1/23/2024

we need to keep the pressure on



Israel’s war against Hamas is seeding hate, and a two-state solution is needed, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Monday amid escalating international pressure on Israel to work toward a long-term political road map to peace.

Commenting before a day of intense diplomacy in Brussels — where European foreign ministers are gathering alongside counterparts from Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Arab League — Borrell said he knows that Israel has “a different stand.”

“Which are the other solutions they have in mind?” he asked, referring to the Israelis. “To make all the Palestinians leave? To kill … them?” He added that the current Israeli military operation that has killed 25,000 people in the Gaza Strip is “seeding the hate for generations.”



this is crazy.  and we need to keep the pressure on - worldwide.  that does not, however, mean glorifying donald trump which the idiot susan benjamin (aka medea) has done.  elaine's writing about that.

goldie e-mailed with a question.  she read c.i.'s 'Didn't work' and said, 'how ticked was c.i.?'

very.  this happens all the time.  some 1 tries to hack into her computer and most of the time she laughs it off, sometimes she'll communicate with them.

this time she was pissed and that was for 2 reasons.  1) it was coming from israel so it was some 1 trying to hack because of c.i.'s defense of the palestinian people.  2) she wasn't feeling good.  friday, she could not get warm.  when that happens, she's sick.  on top of that, elaine told me that she and betty had run some errands together and when they got back, c.i. took off a shoe and was about to take off another when betty said to her, 'your foot is bleeding.'  c.i.'s diabetic so that's no minor thing.  she gets on the laptop while she's cleaning it to look at the wound - and is going back and forth when that nonsense of some 1 in israel trying to hack her starts.  she was not in the mood.

not only did she write about it - which she never does.  i would be surprised if she's ever written about it at 'the common ills.'  she's probably written 2 or 3 times about it in the community newsletters.  and this happens dozens of times each year.  she doesn't believe in writing about it and thinks it's navel gazing, etc.

but dealing with that put her behind schedule and she also wanted to hop in the shower because there was blood all over the foot.  the toenail on her big toe was cutting into the skin of the toe next to it, by the way.  why didn't she feel it?  she's got neuropathy due to her diabetes. but, yes, goldie, she was furious.  that person picked the wrong time to mess with c.i.  i asked elaine if she feels bad about the guy's laptop?  i wouldn't.  he tried to hack me, i wouldn't care that i fried his laptop with a virus in response.  but c.i. would.  on this, though?  no guilt.  that's how mad she was.

again, he picked the wrong day to try to hack.  any other day and she would have just put up some blockers and gone to another laptop.  he picked the wrong day. 


let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'


Monday, January 22, 2024.  A milestone in the Gaza death toll, Netanyahu rejects Joe Biden's call, children continue to suffer, and much more.


A little over 100 days ago, the assault on Gaza began and on Sunday, the number killed climbed to over 25,000.  Yesterday, Mark Lowen (BBC NEWS) reported, "More than 25,000 people have now been killed in Gaza during Israel's offensive there, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. It said there had been 178 deaths in the last 24 hours, making it one of the deadliest days in the war so far." Grasp that these deaths have taken place in just a little over 100 days.  That is a massive amount of deaths.  When do world leaders start listening to the people they supposedly represent?  When do we see a cease-fire?  Najib Jobain and Samy Magdy (AP) explain, "The war’s deaths, destruction and displacement are without precedent in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The war has divided Israelis while the offensive threatens to ignite a wider conflict involving Iran-backed groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen that support the Palestinians."  Jason Burke (GUARDIAN) adds:


Most of the casualties were women and children, the ministry said, and thousands more bodies were likely to remain uncounted under rubble across Gaza.

Speaking at a global summit in the Ugandan capital of Kampala, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, denounced Israel’s three-month assault.

“Israel’s military operations have spread mass destruction and killed civilians on a scale unprecedented during my time as secretary general,” Guterres said at the opening of the G77+China, a coalition of 135 developing countries.

“This is heartbreaking and utterly unacceptable. The Middle East is a tinderbox. We must do all we can to prevent conflict from igniting across the region.”


