu Sitta, who narrated how he survived the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital massacre on October 17, concluded by stressing that “ultimately, justice will reach these individuals, after five or ten years, or when they are in their eighties when the balance of power in the world allows justice for the Palestinians.”
Tuesday, April 23, 2024, marked the 200th consecutive day of Israel’s large-scale military offensive on the Gaza Strip. Nearly 90 percent of the population is displaced, with many living in dire conditions in tents, and the few remaining schools used as shelters. Despite the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures orders to prevent genocide, Israel persists in threatening a large-scale ground invasion of Rafah, home to over 1.2 million residents and displaced persons—a threat that has loomed over the Palestinian people there for several weeks.
Our organizations — the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), Al Mezan, and Al-Haq — are closely monitoring and deeply concerned about the escalation of Israeli airstrikes on Rafah. The tactics of intensified bombing of homes using heavy artillery and carpet bombing are alarming and have resulted in significant civilian casualties over the last six months.
Furthermore, concerns are growing as reports from Israeli media indicate that the Israeli army is purchasing thousands of tents to accommodate displaced individuals from Rafah. The Israeli plan to expand the so-called safe zone in the Al-Mawasi area, despite its limited capacity and current overcrowding with displaced persons, is also troubling. This expansion is purportedly capable of housing up to a million people, but the reality of its size (extending about a kilometer deep from the borders of Khan Younis to the borders of Rafah) raises doubts about its feasibility and effectiveness in addressing the humanitarian crisis.
Our organizations have repeatedly warned and expressed serious concerns about the potential consequences of a large-scale ground invasion on Rafah, similar to what has occurred in most governorates of the Gaza Strip. Such an invasion could lead to horrific massacres and raise scenarios of a second Nakba. The densely populated city, with hundreds of thousands of displaced individuals residing in tents and heavily relying on aid from the Rafah and Kerem Abu Salem Crossings, exacerbates the vulnerability of its population. The closure of these vital crossings during a potential Israeli attack would leave no suitable alternatives for the evacuation of Rafah residents and those already displaced within the city. This concern is compounded by the continued attacks and destruction that have altered the landscape of the Gaza Strip.
According to the latest update from the Palestinian Ministry of Health on April 23, 2024, Israeli military attacks over the span of 200 days have led to the killing of 34,183 Palestinians, including 14,778 children and around 10,000 women, and the injury of 77,143 others. One child is killed or injured every 10 minutes in Gaza. An estimated seven to eight thousand Palestinians are still missing, buried under the rubble, or in the streets. There have been ongoing efforts over the past few days to retrieve some of them, amid reports of finding individuals bound and buried in mass graves in Nasser and Al-Shifa Hospitals, indicating the possibility of them being killed by the Israeli army after their arrest. All of this requires the opening of a serious and independent international investigation. It is worth noting that citizens have been forced to create temporary graves in hospitals, markets, streets, and near destroyed homes due to the impossibility of transporting the people killed to official cemeteries.
After 200 days of horrific genocidal acts in Gaza, the real objectives of the attack are the continuation of the 76-year-long ongoing Nakba and the erasure and genocidal destruction of the Palestinian people in Gaza. Israel is laying the groundwork to fulfill its settler colonial plan of colonizing Gaza, played out in real time on the world’s television sets and screens. We warn that the risks of displacement are still present unless the international community intervenes effectively to prevent them.
Our organisations reiterate that silence from the international community is no longer acceptable, and mere statements of condemnation are not enough in the face of genocide and systematic and deliberate crimes to destroy the foundations of Palestinian life.
Our organizations warn of the threat of an Israeli ground invasion on Rafah. Such an attack would represent the peak of the Israeli attack on Gaza, with the intent of inflicting the highest number of casualties and civilian victims, potentially leading to mass forcible displacement towards the Egyptian borders, located mere meters away. This scenario threatens the acceleration of the Nakba on the Palestinian people and is an approaching reality.
We urgently call on the permanent members of the UN Security Council, the UN Secretary-General, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, and the High Commissioner for Human Rights to swiftly intervene to avert the continuing Nakba and to halt the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Our organisations warn Third States that they may be complicit in genocide through their unlimited military and financial support of Israel’s aggression on the Gaza Strip. We remind the Third States of their erga omnes obligations to protect the Palestinian people from genocide.
We further urge the international community to secure the right of return of Palestinians to their areas of residence and ensure the provision of essential services, including access to clean water, reopening closed roads, and other necessary support.
We emphasize that the key to resolving the crisis in the region forever lies in ending the illegal occupation, dismantling the Israeli settler-colonial apartheid regime, revoking all discriminatory and inhumane laws, policies, and practices against the Palestinian people as a whole, and enabling the Palestinian people to exercise their inalienable right to self-determination and the return of refugees without any conditions or restrictions.
Hypocritically, images from the war in Ukraine were allowed to be featured in the exhibition, proving the EU’s clear double standards and selective humanity, particularly its stance on the humanitarian crises in Gaza. (Al Mayadeen English)
The European Parliament removed 14 photos taken by an Al Mayadeen correspondent in the Gaza Strip from a photo exhibition exposing Israeli crimes, revealing the EU’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian content.
As part of the Western media crackdown on Pro-Palestinian content, the European Parliament Secretariat removed 14 photos taken by Al Mayadeen Media Network, from a photo exhibition organized by a leftist parliamentary group.
Al Mayadeen‘s correspondent, Moussa Assi, explained that the organizers planned the exhibition, set on April 16th in Brussels, intending to feature photos revealing the aftermath of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Al Mayadeen Media Network was extended an invite by the organizers to feature photos showing the impact of war, particularly on Gaza’s children, and showcasing the widespread destruction, the condition of Gaza’s hospitals, and more.
He further added that the Parliament Secretariat argued they didn’t have sufficient time to review the photos before displaying them. However, the organizers of the exhibition confirmed they had submitted the photos within the designated timeframe. They asserted that the decision to remove the photos was politically motivated and influenced by pressure from right-winged parties within the European parliament.
On Tuesday, #AlMayadeen was banned from presenting pictures taken in #Gaza in a photo exhibition in Brussels, #Belgium, despite the photographs being coordinated beforehand, in yet another attack on the freedom of press and those who support the #Palestinian cause for liberation… pic.twitter.com/IqcceTl3HA
The organizers requested that our correspondent, a representative of Al Mayadeen Media Network, give a speech at the exhibition where the prohibited photos will be displayed on a screen in the background. However, the EU parliament desk employees intervened, demanded the photos’ removal, and proceeded to cut off the screen cables provocatively.
What happened further indicates that the European Parliament was adamant on preventing the broadcasting of any content that exposes Israeli crimes in Gaza, Hypocritically, images from the war in Ukraine were allowed to be featured in the exhibition, proving the EU’s clear double standards and selective humanity, particularly its stance on the humanitarian crises in Gaza.
Clear attempt to conceal the truth
Some members of the leftist parliamentary group emphasized that the decision does not reflect the stance of the party or the sentiment of the European public, which has shown increasing support for the Palestinian cause.
In his speech, Al Mayadeen’s correspondent mentioned that the European Parliament’s decision to remove the photos is a clear attempt to “conceal the truth” of what is happening in the Gaza Strip and the reality of “Israel’s” ongoing genocide in the Strip.
He referred to the decision as a direct attack on Al Mayadeen, which has been subjected to several attacks concerning the Palestinian cause in occupied Palestine, Lebanon, and other countries on multiple occasions. Our correspondent stressed that Al Mayadeen‘s commitment to always speak the truth has come at a cost, leading to censorship.
Brutal massacres went ahead in Gaza on the day 193 of the Israeli war on the besieged enclave, with international organizations warning against humanitarian crises.
Continuing Israeli attacks on central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp killed several Palestinians, local media reported.
Israeli fighter jets destroy a residential building in Nusseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, today. pic.twitter.com/wtX9UWBftc
In northern Gaza Strip, casualties were reported as Israeli warplanes pounded Jabalia, targeting a mosque there.
Civil defense crews rescue a little girl following the bombing of a number of homes in Jabalia refugee camp, north of Gaza. pic.twitter.com/sKBhdonNQL
— Palestine and MENA Info Center (@PALMENA_IC) April 16, 2024
Israeli army vehicles reportedly surrounded a school where hundreds of people were sheltering amid gunfire and explosions in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip.
Separately, four people, including a child, were martyred and several wounded in an Israeli attack on a house west of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, the Wafa news agency reported.
Earlier on Monday, two mass graves were discovered by Gaza’s Ministry of Health and the Civil Defense Forces in the north of the Gaza Strip on Monday. The first mass grave was discovered at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, and the second was found in Beit Lahiya.
Death Toll and “Health Disaster”
Health Ministry in Gaza announced that 46 people were martyred and 110 injured by Israeli strikes in the past 24 hours.
It put the death toll of citizens martyred since the start of Israeli aggression on October 7 at 33,843. The ministry added that the number of injured Palestinians reached 76,575.
Meanwhile, the ministry warned that generators powering Gaza’s few functional hospitals around the clock for months could now lose power “at any moment.”
Doctors perform surgery at the European Hospital in Khan Younis (Anadolu news agency).
Such a loss would bring about a “major health disaster”, it said, issuing an urgent appeal for new generators and the restoration of power lines in the besieged territory.
For its part, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) reported in its latest situation update that the amount of aid entering Gaza is far below the operational capacity of the open border crossings of the besieged enclave.
It added that an average of 181 aid trucks reaching Gaza daily fails to meet the Israeli occupation’s stated goal of facilitating the entry of 500 trucks per day.
One Gaza Child Killed or Injured Every 10 Minutes
On the other hand, a UNICEF official said that Gaza children have become the faces of the continuing war as their stories paint a “harrowing picture” of the human consequences of the conflict.
“Children are wearing a tremendous share of the scars of this war,” UNICEF communications specialist Tess Ingram – who left Gaza on Monday after spending two weeks there – told a UN press briefing in Geneva.
Tess Ingram, UNICEF communications specialist.
More than 12,000 children were injured in Gaza since October 7, 2023, she said, and this is “almost certainly an underestimate”.
“With at least 70 children injured every day, we need the number of medical evacuations to increase so children can access the care they urgently need. And with one child killed or injured every 10 minutes, above anything else we need a ceasefire.”
Gaza still amazes the world with its incredible resistance despite all forms of oppression it has been facing since the start of the brutal Israeli aggression on October 7. On the day 192 of the war, both people and resistance stand firm in face of the Israeli massacres and deliberate starvation.
Israeli attacks on Monday took place in several areas across the besieged enclave with the concentration was on Gaza Strip’s center.
Palestinian media reported attacks on two mosques, a UN-run school and the Malaysian school in the Nuseirat refugee camp.
