March 11, 2024
The War on Gaza and the End of Western Moral and Political Hegemony
Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD.
Five months gone and the US supported Israeli violence and bombardment of Gaza unfolds prodigious lies of terror to have redefined and reshaped the so-called Western political hegemonic mental microscope of power exposing dreadful apparatus of moral and intellectual brimstone and failure of human consciousness to see planned human massacres, genocide and alleged crimes against humanity. Tyranny of reason ignores the sanctity of human life and continued occupation of Palestine and is implied while Israel obliterated the entire civilian population of Gaza with US sent bombs and warmachines.President Biden (MSNBC interview:3/9/24), blames PM Netanyahu for irrational choices to invade Rafah that is ‘hurting Israel’ more than helping its cause. America is isolated in global affairs and lost when it comes to shrouded mystery of strange choices to support Israel for the wrong actions or warn Netanyahu of the ‘red lines.’
Multiplied consequential threats to global security and peace, the Western leaders, the so-called proponents of international peace, security and human rights turned out to be wicked spectators mocking human understanding of catastrophic and painful sufferings endured by the 2.9 million civilian people of Gaza. The US supplied all the weapons to Israel without any accountability to international law, Geneva Conventions and UNO protection of the civilians in conflict zones. Chris Hedges and Peter Koenig (“The Horror, The Horror” in Gaza. Chris Hedges. What Is the UN Good for? Where Is the Human Rights Commission When It Is Needed? Global Research: 11/13/2023): ….. “The Horror is of blood and shredded children.... tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands — dead bodies disintegrating in the rubbles of indiscriminately IDF-bombed hospitals, apartment buildings, mosques – you name it.” https://www.globalresearch.ca/horror-gaza-what-un-good-where-human-rights-commission-when-needed/5839831. Kamala Harris, the US VP comes out of political void to call for ‘an immediate ceasefire’, not part of the usual American agenda. PM Netanyahu and his war cabinet look paranoid, vengeful and egomaniac and politically ruptured as the masses in Israel demonstarte daily demanding a ceasefire and return of 134 hostages and new elections. The al-Jazeera “October 7” investigation reports of 27 Israeli citizen hostages killed by their own gun helicopters. Lacking humanitarin impulse, Brett Wilkins spells out:“Complete Madness’: Israel Blocks Food Aid as More Gaza Children Starve to Death.” https://www.uncommonthought.com/mtblog/archives/2024/03/09/complete-madness-israel-blocks-food-aid-as-more-gaza-children-starve-to-death.php
The US-Israel convergence of humanitarian airdrops is an analogy of absurdity and contradictions, explains Dr.Paul Larduee (“Gaza Airdrops: Propaganda and Possibilities.” Global Research: 3/6/24): ... the US. Israel can appear to be less heartless than its genocidal practices would otherwise suggest, and similar PR applies to the other participants that are collaborating with the genocide..... Of course, Israel also agrees to the airdrops because they exercise control over them. https://www.globalresearch.ca/gaza-airdrops-propaganda-possibilities/5851409.
