Child amputees and Israel’s ‘unchilding’ reaches new depravity    By Helen McCue 

 

As the International Court of Justice received submissions from South Africa and Israel on the 11th and 12th of January on the claims by South Africa of an intention to commit genocide by Israel in Gaza, some 20 Gazan children would have lost a limb, forever maimed and severely disabled.

Over 1,000 Gazan children have lost a limb, either one or two legs and or an arm since October 7th, making an horrific statistic – on average of 10 per day – as reported by Save the Children, and that number is growing daily.

An earlier Pearls and Irritations article identified the Israeli policy of ‘unchilding’, described by Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkain, a Hebrew University of Jerusalem law professor. This policy enables Israel to treat Palestinian children as . . .”dangerous and killable bodies needing to be caged and dismembered, physically and mentally”. This policy can be seen in all its horror and brutality in the physical dismembering of now over a thousand innocent children.

The World Health Organisation reports that many of these child amputations are, “done without anaesthetic, with the healthcare system in Gaza crippled by the conflict, and major shortages of doctors and nurses, and medical supplies like anaesthesia and antibiotics”.

Chris Hook has been working with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)/Doctors Without Borders since 2015. He was recently the Head of Medical Teams in Gaza and describes what it’s like to do care work in a city under siege. “Doctors working in Gaza currently are facing choices that no doctor should face. Several times a day, during mass casualty incidents, they find themselves having to step over the bodies of dead and dying children to save other children who have a chance at survival but may not survive.  aving to treat these patients with limited resources in a resuscitation room full of badly injured, dead and dying children was one of the most brutal experiences of my medical career,” he said.

Very often children needing amputations require surgery that has to be done quickly, with many patients arriving at the hospital hourly, and surgery is also carried out sometimes on the floor and often in unhygienic conditions. Many of these child amputees will have to have repeated surgery because they are not getting adequate post operative care in the initial stages following the amputation. Also, they face the high risk of infection living on the street, or in tents if they are lucky, and wading through heavily polluted water on walking sticks or being carried.

Following such painful and brutal surgery children will require pain relief as well as adequate nutrition certainly not presently available. Reports indicate that 90% of Gazans are getting one meal if any per day and the whole population is on the verge of starvation. By way of explanation OCHA has raised the acute food insecurity index to Phase 5 (Catastrophic threshold) in the Gaza Strip and it warns that the risk of famine is increasing daily amid intense conflict and restricted humanitarian access. (OCHA Jan 10)

Children with amputations face long term care that is fraught and filled with pain and problems, as right now there are few if any services for the making and fitting of prostheses. Even before October 7th the quality of prosthetic care in Gaza was really underdeveloped and in need of improvement. And if a child is lucky enough to have a prosthesis it will need to be adjusted and repaired.

But this assault on children’s limbs is not new. Israeli snipers have intentionally maimed Palestinians protesting in Gaza over the past years, creating a generation of disabled youth and overwhelming the territory’s already crippled medical system. The UN reported more than 8,000 Palestinians were shot by Israeli security forces during the Great March of Return protest (2018-2019) on Gaza’s northern border and the majority of these cases were children and young people. Again in the May 2021 protests some 685 children were deliberately wounded. By the end of 2021 there were more than 1,700 people in Gaza having undergone amputation, most of these teenagers or children.

According to a United Nations inquiry released in March 2019 over 80 percent of the 6,106 protesters wounded in the first nine months of 2018-2019 were shot in the lower limbs.  uring that conflict, where protesters were only throwing stones and burning tyres, the IDF deployed more than 100 snipers, called up from military units, primarily from the special forces and gave them live ammunition with clear orders to shoot specifically to injure and maim. There are reports that these snipers took bets on how many legs or knees they could shoot in a day…..some moral army.

Healthcare providers confirmed that the pattern of wounds shows that Israeli soldiers are purposefully shooting to maim protesters, most were children or young adults and who, as a result, require long-term medical care.

“The soldier knows exactly where he’s putting the bullet. This is not random. This is very intimate. This is very planned,” said Ghassan Abu Sitta, professor of surgery at the American University of Beirut (AUB), who treated injured protesters for three weeks at Gaza’s Al-Awda Hospital during these conflicts in 2018.