Israeli occupation forces target civilians and journalists in Nusseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. pic.twitter.com/Ni6Q5euIDM
Also in central Gaza, several residential homes and a market were subjected to Israeli strikes.
Elsewhere in northern Gaza, the Firas market was targeted.
Strikes were also reported in the southern city of Rafah, according to Palestinian media.
Health Ministry in Gaza reported that 68 people were martyred and 94 others were injured in 7 massacres in the past 24 hours. It put the death toll of the Israeli aggression on Gaza Strip at 33,545.
The ministry added that the number of injured people reached 76,094.
Destruction “Disproportionate to Anything One Can Imagine”
Meanwhile on Monday, Civil Defense in Gaza said on its Telegram channel that it recovered 13 more decomposing bodies in Khan Younis’ Al-Balad and Al-Amal neighborhoods.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs described the destruction in the southern city of Khan Younis as profound.
In a post on X the UN office said a team has visited Khan Younis and witnessed destroyed homes, schools and hospitals as well as unexploded ordinance.
🔺 Homes, schools and hospitals severely damaged 🔺 Roads reduced to dirt tracks 🔺 Civilians at grave risk of unexploded ordnance 🔺 Collapsed services
Yesterday, a @UN team visited #Gaza's Khan Younis where they witnessed profound destruction.
For his part, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), said that the organization and its partners went to Khan Younis on Sunday to assess the health facilities there.
.@WHO and partners went to Khan Younis yesterday to assess the health facilities there. The team described the destruction as "disproportionate to anything one can imagine". No building or road is intact, there is only rubble and dirt.
Also on Monday, Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad resistance group released a video showing fighters targeting Israeli concentrations east Jabalia.
سرايا القدس: مشاهد من استهداف قوات الاحتلال وتحصيناتها شرق جباليا بالأسلحة الرشاشة pic.twitter.com/9fMBdoQDZw
On the other hand, a security and military studies professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies said that Hamas’s armed wing, Al-Qassam Brigades, has surprised many military analysts over the past seven months.
Talking to Al-Jazeera, Omar Ashour said Al-Qassam Brigades was completely outnumbered and outgunned in all domains – sea, air and land – as well as electronic and cyberwarfare.
He added that the resistance group has created its own environment to be able to fight by constructing multilevel underground tunnels that doubled or tripled the size of Gaza
“Many Hamas fighters remain, and Israel has killed only one of its three top commanders. If Israel wants to achieve its aim of destroying Hamas, the fight will take a lot longer than the Israeli military expected, and it may not even be possible,” Ashour said, as quoted by Al-Jazeera.
A photo showing the blood of one of the victims of the massacre that Israeli occupation forces committed in the Kuwait Roundabout southeast of Gaza City. (Social media)
The Health Ministry in Gaza says more than 200 Palestinians were killed and injured as a result of the Israeli shelling.
Al Mayadeen‘s correspondent reported Thursday evening that several Palestinians were martyred and a large number were injured in an Israeli shelling that targeted people awaiting aid near Kuwait Roundabout southeast of Gaza City.
The Health Ministry in Gaza confirmed that more than 200 Palestinians were killed and injured as a result of the Israeli shelling.
The Ministry mentioned that 20 martyrs and 155 injuries had arrived at the al-Shifa Medical Complex, while one martyr and six injuries arrived at Kamal Adwan Hospital.
It pointed out that the process of retrieving the bodies of other martyrs and evacuating the wounded is ongoing despite the difficult field situation at the location of the massacre, anticipating an increase in the number of martyrs due to the severity of the injuries reaching Gaza hospitals.
The Ministry indicated that what happened at Kuwait Roundabout indicates a malicious intent by the Israeli occupation to commit a new horrifying massacre.
It also emphasized that the medical teams are unable to handle the volume and severity of injuries reaching hospitals in northern Gaza due to the weakness of medical resources.
On his part, the spokesperson for Civil Defense in Gaza, Mahmoud Basal, told Al Mayadeen that Israeli military helicopters opened fire on civilians before Israeli artillery finalized the massacre at Kuwait Roundabout.
He noted that Israeli artillery shelled civilians after they took shelter in buildings following the helicopter attack, adding that a large number of Palestinians were martyred and wounded and that the situation is catastrophic.
The spokesperson stressed that many are dying in hospitals due to their severe wounds and the medical teams’ inability to handle all injuries.
Various Palestinian factions condemned the new Israeli massacre at Kuwait Roundabout.
In a statement, Hamas said the crime adds to the series of massacres and vicious targeting of civilians facing Israeli starvation policies.
The movement stressed that the international community and the United Nations have failed to take action against the Israeli occupation army, which serves as a green light for committing more heinous crimes, within the framework of genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people.
It pointed out that the Israeli crimes come with full support from the Biden administration, which protects the criminal entity from any international accountability.
Hamas held the Biden administration responsible for the continuation of the Nazi-like massacres committed with US weapons and support.
It called on the United Nations and the Arab League to urgently intervene to stop this genocide, to allow aid to enter through land crossings, and not to submit to the will of the Israeli occupation and its fascist policies.
On its part, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) condemned the Israeli massacre, deeming it “a genocide committed with US approval.”
The PFLP called on the Palestinian people, the Arab nation, and the free people of the world to turn Friday into a day of comprehensive escalation on the ground.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian al-Mujahideen Movement held the US administration, Western governments, and the Arab regimes responsible for the ongoing genocide committed by the Nazi-like Israeli occupation against the besieged and starving people in Gaza.
Al-Mujahideen Movement described the crime represents “a disgrace to every complicit, silent and negligent person,” noting that, by deliberately killing civilians after starving them, the Israeli occupation aims to turn Gaza into an inhabitable place.
Earlier, the Ministry of Health in Gaza reported seven massacres in the past 24 hours alone.
According to the ministry, the Israeli massacres have resulted in the deaths of 69 Palestinian people and the injury of 110 others.
These numbers, however, fail to account for those who remain trapped under the rubble or on the streets as the Israeli occupation forces have forbidden ambulances and civil defense teams from reaching them.
Overall, the death toll from the Israeli occupation’s genocidal war has now risen to 31,341 martyrs, with 73,134 individuals injured since October 7.
The Palestine Chronicle spoke with three survivors of what has been called the ‘flour massacre’, which resulted in the killing and wounding of nearly 1,000 Palestinians waiting for humanitarian aid.
“We were surprised by the occupation’s gunfire and the killing of dozens while we were waiting for food aid”.
This is what Jihad Rajab, a survivor of the ‘flour massacre’, told The Palestine Chronicle.
At least 112 Palestinians were killed and more than 750 wounded on Thursday, February 29, after Israeli troops opened fire on hundreds of Palestinians waiting for food aid at the Nabulsi Roundabout, in the Sheikh Ajleen district, southwest of Gaza City.
‘As We Waited for the Trucks’
Rajab, along with his cousin, went to the roundabout to wait for humanitarian trucks, with the hope that they could finally obtain some flour.
“For over two months, my family hasn’t tasted bread,” Rajab told us, “this is why we decided to go.”
By Palestine Chronicle Staff Palestinian medical sources said that a Palestinian boy, Ahmed Hijazi died due to malnutrition and famine in the northern Gaza Strip, where international organizations have not been able to deliver … Continue reading
“The trucks were supposed to arrive on Wednesday. However, we waited for the whole day and nothing came. We all decided to sleep there and wait for the trucks,” he continued.
“We were sitting on the beach and it was extremely cold. But hunger was stronger than anything else and thousands of people gathered there to get some food. There is nothing to eat in Gaza City and we are living in difficult conditions”,
“As soon as the trucks entered the area, Israeli forces started firing heavily, resulting in the killing and wounding of scores of people,” Rajab said.
“The occupation did not spare us, and they deliberately fired at us as we were awaiting the aid convoy,” he added.
‘The Occupation Killed Us Twice’
“Despite my old age, I was standing in line after a very cold night, like all residents of Gaza City,” Hajj Mahmoud Daghmash told The Palestine Chronicle.
“We had been waiting for hours when we finally spotted the trucks. At that very moment, the Israeli occupation opened fire at us with gunfire and artillery shelling,” Daghmash continued.
“Fear filled all our hearts, and people started running everywhere. We didn’t know where to hide. The screams of the wounded, women, and children were heard everywhere.”
“The occupation killed us twice,” Daghmas explained: “Once when it shelled our homes, and then again by starving us.”
“I can endure hunger, but my children and family cannot, and it is extremely painful not being able to provide for my children and family. All the people in that line were only hoping to return to their families with a bag of flour. Instead, over 100 people returned as martyrs, and more than 800 returned as wounded.”
Daghmas explained that after over one month the occupation had allowed trucks to enter and classified the Sheikh Ajleen area as the only corridor for aid.
“This is a new war crime committed by the occupation against innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip,” he concluded.
‘Children Crying from Hunger’
Yahya Salamia was also among the Palestinians waiting for humanitarian trucks in Gaza City. He was particularly outraged when he realized how Israel tried to distort the facts and claim that Palestinians posed a threat to the military vehicles.
“We were all civilians, unarmed. We only wanted to return to our families with a bag of flour and some food,” he told us.
“Ben Gvir bragged about the massacre and thanked the soldiers. This is the biggest evidence that the occupation continues to commit genocide against the people of Gaza,” Salamia continued.
“The occupation tries to deny the charge of genocide in the International Court of Justice, but every day it commits dozens of crimes and works with all its might to exterminate the people of Gaza and displace them from their lands.”
Salamia also said that the cameras documented part of the massacre and that footage confirmed that Israel deliberately killed civilians as they attempted to obtain flour from the trucks.
“Yes, I returned to my family safely, and I escaped death, but I failed to provide food for them,” he said.
“My heart aches for all those who were martyred and injured in the massacre, and I am deeply saddened because I couldn’t provide food for my family.”
Salamia called on the world to intervene to stop Israeli crimes, and bring food to the people of Gaza, especially in the north.
“We are dying of hunger every moment, and death from hunger is more painful than death from bombing. The crying of children from hunger does not stop, and we have nothing to feed them. Save our children, and stop the occupation’s crimes against us.”
(The Palestine Chronicle)
– Abdallah Aljamal is a Gaza-based journalist. He is a correspondent for The Palestine Chronicle in the Gaza Strip.
For the 118th consecutive day, the Gaza Strip has been ravaged by the Israeli occupation forces, sparking what can only be described as a genocide against the Palestinian people. The relentless assault has seen airstrikes, artillery shelling, and fire belts launched against civilians, resulting in the loss of innocent lives and horrifying crimes committed in areas of incursion. This aggression shows no signs of abating, as the Israeli occupation forces persist in their campaign of destruction.
