Israel’s public admission that it has killed two civilians in the Gaza Strip for every Hamas militant—a roughly 66% noncombatant death rate—is a major understatement, according to an analysis released Tuesday by the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.
Based on preliminary statistics, the Geneva-based nonprofit estimated that at least 90% of the people killed in Israel’s assault on Gaza thus far have been civilians, a rate that exceeds those of the U.S. wars on Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, and Afghanistan, as well as Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Euro-Med Monitor found that when including those believed to be missing under the rubble of Gaza’s decimated infrastructure, Israeli forces have killed 21,022 people in the besieged Palestinian territory since October 7, an estimated 19,660 of whom were civilians. The nonprofit said that 60% of the civilians killed were women and children.
The group said its figures “clearly refute” Israel’s claim of a two-to-one ratio of civilians to militants killed, which an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson hailed as “tremendously positive” in a CNNinterview earlier this week. Israeli forces believe they have killed around 5,000 Hamas fighters since October 7.
“If you compare that ratio to any other conflict in urban terrain between a military and a terrorist organization using civilians as their human shields, and embedded in the civilian population, you will find that that ratio is tremendous, tremendously positive, and perhaps unique in the world,” said the IDF’s Jonathan Conricus.
But an analysis released last month by the watchdog Action on Armed Violence found that Israel’s latest assault on Gaza—carried out with the help of artificial intelligence, according to recent reports—has been far deadlier for civilians than even its previous attacks on the strip.
The group estimated that each of Israel’s casualty-causing strikes on Gaza since October 7 have killed an average of 10.1 civilians.
“This significantly surpasses previous Gaza operations which, at its historic recent worst in Operation Protective Edge, was just 2.5 civilian fatalities per casualty-causing strike,” the watchdog said. “As such, the current operation appears to be four times more lethal, based on per injurious strike data, than previous Israeli operations. It also exceeds the global average of 7.4.”
Citing military analysts, the Financial Timesreported Tuesday that “the destruction of northern Gaza in less than seven weeks has approached that caused by the yearslong carpet-bombing of German cities during the Second World War.”
“Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne—some of the world’s heaviest-ever bombings are remembered by their place names,” U.S. military historian Robert Pape told the newspaper. “Gaza will also go down as a place name denoting one of history’s heaviest conventional bombing campaigns.”
Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said Tuesday that the “pulverizing of Gaza now ranks amongst the worst assaults on any civilian population in our time and age.”
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In an open letter to the UN Security Council, the organization pleads with the international body to push for an end to the wanton bloodshed. Palestinians evacuate survivors of the Israeli bombing in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. (AP Photo/Hatem Ali)
In an open letter, MSF International President Dr Christos Christou writes to the United Nations Security Council, asking they use their leverage and help stop the bloodshed being committed in Gaza.
I am writing to you on behalf of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) to implore you to do everything within your power to ensure an immediate and sustained ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. You must demand that the Israeli government stop the deadly attacks on Palestinian civilians and allow crucial humanitarian aid to enter Gaza.
A seven-day truce, after weeks of relentless violence, was a welcome respite for the people of Gaza. However, these seven days were not nearly enough to organize the delivery of sufficient aid and essential supplies, to meet the immeasurable needs. Now that the truce has ended, there is a return to death and destruction.
My colleagues and I, like so many people around the world, were distressed and shocked by Hamas’s attack on Israeli civilians. Now, after 58 days, words fail us to describe the absolute horror being inflicted on Palestinian civilians by Israel as it carries out incessant and indiscriminate warfare in Gaza for all the world to see.
Words fail us to describe the absolute horror being inflicted on Palestinian civilians by Israel as it carries out incessant and indiscriminate warfare in Gaza for all the world to see.
Israel has shown a blatant and total disregard for the protection of Gaza’s medical facilities. We are watching as hospitals are turned into morgues and ruins. These supposedly protected facilities are being bombed, are being shot at by tanks and guns, encircled and raided, killing patients and medical staff. The World Health Organization (WHO) has documented 203 attacks on health care that have led to at least 22 fatalities and 59 injuries of health workers on duty. Medical staff, including our own, are utterly exhausted and in despair. They have had to amputate limbs from children suffering from severe burns without anaesthesia or sterilised surgical tools. Due to forcible evacuations by Israeli soldiers, some doctors have had to leave patients behind after facing the unimaginable choice between their lives or those of their patients. There is no justification for the atrocious attacks on healthcare.
