The Israeli occupation’s indiscriminate and violent bombardment of Gaza continues, with 17 Palestinians, including 9 children, killed Thursday after airstrikes targeted the Martyrs of Nuseirat School in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, an Al Mayadeen correspondent reported.
The school was sheltering displaced civilians fleeing the Israeli onslaught on the besieged Strip. The attack also left 52 others injured, many critically.
In another incident, Israeli artillery bombarded the eastern part of al-Bureij refugee camp, also located in central Gaza. In northern Gaza, the Israeli occupation forces intensified their attacks on civilians, including airstrikes on the al-Zeitoun neighborhood, southeast of Gaza City, and refugee tents at Abu Hussein School in Jabalia refugee camp.
These intensive attacks come amid a 19-day-long siege on northern Gaza, further devastating the population deprived of basic necessities, such as food and medicine.
Israeli drone fires missile on Civil Defense team
The Palestinian Civil Defense reported that its teams were targeted on Wednesday in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza, as part of what they described as an Israeli campaign to forcibly displace residents and block humanitarian aid.
“Yesterday evening, we were surprised by Israeli drone activity in the area, warning our teams and medical staff to immediately abandon their vehicles and proceed to the Indonesian Hospital, where Israeli forces are stationed, and access is only allowed after inspection,” the Directorate of Civil Defense said in a statement.
As the crews attempted to evacuate, an Israeli drone fired a missile directly at them, wounding three personnel. The only fire truck available to serve the northern region was also hit by artillery shells, completely destroying it and rendering firefighting efforts impossible in the area. The Directorate of Civil Defense announced that its operations in northern Gaza had been halted entirely.
Meanwhile, in southern Gaza, several civilians were injured when an Israeli airstrike targeted a motorcycle in the al-Tanour area, east of Rafah. In another strike, three Palestinians were killed and others were wounded when Israeli forces bombed a house in the Ma’an area, east of Khan Younis.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health’s daily report, Israeli forces committed four massacres against families in Gaza within the last 24 hours, resulting in 55 martyrs and 132 injuries arriving at hospitals.
The Israeli occupation forces have been relentlessly bombarding Gaza for over a year, an ongoing aggression has killed 42,847 Palestinians and wounded 100,544 others, mostly women and children, with thousands still missing under the rubble.
IOF besiege Jabalia for the 20th consecutive day
Al Mayadeen’s correspondent in northern Gaza reported that occupation forces opened fire from helicopters on the Jabalia camp, resulting in injuries among several civilians in the area. Meanwhile, Israeli artillery and drones targeted the streets of the Beit Lahia project.
The occupation forces continued their raids on homes in the northern Gaza Strip, targeting them with machine guns, artillery, and drone strikes. They also attacked shelters while blocking the entry of humanitarian aid, forcing families to flee the area.
Following the famine in the northern Gaza Strip, our correspondent reported a similar situation in the central and southern regions, highlighting the ongoing Israeli blockade and the depletion of all goods, including flour.
IOF prevent Civil Sefense from working
Meanwhile, Gaza’s Civil Defense announced a complete suspension of its services in northern Gaza, highlighting that Israeli occupation forces detained five of its members in the Sheikh Zayed area and abducted them to an unknown location. Additionally, the occupation has detained at least 200 Palestinians from Jabalia camp.
The Civil Defense stated that its operations had completely halted in the northern governorate due to the disastrous situation, leaving citizens in the North without any humanitarian services.
In this context, the Civil Defense announced that its crews were directly targeted on Wednesday in the Beit Lahia Project area. This attack is seen as part of an Israeli strategy to empty northern areas from citizens and to obstruct all efforts to secure humanitarian or medical assistance.
Israeli drones were hovering over the area where Civil Defense and medical services teams were stationed in the Beit Lahia Project, demanding that they vacate their vehicles immediately and proceed to the Indonesian Hospital. The occupation army is stationed there and only allows passage after thorough inspection and search.
The statement noted that as the crews attempted to evacuate the area, an Israeli aircraft fired a missile directly at them, injuring three members with various wounds. Additionally, the only fire truck providing services in the northern areas was targeted with artillery shells.
Israel and the United States are reportedly considering a joint plan to deploy a private American-Israeli security firm to administer Gaza by subjecting Palestinians to biometric screenings with the threat of withholding humanitarian aid.
According to media reports, based on an initial report by Israeli journalist, Shlomi Eldar, on Monday this week, the US and Israel are planning to run a pilot programme – starting with the Al-Atatra village in north-western Gaza – involving 1,000 private mercenaries who would create “gated communities” within the Strip where they will control the inhabitants and their movements through the use of biometrics.
The plan would reportedly see Israeli Occupation Forces clear Palestinian Resistance fighters and Hamas operatives out of areas, with the mercenaries then erecting separation walls around the neighbourhood 48 hours later, forcing only its residents to enter and exit through the use of biometric identification.
Compliance with the forced system would also entirely determine the provision of humanitarian aid, with any who refuse to accept the biometric methods reportedly being cut off from receiving the vital aid.
The plan will reportedly allocate $90 million for the areas’ residents to rebuild their homes, with a “local sheikh” appointed to the position of “head of the council” in the particular zone.
The private security firm at the forefront of the reported plan is Global Development Company (GDC), which brands itself as an “Uber for war zones”. Owned by Israeli-American businessman, Mordechai Kahana, the firm’s operatives include former high-ranking Israeli military officers and former American military and intelligence operatives.
