IDF Killed 64 Children While Freeing 4 Hostages, An Exchange Instead Would Have Brought Happiness 

in Palestine

 by Jay Janson

 07/07/2024

Ever since October 7, 2023, NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, CNN, PBS, along with BBC, DW, NHK other Western entertainment/news conglomerates and wire services like AP, UPI, Reuters and Israeli media have sought to keep their viewers, readers and listeners attention on the hostages and away from any explanation, reason or justification of Palestinians seeking to exchange the hostages for some of the thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. 

This is of course consistent with underreporting the Palestinians suffering the illegal military occupation, subjugation and often murderous treatment from the Israeli military which operates largely with impunity within Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. 

Western media focus on the hostages is even more important in justifying Israel’s wholesale annihilation of much of the population of Hamas governed Gaza, homes, apartment buildings, mosques, schools, stores, bakeries, playgrounds all claimed by Israel to be in defence of the Palestinian guerrilla attack of Israel on October 7, 2023. 

However, since U.S. has built up the Israel military to be one of the most powerful in the world and perfectly capable of defending itself against any subsequent Hamas guerrilla attack, the Israeli obliteration of Gaza’s cities and its people is obviously not defensive, and after Israel’s generations of crimes against Palestinians, the October 7, invasion was hardly unexpected. UN Secretary General António Guterres  said as much right after the October 7, 2023 event. Guterres noted that “these attacks did not happen in a vacuum”—highlighting the impact of 56 years of occupation on the Palestinian people. (United Nations Press).

Israel’s Responsibilities as an Occupying Power Under International Humanitarian Law

Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories, regarding Israel’s right to self-defense in the context of Israel’s (illegal) military occupation of Palestinian lands and people:

“Israel has the right to defend itself, but it cannot invoke this right to perpetrate acts that violate international law against a people it is occupying.” 

In her report to the UN General Assembly in October 2022, Rapporteur Albanese noted, 

“An occupying power has a duty to protect the occupied population and cannot invoke self-defense to justify the use of force against its own protected persons.”

Western news outlets refer to Palestinian freedom fighters as ‘terrorists’ constantly reporting that some Western governments list Hamas and other armed groups fighting the Israeli occupation as terrorist organisations, however, China, as a permanent member of the Security Council, has backed the right of the Palestinian people to use arms.

“The struggle waged by peoples for their liberation, right to self-determination, including armed struggle against colonialism, occupation, aggression, domination against foreign forces should not be considered terror acts”

– Zhang Jun, China’s UN ambassador

Addressing the ICJ on Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian land, February 22, 2024,

Beijing’s envoy said there were “various people (who) freed themselves from colonial rule” and they could use “all available means, including armed struggle”.(seemed an indirect reference to the American War of Independence from Britain.) 

As a conscientious peoples historian activist I have allowed myself to be subjected to anti-Chinese, anti-UN, anti-Hamas, pro-Israeli news slants in the interest of knowing just how the average mainstream media addict comes to accept genocide as an inevitable condition of modern warfare and wars as an unpreventable source of financial gain.

Therefore NBC’s very poignant, even painful to look at and read coverage of the Israeli Defence Force killing of 64 children during its freeing of 4 hostages on June 8, 2024, came as a surprise to this writer and life long sympathiser of the Palestinian inhuman predicament. This sorrowful coverage of the horrendous head wound and death of a lovely four year old boy and the sight of a seven year old girl alive but with more than half her face gone, is perhaps one indication that just perhaps even the racist inclined CIA overseen media of the hegemonic Western nations can no longer tolerate Israeli genocide in its ever more outrageously gruesome aspects. 

Readers are invited to share some grief with Arab Palestinian families suffering soul crushing amount of anguish for the sheer numbers of the dead and dying children and the catatonic state of surviving kids. Just click on the hyperlink below:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/gaza-children-killed-israel-hostage-raid-idf-hamas-war-palestinians-rcna157777

NBC News June 8, 2024

Gazan families mourn children killed during IDF’s hostage rescue

WEB Gaza’s Health Ministry says at least 64 children were killed by Israeli fire during the June 8 raid to rescue four hostages being held by Hamas. 

The four hostages — Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Shlomi Ziv and Andrey Kozlov — were safely extracted from the Gaza Strip and cameras captured their emotional reunions with their families after eight months of captivity.

The joy experienced by both Palestinians and Israelis during the first hostage exchange as they fell into the loving arms of waiting family and friends could have been repeated instead of this horrific bloodbath of some 270 Palestinians, among them 64 precious children on June 8, 2024

Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Shlomi Ziv and Andrey Kozlov will most likely never forget that their homecoming was one sided. No Palestinian got to welcome home family members long imprisoned with or without having been charged as seems to the case for so many incarcerated and more being seized every day.