MSF recently sent an international emergency team to Gaza to support our Palestinian colleagues in providing medical and surgical capacities. Regrettably, their activities have been severely limited due to the scale of casualties, destruction of infrastructure, lack of essential supplies such as fuel, and the ongoing insecurity. We want and ought to be able to do so much more. Today it is impossible for us to adequately respond to medical needs in Gaza due to the siege and the unrelenting, generalised warfare being unleashed by Israel.
Four of our MSF staff have been killed; many more have lost family members. Numerous other colleagues have been injured. Other humanitarian organisations have reported dozens of their staff have been killed.
Gaza, under an Israel-imposed blockade since 2007, is indeed the world’s largest open-aired prison. From the start of its military campaign on 7 October, the Israeli government has enforced a “complete siege” on Gaza, banning the entry of water, food, fuel and medicinal supplies for the 2.3 million people trapped in the enclave. Added to this, unyielding restrictions have been put on humanitarian access and are preventing much needed aid from reaching anyone who needs it. Subjecting an entire population to collective punishment is a war crime under International Humanitarian Law (IHL).
We are witnessing the fundamental principle of humanity being openly disgraced.
Despite Israel’s claims, its all-out assault is not being waged just on Hamas. It is being waged on all of Gaza and its people at any cost. Even wars have rules, but Israel is clearly trading them in for its own military strategy based on disproportionality. In the early days of this unbearable offensive, the spokesman for Israel’s Defence Forces (IDF) announced that the “emphasis” of this flagrantly excessive reprisal was to be on “damage and not accuracy”. It is safe to say Israel’s actions have spoken louder than its words.
We are witnessing the fundamental principle of humanity being openly disgraced.
Northern Gaza is being erased from the map. The health system has collapsed. More than 15,500 people have been killed, half of whom are children, according to Gaza’s health authorities. That’s one out of every 200 people in Gaza. Tens of thousands of people have been injured. Families are digging their dead loved ones out from under the rubble. At least 1.8 million people have been displaced, according to the United Nations. These civilians are being repeatedly and forcibly ordered to move further and further south, but Israel is bombing the entire Strip. Nowhere is safe.
Our emergency team in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, has reported massive influxes of wounded after intense bombing. Last Saturday, 60 dead and 213 injured people arrived at the emergency room of Al-Aqsa hospital. These strikes are also hitting overcrowded, squalid refugee camps, where people are barely surviving on the sparse humanitarian aid available. If the bombs do not get them, infectious diseases and starvation will.
A sustained ceasefire is the only way to stop the killing of thousands of more civilians and allow for the scaled-up delivery of desperately needed humanitarian aid. MSF also calls for the establishment of an independent mechanism to oversee the adequate flow of humanitarian supplies into Gaza. Furthermore, we call for the implementation of secure and long-lasting medical evacuation routes to third countries for people suffering from severe injuries. In the short-term, the evacuation of these patients to Egypt through the Rafah crossing could be an option, and MSF is willing to contribute to scaling up necessary medical capacities.
Indiscriminate and relentless attacks must stop now. Forcible displacement must stop now.
Assaults on hospitals and medical staff must stop now. Restrictions on aid and the siege must stop now.
It must ALL STOP NOW.
We call on you to be part of the solution and exert all means in your power to prevent further carnage.
Our medical teams in the West Bank also report attacks on health care with a surge in violence, persecution and harassment, in which nearly 240 Palestinians have been killed since 7 October, either by Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) or Israeli settlers, according to the United Nations.
Thus far, world leaders, including permanent members of the Security Council, have been complicit, either by providing Israel with diplomatic cover, by supplying Israel with seemingly unconditional military assistance, or by failing to help stem the relentless bloodshed and atrocities being committed in Gaza.
We urge you to take action to uphold our shared humanity.
It is time to choose whether the Council will continue issuing half-hearted calls for the respect of international law and the protection of civilians, or will fulfil its international peace and security mandate and exercise its full diplomatic leverage to convince the State of Israel that the death sentence it has handed the people of Gaza is inhumane, indefensible, and cannot continue to be carried out.
We urge you to take action to uphold our shared humanity.