In a press release on Monday, GDC stated that it has “developed a strategy to securely deliver humanitarian relief to civilians in Gaza. Security for the humanitarian convoys will be provided by a US security company acting as a subcontractor”, which GDC claimed has “extensive experience in operating overseas with the highest standards of integrity, respect for human rights, and cultural sensitivities.”
Revealing that the firm and its subcontractor “have had extensive discussions with the Israeli government including the Ministry of Defence, the Israeli Defence Forces, and the Prime Minister’s Office on the modalities for this initiative”, it stated that the goal of the proposal “is to enable humanitarian organisations to deliver large amounts of humanitarian assistance to needy Gazans without the threat of having Hamas, or others divert or steal the assistance and sell it for profit on the black market”.
Although it has reportedly been approved by the Biden administration and White House National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, the plan requires official authorisation by the US and Israeli governments in order for its implementation. As a US private security firm, GDC would also apparently need approval from the US Senate to offer armed services to the Israeli government.
Israel looks set to also approve the plan, however, with its war cabinet having discussed the proposals on Sunday, resulting in its reported readiness to authorise such a pilot programme within the next two months.
GAZA – Israeli occupation forces executed seven displaced Palestinians and wounded dozens of others while being evacuated from a school sheltering the displaced people in Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday, according to medical sources and eyewitnesses’ accounts.
A medical source at the Kamal Adwan Hospital reported that the bodies of seven martyrs and many wounded were transferred to the hospital as a result of the Israeli artillery shelling on Jabalia camp.
Eyewitnesses told Anatolia agency that the Israelis forced the trapped people at the UNRWA’s Krizm School in the Jabalia refugee camp to gather in preparation for evacuation.
Once they did so, the Israeli forces fired an artillery shell directly towards them, killing at least seven displaced people and wounding dozens, the eyewitnesses added.
GAZA – For the fifteenth consecutive day on Saturday, northern Gaza, particularly Jabalia refugee camp, is enduring an Israeli siege and starvation amidst intense aerial and artillery bombardment, along with a complete isolation of the healthcare system and internet.
In a new massacre in Jabalia, the occupation army carried out an attack after cutting off communications and internet in northern Gaza.
Eyewitnesses reported that a large massacre occurred after homes belonging to the Al-Hawajri and other families near the Nasar junction in Tal Al-Zaatar to the northeast of Jabalia camp were bombed. Several homes were targeted, but the Al-Hawajri house was occupied by many residents, including a significant number of displaced relatives.
They confirmed that this house and the neighboring homes were directly targeted, resulting in 30 martyrs and more than 70 injured arriving at Al-Awda Hospital, with many missing.
The Gaza Government Media Office (GMO) said that 21 women and children were among the martyrs. It pointed out that the massacre committed by the occupation due to the bombing of Tal Al-Zaatar coincides with the collapse of the healthcare situation in northern Gaza.
Additionally, 4 citizens were martyred, and more than 15 others were injured due to Israeli shelling that targeted a home in the Al-Touba area of Jabalia camp.
With this toll, the number of martyrs resulting from Israeli airstrikes in northern Gaza since dawn on Friday has risen to 49, while the total number of martyrs since the siege was imposed on the northern sector has reached 450.
Moreover, the occupation’s artillery shelled the Indonesian hospital with several shells and imposed a siege on it, while the upper floors of Al-Awda Hospital in Tal Al-Zaatar were also targeted, with reports of injuries resulting from the attacks.
Since dawn on Saturday, Israeli occupation forces have besieged the Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahiya, targeting anyone moving in its vicinity. Artillery fired two shells towards it, and the electricity was cut off.
Dr. Marwan Sultan, the hospital director, issued an urgent distress call as Israeli military vehicles are surrounding the hospital and four shelters nearby, posing severe risks to medical staff and patients. He noted that Israeli tanks fired three direct shells at the hospital, and military bulldozers began demolishing parts of the hospital after cutting off its electricity.
He emphasized that 15 medical staff members and 30 injured patients in the hospital face real dangers due to the direct targeting of the hospital and the risk of suffocation from gases emitted by explosive shells nearby, pointing out that the lives of patients needing special care are threatened due to lack of oxygen.
He clarified that artillery shells targeted the second and third floors of the hospital, indicating that the occupation aims to destroy what remains of the healthcare system to force residents to leave.
The director of the Indonesian hospital, Dr. Marwan Sultan, called on the international community to intervene to save what remains of the healthcare system in the Gaza Strip.
The hospital had previously been subjected to a similar siege in November 2023, during which it was directly targeted by the occupying forces, leading to the death and arrest of several injured patients.
Meanwhile, the director of Al-Awda Hospital, Dr. Mohammed Saleh, described the healthcare situation as catastrophic due to the shortage of medical supplies, noting that the situation in northern Gaza is “indescribable.” He expected the number of martyrs to rise in the coming hours due to the lack of medical resources.
A medical source reported that the medical teams at Kamal Adwan and Al-Awda hospitals are unable to cope with the numerous injuries resulting from the bombardment by the occupying forces.
