“Looking forward to the contortions of people whose paychecks are dependent on denying that any of this is the case,” said one observer.
The bodies of victims of an October 31, 2023 Israeli bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip are lined up outside the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza City.
(Photo by Fadi Alwhidi/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Brett Wilkins
Sep 12, 2025
COMMON DREAMS
Belying persistent efforts by Israel and its defenders to deny the staggering number of Palestinians killed during the 23-month Gaza genocide, the general who led the Israel Defense Forces during most of the war acknowledged this week that around 220,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded.
Former Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi—who stepped down in March after leading the IDF since January 2023—told residents of Ein Habor in southern Israel earlier this week that “over 10%” of Gaza’s population of approximately 2.2 million “were killed or injured” since October 2023.
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Classified IDF Intel Reveals 83% of Palestinians Killed in Gaza Are Civilians
“This is not a gentle war, we took the gloves off from the first minute” Halevi said, adding that “not once” has any legal authority “limited” his wartime conduct
Following the October 7 attack, the IDF dramatically loosened its rules of engagement, effectively allowing an unlimited number of civilians to be killed when targeting a single Hamas member, no matter how low-ranking.
The IDF’s use of massive ordnance, including US-supplied 1,000- and 2,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs capable of leveling entire city blocks, and utilization of artificial intelligence to select targets has resulted in staggering numbers of civilian deaths, including numerous instances of dozens or more people being massacred in single strikes.
Halevi insisted that “we are doing everything in accordance with international law.”
The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague disagrees, having issued warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes including forced starvation and murder. Israel’s conduct in the war is also the subject of an International Court of Justice (ICJ) genocide case filed by South Africa and supported by around two dozen nations.
Halevi’s admission tracks with official Gaza Health Ministry figures showing at least 228,815 people killed or wounded by Israeli forces in Gaza. GHM also says that around 9,000 people are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble. Experts—including the authors of multiple peer-reviewed studies in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet—assert that the actual death toll in Gaza is much higher than reported.
The remarks by Halevi come less than a month after a joint investigation by Israeli journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham of +972 Magazine and Local Call and Guardian senior international affairs correspondent Emma Graham-Harrison revealed that, as of May, 5 in 6 Palestinians—or 83%—killed by the IDF through the first 19 months of the war were civilians. The report, which drew from classified IDF intelligence data, blew the lid off of Israeli government claims of a historically low civilian-to-combatant kill ratio.
Responding to Halevi’s admission, Drop Site News national security and foreign affairs reporter Murtaza Hussain said on social media that he is “looking forward to the contortions of people whose paychecks are dependent on denying that any of this is the case.”
Israeli officials and media, along with their supportive US counterparts during both the Biden and Trump administrations, have generally cast doubt or outright denied GHM figures—which have been found to be reliable by the IDF, US officials, and researchers—by linking them to Hamas. This comes in addition to widespread Israeli and US denials of Israel’s forced famine and starvation deaths and IDF war crimes in Gaza.
However, there have been rare instances of frankness, including when Barbara Leaf, a senior State Department official during the Biden administration, said that Gaza casualties could be “even higher than are being cited.” Biden-era State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller also admitted that the Gaza death toll “could very well be more” than GHM reported, even as he lied to the public about who was thwarting ceasefire efforts.
Indian Left Decries BJP Govt for Hosting Israeli Minister
Union Minister for Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal with Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. Photo: X
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) and several other Opposition groups, intellectuals, and activists condemned the Indian government for hosting Israel’s ultra-right-wing leader and finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich.
The CPI (M) and others demanded that India instead cut all ties with Israel. They reminded the Indian government that it has been the country’s foreign policy legacy to oppose occupation and support anti-colonial movements, such as the Palestinian struggle.
Smotrich was in India for a three-day visit. During his stay in India, he met several top officials and signed several deals, including a bilateral investment agreement with his Indian counterpart, Nirmala Sitharaman, on Monday, September 8.
Smotrich, a leader of the violent and racist settlement movement in the occupied West Bank, has been one of the main backers of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza and a key obstacle to ceasefire negotiations. He, along with Israel’s national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir, have been pushing for the mass starvation of the Palestinians in Gaza to force them out of the besieged territory for Israel’s annexation of it.
Smotrich and Ben Gvir have been banned by several countries from visiting for their incitement of violence against Palestinian citizens, including in West Bank settlements. Some of the countries which have imposed such bans and sanctions against Smotrich include the UK, New Zealand, Norway, and Canada.
According to reports, there is an arrest warrant pending against Smotrich and Ben-Gvir at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for their support and promotion of apartheid policies in the occupied territories.
