Israel kills children, damages infrastructure in West Bank
Mourners carry the body of Saqr Abed, an Islamic Jihad militant killed in a raid by Israeli forces in the village of Kafr Dan, near the West Bank city of Jenin, Wednesday, June 12, 2024. ( APA images)
A warning on 4 June from the UN human rights commissioner that “unprecedented bloodshed” in the occupied West Bank must come to an end has gone unheeded.
The Israeli military, at times in collaboration with Israel’s Border Police and Israel’s domestic secret police Shin Bet, has continued to conduct deadly raids into the occupied West Bank, wreaking havoc to private Palestinian property and civilian infrastructure in the process.
An Israeli military raid into Kafr Dan village west of Jenin in the northern West Bank killed six Palestinians earlier this week.
The invading Israeli forces used Energa anti-tank rifle grenades against a home belonging to the Abed family, killing three, Saqr Aref Abed, Mustafa Allam Mirie and Ahmad Muhammad Abu Obeid.
Others killed during the Israeli attack and confrontations in the village include Ayman Abu Fadalah, Muhammad Hazza Mirie and Ahmad Muhammad Samoudi, 17.
On 11 June, Ahmad was with another child, allegedly carrying homemade explosive devices as they waited for Israeli armored vehicles to pass by on a road in the center of Kafr Dan.
An Israeli sniper shot at the two children from a distance of 100 to 150 meters with six bullets, according to Defense for Children International – Palestine.
One bullet hit Ahmad in his leg, and he collapsed and started pleading for help. The other child was able to flee though he was injured in the thigh.
The Israeli sniper shot towards Ahmad again, striking him in his chest and head.
An Israeli military vehicle then approached Ahmad, and the Israeli driver stepped out and shot the child three more times.
The driver of the military vehicle remained near him for a few minutes as Israeli forces blocked a Palestinian ambulance from reaching Ahmad as he lay wounded on the ground.
“Israeli forces shot Ahmad, waited until he fell to the ground, then shot him several more times, then blocked paramedics from reaching him until they were confident he bled out,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability program director at DCIP.
“The United States must stop sending weapons to the Israeli military that are used to kill Palestinian children without restraint, whether in Gaza or the West Bank.”
Ahmad is the older brother of a 12-year-old boy who was shot, and later succumbed to his wounds, during an Israeli raid in Jenin in September 2022.
Mahmoud Muhammad Samoudi had allegedly thrown stones at Israeli vehicles when Israeli forces opened fire at the group of youths he was a part of.
Elsewhere on 10 June, Israeli occupation forces raided the village of Kafr Nimeh, west of Ramallah, and shot and killed four Palestinian men and injured others.
Israeli armored vehicles invaded the Kafr Nimeh village, raided homes and commercial stores, confiscated surveillance cameras and set up a checkpoint at the village’s entrance.
Israeli authorities had been pursuing two Palestinians suspected of setting fire to a vehicle and its trailer in the Sde Ephraim settlement “outpost” in the occupied West Bank overnight on 9 June.
Sde Ephraim was established on a hilltop belonging to the nearby Palestinian village of Ras Karkar.
While all Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are illegal under international law and building them is a war crime, what Israel refers to as “outposts” are often built without even Israel’s permission and are considered illegal under Israeli law.
The men killed were identified as Muhammad Raslan Abdo, Muhammad Jaber Abdo and Rashdi Samih Ataya, according to the Palestinian Authority civil affairs department, which did not name the fourth Palestinian who was killed.
Local news sources named him as Wasim Bisam Zidan.
Israeli forces had previously detained Muhammad Jaber Abdo for two decades, and he was released in 2022. He was a member of Hamas’ armed wing operating in the occupied West Bank.
Israeli forces claimed to have found a makeshift sub-machine gun and other weapons in the vehicle.
Israeli forces then barred Palestine Red Crescent Society medics from reaching and evacuating the injured for at least two hours.
When one ambulance tried to reach, Israeli forces fired at it with live ammunition, puncturing its tires.
Israeli forces also opened fire on Palestinians gathered in the area, injuring eight with live ammunition, including a child.
Israel is now withholding the bodies of all four Palestinians its forces killed in Kafr Nimeh, UN monitoring group OCHA said. Israel withholds the remains of Palestinians killed during what it claims were attacks, intending to use them as bargaining chips in negotiations.
A governorate-wide strike on Ramallah and al-Bireh was reportedly declared the next day, on 11 June, in mourning.
Wreaking havoc on a refugee camp
Israeli forces invaded the al-Faraa refugee camp in the foothills of the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank accompanied with military bulldozers in the late hours of 9 June. Israeli forces briefly withdrew from the camp at dawn the next day but stormed it later with large reinforcements.
Israeli forces also invaded several other neighborhoods in nearby Tubas, before withdrawing completely on the afternoon of 10 June after a 16-hour operation, which saw armed Palestinians defend the camp from the Israeli invaders.
Soldiers raided homes in the refugee camp and used them as sniper and observation points. Bulldozers partially damaged some homes.
A 16-year-old Palestinian child, Mahmoud Ibrahim Nabrisi, was walking out of an alley that led to the refugee camp’s main square when he saw Israeli soldiers stationed in a community center for disabled people in the camp, according to a field investigation by DCIP.
Mahmoud tried to warn people in the area of the presence of the Israeli forces. That’s when an Israeli sniper hiding behind a small hole in the building’s wall that the military created to observe and shoot from, fired at Mahmoud from a distance of 120 to 150 meters. Three bullets hit Mahmoud, one near his eye, one behind his ear and another in his leg.
Palestinian youth transferred Mahmoud to an ambulance, which took him to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead.
As has often been the case with Israeli military raids in the occupied West Bank, which include highly destructive attacks on infrastructure, Israeli bulldozers damaged sewage, electricity and water networks during their invasion of al-Faraa refugee camp. Israeli forces also destroyed and bulldozed the refugee camp’s main square and road.
Israeli forces also surrounded the camp, preventing Palestinian residents from going in or leaving.
Soldiers burned three houses, partially destroyed two and burned four vehicles and destroyed another during their invasion of the camp.
Local media circulated pictures of a home in the camp after it was bombed by the Israeli army, as well as damaged and destroyed vehicles:
The Israeli military’s widespread destruction of civilian and public infrastructures leads residents to believe that the Israeli army is taking revenge on the camp by destroying it, Wafa news agency reported.
The Israeli military has conducted four major raids into the al-Faraa refugee camp since 7 October, killing 17 Palestinians, the news agency reported.
“Unprecedented bloodshed”
Earlier this month, the UN high commissioner for human rights Volker Türk said Palestinians in the occupied West Bank were “being subjected to day after day of unprecedented bloodshed.”
More than 520 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank since 7 October, including at least 504 by Israeli forces, according to OCHA.
Israeli settlers have killed at least 10 Palestinians, and another seven were killed by either Israeli army or settler fire.
