UN convoy attacked by Israel on designated ‘humanitarian route’
The Cradle | December 29, 2023
The Director of the UNRWA in the Gaza Strip, Thomas White, announced on 29 December that the Israeli army had targeted one of the organization’s aid convoys as it was returning from north Gaza on a route designated by Tel Aviv itself.
“Israeli soldiers fired at an aid convoy as it returned from Northern Gaza along a route designated by the Israeli Army,” White said via social media.
“Our international convoy leader and his team were not injured, but one vehicle sustained damage – aid workers should never be a target,” he added.
Israel has shown blatant disregard for humanitarian aid workers during its campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing which began on 7 October.
As of 28 December, 142 UNRWA employees have been killed as a result of the Israeli assault on Gaza, according to the organization’s 57th situation report on the besieged enclave. According to the report, 125 UNRWA installations have also been damaged.
“At least 308 internally displaced peoples (IDPs) sheltering in UNRWA premises have been killed and 1,095 injured since 7 October,” the situation report adds.
It is worth noting that a large majority of the over 30,000 employed by UNRWA are Palestinians.
This is not the first time Palestinians and aid workers have been targeted on humanitarian routes designated specifically by Israel.
Upon resuming the assault after the seven-day truce that ended at the very start of this month, Israel published a map of so-called ‘safe zones’ for Gazans to flee to, ignoring the fact that the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza do not have electricity or internet to access the map. Many Gazans reported airstrikes on a number of the zones designated by Israel.
“The so-called safe zones … are not scientific, they are not rational, they are not possible, and I think the authorities are aware of this,” a UNICEF spokesman told Al-Jazeera on 5 December.
Gazans are suffering due to a severe lack of humanitarian aid, which since the start of the war has trickled into Gaza at a pace nowhere near fast enough to address the dire situation.
Israel continues to bombard the civilian population indiscriminately, while actively pursuing plans for forced displacement.
Tel Aviv recently issued more evacuation orders for Gazans in Khan Yunis to evacuate further south, as tens of thousands of displaced Gazans are already stranded in the southern border city of Rafah.
“People forced to move once again. More people in less space. Rafah in the south is now bursting at the seams. No respite. Time for a humanitarian ceasefire,” Thomas White wrote on social media on 26 December.
Israel confirms 19 prison guards beat Palestinian prisoner to death

MEMO | December 21, 2023
The Israeli occupation authorities have confirmed the involvement of 19 Israeli prison guards in the brutal beating of a Palestinian prisoner, which ultimately led to his death on 18 November.
According to Israel Hayom, Thayer Abu Assab was 38 and from the northern West Bank city of Qalqilya. An autopsy was carried out last month which concluded that he had been subjected to assault and beatings, leading to his death.
All 19 of the prison guards implicated in the assault have been released under “restrictive conditions” pending the conclusion of an investigation.
Israel’s far-right National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has voiced his support for the guards involved in the incident, claiming that they are innocent until proven otherwise. He opposes the idea of charging any of them in connection with the killing of Abu Assab and proceeded to describe the Palestinian freedom fighters detained in Israeli prisons as “human scum” and “murderers”.
The Prisoners’ and Ex-Prisoners’ Affairs Commission had confirmed earlier that the occupation authorities were responsible for the killing of Abu Assab, who was held in Al-Naqab Prison in the Negev from 2005, serving a 25-year sentence. The commission accused the Israel Prison Service (IPS) of carrying out systematic and premeditated killings of Palestinian prisoners.
As many as six Palestinian prisoners have died in detention recently, including one from Gaza who has not been identified.
There are now more than 7,800 Palestinians being held in Israel’s prisons, including more than 2,870 administrative detainees who are held with neither charge nor trial, and 260 classified as “unlawful combatants” from Gaza. The number may be higher because Israel doesn’t release the details of all of the Palestinians it has imprisoned.
Urinating on prisoners: Why humiliation is functional in Israel’s war on Palestinians

By Dr Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | December 19, 2023
‘New Gitmo’: Rights group urges probe into Israel’s starving, murdering Gaza abductees

Hundreds of Palestinian civilians, including children and elderly, are held hostage in ‘Sde Teman’ military camp in inhumane conditions.
Press TV – December 19, 2023
A Geneva-based rights group has called for an urgent international investigation into torture and murder of Palestinian abductees held in Israel’s “Guantanamo-like” jails.
In a statement released on Monday, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said it had gathered testimonies confirming recent reports in Israeli media about the regime’s field execution of the Gaza abductees.