… and how shall the four Israelis back home with their families ever put out of their mind the unspeakable horror and indescribably intense suffering of the families of the 64 Arab children slain as the price of their release?

Actually, how shall any of us ever forget that Americans have been backing and supplying these abominations of using weapons of mass destruction upon fellow human beings and their children in full knowledge of the profits being made by U.S. corporations.

Post Script

https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/2024/israel-war-on-gaza-10000-children-killed

Post Script

What of those buried beneath the ruble and the amputees ?

Post Script

,,, and those already starved to death and those starving to death and those who will starve to deathhttps://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/defense-minister-announces-complete-siege-of-gaza-no-power-food-or-fuel/

Jay Janson is an archival research peoples historian activist, musician and writer; has lived and worked on all continents; articles on media published in China, Italy, UK, India, in Germany & Sweden Einartysken,and in the US by Greanville Post, Dissident Voice; Global Research; Information Clearing House; Counter Currents; Minority Perspective, UK,and others; now resides in NYC; First effort was a series of articles on deadly cultural pollution endangering seven areas of life emanating from Western corporate owned commercial media published in Hong Kong’s Window Magazine 1993; Howard Zinn lent his name to various projects of his; Weekly column, South China Morning Post, 1986-87; reviews for Ta Kung Bao; article China Daily, 1989. Is coordinator of the Howard Zinn co-founded King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign, and website historian of the Ramsey Clark co-founded Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now Campaign, https://prosecuteuscrimesagainsthumanitynow.blogspot.com/which contains a history of US crimes in 19 nations from 1945 thru 2012.

COUNTER CURRENTS

IF YOU WANT TO DEFEND ISRAEL, WATCH THE VIDEO! 

THIS IS GENOCIDE! 

YOU ARE COMPLICIT IF YOU FAIL TO SPEAK OUT! 

UN: Israel Flattened Civilian Housing Complexes with 2000-lb. Bombs in absence of Specific Military Target

JUAN COLE06/22/2024

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a report this week on “Indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks during the conflict in Gaza” during the first three months of the Israeli campaign against Gaza.

The UN is painfully polite, so you may not be able to tell that the terms “indiscriminate” and “disproportionate” are war crimes, of which it is accusing the Israeli government.

The report notes, “According to the Israeli Air Force (IAF), between 7 October 2023 and 19 February 2024 over 29,000 targets in Gaza were attacked.”

Again, although OHCHR is agreeably quoting this official Israeli source, it is not paying a compliment to the air force for its thoroughness:

“The rate at which Palestinians were killed in Gaza during this reporting period was reportedly higher than in any recent conflicts globally.”

Again, not a compliment.

In fact, you have to think of this litany of facts and figures as sort of like the opening statement of a prosecuting attorney, establishing the grounds for a conviction.

They are building up to it: “The war has also witnessed many tragic instances of entire families killed together, from infants to grandparents, many while in their homes (128,904 housing units have been damaged between 7 October 2023 and 1 April 2024) or in other places they had sought safety. According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, as of 3 May 2024, more than 3,129 families have been killed or injured together.” The OHCHR subjected reports of Israeli attacks and their aftermath to very sophisticated CSI-style forensics.

They found, “87 per cent of the verified fatalities have occurred in incidents that resulted in 5 or more fatalities, and over 60 per cent were killed in incidents that resulted in 10 or more fatalities.”

What they discovered is that the Israeli attacks weren’t targeted at, say, a single Hamas militant. The Israeli military went big. Six in ten of their strikes produced 10 or dozens of fatalities. That outcome is weird if you were only trying to kill 37,000 militiamen in a population of 2.2 million people. You’re only targeting 1.6 percent of the population, none of which are women or minors. But “the majority of those killed are children and women.”

So what is the significance of entire families being killed or wounded and over a hundred thousand domiciles being damaged?

Here’s what the High Commissioner’s office is getting at: “These statistics suggest that Israel’s choices of methods and means of conducting hostilities in Gaza since 7 October, including the use of explosive weapons with wide area effects in densely populated areas, have failed to ensure that they effectively distinguish between civilians and combatants. The widespread, large-scale and continuing toll of civilian deaths, notably the high proportion of women and children amongst them, and accompanying destruction of civilian infrastructure in Gaza since 7 October, raise serious concerns about the Israeli Defense Forces’ (IDF) compliance with IHL, including as to patterns of systematic violation of the principles of necessity, distinction, proportionality, and precautions in attack.”