Of those killed in the occupied West Bank since 7 October, 132 were children.
Israeli forces and settlers have injured over 5,200 Palestinians in the West Bank since 7 October, at least 800 of them children. One third of all injuries were by live ammunition.
Israeli forces and settlers have killed 51 Palestinian children since the beginning of the year, including two US citizens, according to documentation by DCIP.
• This article was first published in The Electronic Intifada
Citibank Finances the Colonization of Palestine
Financing Jewish settlements in Palestine is financing the usurpation of Palestine, the oppression of Palestinians, allying with apartheid, and prioritizing profit over people.
Citibank Finances Genocide
Citibank from Apartheid South Africa to Apartheid Israel
It’s Time for Citi to Cut Ties with Genocide
The U.S. arms and supports Israel’s genocide and one of its largest banks, Citibank, plays a key role. Our latest visual in partnership with the Banking on Solidarity campaign illustrates how Citi helps arm Israel, finances weapons companies that make the weapons Israel uses in Gaza, and invests in the Israeli financial and tech sectors.
End the Israeli War on Gaza and Palestine
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
Eight months ago, Israel began a genocidal war against Gaza and the further increase of repression in the West Bank including thousands imprisoned, and expansion of the settlements there. Torture is commonplace of Palestinian prisoners in the West Bank and especially of prisoners in Gaza. 90 per cent of the population of Gaza is hungry, famine is occurring. Besides the 15,000 children killed, almost all Palestinian babies and young children are likely to have permanent health problems if they live from Israel’s systematically starving them and destroying the health care and educational system. Over a million Palestinians were forced to move to Rafah in southern Gaza fleeing their homes beginning May 6th. A million Palestinians in Rafah have been forced to flee again, under the threat of immediate murder by Israel, with no safe place to go to, nor to a place that can sustain life.
Not only is the United States government complicit with and participating in Israel’s genocidal war but also many U.S corporations. A major criminal is the Boeing Corporation. Since late May, Israel has used the so-called precision bomb, the GBU-39, made by the Boeing Corporation to kill hundreds of Palestinians. This includes a “safe area” in Rafah that Israel had said it wouldn’t bomb on May 28th, a United Nations School in central Gaza on Thursday, June 6th, and on June 7th near Gaza City. Israel claims they are targeting Hamas fighters but even if this is so, it is a war crime under international law because of the many more times civilians killed, one third are children. Boeing is increasing production and rushing orders of these bombs to Israel. It is an immoral but profitable business for Boeing.
What can we do? Let us organize against Boeing and target them by education of the public, including talking with their workers and labor unions, doing many types of protest including mass direct action, going to their stockholder meetings demanding they stop their contracts with Israel, and deepening campaigns demanding divestment from Boeing and other connections with Israel from institutions such as the University of Washington. Boeing is especially vulnerable to this campaign as a result of its already weakened position because of the continuing major safety defects of its planes. Its stock has fallen by one quarter this year and a campaign focusing on divestment from Boeing can further hurt their image and lower the value of the value of their stock incentivizing them to stop producing murder weapons for the Israeli military.
On May 31st, Biden made a proposal for a cease fire in Gaza. He claimed he was publicizing a three phase Israeli proposal. In Phase One, in addition to a cease fire by Israel and Hamas, Israel would remain in Gaza but withdraw from population centers there, allow the population to return to cities there, and allow up to 600 trucks of aid daily into Gaza. Some of the Israeli hostages would be traded for a larger number of Palestinian prisoners. This Phase One would last at least six weeks while a permanent cease was being negotiated.
In Phase Two which would begin after a permanent cease fire was negotiated, Israel would withdraw from Gaza and all the remaining Israeli hostages, including Israeli soldiers, would be released for a larger number of Palestinian prisoners. It isn’t specified how Gaza would be governed.
In Phase Three, the remains of Israeli hostages who had died would be returned, the rubble would be cleared and there would be a three-to-five-year reconstruction period financed by the U.S., European Union and international institutions.
If this plan were enacted it would be a major step forward although neither the underlying ongoing Nakba nor the Israeli occupation and Zionist domination are being addressed.
This is my interpretation of Biden’s proposal and the current situation as of June 11, 2024. When Biden said he was publicizing an Israeli proposal, he probably was referring to, not the Netanyahu government, but some of the other Zionist parties such as Gantz and his National Unity Party, and former Prime Minister, Yair Lapid, who have fully supported the invasion, including of Rafah. They probably favor for now, a pause in the Israeli war. The Netanyahu led Israeli government is willing to accept Phase One, a temporary cease fire, but is committed to the further destruction of Gaza and Hamas after six weeks. Hamas leaders have said they regarded Biden’s proposal positively although they haven’t yet fully accepted it.
Israel is willing to agree to a temporary, probably six weeks cease fire, while Hamas is demanding a permanent cease fire. This is the key and significant difference. It is another Netanyahu lie that if he accepts this U.S. proposal, his government will fall because fascist members of his cabinet would leave it, and he would no longer have a majority in the parliament. Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are publicly committed to continuing a total war against Gaza and for the permanent Israeli settlement and occupation of Gaza. However, even if they resign from the Israeli cabinet, some of the slightly more liberal Zionist parties have stated they would support Netanyahu and not oppose him until the next elections if he accepted this proposal. It is also likely that at the end of the six-week, Phase One period, Lapid, Gantz and their political parties, would support Israeli going back to war claiming Hamas had broken the temporary cease fire.
What is the U.S. position and what should we do as Palestine solidarity and human rights activists? The U.S. proposal is because the Democratic Party doesn’t want to lose in November and because the global protests and strong criticisms of the United States support for Israel are increasingly isolating the U.S. internationally.
On June 10th, the United Nations Security Council endorsed and voted for this United States proposal. This is a positive step by the United States who has consistently vetoed permanent UN cease fire proposals before this one.
However, the Biden administration up to the present is continuing its military support for Israel. Israel couldn’t continue its murderous offensive without it. Let us continue to demand the end of U.S. military aid to Israel. The US is also providing cover for Israel by condemning the International Court of Justice move towards charging Israel with genocide, and their demanding the end of the Israeli bombing and invasion of Rafah. The Biden administration also opposes the International Criminal Court charging Netanyahu and defense minister Gallant with war crimes; and opposes the growing global recognition of Palestine.
The U.S. position is a change from the 100 per cent embrace of Israel in October but its significance is limited unless the Biden administration threatens to and substantially cuts aid to Israel until it agrees to and puts into practice a permanent cease fire.
Moreover, Secretary of State Blinken who is in the Middle East, continues to claim as has President Biden that the onus is on Hamas to accept this peace plan; that Hamas not Israel is what is holding it up. However, Israel again is being the rejectionist power by opposing a permanent cease fire and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. If there is a temporary cease fire, Phase One, our challenge is to help make the temporary cease fire a permanent one. This didn’t happen last November, when the cease fire lasted only a week. Our task continues to be, to do what we can to stop US complicity with this war.