By now we are aware of the horrific death toll, injury rate and damage to infrastructure but it is worth repeating that overall, between 7 October and 9 January, at least 23,210 Palestinians were killed in Gaza and 59,167 were injured. And during the same period ,600 children and 6,700 women have been killed. According to UNRWA nearly 85 per cent of the total population of Gaza, are now estimated to be internally displaced with at least 60% of housing destroyed. During the same period a total of 4,097 Palestinians, including 622 children, were injured in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

In addition to this horrific slaughter the brutal assault on teachers, students and educational infrastructure goes on and is not widely reported. By early January some 4,119 school students and 221 teachers have been killed, while 7,536 students and 703 teachers have been injured across the Gaza Strip. 90 per cent of all school buildings in Gaza are being used as shelters for Internally Displaced Persons and have sustained varying levels of damage with 99 schools sustained major damage and 12 were fully destroyed.

Israel continues to deny the delivery of sufficient medical supplies leaving five hospitals in northern Gaza without access to life-saving medical supplies and equipment impacting greatly on the many injured children. It also continues to daily bomb near, or at, other hospitals in the south of Gaza. At the same time, the continued denial of fuel delivery to water and sanitation facilities is leaving tens of thousands of people without access to clean water and increasing the risk of sewage overflows, significantly heightening the risk of the spread of communicable diseases with cases of diarrhoea in children up 50 per cent in just one week. And what of the hundreds if not thousands of orphan children and children with other disabilities. The mental health impact of the many wars in Gaza over the last 16 years, the life in a big prison, this horrific assault on their very existence must be extreme on these young people of Gaza.

The United Nations Security Council has noted “the disproportionate effect on children” and the Secretary General of the UN has described Gaza “as a graveyard for children” but the UNSC has continued to vote against the much needed ceasefire.
The Australian government has condemned attacks by the Houthi on international shipping but has failed to outright condemn Israel for the wholesale slaughter of Palestinian children, nor on Israel’s open policy of ‘unchilding’ and now the ongoing eminent danger of genocide.

While hundreds of thousands of people in Australia and millions overseas are regularly on the streets expressing their moral outrage, our government seems to be cringing behind the coat tails of the morally corrupt, militaristic USA while failing in its moral duty to us and indeed to the principles and laws of the United Nations at this critical moment in history.

https://johnmenadue.com/child-amputees-and-israels-unchilding-reaches-new-depravity/

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW............

 

The West Bank is a ticking time bomb

With army-protected Jewish extremists running riot through Palestinian towns, and the deeply unpopular, US-backed PA barely holding on to its reins, the West Bank is primed for a seismic explosion that will transform into Israel's next war front.

 

Alongside the military assault on Gaza, extremist religious parties in Israel's government coalition seized a strategic opportunity after Operation Al-Aqsa Flood to launch a systematic displacement agenda in the occupied West Bank.

This stealthy policy was facilitated by several factors, notably, the escalation of settler violence post-7 October, increased political pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the vise-like leverage that settler-extremists enjoy over Israel's ruling coalition and key governmental institutions, particularly the Ministry of Finance

As an example, nearly $250 million of the national budget earmarked for war expenses in December 2023 was directed by Israel's radical Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich toward settlement projects in the West Bank.

Immediately after its announcement, the EU criticized the settlement-funding provisions of the revised budget, rightly arguing that the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements and the forced displacement of Palestinians undermine security in the occupied West Bank, and will not make Israel safer.

The silent war on the West Bank 

In response, Tel Aviv significantly tightened its grip on West Bank Palestinians. This involved obstructing Palestinian workers from employment in Israel and the finance minister’s refusal to transfer Palestinian clearance funds to the Palestinian Authority (PA) to pay Gaza's worker salaries.

On the military front, Israeli has launched a frenzied campaign on the West Bank since 7 October, resulting in the death of hundreds and arrest of over 6,000 Palestinians. Acts of violence, forced displacement of civilians, and armed settler attacks – enabled by weapon transfers from Israel's extremist National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir – escalated dramatically across the occupied territory. 