Western Imperialism Controls the Puppet Arab-Muslim Leaders
The Arab-Muslim world is a dead-ended entity of ritual flurries on the crisis without formal burials and no public institutions of reasoned thought and action and responsibility. There are no customary Arab armies or leaders capable of defending the Palestinian cause or interest of Islam. The OIC, Saudi Arabia and the Arab League are symbolic configurations without any capacity - an insult to common sense. The Arab Middle East is a static region of fake oil-based economic prosperity and uncertainty being governed by former neo-colonial tribal agents installed by the Europeans as kings, presidents, emirs, prince and princes living in palaces, not with people. Was the discovery of “oil” an obsession - a stigma, a conspiracy (“fitna”) to forfeit the Arab culture and Islamic civilization? Please see more “How Arab Leaders Betray Islam and Defy the Logice of Political Change, Peace and Security.” https://www.uncommonthought.com/mtblog/archives/2023/10/07/how-did-arab-leaders-betrayed-islam-and-defied-the-logic-of-political-change-peace-and-security.php
The Arab-Muslim leaders mark achievements of friendly relationship with Israel while Israeli-American policies are aimed at rebuking the rights and freedom of Palestine and the joke of ‘two states solution.’The Western mythologist view the oil exporting Arab leaders as “camel jockeys” and brainless figures. Their palaces are protected by the American and European mercenaries, pre-occupied in erecting high-rise buildings, organizing football and olympic games and COP28, while 2.9 millions are being bombed and more than 30,000 are massacred across Gaza; some 13,000 innocent children and more than 8,000 women are killed and 70,000 people injured. The daily Israeli carnage and killings in the West Bank and new settlements are constant reminders of violations of international law written on paper since 1948. Do the Arab-Muslim leaders breathe oxygen in a delusional fantasy? One wonders if “America-Israel War on Gaza a Prelude to Conquest of the Arab World.” https://www.uncommonthought.com/mtblog/archives/2024/01/05/america-israels-war-on-gaza-a-prelude-to-conquest-of-the-arab-world.php
The Earth is a Living Trust Those Bombing it are Not Normal Human Beings
Earth is living - a trust to mankind, it rotates itself at a speed of 1000 miles per hour at equator and orbits the Sun at average speed of 67062 MPH. It is perfectly balanced by the Divine order for human survival and progress. All praises are to God, the Creator of the Heavens and Earth Who has balanced it as just for human living, solidarity and progress. Wherever there is trust, there is accountability.The so-called Western official humanity succumbs to the mysterious ideal of democracy and primitive discourse to face the compelling reality.“Fear God” and ‘do not violate the covenants of peace and trust on Earth.’The Divine Message (3: 190: The Quran) clarifies: Verily in the creation of the Heavens and of the Earth and in the succession of the night and of the day, are signs for men of understanding; Who standing and sitting and reclining,
bear God in mind and reflect on the creation of the Heavens and of Earth and say:
Oh, our Lord-Thou has not created this invain
Those bombing and causing catastrophic destruction of life and Earth are not the normal human beings. The followers of Moses - the generations of Israelite are reminded by God (Quran 2: 84-85): And remember, We took a Covenant from the Children of Israel (progeny of Jacob), Worship none but God; ….shed no blood amongst you, Nor displace people from homes: and Ye solemnly ratified...... And on the Day of Judgment they shall be consigned to the most grievous penalty,For God is not unmindful what ye do.
And killing of innocent people is prohibited in the Ten Commandments (Torah):
'Thou shalt not kill' (Exod. 20:13; also Deut. 5:17). Jewish law views the shedding of innocent blood very seriously, and lists murder as one of three sins (along with idolatry and sexual immorality), that fall under the category of yehareg ve'al ya'avor - meaning "One should let himself be killed rather than violate it."According to Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague: ‘Jewish law forbids the killing of innocent people, even in the course of a legitimate military engagement.’
Is the Fallacy of Civilized Western World Coming to an End on Its Own?
The global institutions and systems of democratic governance and all of its formal moral, intellectual and political proclamations appear defunct when it comes to deal with Israel and the US war against humanity.There is a complete disconnect to moral and humanitarian values and the present and futuristic survival and progress of civilized mankind. Media reports indicate several hundreds of West European and American troops fighting in support of Israel. What a shame, what a disgrace that Arab-Muslim leaders would not act to defend the human dignity, security and freedom of the people of Gaza.
The American-Israeli collaborative war on Gaza and its immediate consequences made the Western world and all of its institutions shamefully redundant in the 21st century global norms of civility, human rights, freedom, justice and safety of civilians - whereas crimes against humanity are captured in obscure impulses and indecision and deliberate inaction by the UNO and the Security Council. Mocking its Charter’s obligations, the UN Security Council failed to agree to an immediate ceasefire or to protect the civilians from terror of daily bombardments of hospitals, doctors, ambulances, schools and places of worship. The Five months continued onslaught sounds like 500 years of prolonged insanity that mankind has never witnessed except the TWO WW. While the political cynicism and wickedness across the Western hemisphere is endemic, the need to end the war calls for an urgent reasoned dialogue for peace. The animals have no bombs, no guns and bullets to kill each other and do not reflect on the imperatives of life. We, the human beings, are supposed to be intelligent and responsible species on this Earth. At the edge of reason, the notion of evil leads to realization of evil and tyranny of war must be stopped by all means and those responsible for bombing the innocents, the genocide and crimes against humanity must be held accountable to restore the vision of a sustainable moral and intellectual humanity.
Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in international affairs-global security, peace and conflict resolution and has spent several academic years across the Russian-Ukrainian and Central Asian regions knowing the people, diverse cultures of thinking and political governance and a keen interest in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including the latest: One Humanity and the Remaking of Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution. 12/2019.
Countercurrent – March 11, 2024
Israel’s Gaza genocide: 5 months on, 100,000 dead and injured. Can we do nothing?
by Arjun Banerjee
The events in Gaza and occupied Palestine are shocking and depressing. Over 30,000 human lives have been brutally taken away in Israel’s ferocious assault on Palestinians in Gaza, which is now widely being acknowledged as a genocide. Over 70,000 people are injured in a besieged enclave where hospitals are bombed, doctors targeted, and essential aid and medicines are denied. Israel has used every possible method to extinguish human lives. It has rained bombs from the sky which have trapped thousands under rubble. It has cut off food and water since the beginning of its assault, which has led to mass starvation and famine that has claimed many lives, including those of infants and children. The UNICEF says that 17,000 children have been left all alone in Gaza. Orphaned and with nowhere to go. It is not for nothing that Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network has said that Israel is imperilling its legitimacy through its own actions, calling it a ﾓcriminalﾔ state, run by a “gang” and “zealots”.
The disturbing pathology of ‘Israeli society’ is visible in the way that its citizens are physically preventing the passage of aid trucks despite their awareness that their actions are compounding the hellish suffering right beside them. It is all justified in the name of Israeli ‘safety’ and ‘right to exist’. There are shameful pictures doing the rounds online of Israeli soldiers flaunting and posing in the underwear of women they killed and displaced, a clear vindication of how deeply militarism, male dominance, and sexual violence are interconnected. Bulldozers running people over and leaving them to rot in their grotesque state, only to be recirculated in putrid Telegram groups with expressions of glee and bombast. These toe-curling, gut-wrenching scenes are part of a historic continuum of escalating Zionist oppression in Palestine. Colonialism has not gone away but is right here, leering in the face of all the moral progress that humanity has made over the past two centuries. In other words, there is not a single atrocity that we can think of that has already not been perpetrated by Israel in Gaza. Visuals from this human catastrophe that will go on to define this century’s history (and a very dark one at that) are today being openly mocked, derided, and denied. How can we let things come to this?
‘Never again’ is for everyone, including Palestinians
The weight on all the world to act has never been higher, given that we have very recent historical precedents and existing commitments to institute mechanisms in place that would never allow a mass extermination like the Holocaust to happen ever again. On this note, it is also important to acknowledge that there are many other people who went through tragedies as deep as the Holocaust. The victims of King Leopold in Congo (1885-1908) and the Chinese victims of Japanese imperialism in the Nanjing Massacre (1937), as well as the Japanese civilians killed and affected by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945) are unfortunate examples of people who paid the ultimate price for the sins of the 20th century.
This is not to pit one tragedy against another but to convey that the moral force behind the collective international will to declare “never again” has emanated from the lived experience of the whole world and not just one section of it. Zionists are misappropriating and perverting the memory of the Holocaust by weaponizing it against any criticism or scrutiny of its actions in Palestine. This has been the standard practice since the inception of Israel and its U.S.-backed influence around the world. On December 8, 2023, the Israeli ambassador trooped in with his staff in the UN General Assembly sporting the yellow ﾑStar of Davidﾒ on their chests. This was one of the many humiliations enforced on Jews in the Nazi regime and is a sensitive memory that deserves to be treated with respect. However, the ambassador was bellicose in the assembly and continually sought to portray Israel as the victim in the U.N. whereas reality cannot be further from the truth. In fact, not only has the U.S. vetoed three resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza (something which would impede Israel’s stated agenda of annexing all of Palestine and expelling/exterminating its indigenous people), but has also led its allies into pulling funding from the UN’s refugee agency (UNRWA), one of the sources from which Palestinians can access food and education. Reports now have the UNRWA’s staff alleging that Israel tortured them into ‘confessing’ that its staffers are aiding the resistance group Hamas or joining its ranks altogether! When has a U.N. member country been accused of torturing the institution’s staff before? Couple this with Israel’s relentless aggressive posturing against the U.N. and brazen flouting of its resolutions and we can safely say that it is a rogue state acting in total disregard for international law and norms.