It is worth carefully studying this and related proposals. Sadly, but not surprisingly, our local Congresswoman, Strickland, and our Washing State Senators, Murray and Cantwell, have not supported a permanent cease fire and Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and continue to support full US military aid to Israel. This is unacceptable.
I continue to be inspired and am hopeful by the growing movement against the Israel and US War against all of Palestine, including the West Bank,
A few important recent developments!
Growing daily is the number of countries signing on to the South Africa charge of genocide against Israel. Also significant is the growing division within the European Union; the breaking with the United States by Ireland, Norway and Spain in recognizing a Palestinian State. These countries are calling for the withdrawal of Israel from the West Bank, Gaza and from East Jerusalem, whose boundaries Israel is continuing to expand.
The graduate student workers at the University of California (UC) campuses, who are represented by the United Autoworkers (UAW), voted to and are striking at several UC campuses. They are striking against the repression of those on these campuses who are actively opposing the Israeli war and supporting a permanent cease fire. Union opposition to U.S. support for Israel is growing and different from the Vietnam war where most labor unions supported the U.S. war.
Pro-Palestinian encampments on college campuses, although often being attacked and closed by the police and university administrations in collaboration with local, State and probably the Federal government have sprung up again and again, for example at Columbia and MIT. Commitments to divest from corporations complicit with Israel has been progressing at a few institutions, e.g., Union Theological Seminary. Actions in solidarity with Palestine have been a common feature at college and high school graduations. A challenge will be to maintain this movement over the summer and to continue organizing even if there is a cease fire until the end of the Israeli occupation.
Closer to Olympia, there was a 25 mile walk of almost 1000 people, the length of Gaza, for peace and justice for Palestine, in the Seattle area, Sunday, May 26th.
On June 6th, there was a walkout and march of 80 students from the three of the local high schools, mainly Olympia High School but also Capital and Avanti; they met and then rallied at the State Capital. It was organized and led by high school students. Thank YOU!
Let us not only demand an immediate and permanent cease fire and the end of US military aid to Israel but also a longer run solution where there is equality and justice for all people living in what was historic Palestine. Where there is the end of the Israeli occupation and the oppression of Palestinians, the right of Palestinians to return to their communities, and the right of Jewish people to live there but not dominate, the end of Zionism.
Let us connect the struggle of Palestinians for land and self-determination to the struggles of all oppressed people, globally and in the U.S. against capitalism and for a world where there is climate, economic, racial, immigrant and gender justice, the end of poverty, alienation and repression–an ecological, feminist, democratic and participatory socialist one.
America Isolated: Why Some Western Capitals Are Shifting Positions on Gaza
Image by Ömer Yıldız.
On June 6, Spain joined South Africa’s case at the United Nations top Court, accusing Israel of genocide.
This move followed a decision by Madrid and two other western European capitals – Dublin and Oslo – to recognize the state of Palestine, thus breaking ranks with a long-established US-led western policy.
As per American thinking, the recognition and the establishment of a Palestinian State should follow a negotiated settlement between Israel and Palestine, under the auspices of Washington itself.
No such negotiations have taken place in years, and the US has, in fact, shifted its policies on the issue almost entirely under the previous administration of Donald Trump. The latter had recognized as ‘legal’, illegal Jewish colonies in Palestine, Israel’s sovereignty over occupied East Jerusalem, among other concessions.
Several years into the Biden Administration, little has been done to reverse or fundamentally alter the new status quo.
More recently, Washington has done everything in its power to support Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Aside from supplying Israel with the needed weapons to conduct its crimes in the Strip, the US has gone as far as threatening international legal and political bodies that tried to hold Israel accountable, thus ending the “extermination” of Palestinians in Gaza – a term used on May 20 by the International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan.
Washington continues to behave in such a way despite the fact that Israel refuses to concede to a single US demand or expectation regarding peace and negotiations.
Indeed, Israel’s political discourse is deeply invested in the language of genocide, while the Israeli military is actively carrying it out.
The West Bank, where the bulk of the Palestinian state would supposedly take shape, is experiencing its own upheaval. Violence there is unprecedented compared to recent decades. Across the West Bank, tens of thousands of illegal settlers are torching homes, cars, and attacking Palestinians with total impunity, in fact, often alongside the Israeli army.
Yet, despite the occasional gentle reprimand and ineffectual sanctions on a few settlers, Washington continues to stand firmly by its declared policy regarding the two states and all the rest. Not a single mainstream Israeli politician, certainly not Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government of extremists, is willing to entertain the very thought.
This is not surprising, as America’s foreign policy often goes against common sense. Washington, for example, fights losing wars simply because no US administration or president wants to be the one associated with failure, retreat or, worse, defeat. America’s longest war in Afghanistan is a case in point.
Due to the massive influence wielded by Israel, its allies on Capitol Hill, in the media, along with the power of lobbies and wealthy donors, Tel Aviv is clearly far more consequential to US domestic policies than Kabul. Thus, the continued US military and political support of a country that is being accused of genocide and extermination.
This reality, however, has created a political dilemma for Europe, which has often blindly followed US steps – or missteps – in the Middle East.
Historically, there have been a few exceptions to the post-WWII rule. French President Jacques Chirac defied US-imposed consensus when he strongly rejected Washington’s policies in Iraq in the lead-up to the 2003 war.
Such important, but relatively isolated fissures were eventually repaired, where the US returned to its role as the uncontested leader of the West.
Gaza, however, is becoming a major breaking point. The initial western unity in support of Israel, immediately after the October 7 events, has splintered, eventually leaving the US and, to some extent, Germany, committed to the Israeli war.
The strong, more recent stances by several western European countries accusing Israel of genocide and joining forces with countries in the Global South with the aim of holding Israel accountable, is a major shift unseen in many years.
It could be argued that the extent of Israeli crimes in Gaza has exceeded the moral threshold that some European countries could tolerate. But there is more to this.
The actual answer lies in the issue of legitimacy. Western leaders are not shying away in phrasing their language as such. In a recent piece, speaking on behalf of the ‘group of elders’, former president of Ireland Mary Robinson warned against the “collapse of international order”.
“We oppose any attempts to de-legitimize” the work of the ICC and ICJ, through “threats of punitive measures and sanctions.”
The Elders’ opposition, however, made no difference. On June 5, the US House of Representatives passed resolution H.R.8282 aimed at authorizing sanctions on the ICC.
References to the collapse of the legitimacy of the West-established international order have also been made by many others in recent months, including by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
In his statement on requesting arrest warrants for accused Israeli war criminals, Karim Khan himself made that reference.
For some in the west, the issue is not just about the Gaza genocide. It is also about the future of the west itself.
For a long time, Washington has succeeded, at least in the eyes of its allies, in keeping the balance between the collective interests of the West and a nominal respect for international institutions.
It is now clear that the US is no longer capable of maintaining that balancing act, forcing some western countries into adopting independent political positions, the future outcomes of which shall prove consequential.
