When Israel began its war on Gaza, it initially felt pressure to deny responsibility for attacks on hospitals and refugee camps. A year of unflinching support from the US has convinced Benjamin Netanyahu that he no longer has any such need to pretend.
By Seraj Assi
October 16, 2024
Source: Jacobin
Israelis bombed a refugee camp at Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza on October 13, 2024, causing a massive fire that killed multiple people by burning them alive. (Photo from Tasnim News Agency)
Eleven days ago, Israel began a bombing campaign targeting the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, which has been home to over one hundred thousand Palestinians. Footage that Israeli soldiers — seemingly proud of the destruction they have wrought — have shared online shows the scale of the horror, which has claimed the lives of over three hundred Gazans.
Bodies remain on the streets and Israel’s bombardment of every hospital in Gaza has left the wounded with little chance of survival. Palestinians who have survived the onslaught are being forcibly displaced; starvation and diseases, caused by Israel’s refusal to allow aid to enter the area since October 1, have become rampant.
For two weeks, Israel has effectively besieged northern Gaza, sealing it from Gaza City with a land, sea, and air blockade while Israel Defense Forces (IDF) armored vehicles, loaded with tons of explosives, have detonated entire homes and buildings where defenseless civilians are taking shelter.
“People in Jabalia are killed — both in groups, and one by one,” according to the testimony of a UN observer. Others have described the Israeli assault as a “death march.” Thousands have fled the camp since the bombing began, but with few places to go, people in the camp, fearing that death awaits them, have taken to sharing their final messages on social media.
“Enemy tanks are less than 700 meters away from us. The artillery is shelling us and the quadcopters are controlling the movement of people and firing at us. We are literally living our final moments, O Allah, grant us a good end,” Hossam Shabat, one of Gaza’s few surviving journalists, pleaded on Sunday.
On Israeli social media, videos and images of IDF soldiers celebrating the destruction are commonplace. In one, a soldier boasts that “WE WILL LEAVE THEM NOTHING” as a camera pans over the rubble of homes and shops before stopping at a digger in the midst of crushing an abandoned motorcycle, presumably owned by a Palestinian whose fate is unknown. In a statement on Saturday, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu cheered: “Our brave soldiers are now in the heart of Jabalia, where they are dismantling the Hamas strongholds.” Acting with impunity, IDF “heroes” filmed themselves rifling through wardrobes of slain Palestinian children in Jabalia, while jesting: “The pink is better on you.” Meanwhile, Maariv, a Hebrew-language daily newspaper in Israel, has published articles admitting that the invasion of northern Gaza is not meant to dismantle Hamas but to destroy Palestinians or expel them from the strip.
This is not the first Israeli campaign to wipe out Jabalia. Last June, Israeli forces invaded the camp, subjected it to relentless bombardment and ground assaults, laid a siege over the camp’s starving refugee population, and destroyed thousands of homes and water wells, leaving the camp in total ruins. Hundreds of bodies were later uncovered in mass graves across the ravaged camp.
Jabalia, created in the wake of the Nakba, the forced expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians following the founding of the state of Israel, is Gaza’s first and largest refugee camp and the birthplace of the first mass uprising, or First Intifada, against Israel in 1987. The camp, a narrow sliver of land barely 1.4 square kilometers, is also the most densely populated refugee camp on earth. Owing to Israel’s relentless bombardment and forced displacement, the camp’s population has dwindled from 120,000 to 60,000 Palestinians since last October.
But Jabalia has not been alone in suffering at the hands of Israel’s indiscriminate bombing campaign. On Saturday, the IDF bombed the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, killing a family of eight — parents and their six children — whose bodies were laid on the floor wrapped in black-and-white plastic bags. On Sunday, Israel carried out a horrific massacre of children near Ghaben Café in the Al-Shati camp west of Gaza City, leaving behind a bloodbath of dead and wounded. Grieving Palestinians held a mass funeral for the five children massacred in the Israeli drone outside of the café in the Al-Shati camp. Heartbreaking footage shows a grief-stricken Palestinian father pleading with his slain child to “wake up.”
In another brutal children’s massacre on Sunday, Israeli forces pounded a UN school sheltering displaced families in Nuseirat camp, killing over twenty people, including at least fifteen women and children. The area had been designated as a “safe humanitarian zone” by Israel.
Overnight, in yet another tent massacre, Israeli forces bombed tents of displaced people sheltering inside the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, burning families and children alive while they were sleeping. In videos, the wails of Palestinians, adults and children, can be heard as they burn. “This is not a massacre, but a holocaust,” in the words of one Palestinian.
This last attack on civilian infrastructure comes a year after Israel bombed the Al-Ahli Hospital. At the time, Israel’s actions so shocked observers that Netanyahu felt obliged to fabricate lies about misfired Hamas rockets. But since that attack, Israel has gone on to bomb many more hospitals, free from compunction or the need to conjure up excuses and emboldened by the United States’ unconditional support. But with every killing, Israel not only claims the lives of Palestinians but degrades, perhaps irrevocably, the whole idea of international law, normalizing horrors that the whole edifice of human rights was erected to oppose.