In the meantime, the director of health in Gaza, Munir Al-Bursh, described the condition of hospitals in northern Gaza as catastrophic. In statements to Al Jazeera, he mentioned that the bodies of over 450 martyrs have arrived at hospitals, and “our estimates indicate 500 martyrs,” confirming that the Israeli occupation is committing massacre after massacre in northern Gaza.
He added that the Israeli occupation is deliberately displacing the population from northern Gaza through bombardment and siege, rendering the healthcare system in northern Gaza non-functional.
A health ministry official in Gaza said that several civilians have died of hunger and thirst in their homes in Jabalia due to the ongoing siege, and the bodies of dozens of martyrs are scattered in the streets of Jabalia as a result of the continuous bombardment.
GMO condemned the moral decline of countries around the world that silently watch and monitor the crime of genocide against the Palestinian people, especially what is currently happening in the Jabalia camp in northern Gaza.
In a press statement, the GMO held the Israeli occupation, the US administration, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and the countries participating in the genocide fully responsible for the continuation of this crime.
The Israeli genocide against the Gaza Strip continues for the 379th consecutive day, with the pace of bombardment escalating in all areas of the Strip, particularly intensifying in the Jabalia camp in northern Gaza, on a night described as the most difficult since the beginning of the genocide, which has resulted in over 142,000 martyrs and injured, mostly women and children, since October 7, 2023.
Germany’s Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, addressed parliament yesterday and justified Israel’s targeting of civilians in Gaza.
‘Self-defence means not only attacking terrorists but destroying them. When Hamas terrorists hide behind people, behind schools… civilian places lose their protected status because terrorists abuse it.’
This, however, is not true, according to human rights lawyer, Craig Mokhiber. The former senior UN human rights official told MEMO claims that Israel has a right to ‘self-defence’ in Gaza don’t have a standing in international law.
The Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, strongly condemned the statements made by German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock on Wednesday, in which she claimed that “Israel” can target civilians in Gaza for “self-defense.”
In a statement, Hamas said the “German government is unashamed of the targeting of civilians and hospitals as long as it provides security for Israel, and this is part of its commitments.”
Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu contemplated implementing the Generals’ Plan in Gaza, backed by former Israeli Defence Forces planning and operations chief General Giora Eiland who has described the siege as “compliant with international law”. The plan, Eiland explained, would give Palestinians a week to evacuate and anyone who remains becomes a legitimate military target.
This week, Axiosreported that Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant assured US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin that the Generals’ Plan would not be implemented. Presumably, the US is now reassured that Palestinians in Gaza will not be starved by Israel, nor considered legitimate military targets.
Can we consider for just a few seconds that Israel does not need the Generals’ Plan to lay siege to and starve Palestinians, and encourage its soldiers to kill them? As macabre as the plan might sound, it is also another weapon of alienation used by governments to silence the cries of genocide, even as Israel is still committing genocide.
Palestinians are being starved already. That’s a fact.
Besieging, forcibly displacing and crowding them into increasingly smaller pockets of land makes it easier for Israel to kill more civilians with a single air strike. That’s a fact too. Burning them to death in tents? Fact. Does Israel really need to bring up the Generals’ Plan?
“What matters to [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar is land and dignity, and with this manoeuvre, you take away both land and dignity,” is how Eiland summed up the plan. Yahya Sinwar does not constitute the entire Palestinian population in Gaza, and Israel has been stealing Palestinian land since its inception and before; the early Zionist colonial settlers were laying the foundations of land appropriation for the settler-colonial, genocidal project. Israel does not need the Generals’ Plan to remove land and dignity. It has been stealing land for decades but, despite colonising Palestine, Israel can never strip Palestinians of their dignity. It is Israel that is entirely without dignity; a grubby monstrosity that needs to stand in front of a mirror and terrify itself with its own image.
Last month, the Norwegian Refugee Council reported that 83 per cent of food aid is not allowed by the occupation state to enter Gaza. The US is not concerned with the ongoing starvation, which is already tangible, but with the possible implementation of the Generals’ Plan. Likewise, the US is not concerned about stating that a military campaign cannot defeat an ideology, with reference to Hamas, but can still make itself complicit in a military campaign to kill thousands of Palestinians in a genocide that world leaders are conveniently ignoring. Sickeningly, the US Department of State has claimed that it cannot say whether burning Palestinians to death can be considered to be another war crime committed by Israel.
In the midst of all this doublespeak, what are the assurances for Palestinians?
The Generals’ Plan may or may not be implemented, but the genocide continues as Israel picks and chooses how it empties Gaza of Palestinians.
Instead of getting caught up in speculation, why not focus on the fact that Israel is carrying out a livestreamed genocide in Gaza which world leaders are still reluctant to call out? The psychological manipulation of Israel mulling over the Generals’ Plan needs to be exposed and challenged. Starvation is no less terrifying if it lacks a grandiose name. The truth is that Israel no longer needs a plan when it is allowed to act with apparently endless impunity.
Dr Soma Baroud, was killed on 9 October when Israeli warplanes bombed the taxi that carried her and other tired Gazans near Bani Suhaila roundabout, Khan Yunis.
“Your lives will continue. With new events and new faces. They are the faces of your children, who will fill your homes with noise and laughter.”
These were the last words written by my sister in a text message to one of her daughters.
Dr Soma Baroud was murdered on 9 October when Israeli warplanes bombed the taxi that carried her and other tired Gazans somewhere near the Bani Suhaila roundabout near Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip.
