Mondoweiss – January 2024
‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 100:
Nearly 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed,
injured, or are missing since October 7
As Israel’s assault on Gaza reaches 100 days, an estimated 100,000 Palestinians have been killed, injured, or are missing. Still Netanyahu declares: “No one will stop us; not The Hague, not the axis of evil and not anyone else calling the ICJ.”
BY MUSTAFA ABU SNEINEH
Casualties
- 23,968+ killed* and at least 60,582 wounded in the Gaza Strip.
- 387+ Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem
- Israel revises its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,147.
- 522 Israeli soldiers killed since October 7, and at least 2,193 injured.**
- *This figure was confirmed by Gaza’s Ministry of Health on January 14. Some rights groups put the death toll number closer to 31,000 when accounting for those presumed dead.
**This figure is released by the Israeli military.
Key Developments
- Israel’s Netanyahu says, “No one will stop us; not The Hague, not the axis of evil and not anyone else calling the International Court of Justice (ICJ).”
- Yoav Gallant, Minister of Defence, storms out of war cabinet meeting on Saturday evening after tense argument with Netanyahu.
- Paltel says Israeli air strike killed two workers, Bahaa Al-Rayes and Nader Abu Hajjaj, in their vehicle while they were in Khan Yunis to fix internet blackout.
- Heavy rain and strong winds knock down tents housing displaced Palestinians and flood shelters and homes in Gaza.
- Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA chief, says “the massive death, destruction, displacement, hunger, loss, and grief of the last 100 days are staining our shared humanity.”
- Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor: “Just About 100,000 Palestinians have been killed, reported missing, or wounded since 7 October 2023 due to Israel’s ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip”
- Overnight, Palestinians recovered bodies of 50 people after Israeli airstrikes bombed three-story residential building housing families of Al-Shubaki, Al-Zoukh, Al-Hassouna, and Al-Qassim in central Gaza City.
- Gaza’s Ministry of Health says Israeli forces killed 337 medical staff and arrested 99 others since October, bombed 203 medical centers and clinics, destroyed 121 ambulances and damaged 30 hospitals, forcing it to stop operating completely.
- Reporters Without Borders (RSF) says International Criminal Court (ICC) agreed to investigate Israel’s crimes against journalists in Gaza.
- Namibia criticizes Germany who said it will interfere as third party to provide evidence in the ICJ case in support of Israel.
On the 100-day mark of Israel’s aggression on the Gaza Strip, nearly 100,000 Palestinians have been killed, injured, or buried under the rubble.
Yet, Israel appears to be unabated, supported by the U.S., UK, and European countries, ignoring international calls for a ceasefire or calls to allow sufficient humanitarian aid to enter the enclave.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged on Saturday evening that the Israeli military invasion of Gaza will not stop “until complete victory.”
“No one will stop us; not The Hague, not the axis of evil and not anyone else calling the International Court of Justice (ICJ),” he said.
Last week, Israel sat in the dock to face a case filed by South Africa at the ICJ accusing Tel Aviv of committing genocidal actions and collective crimes against Palestinians in Gaza, including indiscriminate bombings, destroying schools and public institutions, and officials’ statements that incited the annihilation Palestinians.
Netanyahu said South Africa’s case was an “international defamation campaign [that] will not weaken our hands or weaken our determination to fight to the end.”
However, as Netanyahu was making his speech, hundreds of Israelis traveled to his home in the coastal town of Caesarea, and other cities, calling him to resign and to bring on an early election as well as releasing Israeli captives in Gaza.
Benny Gantz, an opposition figure and a war cabinet member, was among the 120,000 Tel Aviv protesters on Saturday evening.
Israel has failed so far to achieve any of the goals it declared for the war in Gaza since October. Hamas movement is still fighting Israeli forces; the army returned none of the Israeli captives alive in military operations, while Gaza is still a Palestinian stronghold for resistance against occupation.
Aside from dealing with protestors and a corruption trial, Netanyahu also faces tensions inside the war cabinet after Yoav Gallant, the Minister of Defence, stormed out of a meeting on Saturday evening, the Times of Israel reported.