Ben Gvir, who fronts the hidden agenda of nationalist and religious parties in the coalition government, used the Al-Aqsa Flood events to displace 25 Palestinian Bedouin communities, including 266 families in the eastern foothills near Ramallah and the Jordan Valley. 

Already this year, under pressure from his extremist allies, Netanyahu has halted demolitions of illegal Jewish outposts in the West Bank, going against the recommendation of Defense Minister Yoav Galant who is trying to ease tensions in the West Bank while conflict rages on Israel's northern and southern fronts.

In early January, Smotrich and Ben Gvir publicly called for the displacement of Gazans to make way for the return of Zionist settlers to the Gaza Strip for the first time since their 2005 expulsion. Their belligerent comments sparked a new rift with the US administration of Joe Biden, which has sharply criticized “inflammatory and irresponsible” rhetoric from Tel Aviv. 

Blinken’s mission in Ramallah 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent visit with Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas was not primarily focused on post-war discussions on Gaza, as Washington has widely suggested, but on curbing a West Bank conflagration.

The occupied Palestinian territory is today a ticking time bomb that could explode at any moment, over any incident, small or large, and which could jeopardize frantic US attempts to defuse and manage the military escalation on Lebanon's borders.

Blinken’s key objective was to exert pressure on the PA, which governs the West Bank, to prevent and quash any popular Palestinian uprising that could lead to the opening of a third war front against Tel Aviv. 

Last week, Israeli security and military authorities intensified their warnings to cabinet members, urging Netanyahu to de-escalate tensions to avert a third intifada, which the Israeli army may struggle to contain while heavily distracted with Gaza, Lebanon, and the significant economic impact from Yemen’s shipping blockade. 

US and Israel are not on the same page 

The US is up against a highly-pressured timeline as it gears up for the upcoming presidential elections. Despite its efforts to find temporary, band-aid solutions for the regional unrest unleashed by Tel Aviv's war on Gaza, Washington finds itself increasingly entangled in a West Asian quagmire, courtesy of its recent airstrikes on Yemen.

What greatly bothers the White House is that its Israeli ally appears to be frustratingly unconcerned with this American dilemma, with Netanyahu far more focused on his personal political future and the radical agenda of his coalition partners — an agenda not aligned with overall US interests.

Despite persistent warnings about the volatile situation in the West Bank, the Israeli prime minister refuses to pressure his allies, fearful of their repeated threats to abandon his coalition government. 

The US cannot afford a West Bank military escalation because of the major repercussions this may have on its post-war proposals for Gaza and on its domestic political scene. The PA, now deeply unpopular among its own Palestinian constituents, is also a crucial component of US projects in West Asia, many overlapping with various regional agendas.

Since the start of the current war, the US has sought to involve the PA in the post-war political rehabilitation of Gaza, in alignment with several Arab and western countries, as a preliminary step toward resuming negotiations for a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine. 

The path to a ‘just peace’ has become a key element in discussions between Washington and Riyadh, in which the latter insists on tangible Israeli steps toward a two-state solution before considering a full normalization with Tel Aviv.

While the ever-elusive, two-state option was initially a secondary consideration in normalization talks, Israel's brutal and unprecedented military assault on Gaza, in which over 22,000 mostly women and children have been killed, has now become a central component for Saudi Arabia. 

Riyadh has its own motivations, both internal and external, and is firmly adhering to the two-state path. With growing discontent in the US over Biden's handling of the region’s crisis, the White House is in need of a diplomatic breakthrough in West Asia to secure some electoral gains. Recent polls, however, which will almost certainly be exacerbated by last week's unprovoked strikes on Yemen, continue to indicate US voter dissatisfaction (57 percent) with Biden's management of West Asian policy.

The PA’s uncertain future 

To confuse matters further, the US-backed Israeli military establishment has different calculations than the Netanyahu-led government it serves. The military aims to demobilize reservists and shift to a less severe, more targeted level of aggression in Gaza, aligning with US advice, while simultaneously, preparations are being made for a potential Israeli escalation with Lebanon. 

