Monday, May 06, 2024


Nearly 35,000 Palestinians dead as Gaza faces dueling famine, sanitation crises

By Adam Schrader


An Israeli soldier (L) and a security guard keep track of trucks of humanitarian aid arriving from the Ashdod port to the Erez Crossing checkpoint before entering to the northern Gaza Strip on Sunday.
 Photo by Jim Hollander/UPI | License Photo



May 5 (UPI) -- Nearly 35,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since October 7, the Gaza Health Ministry said Sunday, as Palestinians face dueling famine and sanitation crises because of Israel's actions amid the war.

"As thousands of tons of waste pile up across the Gaza Strip, concerns over hygiene and sanitation are increasing," the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees said in a statement Sunday

"With critical machinery damaged and access to landfills repeatedly denied, UNRWA sanitation teams do all they can to avert diseases spreading -- but we need more access."

The agency said that as much as 40,000 tons of waste has piled up in the city of Jabalia in northern Gaza alone with accompanying video footage that makes the community look like a landfill.

"As we move into summer, concerns over hygiene and sanitation are increasing," the UNRWA said. "Mosquitos, flies, mice and rats are spreading - and so are diseases."

Medecins Sans Frontiers, the aid organization known in English as Doctors Without Borders, similarly noted last week that Israel has been an obstacle to providing aid to wounded civilians by blocking, delaying and restricting essential supplies.

For example, an oxygen concentrator -- used to treat the likes of malnourished children, people with severe blood loss and newborns with breathing difficulties -- has not been allowed into any hospitals in Gaza.

"Israeli authorities are maintaining full control over the entry and exit points into Gaza, they have repeatedly refused MSF's requests to bring biomedical equipment such as an oxygen concentrator," Doctors Without Borders said. "When a request has been approved, interminable inspection processes at the border have had the same result."

The aid organization wrote an analysis of the "opaque" inspections and the full process for how materials enter Gaza from Egypt's Al-Arish airport, arguing that there is no clarity or consistency to what is allowed into the Palestinian territory.

"Before the current war, an estimated 500 truckloads of supplies entered Gaza every day," Doctors Without Borders said, noting that air drops and sea corridors are not a sufficient substitute to land routes. "By February 2024, this had reportedly dropped to below 100 truckloads per day."

Meanwhile, the World Food Program has called the catastrophic famine in Gaza a "dark mark" on the world while similarly blasting Israel.

"Children crying out from hunger and dying of malnutrition. People risking gunfire to reach aid convoys, and surviving on animal fodder and soup made from leaves and grass," the organization said in a statement. "Levels of hopelessness and food insecurity that could turn a humanitarian catastrophe into something much worse."

The World Food Program said that an estimated 300,000 people in northern Gaza alone are facing catastrophic famine in the coming weeks. About 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza are experiencing catastrophic hunger.

"It's frustrating. We need a tsunami of aid, not a trickle," Matthew Hollingworth, an executive in the aid organization, said. "But at this point any effort to bring in more assistance is welcome. Because the level of need is so great, we need approvals to provide massive and nonstop deliveries."

And the West Bank is also feeling fallout from war with many going hungry in the Palestinian territory, Hollingworth said.

"Laughter is not something you hear in Gaza these days," he said. "You hear shellfire and mortar fire, rocket fire and small arms fire. You hear people crying. You see them crying."


Netanyahu uses Holocaust ceremony to brush off international pressure against Gaza offensive


People visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem, Sunday, May 5, 2024. The annual Israeli memorial day for the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust of World War II begins at sundown on Sunday. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Israeli students watch a virtual tour of the concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau at the Testimony House, a Holocaust museum in Nir Galim, Israel, on the eve of Israel’s annual Holocaust Remembrance Day, Sunday, May 5, 2024. Israel holds the day of remembrance each year to remember the six million Jewish victims of the Nazi genocide during World War II. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)



People visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem, Sunday, May 5, 2024. The annual Israeli memorial day for the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust of World War II begins at sundown Sunday. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)


People visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem, Sunday, May 5, 2024. The annual Israeli memorial day for the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust of World War II begins at sundown Sunday. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)


Israeli students listen to a lecture at the Testimony House, a Holocaust museum in Nir Galim, Israel, on the eve of Israel’s annual Holocaust Remembrance Day, Sunday, May 5, 2024. Israel holds the day of remembrance each year to remember the six million Jewish victims of the Nazi genocide during World War II. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

BY MELANIE LIDMAN
Updated 1:19 PM MDT, May 5, 2024Share


JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday rejected international pressure to halt the war in Gaza in a fiery speech marking the country’s annual Holocaust memorial day, declaring: “If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone.”

The message, delivered in a setting that typically avoids politics, was aimed at the growing chorus of world leaders who have criticized the heavy toll caused by Israel’s military offensive against Hamas militants and have urged the sides to agree to a cease-fire.

Netanyahu has said he is open to a deal that would pause nearly seven months of fighting and bring home hostages held by Hamas. But he also says he remains committed to an invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, despite widespread international opposition because of the more than 1 million civilians huddled there.

“I say to the leaders of the world: No amount of pressure, no decision by any international forum will stop Israel from defending itself,” he said, speaking in English. “Never again is now.”

Yom Hashoah, the day Israel observes as a memorial for the 6 million Jews killed by Nazi Germany and its allies in the Holocaust, is one of the most solemn dates on the country’s calendar. Speeches at the ceremony generally avoid politics, though Netanyahu in recent years has used the occasion to lash out at Israel’s archenemy Iran.

The ceremony ushered in Israel’s first Holocaust remembrance day since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that sparked the war, imbuing the already somber day with additional meaning.

Hamas militants killed some 1,200 people in the attack, making it the deadliest violence against Jews since the Holocaust.

Israel responded with an air and ground offensive in Gaza, where the death toll has soared to more than 34,500 people, according to local health officials, and about 80% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are displaced. The death and destruction has prompted South Africa to file a genocide case against Israel in the U.N.’s world court. Israel strongly rejects the charges.

On Sunday, Netanyahu attacked those accusing Israel of carrying out a genocide against the Palestinians, claiming that Israel was doing everything possible to ensure the entry of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.

The 24-hour memorial period began after sundown on Sunday with a ceremony at Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust memorial, in Jerusalem.

There are approximately 245,000 living Holocaust survivors around the world, according to the Claims Conference, an organization that negotiates for material compensation for Holocaust survivors. Approximately half of the survivors live in Israel.

On Sunday, Tel Aviv University and the Anti-Defamation League released an annual Antisemitism Worldwide Report for 2023, which found a sharp increase in antisemitic attacks globally.

It said the number of antisemitic incidents in the United States doubled, from 3,697 in 2022 to 7,523 in 2023.

While most of these incidents occurred after the war erupted in October, the number of antisemitic incidents, which include vandalism, harassment, assault, and bomb threats, from January to September was already significantly higher than the previous year.

The report found an average of three bomb threats per day at synagogues and Jewish institutions in the U.S., more than 10 times the number in 2022.

Other countries tracked similar rises in antisemitic incidents. In France, the number nearly quadrupled, from 436 in 2022 to 1,676 in 2023, while it more than doubled in the United Kingdom and Canada.

“In the aftermath of the October 7 war crimes committed by Hamas, the world has seen the worst wave of antisemitic incidents since the end of the Second World War,” the report stated.

Netanyahu also compared the recent wave of protests on American campuses to German universities in the 1930s, in the runup to the Holocaust. He condemned the “explosion of a volcano of antisemitism spitting out boiling lava of lies against us around the world.”

Nearly 2,500 students have been arrested in a wave of protests at U.S. college campuses, while there have been smaller protests in other countries, including France. Protesters reject antisemitism accusations and say they are criticizing Israel. Campuses and the federal government are struggling to define exactly where political speech crosses into antisemitism.

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