Israel’s bombardment in Gaza overnight killed 19 people, including three women and seven children, health authorities said Sunday. The dead include a mother and her six children who were killed in an Israeli strike early Sunday on their house in the central town of Deir al-Balah, according to the al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital. An Associated Press journalist at the hospital counted the dead.
(AP video shot by Abd Al Kareem Hana. Production by Wafaa Shurafa)
'They've Done It Again': Israeli Strikes Kill Dozens in Tents Near Rafah
U.S. President Joe Biden "must stop sending weapons to Israel," said one critic. "This is egregious."
The Israel Defense Forces on Friday yet again shelled tents of displaced Palestinians near the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip, killing at least 25 and wounding another 50, local health and emergency officials said.
"According to Ahmed Radwan, a spokesperson for Civil Defense first responders in Rafah, witnesses told rescue workers about the shelling at two locations in a coastal area that has become filled with tents," The Associated Press reported.
"The locations of the attacks provided by the Civil Defense appear to be just outside an Israeli-designated safe zone," the news agency noted. "The Israeli military said the episode was under review but that 'there is no indication that a strike was carried out by the IDF' inside the safe zone, using an acronym for the Israeli forces. It did not offer details on the episode or say what the intended targets might have been."
The AP shared firsthand accounts from survivors of the Al-Mawasi attack, as did Al Jazeera:
"We had just eaten and were about to sleep and take some rest, and the next we knew was the sound of resounding explosions destroying our places! We find ourselves alone not knowing what to do. We still can't process what happened!" a survivor told Al Jazeera.
"Oh Lord, look at us, oh world, see our condition. There are a lot of injured still inside. We are no longer able to do anything. What is happening to us? The fire is consuming us from every direction."
Another survivor said that "today, before the afternoon, a bomb was thrown near the Red Cross. My husband went out after hearing the sound of the explosion. The second bomb was near the Red Cross building. All the young men went there because some people were injured."
"My husband went, and I looked for him but couldn't find him," the witness added. "Everyone was forced to flee in their clothes without taking their belongings. Some people took us with them in their car. We don't know what happened after that."
The International Committee of the Red Cross in Israel and the occupied territories announced on social media Friday that "the ICRC office—which is surrounded by hundreds of displaced civilians living in tents—was damaged by nearby shelling in Gaza" that the group said "caused a mass casualty influx" at its hospital, which received 22 of those killed and 45 of the people injured.
The Friday attack follows a pair of bombings that killed dozens of Palestinians and injured hundreds in and near Rafah late last month. Like with the attacks last month—which analyses suggest involved U.S.-supplied weaponry—there were swift calls for the Biden administration and other governments to cut off support for the Israeli assault on the Hamas-governed enclave.
"Israel has run out of buildings, schools, and hospitals to bomb and is once again targeting displaced civilians in tents," saidAJ+ senior editor Kareem Yasin. "Any Western government excusing or denying these intentional attacks is complicit."
The Israeli war on Gaza—launched after the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel—has killed more than 37,430 Palestinians and injured over 85,650 others, according to local officials. Survivors face devastated civilian infrastructure and limited food, water, shelter, and medical supplies, as Israel limits the flow of humanitarian aid.
South Africa is leading a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant as well as three Hamas leaders.
"They've done it again," U.S.-based policy analyst Omar Baddar said of Israel Friday. "Nearly every day for the past 260 days, Israel has committed another massacre against Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Fathers, mothers, siblings, children, their bodies burnt or torn apart, while our government gives more weapons for these atrocities."
Even before October 7, the United States gave Israel billions of dollars in annual military aid—but such support has increased during the war. U.S. President Joe Biden previously called an Israeli assault on Rafah a "red line," but as the IDF has killed Palestinians in and around the Gaza city, the White House has signaled that his boundary has not yet been crossed.
Biden "must stop sending weapons to Israel," Nina Turner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy, declared in response to the Friday attack. "This is egregious."
A woman folds a tent as displaced Palestinian families pack their belongings to leave Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on June 20, 2024.
"You opened the door to the rise of democracy, equality, and freedom," Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu said following his re-election. "You ignited hope at the ballot box."
Calling the discussions "outrageous," one former official stressed that only the United Nations General Assembly can change the agency's mandate, "not the secretary-general and certainly not a single member state."
"This is part of the genocidal machine," said one surgeon who volunteered at the hospital. "The genocide can only take place if the health system is destroyed."
"In practice, a terrorist is anyone the IDF has killed in the areas in which its forces operate," said one Israeli reservist.
By Jake Johnson
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged Monday to "immediately" move to ban Al Jazeera from broadcasting from Israel after the Knesset approved legislation that gives the country's government the power to shut down the operations of foreign media outlets deemed a threat to national security.