Gallant argued with Netanyahu over the exclusion of aides in the war cabinet meeting after his chief of staff was not allowed in on Saturday. At the same time, Netanyahu brought five personal aides to the meeting.
“Stop getting in the way of my work,” Gallant told Netanyahu before storming out of the room.
Gaza is under internet blackout, again, as rainwater floods and leaks into tents and shelters
For the past three days, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have been under internet and mobile services blackout.
The Palestine Telecommunications Company (Paltel) said on Saturday that an Israeli air strike killed two workers, Bahaa Al-Rayes and Nader Abu Hajjaj, in their vehicle while they were in Khan Yunis, south of Gaza, to fix the communication outage. PalTel added that since October, 13 members of staff were killed by Israel in Gaza.
Heavy rains overnight flooded and leaked into tents, schools, and homes of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, Wafa news correspondent reported.
In some parts, rainwater was mixed with sewage as Israeli bombardment destroyed urban infrastructure, while water leaked into schools and homes from damaged and cracked roofs and walls. Tents in Jabalia, Beit Hanoun, and Beit Lahia in north Gaza fell over due to heavy rainwater and strong winds, Wafa reported.
Several shelters in Gaza City’s Al-Zaytoun, Al-Shuja’iya, Al-Daraj, and Al-Tuffah neighborhoods were flooded by rainwater on Sunday morning.
In Gaza, “the past 100 days have felt like 100 years”
Philippe Lazzarini, the Commissioner-General of the UN refugee agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said that after 100 days of devastation in the Gaza Strip, “the massive death, destruction, displacement, hunger, loss, and grief… are staining our shared humanity.”
UNRWA schools-turned-shelters have been a lifeline for thousands of Palestinians after Israel destroyed their homes and displaced them. Israel has killed over 140 UN workers in Gaza, and UNRWA offices and crews have been targeted several times in different locations since October 7.
“In the past 100 days, sustained bombardment across the Gaza Strip caused the mass displacement of a population that is in a state of flux – constantly uprooted and forced to leave overnight, only to move to places which are just as unsafe. This has been the largest displacement of the Palestinian people since 1948,” Lazzarini said on Saturday.
UNRWA schools are now housing nearly 1.4 million displaced Palestinians, but unlike home, they lack privacy, proper hygiene, and sufficient food and live in overcrowded rooms.
The UNRWA chief added, “the crisis in Gaza is a man-made disaster compounded by dehumanizing language and the use of food, water and fuel as instruments of war.”
UNRWA officials had called for a permanent ceasefire since October and for securing a constant entrance of enough medicine, water and fuel, but to no avail.
“For the people of Gaza, the past 100 days have felt like 100 years,” Lazzarini added.
Israeli forces bomb Palestinian houses in Gaza
In the past 24 hours, Palestinians recovered the bodies of 50 people after Israeli airstrikes bombed a three-story residential building that housed the Al-Shubaki, Al-Zoukh, Al-Hassouna, and Al-Qassim families in the Al-Daraj neighborhood in central Gaza City.
Israeli artillery shelling killed five Palestinians and injured at least 10 people in the Al-Sabra and Al-Zaytoun neighborhoods in Gaza City on Saturday evening.
Israel’s navy and artillery forces also bombed several houses in the seaside areas of Tal Al-Hawa and Sheikh Ajleen, west of Gaza City, Wafa reported.
In central Gaza’s Al-Sawarha area, Al-Maghazi and Al-Breij camps, Israel killed a total of nine Palestinians in numerous bombardments overnight. Medical crews took the bodies and those injured to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, which was also targeted by Israel on Friday, in Deir Al-Balah.
Wafa reported that Israeli raids killed 30 Palestinians in Khan Younis overnight and another 23 people after bombing a vehicle and two houses in the southern city of Rafah.
On Sunday, the Ministry of Health in Gaza reported that Israeli forces have killed 337 medical staff and arrested 99 others since October, and that it bombed 203 medical centers and clinics, destroyed 121 ambulances, and damaged 30 hospitals, forcing them to stop operating completely.
