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Israeli troops launch ‘massive incursion’ into south Gaza hospital

The Cradle | February 15, 2024

Israeli forces stormed Al-Nasser Hospital in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Yunis on 15 February, which had been besieged by the invading troops for several weeks.

“Israel’s military stormed Nasser Hospital and turned it into a military outpost. The Israeli military destroyed the ambulance station and tents of displaced civilians and bulldozed over [mass] graves in the courtyard of the hospital,” the Gaza Health Ministry announced. 

Displaced Palestinians inside the hospital were “forcibly evacuated” on 14 January before a “massive incursion” on Thursday morning, which began under intense shelling, the ministry added. 

Al-Jazeera reported “heavy tank and machine-gun fire as the Israeli army entered Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis after ordering occupants to evacuate this morning.” 

Intensive care patients were forced to move into one of the hospital’s older buildings, which was not equipped to care for them. 

“The Israeli occupation forces the administration of Nasser Medical Complex to keep intensive care patients without medical staff, which puts their lives in grave danger,” Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said. 

According to hospital officials, seven patients were hit by Israeli fire, and one of them was killed. 

The Israeli military claimed on 15 January it had “credible evidence” that Hamas kept prisoners inside Al-Nasser Hospital and that their remains may still be in the facility. 

However, Hebrew media reported on Thursday that “expectations regarding finding corpses of Israeli detainees at Nasser Hospital must be lowered.”

Tel Aviv also claimed Hamas operatives involved in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood were hiding in the hospital. The Israeli army entered Khan Yunis in early December, laying siege to the southern city’s hospitals.

Over the past week, dozens of Palestinians have been shot and killed by Israeli snipers in the vicinity of Al-Nasser Hospital, including those who were trying to leave the facility.

The Israeli army stormed Khan Yunis’ Al-Amal Hospital at the start of this month.

Tel Aviv has been conducting a military campaign against hospitals in Gaza with the aim of making the strip uninhabitable for Palestinians. In November, north Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital was besieged, stormed, and transformed into a detention center by Israeli troops.

Israeli forces are now preparing to push further south into Rafah but are still facing fierce resistance from Hamas’ Qassam Brigades and other resistance groups in Khan Yunis. 

February 15, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Joe Biden Acts Like the Defender of Gazans, But He is the Destroyer

By Adam Dick | Peace and Prosperity Blog | February 13, 2024

This week President Joe Biden was again talking about his ideas of how the Israel government should exercise more restraint in its war in Gaza. But, he remains all talk and no action on this count.

It is tedious to repeatedly hear the man who is, in the absence of congressional action to provide special assistance to Israel for its war, unilaterally providing the key aid including weapons and intelligence for prosecuting Israel’s war continue to insist he supports restraint while the Israel government keeps pursuing relentless devastation.

Biden, in a Monday statement he made at the White House after meeting with Jordan King Abdullah, said the following regarding impending Israel military action:

As I said yesterday, our military operation in Rafah — their — the major military operation in Rafah should not proceed without a credible plan — a credible plan for ensuring the safety and support of more than one million people sheltering there. Many people there have been displaced — displaced multiple times, fleeing the violence to the north, and now they’re packed into Rafah — exposed and vulnerable. They need to be protected.

This schtick is way past its expiration date. The Israel war, now in its fifth month, continues to rack up destruction of life, health, and the physical manifestations of civilization in Gaza at an astounding pace, with the brunt of the suffering imposed on civilians. Israel is taking the actions. But, the US is the key accomplice to the atrocities because of the aid it provides.

This is Biden’s war as much as it is Israel’s war.

Biden is notoriously prone to make blunders in his public presentations. The blunder he made in his comment in his Monday White House statement is different than many. Biden quickly corrected his mention of “our military operation in Rafah” to clarify that the military operation is Israel’s. The slipup here was not that Biden had stated something false. Instead, it was that Biden had stated the truth that he and his administration are trying their best to hide.

February 13, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, War Crimes | , , , , , | 1 Comment

BBC News Arabic evacuates staff from Gaza via the Rafah Crossing

MEMO | February 13, 2024

BBC News Arabic evacuated its press crew from the Gaza Strip through the Rafah land crossing, after the crew covered the ongoing war there for over four months.

The Egyptian authorities facilitated the crossing of the nine-member press crew through the Rafah Crossing after their families left the Strip through the crossing weeks ago.