Seraj Assi is a Palestinian writer living in Washington, DC, and the author, most recently, of My Life As An Alien (Tartarus Press).
Israelis bombed a refugee camp at Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza on October 13, 2024, causing a massive fire that killed multiple people by burning them alive. (Photo from Tasnim News Agency)
Eleven days ago, Israel began a bombing campaign targeting the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, which has been home to over one hundred thousand Palestinians. Footage that Israeli soldiers — seemingly proud of the destruction they have wrought — have shared online shows the scale of the horror, which has claimed the lives of over three hundred Gazans.
Bodies remain on the streets and Israel’s bombardment of every hospital in Gaza has left the wounded with little chance of survival. Palestinians who have survived the onslaught are being forcibly displaced; starvation and diseases, caused by Israel’s refusal to allow aid to enter the area since October 1, have become rampant.
For two weeks, Israel has effectively besieged northern Gaza, sealing it from Gaza City with a land, sea, and air blockade while Israel Defense Forces (IDF) armored vehicles, loaded with tons of explosives, have detonated entire homes and buildings where defenseless civilians are taking shelter.
“People in Jabalia are killed — both in groups, and one by one,” according to the testimony of a UN observer. Others have described the Israeli assault as a “death march.” Thousands have fled the camp since the bombing began, but with few places to go, people in the camp, fearing that death awaits them, have taken to sharing their final messages on social media.
“Enemy tanks are less than 700 meters away from us. The artillery is shelling us and the quadcopters are controlling the movement of people and firing at us. We are literally living our final moments, O Allah, grant us a good end,” Hossam Shabat, one of Gaza’s few surviving journalists, pleaded on Sunday.
On Israeli social media, videos and images of IDF soldiers celebrating the destruction are commonplace. In one, a soldier boasts that “WE WILL LEAVE THEM NOTHING” as a camera pans over the rubble of homes and shops before stopping at a digger in the midst of crushing an abandoned motorcycle, presumably owned by a Palestinian whose fate is unknown. In a statement on Saturday, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu cheered: “Our brave soldiers are now in the heart of Jabalia, where they are dismantling the Hamas strongholds.” Acting with impunity, IDF “heroes” filmed themselves rifling through wardrobes of slain Palestinian children in Jabalia, while jesting: “The pink is better on you.” Meanwhile, Maariv, a Hebrew-language daily newspaper in Israel, has published articles admitting that the invasion of northern Gaza is not meant to dismantle Hamas but to destroy Palestinians or expel them from the strip.
This is not the first Israeli campaign to wipe out Jabalia. Last June, Israeli forces invaded the camp, subjected it to relentless bombardment and ground assaults, laid a siege over the camp’s starving refugee population, and destroyed thousands of homes and water wells, leaving the camp in total ruins. Hundreds of bodies were later uncovered in mass graves across the ravaged camp.
Jabalia, created in the wake of the Nakba, the forced expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians following the founding of the state of Israel, is Gaza’s first and largest refugee camp and the birthplace of the first mass uprising, or First Intifada, against Israel in 1987. The camp, a narrow sliver of land barely 1.4 square kilometers, is also the most densely populated refugee camp on earth. Owing to Israel’s relentless bombardment and forced displacement, the camp’s population has dwindled from 120,000 to 60,000 Palestinians since last October.
But Jabalia has not been alone in suffering at the hands of Israel’s indiscriminate bombing campaign. On Saturday, the IDF bombed the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, killing a family of eight — parents and their six children — whose bodies were laid on the floor wrapped in black-and-white plastic bags. On Sunday, Israel carried out a horrific massacre of children near Ghaben Café in the Al-Shati camp west of Gaza City, leaving behind a bloodbath of dead and wounded. Grieving Palestinians held a mass funeral for the five children massacred in the Israeli drone outside of the café in the Al-Shati camp. Heartbreaking footage shows a grief-stricken Palestinian father pleading with his slain child to “wake up.”
In another brutal children’s massacre on Sunday, Israeli forces pounded a UN school sheltering displaced families in Nuseirat camp, killing over twenty people, including at least fifteen women and children. The area had been designated as a “safe humanitarian zone” by Israel.
Overnight, in yet another tent massacre, Israeli forces bombed tents of displaced people sheltering inside the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, burning families and children alive while they were sleeping. In videos, the wails of Palestinians, adults and children, can be heard as they burn. “This is not a massacre, but a holocaust,” in the words of one Palestinian.
This last attack on civilian infrastructure comes a year after Israel bombed the Al-Ahli Hospital. At the time, Israel’s actions so shocked observers that Netanyahu felt obliged to fabricate lies about misfired Hamas rockets. But since that attack, Israel has gone on to bomb many more hospitals, free from compunction or the need to conjure up excuses and emboldened by the United States’ unconditional support. But with every killing, Israel not only claims the lives of Palestinians but degrades, perhaps irrevocably, the whole idea of international law, normalizing horrors that the whole edifice of human rights was erected to oppose.
Seraj Assi is a Palestinian writer living in Washington, DC, and the author, most recently, of My Life As An Alien (Tartarus Press).