No Way Out in Nuseirat: the Great Hostage Rescue Massacre
JUNE 14, 2024
Photo: UNRWA.
The Israelis usually make their abduction raids at night, when the streets are empty and their targets are sleeping. The raid on Nuseirat took place in mid-day at a refugee camp, when the roads and markets were packed with civilians, when children were playing, women doing their shopping, and old men drinking their tea.
Some of the Israelis came dressed as Palestinians, speaking Arabic, and looking like refugees. Some came concealed in civilian trucks. Others hovered above in Apache attack helicopters, waiting to strike.
The nearby Al-Aqsa Hospital was already overflowing with patients from the airstrikes of the previous few days, before it began receiving the wounded and maimed from the bloodiest day yet of Israel’s assault on Gaza. Al-Aqsa was already short on supplies, running low on drugs, water and power. The hospital’s hallways were already filled with moaning, bandaged patients, recovering from wounds and surgeries without painkillers. The staff was already overworked, tired and stressed out, when they heard the first explosions around 11 in the morning.
Dozens of airstrikes were followed by volleys of small arms gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades. Some explosions seemed very close to the hospital. Someone said the IDF had called the hospital minutes before and warned the staff to evacuate because it too was a target. But the nurses and the doctors wouldn’t leave their patients. Maybe it was disinformation or just another rumor of a hellish war.
Helicopters hovered overhead. Quadcopter drones darted in and out firing machine guns at the crowded streets. There was the unmistakable growl of tanks. The camp was surrounded. There was no way to flee. No air raid shelters to huddle in. No way out.
Then the calls came for help, soon followed by the wounded, the burnt, the dying and the dead. The bodies of children and women, the old and young, shredded by shrapnel, riven with bullets, some with severed limbs and others with perforated eyes.
“There were children everywhere, there were women, there were men,” said Karin Huster, who was working at Al-Aqsa with Médecins Sans Frontières. “We had the gamut of war wounds, trauma wounds, from amputations to eviscerations to trauma, to TBIs, traumatic brain injuries. Fractures, obviously, big burns. Kids completely grey or white from the shock, burnt, screaming for their parents — many of them not screaming because they are in shock.”
The tempo of the attack increased. The bombings and the gunfire and the tanks and the helicopters. The frenzied sounds of a war machine at full-throttle. For thirty minutes it went on. For an hour. For an hour and a half. It seemed interminable for those seeking shelter on the ground, cowering in buildings and the hospital. And then it was over, finally. And there were only the cries for help from the shattered streets and collapsed buildings. The cries of parents carrying dead children in their arms, the cries of children looking at the gutted bodies of their parents.
What had just happened? Why had this refugee camp at Nusierat, home of so many homeless people, so many Palestinian families who had been displaced by bombs time and time again, come under such a savage sustained attack from the air and the ground, an attack that destroyed 90 homes and apartment buildings? An attack of such fury that it left the streets scattered with severed arms and legs, the bodies of children and their mothers and grandfathers left to bleed out in the marketplace that seemed to be a target of the attack. What could possibly justify this slaughter, this killing, this destruction that one Palestinian refugee in Nuseirat said felt like “Doomsday”?
When the Israelis finally left, they took four people with them, four hostages who had been rescued by Israeli commandos and evacuated in helicopters that were stationed at or near Biden’s hapless “humanitarian” pier that had, coincidentally or not, just been reassembled and re-moored to the beach in central Gaza, after breaking apart in high seas last month.
When the Israelis finally left with the four rescued hostages, who’d been captured by Hamas on October 7 while attending the Nova rave just outside the Israeli security fence that pens in and isolates northern Gaza, they left behind 274 dead Palestinians, including 64 children and 57 women. They left behind 700 wounded, many in critical condition, many of whom seem likely to die in the coming days and weeks.
The great rescue mission turned into the worst massacre to date in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, leaving the streets of Nuseirat, in the words of Abu Asi, “halls of blood.” Everyone on the streets and inside the buildings of Nuseirat was a target that day. The gunfire and airstrikes were indiscriminate. Then entire camp was a kill zone.
Nuseirat’s narrow streets were cratered, so clotted with rubble and bodies that ambulances couldn’t reach the victims, many of whom were wheeled to the hospital in hand carts and wagons. Many more were left to die on the streets from treatable wounds.
“Aircraft struck dozens of military targets for the success of the operation,” the IDF brayed afterward. “Hamas, in a very cruel and cynical way, is holding hostages inside civilian buildings.”
The attack came without warning. It came in one of the most densely populated camps in Gaza. The commandos came in disguise, one group in a truck filled with beds and furniture, as if to mock the very refugees they were about to slaughter. This is a war crime. The crime of perfidy, an act of treacherous deception in which one side promises to act in good faith with the intention of breaking that promise once they encounter their enemy. There’s a reason soldiers wear uniforms in combat situations. It’s to protect civilians.
The Israelis said they came at mid-day as an element of surprise. But their own history of raids in Gaza and elsewhere says they usually come at night. This rescue operation was different. This rescue operation in broad daylight was designed to kill. To kill as many as possible, no matter who they were or what they were doing. To kill kids kicking soccer balls, young women standing in line at the bakery, and old men carrying bags of flour and rice. It even killed hostages.
“We inform you that in exchange for these, your army killed three prisoners in the same camp, one of whom held American citizenship,” the military wing of Hamas announced in a video released following the attack.
The Americans knew. The Americans helped. Did the CIA or Pentagon help with the targeting? It hardly matters. The Americans provided the bombs, the helicopters, the fighter jets, the bullets and the tank shells. The Americans watched the attack unfold. They watched from Biden’s pier. They watched from drones. They watched as the streets filled with blood, bodies and limbs. Afterward, the Americans praised the rescue operation and said nothing about the dead Palestinian children and women. Nothing about the amputees and the eviscerated. Nothing about the three hostages who were also apparently killed in the Israeli attack, including an American citizen.
The Biden administration’s complicity in the Nuseirat mass slaughter shatters the last pretense of American diplomacy in the Middle East. It’s a sinister calculus that justifies killing and wounding 1000 people to rescue four–four people who could have been released through a ceasefire, a ceasefire the Biden administration claims it wanted to broker.
The massacre at Nuseirat made clear once more that some lives are worth more than others. And to the Israelis and their American allies, at least, Palestinian lives don’t seem to be worth anything at all.
Jeffrey St. Clair is editor of CounterPunch. His most recent book is An Orgy of Thieves: Neoliberalism and Its Discontents (with Alexander Cockburn). He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net or on Twitter @JeffreyStClair3.
Photo: UNRWA.
The Israelis usually make their abduction raids at night, when the streets are empty and their targets are sleeping. The raid on Nuseirat took place in mid-day at a refugee camp, when the roads and markets were packed with civilians, when children were playing, women doing their shopping, and old men drinking their tea.