The Rafah crossing is the gateway that connects Gaza to the world and is used for the entry of humanitarian and relief aid and the exit of individuals wounded in Israel’s genocidal war for treatment in Egypt and other countries.

On Sunday, flouting the provisional ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Israel launched an air campaign on Rafah, killing more than 65 Palestinians. The city had been declared a “safe zone” by occupation forces and over a million Palestinians had taken shelter there after being forced out of their homes in the northern areas of the Strip since 7 October.

The Israeli offensive has left 85 per cent of Gaza’s population internally displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60 per cent of the enclave’s infrastructure was damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

The UN, Egypt, and several other countries, including the US, warned Israel against launching an attack on Rafah, as it could cause what they described as a “disaster” in the city crowded with more than half of the two million displaced civilians from across Gaza.

February 13, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Here’s why you shouldn’t trust the ‘declining’ Gaza death toll narrative

By Robert Inlakesh | RT | February 11, 2024

Shortly before the International Court of Justice’s highly anticipated decision to pursue South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide, the New York Times released a report titled ‘The Decline of Death in Gaza’.

The article attributed this alleged decline to a change in Israel’s battle strategy in Gaza, yet the piece omitted key data that contradicted its claims. Then, in the aftermath of the ICJ preliminary ruling, the NYT became the first news outlet to receive and publish information from an Israeli dossier that accused UNRWA staff of complicity in the armed activities of Hamas.

Since the beginning of the war between Israel and Gaza, which began with the Hamas-led attack on October 7, Western corporate media have shown what can only be described as pro-Israeli double standards. On January 9, The Intercept published a quantitative analysis of over 1,000 articles in US mainstream media, including by the NYT, proving the undeniable bias demonstrated in favor of Israeli life and underreporting on Palestinian suffering.

An even more targeted analysis was published by researchers Jan Lietava and Dana Najjar, who specifically looked at the BBC’s coverage of the conflict between October 17 to December 2. The study documented that words like murder(ed), massacre(d) and slaughter(ed) were used by the BBC to describe Israelis 144 times, while Palestinians had only been described as having been murdered or massacred one time each; the word slaughter had never been used to describe the killing of Palestinians. The study clearly shows the disparity in humanizing language used and the number of stories on Palestinian deaths, despite the Palestinian death toll being far higher than the Israeli one.

The Israeli death toll throughout the war officially stands around 700 civilians and 600 combatants, while for Palestinians it is roughly 27,600, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The estimates are that between 61% to 75% of the Palestinians killed in Gaza are women and children. Ranging estimates as to how many Palestinian combatants have been killed are not trustworthy. Israeli spokespeople claim between 7,000 to 10,000 Hamas fighters, depending on the time of day, but provide no estimate for the number of fighters killed who are members of the dozen or so other armed groups in Gaza.

While the NYT report attempts to make the point that deaths in Gaza are steadily declining as the Israeli operation goes on, statistics released by the authorities in Gaza, from January 17 (when the NYT data chart ends) until January 24, clearly show the opposite trend. For reference the daily death tolls read: 163, 172, 142, 165, 178, 190, 195, 210.

The piece also lacks any evidence showing a correlation between the Israeli announcement of what it calls “phase 3” of its battle plan and the death toll charts that showed a downward arc in the daily fatality rate. Israel began announcing its intention to implement its new phase at the beginning of January, yet the argument presented in the article attempted to draw the conclusion that pressure from the US government had contributed to a lowering of fatalities between early December and January 17.

There was a decline in the daily reported death toll, but this occurred prior to any stated change in the military strategy. Also observable is that during the week that the report was released, the daily Gaza death toll actually jumped to 188. Monday through to Sunday of that week there were some 1,317 Palestinians killed by Israel. The week prior, a total of 1,110 were killed.

The NYT also pointed to the Israeli withdrawal of forces from northern Gaza, attempting to use this as evidence of a change in tactics in January that had been brought about due to efforts from the Biden administration. Israel actually reinvaded the north, briefly, after the article was published.

Furthermore, Israel didn’t start withdrawing from northern Gaza in January – it began this process around December 21, when it withdrew the elite Golani Brigades. In late December, five brigades were withdrawn and the reservists amongst them were released for economic reasons. Then, earlier last month, a further four brigades were withdrawn as the Israeli army implemented a retreat from most of the built-up areas in northern Gaza.