This morning, Clea Caulcutt (POLITICO) reports:

In the hospital ward of the Dixmude, a French helicopter carrier turned hospital ship that was dispatched in November to assist overstretched Gaza hospitals, there’s a whiteboard with the ages and injuries of the incoming patients. Girl, 2 years old, skull injury, infected. Boy, 4 years old, burns to the front.
Half the patients treated on the vessel are children. 

Only a trickle of patients and their relatives, a couple of dozens every day, are let through at the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, where they are screened by Israeli, Palestinian and Egyptian authorities. Only men who have suffered severe and life-changing injuries are allowed out. 

Yazan is one of the few Palestinians who have been able to evacuate after suffering injuries in Israel’s bombing campaign launched after Hamas’ attacks against Israel on October 7. After weeks lying on a stretcher in overcrowded hospitals, Yazan left Gaza via Rafah alongside his aunt and his 4-year-old cousin who was suffering from severe diarrhea after sheltering for days in an overcrowded school. 

Remember back in the early days of the assault when the Israeli government would lie that they weren't targeting hospitals and the press would report those claims as though they were believable?  On Friday, the United Nations noted:

Reiterating urgent international calls for a ceasefire, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported that there have been nearly 20,000 births since the start of widespread Israeli bombardment in response to Hamas-led attacks in Israel that left some 1,200 dead and approximately 250 taken hostage.

Chronic aid access problems have meant that Caesarean sections have been performed without anaesthetic while other women have been unable to deliver their stillborn babies because medical staff are overwhelmed, the UN agency said.

“Mothers face unimaginable challenges in accessing adequate medical care, nutrition and protection before, during and after giving birth,” said UNICEF Communications Specialist Tess Ingram.

“Becoming a mother should be a time for celebration. In Gaza, it's another child delivered into hell.”

Echoing deep concerns about the deteriorating humanitarian situation, UN World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus expressed alarm that hepatitis A infections had been confirmed in Gaza.

“The inhumane living conditions – barely any clean water, clean toilets and possibility to keep the surroundings clean – will enable hepatitis A to spread further and highlight how explosively dangerous the environment is for the spread of disease,” Tedros tweeted on X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday.

The latest WHO data indicates that on average 500 people are sharing one toilet, and over 2,000 people have to use a single shower, increasing the risk of disease spread.

In addition to a sharp rise in upper respiratory infections, diarrhoea cases among children under age five recorded during the last three months of 2023 were 26 times higher than reports from the same period in 2022, the UN health agency noted.


 

Pediatric doctors told NBC News yesterday that they were concerned about the spread of the Hepatitis C virus and other diseases among young children in southern Gaza.

“We are seeing many cases of Hepatitis C,” Dr. Bessam Hamouda said as he treated patients in the children’s ward of Rafah's El Najar Hospital.

“It spreads in the packed and the difficult conditions the Palestinian people are in, displaced, tents and the big number of children and the pollution around them. This is a virus which contaminates children in particular,” he added.



Let's drop back to Friday's DEMOCRACY NOW!



AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

Israeli forces are pushing further into southern Gaza, with airstrikes and ground troops attacking areas that Israel had previously told Palestinians to flee to as safe zones. Over the past few days, Israel has bombed areas close to Nasser Hospital, the largest remaining semi-functioning health facility in Gaza, located in the southern city of Khan Younis. Gaza only has 16 partially functioning health facilities remaining. Before Israel’s assault, Gaza had 36 hospitals. The hospitals that are still working are operating far beyond their capacity, have been turned into makeshift refugee camps to house the displaced — and makeshift morgues — with health officials describing the situation as catastrophic. The Health Ministry estimates that over 60,000 people have been wounded in Gaza, with hundreds more casualties every day. The casualty count at this point is nearing 25,000, more than 10,000 of them children.

For more, we’re joined by Dr. James Smith, an emergency medical doctor who just returned from Gaza earlier this month, where he worked alongside Palestinian healthcare workers to treat patients at Al-Aqsa Hospital located in Deir al-Balah in the middle of the Gaza Strip. Dr. James was in Gaza with the organization Medical Aid for Palestinians. He’s joining us now from London.