Some of the Israelis came dressed as Palestinians, speaking Arabic, and looking like refugees. Some came concealed in civilian trucks. Others hovered above in Apache attack helicopters, waiting to strike.
The nearby Al-Aqsa Hospital was already overflowing with patients from the airstrikes of the previous few days, before it began receiving the wounded and maimed from the bloodiest day yet of Israel’s assault on Gaza. Al-Aqsa was already short on supplies, running low on drugs, water and power. The hospital’s hallways were already filled with moaning, bandaged patients, recovering from wounds and surgeries without painkillers. The staff was already overworked, tired and stressed out, when they heard the first explosions around 11 in the morning.
Dozens of airstrikes were followed by volleys of small arms gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades. Some explosions seemed very close to the hospital. Someone said the IDF had called the hospital minutes before and warned the staff to evacuate because it too was a target. But the nurses and the doctors wouldn’t leave their patients. Maybe it was disinformation or just another rumor of a hellish war.
Helicopters hovered overhead. Quadcopter drones darted in and out firing machine guns at the crowded streets. There was the unmistakable growl of tanks. The camp was surrounded. There was no way to flee. No air raid shelters to huddle in. No way out.
Then the calls came for help, soon followed by the wounded, the burnt, the dying and the dead. The bodies of children and women, the old and young, shredded by shrapnel, riven with bullets, some with severed limbs and others with perforated eyes.
“There were children everywhere, there were women, there were men,” said Karin Huster, who was working at Al-Aqsa with Médecins Sans Frontières. “We had the gamut of war wounds, trauma wounds, from amputations to eviscerations to trauma, to TBIs, traumatic brain injuries. Fractures, obviously, big burns. Kids completely grey or white from the shock, burnt, screaming for their parents — many of them not screaming because they are in shock.”
The tempo of the attack increased. The bombings and the gunfire and the tanks and the helicopters. The frenzied sounds of a war machine at full-throttle. For thirty minutes it went on. For an hour. For an hour and a half. It seemed interminable for those seeking shelter on the ground, cowering in buildings and the hospital. And then it was over, finally. And there were only the cries for help from the shattered streets and collapsed buildings. The cries of parents carrying dead children in their arms, the cries of children looking at the gutted bodies of their parents.
What had just happened? Why had this refugee camp at Nusierat, home of so many homeless people, so many Palestinian families who had been displaced by bombs time and time again, come under such a savage sustained attack from the air and the ground, an attack that destroyed 90 homes and apartment buildings? An attack of such fury that it left the streets scattered with severed arms and legs, the bodies of children and their mothers and grandfathers left to bleed out in the marketplace that seemed to be a target of the attack. What could possibly justify this slaughter, this killing, this destruction that one Palestinian refugee in Nuseirat said felt like “Doomsday”?
When the Israelis finally left, they took four people with them, four hostages who had been rescued by Israeli commandos and evacuated in helicopters that were stationed at or near Biden’s hapless “humanitarian” pier that had, coincidentally or not, just been reassembled and re-moored to the beach in central Gaza, after breaking apart in high seas last month.
When the Israelis finally left with the four rescued hostages, who’d been captured by Hamas on October 7 while attending the Nova rave just outside the Israeli security fence that pens in and isolates northern Gaza, they left behind 274 dead Palestinians, including 64 children and 57 women. They left behind 700 wounded, many in critical condition, many of whom seem likely to die in the coming days and weeks.
The great rescue mission turned into the worst massacre to date in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, leaving the streets of Nuseirat, in the words of Abu Asi, “halls of blood.” Everyone on the streets and inside the buildings of Nuseirat was a target that day. The gunfire and airstrikes were indiscriminate. Then entire camp was a kill zone.
Nuseirat’s narrow streets were cratered, so clotted with rubble and bodies that ambulances couldn’t reach the victims, many of whom were wheeled to the hospital in hand carts and wagons. Many more were left to die on the streets from treatable wounds.
“Aircraft struck dozens of military targets for the success of the operation,” the IDF brayed afterward. “Hamas, in a very cruel and cynical way, is holding hostages inside civilian buildings.”
The attack came without warning. It came in one of the most densely populated camps in Gaza. The commandos came in disguise, one group in a truck filled with beds and furniture, as if to mock the very refugees they were about to slaughter. This is a war crime. The crime of perfidy, an act of treacherous deception in which one side promises to act in good faith with the intention of breaking that promise once they encounter their enemy. There’s a reason soldiers wear uniforms in combat situations. It’s to protect civilians.
The Israelis said they came at mid-day as an element of surprise. But their own history of raids in Gaza and elsewhere says they usually come at night. This rescue operation was different. This rescue operation in broad daylight was designed to kill. To kill as many as possible, no matter who they were or what they were doing. To kill kids kicking soccer balls, young women standing in line at the bakery, and old men carrying bags of flour and rice. It even killed hostages.
“We inform you that in exchange for these, your army killed three prisoners in the same camp, one of whom held American citizenship,” the military wing of Hamas announced in a video released following the attack.
The Americans knew. The Americans helped. Did the CIA or Pentagon help with the targeting? It hardly matters. The Americans provided the bombs, the helicopters, the fighter jets, the bullets and the tank shells. The Americans watched the attack unfold. They watched from Biden’s pier. They watched from drones. They watched as the streets filled with blood, bodies and limbs. Afterward, the Americans praised the rescue operation and said nothing about the dead Palestinian children and women. Nothing about the amputees and the eviscerated. Nothing about the three hostages who were also apparently killed in the Israeli attack, including an American citizen.
The Biden administration’s complicity in the Nuseirat mass slaughter shatters the last pretense of American diplomacy in the Middle East. It’s a sinister calculus that justifies killing and wounding 1000 people to rescue four–four people who could have been released through a ceasefire, a ceasefire the Biden administration claims it wanted to broker.
The massacre at Nuseirat made clear once more that some lives are worth more than others. And to the Israelis and their American allies, at least, Palestinian lives don’t seem to be worth anything at all.
Jeffrey St. Clair is editor of CounterPunch. His most recent book is An Orgy of Thieves: Neoliberalism and Its Discontents (with Alexander Cockburn). He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net or on Twitter @JeffreyStClair3.
Israel is Dragging the World into Darkness
Israel must be held accountable for the suffering it is inflicting on Gaza ( APA images)
Israel does not belong in the modern world. It is the child of European colonialism and Europe’s genocidal anti-Semitism, imposed by force and fire and Western guilt on a land already inhabited by an indigenous people.
Israel is a contemporary trespass of that old world’s colonial ethos that justified genocide, ethnic cleansing, wholesale plunder, endless theft and destruction of indigenous peoples in the name of settlement and divine entitlement of a superior group of humans.
But the modern world has moved on with incremental moral evolution. It long ago repudiated, at least in principle, the racist and violent impulses that powered the genocidal colonial engines of old.
