‘Israel is killing us without mercy’: As the fighting in Gaza continues, civilians are starting to lose hopeAmid a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Palestine that no international organization can cope with, locals tell their stories of survival 

Since October 7, 2023, an estimated 22,000 Palestinians have lost their lives amid Israel's shelling of Gaza. Most were civilians. As the conflict nears the end of its third month, the humanitarian situation in the enclave is deteriorating. The vast majority of residents lack food, water and basic medications.

Last October 7, mobs of Palestinian militants stormed Israel's southern communities, massacring an estimated 1,200 and leaving over 5,000 wounded. In response, Israel opened a war on Gaza aimed at crushing Hamas, the Islamic group responsible for the deadly attack. But in the process of doing so, more than 21,000 lives have been taken. According to estimates, only 8,000 of these were militants. 

Samira Hamad, a 33-year-old Palestinian woman from Gaza City, says she would like to forget the last year.

"Even before the war, my family, like most of Palestinians, were living in poverty and deprivation,"says Hamad. "But back then, we at least had some sort of security. My husband was working inside Israel, there was food on the table and there was a hope that things would change for the better. The events of October 7 turned all our lives upside down."

For 41 days, Hamad, her husband and their four children, lived under heavy Israeli bombardment focused primarily on Gaza City. Hamad says she had lost three of her brothers and their families amid the Israeli shelling. When the bombing intensified, the family decided to relocate to Khan Yunis, in the center of Gaza. There, they found refuge with relatives but ten days later, death knocked on their door.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which had been striking military targets belonging to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, dropped a bomb on a six-story building in the center of Khan Yunis, killing her husband and dozens of other civilians. After Hamad buried him, she had no other choice but to move south, to the city of Rafah, where she currently resides in tents, together with her four children. 

But conditions there are terrible, she says. "When my husband was alive, he was providing us with all our necessities. Now we rely on the donations of UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees) and other agencies but their aid is far from being enough. 

Very often my kids fall asleep without eating and I am afraid they would just die from starvation."

Food is not the only commodity Hamad and most of Gaza's 2.2 million population are lacking. Basic hygiene products and medications are also out of reach; medical services are almost non-existent, primarily because many of Gaza's hospitals have either stopped functioning or are about to shut down.

"My kids are often sick due to the poor weather conditions. To get any medical assistance, I need to walk for two hours to reach one of the nearby hospitals, as I simply don't have money for transportation, even if it is a donkey cart."

Hisham Mhanna, communications officer with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), who is currently in Gaza, says he and his organization "understand and feel the distress, helplessness and anger the people in Gaza feel and endure."

According to him, hundreds of thousands of people are trying to find refuge in Gaza shelters, hospitals and schools. Many are staying with their relatives or sleep in their cars or out in the open air, since their homes and neighborhoods have been turned into rubble. 

"The vast majority of the Gazan population is now displaced in parts of the Middle area and Rafah governates. These large-scale displacements add immense pressure on the already fragile service systems – water, sanitation and electricity.

No bakeries have been working, due to the lack of fuel, water, and wheat flour, as well as extensive damage caused by hostilities. Most water plants in Gaza have ceased operating. Water can no longer be pumped or desalinated, leaving families with no access to clean drinking water," he explained.

Since the beginning of the hostilities on October 7, the ICRC, with over 100 staff comprising medical, surgical and weapons contamination experts, has helped to support hospitals and deliver life-saving medication. The staff have also distributed essential household items and conducted multiple surgeries. But, Mhanna admits, the international agency's operations have been rather limited.

 

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Middle East : arsonists shout «Fire!»
While they claim the opposite, NATO and the EU together pursue the project of destroying the Palestinian state. The Hamas attack is only a pretext to finally accomplish the plan of the “revisionist Zionists”, set out in the 1930s by Vladimir Jabotinsky and his private secretary, Bension Netanyahu (father of Benjamin Netanyahu).

 

The one waged by Israel in Gaza is called by the Washington Post "one of the most destructive wars of this century." This war - implemented by Israel with the full support of the U.S. NATO and the EU - has so far left more than 20,000 Palestinians dead and 55,000 seriously wounded, most of whom will not survive as Israeli forces systematically destroy Gaza’s hospitals. Women and children account for 70 percent of the dead. About 2 million people, corresponding to 85% of the population, are displaced. Increasing at the same time are Israeli raids in the West Bank. Against this background, PM Netanyahu enunciates, in an article in the Wall Street Journal, as the first "prerequisite for peace" the need that "Hamas must be destroyed." He stresses that "in destroying Hamas, Israel will continue to act in full compliance with international law."