The ministry said that in the past 24 hours, Israel committed 11 massacres, killing 125 people and injuring 265 others. Since October, the ministry said that Israel killed 23,968 Palestinian martyrs and injured at least 60,582 people. An estimated 8,000 Palestinians remain missing under the rubble and are believed to be dead.
“For the past 100 days, the international community failed to provide a humanitarian route to grant the supply of medical assistance and the travel of injured [outside Gaza for treatment] away from Israeli occupation restrictions,” the ministry said in a statement on Telegram channel.
Last week, Nagham Abu Samra, a Palestinian athlete, died while being treated in Egypt from injuries sustained in an Israeli bombardment in Al-Nuseirat refugee camp.
Abu Samra was part of the Palestine Olympic team for Karate, and she trained martial arts in a center in Gaza. Her brother was killed in the Israeli bombardment, while she was placed in the intensive care unit and her leg was amputated. She lived a month in coma before succumbing to her wounds in Egypt.
International Criminal Court to investigate killing of journalists in Gaza
On Saturday, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said that the International Criminal Court (ICC) agreed to investigate Israel’s crimes against journalists in Gaza.
“Journalists are protected by international humanitarian law and the Rome Statute, and must not under any circumstances be targeted in the exercise of their important mission,” the ICC chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, said in a message sent to RSF.
Over 100 journalists have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza Strip, at least 18 of them while working on the ground since October.
Following the hearing at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) this week, the potential ICC investigation is another front that Israeli officials could face.
On Sunday, Namibia criticized Germany, which said that it would interfere as a third party to provide evidence in the ICJ case in support of Israel.
“Germany has chosen to defend in the ICJ the genocidal and gruesome acts of the Israeli government against innocent civilians in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian Territories,” Hage Geingob, the president of Namibia, said in a statement on X.
In the early 1900s, colonial Germany committed atrocities in Namibia, killing tens of thousands of citizens.
“Germany cannot morally express commitment to the United Nations Convention against genocide, including atonement for the genocide in Namibia, whilst supporting the equivalent of a holocaust and genocide in Gaza,” the Namibian presidency said.
Hundreds of thousands of protesters rally worldwide in support of Gaza
On Saturday, from London to Washington, hundreds of thousands of people marched in over 60 cities around the world calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
In Washington, an estimated 400,000 Americans marched on the Freedom Plaza, rejecting U.S. complicity in Israeli war crimes and chanting “Ceasefire now,” “Free Palestine,” “Stop the war on Gaza,” and “Stop funding genocide.”
Speakers close to the White House urged President Joe Biden to end U.S. financial and military support for Israel.
Other rallies took place in Paris, Amsterdam, Oslo, Milan, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Seoul and Jakarta, to name a few.
Hamas says it lost communication with unit in charge of four captive Israeli soldiers
In the past 24 hours, the Israeli military said that 522 Israeli soldiers have been killed in battles with Palestinian fighters in Gaza.
Hamas armed wing, Izz El-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, released a video of firing the 105mm Al-Yaseen anti-tank shells in Khan Younis, where heated battles are taking place.
Before firing one of Al-Yaseen shells, a Palestinian fighter is heard dedicating the bombing of an Israeli armored vehicle to Saleh Al-Aruri, the Hamas deputy political leader assassinated by Israel in Beirut in early January.
Hamas also said that it lost communication with the groups charged with four Israeli soldiers, who were taken captives in the 2014 war. It released a video confirming that their status remains vague.
In another video Islamic Jihad fighters fired mortar shells on Israeli military stations and detonated a mine field in Israeli forces, east of Gaza.
Israeli forces arrest sisters of Saleh Al-Aruri in Ramallah
Israel arrested the two sisters of Saleh Al-Aruri from his hometown in Arura, near Ramallah, on Saturday evening.
In the past 24 hours, Israel arrested 25 Palestinians from Hebron, Nablus, Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Jenin.