Israeli authorities claim that the reason for the change in the war strategy, shifting from the high-pressure tactics of the first two phases, was due to their desire to continue the fight for the whole of 2024. If Israel is planning to fight a year-long war, it makes sense for it to use fewer munitions and soldiers, as munitions are finite and the cost of the initial battle strategy would have been a significant economic burden.

Another crucial point is that the report completely left aside all other considerations as to what could explain a decline in death tolls across certain periods of time. A major issue that is faced today is a lack of a properly functioning health sector in Gaza altogether; according to the World Health Organization (WHO), only 16 hospitals out of 36 remain operational and all are “minimally or partially functioning.”

One of the last remaining professional journalists in northern Gaza, Anas al-Sharif, reported to Al Jazeera Arabic, on January 16, of the intensifying bombardments in the area and the underreporting of casualties there. A resident named Akram based in the Jabalia Refugee Camp told RT that “the bombing over those few days returned to how it was at the start of the war, it was terrifying and it seemed like it didn’t stop at all for over a day.”

With a health sector that has all but collapsed, properly accounting for the dead is a tough challenge, which is why the Gaza Health Ministry routinely includes the caveat to its daily death tolls that there are others under the rubble who are unaccounted for. To demonstrate how big of a difference the death toll is, when those missing under the rubble are factored in, take the statistics released by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, which stated that 31,497 Palestinians had been killed by January 14.

Aside from us not having a full picture of the true daily death toll, Israel is also being accused of using starvation as a weapon of war, and the statistics that are being cited do not include those who are now dying due to disease and starvation. Some 400,000 people living in northern Gaza are without aid altogether, as efforts by international organizations to transport medical, food and fuel aid to the north have repeatedly been blocked. On December 9, Save The Children warned that the primary cause of death in Gaza could soon be starvation and disease, instead of bombs, with the humanitarian situation having severely deteriorated since then.

When the Israeli government later released its allegations that 12 UNRWA employees – out of 13,000 working in Gaza – had participated in the Hamas-led attack of October 7, the New York Times was the first to get its hands on the Israeli dossier that detailed its allegations. The newspaper failed to report that most of the allegations were based on interrogations conducted by the Shin Bet (Israeli secret police), which is renowned for extracting confessions through torture. The article that the NYT published on the issue made the dossier’s information seem somewhat credible, yet, when the UK’s Channel 4 obtained it and quoted it directly to the public, it concluded that “no evidence” was contained within the dossier.

The NYT’s reporting on Israeli allegations that Hamas conducted a premeditated mass rape campaign have come under fire also. In one case family members of an Israeli woman killed on October 7 had to take to social media to denounce the NYT’s attempts to suggest she had been raped, which the newspaper allegedly failed to tell the family it was planning to include in its article.

At every turn, Western corporate media has used distortions, linguistic manipulation, and outright lies to mislead its audiences on the truth about what is occurring in Gaza. It does not get lower than playing with statistics in order to downplay what the highest judicial body on earth has overwhelmingly ruled is plausibly a genocide, or what UN aid chief Martin Griffiths has called “the worst ever” humanitarian crisis.

Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News.

February 11, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, War Crimes | , , , , , | 1 Comment

Israel targets Red Crescent headquarters in Gaza

MEMO | February 9, 2024

The headquarters of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society in the Gaza Strip have been damaged due to incessant bombings by the Israeli army.

Major damage was caused to the society’s headquarters in the Tal Al-Hawa neighbourhood in Gaza City and the Al-Amal neighbourhood in the city of Khan Younis, eyewitnesses told Anadolu.

The Israeli army also targeted vehicles belonging to the humanitarian aid group, an Anadolu correspondent reported.

The Society’s Al-Quds Hospital in Tal Al-Hawa was also subjected to significant damage as a result of being targeted by Israeli tanks.

“The Israeli army deliberately targeted the society’s headquarters and vehicles to put them out of service,” Red Crescent spokesman Raed Al-Nims said.

“The most severe Israeli attacks against the society were those in northern Gaza, which caused a health and humanitarian crisis, especially after hospitals and medical centres went out of service there,” he added.

Nims said only one medical centre affiliated with the society is now operating in northern Gaza to provide first aid services.

He added that Israel has cut off medical, relief and food supplies to the northern Gaza Strip, which has exacerbated the humanitarian situation for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living there.