The Sde Teman Israeli army camp has been turned into “a new Guantanamo-like prison,” where detainees lose their lives after being subjected to extreme torture and mistreatment, it added.
The Israeli army uses open-air chicken coops to house the inmates and withhold food or drink for long periods of time.
The rights group also noted that the Palestinians held in Sde Teman are caged in inhumane conditions, blindfolded and subjected to harsh interrogations with their hands tied.
It further said that turning on lights at night, as well as barring the abductees from using phones and meeting lawyers and representatives from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) are among the torture tactics being used at the Israeli jail.
The testimonies affirm that multiple elderly abductees endured cruel beatings and humiliating treatment, Euro-Med said.
One of the released detainees, who was speaking on condition of anonymity, said that he witnessed Israeli soldiers directly shooting and killing five abductees in separate incidents.
Earlier, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported the deaths of six Palestinians in Israeli prisons since the beginning of Israel’s ongoing bloody war on Gaza.
Despite evidence of violence preceding the inmates’ death or medical neglect – their cause of death was not established, according to the report.
It added that Just 71 out of 500 Palestinians arrested during the Gaza war have been brought before Israeli courts, and that the remaining detainees have been moved to prisons run by the Israeli Prison Service or to detention facilities run by the regime’s so-called internal security service, Shin Bet.
Previously, the Euro-Med field teams documented the detention of more than 1,200 Palestinian civilians in random Israeli arrest campaigns across Gaza during Israel’s onslaught on the besieged territory.
The abductees were subjected to all forms of beatings and ill-treatment during their detention and purposefully left blindfolded, nearly nude, and kneeling on the ground upon their release.
Israel waged the devastating war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
Since the start of the aggression against Gaza, the Tel Aviv regime has killed at least 19,453 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 52,286 others.
Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under the rubble in Gaza, which is under “complete siege” by Israel.
Israel forced women in Gaza to abandon their children then detained them
MEMO | December 18, 2023
The Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners’ Affairs Commission has warned that Israel is subjecting Palestinian female prisoners held in Damoun Prison, especially those randomly arrested from the besieged Gaza Strip, to “inhumane” treatment and “horrific” detention conditions including severe punishments on a daily basis.
In a report issued yesterday, the rights group quoted its lawyer saying that since 7 October, Israeli occupation forces have launched a massive arrest campaign in the occupied West Bank including East Jerusalem, inside Israel and in Gaza, specifically targeting female prisoners, who were tortured and abused from the moment of their arrest.
“The female prisoners were subjected to degrading treatment including beating and insults, strip searches, isolation and deprivation of the most basic rights,” the lawyer said.
The prison administration deliberately singled out female detainees from the besieged Gaza Strip for the worst type of torture, according to one female prisoner.
In her testimony, the prisoner said: “A few days ago, an elderly woman [80 years old] from Gaza arrived at the department, walking on a crutch and without a cover on her head. Her body and clothes were covered with blood and she appeared to suffer from Alzheimer’s.”
According to the report, all the female prisoners from the Gaza Strip had their clothes taken away and replaced with summer clothes, and had been tortured before arriving at Damoun Prison and were subjected to physical and verbal abuse.
“Some of them had spent seven days outdoors in the rain and in the cold, and all of them arrived at the prison in a deplorable condition both physically and psychologically.”
The report lists the case of a female prisoner from Gaza who is a mother of four children and who was forced to hand her children to an unknown man in the street when she was detained.
“Other female prisoners were also forced to leave their children in the street when they were arrested by the Israeli army forces,” the detainee said.
Israeli sniper kills in ‘cold blood’ mother, daughter in Gaza church

Press TV – December 17, 2023
An Israeli military sniper has shot dead a Christian mother and daughter on the grounds of a Catholic church in the Gaza Strip sheltering displaced Palestinian families.
The fatal shooting took place inside the Holy Family Parish in Gaza City at around noon on Saturday, the Latin Patriarchate of al-Quds, which oversees Catholic Churches across Cyprus, Jordan, the Israeli-occupied territories, Gaza and the West Bank, said in a statement.
“Nahida and her daughter Samar were shot and killed as they walked to the Sister’s Convent. One was killed as she tried to carry the other to safety,” it added.
The patriarchate also said that no warning was given before the shooting and that the victims “were shot in cold blood inside the premises of the Parish, where there are no belligerents.”
Seven more Palestinians were also wounded by gunfire as they tried to protect others at the church, according to the statement.
The patriarchate further said that an Israeli tank fired three projectiles, destroying a convent’s generator and fuel supplies, and rendering a building housing 54 disabled people uninhabitable.