The U.N. is a product of the victory against fascism and the anti-colonial movement as much as it is an institution to negotiate international realpolitik in the aftermath of World War 2. While it has never been perfect or radically disruptive to the agenda of Western, white supremacist capitalist hegemony, the ongoing genocide in Gaza has shaken its very foundations in its visible weakness when faced with good old-fashioned settler colonialism armed with modern-day weapons of war and information. Even these vestiges of its symbolic value will erode if Israel is allowed to run rampant on its current trajectory of total annihilation of the Palestinians. As it is, the U.S.-led West and their ‘allies’ are internationally isolated on this issue. Experts and ordinary people alike can trace the congruency between the West’s (relatively recent) settler colonial and fascist past and the present-day carnage being perpetrated in Gaza. Support is coalescing along the lines of ‘Global North vs. Global South’ and there is vigorous talk of a multipolar world emerging from the ashes, led by a Global South that is more substantial as a grouping than simply being “formerly colonized”.
Israeli genocide in Gaza: Documentation and resources
1. Free Palestine: A Verso Reading List [Link]. Ten Myths About Israel, Palestine Speaks, Blaming the Victims, The Case For Sanctions Against Israel, The Punishment of Gaza are available to read and download for free.
2. ‘25 threads to make sense of Israel/Palestine’ [Twitter threads]
3. 25 Zionist talking points/propaganda refuted [Twitter thread]
4. Genocidal intent declared by top Israeli leadership [Tweet, image]
5. Israeli minister endorses using epidemics to wipe out Palestinians [Tweet]
6. Israel starves special needs child Yazan al Kafarneh to death [News]
7. Girl child Anhar Al-Shanbari starved to death by Israel [Tweet]
8. Seven-year-old girl kidnapped by Israeli military in West Bank [Tweet, video]
9. Airstrikes wipe out family in Tal Al-Hawa, west of Gaza city [Tweet, video]ﾠ
10. Women journalists and activists killed by Israel [Twitter thread]
11. Hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza lined up before the IDF [Tweet, video]ﾠ
12. Israeli war crimes posted by IDF soldiers themselves [Twitter thread]
13. Rafah Flour Massacre: 112 killed, 750 injured by Israel [News, link]
14. Another massacre of Palestinians for seeking food [Tweet, news, video]
15. Exposing NYT’s fraud “exposé” on Hamas ‘rapes’ [Article, video]
16. 5-year-old Faisal recounts pregnant mother shot in the belly [Tweet, video]
17. “Gaza and its citizens are all dying ugly deaths and I love it…”- Nurse from Howard University Hospital in DC [Tweet, video]
Arjun Banerjee is a writer and political commentator. He is a postgraduate in English literature from the University of Delhi. He writes about current events and culture
Desperate to escape Gaza carnage, Palestinians
are forced to pay exorbitant fees to enter Egypt
With almost no options for escape, people in Gaza are increasingly paying thousands of dollars to fixers connected to the Egyptian government.
Khalid Mohammed
ALAA SHATILA AND her family had been sheltering at a hospital in southern Gaza for 40 days when they made the decision. Their house and accessories shop in Gaza City had long been flattened by Israeli warplanes. They had survived an airstrike in Rafah in October and moved to Khan Younis. But even in their new refuge, the European Hospital, they could feel the bombings getting more and more intense. It was time to leave Gaza. They needed to find a way out. These days, that’s almost impossible.
In most cases, it takes having a foreign passport to be evacuated from Gaza into neighboring Egypt, though some people with serious injuries are sometimes allowed to exit as well. As Israel threatens to invade Rafah, where more than 1 million people from across Gaza have been displaced, Palestinians are increasingly desperate to get out. With no other options, they are turning to unofficial channels instead: paying what is known as a “coordination” fee for a travel permit. These days, that can cost $5,000 to $7,500 per person — an exorbitant markup of the prewar cost of $250 to $600.