“The Israeli army is still besieging the society’s Al-Amal Hospital, west of Khan Younis, from all sides, depriving Palestinians sheltering there of food, water, medical supplies, basic needs, and oxygen.”

“The hospital houses more than 200 patients, medical and administrative staff,” the spokesman added.

On 7 February, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) reported an alarming spread of diseases due to the lack of sanitation and clean water.

Recent results of malnutrition screenings conducted by partner organisations indicate a significant increase in the overall acute malnutrition rate among children.

Overall acute malnutrition in the Gaza Strip reached 16.2 per cent, a rate that exceeds the critical threshold set by the World Health Organisation set at 15 per cent.

Despite the International Court of Justice’s provisional ruling, Israel continues its onslaught on the Gaza Strip where at least 27,947 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children, and 67,459 injured since 7 October, according to Palestinian health authorities.

The Israeli offensive has left 85 per cent of Gaza’s population internally displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60 per cent of the enclave’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

February 9, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Netanyahu orders ‘evacuation’ of over one million Gazans from Rafah

Displaced Palestinians who fled Khan Younis set up camp in Rafah further south near the Gaza Strip’s border with Egypt, on 6 December 2023. (Photo credit: Getty)
The Cradle | February 9, 2024

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed on 9 February that the over one million Palestinian civilians who have taken refuge in the southern Gaza city of Rafah will be able to evacuate before the Israeli army begins a ground operation there.

Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that he had instructed the army to prepare plans for both the evacuation of the Palestinian civilian population from the southern Gaza Strip and the dismantlement of any battalions of Hamas’ armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, in the Rafah area.

“It is impossible to achieve the war goal of eliminating Hamas and leave four Hamas battalions in Rafah,” the statement said.

“On the other hand, it is clear that a massive operation in Rafah requires the evacuation of the civilian population from the combat zones,” it added.

But such a plan to evacuate over 1 million people is likely impossible. UN chief Antonio Guterres says half of Gaza’s 2.3 million population “is now crammed into Rafah with nowhere to go,” warning the displaced “have no homes” and “no hope.”

Israel’s previous warnings to Palestinians to flee northern Gaza and take refuge in the south did not provide safety to civilians, as Israel bombed the proposed evacuation routes and alleged safe zones.

Expressions of concern for civilians in Gaza by Prime Minister Netanyahu have come amid other calls he has made to exterminate the millions of Palestinians in the besieged enclave.

“You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible — we do remember,” Netanyahu has said on several occasions. According to the New York Times he was referring to the “ancient enemy of the Israelites, in scripture interpreted by scholars as a call to exterminate their ‘men and women, children and infants.’”

Last month, the UK aid group Oxfam said that the Israeli military is killing 250 Palestinians per day, with many more lives at risk from hunger, disease, and cold.

Any plan to evacuate civilians is also likely to be superficial, given that as of Sunday, no such plan was being prepared. CNN reported that Brig. Gen. Dan Goldfuss, who oversees the army’s 98th Division, said that he would work on such a plan “if and when” he receives the order to send his forces into the area and that as of Sunday, the order had not been issued yet.

February 9, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Arab world calls US top security threat, sees no prospect of peace with Israel: Poll

The Cradle | February 9, 2024

A new opinion poll conducted in 16 Arab countries shows that Washington’s continued support for Israel’s campaign of genocide in the Gaza Strip has dramatically hurt its image across West Asia and North Africa, as 94 percent of respondents describe the US position as “bad.” At the same time, more than half say the US poses the biggest threat to regional security.

Other western states fared almost as poorly, with more than three-quarters of those polled saying the position of the UK, France, and Germany in relation to Gaza is “bad” or “very bad.”

In contrast, Iran received a surge in recognition, with 48 percent of respondents expressing a positive view of the Iranian position, while 37 percent held a negative view. Despite Ankara’s increasing trade ties with Tel Aviv, Turkiye got a similar response – 47 percent perceived the country’s position positively, and 40 percent perceived it negatively.

To make matters worse for Washington, 51 percent of respondents agree that the US is currently the biggest threat to peace and stability in the region – marking a 12-point jump from 2022. Israel trails behind with 26 percent, a 15-point drop from 2022.

