Killing humanitarian workers as a strategy: Israel’s endgame in Gaza
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | April 9, 2024
Israel described its clearly deliberate killing of seven humanitarian aid workers in Gaza on 1 April as a “grave mistake”, a “tragic event” of a kind that “happens in war”. Obviously, Israel was lying. In fact, this entire so-called war in Gaza — which is in reality a genocide — has been based on a series of lies, some of which Israel and its supporters continue to peddle.
For some in the mainstream media, it took months to accept the obvious fact that Israel has been lying about the events that led to its military offensive and the objectives of its constant targeting of hospitals, schools, shelters and other civilian facilities. As such, it was only logical for the occupation state to lie about killing the six internationals and their Palestinian driver working with the World Central Kitchen (WCK) charity. Notwithstanding an event as atrocious as this undoubtedly was, it is implausible for Israel to start telling the truth now.
Fortunately, few seem to believe Israel’s version of the WCK incident or, indeed, its ongoing massacres elsewhere in Gaza. The state “cannot credibly investigate its own failure in Gaza,” said the US-based NGO on 5 April.
The issue of targeting these internationals, however, has to be placed within a larger context.
Israel was hardly secretive about its intentions to deny Palestinians even the most basic necessities of survival in Gaza, epitomised in the words of Minister of Defence Yoav Gallant way back on 9 October: “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, no water, everything is closed.”
This statement, like many others, was understood at the time to be due to Israel’s desire to punish Palestinians for the 7 October Operation Al-Aqsa Flood by resorting to its usual tactic of collective punishment. Based on statements made by other Israeli officials, though, it soon became clear that the occupation state wanted to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from the enclave altogether.
The Israeli stratagem was rejected immediately by Egypt, Jordan, other Arab countries and, eventually, governments around the world. Israel, however, persisted. Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich described the “voluntary migration” of Palestinians in Gaza as the “right humanitarian solution”. Benjamin Netanyahu concurred. “Our problem is [finding] countries that are willing to absorb Gazans [sic], and we are working on it,” said the Israeli prime minister.
However, for ethnic cleansing to take place, several prerequisites had to be fulfilled. For a start, the bulk of Gaza’s 2.3 million people had to be forced to the south, as close to the Egyptian border as possible. This has been achieved. Then everything conducive to life had to be destroyed throughout Gaza, including all hospitals and clinics.
Thus, we saw the grisly massacre at Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital on 17 October, for example, and the bloodbath and eventual total destruction of Gaza’s largest medical complex, Al-Shifa, on 1 April. When the Israeli military pulled out of the Shifa area, troops left behind one of the most tragic scenes in the history of modern warfare. Hundreds of bodies were hurriedly buried in mass graves amid charred buildings and indescribable destruction. Limbs of children stuck out of the dirt, and whole families were tied together and executed; and there were other crimes that will take the world a long time to fathom, let alone explain. And yet former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett claimed nonchalantly that “not one civilian” was killed in Al-Shifa. Another blatant lie.
Most civilian shelters, bakeries, markets, electricity grids and water generators also had to be targeted so that the hapless population, especially in northern Gaza, would understand that life there would simply be unsustainable. Becoming fully aware of Israel’s ultimate plan of inducing a famine in Gaza, though, the Palestinians fought back. Their counterstrategy was predicated on ensuring that as many of them as possible remained in northern Gaza, and that those concentrated in Rafah were not pushed into the Sinai desert.
Aside from the ongoing battle between the Israeli army and Palestinian resistance movements in Gaza, there was thus another deadly struggle taking place: Israel’s push for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the latter’s desire to survive and remain within the nominal borders of their land.
This is why Israel has killed countless Palestinians involved in the life-sustaining work in northern and central Gaza.
According to the UN, prior to the killing of the six internationals on 1 April, Israeli troops had already killed 196 humanitarian aid workers in the Palestinian territory. This figure does not include doctors, medical staff, civil defence workers, police chiefs and officers, and anyone else contributing to day-to-day life in areas that Israel wanted to empty of its inhabitants.