In a social media post, Netanyahu called the Qatari-owned network a "terrorist channel" and said he would use the new law to halt its activities in Israel.
"I welcome the law promoted by Communications Minister Shlomo Karai with the support of coalition members led by coalition chairman Ofir Katz," wrote Netanyahu.
Under the new law, the Israeli communications minister can ban foreign outlets with the prime minister's permission. The measure, which also gives Israeli authorities the power to confiscate a foreign media outlet's equipment, passed the Knesset in an overwhelming 71 to 10 vote.
The law's passage comes days after Al Jazeera broadcast video footage of Israeli soldiers gunning down two unarmed Palestinians in northern Gaza, one of whom was waving a piece of white fabric in a gesture of surrender. The footage showed Israeli bulldozers subsequently burying the two bodies under the sand of the beach where the killings took place.
"Israel continues to act as a rogue, authoritarian state with total impunity."
Al Jazeera has a bureau in Jerusalem and offices in the West Bank and Gaza, and it has covered Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip closely and critically, regularly reporting and broadcasting footage and eyewitness accounts of Israeli atrocities. Al Jazeera is one of the few international media outlets to broadcast live from Gaza during Israel's latest war on the Palestinian enclave.
The outlet's correspondents have been among the dozens of journalists killed, wounded, or detained by Israeli forces in Gaza since October 7.
Wael Dahdouh, Al Jazeera's Gaza bureau chief, was wounded by an Israeli missile attack in December. Israeli forces have killed five members of Dahdouh's family—including his son, Hamza, who was also an Al Jazeera journalist.
"After murdering multiple Al Jazeera journalists, Israel is now moving to expel the news organization entirely," Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East wrote in response to the new law's passage. "Israel continues to act as a rogue, authoritarian state with total impunity."
Al Jazeerareported Monday that the Netanyahu government has been threatening to shutter the outlet and other publications for months under the guise of wartime security.
In a statement ahead of Monday's vote, the Association for Civil Rights expressed opposition to the proposed crackdown on foreign media outlets, arguing that the measure's "real purpose is not security-related but political: to allow the government to impose sanctions on foreign broadcasting tools whose broadcasts are not to its liking."
"In addition to the grave infringement on freedom of expression and freedom of the press, it also prohibits the court from overturning a non-proportional decision, effectively tying the court's hands from intervening in decisions regarding the closure of media outlets," the group said. "This is a direct continuation of the judicial overhaul, harming the courts and media outlets, all while cynically using war and security justifications."
If the Israeli government was really the victim of widespread lying, it wouldn’t be killing and arresting the brave journalists who are there to reveal the truth.
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The annual Gallup report on happiness by country came out this week. It is based on a three-year average of polling. What struck me in their report is how unhappy the Middle East is. The only Middle Eastern country in the top twenty is Kuwait (for the first time in […]
By Chuck Collins and Omar Ocampo | – ( Inequality.org ) – Four years ago, the United States entered the Covid-19 pandemic. Forbes published its 34th annual billionaire survey shortly after with data keyed to March 18, 2020. On that day, the United States had 614 billionaires who owned a combined wealth of $2.947 trillion. Four […]
By Haneen Abo Soad | – The author’s four-generation land and home were destroyed by Israeli F16 rockets in January, reducing it to rubble. Photo provided by the author, used with permission. ( Globalvoices.org ) – On January 12, a message arrived from my sister in Gaza, bearing the devastating news: our parents’ home, a […]
“What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide? The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.” – Aaron Bushnell, martyred on Feb 26, 2024.
The basic kernel of truth about the extermination of Jews during the Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany is that whatever happened was wrong, and offensive to humanity on a level that all people across the world can relate to. The acceptance that the atrocities of the Holocaust were just that: atrocities. There could be no situational justification or no rationalization of why this evil was necessary. It is a momentous event that should shock us out of the bloodlust of war and make us pause and consider the humanity that had been destroyed in the process. The Zionist actions in Palestine are striking at the roots of what makes the Holocaust stand out in its inhumanity and absolute evil. If the position that it is acceptable to allow Zionism to do what it is doing because of ‘terrorism’, then the essential spirit behind remembrance of that great human catastrophe stands rejected.
All human beings can inherently understand the repugnance of murder and imagine the pain of physical injury and torture. A sense of absolute hopelessness and dread is created in us when we witness the history of those events through records and works of culture (art, films, books, etc.). We can instinctively understand that there can be no justification for treating fellow human beings like this. The ability to feel wronged on another’s behalf, and to be able to place oneself in those who were persecuted, ripped from their families, and denied their humanity: this is what makes the vast majority of the world acknowledge and mourn the Holocaust. By not doing the same for the Palestinian people, the world does a great disservice to the memory of the Holocaust by allowing it to be weaponized by the Zionist agenda.