The survey, conducted by the Arab Center Washington DC (ACW) in cooperation with The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS), also asked respondents their opinions on prospects for peace with Israel in the wake of the war in Gaza.

Fifty-nine percent answered with certainty that there can be no possibility for peace with Israel, while 14 percent reported having serious doubts, and nine percent said they did not believe in the possibility of peace with Israel in the first place.

Furthermore, 89 percent of Arab citizens say they oppose official recognition of Israel, with only four percent favoring it. This marks the lowest level of recognition since the question was first asked in 2011.

When asked what actions regional leaders must take to stop the mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza, 36 percent said governments should suspend relations or normalization agreements with Israel, 14 percent said aid must be delivered to Gaza regardless of Israeli approval, and 11 percent said oil exports should be used to put pressure on Israel and its western backers.

A large majority of respondents also agreed that the US is not serious about working to establish an independent Palestinian state under the 1967 borders with occupied Jerusalem as its capital.

“This is a historic moment in some very important ways,” Shibley Telhami, a professor at the University of Maryland, said at an event presenting the survey findings on Thursday. “The scale of what we have seen and the role the US has played in this deeply painful crisis has been so large and been perceived to be so large that it’s going to leave an imprint on the consciousness of a generation in the region that is going to outlast this administration and outlast this crisis.”

Questions about Washington’s alleged commitment to democracy and regional stability have been growing steadily in the Arab world for several years. According to a Gallup poll conducted in April 2023, a great majority of citizens in 13 countries across West Asia and North Africa said they did not trust US claims about “encouraging the development of democracy” or about “improving the economic lot of people.”

A few months earlier, the ACRPS revealed the results of the largest opinion survey conducted in the Arab world, showing that 84 percent of Arabs reject recognizing Israel for political and cultural reasons.

February 9, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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.

February 8, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | 1 Comment

Palestinian Red Crescent calls for pressure on Israel over fate of missing staff, child

Press TV – February 8, 2024

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) in the Gaza Strip has called on the international community to exert pressure on the Israeli regime to reveal the fate of two of its staff and a six-year-old Palestinian girl who have been missing for a week.

PRCS made the appeal in a social media post on Thursday, 122 hours after the disappearance of their staff members Youssef Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoon as well as Palestinian girl Hind Rajab in the Tal Al-Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City.

“We urgently appeal to the international community to exert pressure on Israeli occupation authorities to disclose the whereabouts of Hind and the PRCS team,” the group said.

On January 29, Hind was traveling in a car with her uncle Bahsar Hamada, his wife and their four children, fleeing the brutal bombardment by the Israeli regime.

On their way, Hamada’s car was stopped by the Israeli military. The stoppage was followed by a shower of bullets at Hamada’s car, which killed him, his wife and three of their children on the spot.

Layan Hamada, 15, survived with her cousin Hind. Layan was shot dead as she was speaking on the phone with the PRCS crew while Hind was still trapped inside the vehicle.

Around 6 pm local time, the PRCS team reached the area to rescue Hind who as per the last update remained trapped alone in a car with the dead bodies of her uncle, aunt and cousins scattered around her.

The PRCS team had informed and coordinated with the Israeli authorities before dispatching an ambulance to the location but the NGO lost all contact with its crew after the team went to retrieve the girl.

Since then, demands for answers have been mounting over the fate of Hind and the PRCS medical workers.

Hind’s mother, Wisam, has also issued appeals to international rights organizations for help in finding out what happened to her daughter.

Israel waged its brutal war on besieged Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out an unprecedented operation against the occupying entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

So far, the Tel Aviv regime has killed at least 27,700 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 67,000 others.

February 8, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Albanese: Israel is still practicing ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip, West Bank and Jerusalem

Palestinian Information Center – February 8, 2024

GAZA – The United Nations Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, said on Wednesday that Israel has never respected the international law and has been allowed to violate it since 1967. It is still carrying out acts of ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Jerusalem.

The famine suffered by the residents of the Gaza Strip is unparalleled in the whole world, she said, stressing the necessity of taking all required measures to prevent genocide in Gaza.

Albanese said, in a press statement, “the more aid and ceasefire are delayed, the greater the number of casualties in the Gaza Strip will be.”

She accused Israel of ignoring the International Court of Justice’s ruling by killing more civilians everyday in Gaza, calling on world countries to put pressure on Israel by halting mutual commercial trades.