One can hear Israel’s anachronistic nature in the rhetoric of its leaders and citizens. Benjamin Netanyahu points to America’s nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to justify Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Zionists, especially those in settler-colonial nations like the United States and Australia, love to remind us that these countries were founded on the genocide and ethnic cleansing of indigenous peoples.
And from these reminders come their accusations of double standards and hypocrisy. “You’re living on stolen land, why don’t you leave?” so their rhetoric goes.
Implicit in their accusations is an admission of sameness with the violent and racist settler-colonial force that created the United States.
In other words, while humanity has tried and continues to strive to prevent and right the wrongs of the past, Israel points to these base moments in human history, not in the context of “never again,” but as precedents it should be free to emulate.
As we still today uncover mass graves in “Indian schools” where Indigenous children were ripped from their families and tortured to death in boarding schools, Israel demands the right to create more mass graves of Palestinians in the name of “self-defense.”
While we engage in discourse to push for acknowledgement and reparations, much as the world did for European Jews, Israel demands an entitlement to ethnically cleanse indigenous Palestinians, steal their lands, plunder resources and raze their cities and farmlands.
While we imagine and endeavor to create a post-colonial reality of revolutionary universalism, inclusion, equity and understanding, Israel demands the right to Jewish exclusivity and Jewish entitlement at the expense of non-Jews.
Invoking American settler-colonialism to justify its own version of the same is no different than invoking America’s industrialized enslavement as a precedent to emulate.
Rules-based order?
Western governments have long touted their values as beacons of democracy and idealism toward which modernity must aim. How they love to lecture the world about law and rules-based order; about freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of this and that.
But look how quickly they denounce, veto and attack any courts, human rights organizations and UN protocols when the institutions they helped create do not serve their imperial interests. Look how quickly they shut down speech and sic their police on their own citizens trying to exercise those freedoms.
They do this because Israel is antithetical to democratic values. It is antithetical to human rights and the so-called rules-based order.
The West must therefore choose between Israel and the ideals it claims to uphold. And thus far, it is choosing Israel.
And in the process, it is dragging itself and the world into an abyss.
Already, Indian commentators are talking about an “Israel-like” solution in Kashmir. The world is silent as Arab dictatorships like the UAE are arming genocidal militias in Sudan to take control of the country’s vast gold and uranium treasures.
Israel is dragging the world into an infectious darkness that will spread across our planet unless it is stopped and held accountable for the holocaust it is committing in Gaza and now, it seems, in the West Bank as well.
The “solution” is not at all complicated, contrary to pervasive Zionist propaganda.
It is simply an adherence to accepted universal morality that rejects Jewish supremacy as it rejects all other forms of supremacy. This means equality of rights for all those who inhabit the land, a return of Palestinian refugees in a nation of its citizens founded on the principle of one-person-one-vote.
• Article first published in The Electronic Intifada
Did You Donate to Send Food to Gaza? Think again
“HUNGER CATASTROPHE IN GAZA – DONATIONS NEEDED” cries Mercy Corps.
“URGENT: STARVATION IN GAZA: ALL GIFTS MATCHED FOR GAZA” shouts Rescue.org
These and many other appeals from international relief organizations have motivated untold numbers of compassionate and generous souls to open their purses. You may be among them. If so, you may have thought that these organizations are delivering food, medicine and other relief supplies to Gaza. But they are not.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) confirms that not a single truck with relief aid has crossed the border from Egypt to Gaza since Israeli troops captured the Rafah border crossing on May 7, 2024, more than a month ago. Until then, the Rafah crossing was the only one open. Today, roughly 1800 mostly large 18-wheel trucks, each carrying up to 12 tons of supplies, are backed up into the Sinai Desert, waiting for Israeli permission to enter. Some have been there for months. And some of those trucks belong to the relief organizations. But they, like all the others, are not getting in.
Many of the organizations also announce that, thanks to your donations, they have provided hundreds of thousands or even millions of meals to starving Palestinians in Gaza. What they do not necessarily tell you is that they are doing this by purchasing food and medicine from the dwindling supplies inside Gaza.
The bottom line is that your money is reaching the relief organization’s operations in Gaza, but food, water and medical supplies are not. The amount of food in Gaza is dwindling, and Israel is allowing only a tiny trickle to enter by isolated air drops, a single delivery by sea and occasional vehicles through the Erez crossing between Gaza and Israel. For a pre-October 7th population of 2.3 million, this is nothing.
As the supplies shrink inside Gaza, the prices rise, and your donations increase the prices further. The same applies to all the needs of the population. More money chasing fewer goods. At some point, no amount of money will buy food or medicine in Gaza. Already, Palestinians are dying of starvation, malnutrition and diseases caused by reduced resistance. These are not often reported, because they are not victims of violent slaughter, and because the hospitals, clinics and mortuaries that would have reported them to the Ministry of Health – who would have tallied them – no longer exist. The Ministry of Health barely exists, while the weak die anonymously, buried by their families and communities. Some estimates of such casualties are already in the hundreds of thousands.
It’s not that the relief agencies are not performing a worthwhile service. They are enabling increasingly scarce supplies to reach larger numbers of destitute people while they last. But they will not last, and the relief organizations are unable to bring additional supplies. Furthermore, they are mostly failing to be forthright with you by reporting these facts. Instead, they are projecting an image of success, with the result that you might think that they are maintaining a lifeline when in fact Gaza is heading to complete depletion of the few resources that remain.
This is what Israel intends. If the food is distributed equitably, a large proportion of the population will survive until the day there is nothing left. Then everyone will starve at the same time, and the genocide will be accomplished quickly with the last loaves of bread costing $1000 apiece. And the humanitarian relief organizations will not have warned you.
Paul Larudee is a retired academic and current administrator of a nonprofit human rights and humanitarian aid organization. Read other articles by Paul.
Diamonds and Cold Dust: Slaughter at Nuseirat
The ashes had barely settled on a Rafah tent camp incinerated by an Israeli airstrike before the next, gorged massacre presented itself for posterity’s gloomy archive. It was intended as a golden operation and had been months in the making. The rescue of four Israeli hostages, the killing of three others (bound to happen for the expertly inclined), and the massacre of over 274 Palestinians at the Nuseirat refugee camp were the end result.
The logistics that led to the bloodbath had been rehearsed with detail verging on the manic. Many a vengeful mind was at play. Two buildings were constructed for training purposes. Participants involved the special counter-terrorism unit Yamam, Israel’s internal security agency Shin Bet, and members of the Israeli Defence Forces. An enormous casualty rate would have already been contemplated given the remarks of IDF spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari. “We understood that in those apartments with those guards, daytime will be the ultimate surprise.”
The lies barely have time to fledge. First, the numbers. Hagari could only count “dozens”, and “knew of less than 100”. He conceded to not knowing how many of such a reduced number were civilians. Israel’s Foreign Minister, Israel Katz, was happy to soften the carnage in attacking his country’s detractors. “Only Israel’s enemies complained about the casualties of Hamas terrorists and their accomplices.”