“The 54 disabled persons are currently displaced and without access to the respirators that some of them need to survive,” it noted.
Meanwhile, the Vatican press agency said the Israeli strikes wounded three people.
Israeli air raid kills nearly two dozen Palestinians in Jabalia
In another development, at least 20 Palestinians were killed and some 100 others injured following an Israeli aerial assault on a residential block in Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.
The attack targeted the home of the Shehab family, causing extensive damage to neighboring houses.
Israel waged the brutal war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
Since the start of the onslaught on Gaza, the Tel Aviv regime has killed at least 19,088 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 54,450 others.
Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under the rubble in Gaza, which is under “complete siege” by Israel.
Another U.S. Spy for Cuba
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | December 13, 2023
U.S. spies for Cuba are in the news. Last week, U.S. officials announced the arrest of Victor Manuel Rocha, 73, a former U.S. ambassador, on charges of having spied for Cuba since the 1970s. Meanwhile, Ana Montes, a former analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency, was recently released from federal prison after serving a 20-year sentence for spying for Cuba. In the context of reporting on these two people, the media is also bringing up the case of Walter and Gwendolyn Myers, a husband and wife who worked for the State Department, who pleaded guilty in 2009 to spying for Cuba for 30 years.
As a Wall Street Journal story last month stated, these spies were not driven by money to spy for Cuba. The article stated that they were instead driven by “ideology.” My hunch is that these four people themselves would say that they were driven to spy for Cuba by conscience.
Ever since the Cuban revolution in 1959, Cuba has been considered to be an official enemy of the United States and, specifically, of the U.S. national-security establishment (i.e., the Pentagon, CIA, and NSA), which is the driving force of U.S. foreign policy within the U.S government.
Prior to the Cuban revolution, the Cuban government had been controlled by U.S. officials ever since the Spanish-American War of 1898. In essence, Cuba had been a U.S. colony up until the time of the 1959 revolution.
Prior to the revolution, Cuba was ruled by a brutal rightwing dictator named Fulgencio Batista, who was a loyal agent of the U.S. government. Many Cubans resented Batista, not only because of his brutal dictatorship, and not only because he was a loyal lackey of U.S. officials, but also because he had become a partner of the Mafia, the world’s premier criminal organization, which ran casinos in Havana and shared its profits with Batista under the table. One of Batista’s policies that many Cubans resented was the state-sponsored kidnapping of underaged girls in the countryside who Batista’s goons would deliver to the Mafia’s high rollers in the casinos as a sexual perk. In fact, it was that policy that set off the Cuban revolution.
Once the revolution was won, the new regime, headed by Fidel Castro, took Cuba in a different direction. Castro refused to become a lackey of the U.S. government and insisted that Cuba would henceforth be an independent nation. He also later made it clear that he was committed to socialism and communism and, in fact, was determined to establish friendly relations with the Soviet Union and the communist world (something that President Kennedy was also determined to do, as he outlined in his famous Peace Speech in June 1963).
Owing to these actions, Cuba was deemed to be a grave threat to U.S. “national security” (just as Kennedy was).
But there is something important to recognize about all this: Cuba never committed any act of aggression against the United States or even threatened to do so. Instead, it has always been the United States that has been the aggressor against Cuba.
For example, there were repeated assassination attempts by the U.S. government against Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Given that Castro had never initiated any aggressive action against the United States, these were nothing more than attempts at legalized murder. In fact, President Lyndon Johnson even candidly pointed out that the CIA was running a “damned Murder Inc.” in the Caribbean.
There was also Operation Mongoose, which entailed U.S. acts of sabotage and terrorism inside Cuba.
And, of course, there has been the ongoing brutal U.S. economic embargo against Cuba, which has targeted the Cuban people with death and economic suffering in the hopes that they would rise up in another revolution, one that would replace Cuba’s recalcitrant communist regime with another U.S.-approved rightwing stooge.
Therefore, since the U.S. government has always been the aggressor against Cuba — with assassinations, terrorism, sabotage, and its deadly embargo — and since Cuba has never aggressed against the United States — it stands to reason that any information that these four U.S. spies for Cuba delivered to Cuba almost certainly involved secret information that was designed to help Cuba protect itself and its citizens from the acts of aggression by the Pentagon and the CIA.