“We did what we could. Remember us.” These are the words our Dr Mahmoud Abu Nujaila, who has since been killed in a hospital strike, wrote on a Gaza hospital whiteboard normally used for planning surgeries. When the guns fall silent and the true scale of devastation is revealed, will the Council and its members be able to say the same?
The Wall Street Journalpublished details about the White House’s secretive arms transfers to Israel since October 7. The US has provided Israel with 57,000 artillery shells and 15,000 bombs, including over 5,000 with 2,000-pound warheads.
According to a list of weapons obtained by the Journal, the US has shipped Israel “more than 5,000 Mk82 unguided or ‘dumb’ bombs, more than 5,400 Mk84 2,000-pound warhead bombs, around 1,000 GBU-39 small diameter bombs, and approximately 3,000 JDAMs.”
The US has additionally shipped 57,000 155 MM shells to Israel. NBC News previously reported in October that Washington sent Tel Aviv artillery rounds that are cluster munitions.
Mick Mulroy, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense and officer in the Marine Corps, described the weapons as those the US would use in non-urban areas. “They are kind of the weapons of choice for the fights we had in Afghanistan and Syria in open, non-urban areas,” he said. “The US may use them in more urban areas, but first it would do a lot of target analysis to make sure the attack was proportional and based on military necessity.”
By contrast, Gaza is about 140 sqare miles and home to 2.3 million people—one of the most densely packed regions on earth. Additionally, Israel has relied on an AI program to rapidly generate lists of suspected low-level Hamas members to target, without respect to civilians in proximity.
The Israeli policy has led to the widespread devastation of Gaza. At least 15,000 civilians have been killed. The number of dead Palestinian children exceeds the number of Hamas fighters Israel has claimed to kill by many thousands. Nearly 100,000 buildings in Gaza have been damaged by Israel’s bombing campaign, including the destruction of universities, hospitals, schools, and entire residential neighborhoods.
On Saturday, the New York Timesreported that Israel was killing civilians in Gaza at a “historic pace.” The outlet added that part of the explanation for the huge death toll was Tel Aviv’s willingness to drop 2,000-pound American-made bombs on various civilian centers.
Marc Garlasco, a former Pentagon analyst who advises the Dutch organization PAX, told the Times that he’s never seen anything like it. “It’s beyond anything that I’ve seen in my career,” he said. Garlasco added that to find a historical comparison for so many large bombs in such a small area, one would have to “go back to Vietnam or the Second World War.”
Israeli officials and American politicians have attempted to justify Tel Aviv’s slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza by referring to the allied bombings of Tokyo during World War II. In a single night during the bombing of Tokyo, more than 100,000 people were burned to death by American napalm bombs.
The White House has made some requests to Tel Aviv to try to curb civilian casualties. However, the Biden administration has refused to condition future weapons shipments to Israel on reducing the civilian death toll.
The US has primarily relied on aircraft for quick shipment to Israel hundreds of millions of dollars in arms during the past two months. Unlike weapons shipments to Ukraine, the Biden administration has refused to provide the public with information on the arms it is providing to Tel Aviv.
Senior Campaign Manager at Amnesty International Isra Chaker speaks during a press conference on the delivery of close to 1 million supporters calling on President Biden to help bring about a ceasefire in Israel and Gaza at the White House on November 29, 2023 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images for MoveOn)
Biden can get more humanitarian aid trucks into Gaza simply by enveloping them with the American flag and daring Israel to delay, obstruct or destroy these carriers of live-saving food, water, fuel and medicine. But he is too weak and too cowardly to do so.
A letter to President Joe Biden, dated October 24, 2023, on the Israel-Hamas war by international law specialist, Bruce Fein and me, prompted this form letter Biden response.
Apart from the usual saying one thing and doing the opposite (e.g., standing for the protection of civilians and a two-state solution while fully arming and backing Israel’s genocidal destruction of everything in Gaza—children make up nearly half the population of Gaza) — Biden’s letter completely ignores key issues in our letter.
We asked why he wants Congress to make U.S. taxpayers pay another $14.3 billion for a prosperous country’s colossal military and intelligence operations, especially since Israel’s leadership failed to protect its people on October 7th.
We cited David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, who said: “If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country.’ … Why would they accept that?”
In response to Biden’s repeated urging that Israel comply with the “laws of war” we described how Benjamin Netanyahu and his regime are doing just the opposite with its brutal terror campaign against defenseless Palestinian civilians and their critical public support structures.