Much is unknown about the ongoing coordination between the Israeli military and the Pentagon – in terms of whether they are willing to undermine Tel Aviv's goals and tactics – other than their joint concern that Israel's right-wing government pursues personal interests over strategic considerations.

But avoiding a West Bank conflagration is a major concern for both, hence why this was a focal point of Blinken's visit with Abbas and his shuttle diplomacy with the Saudis. The threat of a West Bank escalation was also used as leverage by the US to wrest Palestinian clearance funds back from the Netanyahu government. Key to the White House efforts is securing the weak and ineffectual PA as its main Palestinian partner moving forward, and rebranding it as a safe alternative to Hamas and other resistance factions in Gaza.

Since 7 October, the PA has sought political cover by tightly aligning itself to the stances of Egypt and Jordan, who warn Israel and its allies against population displacements in Gaza and the West Bank. This has led to increased engagements between Ramallah, Cairo, and Amman, which suits Washington's agenda well. 

None of these things, however, disguises the fact that an unpopular PA, riding on the shoulders of the now utterly despised American enablers of Gaza's collapse, is seeking to unseat a popular Palestinian resistance, while poorly managing multiple war fronts, with an Israeli government immune to US demands or pleas.

Washington couldn't deliver a Palestinian solution in the decades since peace was struck in Oslo – so what can it possibly do now? Wealthy Arab states are not interested in carrying the load of the PA when even the US can barely keep it on life support. Even UAE leader Mohammad bin Zayed, the Arab point-man for the Abraham Accords with Israel, told Netanyahu to ‘go ask Zelensky’ when the Israeli PM came begging for money to prop up the PA. 

Band-aid solutions are only ever temporary. It takes a mere few drops of water to destroy their efficacy. As religious settlers run wild throughout the West Bank, courtesy of the Netanyahu government – the US will be playing full-time nursemaid alone, in a vain effort to tend to each and every cut. We could be one wound away from the whole enterprise imploding.

https://new.thecradle.co/articles/the-west-bank-is-a-ticking-time-bomb

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW, PLEASE...............................

 

Cowardly refusal to support South Africa at the ICJ    By Stuart Rees

 

In response to South Africa’s suit before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) charging Israel with genocide in Gaza, Australian politicians have refused to support a significant international means of ending this slaughter of Palestinians. Instead, party leaders search for words to disguise cowardice, to camouflage the lack of courage required to avoid offending Israel or the U.S. 

Prime Minister Albanese says Australia will not intervene before the ICJ because he is ‘focussed on a political solution’, code for doing nothing. Foreign Minister Penny Wong says she does not accept the premise of South Africa’s genocide case against Israel. Yet a few months ago, when Ukraine took Russia to the ICJ, Australia rushed to support Ukraine and made the self righteous claim that this support showed Australia’s ‘continued commitment to protecting and promoting the rules based international order and peaceful settlement of disputes.’

What was good for Ukraine is unacceptable towards South Africa. Hypocrisy goes hand in hand with cowardice. Despite Gazans suffering an ongoing slaughter, Australian leaders watch and wait, hence a need to examine the nature of their conduct.

Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar gives the first clues. Suspecting that something terrible might happen to him, Caesar explained to his wife that he had no fear because, ‘Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste death but once.’

Via Caesar, Shakespeare depicted a coward as someone who was afraid to face challenges by taking risks, by fighting for what they believed in. For example, Australia’s foreign policy is said to adhere to humanitarian law, but that belief becomes paper thin when the government is asked to challenge Israeli/US policies towards Palestinians.

Cowardice shown over Australia’s reluctance to support South Africa before the ICJ has decades of precedence. In previous Israeli slaughter of Palestinians, successive Coalition and Labor Prime Ministers have looked the other way or made meaningless statements about good intentions.