Residents woke up this morning bidding farewell to dozens of family members, who were killed in Israel's brutal strikes on Gaza last night. pic.twitter.com/R38vfG3XsL
According to the Palestinian Information Center, the occupation aircraft and artillery intensified their raids and bombings across various parts of the Gaza Strip, with a particular focus on the city of Khan Yunis. Homes, displaced persons’ gatherings, and streets were ruthlessly targeted, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of martyrs and leaving countless wounded in their wake.
Part of the widespread devastation inflicted on Al-Orouba school area in Nuseirat Camp, central Gaza due to Israeli violent attacks. pic.twitter.com/GgOzmtHOcv
One victim of this unrelenting violence is Muhammad Hussam Al-Shaer, a child who lost his life as a result of injuries sustained in a car bombing in Rafah. As the chaos continues, citizens have rallied to recover the bodies of 22 martyrs, hauling them on trailers from the Khan Yunis camp to the Nasser Medical Complex for burial in the hospital yard.
The first moments after Israeli occupation's warplanes targeted Al-Salah Charity Society building in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza. pic.twitter.com/kgOptVC8et
Sadly, the humanitarian crisis shows no signs of abating. The Palestine Red Crescent Society has reported that Israeli occupation vehicles stormed Al-Amal Hospital for the third time, subjecting it to heavy fire and endangering the lives of medical staff and patients. Bullets pierced five vehicles, including ambulances, further exacerbating the dire circumstances faced by the Palestinian population.
Part of the widespread devastation inflicted on Al-Orouba school area in Nuseirat Camp, central Gaza due to Israeli violent attacks. pic.twitter.com/GgOzmtHOcv
Israeli gunboats have also engaged in intensive bombardments along the coast of Rafah, causing additional casualties among the civilian population. The Abu Fayyad family, residing in the new camp west of Nuseirat, fell victim to an occupation bombing, resulting in injuries. Meanwhile, the Al-Amal neighborhood and the vicinity of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, both located west of Khan Yunis, were subjected to merciless artillery bombardment.
The violence has even targeted children, Hamza Nader Al-Buhaisi, the son of a Red Crescent ambulance officer, lost his life when the occupation forces bombed the Al-Buhaisi family home in Deir Al-Balah. In a further illustration of the gravity of the situation, Israeli airstrikes continued unabated, with yet another raid unfolding south of Rafah.
The Israeli aggression continues to target civilians: This faulty 1 tonne missile landed between two homes in Gaza but failed to detonate pic.twitter.com/6Odzu5L1T3
The persistent clashes between the resistance and occupation forces, occurring northeast of Bureij, underscore the intensity of the conflict. With a devastating toll mounting, it is crucial to acknowledge that since October 7, Israel’s destructive war on the Gaza Strip has resulted in over 100,000 casualties, including martyrs, missing individuals, and the wounded. Shockingly, 70% of these victims are children and women.
'Israel' Deliberately Executes Domicide in Gaza
Israeli soldiers, on orders from commanders, burn homes in the Gaza Strip to make them unlivable. This tactic, exposed by Haaretz, aims to prevent Palestinians from returning and drive them away. pic.twitter.com/Tq57glffWk
Palestinian media reported early Tuesday that an Israeli special force assassinated three Palestinian youths in Ibn Sina Hospital in Jenin in the occupied West Bank.
According to preliminary reports, the Israeli force raided the third floor of the hospital and assassinated the three Palestinians using silenced weapons, then withdrew from the scene.
Later, Al-Qassam Brigades – Jenin Brigade announced in a statement that a group of its Resistance fighters were martyred in a cowardly assassination operation carried out by an Israeli special force that infiltrated the Ibn Sina Hospital.
Earlier, Israeli occupation forces carried out large-scale incursions in various areas of the West Bank. In the northern part of al-Khalil, the occupation forces raided the town of Surif and the al-Arroub refugee camp, where they arrested released prisoner Muayyad al-Sharabi, as well as Aysar Rabah Fdelat.
Israeli occupation forces also raided the town of Azzun east of Qalqilya and the eastern area of Nablus city, where Palestinian Resistance fighters confronted the raiding forces with gunfire.
In the village of Umm Safa west of Ramallah, the Israeli occupation forces arrested Ayham Baher from his home, and Ahmad Fayez Hboub from the town of Beitunya.
Meanwhile, Palestinian Resistance fighters confronted Israeli forces late Monday during their incursion into Tulkarm refugee camp in the West Bank. Palestinian media reported that the Resistance targeted an Israeli occupation bulldozer with gunfire inside the al-Muqataa neighborhood in the camp and attacked the raiding forces with explosive devices.
The Israeli enemy continued on Monday its aggression on Gaza for the 115th consecutive day, committing more massacres against the civilians in the Strip.
In this regard, the Zionist war jets raided overnight residential buildings in Gaza city, claiming 15 martyrs.
Meanwhile, Israeli air raids on Al-Shati Camp claimed 10 martyrs. Moreover, 13 Palestinians were killed by a Zionist aerial aggression on Al-Rimal neighborhood.
Palestinian medical sources indicated that 15 martyrs and 23 injuries were moved to Al-Shifaa Hospital and that Israeli drones targeted its vicinity where gunfire and tanks movements were heard.
It is worth noting that the Israeli enemy has continued besieging Al-Amal Hospital and Al-Nasser Medical Center in Khan Younis.
The Zionist aggression on Gaza has so far left 26,422 martyrs and 65,087 injuries.
Gaza’s Khan Younis has become the new war epicenter as the Israeli occupation intensified the aggression on Monday, hammering the southern city and committing brutal crimes against its residents.
Dozens were reported martyred or injured in the besieged southern city as Israeli occupation forces target hospitals, ambulances, and schools where thousands of civilians have been sheltering.
Much of Khan Younis has already been damaged or destroyed by Israeli air attacks. Palestinian activists also reported that Israeli occupation soldiers on the ground were blowing up residential buildings.
They’re blowing up entire neighborhoods in Khan Younis |
Israeli soldiers of Givati Brigade blew up 40 houses this evening, according to a soldier on facebook. See the mines used in the comment. pic.twitter.com/Ed0EmyCR6h
For its part, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said the occupation military was attacking its ambulance center, preventing first responders from reaching the wounded in Khan Younis.
🚨Urgent: PRCS ambulances unable to reach the wounded in Khan Yunis. Israeli occupation forces are besieging the PRCS ambulance center, and targeting anyone attempting to move in the area.#Gaza#NotATarget ❌#IHLpic.twitter.com/NXOT2Zzvlv
“There is an intense bombing campaign near the Nasser hospital and also El Amal City Hospital in the western part of the city. Attacks are also targeting Gaza’s largest university where thousands of people are sheltering. The area is being bombed by land, air and sea – there’s no safe corridor for them to escape,” Al-Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud reported from Rafah.
In the latest toll, Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza announced that the number of martyrs since the Israeli aggression on Gaza started on October 7th surpassed 25,000.
As the ministry put the death toll at 25,105, it said that the number of injured Gazans reached 62,681.
“Bringing Hostages in Body bags Not a Victory”
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been under mounted pressure by the families of Israeli hostages held in Gaza.
A group of Israeli hostages’ families and protesters blocked off traffic outside Netanyahu’s private residence in occupied Al-Quds (Jerusalem) on Sunday evening, demanding the occupation government reach a deal to ensure the return of the remaining captives held by Hamas.
Families of Israeli captives held in Gaza set up tents near the residence of PM Benjamin Netanyahu (January 21, 2024).
Israeli media reported that the hostages’ families pitched tents in the area.
The Times of Israel quoted a mother of an Israeli captive killed while in captivity in Gaza as urging Netanyahu and the war cabinet to “give up on ego.”
“My daughter didn’t just die, she died on our watch,” she said.
Meanwhile, a father of another Israeli captive said:” “We ask that they fix the failure of October 7… Bringing home 136 hostages in body bags can never be considered any part of a victory.”
The Head of the UN health agency, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, stated that the WHO condemns the recent Israeli airstrike on Al-Maghazi refugee camp, which killed at least 70 Palestinians.
The World Health Organization condemned the recent airstrike carried out by the Israeli occupation on a refugee camp in the besieged Gaza Strip, resulting in the martyrdom of at least 70 Palestinian lives.
On social media platform X, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the UN health agency, conveyed significant concern in a post on Monday. He referenced touching narratives from health workers and victims, highlighting the profound suffering inflicted by the attacks.
“One child had lost their whole family in the strike on the camp. A nurse at the hospital suffered the same loss, with his entire family killed,” he added.
WHO today visited Al-Aqsa Hospital, where scores of injured people were taken overnight following strikes in central #Gaza, including in the vicinity of the Maghazi refugee camp.
Palestinian health authorities reported that 70 people were killed, while Al-Aqsa Hospital staff… pic.twitter.com/B5503C82CT
Ghebreyesus’ statement came a day after an Israeli airstrike targeted the al-Maghazi refugee camp in the central region of Gaza, which has been under constant aggression by the occupation.
In response to the attack, Gaza’s Health Ministry reported the destruction of a “residential block”, and expressed concern that the “toll is likely to rise” due to the considerable number of families living there and the fact that many individuals were still trapped under the rubble.
Describing the Israeli attack on Sunday, the ministry’s spokesperson Ashraf al-Qudra said, “What is happening at the al-Maghazi camp is the annihilation of an entire residential square.”
“Palestinian health authorities reported that 70 people were killed, while Al-Aqsa Hospital staff reported receiving around 100 casualties,” Tedros said, adding, “The hospital is taking in far more patients than its bed capacity and staff can handle.”
“Many will not survive the wait,” the WHO’s head warned, insisting that “this latest strike on a Gazan community shows just why we need a #CeasefireNOW.”
The senior UN official noted, “WHO is extremely concerned about the unbearable strain that escalating hostilities are putting on the few hospitals across Gaza that remain open – with most of the health system decimated and brought to its knees.”
The ongoing Israeli aggression on Gaza has resulted in the martyrdom of at least 20,674 Palestinian lives, with the majority being women and children.
A Palestinian father carries the body of his child killed in overnight Israeli shelling during a funeral in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, on October 10, 2023. (AFP)
Israeli occupation forces commit yet another heinous crime involving the seizure of the bodies of Palestinian martyrs and the theft of their vital organs.
In a heart-wrenching statement, the Government Media Office in Gaza revealed that the Israeli occupation forces handed over the mutilated bodies of 80 martyrs after stealing their organs, adding that the bodies were unidentified and the occupation refused to specify the names of these martyrs or the places from which they were stolen.
The occupation repeated the crime of stealing organs more than once during its real-time genocidal war, as per the statement.
It was highlighted that the Israeli occupation forces have been involved in a grave crime, specifically the kidnapping of the bodies of Palestinian martyrs and the theft of their vital organs.
The statement further pointed out that “Israel” had previously engaged in desecrating graves in Jabalia, underscoring that “Israel” continues to retain possession of numerous martyrs’ bodies from the Gaza Strip.