I still don’t know whether she was on her way to the hospital where she worked, or leaving the hospital to go home. Does it even matter?
The news of her assassination — which was a political murder; Israel has deliberately targeted and killed 986 medical workers, including 166 doctors — arrived through a screenshot copied from a Facebook page: “Update: these are the names of the martyrs of the latest Israeli bombing of two taxis in the Khan Yunis area…” It was followed by a list of names. “Soma Mohammed Mohammed Baroud” was the fifth name on the list, number 42,010 on Gaza’s ever-growing list of martyrs.
I refused to believe the news, even when more posts began popping up everywhere on social media, listing her as number five, and sometimes six in the list of martyrs of the Khan Yunis air strike.
I kept calling her, over and over again, hoping that the line would crackle a bit, followed by a brief silence, and then her kind, motherly voice would say, “Marhaba Abu Sammy. How are you, brother?” But she never answered the call.
I had told her repeatedly that she does not need to bother with elaborate text or audio messages due to the unreliable internet connection and electricity.
“Every morning,” I said, “just type: ‘We are fine’.” That’s all I asked of her.
But she would skip several days without writing, often due to the lack of an internet connection. Then, a message would arrive, although never brief. She wrote with a torrent of thoughts, linking up her daily struggle to survive, to her fears for her children, to poetry, to a Qur’anic verse, to one of her favourite novels, and so on.
“You know, what you said last time reminds me of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude,” she told me on more than one occasion, before she would take the conversation into the most complex philosophical spins. I would listen, and just repeat, “Yes… totally… I agree… one hundred per cent.”
For us, Soma was a larger-than-life figure. This is precisely why her sudden absence has shocked us to the point of disbelief. Her children, although grown up, felt orphaned. But her brothers, me included, felt the same way.
I wrote about Soma as a central character in my book My Father Was a Freedom Fighter, because she was indeed central to our lives, and to our very survival in a Gaza refugee camp.
The first born, and only daughter, she had to carry a much greater share of work and expectations than the rest of us. She was just a child when my eldest brother, Anwar, still a toddler, died in an UNRWA clinic at the Nuseirat refugee camp due to the lack of medicine. Then, she was introduced to pain, the kind of pain that with time turned into a permanent state of grief that would never abandon her until her murder by a US-supplied Israeli bomb in Khan Yunis.
Two years after the death of Anwar, another boy was born. They also called him Anwar, so that the legacy of the first boy could carry on. Soma cherished the newcomer, maintaining a special friendship with him for decades to come.
My father began his life as a child labourer, then a fighter in the Palestine Liberation Army, then a police officer during the Egyptian administration of Gaza, then, once again, a labourer, because he refused to join the Israeli-funded Gaza police force after the 1967 Naksa (the Six Day War).
A clever, principled man, and a self-taught intellectual, my Dad did everything he could to provide a measure of dignity for his small family; and Soma, a child, often barefoot, stood by him every step of the way. When he decided to become a merchant, as in buying discarded and odd items in Israel and repackaging them to sell in the refugee camp, Soma was his main helper. Although her skin healed, cuts on her fingers due to wrapping thousands of razors individually, remained as a testament to the difficult life she lived.
“Soma’s little finger is worth more than a thousand men,” my father would often repeat, to remind us, eventually five boys, that our sister will always be the main heroine in the family’s story. Now that she is a martyr, that legacy has been secured for eternity.
Years later, my parents sent her to Aleppo to obtain a medical degree. She returned to Gaza, where she spent over three decades healing the pain of others, although never her own.
She worked at Al-Shifa Hospital and Nasser Hospital among other medical centres. Later, she obtained another certificate in family medicine, and opened a clinic of her own. She did not charge the poor, and did all she could to heal those victimised by war.
Soma was a member of a generation of female doctors in Gaza who truly changed the face of medicine.
Collectively, they put great emphasis on the rights of women to medical care and expanding the understanding of family medicine to include psychological trauma with particular emphasis on the centrality as well as the vulnerability of women in a war-torn society.
When my daughter Zarefah managed to visit her in Gaza shortly before the ongoing war, she told me that, “When aunt Soma walked into the hospital, an entourage of women — doctors, nurses and other medical staff — would surround her in total adoration.”
At one point, it felt that all of Soma’s suffering was finally paying off: a nice family home in Khan Yunis, with a small olive orchard, and a few palm trees; a loving husband, a professor of law and eventually the dean of law school at a reputable Gaza university; three daughters and two sons, whose educational specialties ranged from dentistry to pharmacy, to law to engineering.
Even under siege, life — at least for Soma and her family — seemed manageable. True, she was not allowed to leave the Strip for many years due to the blockade, and thus we were denied the chance to see her for years on end. True, she was tormented by loneliness and seclusion, hence her love affair with and constant citation of García Márquez’s seminal novel. But at least her husband was not killed or missing. Her beautiful house and clinic were still standing. And she was living and breathing, communicating her philosophical nuggets about life, death, memories and hope. And then…
“If I could only find the remains of Hamdi, so that we can give him a proper burial,” she wrote to me last January, when the news circulated that her husband had been executed by an Israeli quadcopter in Khan Yunis. Because his body was missing, she held on to some faint hope that he was still alive. Her boys, on the other hand, kept digging in the wreckage and debris of the area where Hamdi was shot, hoping to find him and give him a proper burial. They would often be attacked by Israeli drones in the process of trying to unearth their father’s body. They would run away, and return with their shovels to carry on with the grim task.