In response to the brutality of Israeli Operation Cast Lead in 2008, Julia Gillard said she was ‘very mindful of (the lives of) civilians.’ In his Memoir, Bob Carr concludes that on Israel issues, Australian governments were paralysed by obligations to the Zionist lobby. Malcolm Turnbull bravely stated, ‘My government will not support one-sided resolutions criticising Israel’, as adopted by the UN Security Council. The Christian fundamentalist Scott Morrison squealed, ‘Israel has no greater friend than Australia anywhere in the world. We will always be consistent about that.’

Avoiding commentary about the deaths of Palestinians, reveals germs of cowardice. Avoidance so infects the mentality of leading politicians that they appear to stand for nothing, as in a refusal to respond to correspondence. Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Birmingham ignores registered letters asking him to acknowledge the regular Israeli killings of Palestinians not just the Hamas savagery of October 7. Labor members’ letters to the Prime Minister pleading for his government’s support of South Africa fall on deaf ears.

Avoidance as a feature of cowardice has become a taken for granted feature of public administration. Before Senate hearings inquiring into police raids on the home of former NSW MP Shaoquett Moselmane, the AFP Commissioner, when asked how the media knew of the impending raid, trotted out the standard, ‘I’ll take that question on notice’, which meant ‘don’t expect to hear from me again.’

In the ICJ controversy, fear has stifled freedom of thought, a fear born of wishes to avoid offending powerful interests. Instead, consistent with other features of cowardice, assessments are made of the consequences of acting decisively, a process which has produced a preoccupation with minimising risks. Courage to show concern for a common humanity is replaced by the cowardice inherent in policy makers’ fifty cents each way bets.

Cowards can also appear passive aggressive, as when claiming, in the Palestinian case, that a terrorist organisation Hamas is entirely at fault, never themselves. Hamas is accused of cowardly conduct by using civilians as human shields, but there‘s little or no insight into the cowardice involved in fearing to offend, the US, Israel or News Corporation outlets. It even appears that cowardice persists through projection, that psychological/political practice of attributing to others behaviour characteristic of your own thoughts.

Investigating cowardice must avoid generalisations which could imply there are no exceptions to the rule. To her credit, Foreign Minister Penny Wong has insisted that there must be a ceasefire over Gaza though that stand does not explain prevarication over the ICJ initiative.

What else has to happen before Australia provides unashamed support for South Africa? What could get worse than the depravity suffered by Gazan child amputees as described in a January 17 P&I article [LINK] by Helen McCue: ‘since October 7, over 1,000 children have lost a limb, either one or two legs or an arm, an average of 10 per day’, surgery completed largely without anaesthetic.

In his challenge to a cowardly west looking on in silence, in last week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres demanded, ‘Nothing can justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people… the long shadow of starvation is stalking the people of Gaza along with disease, malnutrition and other health threats.’

Guterres lamented that he was also ‘deeply troubled by the clear violation of international humanitarian law.’

The South African ICJ initiative relies on principles of humanitarian law to hold accountable the Israeli perpetrators of an alleged genocide. The world watches. The ICJ is on trial, so too the persistence of political cowardice in western democracies.

Refusal to support the principled South African ICJ initiative is a legal, political and humanitarian opportunity missed. Australia, and other western governments, the US and UK, behave as though the world should not worry.

Cowardice is alive and well. When it comes to deliberations about peace, indecisiveness plus scant regard for beyond belief inhumanities, persist as though these are helpful ways to contribute to solutions to end the brutalities of a one sided slaughter, which is also referred to as a war.

https://johnmenadue.com/cowardly-refusal-to-support-south-africa-at-the-icj/

 

 

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW..............

In controversial statement, Borrell claims 'Israel' 'created' Hamas

• ByAl Mayadeen English

The European Union's top diplomat Josep Borrell claims "Hamas has been financed by the Israeli government to try to weaken the Palestinian Authority."

 

The European Union's top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said on Friday that the Israeli occupation "created" and "financed" Palestinian Resistance movement Hamas.

Israeli occupation Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has in recent days reaffirmed his opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state, drawing criticism from his US ally, which is still advocating a "two-state solution."

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/in-controversial-statement--borrell-claims--israel---created

 

WE HAVE KNOWN THIS SINCE HAMAS INCEPTION........

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW.................