Tag: palestine

Survivors of Israeli Bombardment Face New Catastrophe: Epidemics, Amputations, Starvation

As the northern Gaza Strip is subjected to a fresh campaign of massacres and enforced starvation, doctors working elsewhere in Gaza say that a quieter threat is now sweeping across the territory: chronic disease and infection. 

One year into the conflict, attacks on civilians in the territory have continued to escalate, including bombings of hospitals and schools in the north that have inflicted a staggering number of civilian casualties. While clinics in the north have been overwhelmed by traumatic injuries from aerial bombings and other attacks, medical facilities in other parts of the Strip that are not presently the focus of this campaign have seen a relative decline in such injuries, doctors in Gaza told Drop Site News. 

Amid this lull in trauma cases in other parts of the Strip, the full impact of disease and malnutrition on the Palestinian population is becoming clear to medical authorities, as patients grow desperate for access to the meager healthcare infrastructure still operating in the territory. 

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Israel is Turning Gaza into ‘Uninhabitable Ruins’ – Doctors without Borders

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Friday that thousands of Palestinian civilians are trapped in Jabaliya camp while the Israeli occupation army carries its latest military operation in the area for the sixth consecutive day.

“Nobody is allowed to get in or out, anyone who tries is getting shot,” said MSF project coordinator Sarah Vuylsteke on the organization’s account on X.

Headlining its post as an “Update from northern Gaza”, the international organization revealed that five of its staff are trapped in the camp, expressing fear for their life.

“We were staying at the Al-Yemen- Al-Saeed Hospital, but they bombed it. About 20 people were killed. I don’t know what to do, at any moment we could die,” MSF driver Haydar who is trapped in Jabaliya was quoted as saying.

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How Israel killed hundreds of its own people on 7 October

One year ago today Palestinian fighters led by Hamas launched an unprecedented military offensive out of the Gaza Strip.

The immediate goal was to inflict a shattering blow against Israel’s army bases and militarized settlements which have besieged Gaza’s inhabitants for decades – all of which are built on land that Palestinian families were expelled from in 1948.

The bigger goal was to shatter a status quo in which Israel, the United States and their accomplices believed they had effectively sidelined the Palestinian cause, and to bring that struggle for liberation back to the forefront of world attention.

“Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” as Hamas called it, was, by any objective military measure, a stunning success.

It was said at Israel’s military headquarters that day that “the Gaza Division was overpowered,” a high-level source present later recalled to Israeli journalists. “These words still give me the chills.”

Covered from the air by armed drones and a barrage of rockets – which opened the offensive at 6:26 am exactly – Palestinian fighters launched a lightening raid over the Gaza boundary line.

The army bases were conquered for hours. Some of the settlements still had an armed Palestinian presence two days later.

The military communications infrastructure was instantly smashed. Simultaneous attacks took place by land, air and sea.

Palestinian drones took out tanks, guard posts and watchtowers.

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Peter Thiel: From Gaza AI War Criminal To White House Puppet Master

The screams of babies as buildings collapse in Gaza. Terrified parents carrying the remains of their children away in plastic carrier bags. These scenes – altogether too familiar today – come enabled by German-American tech billionaire Peter Thiel and his company, Palantir, whose software uses AI and big data to help the Israeli military surveil, target and slaughter hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. It is also used by ICE, the FBI and U.S. law enforcement to destroy privacy, to attack whistleblowers, and to turn the Orwellian concept of “pre-crime” (identifying and tracking potential subversives before they commit any offense) into a reality.

The Silicon Valley oligarch has deep ties to the CIA and the military-industrial complex and is one of the Republican Party’s most powerful backers. Already one of the world’s most influential individuals, if Donald Trump wins in November, Thiel has set himself up to become a “shadow president,” wielding gigantic power over us all. This is his story.

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Israel to Establish Jewish-Only Settlements in Northern Gaza as Annexation Moves Forward

Israel has set its sights on a potential annexation of northern Gaza, framing it as a “closed military zone.” This comes one year after the same area endured an all-out ground assault. Coupled with Israel’s newly established “buffer zone” and the occupation of two corridors in central and southern Gaza, the territory is being gradually eroded.

In late October 2023, Israel launched its ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, concentrating primarily on the northern portion of the besieged enclave. At the same time, Israel issued demands for medical staff at all major hospitals to abandon their facilities.