Nowhere is safe in Gaza
Among the hundreds of disturbing visuals from Palestine, there is one that shows the Star of David cut into the back of a Palestinian man kidnapped and tortured by Israeli soldiers. Susan Abulhawa tells their story, along with those of others, here. It is but one of the many windows into the hell that Israel has created in Gaza. The branding and marking of a tortured body with a symbol of a whole people and religion is a gross disrespect compounded by a terrible crime. It is one of the ways in which Zionism turns Judaism and Jewish identity into a weapon. This recalls the Zionist regime’s ambassador to the U.N. brandishing the Star on his chest, in an attempt at referencing the Nazi segregation of Jews from 1939 onwards in December 2023.
Zionism violently marks the Palestinian body (in a gendered and sexual manner) with visible markers of Jewish supremacy and exceptionalism. It declares that the Jews are exempt and immune to the censure of all humanity and have propped themselves up as a self-righteous exemption to ‘Never Again’.
The many horrendous calamities being deliberately visited upon the Palestinian people have blown any semblance of the ‘post-colonial’ or ‘post War’ world to shreds. What do these terms even mean now, other than being mere academic brackets around random dates? There have been at least four similar incidents after the Rafah flour massacre on March 1. People are being baited with food dropped from the air, made to run around only to be shot at or even to be killed by the dropped ‘aid’ items themselves. Military-grade weapons and equipment mounted on ships, warplanes, and tanks are being used to mow down starving human beings. This reality is infinitely more shocking than the shameless, fake propaganda about Hamas killing babies and raping women by the dozens. Hemmed in without food, water, electricity, medicine, and communication, the Zionist regime stamps its bloody fist all over the land and people of Palestine with impunity. Its actions have discredited the moral and political unanimity that stood behind the condemnation of the Holocaust because of its insistence that the same crimes committed in the name of protecting Judaism do not count. The universality of the human values that were offended by the Holocaust is being openly denied and refuted. Nothing could be a greater representation of the disrespect and failure of the efforts of so many people to preserve the solemnity of the Holocaust and all its lessons for future generations. It has taken six decades of absolute terror by Israel in Palestine for it all to unravel into the ghastly scenes we are witnessing today.
Relentless bombings and massacres of the hungry
Rafah, the last refuge of 1.7 million besieged people, is being bombed relentlessly. Nothing can hide the shame of the fact that Israel is targeting all Palestinians in a bid to completely remove them from their lands. Raids, abductions, airstrikes, children recounting horror after horror, starving people being shot at as they rush at food or try and collect water: the human dignity and spirit of an entire people is under attack as we watch them scrounge for the bare minimum while their cultural achievements, arts, and education is completely obliterated. Nowhere is safe now. The Western-backed Zionist forces have marked Palestine out for complete annihilation. Zionism makes sure that all Israelis share in this great sin. The people of this highly militarized, apartheid ethnonationalist regime bring their children to blockades of aid trucks, declaring openly that they mean to starve everyone trapped behind their high-tech walls. Their children are being conditioned to enjoy the suffering that they will soon be called on to perpetrate with their own hands. By that time, however, they will have completely submitted to the depravity that prompts them to revel in the miseries of others and broadcast their crimes with pride on their social media profiles.
We have seen a repeat of every defining image of the Holocaust over these six months— children emaciated from extreme starvation and dehydration, people put through famine and thirst, families separated and kidnapped for beatings and torture, human bodies crushed by bulldozers and maimed in every way imaginable, surgeries conducted without anaesthesia, and so much more. Is this not the utter and complete failure to honour the memory of that calamity? Can it be said that the Holocaust was never ‘over’ in the first place, but merely shifted to other lands far away?
Some voices roar in a morally dead world
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It takes great sacrifices to make the world beat back the information fatigue and culture of apathy and take a good hard look at what is being allowed to happen in Gaza. The brave actions of two American citizens: an unnamed woman in Atlanta, and USAF serviceman Aaron Bushnell were acts of extreme protest that confronted those of us in our fragile bubbles of comfort with the brutality of what “the ruling classes have decided will be normal” (Bushnell’s final message). The masses in the Arab world have expressed their support and respect for Bushnell for paying the ultimate price in such a heroic manner. What Bushnell achieved with his self-immolation was to make us sit up and take notice and to inspire a renewed faith in moral convictions in a world where things are quickly forgotten and caring for others is scorned. None of this makes up for the loss of his brilliant life or the physical anguish he endured in his final moments. It is up to all of us to ensure that his sacrifice did not go in vain.
Arjun Banerjee is a writer and political commentator. He is a postgraduate in English literature from the University of Delhi. He writes about current events and culture