Dr. James, welcome to Democracy Now! Describe what you saw, what you confronted, the work you were doing, what’s happening at Al-Aqsa Hospital.

DR. JAMES SMITH: Hi, Amy.

So, yes, as you say, I was working with a team. There were 10 of us. Myself, I was with the organization Medical Aid for Palestinians. We were accompanied by colleagues from the International Rescue Committee. And very importantly, we were — it’s important to really reiterate that we were working with our Palestinian colleagues, so doctors, nurses, other healthcare professionals, at Al — sorry, at Al-Aqsa Hospital. Al-Aqsa is a hospital based in the middle area of Gaza, so south of Gaza City and north of Khan Younis.

Myself, I was working in the emergency room. So, we would position ourselves in the ER every morning and, really, at that point, wait to see what the day would bring. Every single day, without exception, there were multiple mass casualty incidents at the hospital. So that’s several patients presenting at a time with traumatic injuries of varying severity. Those patients would require stabilization and then often transfer through to the operating room for surgical intervention. Some patients would require palliative care, if we were able to provide some form of palliative care, and in addition to many, many trauma patients. And by “many,” I mean several hundred over the time that we were working at Al-Aqsa. We were also treating patients presenting with complex medical problems, so people that had suffered heart attacks, for example, had suffered from strokes, and people whose hypertension or diabetes management had been negatively impacted, usually through a lack of access to their usual medication or because they hadn’t been able to see their usual doctor for several months. And then, furthermore, we were also seeing an even greater number of people with, effectively, primary healthcare-level problems.

So, the entirety of the primary healthcare or community care system in Gaza has completely collapsed. In fact, the entire healthcare system, the Ministry of Health has already announced several months ago, has completely collapsed. But that meant that anyone presenting with so-called, well, more minor complaints — coughs, colds, diarrheal illnesses — they were all also presenting to the emergency room to be seen by the doctors and nurses there.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about treating children, Dr. James?

DR. JAMES SMITH: Sure. So, as you’ve mentioned, a significant proportion of the people that have been killed since the start of this escalation are children. We certainly saw every mass casualty incident in the emergency room. There were several children also present. I remember very vividly some of the most traumatic injuries inflicted upon people were inflicted upon children. And they would include open chest wounds, open abdominal wounds, traumatic amputations, severe full-thickness burns to a substantial proportion of the body area — really some of the most horrific traumatic injuries that I have ever seen.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re actually showing images for our TV audience of Al-Aqsa Hospital and of the children and the adults who have been wounded there. You know, it’s really important to point out, if you’re talking about a hospital in normal times that has repeatedly been attacked, it would — and that’s severely compromised in its functioning, but we’re talking about this constant bombardment, where you have people coming in who have been severely wounded. You have people taking refuge there. And is it both like a refugee camp and a morgue?

DR. JAMES SMITH: So, there were several thousand people that had sought supposed sanctuary within the hospital compound itself. And we’ve seen this in several other hospitals across the Gaza Strip. There were reports, for example, of thousands of people sheltering in the Al-Shifa compound before that was surrounded and raided by the Israeli occupation forces. The same was the case at Al-Aqsa. So there were people staying in makeshift tents in and around the hospital buildings. Just up the main street adjacent to the hospital, sort of another IDP camp, internally displaced persons camp, had sort of formed very organically on open land. As the Israeli ground forces moved closer to the hospital and as the bombardment, the artillery and air bombardment, intensified, many of those — many thousands of those displaced people have displaced further south towards Rafah. And that also includes patients who were in the hospital at the time that we were working there. Many of them have also fled, along with many of the staff, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to a clip, and it’s really important to play these clips. Right now Gaza has experienced the longest communications blackout of this Israeli attack for the last three months. I think it’s something like seven days. So it’s really hard to get information inside this intense Israeli bombardment in the vicinity of Nasser Hospital, the main hospital in Khan Younis, the largest remaining semi-functioning health facility in Gaza, and tanks and armored vehicles are on the main road leading to the area. On Wednesday, Democracy Now! reached Dr. Ahmed Moghrabi, who works in Nasser Hospital. He described the situation on the ground and the difficulty in getting out any messages. This is what he had to say.