Even when, under international pressure, the rogue state allowed limited aid to enter northern Gaza, its army killed and wounded Palestinian civilians on a number of occasions as they gathered in desperation hoping to get some life-saving supplies. According to a 4 April report by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, Israel has killed 563 Palestinians and injured 1,523 by bombing and shooting people waiting for aid at designated spots in northern Gaza, or when it bombed distribution centres and workers responsible for distributing the aid. The Kuwait roundabout area in Gaza City alone witnessed the murder of 256 starving refugees, while 230 others were killed on Al-Rashid Street elsewhere in the city.
Israel’s bombing was not random, as it also targeted and killed 41 police officers who had worked with volunteers from various Gaza clans to help the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) to distribute aid among the famine-stricken population. Even the clans themselves were targeted in equally merciless bombardments.
On each occasion, just as happened after the attack on the WCK workers, the entity responsible for the aid would declare that it would no longer be involved in aid distribution. This is how Gaza’s hunger turned into famine. It was Israel’s very deliberate strategy.
The killing of the internationals in Gaza served the same goal of ensuring that no aid distribution mechanism was in place, because Israel would not allow it. Ironically, the involvement of World Central Kitchen was itself the outcome of a US-negotiated agreement that would deny the Gaza authorities and even UNRWA any role in the distribution of aid.
The apartheid state of Israel must be stopped at any cost. Moreover, that cost must include Israeli war criminals being held accountable for one of the worst genocides in modern history.
See also:
Drone footage shows Gaza turned to wasteland since start of Israeli offensive
Hundreds of corpses recovered from vicinity of Al-Shifa Hospital

The Cradle | April 9, 2024
The bodies of hundreds of Palestinians killed by Israel have been recovered from the vicinity of the Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City, in the north of the strip.
The medical facility was destroyed in a massive Israeli operation inside and around the hospital, which spanned two weeks.
“The bodies of 409 martyrs – some of them decomposed – have so far been recovered by civil defense teams from the Al-Shifa Medical Complex and its surroundings in Gaza City,” Palestinian news agency WAFA reported on 9 April.
Israeli troops raided Al-Shifa Hospital on 18 March – for the second time since the start of the war – carrying out what it said was an operation against Hamas leaders in the facility. During the onset of the attack, Brigadier General Fayeq al-Mabhouh, Gaza’s chief of police and overseer of aid distribution in the north of the strip, was assassinated by Israeli forces.
The army withdrew from Al-Shifa Medical Complex on 1 April. Following the withdrawal, videos on social media showed the full extent of the damage inflicted on the hospital by Israel’s army and aircraft.
The complex’s entire buildings were ravaged, and hundreds were killed in the two-week attack. The hospital has been sheltering thousands of displaced Gazans since the war began. Dozens of Palestinians, among them children, were executed by Israeli forces around the hospital throughout the operation.
Palestinian Civil Defense in Gaza also reported massive damage and unprecedented numbers of dead bodies in the strip’s southern city of Khan Yunis on 9 April. Israel had been operating in Khan Yunis since early December in an attempt to dismantle the presence of Hamas’ military wing, the Qassam Brigades – which it failed to do.
Following the army’s large-scale withdrawal from Gaza over the weekend – which has left a limited number of troops inside the enclave – families returning to Khan Yunis witnessed scores of bodies, many trapped under rubble.
Dozens of young men have also been reported missing, according to what returning families told the civil defense.
The city “smells of death,” one mother said as she was returning, adding: “We don’t have a city anymore – only rubble. There is absolutely nothing left.”
The civil defense has urged the international community to provide specialized equipment to remove the bodies from underneath the rubble.
Palestine’s Sacrifice
By Paul Larudee | Dissident Voice | April 8, 2024
Years ago, I made the statement that Palestinians had not sacrificed enough. It was meant to be a shocking statement, but it wasn’t a judgmental one. What I meant was that all of the terrible sacrifices that Palestinians had made up until that time had failed to liberate Palestine, and that we would know when adequate sacrifice had been made by the standard of whether liberation had been achieved.
I believe that we are reaching a vantage point where this accomplishment is now within view, or at least just over the horizon. If so, it is utterly astonishing, but the greatest part of the sacrifice is yet to come. We call it genocide, and although we are in the midst of it, we have not yet seen the worst.
Israel, which has spent its entire history building its image and cementing its relationships – security, technological, academic, economic and cultural – with the rest of the world, now perceives that it must allow itself to become a reviled international pariah in order to commit horrors that will preserve itself as a Zionist exclusivist enclave on stolen territory. Israel, in its desperation, has given up on all civilized pretenses and most links to the outside world, except its lifeline with the only superpower that can single-handedly transfuse enough arms and wealth to maintain its ability to wreak havoc upon its unwanted subjugated population and instill fear in its neighbors.