To maximise their chances of survival, my sister’s family decided to split up between displacement camps and other family homes in southern Gaza. This meant that Soma had to be in a constant state of moving, travelling, often long distances on foot, between towns, villages and refugee camps, just to check on her children, following every incursion, and every massacre.
“I am exhausted,” she kept telling me. “All I want from life is for this war to end, for cosy new pyjamas, my favourite book, and a comfortable bed.”
These simple and reasonable expectations looked like a mirage, especially when her home in the Qarara area, in Khan Yunis, was demolished by the Israeli army last month. “My heart aches,” she wrote. “Everything is gone. Three decades of life, of memories, of achievement, all turned into rubble.”
She pointed out that this is not a story about stones and concrete. “It is much bigger. It is a story that cannot be fully told, however long I write or speak. Seven souls had lived here. We ate, drank, laughed, quarrelled, and despite all the challenges of living in Gaza, we managed to carve out a happy life for our family.”
A few days before she was killed, she told me that she had been sleeping in a half-destroyed building belonging to her neighbours in Qarara. She sent me a photo taken by her son, as she sat on a makeshift chair, on which she also slept amidst the ruins. She looked tired, so very tired.
There was nothing I could say or do to convince her to leave. She insisted that she wanted to keep an eye on the rubble of what remained of her home. Her logic made no sense to me. I pleaded with her to leave. She ignored me, and instead kept sending me photos of what she had salvaged from the rubble, an old photo, a small olive tree, a birth certificate…
My last message to her, hours before she was killed, was a promise that when the war is over, I would do everything in my power to compensate her for all of this. That the whole family would meet in Egypt, or Turkiye, and that we would shower her with gifts, and boundless family love. I finished with, “Let’s start planning now. Whatever you want. You just say it. Awaiting your instructions…” She never saw the message.
Even when her name, as yet another casualty of the Israeli genocide in Gaza was mentioned in local Palestinian news, I refused to believe it. I continued to call. “Please pick up, Soma, please pick up,” I pleaded.
Only when a video emerged of white body bags arriving at Nasser Hospital in the back of an ambulance did I think that maybe my sister was indeed gone.
Some of the bags had the names of the others mentioned in the social media posts. Each bag was pulled out separately and placed on the ground. A group of mourners, bereaved men, women and children would rush to hug the body, screaming the same shouts of agony and despair that have accompanied this ongoing genocide from the first day.
Then, another bag, with “Soma Mohammed Mohammed Baroud” written across the thick white plastic.
Her colleagues carried her body and laid it gently on the ground. They were about to zip the bag open to confirm her identity. I looked away.
I refuse to see her in any way but the way that she wanted to be seen, a strong person, a manifestation of love, kindness and wisdom; someone whose “little finger is worth more than a thousand men.”
But why do I continue to check my messages with the hope that she will text me to tell me that the whole thing was a major, cruel misunderstanding and that she is okay?
My sister Soma was buried under a small mound of dirt, somewhere in Khan Yunis.
It’s time for the American people to stand up to Washington and demand an immediate end to the endless support the United States has provided toapartheid Israel for its killing spree during the past year.
In the besieged Gaza Strip, Tel Aviv has murdered, mutilated, and maimed roughly 215,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children. Those figures do not include countless thousands of Palestinians missing or presumed dead beneath the 40 million tons of rubble Israel’s war has generated.
Last month, the Gaza Health Ministry published a 649-page document providing information regarding 34,344 murdered Palestinians identified thus far.
Antiwar.com news editor Dave DeCamp reported that, “The document lists 11,355 children, including 710 infants under the age of one, as Palestinian babies have been killed throughout the genocidal campaign. The infants are listed on the first 14 pages of the document…Out of the 34,344 people who have been identified, 60% are children, women, and elderly. The remaining 40% are men ranging in age from 18 to 59.” Currently, the total number of Palestinian children slaughtered in Gaza is approximately 16,800.
Vice president of the International College of Surgeons, Dr. Mark Perlmutter, an orthopedic surgeon based in North Carolina, volunteered his services in Gaza between April and May this year. In July, he lamented to CBS News unequivocally that “[of] all of the disasters I’ve seen, combined—40 mission trips, 30 years, Ground Zero, earthquakes, all of that combined—doesn’t equal the level of carnage that I saw against civilians in just my first week in Gaza.”
He bluntly described Tel Aviv killing children on an unprecedented scale, warning Israeli military snipers were deliberately shooting children and murdering toddlers:
“I’ve seen more incinerated children than I’ve ever seen in my entire life, combined. I’ve seen more shredded children in just the first week…missing body parts, being crushed by buildings, the greatest majority, or bomb explosions, the next greatest majority. We’ve taken shrapnel as big as my thumb out of eight-year-olds. And then there’s sniper bullets. I have children that were shot twice.”
After being asked to clarify his statement, Perlmutter said, “I have two children that I have photographs of that were shot so perfectly in the chest, I couldn’t put my stethoscope over their heart more accurately, and directly on the side of the head, in the same child. No toddler gets shot twice by mistake by the ‘world’s best sniper.’ And they’re dead-center shots.”