Biden knows that the Israeli government is implementing what its ministers ordered on October 8th – a total siege with no food, no water, no electricity, no fuel, and no medicine which meets the definition of the crime of genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Israeli videos provide the grisly evidence of over 20,000 bombs and missiles striking homes, apartment buildings, schools, markets, water mains, bread bakeries, hospitals, clinics, ambulances and places of worship. After many days, the terror-stricken civilians, fleeing from one place to another in Gaza while being attacked, are also dying of disease, hunger, thirst, and a lack of critical medicines, such as insulin, with the bodies of infants and children still under the rubble in numbers too many to be counted.
Israel’s extremist right-wing politicians use words such as “human animals,” “annihilation” and “extermination” as declared objectives of their mass terrorism. (See, Amy Goodman’s interview with Yuval Abraham this week on Democracy Now!).
Biden can get more humanitarian aid trucks into Gaza simply by enveloping them with the American flag and daring Israel to delay, obstruct or destroy these carriers of live-saving food, water, fuel and medicine. But he is too weak and too cowardly to put strong U.S. leverage behind his sugarcoating wishes for saving the civilian mothers, fathers and children of Gaza.
He has made the U.S. a co-belligerent by unconditionally supplying abundant weapons, military intelligence and political cover, including vetoes of United Nations resolutions.
Biden has another apprehension—the near total control of Congress by the “Israel’s government can do no wrong” lobby. The indentured rubber-stamping Senators and Representatives have no problem supporting Israel’s violent repression and land dispossession in what is left of the original Palestine and its five million encircled Palestinians. Would these politicians deploy such eagerness in helping poor American children and their families in our country?
These callous legislators know little of this history, and little of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s long support for funding of Hamas to break up any two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority. Moreover, they and their predecessors have blocked any Congressional public hearings featuring prominent Israeli and Palestinian peace advocates. Congress is importing censorship of those who wish to wage peace. (For the full list of our letters to Joe Biden, see nader.org).
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This is a rare example of a very direct message delivered by one government to another at the United Nations.
Samuel Moncada, Venezuela’s ambassador to the U.N., addressed the General Assembly on Tuesday.
Mr. President, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela robustly condemns the Israeli aggression against the civilian population in the occupied Palestinian territories. This is an operation of mass expulsion of an entire people in order to annex their territory by the occupying power. It’s a new cycle of expansionist terror, of so much that has been suffered by the Palestinian people over 75 years of occupation.
Over the last eight weeks we have seen an escalation of the crimes perpetrated by the Israeli regime against the Palestinian people. Almost 15,000 innocent civilians have been murdered by the occupation forces in the Gaza Strip, mainly women and children in an operation of ethnic cleansing which has not even spared the staff of the United Nations who have also been massacred.
It is repugnant to see how, despite the cruelty of the facts that on view to the world, the government of the United States of America and its satellites aim to justify the unjustifiable:
That the occupying power is carrying out a genocide against the Palestinian people as defined in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the Rome statute of the International Criminal Court. We ask ourselves where are those who in other cases rush to apply the responsibility to protect but now are ignoring the human rights of Palestinians submitted to the Israeli occupation?
Where are the activists on the code of conduct of the Security Council against genocide or those advocating for a reduction in the right of veto in the Security Council when mass atrocities are being committed? Their silence makes them an accomplice in these crimes.
We call for a condemnation in the firmest terms of the criminal policies of Israel against the civilian population. The United Nations must act with determination including the Secretariat that has a crucial role to play in preserving the right to life of millions of innocent people. We cannot allow now that our actions and our omissions make us jointly responsible for the annihilation of an entire people.
Mr. President, Israel has no intention of putting an end to the occupation. On the contrary it aims to wrest control of the entire occupied Palestinian territory while it alters the demographic situation, repressing Palestinians and privileging Israeli settlers. This is a case of the the imposition of a system of apartheid to this reality.
We must add the destruction of tens of thousands of dwellings, the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, as well as the deliberate attacks against vital infrastructure. Mr. President, today we must make progress as a matter of urgency in at least three critical areas.
Firstly we must put an end to the cycle of impunity. Israel must be held accountable by International Justice for the crimes against humanity and war crimes that it has been committing over years, as well as for the genocide underway today. The international impunity provided to it by a government of one of its main partners that is a permanent member of the Security Council, this encourages the crimes committed daily by Israel.