Netanyhau “forgets the official statement he made in 2019: “Anyone who wants to obstruct the creation of a Palestinian State must support Hamas and transfer money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy: to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” For years, in agreement with Israel, Qatar has sent hundreds of millions of dollars in cash to Gaza each month to support the Hamas government. A 40-page document, code-named by Israeli intelligence "Wall of Jericho," shows that Israel knew for more than a year, in detail, the plan for the attack carried out by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. It served Israel’s leaders to justify “one of the most destructive wars of this century,” the purpose of which was clear from the beginning: to wipe out the territories of the Palestinian State, massacring and deporting its entire population. This was confirmed today by Paula Betancur of the UN High Commission for Human Rights: “The Israeli military operation in Gaza aims to deport the civilian population en masse.”

The Israeli war to permanently wipe out the Palestinian State is part of the U.S.-NATO-EU strategy to maintain by war the control of a strategic region, the Middle East, in which the West is losing ground in the face of advancing political-economic projects, such as that of the BRICS, that are changing world assets.

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Palestine SitRep: Sanitizing Language While The War Escalates

The New York Times has claimed that Israel is cutting back its brutal war in Gaza:

The Israeli military has begun a new and less intense phase of its invasion of Gaza, its chief spokesman said on Monday, after weeks of pressure from the United States and other allies to scale back an offensive that has caused widespread devastation and civilian deaths.

The Nation however finds that this is certainly not the case:

The Israeli Defense Forces spokesman, Radm. Daniel Hagari, gave the Times the interview that it used for its headline. But Hagari’s quotes never actually promise the “less intense phase” in the Times paraphrase. Hagari instead describes the focus of the pitiless Israeli campaign shifting southward—while his superiors in the Israeli government indicate that it could expand regionally.

The Times isn't the only main stream media to lie about the war. CNN is routing all news through its Jerusalem bureau where an Israeli military censor takes care that everything is 'sanitized'. This while the Washington Post is sending out its most Zionist reporter to write a hit piece about pro-Palestinian news sites.

The Canadian Broadcast Corporation is using harmless language to describe Israeli air attacks while it brutalizes reports of Hamas ground attack. It even justifies this:

“Different words are used because although both result in death and injury, the events they describe are very different,” Waugh wrote. “The raid saw Hamas gunmen stream through the border fence and attack Israelis directly with firearms, knives and explosives. Gunmen chased down festival goers, assaulted kibbutzniks then shot them, fought hand to hand, and threw grenades. The attack was brutal, often vicious, and certainly murderous.”

“Bombs dropped from thousands of feet and artillery shells lofted into Gaza from kilometers away result in death and destruction on a massive scale, but it is carried out remotely,” Waugh continued. “The deadly results are unseen by those who caused them and the source unseen by those [who] suffer and die.”

All these censorship and disinformation efforts hide the reality of the brutal war from the western public.

This while the extremely brutal Israel attacks on Gaza continue as the occupation forces now move into the center of the strip:

Israeli attacks around central Gaza’s last remaining hospital caused hundreds of displaced civilians to flee over the weekend and forced most medical workers to evacuate, leaving wounded people with no good options for seeking care as fighting intensifies in the area.

Organizations including Doctors Without Borders, the International Rescue Committee and Medical Aid for Palestinians have pulled their staff from al-Aqsa Hospital in recent days, after the surrounding areas in the Deir al-Balah region came under drone attacks and sniper fire, and residents received warnings from the Israel Defense Forces to evacuate.

The people who had already fled from north Gaza now have to move further south towards Rafah where Israel is bombing them too.

The targeted killing of journalists and academics continues. However none of these are Hamas and Israel's declared aim of eliminating it is certainly not in sight. Hamas missile strike on targets in Israel continue. Even though most are harmless they cause alarms. In the north of Israel the tit for tat attacks between Hizbullah and the occupation forces continues likewise.

Ali Hashem علي هاشم @alihashem_tv - 9:54 UTC · Jan 9, 2024

Hezbollah announces the targeting of the northern region command headquarters of the Israeli army in the city of Safed (13 kilometres from the border) with a number of explosives laden drones. The attack was in retaliation to Israel’s killing of Saleh Arouri and Wissam Tawil.

This was the deepest attack by Hizbullah since October 8. Later Israel attacked the burial of Wissam Tawil, a member of Hizbullah's special forces. The number of alarms in Israel from rockets launched from the north are growing on a daily basis.

Israel is driving this escalation while Hizbullah is still holding back. Its missiles could reach far further and will do so should Israel continue to escalate.

The U.S. is alarmed about the Israeli attempt to draw it into the conflict:

In private conversations, the administration has warned Israel against a significant escalation in Lebanon. If it were to do so, a new secret assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) found that it will be difficult for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to succeed because its military assets and resources would be spread too thin given the conflict in Gaza, according to two people familiar with those findings.

Private warnings are useless as long as Israel still gets U.S. support.

The Biden administration wants to be seen supporting Israel.

It also wants to be seen tamping down and ending the conflict.

But it can't have it both ways.

Shutting down ammunition support for Israel, if only for a short time, is likely the only way to bring some senses to Israeli minds.

Posted by b on January 9, 2024 at 14:16 UTC

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/01/palestine-sitrep-sanitizing-language-while-the-war-escalates.html

 

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