Shatila’s family estimates that they need £30,000, or about $38,000, to pay the travel fees for six people. Having lost everything during the war, they don’t have anything close to that kind of money. So like many others in Gaza, they are now reluctantly raising funds online to support their escape.
“Even affording the basics now is beyond our means here,” said Shatila, whose sister urgently needs medical care after being injured in an airstrike. They launched a crowdfunding campaign, with the help of another sister who lives outside of Gaza — out of hopes that they can someday soon “sleep without fear or anxiety and wake up without the sound of warplanes and missiles,” Shatila said.
Palestinians who are able to scrape together the money pay the fees to a travel agency, which takes a commission before sending the remainder to officials in Egypt with connections to the state intelligence agency, according to people in Gaza with knowledge of the process. Within 10 days, the traveler’s name appears on a “coordination register,” separate from the official Gaza government register — allowing the traveler swift processing at the border. Mada Masr, an independent Egyptian news outlet, reported in a detailed investigation last month that a well-connected businessman with close ties to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is running the show.
Officials in both Gaza and Egypt have denied the existence of a system to collect fees from would-be travelers. “We have nothing to do with imposing any fees on citizens for travel, and we listen to complaints, but we do not have any authority in this matter,” an official on the Hamas-controlled side of the crossing told Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper. An Egyptian intelligence official, meanwhile, asked Palestinians to “notify the Egyptian security authorities at the crossing if they are blackmailed or under pressure from anyone profiting from their case.”
IT’S AN OPEN secret in Gaza that travel agencies coordinate with Egyptian authorities to buy passage for people seeking to leave the Gaza Strip. The process dates back to at least 2015, according to an employee of a Gaza travel agency, who spoke to The Intercept on condition of anonymity. By that point, Gaza had been under a punishing Israeli blockade that was reinforced by Egypt for nine years. The prolonged closure of the Rafah border crossing (which continues to this day) meant that people waited for months for government permission to leave the Gaza Strip, giving rise to coordinators who facilitated travel permissions for about $3,000, the travel agency source said.
The Hamas-run government has long officially opposed the practice, which is illegal, but it is commonplace nonetheless. “The government used to require some travel agencies that had worked in coordination, to sign an agreement stating that if they were caught breaking the rules again, their business would be shut down,” the employee said. “Then the government turned a blind eye.”
For Gazan youth who face travel restrictions to Egypt, paying the fee has long been one of the only ways out: a path to medical treatment, an education, or better economic opportunities abroad. The coordination fee has fluctuated over time, generally more expensive in the summer than during winter months. In the months preceding the current war, the fee was around $250 to $600, according to the worker and Palestinians who paid such fees last summer.
“The Egyptian side determines the coordination fees, but sometimes Gazan coordinators manipulate prices,” the worker said. He added that the local fixers send the money to Egyptian officials through a currency exchange office in Gaza or another cash transfer service.
For the Egyptian public and others sympathetic with the people of Gaza, the idea of Egyptian officials pocketing thousands of dollars in coordination fees is unforgivable.
As those prices have skyrocketed in recent months, and as fundraisers for Palestinians hoping to cross into Egypt have proliferated online, the Egyptian government has faced increased scrutiny for its management of the border crossing. Keeping the border closed and ceding to Israeli restrictions on humanitarian aid is controversial enough; for the Egyptian public and others across the Muslim-majority world who are strongly sympathetic with the people of Gaza, the idea of Egyptian officials pocketing thousands of dollars in coordination fees is unforgivable. The Egyptian government, for its part, has continually denied that such an arrangement exists.
Yet a retired security source who used to work with Egypt’s military intelligence in North Sinai, a province that is near the border with Gaza, confirmed to Middle East Eye that there is a network of mediators connected to different parts of the state’s security apparatus who were facilitating the entrance of foreigners from Egypt’s eastern borders.
In its recent investigation, Mada Masr reported that a travel agency called Hala Consulting and Tourism Services, owned by Ibrahim al-Argany, has usurped control of the coordination process, effectively becoming the only agency capable of ensuring travel permits. Human Rights Watch scrutinized Argany’s dealings back in 2022, reporting that Hala “has strong links with Egypt’s security establishment and is staffed largely by former Egyptian military officers.”
In a recent post, a Facebook page affiliated with the travel agency advertised prices of $5,000 for adults and $2,500 for those younger than 16.