CBS noted that over twenty doctors had recounted similar child slayings. One American doctor reportedly felt compelled to review CT scans to confirm what he saw with his own eyes because he “didn’t believe that this many children could be admitted to a single hospital with gunshot wounds to the head.”
In April, Dr. Fozia Alvi, a Canadian physician, described her experience treating two children shot in the brain by Israeli snipers during her last day volunteering at southern Gaza’s European hospital. Alvi told The Guardian, “I asked the nurse, what’s the history? She said that they were brought in a couple of hours ago. They had sniper shots to the brain. They were seven or eight years old.”
She elaborated, “They were not able to talk, paraplegic. They were literally lying down as vegetables on those beds. They were not the only ones. I saw even small children with direct sniper shot wounds to the head as well as in the chest. They were not combatants, they were small children.”
Scores of American doctors, surgeons, nurses, and emergency room physicians have confirmed these accounts, writing multiple open letters to the White House urging the Joe Biden administration to cease support for the Israeli genocide and warning that the true death toll already includes more than 118,000 Palestinians, vastly exceeding Palestinian Health Ministry estimates.
One July letterfeatures Asma Taha, a pediatric nurse practitioner based in Oregon, describing the nightmare of living as a pregnant mother, newborn infant, or fetus trapped and under siege in the Gaza death camp. “Every day I saw babies die. They had been born healthy. Their mothers were so malnourished that they could not breastfeed, and we lacked formula or clean water to feed them, so they starved,” she wrote.
Another open letter sent to the White House was signed this month by ninety-nine American physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners, surgeons, and midwives who’ve spent a combined 254 weeks volunteering in Gaza. “This letter and the appendix show probative evidence that the human toll in Gaza since October is far higher than is understood in the United States. It is likely that the death toll from this conflict is already greater than 118,908, an astonishing 5.4% of Gaza’s population,” it reads.
The medics continue, describing the devastating toll that the genocidal campaign has taken on the entire civilian population:
“With only marginal exceptions, everyone in Gaza is sick, injured, or both. This includes every national aid worker, every international volunteer, and probably every Israeli hostage: every man, woman, and child.”
Israel’s brutal siege warfare, combined with constant bombing of civilian infrastructure including water systems, is designed to spread diseases by systematically liquidating and infecting Palestinian children, newborns, and babies.
As the American medical volunteers have thoroughly detailed:
“Virtually every child under the age of five whom we encountered, both inside and outside of the hospital, had both a cough and watery diarrhea. We found cases of jaundice (indicating hepatitis A infection under such conditions) in nearly every room of the hospitals in which we served, and in many of our healthcare colleagues in Gaza. An astonishingly high percentage of our surgical incisions became infected from the combination of malnutrition, impossible operating conditions, lack of basic sanitation supplies such as soap, and lack of surgical supplies and medications, including antibiotics.
“Malnutrition led to widespread spontaneous abortions, underweight newborns, and an inability of new mothers to breastfeed. This left their newborns at high risk of death given the lack of access to potable water anywhere in Gaza. Many of those infants died. In Gaza we watched malnourished mothers feed their underweight newborns infant formula made with poisonous water. We can never forget that the world abandoned these innocent women and babies…
We urge you to realize that epidemics are raging in Gaza. Israel’s continued, repeated displacement of the malnourished and sick population of Gaza, half of whom are children, to areas without running water or even toilets available is absolutely shocking. It was and remains guaranteed to result in widespread death from viral and bacterial diarrheal diseases and pneumonias, particularly in children under the age of five. Indeed, even the dreaded polio virus has reemerged in Gaza due to a combination of systematic destruction of the sanitation infrastructure, widespread malnutrition weakening immune systems, and young children having missed routine vaccinations for nearly an entire year. We worry that unknown thousands have already died from the lethal combination of malnutrition and disease, and that tens of thousands more will die in the coming months, especially with the onset of the winter rains in Gaza. Most of them will be young children.”
These doctors reaffirmed the claims from the previous letters and testimonies from medical volunteers that Israeli snipers are relentlessly targeting children as young as toddlers with head shots:
“Specifically, every one of us who worked in an emergency, intensive care, or surgical setting treated pre-teen children who were shot in the head or chest on a regular or even a daily basis,” the letter states. The American medical professionals insist, “It is impossible that such widespread shooting of young children throughout Gaza, sustained over the course of an entire year is accidental or unknown to the highest Israeli civilian and military authorities.”
Perlmutter is quoted again, emphasizing, “Gaza was the first time I held a baby’s brains in my hand. The first of many.”
It is absolutely clear that supporting Israel, quite literally, means mass murdering children every day in our name and on our dime. Since October 2023, the AIPAC-owned Congress has robbed over $22 billion of Americans’ hard-earned money, amidst crippling inflation, to facilitate and underwrite this genocide. Now, Tel Aviv wants to take our kids to war with Iran, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine simultaneously.
Americans are lectured incessantly, including by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that this is all obligatory and essential. We are told Americans must fight and die on the side of Israeli “civilization” against Middle Eastern “barbarism.” This author defies anyone to try to make a case for our “shared values” with the Israelis after reading these American doctors’ testimonies.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is examining a plan to seal off humanitarian aid to northern Gaza in an attempt to starve out hundreds of thousands of Palestinians unwilling or unable to leave their homes.