It has come down to this: From Israel’s perspective, it must commit genocide in order keep the Zionist dream of a Jewish state alive. There will be no de Klerk-Mandela moment, no integration, no truth commission, no mutual acceptance. The Israelis who believed in good will and mutual respect do not exist anymore, and their dream was a fantasy in any case, depending as it did upon tolerance in a society that required racist credentials for admission. Roughly a million of them emigrated in the decade prior to October 7th, 2023, and another million in the six months after. In the remaining Israeli population, fanaticism rules. It is the future of Israel, to the extent that it has any. Like the crusader castle at Acre, it will be a fortress that remains until it is no longer viable, losing its body of the faithful, unwilling to keep it going.
That is the future. At present, it is a fearful, enraged beast, ready to commit all manner of atrocities in order to resist the inevitable. As it makes no visible progress against its armed foes in Gaza, the West Bank and south Lebanon, it is now seeking to widen the war, with direct superpower military engagement. Although the US remains unlikely to take the bait, it is also ruled by a similar siege mentality, especially at the highest levels of government, which are impervious to popular will, and are wedded to interests that largely determine its composition, regardless of the party “in power”. One of those interests is the Israel lobby, which not surprisingly maintains especially strong control over US policy towards Israel. The practical implications are that, regardless how unpopular a government or its policy may be, it will not waver in its support for Israel – in effect a sock puppet with a teleprompter.
These factors will raise the cost of the Palestinian victory. Yet even those who are the victims of the greatest crime of this century refuse to accept a return to life in the concentration camp that was Gaza. Indeed, the ranks of Hamas and Islamic Jihad are swelling with more recruits than they can accept at present.
Will the crescendo of the world’s voices and actions prevent the worst from happening? Will the ships of aid and volunteers change the outcome? The demonstrations? The suspension of trade and exchange agreements? The isolation of Israel as a pariah? The alienation of Jewish youth from Zionism? I would like to think so, but as far as I can tell, none of this has any impact upon the thinking – much less the decisions – in Israel or the US. Our predictions for the future are projections of the past and present, and I see nothing in those projections that will avert the course of genocide. I would love to be wrong.
Paul Larudee is a retired academic and current administrator of a nonprofit human rights and humanitarian aid organization.
Israel Seeks to Sell Weapons Used in Gaza Slaughter
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | April 8, 2024
Israeli weapons markers are selling some weapons platforms that have been utilized during the onslaught in Gaza. Tel Aviv’s arms industry has found buyers among several Asian countries as Washington tries to make allies in the region, preparing for a future war with China.
Last week, several Israeli arms markers hosted delegations from multiple Asian nations at their booth at the Singapore arms expo. Jon Ostrower, editor-in-chief of The Air Current, explained, “They’ve come to demonstrate their power.”
Axon Vision CEO Roy Riftin said in an interview with Asia Nikkei that his company was coordinating with the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza to refine its military AI tech and then export it abroad.
Some of the weapons platforms featured in Singapore have been used in Gaza. Over the past six months, Israel has killed at least 33,000 Palestinians. Most of the dead are women and children. Several international rights experts have warned that Israeli operations amount to genocide.
In coverage of the Singapore arms event, Haaretz notes that some of the drones touted by the Israeli arms dealers were used by Azerbaijan in Nargano-Karabash. Last year, the Azeris completed an ethnic cleansing of the region by forcing the enclave’s last 100,000 residents out of the Republic of Artsakh and into Armenia.
An Israeli official said it was primarily seeking clients who did not buy Chinese arms. “Ultimately all the countries in the region are threatened by the Chinese,” a senior figure in one of the Israeli defense companies on hand told Haaretz. “Here at the airshow they don’t buy fighter jets from China.”
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Israel sells the most arms to India and the Philippines. The US has tried to include both New Delhi and Manila in its Asia-Pacific alliances, with the aim at fighting a future war with China. The US has frequently sanctioned other countries over alleged war crimes and human rights abuses while ignoring the rampant abuses committed by Israel in Gaza.