Secondly whilst the occupying power continues with its policies of shoot to kill, bombing schools, hospitals, housing, refugee centers or food storage facilities as well as the systemic violence on the part of Israeli settlers against the innocent civilian population. We must apply provisional measures under international humanitarian law that will guarantee the international protection of the Palestinian people.
And thirdly, an end must be put to the illegal settlement policy, the evictions and demolition of homes, the expropriation of Palestinian land, to the arbitrary detentions of innocent Palestinian civilians and the persecution of civil society Palestinian organizations. We must repudiate those who call for the use of weapons of mass destruction against the Palestinian people and that encourage fanatical groups to commit hate crimes or attack religious sites.
Mr. President, on the other hand we insist on our rejection of the lack of compliance with the provisions of resolution 497 of the Security Council, which for more than 40 years now has demanded the withdrawal of Israel from the Syrian Golan and we also reject any actions taken by the occupying power to change the demographic or legal situation of the occupied Syrian Golan. We reject any measures that use force to exercise jurisdiction and administration in this territory.
The time has come for this General Assembly to demand concrete action and that’s why we urge a vote in favor of all of the draft resolutions tabled today under items 39 and 40 of the program of work.
Finally we reaffirm our solidarity with the Palestinian people as well as our support for self-determination and a Palestinian state that is independent and sovereign within in the pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital and as a full member of the United Nations.
Sen. Bernie Sanders says he’s considering pushing a vote on conditioning extra military aid to Israel
by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar. com, November 28, 2023
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Tuesday dismissed growing calls to condition military aid to Israel, calling them “ridiculous,” as Israel has been killing civilians at a historic pace in Gaza.
“Our relationship with Israel is the closest national security relationship of any country in the world. And to condition, in effect, our assistance to Israel on their meeting our standards, it seems to me is totally unnecessary,” McConnell said, according to The Hill.
While the majority of Congress staunchly backs Israel and wouldn’t want to place limits on US military support, there have been growing calls from some Democrats and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to put conditions on US aid.
“The United States must make clear that while we are friends of Israel, there are conditions to that friendship and that we cannot be complicit in actions that violate international law and our own sense of decency,” Sanders wrote in The New York Times last week.
According to The Intercept, Sanders said he might push a vote on conditioning the over $14 billion President Biden is seeking to fund Israel’s onslaught in Gaza, which, according to the most conservative estimates, has killed at least 10,000 civilians.
The mass slaughter of civilians has not fazed hawks in Congress. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has said there is “no limit” to the number of civilians Israel can kill before it would lose US support.
While Graham is an ultra-hawk, his view reflects that of the Biden administration, which has said it would not draw “red lines” for Israel despite the massive civilian casualties. The US is issuing warnings over Israel’s coming campaign in south Gaza, but there’s no sign it’s looking to leverage military aid.
Haidar Eid is an associate Professor at Al-Aqsa University in Gaza.
Aljazeera, 27 Nov 2023
The bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli bombardment and fire are buried in a mass grave, after they were transported from al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City to Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on November 22, 2023 [Reuters/Mohammed Salem]
The bitter reality for us, Palestinians in Gaza, is that we are alone, beleaguered, under siege, and are seen as undesirables even by some of those who are supposed to be our brethren. Forty-five days of barbaric massacres have claimed the lives of more than 14,000 people, including more than 6,000 children and 3,500 women.
Among the thousands of men who have been killed are university students, doctors, nurses, shop owners and youth who were sent out by their families to search for food or water.
More than 7,000 are still missing, including 4,000 children – most of them are dead, buried under the rubble of their homes.
More are dying in bombed-out hospitals rendered unoperational and in the few that are still working but cannot cope with the tens of thousands wounded due to the lack of staff and medical supplies. Soon even more will be dying of disease, hunger and the winter cold.
Israel’s deliberate targeting of civilian homes has completely wiped out hundreds of families from the population register. Some 1.7 million people have been displaced.
For 45 days, Palestinians have been left alone to face the onslaught of the world’s fourth strongest army, which possesses 200 nuclear weapons, hundreds of F-16 jets, attack helicopters, gunboats, battle tanks and armoured vehicles, and hundreds of thousands of soldiers and reservists.
As the humanitarian tragedy in Gaza has reached unimaginable levels, some Arab regimes have done nothing more than issue timid statements, denouncing and condemning. Nothing more.