The statement strongly emphasized that this heinous crime is just one in a series of atrocities committed by the Israeli occupation army, particularly following the green light given by the United States to kill civilians, including children and women.
The office, in its statement, called for the formation of a completely independent international investigation committee to probe the Israeli army’s seizure of martyrs’ bodies and the theft of their vital organs.
It also expressed deep shock at international organizations’ “eerie silence”, most notably the International Red Cross operating in the Gaza Strip. The statement also criticized these organizations for their feeble, secondary, and confused positions, emphasizing that they fall far short of the humanitarian and ethical standpoint required in the face of such heinous crimes committed by “Israel”.
‘Israel’ steals bodies of Gazans
The invading Israeli forces frequently targeted numerous cemeteries in the Gaza Strip, causing extensive damage, desecration of graves, and the theft of bodies, as reported by the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor on December 14.
Based on field documentation, these attacks have affected al-Falujah cemetery in the northern part, Ali bin Marwan, Sheikh Radwan, al-Shuhada, and Sheikh Shaaban cemeteries, along with St. Porphyrius Church cemetery in Gaza City. These assaults have resulted in the destruction of numerous graves, displaying a complete disregard for the sanctity of the deceased.
Frequent Israeli attacks have caused significant damage, resulting in large holes within these cemeteries, impacting dozens of graves, as per Euro-Med Monitor.
Numerous graves have been seriously damaged, and in some cases, the remains of deceased individuals have been scattered or gone missing. Reports received by Euro-Med Monitor indicated that Israeli occupation forces dug up several graves in al-Faluja cemetery, stealing the bodies of Palestinians amid arising concerns about potential organ theft.
The Monitor strongly emphasized that even the deceased have not been spared in the ongoing Israeli genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, which commenced on October 7. The organization highlighted “Israel’s” systematic violation of the sanctity of the dead and cemeteries, constituting a blatant breach of international humanitarian law principles and the rules of war governing the protection of cemeteries during wars.
Dive deeper
The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reported, on November 26, that the Israeli army is holding the bodies of numerous Palestinians killed during the ongoing Israeli aggression on Gaza.
The organization called for an independent international investigation into organ theft. Euro-Med Monitor documented the Israeli army confiscated dozens of bodies from Al-Shifa Medical Complex, the Indonesian Hospital, and the vicinity of the designated “safe corridor” for forcibly displaced people.
Concerns about organ theft arose after medical professionals in Gaza found evidence of missing cochleas, corneas, and vital organs, such as livers, kidneys, and hearts, during quick examinations.
“Israel” has a long history of withholding Palestinian bodies and storing them in covert mass graves referred to as “enemy combatant graves.” These graves, situated in closed military zones, are marked only with metal plates. The organization cited at least 145 Palestinians’ remains in Israeli morgues, approximately 255 in the “Numbers Cemetery” near the Jordanian border, and 75 missing individuals unidentified by “Israel”.
As per a previous Euro-Med Monitor report, Israeli occupation authorities stored the bodies of Palestinians in subfreezing temperatures, sometimes below -40 degrees Celsius, to prevent disturbance and potentially conceal organ theft.
The human rights group stressed that “Israel” has legalized the retention of dead Palestinians’ bodies and the theft of organs, citing a 2019 Israeli Supreme Court ruling allowing temporary burial in the “Numbers Cemetery”.
By the end of 2021, Israeli laws were enacted, permitting the army and police to withhold the bodies of Palestinians. Reports have surfaced in recent years suggesting the unlawful use of Palestinian bodies by “Israel”, including organ theft for use in Israeli medical school labs.
It is worth noting that Dr. Meira Weiss, an Israeli doctor, disclosed in her book “Over Their Dead Bodies” that organs taken from dead Palestinians were used in medical research at Israeli universities’ medical faculties and transplanted into Israeli patients.
In the same context, Yehuda Hess, the former director of “Israel’s” Abu Kabir Institute of Forensic Medicine, admitted to the theft of human tissues, organs, and skin from dead Palestinians without their relatives’ knowledge or consent. A 2008 CNN investigation identified “Israel” as a major hub for the illegal global trade in human organs and implicated the entity in the theft of organs from deceased Palestinians for illegal use.
Euro-Med Monitor has verified that “Israel” is the singular entity systematically retaining the bodies of people it has killed, and it stands as one of the world’s largest centers for the illicit trade of human organs, justified under the pretext of “security deterrence” and in complete contravention of international charters and agreements.
The human rights group additionally affirmed that the denial of surrendering the bodies of the deceased for proper burial, in line with their religious customs and for their grieving families, could constitute collective punishment. Such an act is explicitly prohibited under Article 50 of the Hague Regulations and Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Ghebreyesus explains that the largest hopsital in Gaza, al-Shifa, is trying to operate again but the situation remains “unbelievably challenging and chaotic.”
Medics prepare premature babies for transport to Egypt after they were evacuated from al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City to a hospital further south in Rafah, on Nov. 20, 2023. (
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus confirmed that a World Health Organization (WHO) team delivered medical aid to Gaza‘s largest hospital, al-Shifa Hospital.
Ghebreyesus took to X to break the news.
“A WHO-led team of UN experts reached al-Shifa today to deliver essential medical supplies and assess priority health needs,” he posted, adding that al-Shifa is trying to operate again but the situation remains “unbelievably challenging and chaotic.”
Al-Shifa hospital in northern #Gaza is trying to resume its operations to serve thousands of patients again, but the situation is still unbelievably challenging and chaotic, and the hospital is in need of resuscitation — high-risk @WHO mission finds.
“Gaza’s largest hospital is at the moment able to provide limited trauma stabilization and some dialysis support. Surgery is not yet possible; the hospital has no blood for transfusion, and hardly any staff to care for the constant flow of patients,” Ghebreyesus said.
Ghebreyesus affirmed that 8 hospitals out of 36 are partially functioning in Gaza. Just a few days ago, 13 out of the 36 hospitals were still operational, as per the latest update from the World Health Organization on the war in Gaza.
According to Reuters, Ghebreyesus noted in a social media post that a WHO-led mission to Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza faced delays at a checkpoint both on the way to north Gaza and upon returning.
We received greater detail on Saturday’s high-risk @WHO-led mission in #Gaza to Al-Ahli Hospital. We are deeply concerned about prolonged checks and detention of health workers that put lives of already fragile patients at risk.
He highlighted that some Palestine Red Crescent Society personnel were detained on both occasions. Ghebreyesus emphasized deep concern about the prolonged checks and detention of health workers, putting the lives of already vulnerable patients at risk.
Gazans, due to “Israel’s” genocidal war, are lacking clean water, food, medicinal aid, living in overcrowded shelters, and forced to endure the cold weather of December as illnesses and diseases are tearing through the survivors.
As Gaza remains deprived of aid and with the constant brutal bombardment that destroys hospitals and aid coming into the Strip, those who have fallen ill find themselves unable to receive treatment as doctors scurry the limited resources they still have to Palestinians whom Israeli strikes have injured.
Phase One of Israel’s genocidal campaign on Gaza has ended. Phase Two has begun. It will result in even higher levels of death and destruction.
The skies over Gaza are filled — after a seven-day truce — with projectiles of death. Warplanes. Attack helicopters. Drones. Artillery shells. Tank shells. Mortars. Bombs. Missiles. Gaza is a cacophony of explosions and forlorn screams and cries for help beneath collapsed buildings. Fear, once again, is coiling itself around every heart in the Gazan concentration camp.
By Friday evening, 184 Palestinians — including three journalists and two doctors — had been killed by Israeli air strikes in the north, south and central Gaza, and at least 589 injured, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. Most of them are women and children. Israel will not be deterred. It plans to finish the job, to obliterate what is left in the north of Gaza and decimate what remains in the south, to render Gaza uninhabitable, to see its 2.3 million people driven out in a massive campaign of ethnic cleansing via starvation, terror, slaughter and infectious diseases.
The aid convoys, which brought in token amounts of food and medicine — the first batch was shrouds and coronavirus tests according to the director of al-Najjar hospital — have been halted. No one, least of all President Joe Biden, plans to intervene to stop the genocide. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Israel this week, and while calling for Israel to protect civilians, refused to set conditions that would disrupt the $3.8 billion Israel receives in annual military assistance or the $14.3 billion supplemental aid package. The world will watch passively, muttering useless bromides about more surgical strikes, while Israel spins its roulette wheel of death. By the time Israel is done, the 1948 Nakba, where Palestinians were massacred in dozens of villages and 750,000 were ethnically cleansed by Zionist militias, will look like a quaint relic of a more civilized era.
Israel began to bomb Khan Younis on Friday after dropping leaflets warning civilians to evacuate further south to Rafah, located on the border crossing with Egypt. Hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians had sought refuge in Khan Younis. Once Palestinians are pushed to Rafah, there is only one place left to flee — Egypt. The Israeli Ministry of Intelligence, in a leaked report, calls for the forcible transfer of Gaza’s population to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. A detailed plan to intentionally displace the Palestinians in Gaza and push them into Egypt has been embedded in Israeli doctrine for five decades. Already, 1.8 million Palestinians in Gaza have been driven from their homes. Once Palestinians cross the border into Egypt — which the Egyptian government and Arab leaders are seeking to prevent despite pressure from the U.S. — Palestinians will never return.
This is not a war against Hamas. It is a war against Palestinians.
Israeli strikes are generated at a dizzying rate, many of them from a system called “Habsora” — The Gospel — which is built on artificial intelligence that selects 100 targets a day. The AI-system is described by seven current and former Israeli intelligence officials in an article by Yuval Abraham on the Israeli sites +972 Magazine and Local Call, as facilitating a “mass assassination factory.” Israel, once it locates what it assumes to be a Hamas operative from a cell phone, for example, bombs and shells a wide area around the target, killing and wounding tens, and at times hundreds of Palestinians, the article states.
“According to intelligence sources,” the story reads, “Habsora generates, among other things, automatic recommendations for attacking private residences where people suspected of being Hamas or Islamic Jihad operatives live. Israel then carries out large-scale assassination operations through the heavy shelling of these residential homes.”
Some 15,000 Palestinians, including 6,000 children and 4,000 women, have been killed since Oct. 7. Some 30,000 have been wounded. Over six thousand are missing, many buried under the rubble. More than 300 families have lost 10 or more members of their families. More than 250 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since Oct. 7, and more than 3,000 injured, although the area is not controlled by Hamas. The Israeli military claims to have killed between 1,000 and 3,000 of some 30,000 Hamas fighters, a relatively small number given the scale of the assault. Most resistance fighters shelter in their vast tunnel system.
Israel’s playbook is the “Dahiya Doctrine.” The doctrine was formulated by former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot, who is a member of the war cabinet, following the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Dahiya is a southern Beirut suburb and a Hezbollah stronghold. It was pounded by Israeli jets after two Israeli soldiers were taken prisoner. The doctrine posits that Israel should employ massive, disproportionate force, destroying infrastructure and civilian residences, to ensure deterrence.