Saudi Arabia, Pakistan demand end to Israel’s hostilities in Gaza
Press TV – April 8, 2024
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have made a joint statement, calling on the international community to pressure Israel to halt hostilities in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Riyadh and Islamabad made the statement after Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman hosted Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in Mecca on Sunday.
Both parties called for international efforts “to halt Israeli military operations in Gaza, mitigate humanitarian impact and… pressure Israel to cease hostilities, adhere to international law, and facilitate unhindered humanitarian aid access to Gaza.”
The two leaders also called for “the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem (al-Quds) as its capital,” according to the statement.
In February, Saudi Arabia made it clear that the kingdom will not begin diplomatic relations with Israel before the establishment of an independent Palestinian state and a permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
Saudi officials have repeatedly called for a halt to the Israeli campaign.
Yet even as anger ripples across the Muslim world after six months of bombardment, mass displacement and over 33,000 Palestinians killed, there is no sign of an end to the regime’s campaign in the besieged territory.
The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas said on Monday no agreement is even close in the ceasefire talks underway in Cairo.
Israel withdrew from southern Gaza due to the resistance’s strikes, expert says

MEMO | April 8, 2024
Iran Warns it Has Nine Types of Missiles Able to Strike Israeli Territory
Sputnik – 08.04.2024
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long urged military action against the self-avowed Islamic Republic, but the nation of 88 million people possesses significant defensive capabilities.
Iran has nine types of missiles with sufficient range to hit Israeli territory, Iranian news agency ISNA reported against the backdrop of concerns over possible armed conflict between the two countries.
An infographic presented by the news agency Sunday revealed multiple Iranian ballistic missiles – the Sejjil, Kheibar, Emad, Shahab-3, Ghadr, Paveh, Fattah-2, Kheibar Shekan, and Haj Qasem – the speed of which ranges from Mach 5 to Mach 14 (from 3,836 miles per hour to 10,741 miles per hour).
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long urged military action against the self-avowed Islamic Republic and regional critic of Israel, but the nation of 88 million people possesses significant defensive capabilities. A war on Iran also raises the prospect of potential involvement by Tehran’s ally Russia, while Netanyahu would presumably count on an assist from the United States.
On April 1, Israel carried out an airstrike on the consular annex of the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, destroying the building. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said seven of its members had been killed in the attack, including two commanders. On Tuesday the Syrian Health Ministry said the attack had also killed four Syrians and injured 13 more.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry said it “reserves the right” to respond to the Israeli attack and “punish the aggressor.” Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi also vowed Israel would pay a “heavy price” for the strike.
“None of the embassies of the (Israeli) regime are safe anymore,” said top Iranian military advisor Gen. Rahim Safavi Sunday, suggesting the country could mirror Israel’s consular strike.
Iran is a staunch defender of the Palestinian cause in the region – Palestinian solidarity was a founding principle of the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution which toppled the US backed Pahlavi royal family. The country’s foreign policy is rooted in strong opposition to US imperialism, which has left a lasting legacy in the Persian country.
Israel announces partial withdrawal of its troops from southern Gaza

Palestinians inspect destroyed residences in Khan Younis after Israeli military withdraws most of its ground troops from the southern Gaza Strip (Reuters)
Press TV – April 7, 2024
Israel says it has pulled most of its troops out of southern Gaza in what it said is a move to recuperate and prepare for future offensives.
Three Israeli brigades on Sunday left the southern city of Khan Yunis but another remained to prevent displaced Palestinians from returning to their homes in the north.
The Israeli military said a “significant force” will remain in the rest of the besieged Gaza Strip.
Israel’s military earlier announced it’s pulling thousands of soldiers out of the south, including Khan Younis city, after months of fierce combat.
The military wing of the Hamas resistance movement said Israel was forced to end its operations before achieving its goals.
The al-Qassam Brigades dismissed Israel’s claims that it had destroyed resistance forces in those areas from where it had withdrawn.
The Brigades added that resistance forces have always surprised Israel.
Khan Younis residents, who rushed back to their city after Israeli forces relocated from southern Gaza, found a wasteland of destruction and rubble.
Media reports quoting residents said much of Khan Younis had been destroyed, many buildings had been bombed, and there were overturned cars stuck in the mud near craters left by missiles.
Witnesses said that damaged hospital beds were seen on one street.