“Hala agency’s offices in Cairo are overcrowded,” Asil, a Palestinian woman who recently paid $24,000 for her family’s travel, told The Intercept. “They are willing to pay any amount to get their families out of Gaza.”
TWO-THIRDS OF PEOPLE in Gaza have been displaced since the start of the war. Most of them, some 1.3 million, are now caught in Rafah, a city in southern Gaza that Israel had declared a safe zone.
The Shatila family’s displacement journey began in the first week of the war. Residents of Gaza City, they had moved south to Rafah to shelter at a relative’s house. On October 17, they were sleeping when an Israeli air raid struck an adjoining house, wounding all of Shatila’s siblings and father.
“Suddenly, the house roof fell on us, and a large stone struck my head. I was bleeding from my head and nose, vomiting blood. We were screaming for rescue,” Shatila said. “I didn’t find my eyeglasses and couldn’t see anything to look for my family. I was screaming and calling my family, but I didn’t find them.”
Nearly three months after launching the fundraising campaign, the family is still stuck in Gaza, having raised just over half the money they need for the six of them to leave the country.
“I know we may not raise the whole amount as it’s very high, hoping it goes down soon,” she said.
World Socialist Web Site – March 10, 2024
Israel forced UNRWA employees to falsely admit agency
links to Hamas and staff participation in October 7 incursion
Jean Shaoul
The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) says Palestinians released into Gaza from Israeli prisons were forced to falsely admit links between the agency and Hamas and that its staff took part in the October 7 incursion.
According to Reuters and the Times of Israel, these claims were contained in a report, dated February 2024, detailing mistreatment and abuse suffered by Gazans. The report states, “Agency staff members have been subject to threats and coercion by the Israeli authorities while in detention, and pressured to make false statements against the Agency, including that the Agency has affiliations with Hamas and that UNRWA staff members took part in the 7 October 2023 atrocities.”
The 11-page UNRWA report, yet to be published, said that the Israeli military detained several UNRWA Palestinian employees in Gaza in Israeli jails. Ill-treatment and abuse included severe physical beatings, waterboarding, and threats of harm to family members. As well as describing efforts to extract false confessions, they and other Palestinian detainees reported beatings, humiliation, threats, dog attacks, sexual violence and deaths of detainees denied medical treatment.
Juliette Touma, UNRWA’s communications director, said the agency planned to pass the report to UN and other human rights agencies concerned with potential human rights abuses, saying, “When the war comes to an end there needs to be a series of inquiries to look into all violations of human rights.” She explained that document was based on interviews the agency had conducted with dozens of Palestinians freed from Israeli detention.
Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s Commissioner-General, warned of “a deliberate and concerted campaign” seeking to end the agency's work, citing comments by Israel’s fascist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about destruction of the agency's infrastructure in Gaza and its replacement by another UN agency. As of the end of January, Israel’s war on Gaza had killed 152 of UNRWA’s Palestinian employees and hit its facilities 263 times, resulting in 360 civilian deaths.
On Saturday, Lazzarini told Swiss broadcaster RTS, “The agency is at risk of death, it is risking dismantlement. What is at stake is the fate of the Palestinians today in Gaza in the short term who are going through an absolutely unprecedented humanitarian crisis.”
The use of violence and abuse to obtain false confessions is part of a criminal effort to justify closing down UNRWA, set up by the UN in 1949 with responsibility for education, health and relief services to the 5.7 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
It follows a list of shameless and refuted lies by Israeli officials, including that government had no warnings of an impending Hamas attack, claims about the beheading of 40 babies and mass rape on October 7, the supposed vast underground command centre beneath Al-Shifa Hospital, and the claim that the 112 Palestinians killed in the “flour massacre” died as a result of a stampede to get the food aid rather than live fire from Israel’s military forces.
In December, a classified Israeli foreign ministry report was leaked proposing the elimination of UNRWA from Gaza in three steps: alleging cooperation of UNRWA staff members with Hamas; reducing UNRWA services in Gaza; and then transferring its duties to whatever entity was left governing Gaza after the end of the war, thereby giving Israel complete control.