At Montez’s sentencing, federal Judge Ricardo Urbina, stated that she had put the United States “as a whole” at risk by spying for Cuba. It would be difficult to understand how she had done that, given that it has always been the United States that has been the aggressor against Cuba, not the other way around. More likely, Montez, along with those other three U.S. spies for Cuba, provided information that assisted the Cubans to protect themselves from U.S. attempts at murder, sabotage, terrorism, and the infliction of death and suffering from the U.S. embargo. U.S. officials say that they betrayed the United States and, therefore, need to be severely punished for helping the Cuban people protect themselves from Pentagon-CIA aggression.
Israeli military abducts Gaza hospital director after he decries siege
Press TV – December 12, 2023
The Israeli military has abducted the director of a main hospital in the northern Gaza Strip after he decried the occupying regime’s days-long siege of the facility and its draconian and deadly repercussions.
Ahmed al-Kahlout, head of Kamal Adwan Hospital in the city of Beit Lahiya, was arrested and taken to an “unknown destination outside the hospital,” Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Tuesday.
The hospital has been under siege by Israeli tanks for the past four days. Earlier on Tuesday, health officials reported that Israeli forces had stormed the hospital, rounding up Palestinian men for interrogation.
Before his abduction, Kahlout had strongly criticized the siege laid on the hospital, saying it had caused the situation at the facility to become “very difficult.”
“No electricity, water, or food at the hospital,” Kahlout had bemoaned, and noted that “three children at the hospital lost their lives in the last three days due to a shortage of oxygen.”
“Israeli drones target anyone entering or leaving the hospital,” he had also said, announcing that the Israeli military had shelled the facility’s maternity ward and water system, forcing the staff to rely on groundwater.
The Israeli military was sustaining its siege and attacks on the hospital, while the facility was accommodating “65 injuries, including 12 children in intensive care, six children with serious injuries, and 3,000 displaced people,” the hospital director had said.
The remarks came amid an ongoing war by the Israeli regime against the entire Gaza, which Tel Aviv began on October 7 in response to an operation staged by the coastal sliver’s resistance groups.
Nearly 18,500 people have been killed in Gaza as a result of the Israeli attacks, most of them women and children.
Also on Tuesday, the UN said only 13 out of 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip were partially functional as Israeli occupation forces were targeting medical centers and staff amid heavy bombardment of the besieged territory.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a report that the services provided to patients at operational hospitals were “limited” as the facilities had run out of bed capacity.
Euro-Med Monitor: “In Gaza, Israel’s Army Replicates the Crimes Committed by Zionist Gangs in 1948”
IMEMC | December 12, 2023
An urgent international investigation must be opened into horrific crimes committed by the Israeli army during its land incursions into the Gaza Strip, including field executions, torture, and rape threats, said Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, citing testimonies collected from newly-released civilians.
Euro-Med Monitor said that Israeli army forces are reenacting the same crimes committed by Zionist gangs during the 1948 Nakba, which resulted in the collective displacement of Palestinians.
These crimes include premeditated murder, setting fire to Palestinian homes and properties, torture, and insulting and humiliating detained civilians.
The human rights organisation highlighted the Israeli forces’ brutal storming of civilian homes in crowded residential neighbourhoods during the ongoing genocide.
Members of Israel’s military terrorized and beat residents, plus arrested hundreds of them, including women, children, and sick people.
According to testimonies gathered by Euro-Med Monitor from several detainees who were newly released, the Israeli forces took the detainees from their homes, stripped them naked, and attacked them with machine guns, electric cables, and cold water.
Sixteen-year-old Muhammad Mahmoud Aslim told the Euro-Med team that the Israeli forces stormed his family’s home in Al-Shuja’iya neighbourhood, east of Gaza City, after they were trapped for an entire week without food and water.
He stated that over the past few days, Israeli forces killed everyone in his neighbourhood who tried to leave their home, including Aslim’s brother.
Israeli forces later stormed his family’s house, said Aslim, and destroyed its contents with heavy gunfire. His family members were gathered naked and handcuffed before being violently assaulted and beaten.
Aslim still does not know what happened to his mother and sisters, who were captured and kidnapped by the Israeli army.
The Euro-Med Monitor team has gathered statements and testimonies about Israeli special forces raiding refugee centres in Gaza City and its northern areas, which housed thousands of displaced Palestinians.
These raids have involved the execution of young men who were shot with live ammunition at point-blank range.
Displaced people at the Cairo School, which houses hundreds of displaced people west of Gaza City, told Euro-Med Monitor’s team that several civilian cars carrying Israeli special forces stormed the school yard on Friday December 8, killing and wounding a number of unarmed young men.
According to the testimonies, the Israeli special forces ordered all of the men in the school to quickly gather and line up opposite them. Four of the men were executed, and the others were arrested after a brief interrogation.