DR. AHMED MOGHRABI: Thank you, sister, for asking about us. Thank you for letting me speak out here. We don’t have internet at all. I managed to get a very weak signal. I can’t upload any of these videos. Here, 90% of people who are already evacuated at the hospital, they evacuated from the hospital. Ninety percent of medical personnel evacuated from the hospital.

And this is my little daughter, actually. She got head trauma Saturday. You know, hundreds of these evacuating people at the corridor, somebody pushed her, and she fell on her head. Now I’m taking care about my — this little girl. She needs medicine. She’s not well. So I stay at the hospital now, but I want to evacuate. The situation is catastrophic, sister. Really, I’m very tired. I’m very tired.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Dr. Ahmed Moghrabi, and the image we’ve been showing as he spoke was Dr. Moghrabi holding his own wounded daughter. I’m wondering, Dr. James, if you can talk about the significance, the medical significance, of a complete — almost complete telecommunications blackout, in terms of ambulances being reached, people being able to communicate to get help.

DR. JAMES SMITH: Absolutely. I mean, this is a catastrophic development. As you’ve mentioned, Amy, this, I think, is the seventh time that the Israelis have suspended access to telecommunications across almost the entirety of the Gaza Strip. This is now day six or seven of a complete sort of telecommunications blackout. It makes it almost impossible to do anything.

So, in the first instance, people can’t reach their families, their loved ones. They can’t communicate with colleagues. They can’t reassure family that they’re OK, or indeed relatives and friends can’t inform family members and so on when somebody has been killed or injured. There have been occasions where the emergency number has not been in use. So, as you say, it’s been difficult to call ambulances or mobilize ambulances to places where there has been an air or artillery strike. It makes it very difficult for health and humanitarian workers to do their essential work —

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Smith, we —

DR. JAMES SMITH: — so they can’t coordinate with each other.

AMY GOODMAN: We only have 10 seconds. What message do you have for the world, just having come out of Gaza? Ten seconds.

DR. JAMES SMITH: The violence needs to end immediately.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. James Smith, emergency medical doctor, just back from Gaza, where he worked to treat patients at Al-Aqsa Hospital.

That does it for our show. Democracy Now! has job openings. Check democracynow.org.


Let's note this from NBC NEWS.



That's the Sunday funeral of Tawfic Hafeth Abdel Jabbar.  Faris Tanyos (CBS NEWS) reports:

A Palestinian-American teenager was shot and killed Friday by Israeli troops in the West Bank, Palestinian officials told Reuters.

The 17-year-old boy was shot during clashes with Israeli forces, the victim's uncle told Reuters.

A State Department spokesperson would only confirm to CBS News that a U.S. citizen had died in the West Bank, adding that "we are working to understand the circumstances of the incident and have asked the government of Israel for further information."

According to Wafa, the Palestinian National Authority's official news agency, the boy was shot in the head. Wafa identified him as Tawfiq Ajjaq.   


Julia Frankel and Nasser Nasser (AP) quote the child's father declaring, "They [Israeli forces]  are killer machines. They are using our tax dollars in the U.S. to support the weapons to kill our own children."  ALJAZEERA notes:

Celebrated UK-based Palestinian writer and director Ahmed Masoud lost his brother in Gaza after he was hit by an Israeli air strike.

“I knew I was going to write a post like this, I knew I wouldn’t find the words,” Masoud, who grew up in Gaza and later moved to the United Kingdom, wrote on X.

He showed earlier this month how his brother Khalid’s home was almost entirely destroyed after being targeted by an Israeli air strike as drones buzzed in the background. Then, his brother was shot by an Israeli sniper in the leg.

“A few days ago he went missing. A drone bombed, he lost his leg and bled for three days. My brother and friend is gone.”