It then released CGI imagery depicting a “Hamas headquarters” under al-Shifa Hospital, which was later debunked after the medical facility was bombed and invaded. It had also ordered some 1.1 million civilians to flee towards the South, where “safe zones” were said to be located. Today, Israel has again shifted its focus onto northern Gaza, ordering the civilian population to flee and signaling to the remaining staff of the Kamal Adwan, Indonesian and Al-Awda Hospitals that they should immediately evacuate or be subjected to consequences of another military assault.

Israel has now coupled its invasion of the Jabalia Refugee Camp with speculation that the government is moving forward with a plan reportedly considered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in secret meetings back in September. This plan, publicly supported by certain Israeli members of the Knesset and former military officials, involves seizing northern Gaza and declaring it a “closed military zone.”

According to Haaretz, Netanyahu’s administration is now preparing to enter the “next phase” of its war on Gaza, which could result in the de facto annexation of the area north of the Netzarim Corridor. This corridor, which has been occupied by the Israeli military, effectively splits the Gaza Strip in half. It played a crucial role in the breakdown of previous ceasefire talks, as Israel refused to agree to a permanent withdrawal from the area.

The possibility of allowing Jewish settlers to establish colonies in northern Gaza is also being discussed. Since January, the settler movement has held conferences promoting this topic, signaling growing support for the idea.

Additionally, on May 6, after Hamas agreed to a ceasefire proposal, the Israeli military immediately invaded the Rafah Crossing in southern Gaza. The invasion continued until Israel’s forces occupied the entire Palestine-Egypt border area, known as the Philadelphia Corridor. This, along with the destruction of infrastructure and agricultural land on Gaza’s outskirts over the past year to create a new “buffer zone,” has effectively reduced Gaza into an even smaller enclave. Over 1.5 million people are now crammed into overcrowded, unsanitary tent cities.

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White House Ignored Warning from Pentagon, State Dept that Israel Was Creating a Catastrophe in Gaza

Recently released emails from Reuters show that officials in the White House ignored warnings from their counterparts at the Defense and State Department warning that Israel was committing war crimes and creating a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Reuters reviewed emails from the Departments of Defense and State from last October, showing that high-ranking officials warned about supporting Israel as it committed war crimes in Gaza.

“As Israel pounded northern Gaza with air strikes last October and ordered the evacuation of more than a million Palestinians from the area, a senior Pentagon official delivered a blunt warning to the White House, the outlet reported. “The mass evacuation would be a humanitarian disaster and could violate international law, leading to war crime charges against Israel.”

The warning came from Dana Stroul, then the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East in an Oct. 13 email sent to senior White House aides. She explained an assessment by the International Committee of the Red Cross that had left her “chilled to the bone.”  

Stroul and other officials were pushing the White House to take a more sympathetic position on the suffering of Palestinians and ask Israel to give Gazans more time to comply with Tel Aviv’s evacuation orders. 

While the Biden administration claims that it did pressure Israel early in the onslaught and that did make a difference, Reuters reports that the White House had little impact on Tel Aviv’s military operations. 

“But Washington was slow to address the suffering of Palestinians, said three senior U.S. officials involved in the decision-making process,” the article explains. “And while the ground invasion was ultimately delayed by about 10 days, the three officials attributed the pause more to operational preparations by the Israeli military than U.S. pressure.”

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Words Kill: Why Israel Gets Away With Murder in Gaza and Lebanon

The official Israeli army version of why it has targeted civilian areas during the intense and deadly bombardment of September 20 in south Lebanon is that the Lebanese are hiding long-range missile launchers in their own homes.

This official explanation by the Israeli military was meant to justify the killing of 492 people and the wounding of 1,645 in a single day of Israeli strikes.

This ready-to-serve explanation shall accompany us throughout the Israeli war in Lebanon, however long it takes. Israeli media is now heavily citing these claims and, by extension, US and western media are following suit.

Keep this in mind as you reflect on earlier statements made by Israeli President Isaac Herzog on October 13 when he argued that there are no civilians in Gaza and “there is an entire nation out there that is responsible”.

Israel does this in every war it launches against any Palestinian or Arab nation. Instead of removing civilians and civilian infrastructures from its bank of targets, it immediately turns the civilian population into the main targets of its war.