They have been saying the situation is completely indescribable and chaotic as a great deal of destruction has been done to the entire area
“It is a shock, a shock. What happened was not small … while coming on the way in the car, I saw things. The destruction is unbearable,” said Mohammed Abou Diab, who was among those who returned to his old neighborhood.
The Secretary-General and CEO of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Jagan Chapagain, says the situation in Gaza is “desperate and worsening” as the war hits its six-month anniversary.
The city has come under intense Israeli bombardment in recent months.
Khan Younis has been destroyed, with the destruction of civil infrastructure, mosques, and residential houses, and people are saying that they have nothing left in the city.
After six months of relentless attacks on Gaza, Israel remains no closer to a victory than it has been at any point since October of last year.
US says Israeli military’s troop reduction in Gaza is to ‘rest and refit’
White House National Security spokesperson John Kirby said the Israeli army’s troop reduction in Gaza appears to be a “rest and refit” and not necessarily indicative of any new operations.
“As we understand it, and through their public announcements, it is really just about rest and refit for these troops.”
“[This is] not necessarily that we can tell indicative of some coming new operation for these troops,” Kirby said when asked about the step.
Palestinians face more deaths and destruction in Gaza as the US-Israeli onslaught in the besieged strip continues for a seventh month.
Since the beginning of the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza, nearly 33,200 people have been killed.
At least 7,000 people are also unaccounted for or presumed dead under the rubble.
Day 184: ‘Israel’ Withdraws Most Troops from Southern Gaza
Al-Manar | April 7, 2024
The 184th day of the Israeli genocidal war on Gaza witnessed a dramatic development represented by the Zionist military withdrawal from southern Gaza.
In this context, the Israeli military radio said that the army withdrew Division 98 with its 3 brigades from Khan Younis, adding that only Nahal Brigade remained in the Strip, specifically at Natsarim crossing, which separates the Gaza’s north and south.
Reuters news agency quoted the Zionist military spokesperson as saying that the Israeli army has withdrawn all ground troops from South Gaza, except one brigade.
The Israeli occupation army announced the death of 4 soldiers during battles in southern Gaza.
Meanwhile, the Zionist occupation forces continued bombarding the innocent civilians in the various areas of Gaza, claiming more martyrs.
The Israeli warplanes and artillery struck civilian targets in Khan Younis, Rafah, and Gaza city.
The Palestinian health ministry reported that the Israeli occupation forces committed four massacres during the past 24 hours in Gaza, killing 38 civilians and injuring 71 others.
Thus, the latest toll of the Zionist genocidal war in Gaza has become 33,175 martyrs and 75,886 injuries.
Mexico warns Israel for ‘protecting’ suspect in disappearance of 43 students
Press TV – April 6, 2024
Mexico has warned that if Israel continues with its refusal to extradite a fugitive security official wanted in connection with the disappearance of 43 Mexican college students a decade ago, their bilateral ties may be damaged.
Back in September 2014, 43 male students disappeared from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College after being abducted in Iguala, in the southwestern state of Guerrero. The students were traveling to a demonstration in Mexico City amid a drug war.
The official narrative by the government said at the time that corrupt police handed the ill-fated students over to drug gang henchmen, who then incinerated the students at a garbage dump and threw the ashes in the San Juan River.
Questioning the official narrative by some experts as well as growing anger in Mexico at federal inaction prompted the current administration, led by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, to pledge to re-open the case.
Tomas Zeron, who headed the Criminal Investigation Agency that led the inquiry into the case – dubbed one of Mexico’s worst human rights tragedies – is wanted by the Mexican justice system for the crimes of torture, violation of human rights and forced disappearance of the 43 students.
“The lack of progress in resolving this case is interpreted as de facto protection by Israel of Tomas Zeron and threatens to become an irritating and disruptive factor with” Tel Aviv, the Mexican foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday.
The former official, who fled to Israel in 2020, has also been charged with the abuse of power and authority, embezzlement, fraud and criminal association. He has consistently denied all allegations.
Although Mexico and Israel do not have an extradition treaty, Mexico City has repeatedly asked Tel Aviv to hand over Zeron over allegations of serious irregularities in the probe into the said case, but all to no avail.
Zeron is one of the architects of the 2015 official narrative or the so-called “historical truth” regarding the fate of the disappeared students, whose exact circumstances of their disappearance are still unknown.
The victims’ families have so far strongly rejected that narrative.