Talking to the Indian press on Monday, Smotrich praised the Indian government, claiming that his government values relations with India as it is “a growing economic powerhouse, and cooperation with it provides “tremendous opportunity for the state of Israel”. He also tried to justify the war and genocide in Gaza calling it a fight against terrorism.
However, India’s political opposition and progressive sections rejected Smotrich’s claims, arguing that cooperation between the zionist regime in Israel and India’s right-wing government is shameful and humiliating for the people in the country who have always stood for the rights of the Palestinian people.
Architect of genocide in Gaza
“Smotrich belongs to a far right racist party who is the leading advocate in the Netanyahu government for occupying the Gaza strip by forcibly displacing the Palestinian people. He is also a prime mover of proposals to annex the occupied West Bank,” CPI (M) said in a statement on Tuesday.
“It is shameful that the [Narendra] Modi government has hosted such a person and signed agreements with the Israeli government at a time when the people of Gaza are being massacred every day. This episode highlights the deep and entrenched ties that the Modi government has forged with the Netanyahu government, and its complicity in the ongoing horrific genocide in Gaza,” the statement further reads.
Reacting to Smotrich’s visit to India, chief minister of India’s southern state of Kerala Pinarayi Vijayan said that “at a time when genocide is unfolding in Gaza, entering into agreements with representatives of Netanyahu regime is nothing short of a betrayal of India’s historic solidarity with Palestine.”
Contrary to India’s long-term support of the Palestinian cause, the ultra-right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has adopted a pro-Israel policy since coming to power in 2014.
It has abstained on various resolutions in the UN demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, has signed agreements to supply labor to replace Palestinian workers from the occupied territories, and tried to curb the pro-Palestinian mobilizations in India by filing cases against demonstrators.
Vijayan described Smotrich as a “chief architect of Israel’s brutal occupation and expansionist agenda” and called it “deplorable” that India “maintains military, security, and economic ties with Israel while the path to a just and lasting peace for Palestinians remains unpursued.”
Several academics and journalists also took to social media to condemn Smotrich’s visit to India. People questioned the BJP government’s intentions behind inviting Smotrich at the time when Israel is calling for the expansion of the occupation.
Some of the activists argued that the growing closeness between Israel and India is a reflection of ideological parity between the BJP’s Hindu supremacism and the Jewish-only vision of an Israeli state.
Courtesy: Peoples Dispatch
COMMENT
‘Pure cinema’ — Gen Z can’t believe Pakistan’s UN ambassador told Israel it has no friends
Images Staff
13 Sep, 2025
DAWN
Make way for Ambassador Asim Iftikhar, Pakistan’s permanent representative to the United Nations, who has become a hero to Pakistanis online after delivering a cool but devastating response to Israeli allegations at a session of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on Thursday. The emergency session, convened at the request of Pakistan and Somalia, saw all 15 members of the UNSC — including the United States — and aggrieved Qatar bash Israel for violating the Gulf state’s sovereignty.
Hoping to score a point amidst all the criticism, Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon called out the double standard of celebrating certain countries acting against terrorists abroad, notably the US killing Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, while admonishing Israel for attacking Hamas leaders in Doha. Ambassador Iftikhar requested the council president to grant him a right to reply and went on to thoroughly thrash Israel for five and a half minutes.
He questioned whether his Israeli counterpart had listened attentively to what was being said in the chamber and remarked it was “ludicrous for an aggressor, an occupier [and] a serial violator of the UN charter and international law, [Israel], to abuse this chamber”. The ambassador lamented that Israel “does not heed to any advice, even from its friends, if it has any left”.
As the ambassador’s words were heard loud and clear in the council and similar statements were made by other delegates, Pakistanis on X were all praises for their representative. Several users, especially Gen Z ones, said they were proud of Pakistan’s stance and how it was delivered.
Netizens celebrated how Pakistan roasted Israel at the UNSC, with one saying we should “forget cricket and hockey, roasting should be our national sport”.
One user, talking about what just happened to the Israeli delegation, said, “there’s beating someone up, there’s dragging someone and then beating them up and then there’s dragging someone a good distance and beating them up after”.
Being the star of the moment, Ambassador Iftikhar received a generous heaping of praise for his words and was bestowed with a couple of titles by netizens.
While the UNSC agreed to censure Israel on Thursday over its attack on Qatar, progress on a ceasefire in Gaza remains elusive as at least 64,368 people have been killed since October 2023 by the Israeli Defence Forces. A resolution calling for an independent Palestinian state was adopted in the UN General Assembly (UNGA) on Friday with the US and Israel being two of 10 countries in opposition to the measure. France and the United Kingdom are also expected to recognise a Palestinian state during this session of the UNGA, which opened on September 9.
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