In fact, Arab regimes have let down the Palestinians since 1948, and to this day, official Arab positions are a combination of cowardice and hypocrisy. They have failed to bring an end to the Israeli siege on Gaza for 17 years now and are now failing to stop Israel’s genocide.
We in Gaza are now wondering how the timid expressions of support coming out of the streets and capitals of the Arab nations can be turned into concrete action in the absence of democracy. We wonder whether the Arabs living under the rule of authoritarian, oligarchical regimes can change them in non-violent ways.
We exhaust ourselves trying to figure out the possible means available to achieve democratic political change, because with the genocide in Gaza and the apartheid regime in the rest of Palestine, we have not seen any practical translation for the solidarity shown by some Arab peoples with Palestine.
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Desmond Tutu, the late South African anti-apartheid activist and Anglican bishop, once said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
As I argued during Israel’s brutal assaults on Gaza in 2009, 2012, and 2014, the United Nations, the European Union, and Arab states have not been neutral; they have remained largely silent about the atrocities the Israeli forces have committed. Since thousands of corpses of women and children have failed to convince them of the need to act, they have taken Israel’s side.
This state of affairs put two choices before the Palestinians in Gaza: dying dishonourably while thanking our killers for a trickle of food and water; or fighting for our dignity, for ourselves and the coming generations. It is now clear that after years of self-deception that portrayed slavery to the occupier as a fait accompli, we have chosen the second option.
But instead of recognising our resistance as such and seeing it in the context of the decades-long Palestinian struggle for freedom from occupation and apartheid, the international community is instead reducing it to a “conflict” between two “equal” sides.
The ongoing truce and the longer-term ceasefire initiative reflect this attitude. They in no way take into account that Israel has two clear objectives in its war on Gaza: the slaughter of the largest possible number of Palestinians by targeting Palestinian civilians; and the elimination of any possibility of resistance in order to maintain stability in this open-air concentration camp.
It appears that what the international community is requiring of Palestinians is to behave as “house slaves” and be grateful for the crumbs their white masters are letting them have. They are to appreciate the trickle of food and water that is allowed to sustain them barely alive and accept their slow death. They are to concede that if they die, it is their own fault.
But Palestinians in Gaza and beyond will not oblige.
Accordingly, any agreement that does not lead to the immediate lifting of the blockade, the reopening of the Rafah crossing and all the other crossings in a manner that allows the introduction of food, fuel, medicine, and all other needs – in conjunction with an agreement that ends the Israeli occupation and apartheid and upholds the Palestinian right of return – will not be acceptable to the people of Gaza.
The biggest source of concern for the Israeli “masters”, their Western allies, and their Arab lackeys, would be for us to raise the ceiling of our demands to that level; to demand that the conflict be put in the context of the multifaceted settler-colonial enterprise, the occupation, the apartheid, and the ethnic cleansing.
October 7 is a pivotal moment in Palestinian history. Gaza and the rest of Palestine yearns for a leadership that rises up to the level of this historic moment, a leadership that would take the following measures without any further delay:
Enacting a full cessation of security coordination with Israel;
Going to the International Criminal Court and suing Israeli political and military leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity;
Reviewing all agreements signed with Israel, particularly the Oslo Accords and related agreements;
Declaring a clear position on any initiative that does not take into account the need for the immediate end of the siege, the reopening of all crossings, and the restoration of the full freedom of movement.
Any talk about improving the conditions of oppression in light of the great sacrifices of Gaza is a betrayal of the Palestinian martyrs. It is time to start discussing radical solutions away from the “interim programme” and the Bantustan-like state, and adopt a clear slogan: end the occupation, end the apartheid, and end settler-colonialism. This is the only way the loss of thousands of lives in Gaza would not have been in vain.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
Haidar EidHaidar Eid is an associate Professor at Al-Aqsa University in Gaza.
The New York Times reported Saturday that Israel is killing Palestinian civilians in Gaza at a historic pace.
The huge civilian death toll in Gaza is explained by the scale of the bombing campaign and Israel’s willingness to drop US-provided 2,000-pound bombs on densely populated areas that are packed with civilians.
Marc Garlasco, a former Pentagon analyst who advises the Dutch NGO PAX, told the Times that he’s never seen anything like it. “It’s beyond anything that I’ve seen in my career,” he said. Garlasco added that to find a historical comparison for so many large bombs in such a small area, one would have to “go back to Vietnam or the Second World War.”
Israeli officials have frequently cited the Allied strategic bombings of Japan and Germany during World War II to justify their onslaught in Gaza. The comparison includes the US fire bombings of Japanese cities, which killed around 100,000 civilians in Tokyo in one night in 1945, as well as the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Israel has also invoked the US air campaign against ISIS, which killed tens of thousands of civilians in Iraq and Syria. But even the most brutal battle of the ISIS war does not compare to Israel’s onslaught in Gaza. According to an AP investigation, between 9,000 and 11,000 civilians died during the Battle of Mosul. About a third were killed by US-led coalition airstrikes or Iraqi forces, a third were killed by ISIS, and the cause of death for the rest is undetermined.
The Battle of Mosul lasted for nine months, from October 2016 to July 2017. In less than two months in Gaza, the Israeli bombardment has killed at least 10,000 civilians, based on a conservative estimate cited by The Times.
The Times report said, “People are being killed in Gaza more quickly, they say, than in even the deadliest moments of US-led attacks in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, which were themselves widely criticized by human rights groups.”
The Israeli onslaught also dwarves the civilian casualties in the war in Ukraine since Russia invaded in February 2022. In one year and nine months of fighting, the UN estimates at least 10,000 civilians have been killed in Ukraine, including 560 children. The last update released by Gaza’s Health Ministry on November 10, after just 35 days of Israel’s campaign, said over 4,500 Palestinian children had been killed in Gaza, which the US State Department acknowledged was considered to be a low estimate at the time.
Despite the massive civilian and child death toll, the US continues to provide Israel with unconditional military aid. The White House has acknowledged that Israel is killing thousands of innocent people in Gaza but has said there are no “red lines” that would impact US support.
Israel is carrying out a campaign to make Gaza uninhabitable. This campaign includes destroying all of Gaza’s hospitals. The message Israel is sending is clear – Nowhere is safe. If you stay, you die.
By Chris Hedges, ICH
Eve of Destruction – by Mr. Fish
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. Ambulances are blown up by Israeli missiles. Power and water is cut. Medical supplies are blocked. There are no painkillers, antibiotics and 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 the medical centers will not be targeted by Israel. 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.
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. The Ibn Sina Hospital has been raided by Israeli soldiers 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.
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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. At least 43 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed by Israel 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 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 and in Israeli 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.
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, 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.
Chris Hedges is an American journalist, author, commentator and Presbyterian minister. In his early career, Hedges worked as a freelance war correspondent in Central America for The Christian Science Monitor, NPR, and Dallas Morning News.
The US doesn’t want public opinion turning more against Israel
by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar. com, November 22, 2023
There has been concern within the Biden administration that a pause in fighting in Gaza will give journalists the opportunity to expose more of the atrocities Israel has been committing, POLITICO reported on Tuesday. The concern was related to the hostage deal that was reached between Israel and Hamas that, if implemented, will include a four-day pause in the Israeli bombardment and ground campaign. The report said there was “some concern in the administration about an unintended consequence of the pause: that it would allow journalists broader access to Gaza and the opportunity to further illuminate the devastation there and turn public opinion on Israel.” Israel’s Gaza campaign has had an enormous toll on journalists. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 46 Palestinian journalists have been killed by Israel since October 7. Other journalists have had their families slaughtered, including Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief, Wael Dahdouh, who lost his wife, son, daughter, and grandson. The killing of the Dahdouh family came around the same time Secretary of State Antony Blinken asked Qatar to tone down Al Jazeera’s coverage of the Gaza war over concerns about global public opinion on Israel. Al Jazeera is funded by Qatar but maintains it has editorial independence. The Israeli onslaught has also made it impossible for Gaza’s Health Ministry to count the dead, depriving journalists of the ability to gauge the destruction by the number of killed. The current unconfirmed estimate puts the death toll over 14,000, but the latest confirmed number from the Health Ministry was 11,078, including over 4,500 children, which was issued on November 10. President Biden previously accused the Palestinians of lying about the death toll when confronted about the massive civilian casualty rate. But since then, a senior State Department official said the true death toll is likely significantly higher than what the Health Ministry had been reporting, and that was before counting the dead became impossible.
Palestinians evacuate survivors of the Israeli bombing in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. (AP Photo/Hatem Ali)
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