Violating these four principles is in each case a war crime. Remember that the International Court of Justice is deciding whether Israel is guilty of genocide, and the International Criminal Court has asked for warrants against Israel’s prime minister and its minister of defense on grounds that they may have committed war crimes.

The report gives examples of each of the violations it has identified. Last October 9, the Israeli air force appears to have dropped without warning a 2,000-pound BLU-109/MK 84 bomb on the densely populated Jabaliya Refugee settlement, pulverizing two multi-story buildings and damaging many others, and killing at least 60 people, wounding dozens more. A 2000-pound bomb can have a blast radius of a quarter mile. The point is that this was not a precision strike on a handful of guerrillas. It took out two apartment buildings full of families.

The same day, more 2000-pound bombs were dropped on Gaza city: “An area of 5,700 square metres [61,354 square feet] was essentially flattened, with at least seven structures, including Taj3 Tower, completely destroyed and three other structures showing signs of significant damage.”

61,000 square feet is the size of a town shopping center.

In fact, the US Pentagon, which has very good satellite photography, has seen 500 craters consistent with use of 2000-pound bombs. The US military is clearly appalled, since these weapons should not be used on densely populated urban areas, and were not deployed by the US against ISIL in Mosul, for instance. Several Biden administration officials, civilian and military, who have seen these atrocities unfold and recognize them for what they are have resigned in protest.

That is why President Biden paused a shipment of 2000-pound bombs to Israel– he didn’t want them used on Rafah, which had swollen with refugees. Netanyahu, however, just vigorously protested that halt, saying he needs the bombs. What does he plan to do with them? Knock down that last three apartment buildings in Gaza?

The report gives other examples of the Israelis flattening entire residential blocks. It concludes that the Israeli army in Gaza has not distinguished between military targets and civilians, and that it has launched indiscriminate attacks on urban infrastructure with no specific military target in sight.

Israeli commanders violated the principle of proportionality, which holds that “an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.” That is, you can’t take out a whole city block and kill hundreds of people to get at three terrorists. But that procedure has been the Israeli war on Gaza in a nutshell.

Using 2000-pound bombs on dense neighborhoods also violates the principle of precaution, which requires military commanders to give some thought beforehand to what would happen to unarmed civilians if they chose a highly destructive 2000-pound bomb to accomplish their mission rather than something more appropriate to targeting a small guerrilla band.

Moreover, there is no evidence that the Israeli military issued any warnings to the civilians it planned to wipe out. These attacks were not like the US Fallujah campaign in Iraq in fall of 2004, where most of the city was allowed to leave before the assault.

So if the Israeli government has committed war crimes, it has to investigate them and punish those responsible. Otherwise, the High Commissioner warns ominously, “Member States must support accountability measures at the international level, including through the International Criminal Court.”

Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant had better enjoy Israel in the summer, because their future ability to travel will be circumscribed when they are convicted of war crimes by the ICC.

Middle East Eye Video:
“Israel dropped hundreds of 2,000-pound bombs on Gaza”

INFORMED COMMENT

 

Gaza And The Israeli Killer Instinct

in Palestine

by Dr Marwan Asmar

27/05/2024

The Israeli war on Gaza is moving full-blast ahead despite international pressure to have it stopped. The Israeli government is neither listening to the International Court of Justice nor to the World Criminal Court to end the bloody conflict on Gaza that long passed genocide and ethnic cleansing.

If anything, Israel is moving ahead with its military offensive in all of Gaza, beating, starving and massacring Palestinians from the south, middle and north of the enclave with more US-made bombs and missiles willingly given to Israel.

The Israeli army is in the middle of a protracted military campaign in Jabalia, Al Nazla, Biet Lahia, Tal Al Zaatar and Beit Hanoon. All they can do is destroy more houses of ordinary people and who in turn move to schools which are bombed by the Israelis. It’s a vicious cycle.

But Israelis soldiers are not being let off the hook easily. Together with their armory and tanks, they are facing stiff resistance from Palestinian fighters and their soldiers and tanks are being killed and destroyed by the day.  

To be noted is the fact that while the bombs are reigning down on Gaza, Israeli politicians pay lip service to mediation and the freeing of the Israeli hostages – now at 125 or so – but this might be to keep the Americans happy and keep the war going for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is only interested in a war momentum.

Following are different videos showing the extent of the deprivation Israeli soldiers are being reduced to in their slaughter on ordinary Palestinian civilians.

It’s a sick society. An Israeli soldier dangling a baby’s sock says “my hobby is to inhale 10 Palestinian baby’s socks a day after I kill them.” This soldier, which Israel should be proud, of was “neutralized” recently by the Palestinian resistance.