Daniel Hagari, spokesman of the IDF, conceded at the start of Israel’s most recent attack on Gaza that the “emphasis” would be “on damage and not on accuracy.”
Israel has abandoned its tactic of “roof knocking” where a rocket without a warhead would land on a roof to warn those inside to evacuate. Israel has also ended its phone calls warning of an impending attack. Now dozens of families in an apartment block or a neighborhood are killed without notice.
The images of mass destruction feed the thirst for revenge within Israel following the humiliating incursion by Hamas fighters on Oct. 7 and the killing of 1,200 Israelis, including 395 soldiers and 59 police officers. There is a sadistic pleasure voiced by many Israelis over the genocide and a groundswell of calls for the murder or expulsion of Palestinians, including those in the occupied West Bank and those with Israeli citizenship.
The savagery of the air strikes and indiscriminate attacks, the cutting off of food, water and medicine, the genocidal rhetoric of the Israeli government, make this a war whose sole objective is revenge. This will not be good for Israel or the Palestinians. It will fuel a conflagration throughout the Middle East.
Israel’s attack is the last desperate measure of a settler colonial project that foolishly thinks, as many settler colonial projects have in the past, that it can crush the resistance of an indigenous population with genocide. But even Israel will not get away with killing on this scale. A generation of Palestinians, many of whom have seen most, if not all, of their families killed and their homes and neighborhoods destroyed, will carry within them a lifelong thirst for justice and retribution.
This war is not over. It has not even begun.
(Republished from Scheerpost by permission of author or representative)
Israeli captive being released by Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters at Rafah Crossing during the fifth release on Tuesday, November 28, 2023.
The temporary ceasefire in Gaza entered its sixth and last day on Wednesday, with reports on extending the truce for the second time being leaked. As the sixth release of Israeli and Palestinian prisoners is in process, leaks come out that there are negotiations between the Zionist entity and Hamas to release additional captives and extend the ceasefire by another five days.
According to leaks reported by Al-Jazeera, talks on truce extension tackled doing this “over five categories: Israeli captives; elderly men who are too old to be reservists; female soldiers; reservist soldiers; and then the bodies of Israelis who were killed before or during captivity.”
“There seem to be positive noises coming from Hamas about this, as well,” Al-Jazeera added, noting that “there’s a lot of pressure from the right-wing in Israel, which actually controls the government, that this ceasefire should not go on indefinitely.”
Meanwhile, the Israeli Broadcasting Corporation reported that occupation authorities are looking into another extension of the truce.
“It depends on the conduct of Hamas,” an Israeli political official was quoted as saying.
Qatar, which mediated the truce deal, hosted on Tuesday the heads of Israeli Mossad and the CIA for talks.
Sixth Release
Another 30 Palestinian prisoners will be released on Wednesday for 10 Israeli captives, media reported.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement it has received a list with the names of Israelis that Hamas is slated to release later today, the sixth group of hostages to be freed as part of the temporary truce.
The Israeli statement said the “families of those on the list have been informed,” without giving further details.
Earlier on Tuesday, the fifth batch of prisoners were released as part of the swap deal. Hamas released 10 Israeli hostages and two Thai nationals, in exchange for 30 Palestinian prisoners.
The Israeli captives were handed over by Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades and ally Islamic Jihad’s Al-Quds Brigades to the Red Cross.
The Palestinian Prisoner’s Club said 15 women and 15 minors were freed.
Upon his liberation from the Israel occupation prisons through the resistance deal, the first words from the father of the prisoner, young Qassam Attoun, were filled with concern: 'Where did your weight disappear? They don't feed you, do they?'
On the other hand, several shooting incidents were reported by Israeli occupation army across the Gaza Strip in violation of the temporary ceasefire.
Israeli forces “opened fire on a Palestinian boat that was trying to go out into the open sea from the shores of Deir el-Balah. The boat returned to the shore,” Amir Bohbot, correspondent for the Israeli Walla news website, said, noting that the shooting is the second incident on Wednesday.
Gaza neighborhood that have been heavily damaged by Israeli bombardment.
Earlier, three Palestinians were wounded, one seriously, as occupation forces in Beit Hanoun opened fire at them in the northern region of the besieged strip.
Catastrophic Humanitarian Situation
The Director General of hospitals in Gaza Mohammad Zaqout said that hospitals in the strip’s north including Al-Shifa, Kamal Adwan, and al-Ahli hospitals have yet to receive fuel.
He added that Field hospitals coming into Gaza are currently are not in service despite an urgent need for them.
A Palestinian boy rests on a mattress near the ruins of destrpyed houses in Gaza (November 28, 2023 / photo by Reuters).
The official warned that the lack of water and hygiene-related materials will increase the risk of epidemics.
For its part, UN’s World Food Program (WFP) said that aids delivered to Gaza are wholly insufficient to deal with level of hunger.
The organization warned that humanitarian situation in Gaza is catastrophic, and that “we are facing the risk of famine.”
“6 days are not enough to deliver the needed aid, people of Gaza deficient in food,” WFP added.
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report.
Washington DC — (Scheerpost) — Israel is not attacking hospitals in Gaza because they are “Hamas command centers.” Israel is systematically and deliberately destroying Gaza’s medical infrastructure as part of a scorched earth campaign to make Gaza uninhabitable and escalate a humanitarian crisis. It intends to force 2.3 million Palestinians over the border into Egypt, where they will never return.
Israel has destroyed and nearly emptied the Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. The Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia is next. Israel is deploying tanks and armored personnel carriers around the hospital and has fired rounds into the building, killing twelve people.
The playbook is familiar. Flyers are dropped by Israel over a hospital, telling people to leave because the hospital is a base for “Hamas terrorist activities.” Tanks and artillery shells rip away parts of the hospital walls. Israeli missiles blow up ambulances. Power and water are cut. Medical supplies are blocked. There are no painkillers, antibiotics or oxygen. The most vulnerable, premature babies in incubators and the gravely ill die. Israeli soldiers raid the hospital and force everyone out at gunpoint.
This is what happened at Al Shifa Hospital. This is what happened at Al Rantisi Children’s Hospital. This is what happened at Gaza’s main psychiatric hospital. This is what happened at Nasser Hospital. This is what happened at the other hospitals that Israel has destroyed. And this is what will happen at the few hospitals that remain.
Israel has shut down 21 of Gaza’s 35 hospitals, including Gaza’s only cancer hospital. The hospitals still operating have severe shortages of basic medicine and supplies. One by one, the hospitals are being picked off. Soon, there will be no health facilities left. This is by design.
Tens of thousands of terrified Palestinians, forced to evacuate by Israel, their homes blasted into rubble, seek refuge from the relentless bombing by camping out in and around Gaza’s hospitals. They hope Israel will not target the medical centers. If Israel abided by the Geneva Conventions, they would be correct. But Israel is not carrying out a war. It is carrying out a genocide. And in a genocide, a population, and all that sustains a population, is obliterated.
Civilian casualties from an Israeli airstrike on the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza, November 21, 2023
In an ominous sign that Israel will turn on the Palestinians in the West Bank once it is done flattening Gaza, armored vehicles have surrounded at least four West Bank hospitals. Israeli soldiers have raided the Ibn Sina Hospital along with the East Jerusalem Hospital.
Israel’s settler colonial state was founded on lies. It is sustained by lies. And now, when it is grimly determined to carry out the worst slaughter and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians since the 1948 Nakba, or “catastrophe,” that saw 750,000 Palestinians ethnically cleansed and some 50 massacres by Jewish militias, it spits out one grotesque absurdity after another. It speaks of Palestinians as a dehumanized mass. There are no mothers, fathers, children, teachers, doctors, lawyers, cooks, poets, taxi drivers or shopkeepers. Palestinians, in the Israeli lexicon, are a single contagion that must be eradicated.
Watch this video of Israeli school children singing, “We Will Annihilate Everyone” in Gaza.
Hitler Youth used to sing songs like this about Jews.
Those who embark upon projects of mass killing lie to avoid demoralizing their own populations, lull the victims into believing they will not all be exterminated and stop outside forces from intervening. The Nazis claimed that Jews packed on trains and sent to extermination camps were on work details and had good medical care and adequate food. As for the infirm and elderly, they were cared for in rest centers. The Nazis even created a mock camp for the “resettlement” of Jews “to the East,” – Theresienstadt – where international bodies such as the Red Cross could see how humanely the Jews were treated, even as millions were being exterminated.
At least 664,000 and possibly as many as 1.2 million Armenians were massacred or died of exposure, disease and starvation during the genocide carried out by the Ottoman Empire from the spring of 1915 to the autumn of 1916. The Armenian genocide was as public as the genocide in Gaza. European and U.S. consular missions provided detailed accounts of the campaign to cleanse modern-day Türkiye of Armenians.
The Ottoman government, in an attempt to hide the genocide, banned foreigners from taking photographs of Armenian refugees or the corpses that lined the roads. Israel, too, has blocked the foreign press from Gaza, carrying out only a handful of brief and carefully staged visits arranged by the Israeli military. Israel periodically cuts off internet and phone services. Israel has killed at least 43 Palestinian journalists and media workers since the Hamas incursion into Israel on Oct. 7, many undoubtedly targeted by Israeli forces.
Armenians, like Palestinians, were forced from their homes, gunned down and denied food and water. Armenian deportees were sent on death marches to the Syrian Desert, where tens of thousands were shot or died from starvation, cholera, malaria, dysentery and influenza. Israel is forcing 1.1 million Palestinians into the southern tip of Gaza and bombing them as they flee. These refugees, like the Armenians, lack food, water, fuel and sanitation. They, too, will soon succumb to epidemics of infectious diseases.
Talat Pasha, the de facto leader of the Ottoman Empire, told the United States ambassador, Henry Morgenthau Sr., in words that replicate Israel’s stance, on Aug. 2, 1915, “that our Armenian policy is absolutely fixed and that nothing can change it. We will not have the Armenians anywhere in Anatolia. They can live in the desert but nowhere else.”
The longer the genocide continues, the more absurd the lies become.
There are big Israeli lies. The obliteration of Gaza and wanton killing of thousands of Palestinians, Israel insists, is a targeted effort to get rid of Hamas rather than a campaign to reduce Gaza to a pile of rubble, carry out mass murder and ethnically cleanse Palestinians.