On Saturday, at least 15 Palestinian workers from Gaza were detained in Bidya village in Salfit, north of the occupied West Bank.
The Prisoners’ Club and the Prisoners’ Affairs Authority said 5,875 Palestinians have been arrested by Israel since October.
Some Palestinian prisoners have been languishing in Israeli jails for over two decades. Muammar Asaad Abdullah Sabah, 45, from Jenin, entered his 22nd consecutive year in jail on Sunday, he has been serving a 23-year sentence since 2003, Wafa reported.
Overnight, Israeli forces raided Jenin town, Al-Faraa refugee camp, south of Tubas, arrested a number of Palestinians, and vandalized and damaged urban infrastructure and properties. It also raided Salfit, Hebron, and Nablus.
In Jericho, Israeli forces killed Louay Al-Sufi in Ain Al-Sultan refugee camp on Sunday afternoon, and another Palestinian was killed north of Hebron.
Countercurrent – January 14, 2024
Battle of Khan Younis Rages on
by Dr Marwan Asmar
The Israeli army are still trying to enter Khan Younis ever since their military campaign on the southern city started on 1 December, 2023.
We are well into the first month of 2024 and Israeli soldiers are still trying to enter Gaza’s second largest city but with little success. They are being hammered by the Palestinian resistance movement on a daily basis despite their missiles and bombs with the help of Israeli warplanes striking homes and ambulances and their drivers.
There is a snagging feeling the Israeli soldiers are also being aided by British reconnaissance flights but with no apparent success.
Khan Younis must be seen as the resistance hub that is yet to be dominated and controlled. But this is not the north. Here, Izz Aldin Al Qassam and Saraya Al Quds fighters are moving full throttle ahead with their booby traps laid in circles outside the city to make sure the invaders don’t enter. These are proving death traps for the Israeli soldiers who are falling on daily basis together with their tanks, military convoys and bulldozers.
Battle of Khan Younis
Despite their daily clobbering, they are determined to dominate Khan Younis with the Israeli army increasing the brigades to around 30,000 soldiers but as yet this is not happening. Regardless of the low and ‘messaged’ numbers daily regurgitated by the Israeli army, one soldier blasts the Netanyahu government for being irresponsible and turning a blind eye to the number of deaths and the hostages that are still in Hamas captivity.
The soldier tells them on the social media to stop playing with the figures. He says Jewish parents already know the extent of deaths because they see their siblings coming home in draped coffins. He says 3000 Israeli soldiers have already been killed with over 10,000 injured. This is not to mention the thousands disabled by the war so far and are now no use for fighting.
The Israeli deaths in Khan Younis reflect the overall number of the soldiers being killed in the Gaza whether it’s in the north middle, east and to the south of the Strip. While the warplanes wreaked criminal havoc on the Palestinian population, Israeli soldiers have been getting as much as they are giving despite the fact the Israeli army point to mass deaths in the ranks of the Palestinian resistance movement, claiming they have killed 8000 of them since 7 October. But they also killed over 23,000 Palestinian civilians which they fail to mention.
And if the Israeli army are doing so well why haven’t they entered Khan Younis yet, a city of over 2000 people and a major commercial and intellectual hub. If the Israelis are on the periphery of the city, they should have entered its center by now. But they are being blocked. They are still to the east of the city, bogged down in towns like Bani Suhaila, Al Qarara and Absan. They are meeting stiff resistance there by Palestinian fighters in jeans and flip-flops facing a highly mechanized Israeli army.
Battering
But the Israeli army are getting a battering along with their heavy military hardware with tanks and machinery lost in their hundreds.
So if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu keeps saying the war will go on for a few more months yet, a position repeated by his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, then he will continue to face the military music of more deaths and destruction.
But the military top brass are not convinced, agreeing with the politicians who say the war must go on whilst believing this is a new stage III of the war that focuses on the south and have been withdrawing some brigades especially from the northern parts of the strip to its outer part.