A quick glance at the number of civilians killed in the ongoing war and genocide in Gaza should be enough to demonstrate that Israel targets ordinary people as a matter of course.

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza, children and women constitute the largest percentage of the war’s victims at 69 percent. If we factor in the number of adult males who have been killed – a number that includes doctors, medics, civil defense workers and numerous other categories – it will become obvious that the vast majority of all of Gaza’s victims are civilians.

Only Israeli media, and their allies in the west, continue to find justifications of why Palestinian civilians, and now Lebanese, are being killed in large numbers.

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October 7th in Retrospect, Why Hamas Attacked

A year has passed since Hamas’ incursion into Israel on October 7th. Dubbed Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, Hamas conducted an improbable attack that resulted in 1200 dead Israelis and over 250 hostages taken into Gaza. Israel also initiated the Hannibal Directive that day, killing some of their civilians to prevent them from being taken into Gaza. In the aftermath of the attack, political pundits and analysts ruminated on why Hamas attacked. From Hamas’ perspective, October 7th was a justified response to 75 years of Israeli oppression against the Palestinian people. Beyond that rationale, experts could not fully explain October 7th. However, in retrospect, other elements may have driven Hamas’ strategic calculus for the October 7th attacks.

One of the motivating factors behind Hamas’ October 7th attack was the group’s unpopularity amongst Palestinians in Gaza. According to James Zogby of the Arab-American Institute, roughly 20% of Palestinians in Gaza supported Hamas before Oct 7th. One of the most notable instances of public disobedience came in July 2023 when thousands of Palestinians took to the streets against the Islamist group over the economic and living conditions in Gaza caused by Israel’s brutal blockade. The demonstrations were violently broken up in what was considered a rare but powerful display of frustration against Hamas’ rule.

Taking these elements into consideration, Hamas sought to use October 7th as an attempt to reconfigure its image as an authoritarian militant group into a fighting force protecting Palestinians against Israeli aggression. Hamas believed that by framing October 7th as a revolutionary act of resistance against Israel, Palestinians would see them as protectors of their struggle and see Hamas in a favorable light.

Geopolitical considerations in the Middle East also contributed to the October 7th attack. Hamas ultimately felt the need to debunk the narrative that the Middle East could ignore the Palestinian struggle entirely. For example, Jordan and Egypt relinquished their political leverage when both nations made peace with Israel without conditioning the creation of a Palestinian state.

In the months before the Hamas attack, Saudi Arabia was on the brink of repeating this same pattern by normalizing relations with Israel. Washington and Riyadh were engaged in high-level discussions in which the Saudis sought a U.S. defense pact. The White House pushed the Kingdom to drop its demands that normalization with Tel Aviv be conditioned on a Palestinian state.

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“We Spread Misinformation”: CBS Photojournalist Lights Himself On Fire Near White House 

A CBS News photojournalist from Phoenix, Arizona, lost his marbles in Washington, DC Saturday evening near the White House at the Black Lives Matter Plaza, setting himself on fire while screaming, “I am a journalist. We spread the misinformation.”

Sam Mena Jr, a photojournalist for ​AZFamily KTVK 3TV and KPHO CBS 5 News, set his left arm on fire while attempting self-immolation during a pro-Palestinian rally near the White House. He shouted, “Free Palestine!”, and “I’m a journalist and I’m ashamed! We spread the misinformation!”

Just before the incident, the MSM photojournalist posted a lengthy blog post to his website, telling anyone who read the post exactly what he was going to do:

“To the 10 thousand children in Gaza that have lost a limb in this conflict, I give my left arm to you. I pray my voice was able to raise up yours, and that your smiles never disappear.” 

What’s very concerning is that the MSM photojournalist, who possibly had a few screws loose, was just feet from former President Trump during a press conference in Arizona late last month. 

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Anti-Israel Protestor Sets Himself on Fire Outside White House

An anti-Israel protester, identified as Samuel Mena Jr, lit himself on fire outside of the White House during an anti-Israel protest on Saturday evening.

In photos and videos  of the incident, Mena Jr,  is seen screaming in pain as he raises his left arm engulfed in pain and

Several bystanders rished to his aid, dousing him with water and beating out the flames with pieces of clothing.

Mena screamed about ‘misinformation’ and announced that he is a journalist.

Jessica Costescu from Free Beacon captured the harrowing incident and its aftermath.

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