This is Israel’s “most moral army in the world” as termed by Netanyahu. Shocking footage captured by Israeli soldier/photographer Yoni Pasha shows the extent of the war crimes in Khan Younis committed by the Israeli army.

Pasha uploaded the footage, shot on 12, 20 February 2024, was uploaded on the social media. It shows the targeting and destruction of residential blocks, striking unarmed civilians and indiscriminately firing artillery shells on homes of ordinary people.

Israeli soldiers never learn. They will keep invading Palestinian homes, but for them, this is fatal. And so is the case with a unit from the Golani Brigade.

They recently entered one of the houses in Jabalia to no doubt, rest and take pictures from the bedrooms there as reported by Rozan Qabass Aal Salem, who is a Yemeni Jew.

An image of at least four soldiers shows them stretched out  and happy, but not for long. Little did they realize the house was bobbytrapped by Hamas fighters and moments later, it blew up burying the soldiers under the rubble, no doubt following the thousands – estimated at over 10,000 Palestinians – who continued to be immersed in the Gaza mother earth because of Israeli bombing.

The scale of destruction and debris has probably never been known by mankind especially, if you take the time period, the geographical space of Gaza which is around 364 kilometers.

In just 200 days – and now its 234 since the bloody war on the territory began – the Israeli military dropped 75,000 tons of explosives on the Gaza Strip. Besides turning 80 percent of the area into rubble and wreckage, the explosives equate to more than 37 nuclear bombs – a disaster for humanity being dragged by Israel on the brim purgatory and hell.

This should be seen as absolute madness by the moral West. The United States is a major conspirator in this war providing an air-and-sea bridge of weapons and mass weapons to fuel the war which so far killed over 35,000 people mostly women and children and injured over 80,000.  

The Israeli war on Gaza, although intense has not satisfied the “blood-thirst” of many Israelis according to one video posted. It shows the pledge of one claimed soldier to Netanyahu and says there are 100,000 soldiers who will not leave Gaza to Hamas, Fatah and or the Palestinian Authority of the West Bank.

The soldier makes a direct challenge to Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and the Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi about their comments on the need to rethink the Gaza war the day after. Both men have said there must be new perspectives on Gaza.

The soldier talks of an impending military coup if Gallant and no doubt Halevi, put their full force behind Netanyahu which is to continue the war, invade Rafah and eradicate Hamas and the Palestinian resistance movement.

This is not happening despite the full military blast of the army. Yair Netanyahu, who is in Florida, and has been there for the duration of the war on its beaches, and no doubt avoiding military conscription, has posted the video-clip and then deleted it after pressure from the office of the Israeli prime minister, or so we are told.

Dr Marwan Asmar is an Amman-based writer covering Middle East Affairs

COUNTERCURRENTS

 

Israel Bombs School, Kills 10 People

in Palestine

by Dr Marwan Asmar

26/05/2024

Ten martyrs were killed and 17 others injured when Israeli warplanes launched another deadly attack on the Al Nazla School in Al Saftawi in north Gaza.

This is another massacre carried under the eyes of the world. When the Israeli army launched their attack, the school yard was full of thousands of displaced people who hastily left their homes in Jabalia because they were being bombed by Israeli warplanes.

Pictures provided by Al Jazeera showed hundreds of people aimlessly moving on roads with their belongings from Biet Jabalia under the sound of Israeli gunfire and as they tried to make it to the school and to safety.

But in Gaza nowhere is safe. Biet Jabalia has been bombed for the last 13 days with other areas like Biet Lahia, Tel Al Zatar, Al Falouja and Biet Hanoon. 

Today, they are being bombed relentlessly as Israeli soldiers are killed daily with their Merkava tanks destroyed.

Anas Al Sharif of Al Jazeera says the bombing of the school, Friday, was so bad the 17 that were hit were critically injured and had to be moved to the Baptist Hospital in Gaza City and Shiekh Radwan clinic because the Abu Yousef Al Najjar Hospital in Jabalia was put out of action. 

Such distance, the reporter warned put extra restraint on the critical situation of the injured and led to their possible death as the two facilities are considered some way from the Nazla school and amidst the intense bombing of the area.

The school has been frequently targeted by Israeli warplanes. The first time it was targeted was back in early November 2023 in which up to 30 people were killed.

In this context, Major Mahmood Bussal, Gaza Civil Defense spokesman, said the Israeli occupation army continues to target homes and areas congested with people in north Gaza. He said Israeli refuses to allow the entry of machines into the Strip to remove the wreckage after 80 percent of Gaza was turned into rubble.

Dr Asmar is an Amman-based writer covering Middle East affairs.

COUNTERCURRENTS