Then came the praise, manifold, effusive. The Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant cooed with satisfaction, calling the effort “one of the most extraordinary operations”. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu merely offered the following morsel: “Israel does not surrender to terrorism.”
Furthermore, no civilian trucks, claimed the IDF, were used in the operation. Yet undercover vehicles were apparently deployed, one very much resembling those used by Israel to traffic commercial goods into Gaza; another being a white Mercedes truck packed and stacked with furniture and miscellaneous belongings typical of the dislocated and dispossessed. Disgorged from the latter, Palestinian eye-witness accounts noted men in plainclothes and some 10 heavily armed soldiers ready for mischief. The commencement of firing signalled the start of the butchery.
The UN Special Rapporteur of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, was certain. The IDF, she stated with exasperation, had “perfidiously” hidden “in an aid truck”. This constituted “‘humanitarian camouflage’ at another level.” While expressing relief at the rescue of four hostages, the enterprise “should not have come at the expense of at least 200 Palestinians, including children, killed and over 400 injured by Israel and allegedly foreign soldiers”.
In time, it became clear that the mission, venerated for its secrecy and praised for its planning, had not caught the Hamas guards responsible for three male hostages by surprise. They duly engaged the Yamam operatives. “Immediately, it became a war zone,” reservist brigadier general Amir Avivi told The Washington Post. The Israeli air force commenced indulgent fire. Death reigned at Nuseirat for some 75 minutes, concealed by the now standard refrain by the IDF: “Aircraft struck dozens of military targets for the success of the operation.”
Other, more tormented descriptions seemed closer to the mark. The Intercept noted the observations of a Palestinian witness by the name of Suhail Mutlaq Abu Nasser. “The area turned to ashes… I couldn’t find my wife and started calling out to those around me to ensure they were still alive.” The account goes on to document the use of armed quadcopter drones, the presence of tank tracks, the hovering of Apache attack helicopters, the targeting of homes by missiles. Camp resident Anas Alayyan was also convinced that the entire military operation by Israeli forces did not fall short of a mass execution.
There is a pattern here, a murderous ratio justified by that most elastic yet horrific of reasons: self-defence. The hostage rescue will go down a treat in Israel. The names of those captured by Hamas on October 7 will be anointed in Israeli mythology: Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov, Shlomi Ziv. But at what cost to those around them?
In addition to the slaughter, some indication of the aftermath is provided by Al Jazeera. “The wounded were taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah, an already overwhelmed facility.” Medics are found to be in utter despair.
The scale of killing on this score also raises troubling issues with Israel’s closest ally. Despite some political grumbling in the ranks, the Biden administration remains steadfast in support. The deaths in Rafah were still excusable because, in the words of US State Department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, Israel had not engaged in “a military operation on the scale of those previous operations [in Khan Younis and in Gaza City].”
The hefty death toll of Palestinian civilians in the Nuseirat operation was of lesser concern to President Joe Biden than the welfare of Israeli hostages. Speaking in Paris, Biden welcomed “the safe rescue of four hostages that were returned to their families in Israel. We won’t stop working until all the hostages come home and a ceasefire is reached.”
The sanguinary episode at Nuseirat is hard to stomach, even by Biden’s rubbery standards. It stands to reason. The entire operation had the buttressing of what the New York Times reported to be “intelligence and other logistical support” from the United States. Two Israeli intelligence officials also confirmed that “American military officials in Israel provided some of the intelligence about the hostages rescued Saturday.” And let us not forget murderous military hardware, readily supplied from US defence companies. It follows that the lives of Israeli hostages, dubbed “diamonds” by their rescuers, are invaluable, the precious stones of Israeli-US policy. The Palestinians, on the other hand, are mere coal dust.
The Day the West Defined “Success” as a Massacre of 270 Palestinians
Israelis dance in the streets, the White House hails a ‘daring’ operation, Rishi Sunak expresses relief. How carnage in Gaza has become the new normal
Israel hasn’t just crossed the Biden administration’s pretend “red lines” in Gaza. With its massacre at Nuseirat refugee camp at the weekend, Israel drove a bulldozer through them.
On Saturday, an Israeli military operation to free four Israelis held captive by Hamas since its 7 October attack on Israel resulted in the killing of more than 270 Palestinians, many of them women and children.
The true death toll may never be known. Untold numbers of men, women and children are still under rubble from the bombardment, crushed to death, or trapped and suffocating, or expiring slowly from dehydration if they cannot be dug out in time.
Many hundreds more are suffering agonising injuries – should their wounds not kill them – in a situation where there are almost no medical facilities left after Israel’s destruction of hospitals and its mass kidnap of Palestinian medical personnel. Further, there are no drugs to treat the victims, given Israel’s months-long imposition of an aid blockade.
Israelis and American Jewish organisations – so ready to judge Palestinians for cheering attacks on Israel – celebrated the carnage caused in freeing the Israeli captives, who could have returned home months ago had Israel been ready to agree on a ceasefire.
Videos even show Israelis dancing in the street.
According to reports, the bloody Israeli operation in central Gaza may have killed three other captives, one of them possibly an American citizen.
In comments to the Haaretz newspaper published on Sunday, Louis Har, a hostage freed back in February, observed of his own captivity: “Our greatest fear was the IDF’s planes and the concern that they would bomb the building we were in.”
He added: “We weren’t worried that they’d [referring to Hamas] do something to us all of a sudden. We didn’t object to anything. So I wasn’t afraid they’d kill me.”
The Israeli media reported Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant describing Saturday’s operation as “one of the most heroic and extraordinary operations I have witnessed over the course of 47 years serving in Israel’s defence establishment”.
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court is currently seeking an arrest warrant for Gallant, as well as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The charges include efforts to exterminate the people of Gaza through planned starvation.
Israel has been wrecking the established laws of war with abandon for more than eight months.
At least 37,000 Palestinians are known to have been killed so far in Gaza, though Palestinian officials lost the ability to properly count the dead many weeks ago following Israel’s relentless destruction of the enclave’s institutions and infrastructure.
Israel has additionally engineered a famine that, mostly out of view, is gradually starving Gaza’s population to death.
The International Court of Justice put Israel on trial for genocide back in January. Last month, it ordered an immediate halt to Israel’s attack on Gaza’s southern city of Rafah. Israel has responded to both judgments by intensifying its killing spree.
In a further indication of Israel’s sense of impunity, the rescue operation on Saturday involved yet another flagrant war crime.
Israel used a humanitarian aid truck – supposedly bringing relief to Gaza’s desperate population – as cover for its military operation. In international law, that is known as the crime of perfidy.
For months, Israel has been blocking aid to Gaza – part of its efforts to starve the population. It has also targeted aid workers, killing more than 250 of them since October.