We are yet to see how will the shape of this war unfolds. But here as well, they maybe adhering to the American position which wants them to tone down the bloody conflict while opposing Hamas and hopping, maybe, it can be finished off.
Despite this the battle of Khan Younis rages on and a ceasefire is no where in sight.
Dr Marwan Asmar who has a PHD from UK’s Leeds University, is a frequent contributor on Middle East affairs
https://countercurrents.org/2024/01/battle-of-khan-younis-rages-on/
Rima Najjar Medium – January 14, 2024
Israel — “Nation of murderers and murder victims”
By Rima Najjar
I don’t see them much anymore — I mean the “Israeli public.” In the first few weeks after al-Aqsa Flood, their images and voices were all over the live coverage on Al Jazeera Arabic and al-Mayadeen. The hope was that the pressure the families of the hostages was exerting on the Israeli government would succeed in making their release a priority for the Israeli cabinet over the impulse of vengeance. That obviously did not happen and most of them continue to be solidly behind the strategic aims of their blood-thirsty government, if not its tactics.
Since the news stream kept flipping back and forth between images and voices from Israel and those from Gaza, the contrast in what the cameras were capturing was arresting and telling. On the one hand, there were images of orderly, rallying Israeli crowds in spacious squares with music emanating from the speakers’ platform; on the other were images of apocalyptic chaos, raw grief and screams of despair, arms flung up to heaven. On the one hand was the image of a little Palestinian girl, bandaged and traumatized and barely able to move, who, upon noticing the camera pointed at her, made a slow and laborious victory sign with her injured hand, her face still blank. On the other was the image of an Israeli teenager marching and giggling with her friends in a youth rally for the hostages stopping to pose sexily for the camera and raise a victory sign.
I used to think that much of the Israeli public isn’t actually aware of the horrendous human consequences of what their military was doing in Gaza, hence their apathy toward its crimes against humanity. Now, however, I am convinced that the degree of denial of the occupation, dehumanization of Palestinians and sense of entitlement is not merely a disconnectedness from reality. Rather, it is a determination not to know and not to hear, a reflection of the Israeli psyche. Because Israel’s national security strategy is apparently driven by a deep-seated fear of annihilation, the Israeli national psyche can be characterized by a sense of insecurity that no degree of military might can fully alleviate.
Israel has always exploited the Holocaust both at home and internationally to bolster its claim to Palestine, molding its identity as a victim entitled to defend itself from the people it oppresses. Israel’s psyche has led it straight to the dock, where it is now defending itself against accusations of genocide against Palestinians at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague
A few early Israelis were strong and smart enough to escape the pull of their national psyche even as it was being forged. They were prescient enough to predict exactly where such a psyche would lead. Such were the Machovers. In an interview by Owen Jones (This Lawyer Reveals Why Israel’s Gaza Onslaught Could Be Stopped By Genocide Case), Daniel Machover, a UK civil litigation lawyer, explains how his parents who “were born in Palestine as it then was” became very concerned about what was happening in Israel in the 1950s.
Following the 1967 war, Machover’s parents were among a very small number of Israelis (including a Palestinian citizen of Israel) who immediately opposed the fact of the occupation and signed a declaration that was published by Haaretz on the 22nd of September 1967. It said:
Our right to defend ourselves from extermination does not give us the right to oppress others. Occupation entails foreign rule; foreign rule entails resistance; resistance entails repression; repression entails terror and counter-terror. The victims of terror are mostly innocent people; holding on to the occupied territories will turn us into a nation of murderers and murder victims. Let us get out of the occupied territories immediately.
The biggest irony of all is that Israel is not “defending itself from extermination,” no matter what its fancy lawyers are saying in The Hague. Israel’s bogus argument that Hamas is out to exterminate all Jews is a legitimization for its mass killing of Palestinian civilians and their ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank. In both places, Israel is making the conditions of life unbearable to drive Palestinians out and “settle” Jews in their place.
We must radicalize the Israeli public.
Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank.
https://rimanajjar.medium.com/israel-nation-of-murderers-and-murder-victims-a143fc9bfc39
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