There are small Israeli lies. Forty beheaded babies. Al Shifa Hospital is a “Hamas command center.” A calendar in Arabic on the wall of a hospital, according to IDF Spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, is “a guardian [guard] list, where every terrorist writes his name and every terrorist has his own shift guarding the people that were here.”An Israeli actor dressed up as a nurse and speaking heavily accented Arabic claims to be a Palestinian doctor and to have seen Hamas use civilians as human shields. She says members of Hamas “attacked Al Shifa Hospital” and stole “the fuel and medicine.” Palestinian militants, rather than Israeli tanks, Israel says, are responsible for shelling Al Shifa Hospital. Israel struck a car full of “terrorists” in southern Lebanon, “terrorists” who turned out to be three girls, their mother and grandmother. The explosion at the Al Ahli Hospital was the result of an errant rocket fired by the Palestinians, a claim questioned by The New York Times when it discredited the video based on analysis of its time stamp. Israel said it “responded to the request of the director of Shifa Hospital to allow Gazan citizens who were sheltering in the hospital and who wish to evacuate from Shifa Hospital towards the humanitarian crossing in the Gaza Strip via a secure axis,” a statement Mohammed Zaqout, director general of hospitals in Gaza, said was “false,” adding “we were forced to leave by gunpoint.” Israeli Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, in a video pilloried by the BBC, shows viewers a meager stash of automatic weapons in a promotional video that magically increases once foreign reporters arrive for a guided tour. The IDF later deleted it.
The lies will be written into the Israeli school books. The lies will be repeated by Israeli politicians, historians and journalists. The lies will be told on Israeli television, films, and books. Israelis are eternal victims. Palestinians are absolute evil. There was no genocide. Türkiye, a century later, still denies what happened to the Armenians.
A Palestinian doctor carries a child as he flees the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza, November 21, 2023. Photo | Quds News Network
In wartime, people believe what they want to believe. The lies fill a hunger within the Israeli public that sees the conflict as a binary struggle between “the children of light and the children of darkness.” The lies are a defense against accountability, for if Israel refuses to acknowledge reality, it is not forced to respond to reality. The lies create cognitive dissonance, where fact becomes fiction and fiction becomes truth. The lies make any discussion of genocide or reconciliation impossible.
Israel, with the backing of the Biden administration, will continue to snuff out all systems that sustain life in Gaza. Hospitals. Schools. Power plants. Water treatment facilities. Factories. Farms. Apartment blocks. Houses. Then Israel will pretend, like the killers in past genocides, that it never happened.
The lies used by Israel to absolve itself of responsibility will eat away at Israeli society. They will corrode its moral, religious, civic, intellectual and political life. The lies will elevate war criminals to heroic status and demonize those with a conscience. Israel’s genocide, as with the 1965 mass killings in Indonesia, will be mythologized, an epic battle against the forces of evil and barbarity, just as we mythologized the genocide of Native Americans and turned our settlers and murderous cavalry units into heroes. The killers in the Indonesian war against communism are cheered at rallies as saviors. They are interviewed about the “heroic” battles they fought nearly six decades ago. Israel will do the same. It will deform itself. It will celebrate its crimes. It will turn evil into good. It will exist within a self-constructed myth. The truth, as in all despotisms, will be banished. Israel, a monster to the Palestinians, will be a monster to itself.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect MintPress News editorial policy.
Since Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza began, Zionist officials, pundits, journalists, and their Western opposite numbers have endlessly invoked the sinister specter of “terrorism” to justify the industrial-scale slaughter of Palestinians. It is because of “terrorism,” twice-failed U.S. Presidential candidate and unconvicted war criminal Hillary Clinton representatively wrote for The Atlantic on November 14 that “Hamas must be permanently erased.” Destroyed hospitals and schools and civilians killed en masse are reasonable “collateral damage.” Such is the unparalleled evil of “terrorists.”
Yet, the relentless stream of heart-rending clips documenting the Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) Holocaust deluging social media feeds the world over, and the ever-ratcheting child death toll has compelled countless citizens to ask, “If Hamas are terrorists, then what are Zionists?” It is surely no coincidence YouTube recently yanked the official video of a groundbreaking track by renowned rapper and MintPress News contributor Lowkey, “Terrorist?” posing this precise question.
“Terrorist?” was released in 2011, at the height of the U.S. Empire’s “War on Terror.” Then, the purported global threat of “terrorism” was exploited throughout the West to savage civil liberties at home and wage relentless illegal military “interventions” abroad. Mainstream usage of the term precipitously plummeted thereafter. It is only now regaining popular currency due to the Gaza genocide.
This is no accident. As we shall see, Israel – and specifically its veteran leader, Benjamin Netanyahu – was fundamental to concocting the mainstream conception of “terrorism,” explicitly to delegitimize anti-imperial struggles while validating Western state violence directed at oppressed peoples across the Global South. The impact of this informational assault can be felt in every corner of the world today – not least Gaza.
In fact, one might reasonably conclude the specific foundations of Nakba 2.0, which is unfolding in grisly real-time right now, were laid decades ago as a result of the connivances of Netanyahu, the international Zionist lobby, and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. What follows is the little-known history of how “terrorism” came to be. A majority of the world’s population – the Palestinian people in particular – live with the mephitic consequences every day.
IT BEGINS…
Our story starts in 1976, at the peak of détente between the U.S. and Soviet Union. After two-and-a-half decades of bitter enmity, the two superpowers resolved to peaceful coexistence at the start of the decade. They collaborated to systematically dismantle the structures and doctrines that defined the immediate post-World War II era, such as Mutually Assured Destruction (M.A.D.).
In May of that year, the CIA produced its annual National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), a comprehensive report combining data from various intelligence agencies intended to be a basis for crafting foreign policy. In keeping with the past five years, it concluded the Soviets were in severe economic decline, favored diplomacy over conflict, and desperately sought an end to the Cold War. Such findings lay behind Washington’s push for détente and Moscow’s eager acceptance of major disarmament and arms control treaties.
However, newly-appointed CIA director George H. W. Bush categorically rejected these conclusions. He sought a second opinion and constructed an independent intelligence cell to review the NIE. Known as Team B, it was composed of hardcore Cold Warriors, defense-industry-funded hawks, and rabid anti-Communists. Among them were several individuals who would become leading figures in the neoconservative movement, such as Paul Wolfowitz. Also present were the infamous CIA and Pentagon dark arts specialists who had been professionally ostracized due to détente.
Team B duly reviewed the NIE and rubbished each and every one of the Agency’s findings. Rather than dilapidated, impoverished and teetering on total collapse, the Soviet Union was, in fact, more deadly and dangerous than ever, having constructed a vast array of “first strike” capabilities right under the CIA’s collective nose. To reach these bombshell conclusions, Team B relied on a confounding hodgepodge of peculiar logical fallacy, paranoid theorizing, crazed conspiratorial conjecture, unsupported value judgments, and amateurish circular reasoning.
Then-CIA director George H.W. Bush looks over a map of Beirut, Lebanon, with President Gerald Ford. Photo | CIA Archives
For example, Team B repeatedly assessed that a lack of evidence Moscow possessed weapons systems, military technology, or surveillance capabilities comparable or superior to Washington’s own was inverse proof the Soviets, in fact, did. They were so sophisticated and innovative, Team B concluded, that they couldn’t be detected or even comprehended by the West. Team B’s analysis was confirmed to be a total fantasy when the USSR collapsed. Yet, its methods informed all subsequent NIEs throughout the Cold War and likely endure today.
On June 27 of that year, mere weeks after Team B was set to work on reigniting the Cold War, Air France Flight 139, en route to Paris from Tel Aviv, was hijacked by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Redirected to a Ugandan airport, the plane was greeted on the runway by Idi Amin’s military, who ushered the passengers – the majority of whom were Jewish or Israeli – into the terminal, watched over by scores of soldiers, intended to prevent their escape or rescue.
The hijackers relayed a demand to the government of Israel. Unless a ransom of $5 million was paid to them and 53 Palestinian prisoners were released from jail, the hostages would be executed. In response, 100 elite IOF commandos launched an audacious action to free the hostages. Their mission – known as the Entebbe Raid – was a stunning success. All but four hostages were rescued alive, and the IOF lost just one commander – Yonatan (Jonathan) Netanyahu, the older brother of Israel’s sitting Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
‘PROPAGANDA TO DEHUMANIZE’
For years, by that point, Israeli officials had been attempting to popularize the term “terrorism” to explain the motivations and actions of Palestinian freedom fighters. That way, their righteous fury at repression could be reframed as a destructive ideology of violence for violence’s sake without rationale and Zionist colonial tyranny as warranted self-defense. This effort became turbocharged in September 1972, when the kidnapping of 11 Israeli athletes at that year’s Olympics in Munich by Palestinian militants ended with all hostages murdered.
This particularly public bloodshed centered world attention on Israel and left Western citizens wondering what could’ve possibly inspired such actions. Zionists had hitherto managed to largely conceal their systematic, state-enforced repression and displacement of Palestinians from the outside world. Journalists were kept well away from the scenes of major crimes. At the same time, Amnesty International’s Israeli branch was secretly financed and directed by Tel Aviv’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to whitewash facts on the ground.
For the Netanyahu family, the Entebbe raid was a tragedy – but also an ideal opportunity to validate and internationalize the concept of “terrorism,” as espoused by Zionists. In 1979, Benjamin Netanyahu founded the Jonathan Institute in honor of his slain brother. Its purpose, he said, was:
“To focus public attention on the grave threat that international terrorism poses to all democratic societies, to study the real nature of today’s terrorism, and to propose measures for combating and defeating the international terror movements.”
In 1983 Netanyahu explained what terrorism is not
If you miss a target and a bomb accidentally falls on a Children's hospital it's not terrorism Does it hold true in 2023!!! pic.twitter.com/6DiHRv0IKk
In July that year, the Institute convened the Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism (JCIT) in Jerusalem’s Hilton Hotel. It gathered together a 700-strong mob of Israeli government officials, U.S. lawmakers, intelligence operatives from across the ‘Five Eyes’ global spying network, and Western foreign policy apparatchiks. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many representatives of Team B were in attendance. For four days and seven separate sessions, speaker after speaker painted a disturbing picture of the worldwide phenomenon of “terrorism.”
They unanimously declared that all “terrorists” constituted a single, organized political movement that was being secretly financed, armed, trained, and directed by the Soviet Union. This devilish nexus, it was claimed, posed a mortal threat to Western democracy, freedom, and security, requiring a coordinated response. Eerily, as academic Diana Ralph later observed, the JCIT’s collective prescription for tackling this purported menace was precisely what transpired just over two decades later during the “War on Terror”.
“[This included] pre-emptive attacks on states that are alleged to support ‘terrorists’; an elaborate intelligence system apparatus; slashed civil liberties, particularly for Palestinians targeted as potential terrorists, including detention without charge, and torture; and propaganda to dehumanize ‘terrorists’ in the eyes of the public.”
Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin addressed the JCIT’s opening session. He set the tone by claiming Western state violence was ultimately “a fight for freedom or liberation” and, therefore, fundamentally opposed to “terrorism.” He concluded his remarks by imploring the assembled throng to go forth and promote the conference’s message once it was over. And they did.
Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin addressed the JCIT’s opening session. He set the tone by claiming Western state violence was ultimately “a fight for freedom or liberation” and, therefore, fundamentally opposed to “terrorism.” He concluded his remarks by imploring the assembled throng to go forth and promote the conference’s message once it was over. And they did.
‘THE TERROR NETWORK’
Among the JCIT attendees was American author and journalist Claire Sterling, who cut her teeth as a reporter decades earlier at the Overseas News Agency, an MI6 propaganda operation seeking to boost U.S. public support for entering World War II. Following the conference, she frequently amplified the claims of JCIT speakers in articles for prominent newspapers, leading to an epic March 1981 front-page exposé in The New York Times, “Terrorism: Tracing The International Network.”
A book published later that year, “The Terror Network,” expanded significantly on Sterling’s oeuvre and firmly cemented the notion of Moscow as a grand spider sat in the middle of a vast, globe-spanning web of deadly political violence in the Western public mind. It caused a sensation upon release, receiving rave reviews from major news outlets, being translated into 22 languages, and becoming a bestseller in several countries.
Most significantly of all, “The Terror Network” had a particularly potent impact on newly-inaugurated President Ronald Reagan and his CIA chief William Casey. Committed anti-Communists, they entered office desperately seeking a pretext for brutally crushing left-wing, nationalist opposition to U.S. imperialism in Latin America. Sterling’s work provided ample ammunition for achieving that bloodsoaked objective and was key to the White House decisively shattering détente, a process begun by Team B five years earlier.
Consequently, “The Terror Network” was circulated among U.S. lawmakers and heavily promoted overseas on the Reagan administration’s dime. Casey furthermore tasked his Agency with verifying its thesis. They quickly assessed Sterling’s work to be irredeemable garbage, ironically enough, as it was heavily influenced by CIA black propaganda. Enraged, Casey demanded the evaluation be revised. An updated appraisal was less scathing but nonetheless stressed the book was “uneven and the reliability of its sources varies widely,” while “significant portions” were “incorrect.”
Still dissatisfied, Casey asked a CIA “senior review panel” charged with scrutinizing Langley’s formal estimates to write their own report on the subject. They concluded the Soviets did offer limited financial, material and practical assistance to a handful of anti-imperial Global South liberation movements, some of which were labeled “terrorists” by Western powers. But there was “insufficient evidence” of Muscovite culpability for the entire global phenomenon of “terrorism,” let alone funding and directing such entities as dedicated policy.
Undeterred, when Casey personally delivered the report to Reagan, he allegedly said of its findings, “Of course, Mr. President, you and I know better.” So it was CIA-backed death squads that ran roughshod across Washington’s “backyard” throughout the 1980s in the name of neutralizing Soviet influence in the region. Their actions were heavily informed by the Agency’s guerrilla warfare manual, which encouraged assassinations of government officials and civilian leaders and deadly attacks on “soft targets” such as schools and hospitals. “Terrorism,” in other words.
‘WE ARE ALL PALESTINIANS’
Another example of Reagan’s “terrorism” was sponsoring Afghanistan’s Mujahideen resistance fighters in their battle with – ironically enough – the Soviet Red Army. This policy endured after the “Evil Empire” was vanquished. The same militants were transported to Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s to aid and abet the painful, forced death of Yugoslavia.
When these covert actions produced “blowback” in the form of the 9/11 attacks, several individuals who attended the JCIT, and their acolytes, were elevated to the Bush administration due to their supposed “terrorism” expertise. Meanwhile, with public and state-level fears of “terrorism” ramping up significantly the world over, many Western countries turned to Israel for advice and guidance on how to tackle the issue. As Nentyahu commented in 2008:
“We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon and the American struggle in Iraq.”
Netanyahu shows reporters a copy of a Syrian passport allegedly found on a Palestinian fighter that washed ashore in Gaza, 1991. Jerome Delay | AP
It is not for nothing that graphic videos showcasing IOF “surgical strikes” on Palestinians, their homes, schools, and hospitals are proudly displayed at international arms fairs, and private demonstrations of invasive surveillance tools such as Pegasus routinely wow repressive foreign security and intelligence agencies behind-closed-doors.
On top of a significant financial benefit, there is a diplomatic dividend, too. Israel secures an invaluable censure-stifling goodwill from customers, therefore permitting the Zionist project of permanently purging Palestine of its indigenous inhabitants to persist untrammeled. We see a palpable demonstration of this currently. While the streets of almost every major Western city have regularly teemed with pro-Palestine fervor ever since the latest attack on Gaza began, the protesters’ elected representatives are at best silent, at worst, actively complicit.
Impassioned chants of “We are all Palestinians!” have been a frequent fixture at these events. This rallying call is highly apposite, for in addition to expressing sympathy and solidarity with the Palestinian people, it is urgently incumbent upon us all to reflect that the very same techniques and technologies of control and oppression to which they have been so cruelly subjected daily for decades are now firmly trained on us as well, as a result of Israel’s invention of “terrorism.” As such, it is no exaggeration to say Palestinians are canaries in the coalmine of humanity.
October 17, 2023. A day that will eternally etch as the most somber chapter in human history. The aggression on al-Ahli Hospital has exposed a never-seen-before degree of malevolence on the part of the Israeli regime. On October 17, a medical establishment meant to be a sanctuary for the ill, the wounded, and the displaced was blown off with the utmost brutality, extinguishing the lives of almost 500 beating hearts with just one single rocket. The perpetrators of this massacre swiftly emerged on social media, only to later erase their digital traces. After the fact, Biden portrayed the attack as a result of Palestinians’ actions. One may ponder, how can anyone on earth be so evil? And as world leaders remain silent in the face of such an atrocity, one can’t help but wonder: has the world gone mad?
“Israel” ceased to exist
The moment the genocide was sparked, “Israel” had already ceased to exist. As a regime that struggled to maintain its credibility on the world stage, it no longer retains any semblance of legitimacy. Carrying out a massacre of such magnitude would not only spell disaster for the Israeli working class, but it also expose the extent to which Western morals and values are fragile.
The ruling settler classes have historically expanded their capacity for accumulation via means of expropriation and depopulation. However, in this specific instance, they no longer appear to wield this power. By dismantling the moral veneer of Zionism, the US manifested that it now holds the reins of decision-making. This is evidenced by the fact that the war in Gaza is not primarily aimed at exerting psychological pressure on Hamas fighters but rather at sending a clear message of war to Iran.
The Iranian revolution has faced continuous sanctions since its inception, leading to economic challenges and a strong sense of self-reliance and resentment towards the West. Over the years, the Iranian government has gained wide popular support but the true achievement of the revolution lies in Iran’s autonomy, which challenges imperialism. Iran has also shown a willingness to reform on social issues, particularly concerning women’s rights, and its stability can lead to social progress.
For quite some time now, the US has been itching to wage a war against Iran. Since the start of the genocide, Iran has issued several warnings to the regime that it would be compelled to intervene should the war on Gaza prolong. However, in its attempt to incite a response, the US failed to anticipate that Iran would refrain from launching a military response. Consequently, the US shot itself in the foot by revealing on the world stage the extent of its actions’ unparalleled brutality and injustice. But so far, it seems that the US remains oblivious to the magnitude of the self-inflicted damage.
Rising with the people of the West Bank the refugee camps, diaspora, and allies in Lebanon, Turkey, Greece, Spain, Iraq, Yemen, Iran, Morocco and globally erupt in anti-zionist protest in condemnation of the American-zionist massacre carried out at Al-Maamadani hospital in #Gazapic.twitter.com/JAoLtEIObO— UBBE AHMERDSON (@OurVisionariess) October 18, 2023
Understanding Israeli aggressions
The regime has a history of perpetrating similar acts of atrocity, with a pattern of constant disregard for human rights and international law. We have seen similar episodes in the Qana massacre in 1996 when the IOF bombed a UNIFIL shelter housing women, children, and UN staffers in southern Lebanon. Syria is neither a stranger to Israeli crimes as it has over the years been the target of multiple aggressions via airstrikes. Despite constant appeals to put a halt to Israeli aggressions, no concrete steps were ever taken to act in defense of international law.
When the regime was first conceived under Resolution 181, its primary objective was to establish a Western foothold in the Arab region. At that time, the pan-Arab movement posed a substantial threat to Western interests and was gaining momentum throughout the region. Through the defeat of pan-Arabism, “Israel” effectively isolated the Arab masses from the fallout of development in the productive forces. The effort was one where the US and several EU countries had joined forces to arm the Zionists, and thus, contrary to Zionist claims, the regime’s actions against Arab states were never primarily driven by existential threats but rather served to act on the behest of imperialism.
But this time, the West no longer has the capacity to exonerate “Israel’s” war crimes. The warning signs were evidenced by the fact that the regime had been embroiled in political upheaval over the past ten months. Netanyahu’s extremist cabinet and the proposed judicial overhaul plan had weakened the liberal basis of the Zionist regime which would have opted for a more strategic approach to negotiate superficial concessions with the Palestinians and to ensure the regime’s credibility and durability.
Moral decay
Anti-US sentiment initially pervaded countries like Syria, Libya, Iraq, and Yemen which endured the harshest consequences of US intervention and policies. Anti-US sentiment has also been steadily growing over the past decade throughout the Gulf region, including by key allies like Saudi Arabia, which have sought to establish greater autonomy in matters of national defense. But since the genocide began, this sentiment has grown immensely out of proportion among the Arab masses. Videos circulated all across social media of protesters attacking US embassies, as well as resistance groups resorting to attack military posts and warships. Likewise, numerous protests erupted across the West, but the silence of Western leaders implies a desire for more massacres to occur.
Western amorality is explained by the fact that the commodification of labor under capitalism not only objectifies labor but also establishes the moral framework for how capital treats human resources. Eurocentric perspectives tend to focus on partial facts as absolute truths, emphasizing class-desirable information to guide moral actions. The rejection of the categorical imperative, due to its lack of alignment with ruling-class interests, leads to various shortcuts and eclectic approaches to ethics, which erode the universality of moral conduct. In some cases, morality is reduced to a form of lifeboat ethics, justifying actions like shooting refugees at sea to protect Europe or provide benefits to the majority white population. This perspective is also reflected in the justifications provided by US presidents for war, where the focus is on protecting a way of life that perpetuates profit rates and imperialist exploitation, rather than safeguarding life itself. In this particular context, the US capitalizes immensely through the dehumanization of both Palestinians and Jews.