In January, it put its plan into effect, accusing 12 UNRWA staff of taking part in the October 7 attack. It later claimed that 450 of the agency’s 13,000 workers in Gaza are members of Hamas or other militant groups, without providing a shred of evidence.
Foreign Minister Israel Katz declared that his aims included “promoting a policy ensuring that UNRWA will not be a part of the day after” an Israeli victory in Gaza. The agency is targeted because it keeps the Palestinians together rather than attempting to resettle them, and enshrines the right of Palestinian refugees to return home in accordance with United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194. The US immediately suspended all funding to UNRWA, followed by 15 other states, including Germany, the UK and France, putting the very survival of the agency at risk.
The Reuters’ report of Israel’s abusive efforts to coerce Gazans into making false confessions follows earlier articles in the New York Times, the Guardian and Ha’aretz, based on the same UNRWA document. While the newspapers’ articles described the horrific conditions of Palestinian detention in Israeli jails, including that detainees were “beaten, stripped, robbed, blindfolded, sexually abused and denied access to lawyers and doctors, often for more than a month,” they said nothing about the attempts to force false confessions about supposed links to Hamas.
This silence is in line with the systematic bias in the mainstream media in their reporting of Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza, in order to support its continuation and extension to Iran and its allies in the region.
As the Times noted, UNRWA’s investigation was based on the testimony from more than 100 of the 1,002 civilians later released without charge held at three military sites in Israel. Those detained included males and females aged from as young as 6 to 82, including some with Alzheimer’s disease, intellectual disabilities and cancer. Some Gazans died while in detention, including those denied access to medical treatment. Many had been captured from northern Gaza when they were sheltering in hospitals and schools or were fleeing south, while others had their permits to work in Israel revoked after October 7, leaving them stranded and detained in Israel.
The report describes “a range of ill-treatment that Gazans of all ages, abilities and backgrounds have reported facing in makeshift detention facilities in Israel,” which it concluded, “was used to extract information or confessions, to intimidate and humiliate, and to punish.” An estimated 3,000 Gazans remain in Israeli detention without access to lawyers, a right denied for up to 180 days to detainees captured in Gaza under legislation passed since the start of the war.
Some male detainees reported that they were beaten on their genitals, while women experienced “inappropriate touching during searches and as a form of harassment while blindfolded” and being forced to strip in front of male soldiers during searches.
The report’s findings back up those of several Israeli and Palestinian rights groups, as well as separate investigations by two UN special rapporteurs, alleging similar abuses inside Israeli prisons.
On Thursday, Ha’aretz reported that 27 Gaza detainees had died in custody in temporary prison camps at Israeli military centres since the start of the war. In December, Ha’aretz revealed that detainees at Sde Teiman were held while handcuffed and blindfolded throughout the day.
According to data that the HaMoked Center for the Defense of the Individual received from Israel’s Prison Service, as of March 1, the Prison Service was holding 793 Gaza residents in its jails under the status of “unlawful combatants” in addition to an unknown number of Gazans held in military detention facilities.
In another article last week, Ha’aretz reported that police are holding Palestinians, including those stranded after the war when their work permits were revoked, in makeshift cages made of bars, with no walls, beds or toilets, due to a shortage of prison cells, leaving them exposed to the cold, 24 hours a day. Despite Justice Gad Ehrenberg, at a hearing at the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court, describing the conditions at a Border Police base in Atarot, near Jerusalem, as “unsuitable for humans” and demanding the practice be stopped, nothing has changed.
In another case, a Palestinian who had been held there for four days without being allowed to shower and “without proper food or blankets, despite the extreme cold” as his lawyer explained, was released after a court ruled last month that “conditions there grossly violate the law regulating detentions, thereby violating the basic rights of suspects.”
Security prisoners and detainees at Gilboa Prison and Megiddo—where two prisoners died in the weeks following the start of the war—in northern Israel have reported that prison guards had assaulted, humiliated and abused them after October 7, including threatening them with violence if they refused to kiss the Israeli flag. The Prison Service has ignored their complaints, under instructions from Jewish Power leader and minister of national security Itamar Ben-Gvir, who long ago declared war on Palestinian prisoners, including giving orders to shut down the bakeries that supply bread to prisoners, which he described as an “indulgence,” and drastically limiting water use.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/03/10/nref-m10.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws
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