 
Gaza remains under assault.  Binoy Kampmark (DISSIDENT VOICE) points out, "Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion.  The ongoing campaign in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction.  But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge for the propaganda outlets:  How to justify it?  Fortunately for Israel, the United States, its unqualified defender, is happy to provide cover for murder covered in the sheath of self-defence."   CNN has explained, "The Gaza Strip is 'the most dangerous place' in the world to be a child, according to the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund."  ABC NEWS quotes UNICEF's December 9th statement, ""The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. Scores of children are reportedly being killed and injured on a daily basis. Entire neighborhoods, where children used to play and go to school have been turned into stacks of rubble, with no life in them."  NBC NEWS notes, "Strong majorities of all voters in the U.S. disapprove of President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll. The erosion is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza."  The slaughter continues.  It has displaced over 1 million people per the US Congressional Research Service.  Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) points out, "Academics and legal experts around the world, including Holocaust scholars, have condemned the six-week Israeli assault of Gaza as genocide."   The death toll of Palestinians in Gaza is grows higher and higher.  Friday, United Nations Women noted, "Since 7 October 2023, more than 24,620 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip, 70 per cent of whom were women or children. More than 1.9 million people -- 85 per cent of the total population of Gaza -- have been displaced, including what UN Women estimates to be nearly 1 million women and girls. The entire population of Gaza -- roughly 2.2 million people -- are in crisis levels of acute food insecurity or worse."  CNN notes, "The Palestinian toll includes 25,105 killed and 62,681 injured" and there are also the missing.  AP notes, "About 4,000 people are reported missing."  And the area itself?  Isabele Debre (AP) reveals, "Israel’s military offensive has turned much of northern Gaza into an uninhabitable moonscape. Whole neighborhoods have been erased. Homes, schools and hospitals have been blasted by airstrikes and scorched by tank fire. Some buildings are still standing, but most are battered shells."  Kieron Monks (I NEWS) reports, "More than 40 per cent of the buildings in northern Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, according to a new study of satellite imagery by US researchers Jamon Van Den Hoek from Oregon State University and Corey Scher at the City University of New York. The UN gave a figure of 45 per cent of housing destroyed or damaged across the strip in less than six weeks. The rate of destruction is among the highest of any conflict since the Second World War."  Max Butterworth (NBC NEWS) adds, "Satellite images captured by Maxar Technologies on Sunday reveal three of the main hospitals in Gaza from above, surrounded by the rubble of destroyed buildings after weeks of intense bombing in the region by Israeli forces."




Friday, Amy Goodman (DEMOCRACY NOW!) noted, "There are reports Israel has killed another journalist in Gaza. Palestinian news outlets report Wael Fannouneh, the manager of Al-Quds Today TV, was killed today in an Israeli bombing in Gaza City. Over 110 journalists have been killed since Israel began its assault on Gaza following the October 7 Hamas attack."

ALJAZEERA notes that professors have been murdered:

Israel has killed 94 university professors, hundreds of teachers and thousands of students during its war in Gaza, a rights group has said.

The Israeli military has targeted academics and intellectuals “in deliberate and specific air raids” on their homes without prior warning, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said in a statement on Saturday.

These figures appear to have been targeted with “no justification or clear reason”, the monitor said.

“The targeted academics studied and taught across a variety of academic disciplines, and many of their ideas served as cornerstones of academic research in the Gaza Strip’s universities,” the Geneva, Switzerland-based group said.

   

In related news,  Miriam Berger and Hazem Balousha (WASHINGTON POST) report:


The Israeli military says it is reviewing the decision to destroy the main building of Gaza’s Israa University in what appears to have been a planned explosion.

In a widely viewed video geolocated by The Washington Post, a camera apparently attached to a drone shows the sprawling building outside of Gaza City implode, demolishing the educational complex and engulfing the area in smoke.

The university shared news of the explosion of building, which housed its graduate and undergraduate studies, Wednesday.