Muhammad Abu Mustafa said that three individuals—two from the Abdul Ghafour and Abu Zaid families and one from his own family—were shot and killed by Israeli snipers after they went to assist a neighbour in Al-Shuja’iya neighbourhood. The victims were left bleeding to death.
Similar violations were reported on Saturday by other internally displaced people at the UNRWA-run Khalifa Bin Zayed School, in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahia.
They reported that the Israeli forces arrested dozens of men and minors in the school. The detainees were stripped of their clothes, bound, and taken to another location, where they were interrogated and tortured. Some of them were released, while the rest were kept in custody.
One of the released men, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation, said that they were ordered to take off their clothes after being handcuffed and blindfolded.
They were then put in trucks and taken to the seashore, where they were kept shackled for about 19 hours.
According to the young man, they were subjected to insults, severe beatings, threats of being shot in the head, and had numbers written on their hands. They were also deprived of drinking water for many hours.
Upon their release, they were transferred naked to Salah al-Din Street, south of Gaza City, where the soldiers ordered them to walk on foot towards the central areas of the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli random arrests also targeted a young disabled man who suffers from hemiplegia.
The young man had been displaced from Al-Zaytoun neighbourhood in Gaza City to a relative’s apartment in the city centre before he and his brother were arrested; their fate remains unknown.
Ms. M.Z., a resident of Al-Zaytoun neighbourhood who was displaced to Shuhada Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah, in the southern part of the Strip, said that an Israeli soldier pointed his gun at her head and threatened to kill her even though she had told him she was five months pregnant.
The soldier ordered her to take off her clothes and threatened to rape her.
As it continues to document testimonies from victims of the Israeli army’s crimes and random arrests, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor renewed its call for an urgent international investigation into Israel’s violations and crimes against civilians, and called on the United Nations to assume its responsibilities and provide a safe passage for the displaced to use to evacuate.
Israel is required by international humanitarian law to take all reasonable steps to prevent harm civilians and to guarantee their safe shelter.
The Geneva-based rights organization emphasized, however, that civilians who choose to stay in areas designated for evacuation do not forfeit their protection, and cannot be singled out or targeted for any reason.
Israeli army fires on 6 Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances escorted by UN vehicles
MEMO | December 10, 2023
The Israeli army opened fire on six ambulances of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, escorted by UN vehicles, carrying 11 patients with critical injuries, including amputations and head wounds, in Gaza, the Red Crescent said on Sunday, adding that one of the injured died before receiving any treatment, Anadolu Agency reports.
“The Palestine Red Crescent Society coordinated with the United Nations to evacuate 11 casualties in critical condition last night from Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City to the hospital in the south of the Strip,” the Red Crescent said in a statement on X.
A convoy of six Red Crescent ambulances, accompanied by UN vehicles, set off from Khan Younis after waiting about four hours for the first green light to move towards the military checkpoint that separates the north from south in the Gaza Strip, it added.
“The convoy then waited a full hour to get a second green light to cross the checkpoint,” the Red Crescent explained, noting that “It was then subjected to a thorough inspection that lasted for about two hours, during which two paramedics were detained and released as soon as the convoy was allowed to pass.”
As soon as the convoy left the checkpoint and arrived near the Kuwait Roundabout, the statement said, “The occupation soldiers opened fire on one of the ambulances.”
One of the side windows was hit, and the bullet damaged the ambulance, the Red Crescent said.
“After the convoy returned from the Baptist Hospital and upon reaching the checkpoint on the way back, the convoy’s path was deliberately obstructed and paramedic Rami Al-Qatawi was detained again,” it said.
The Red Crescent said the Israeli military repeated its thorough inspection procedures, obstructing the convoy’s passage, and “interrogation at the checkpoint for more than two hours led to the martyrdom of one of the wounded.”
“After a detention that lasted for more than four hours during which he was subjected to beatings, abuse, and blackmail while being interrogated, paramedic Rami Al-Qatawi was released,” according to the statement.
He arrived at the other side of the checkpoint in a deplorable state after being forced to walk more than 2 kilometers (1.25 miles) on a rough road in cold weather while “naked and handcuffed,” the Red Crescent said.
Israel resumed its military offensive on the Gaza Strip on Dec. 1 after the end of a week-long humanitarian pause with Hamas.
At least 17,700 Palestinians have been killed and more than 48,780 others injured in relentless air and ground attacks on the enclave since Oct. 7 following the cross-border attack by Hamas.
The Israeli death toll in the Hamas attack stood at 1,200, according to official figures.