Panic begets panic
There was a time when the US had the ability to implement wars similar to those in Libya and Iraq. But the changing global balance of forces had no longer allowed for such scenarios to be repeated. With the rise of China and Russia on the global stage, there seemed less of a free hand to engage in direct military intervention. Russia forged alliances with Iran and the DPRK, de-dollarized its own economy, and gained new territory by defying NATO’s expansion to the East. China, on the other hand, supports the sovereignty of developing states and recognizes the national rights of the Palestinian people in Al-Quds, which poses a challenge to “Israel”, seen as a spearhead of US-led imperialism. The US felt it could not keep up with China as it offered a more compelling offer for peace: While the US promoted a version of peace based on the unchallenged supremacy of US military, China promoted peace via trade and development projects.
For the US to get directly involved through the monstruous dispatch of arms and carriers speaks volumes about the deteriorating state of US influence in the Arab region. With an awareness that attempts to drive a wedge between China and Russia had failed, the US is taking actions that continue to erode its global reputation. It brings to mind the adage that “panic begets panic,” that is, the US is increasingly losing its strategic composure on the international stage and resorting to a full-scale destruction of anything in sight amid despair to reaffirm dominance.
Could this be cause for concern? Quite so, since the reconfiguration of power structures could potentially lead to a nuclear conflict.
Bombing and targeting civilian infrastructure is not new to “Israel”, it is a common practice.
As “Israel” pursues its aggression against civilians in the blockaded Gaza Strip, Palestinians head to the one place that they deem safe – hospitals. Yet, even hospitals were not spared from Israeli bombs and airstrikes.
On that ominous night, with hundreds of Palestinian refugees seeking shelter in al-Ahli Arab Hospital, “Israel” committed one of its most brutal massacres so far, 12 days after the aggression.
When a picture is truly worth a thousand words.
A photo being circulated on social media platforms shows hundreds of #Palestinians' bodies laid on the ground after "Israel" committed a massacre that amounts to genocide by bombing Al-Maamadani Hospital in #Gaza.#Palestine… pic.twitter.com/5315uk9ttX
“Israel” butchered hundreds of Palestinians including refugees, patients, and media personnel, in an attack labeled as “unparalleled and beyond description” by the Gaza Health Ministry spokesperson.
“Unparalleled and beyond description.”
That’s how the #Gaza Health Ministry spokesperson described the Israeli massacre in the #BaptistHospital.
More than 600 have been murdered in cold blood in this massacre only by the bloodthirsty Israeli occupation forces so far.… pic.twitter.com/LjG8zcuGiQ— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) October 18, 2023
When a picture is truly worth a thousand words.
A photo being circulated on social media platforms shows hundreds of #Palestinians‘ bodies laid on the ground after “Israel” committed a massacre that amounts to genocide by bombing Al-Maamadani Hospital in #Gaza.#Palestine… pic.twitter.com/5315uk9ttX— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) October 17, 2023
The Palestinian Health Ministry revealed that the hospital was sheltering not only hundreds of sick and wounded but also people forcibly displaced from their homes escaping Israeli aggression.
At least 600 were killed in the attack, with footage circulating depicting an atrocious crime as martyrs were left there dismembered and beyond recognition.
In a chilling scene, surrounded by dead bodies to showcase the atrocity of the crime, the director of the Gaza hospital revealed that all the victims and the wounded in the al-Ahli hospital massacre were civilians, as the hospital was considered a safe haven for civilians displaced in Gaza.
🚨From between piles of bodies, the Director General of the Ministry of Health in Gaza held a press conference:
🔹All the victims & the wounded in the Baptist(Al Ahli) hospital massacre were civilians. 🔹The hospital was considered a safe haven for civilians displaced in #Gaza. pic.twitter.com/EYrFdvUvl2— Ahmed Abofoul | أحمد أبو فول (@AhmedAbofoul) October 17, 2023
Meanwhile, Don Binder, Chaplain to the Anglican Archbishop in occupied al-Quds, revealed that the attack on the same hospital was not “Israel’s” first.
In a post on Facebook three days ago, the chaplain revealed that al-Ahli Hospital’s Diagnostic Cancer Treatment Center in Gaza came under attack.
“At about 7:30 pm local time today, Ahli Hospital’s Diagnostic Cancer Treatment Center in Gaza was hit by Israeli rocket fire,” which severely damaged the two upper floors, including the Ultrasound and Mammography wards, the chaplain had warned.
ALERT: AHLI HOSPITAL STRUCK BY ISRAELI ROCKET FIRE!
At about 7:30 pm local time today, Ahli Hospital’s Diagnostic Cancer Treatment Center in Gaza was hit by Israeli rocket fire. The strike severely damaged the two upper floors, including the Ultrasound and Mammography wards.
Four of the hospital staff working there were injured in the blast and are receiving treatment for their wounds….See more
In his post, he urged whoever has any political influence to force the Israeli government to waive off the IOF “from bombing our hospital!”
Yet, nothing was done. The warning fell on deaf ears and thus came today’s massacre.
Stuck in the mud? Deflect attention
This comes as some Israeli and pro-Israeli accounts claimed that the attack was a failed Resistance launch, in a weak attempt to absolve the Israeli occupation from any responsibility and pin the blame on Palestinian Resistance factions.
However, based on the speed of the object, it can’t be a dud missile, as rockets failing to accelerate would have much lower speeds.
The speed difference can be easily identified between gliding munition launched from the air and failing-to-accelerate dud missiles. Hence, the object that hit the hospital was most definitely an Israeli airstrike.
This is even supported by BBC’s reporter John Donnison, who said, “It’s hard to see what else this could be, really, given the size of the explosion, other than an Israeli air strike, or several air strikes.”
BREAKING: AL-AHLI BAPTIST HOSPITAL MASSACRE – BBC JOURNALIST STATES IT HAD TO BE ISRAEL
BBC’s John Donnison: “It’s hard to see what else this could be, really, given the size of the explosion, other than an Israeli air strike, or several air strikes” pic.twitter.com/Gxx4evC9DW— Sulaiman Ahmed (@ShaykhSulaiman) October 17, 2023
In response to the Israeli accusations, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) Movement issued a statement slamming the Israeli attempts at falsifying the truth and accusing the PIJ of bombing al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza.
The statement stressed that “hurling accusations at the PIJ will not absolve the enemy of its responsibility for the massacre.”
“The enemy is trying to fabricate lies, as usual, to evade responsibility for the brutal massacre,” the statement read.
The PIJ confirmed in the statement that the movement, like the rest of the Resistance factions in Gaza, “does not use places of worship or public facilities, especially hospitals, as military sites or positions to store weapons or launch rockets.”
Not a first; a common practice
Going a few days back, and despite global appeals to protect healthcare facilities from Israeli airstrikes and forced displacement orders, Israeli threats targeted hospitals in the Gaza Strip, endangering the well-being of patients and the wounded.
While the IOF claim that they do not target hospitals, the UN and Doctors Without Borders said Israeli airstrikes have struck medical facilities, including hospitals and ambulances.
“Israel” demanded that al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza forcibly evacuate its patients and staff within a two-hour timeframe, subsequently extending the deadline until 6:00 am.
In response to the evacuation order, the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) rights group issued a statement on the X platform, expressing strong condemnation for the ongoing indiscriminate attacks on healthcare facilities in Gaza and underscoring the intricacies involved in the process of forced displacement.
“We unequivocally condemn this action, the continued indiscriminate bloodshed and attacks on health care in Gaza. We are trying to protect our staff and patients,” MSF says. “The evacuation of patients remains complicated.”
🔴BREAKING:
Israel has given Al Awda Hospital just two hours to evacuate. Our staff are still treating patients.
We unequivocally condemn this action, the continued indiscriminate bloodshed and attacks on health care in Gaza.
On Tuesday, Israeli warplanes hit two densely populated refugee camps and an UNRWA school housing displaced people in central Gaza, killing at least 18 people and injuring scores, Palestinian officials said.
Israeli warplanes also carried out airstrikes in the vicinity of the hospital in Tel al-Zaatar, northern Gaza, as part of their attempt to exert pressure on the hospital and expedite the displacement process.
In the same context, al-Durra Children’s Hospital in the east of the Gaza Strip was forced to evacuate its staff and patients after it was pounded with white phosphorus munitions.
Furthermore, the Israeli aggression has left the Beit Hanoun hospital inoperable and has damaged the newborn section at al-Shifa Hospital.
At Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital, patients were being treated on the floor and in corridors, while the morgue was at full capacity, forcing medics to store bodies in ice-cream refrigerators.
#AlMayadeen‘s correspondent in #Gaza said medical crews are using ice cream freezers to keep the bodies of martyrs in the Strip in light of the unjust siege that encompasses everything, stressing that all the martyrs arriving at hospitals are civilians. #GazaUnderAttack… pic.twitter.com/5HDNKciOZo— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) October 14, 2023
With the situation at the hospital spiraling down, medics revealed that they were performing surgeries on injured Palestinians without anesthesia and in the middle of the streets.
Amidst the heart-wrenching chaos, #Gaza‘s medical heroes remain steadfast. The head of Al-Shifaa Hospital in Gaza stated that medics are performing surgeries on injured Palestinians without anesthesia and in the middle of the streets.#Palestine#GazaUnderAttackpic.twitter.com/imYLi0cixZ— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) October 17, 2023
While the Israeli occupation tries to absolve itself from responsibility claiming that it is only after military targets, circulated footage clearly shows its bank of targets: children, women, ambulances, civil defense crews, hospitals, and schools.
The Israeli raids have killed at least 3,000 Palestinians, including at least 800 children.
As a matter of fact, several statements by international organizations and UN agencies have accused the Israeli occupation of targeting civilian facilities, contrary to its claims.
WHO said 111 medical buildings have been hit, 12 medical workers have been killed, and 60 ambulances were targeted.
Adding insult to injury, “Israel” tightened its grip on Gaza rendering the conditions across the Strip unbearable for the 2.3 million population, according to aid agencies.
UNICEF, the UN children’s agency, said that unless water and fuel are sent “immediately”, Gaza inhabitants are in “imminent danger” of epidemics and death.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has issued an urgent warning about the probable loss of lives of two million people inside Gaza, as a result of the siege imposed by the Israelis on the people.
“People are forced to use dirty water from wells, which increases the risk of spreading water-borne diseases,” said Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of UNRWA.
The water issue “has become a matter of life and death,” he added, calling for fuel to be urgently delivered now to Gaza to provide water for two million people.
The only crossing to the rest of the world at Rafah is closed, not to mention that it came under several Israeli attacks.
To sum up, just imagine being stuck in a total area of 365 square km, which is home to 2.3 million people, with an occupation lurking just outside your Strip from the east and north and a crossing to the southwest completely closed and the Mediterranean Sea right to your west.
Then imagine a brutal occupation indiscriminately dropping bombs and missiles on houses, residential towers, hospitals, and schools… targeting everything civilian in that Strip.
Now imagine the school people sought refuge in being bombed…
Where would you go?
Where would you hide?
This is a reality the Palestinians have to endure every single day of their lives until… LIBERATION comes along.
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 