Israa University Vice President Alaa Matar told The Washington Post that he could not confirm the date of the blast: Israeli forces, he said, had been occupying the campus for about 70 days, and Palestinians could not safely access the area. Matar spoke by phone from the southern city of Rafah, where more than half of Palestinians in Gaza have fled.

Satellite imagery of the area, assessed by The Post, showed the building intact on Jan. 13 and destroyed the next day. Most cellular and other communications had been unusable in the Gaza Strip for more than a week, from Jan. 12 until Friday evening.


Julia Conley (COMMON DREAMS) covers the destruction of Israa University noting:

  The Israel Defense Forces' detonation of more than 300 mines planted at Israa University in Gaza on Wednesday provided the latest evidence that Israel's objective in its bombardment of the enclave is not self-defense, rights advocates said.

"This is not self-defense," said Chris Hazzard, an Irish member of the United Kingdom's Parliament. "This is not counter-insurgency. This is ethnic-cleansing."

The International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC) called the destruction of Israa University Israel's latest attempt to carry out a "cultural genocide" along with the slaughter of at least 24,620 people in just over three months—people who Israeli officials have claimed are legitimate military targets despite the fact that roughly half of those killed have been children.

The wiping out of cultural landmarks was included in South Africa's International Court of Justice case accusing Israel of genocidal acts in Gaza last week, with the complaint noting that "Israel has damaged and destroyed numerous centers of Palestinian learning and culture," including libraries, one of the world's oldest Christian monasteries, and the Great Omari Mosque, where an ancient collection of manuscripts was kept before the building was destroyed in an airstrike last month.

"The crime of targeting and destroying archaeological sites should spur the world and UNESCO into action to preserve this great civilizational and cultural heritage," Gaza's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said after the mosque was bombed. 


Phillippe Lazzarini is the Commissioner General for UNRWA - the UN agency with specific responsibility for Palestinian refugees. He's just returned from his fourth visit to Gaza since the start of the war.

"There are today more than half a million children in the primary and secondary school system. How will they go back if you cannot bring people back to their homes which have been completely destroyed," Mr Lazzarini tells me.

"And I'm afraid that we're running the risk here of losing a generation of children."

Images of Israeli troops cheering as educational institutions were blown up went viral on social media, including one showing the complete demolition of a distinctive blue UN school in northern Gaza.



Over the weekend, AP reported:


Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that he “will not compromise on full Israeli control” over Gaza and that “this is contrary to a Palestinian state,” rejecting U.S. President Joe Biden’s suggestion that creative solutions could bridge wide gaps between the leaders' views on Palestinian statehood.

In a sign of the pressures Netanyahu’s government faces at home, thousands of Israelis protested in Tel Aviv calling for new elections, and others demonstrated outside the prime minister’s house, joining families of the more than 100 remaining hostages held by Hamas and other militants. They fear that Israel's military activity further endangers hostages' lives.


Emma Graham-Harrison and Toby Helm (GUARDIAN adds, "Over the weekend, Netanyahu sparred publicly – if indirectly – with US President Joe Biden, who for months has offered Israel almost unconditional support for its war in Gaza, at considerable political cost to his own administration, both in America and beyond."  Poor Joe, getting played for a fool by a crook like Netanyahu.  NBC NEWS notes, "President Joe Biden attempted to downplay Netanyahu's opposition to a Palestinian state. When asked if a two-state solution is impossible with Netanyahu in office, Biden said, 'No, it is not,' adding that he believes the Israeli prime minister could change his mind."  Binoy Kampmark (DISSIDENT VOICE) points out, "The latest remarks from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on January 18 suggest that the license also extends to ensuring that Palestinians will never be permitted a sovereign homeland, that they will be, in a perverse biblical echo, kept in a form of bondage, downtrodden, oppressed and, given what happened on October 7 last year, suppressed.  This is to ensure that, whatever the grievance, that they never err, never threaten, and never cause grief to the Israeli State.  To that end, it is axiomatic that their political authorities are kept incipient, inchoate, corrupt and permanently on life support, the tolerated beggars and charity seekers of the Middle East."


The following sites updated: