Israeli Troops to Attack Rafah as the UN Warns of ‘Large-Scale Loss of Civilian Life’
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | February 8, 2024
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would order his troops to attack Rafah, a city in Gaza sheltering over one million internally displaced civilians. The situation in the Gazan city is already dire. The UN warns the attack could cause a massive loss of civilian life.
Netanyahu declared Israeli troops would soon attack Rafah. The statement follows the Israeli leader rejecting a ceasefire deal and hostage exchange, saying he would settle for nothing less than “total victory.”
Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said attacking the city that is sheltering over 1.5 million Palestinians “may constitute war crimes.“ “To be clear, intensified hostilities in Rafah in this situation could lead to large-scale loss of civilian lives, and we must do everything possible within our power to avoid that,” he warned.
Palestinians living in Rafah are sheltering in tents. The people lack food and clean drinking water. Disease and starvation are spreading in the city. Gazans feel the coming assault has them “waiting to be martyred.”
Omar Shaki, the Israel-Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, expressed that Israeli attacks on the densely populated city will add to the 11,500 children Israel has killed in Gaza over four months. “Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on Earth, and Rafah is now the most densely populated place in Gaza. Any sort of military campaign or air strike would amplify risks of disproportionate attacks,” he stated.
It is unclear where the Palestinians will go after Rafah is destroyed by the Israeli military. Tel Aviv has placed two-thirds of the Strip under execution order. Outside of Rafah, other places in Gaza deemed “safe zones” lack infrastructure to support the 2.3 million Palestinians living in the small enclave. Egypt has threatened to go to war if the Israeli military attempted to drive the Palestinians across the border.
Bob Kitchen of the International Rescue Committee explained there was nowhere safe for the Palestinians to go. “If they aren’t killed in the fighting, Palestinian children, women and men will be at risk of dying by starvation or disease,” he said. “There will no longer be a single ‘safe’ area for Palestinians to go to.”
Rafah is the last city in Gaza not devastated by the Israeli military operations in the Strip. However, Israel has conducted scores of strikes in the city. On Wednesday, Israeli strikes in Gaza killed 13 people, including two women and five children.
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A New Era Of Mass Armies Approaches
BY IAN WELSH | SEPTEMBER 29, 2023
The army, or a part of it at the war college, has perked up and noticed some of the lessons of the Ukraine war, and that it’s a war that the US military could not fight. They’ve missed a lot of things, or felt they couldn’t/shouldn’t write about them, but they’ve figured some stuff out and written about them in a new report, “A Call to Action: Lessons from Ukraine for the Future Force” by Lieutenant Colonel Katie Crombe, and Professor John A. Nagle.
The entire thing is worth reading, but I’m going to pull out three of the main points. The first is that a volunteer US military can’t fight a real war.
The Russia-Ukraine War is exposing significant vulnerabilities in the Army’s strategic personnel depth and ability to withstand and replace casualties.11 Army theater medical planners may anticipate a sustained rate of roughly 3,600 casualties per day, ranging from those killed in action to those wounded in action or suffering disease or other non-battle injuries. With a 25 percent predicted replacement rate, the personnel system will require 800 new personnel each day. For context, the United States sustained about 50,000 casualties in two decades of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. In large-scale combat operations, the United States could experience that same number of casualties in two weeks. (emphasis mine)
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Governments in Southwest Asia and outside it, must act NOW to save 1.5 million lives in Rafa. Palestinians have sought refuge in the last place in Gaza. If Israel’s “IDF killers” are ordered into Rafa, they will shoot anything that moves; women, children, elderly, it doesn’t matter to them. They have shown the ugly face of fascism, killing and wounding 100,000 men, women and mostly children! The community of nations has got to take action now to prevent the annihilation of potentially 1.5 million Palestinians It would be an unspeakable crime against humanity if Israel were allowed to mass murder millions of innocent civilians! But Israel has abandoned all human decency. And the IDF’s lusts for shooting pregnant women and children has been on full display for the world to see. The actions of the American government of Joe Biden is shameful. Biden personally should be held accountable for his criminal intent to continue arming Israel in the face of the ICJ court ruling “plausible genocide” committed by Israel. And his refusal to stop it when he knew or should have known genocide was being committed.. Biden’s act of omission is also crime. And so too is the US Congress for voting up billions for Israel for Israeli arms purchases from US arms dealers. They all may be declared complicit for aiding a Holocaust! They all knew what they were doing.
Biden, Blinken and Austin must be charged with aiding and abetting Israeli genocide per the articles of the 1948 Genocide Convention. Will the ICC issue arrest warrants for these three? Or will they cower in the shadow of fascism while tacitly condoning the law of the Jungle? The world is watching.
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