Albanese said she was shocked to know that member states of the International Court have recently attacked UNRWA, noting that the international community is capable of stopping the ongoing massacres carried out by Israeli occupation forces in the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli occupation’s ongoing aggression on the blockaded Gaza Strip has so far led to the martyrdom of 27,708 people and the injury of 67,147 others, in addition to the enforced displacement of more than 85 percent (about 1.9 million people) of the Strip’s population, according to official authorities and international bodies and organizations.

February 8, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Palestinian Information Center director Gharabli martyred in Israeli strike

Palestinian Information Center | February 7, 2024

GAZA – The Palestinian Information Center (PIC) has mourned the tragic loss of its office director in Gaza, Dr. Rizq al-Gharabli, who was martyred on Tuesday during relentless Israeli attacks on Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip.

Dr. Gharabli’s death brings to 123 the number of Palestinian journalists who have been martyred since the Israeli occupation state started its genocidal war on Gaza.

The Government Media Office announced yesterday the martyrdom of Dr. Gharabli in an Israeli airstrike on his home in Khan Yunis.

Last Monday, the International Federation of Journalists organized a rally outside the European Union headquarters in Brussels in solidarity with the journalists in Gaza and in protest at the European silence on Israel’s crimes against civilians, especially journalists.

The participants in the protest carried placards and banners that said “Freedom for Palestinian journalists,” “Israel, stop killing journalists in Gaza” and “Journalists in Gaza, we are with you.”

February 7, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | 1 Comment

FOR WESTERN MEDIA, ISRAEL’S BOMBING OF GAZA IS NOT ‘DEADLY’

Right across the Anglo-American mainstream media, the killing of Palestinians is seen as normal. It’s only Israeli lives that matter.

BY DES FREEDMAN | DECLASSIFIED UK | JANUARY 30, 2024

Twenty-four Israeli soldiers were killed in two separate incidents in Gaza on 22 January. Mainstream media outlets around the world reacted in unison: that this was the “deadliest day” for Israel since 7 October.

This exact phrase was used in headlines on 23 January carried by news agencies such as Reuters and AFP, and major broadcasters including the BBC, CBS, NBC, CNN, ABC and ITV News.

The exact same phrase was also used by leading news titles including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time magazine, Daily Telegraph, the Sun, Jerusalem Post, Guardian, London’s Evening Standard, Financial Times, Independent and Yahoo News.

On the same day, Israeli forces killed almost 200 Palestinians in Gaza including at least 65 people in Khan Younis alone.

These deaths received no headlines in the above outlets. Where they were reported, they were listed as part of the regular daily round-up of events in an unfolding genocide that has now seen more than 26,000 people killed in Gaza.

How is it possible that the world’s media could embrace exactly the same phrase in relation to Israeli victims but largely ignore the identities of the much higher number of Palestinians killed?

Why would 22 January be described as “deadly” for one group of people but not for another?

Unequal value

You might expect that editors took the “deadliest day” phrase from press statements from the Israeli government or military.

Yet Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Daniel Hagari did not use this phrase in his statement and neither did the IDF Chief of the General Staff, Herzi Halevi, who instead simply called it a “difficult day”.

Prime minister Benjamin Netanhayu also described it as “one of the most difficult days” while Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog, spoke of “an unbearably difficult morning”.

He used the same language as both Knesset speaker Amir Ohana and minister Benny Gantz, both of whom referred to a “painful morning”.

Of course, it is possible the phrase was used in private and informal briefings to the press on the morning of 23 January. It is, however, equally conceivable that this was a trope that came “naturally” from a deep-rooted idea in the western media that the lives of Israelis and Palestinians are not of equal value.

And, therefore, that measuring the “deadliness” of a particular day should only be done for Israelis (where every life matters) and not for Palestinians (whose individual lives clearly appear to count for less).

‘Deadliest day’

Indeed, a search of the Nexis database of UK national and local news (including BBC broadcast bulletins) reveals that there were 856 uses of the phrase “deadliest day” from 7 October 2023 until 25 January 2024, none of which directly referred to evidence of Palestinian deaths in Gaza.

The only exception to this were some BBC bulletins on 25 October which mentioned “Palestinians reporting the deadliest day in Gaza” (emphasis added).

Otherwise, there was not a single reference during this period across the British media to “the deadliest day for Palestinians” or “for the people of Gaza”.