Under the proposed plan, seen by the Associated Press, civilians who remain in northern Gaza would be classified as combatants, allowing Israeli troops to kill them. They would be denied access to food, water, medicine, and fuel.
The plan proposed to Netanyahu by a group of retired generals, calls for Israel to maintain control over the north for an indefinite period to attempt to create a new administration, splitting the Gaza Strip in two.
Israeli media reported that Netanyahu told a closed parliamentary committee session that he was considering the plan.
Israeli authorities with knowledge of the matter said parts of the plan are already being implemented.
The plan gave Palestinians a week to leave the northern third of the Gaza Strip, including Gaza City, before declaring it a closed military zone.
Israel has issued many evacuation orders for the north throughout the yearlong campaign of death and destruction, the most recent of which was Sunday.
Israeli forces widened their brutal military offensive on north Gaza early on Sunday, after killing 300 people over nine days in a ramped-up ground offensive targeting the Jabalia refugee camp.
Israeli tanks made their way to the north edge of Gaza City, while airstrikes from above continued.
Residents say they have been isolated from the rest of Gaza, with Israeli forces not allowing anyone to enter or exit the north.
No trucks of food, water, or medicine have entered the north since Sept. 30, according to the UN.
So far, very few Palestinians have heeded the latest evacuation order. Much fear there’s nowhere safe to go and that they will never be allowed back. Israel has prevented those who fled earlier in the war from returning.
“All Gazans are afraid of the plan,” said Jomana Elkhalili, a 26-year-old Palestinian aid worker for Oxfam living in Gaza City with her family.
“Still, they will not flee. They will not make the mistake again … We know the place there is not safe,” she said. “That’s why people in the north say it’s better to die than to leave.”
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees, wrote on X Thursday that only about 100 Palestinians have fled the north since Sunday.
“At least 400,000 people are trapped in the area,” the UN official said “With almost no basic supplies available, hunger is spreading.”
Human rights groups say the plan would likely starve civilians and that it flies in the face of international law, which prohibits using food as a weapon and forcible transfers.
The fact that Israel is intentionally limiting food to Gaza is central to the genocide case brought against it at the International Court of Justice.
Israeli authorities say that if the strategy is successful in northern Gaza it could then be replicated in other areas, including tent camps further to the south sheltering hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
When asked about the plan Wednesday, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the US, Israel’s main benefactor, was going to “make absolutely clear that it’s not just the United States that opposes any occupation of Gaza, any reduction in the size of Gaza, but it is the virtually unanimous opinion of the international community.”
The Israeli military presses ahead with its relentless bombardment of the besieged Gaza Strip now more than one year into the genocidal war.
The Israeli aggression on Gaza began in October last year, claiming the lives of more than 42,000 so far. Over 98,000 d others have also been injured since then.
A European rights group has filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) against 1,000 Israeli occupation soldiers for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Gaza.
In a statement released on its website on Tuesday, the Hind Rajab Foundation, a branch of the March 30 Movement, said the complaint is “supported by over 8,000 pieces of verifiable evidence – including videos, audio recordings, forensic reports, and social media documentation – demonstrates the soldiers’ direct involvement in these atrocities.”
It added that soldiers were named and were all “located in Gaza during the genocidal assault, and the evidence reveals their participation in violations of international law.”
It added that it provided evidence that they had taken part in the “destruction of civilian infrastructure … Illegal occupation and looting … Participation in the Gaza blockade … Targeting civilians … Use of inhumane warfare tactics,” which are violations under international law.
The soldiers named include “high-ranking officers and commanders responsible for planning and executing military operations in Gaza,” individuals with dual citizenship, “including 12 from France, 12 from the United States, 4 from Canada, 3 from the United Kingdom, and 2 from the Netherlands,” and soldiers “who have openly boasted about their war crimes on social media,” the statement explained.
We are now a year into the Israel government’s military action devastating the people and infrastructure of Gaza and since expanded into escalating violence against countries including Lebanon and Iran. Yet, even today, United States Senate members are repeating flagrant lies produced in the war’s early days to trick Americans and others around the world into supporting Israel’s war.
On Monday, Republican US Senators introduced a resolution repeating some of these old lies that helped build support among Americans for Israel’s war — that “Hamas terrorists” killed “approximately 1,200 individuals” in their October 7, 2023 attack and that Hamas used “rape as a weapon of war.” Why repeat the lies? To support the resolution’s conclusions, including that the Senate wants to “ensure the forever survival of Israel.” Left unsaid in the resolution is that the way the US government continually acts to purportedly achieve this goal includes shoveling more and more money, weapons, and intelligence to Israel for Israel to use in whatever way it chooses. Indeed, the US government’s commitment seems unfazed no matter Israel’s level of barbarity and no matter how much Israel’s actions cause further geographic expansion of the war.
To the extent American politicians repeating these baseless claims regarding October 7 are doing so because they are ignorant about what happened, they would do well to watch a new documentary — Atrocity Inc. — featuring reporter Max Blumenthal. Blumenthal was there from the beginning calling no dice on the propaganda promoted by Israel and US politicians, along with American media, that has been used to gain public support for Israel’s aggressive actions. The widespread rape allegations are ridiculous fabrications and a significant portion of the death toll is from the willful killing of Israelis by agents of their own government, Blumenthal explains in the documentary. Blumenthal also debunks other outrageous lies, including claims related to the killing of, and even beheading of, babies on October 7.