But more specifically, Israel is waging a war on Unrwa, claiming without evidence that the UN’s main aid agency in Gaza is implicated in Hamas “terror” operations. It wants the UN, the international community’s last lifeline in Gaza against Israel’s wanton savagery, permanently gone.
By hiding its own soldiers in an aid truck, Israel made a mockery of its supposed “terrorism concerns” by doing exactly what it accuses Hamas of.
But Israel’s military action also dragged the aid effort – the only way to end Gaza’s famine – into the centre of the battlefield. Now Hamas has every reason to fear that aid workers are not what they seem; that they are really instruments of Israeli state terrorism.
In the circumstances, one might have assumed the Biden administration would be quick to condemn Israel’s actions and distance itself from the massacre.
Instead, Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, was keen to take credit for the mass carnage – or what he termed a “daring operation”.
He admitted in an interview on Sunday that the US had offered assistance in the rescue operation, though he refused to clarify how. Other reports noted a supporting British role, too.
“The United States has been providing support to Israel for several months in its efforts to help identify the locations of hostages in Gaza and to support efforts to try to secure their rescue or recovery,” Sullivan told CNN.
Sullivan’s comments fuelled existing suspicions that such assistance extends far beyond providing intelligence and a steady supply of the bombs Israel has dropped on the tiny Gaza enclave over the past few months – more than the total that hit London, Dresden and Hamburg combined during the Second World War.
A Biden official disclosed to the Axios website that US soldiers belonging to a so-called American hostages unit had participated in the rescue operation that massacred Palestinian civilians.
Additionally, footage shows Washington’s floating pier as the backdrop for helicopters involved in the attack.
The pier was ostensibly built off Gaza’s coast at huge cost – some $320m – and over two months to bypass Israel’s blocking of aid by land.
Observers argued at the time that it was not only an extraordinarily impractical and inefficient way to deliver aid but that there were likely to be hidden, nefarious motives behind its construction.
Its location, at the midpoint of Gaza’s coast, has bolstered Israel’s severing of the enclave into two, creating a land corridor that has effectively become a new border and from which Israel can launch raids into central Gaza like Saturday’s.
Those critics appear to have been proven right. The pier has barely functioned as an aid route since the first deliveries arrived in mid-May.
The pier soon broke apart, and its repair and return to operation was only announced on Friday.
Now the fact that it appears to have been pressed into immediate use as a beachhead for an operation that killed at least 270 Palestinians drags Washington even deeper into complicity with what the World Court has called a “plausible genocide”.
But like the use of the aid truck, it also means the Biden administration is joining Israel once again – after pulling its funding to Unrwa – in directly discrediting the aid operation in Gaza when it is needed most urgently.
That was the context for understanding the World Food Programme’s announcement on Sunday that it was halting the use of the pier for aid deliveries, citing “safety” concerns.
As ever, for western media and politicians – who have stood firmly against a ceasefire that could have brought the suffering of the Israeli captives and their families to an end months ago – Palestinian lives are quite literally worthless.
The German Chancellor Olaf Scholz thought it appropriate to describe the killing of 270-plus Palestinians in the freeing of the four Israelis as an “important sign of hope”, while the British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak expressed his “huge relief”. The appalling death toll went unmentioned.
Imagine describing in similarly positive terms an operation by Hamas that killed 270 Israelis to liberate a handful of the many hundreds of medical personnel kidnapped from Gaza by Israel in recent months and known to be held in a torture facility.
The London Times, meanwhile, breezily erased Saturday’s massacre of Palestinians by characterising the operation as a “surgical strike”.
Media outlets uniformly hailed the operation as a “success” and “daring”, as though the killing and maiming of around 1,000 Palestinians – and the serial war crimes Israel committed in the process – need not be factored in.
BBC News’ main report on Saturday night breathlessly focused on the celebrations of the families of the freed captives, treating the massacre of Palestinians as an afterthought. The programme stressed that the death toll was “disputed” – though not mentioning that, as ever, it was Israel doing the disputing.
The reality is that the savage “rescue” operation would have been entirely unnecessary had Netanyahu not been so determined to drag his feet on negotiating the captives’ release, and thereby avoid jail on corruption charges, and the US so fully indulgent of his procrastination.
It will also be very difficult to repeat such an operation, as Haaretz’s military correspondent Amos Harel noted at the weekend. Hamas will learn lessons, guarding the remaining captives even more closely, most likely underground in its tunnels.
The remaining captives’ return will “probably occur only as part of a deal that will require significant concessions”, he concluded.
Benny Gantz, the politician-general who helped oversee Israel’s eight-month slaughter in Gaza inside Netanyahu’s war cabinet and is widely described as a “moderate” in the West, resigned from the government on Sunday.
Although ostensibly the dispute is over how Israel will extricate itself from Gaza over the coming months, the more likely explanation is that Gantz wishes both to distance himself from Netanyahu as the Israeli prime minister faces possible arrest for crimes against humanity and to prepare for elections to take his place.
The Pentagon and the Biden administration see Gantz as their man. Having him out of the government may give them additional leverage over Netanyahu in the run-up to a US presidential election in November in which Donald Trump will be actively trying to cosy up to the Israeli prime minister.
The focus on Israeli politicking – rather than US complicity in the Nuseirat massacre – will doubtless provide a welcome distraction, too, as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken tours the region. He will once again wish to be seen rallying support for a ceasefire plan that is supposed to see the Israeli captives released – a plan Netanyahu will be determined, once again, to stymie.
Blinken’s efforts are likely to be even more hopeless in the immediate wake of the Biden administration’s all-too-visible involvement in the killing of hundreds of Palestinians.
Washington’s claim to be an “honest broker” looks to everyone – apart from the reliably obedient western political and media class – as even more derisory than usual.
The real question is whether Blinken’s serial diplomatic failures in ending the slaughter in Gaza are a bug or a feature.
The stark contradiction in Washington’s position towards Gaza was exposed last week during a press conference with State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.
He suggested that the aim of Israel and the US was to persuade Hamas to dissolve itself – presumably by some form of surrender – in return for a ceasefire. The group had an incentive to do so, said Miller, “because they don’t want to see continued conflict, continued Palestinian people dying. They don’t want to see war in Gaza.”
Even the usually compliant western press corps were taken aback by Miller’s implication that a crime against humanity – the mass killing of Palestinians, such as took place at Nuseirat camp on Saturday – was viewed in Washington as leverage to be exercised over Hamas.
But more likely, the seeming contradiction was simply symptomatic of the logical entanglements resulting from Washington’s efforts to deflect from the real goal: buying Israel more time to do what it is so well advanced doing already.
Israel needs to finish pulverising Gaza, making it permanently uninhabitable, so that the population will be faced with a stark dilemma: remain and die, or leave by any means possible.
The same US “humanitarian pier” that was pressed into service for Saturday’s massacre may soon be the “humanitarian pier” that serves as the exit through which Gaza’s Palestinians are ethnically cleansed, shipped out of a death zone engineered by Israel.
• First published in Middle East Eye
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