The other approximately 850 references directly related only to Israeli casualties. Some 28 per cent of them focused on the killing of IDF soldiers on 22 January.

The vast majority referred to the events of 7 October, described either as “the deadliest day for Jews” or “the deadliest day for the Jewish people” which accounted for some 25% of all references.

Many of these stories were focused on the words of US president Joe Biden who, in a much publicised speech to Jewish leaders at the White House, described the Hamas attack on 7 October as the “deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust”.

Biden’s words alone make up 20% of all references to the “deadliest day” trope.

Perhaps Biden’s words were on the minds of editors across the world as they listened to Israeli spokespeople on the morning of 23 January and that the deaths of 24 IDF soldiers merited such a phrase when talking about Israeli lives.

Framing the war

But why has the phrase not been used in relation to Palestinians and, indeed, why is there so little preoccupation with days when particularly large number of Gazans are killed?

Precisely because the war is not framed in a way which recognises the equal worth of all those affected – in other words, a situation where every instance of significant Palestinian casualties would deserve a headline – it’s hard to be certain of which have been the very deadliest days for the residents of Gaza.

However, it’s clear that the period immediately after the temporary ceasefire in the last week of November saw particularly intense airstrikes and there were, according to Al Jazeera, at least 700 Palestinians killed on 2 December alone.

Yet there was no mention in the UK media about this being the “deadliest day” for Palestinians. Instead, the Guardian simply ran with a headline of “‘Israel says its ground forces are operating across ‘all of Gaza’” while the Sunday Times wrote that “Fears for hostages as Gazans say bombardment is worse than ever”.

According to the Mail Online, “Israel says it is expanding its ground operations against Hamas’ strongholds across the whole of the Gaza Strip as IDF continues to bomb territory after terrorists broke fragile truce”.

The BBC’s TV news bulletins on 3 December carried distressing footage of casualties but also featured a quote from an adviser to Netanyahu saying that “Israel was making the ‘maximum effort’ to avoid killing civilians” without carrying an immediate rebuttal of this outrageous claim.

In other words, despite the fact that 30 times more Palestinians were killed on 2 December than when the 24 IDF soldiers were killed, there was no recognition of the “deadliness” of that day.

Instead, the framing was all about the strategic plans of the Israeli military rather than the mass slaughter of Palestinians.

‘Intensive strike’

On 26 December, a further 241 people were killed by Israeli bombs. Britain’s “newspaper of record”, The Times, responded with the headline: “Israel-Gaza war: Palestinians hit by ‘most savage bombing’” with a sub heading that “Israel launches most intensive strike since Hamas attack on October 7”.

You could be forgiven for thinking that there was nothing deadly about this episode because, after all, Palestinians were only being “struck” as opposed to brutally killed.

But this was hardly an exceptional day given that Oxfam reported earlier this year that Israel’s military was killing Palestinians at an average rate of 250 people a day, a figure it said exceeded the daily death toll of any other major conflict of recent years.

There is clearly a brutal politics to counting the dead. The New York Times ran an article on 22 January headlined “The Decline of Deaths in Gaza” arguing that average daily deaths across a 30-day period have now fallen below 150.

For the NYT, it is “plausible that a lower percentage of deaths are among civilians now that Israel’s attacks have become more targeted and the [average] daily toll has declined”.

Not only, however, is there little evidence that the IDF is in any way opposed to killing civilians but the idea that casualties are declining at a time when we are soon likely to see a total of 30,000 Palestinian deaths is profoundly shocking.

Any slowdown in the rate of killing is hardly a consolation to the millions who still live in fear of IDF raids and rockets.

Media consensus

The media consensus that only Israelis are the victims of the “deadliest days” in the region and not Palestinians, despite the latter accounting for 95% of deaths since 7 October, is one of the many illustrations of the unequal and profoundly distorted coverage of this war.

Until the South African government submitted its partially successful claim to the International Court of Justice, news organisations were unwilling even to investigate the genocidal language of Israeli political and military leaders.

The media also routinely uses dehumanising and differential language where Israelis are “massacred” while Palestinians simply “die”. This illustrates the awful role of the mainstream media in paving the way for the ethnic cleansing we are currently seeing.

The real reason you don’t see or hear the media talk about a “deadly day” for Palestinians is that every day is deadly when you live in Gaza.

February 4, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , | 1 Comment

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