Senators, and everyone else, can watch the documentary here.
No one expected that one year would be enough to recalibrate the Palestinian cause as the world’s most pressing issue, and that millions of people across the globe would, once again, rally for Palestinian freedom. The past twelve months have witnessed an Israeli genocide in Gaza and unprecedented violence in the West Bank, as well as legendary expressions of Palestinian sumud, steadfastness.
It is not the enormity of the Israeli war, but the degree of the Palestinian sumud that has challenged what once seemed to be a foregone conclusion to the Palestinian struggle. Yet, it turned out that the final chapter on Palestine was not ready to be written, and that it would not be Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who would write it.
The ongoing war has exposed the limits of Israel’s military machine.
The typical trajectory of Israel’s relationship with the occupied Palestinians has been predicated on unhindered Israeli violence and deafening international silence. It was largely Israel alone that determined the timing and objectives of war. Its enemies, until recently, seemed to have no say over the matter.
This is no longer the case. Israeli war crimes are now met with Palestinian unity; Arab, Muslim and international solidarity; and early, albeit serious, signs of legal accountability. This is hardly what Netanyahu was hoping to achieve; just days before the start of the war, he stood in the UN General Assembly brandishing a map of a “New Middle East”, a map that had completely erased Palestine and the Palestinians.
“We must not give the Palestinians a veto over… peace,” he said. Why? “Palestinians are only two per cent of the Arab world.” His arrogance didn’t last long. His supposedly triumphant moment in the international spotlight was short-lived.
Embattled Netanyahu is now mostly concerned about his own political survival. He is expanding the war front to escape his army’s humiliation in Gaza and is terrified by the prospect of an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
And as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) continues to look into an ever-expanding file, accusing Israel of deliberate genocide in the Strip, the General Assembly resolved on 18 September that Israel must end its illegal occupation of Palestine within a year from the passing of its resolution on the matter.
It must be utterly disappointing for Netanyahu — who has worked tirelessly to normalise his country’s occupation of Palestine — to be met with total and thundering international rejection of his schemes. The advisory opinion of the ICJ, issued on 19 July, declared that “Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (is) unlawful.” This was another blow to Tel Aviv, which despite unlimited US support, failed to change international consensus on the illegality of the occupation.
In addition to the relentless Israeli violence, the Palestinian people have been marginalised as political actors. Since the Oslo Accords in 1993, their fate has been largely entrusted to a mostly unelected Palestinian leadership, which, with time, has monopolised the Palestinian cause for its own financial and political interests.
The sumud of the Palestinians in Gaza, who have endured a year of mass killing, deliberate starvation and total destruction of all aspects of life, is helping reassert the political significance of a long-marginalised nation.
This shift is fundamental as it runs contrary to everything that Netanyahu had tried to achieve.
In the years prior to the war, Israel seemed to be writing the final chapter of its settler-colonial project in Palestine. It had subdued or co-opted the Palestinian leadership, perfected its siege on Gaza and was ready to annex much of the West Bank.
Gaza became the least of Israel’s concerns, as any discussion around it was confined to the hermetic Israeli siege and the resulting humanitarian, although not political crisis.
While Palestinians in Gaza have tirelessly implored the world to put pressure on Israel to end the protracted siege, imposed in earnest in 2007, Tel Aviv continued to conduct its policies in the Strip according to the infamous logic of former top Israeli official Dov Weissglas, who explained the rationale behind the blockade as “to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”
A year into the war, though, and the Palestinians have become the centre of any serious discussion on a peaceful future in the Middle East. Their collective courage and steadfastness have neutralised the Israeli military’s ability to exact political outcomes through violence.
True, the number of dead, missing or wounded in Gaza has already exceeded 150,000. The Strip was already impoverished and dilapidated to begin with; today it is in total ruins. Every mosque, church or hospital has been destroyed or seriously damaged. Most of the enclave’s educational infrastructure has been obliterated. Yet, Israel hasn’t achieved any of its strategic objectives, which are ultimately united by a single goal: that of silencing the Palestinian quest for freedom, forever.
Despite the unbelievable pain and loss, there is now a powerful energy that is unifying Palestinians around their cause, and the Arabs and the rest of the world around Palestine. This shall have consequences that will last for many years, long after Netanyahu and his fellow extremists are gone.
The Kevin Barrett-Chomsky Dispute in Historical Perspective – 10th part of the series “9/11 and the Zionist Question”
Prof. Tony Hall | American Herald Tribune | August 9, 2016
… In Among The Truthers Kay repeats the core idea of The Volunteer: A Canadian’s Secret Life in the Mossad. As Kay would have it, 9/11 confirms the role of Israel as the West’s primary bulwark against Islamic savagery. In making this case Kay repeats the assertion of Benjamin Netanyahu that 9/11 was good for Israel.
Kay asserts, “Following the attacks supporters of Israel spoke of a silver lining. The war against militant Islam suddenly was a global one. Now the whole world would see and understand the sort of nihilistic hatred that Israelis confront every day.” As Kay sees it, Jews are being enlisted en masse to serve as primary soldiers in a war of civilizations.
He writes, “The Jew was the perfect anti-Islamist, whose zeal and reliability was hard-wired into his political DNA thanks to six decades of Israeli warfare against Islamic terrorists in the Middle East.” … Read full article
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Al Mayadeen | October 16, 2024
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