Netanyahu is facing more criticism at home as well since the hostage screw up
A columnist in the Hebrew-language newspaper Maariv wrote about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “The truth is simple: The man who was once the great wizard of Israeli politics, no longer has his charms. He always needs an outside enemy, an imagined enemy from which the public can be frightened and to ensure salvation.”
Meanwhile, the liberal publication Haaretz published a scathing editorial saying, “One can also not blur what is emerging from the [Israeli army]’s preliminary investigation, which is that there is insufficient discrimination between Hamas fighters and civilians when striking. This time, Israeli hostages tragically paid the price.”
And in the Times of Israel, a journalist wrote, “Captives and their families now carry the added fear that, even an improbable escape from captivity might lead to their deaths, in such hitherto unthinkable circumstances, as occurred on Friday morning.”
The turning point in the Israeli media narrative comes after the killing of the Israeli captives but also follows an admission from journalists and activists that Israeli mainstream media are barely showing images of what’s happening in Gaza and that journalists are not doing their jobs.
Public support in Israel for the war will take a hit as more of the truth trickles through into Israeli media. The problem is, the more Netanyahu feels backed into a corner, the more destructive he gets.
Latest war crimes and atrocities
Palestinian Health Minister Mai al-Kaila has called for an “urgent probe” after Israeli forces were accused of crushing Palestinians, including wounded patients, using bulldozers in the yard of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza.
On Saturday, doctors and other witnesses said Israeli forces bulldozed tents housing displaced Palestinians near the hospital and crushed them to death. Witnesses told Al Jazeera that civilians were deliberately targeted.
The Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs said that women arrested by the Israeli army from the Gaza Strip were subjected to torture and brutal abuse.
According to a testimony from one of the prisoners, the Israeli prison administration deliberately singled out female detainees from Gaza for the worst type of treatment.
The Commission quoted the prisoner as saying: “An elderly woman, 80 years old from Gaza, arrived at the prison walking on a crutch and without a cover on her head. Her body and clothes were full of blood and she did not know anything. It seemed that she was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.”
The Commission said that all the female prisoners in the Gaza Strip had their clothes confiscated and replaced them with summer clothes. They were subjected to many beatings and assaults, in addition to non-stop insults, with some of them spending seven days outdoors in the rain and in the cold.
The UN’s human rights office says it received reports from the north of Gaza of mass detentions, ill-treatment and forced disappearances of possibly thousands of Palestinians at the hands of Israeli soldiers.
They include more than 100 women and girls, most rounded up as they attempted to move south or were taken during operations conducted on their homes, hospitals, schools and other places of refuge.
OHCHR in the occupied Palestinian territory also said:
- Reports claim children as young as 12 and people as old as 70 are among those detained.
- Reports suggest many of the detained were subjected to serious ill-treatment, which in some instances may amount to torture.
- Credible information was also received about 140 women and girls arbitrarily detained and being held in undisclosed locations.
- Civilians have been killed, including in apparent extrajudicial executions, in places of refuge, particularly schools.
An airstrike Sunday morning killed at least 24 people in Jabalya, northern Gaza, the Hamas-controlled health ministry in the territory said. At least 90 people were wounded in addition to the 24 dead, and there are "many more feared under the rubble of a house," according to Dr. Munir Al-Bursh, director-general of the Ministry of Health.
Desperation has set in
Commenting on the scenes of people rushing aid trucks at the Rafah crossing, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara says it is another sign that the “collective punishment” of Palestinians in Gaza is continuing unabated.
“They have cut off communications longer than before. Not only are they starving people but also denying them medical help, clean water, electricity and communication,” he said. “People in Gaza are suffering like no people have ever suffered before in modern times. It’s documented. It’s in plain sight.”
He added that the recent statements by the UK and German foreign ministers calling for a “sustainable ceasefire” were “delusional” in light of the suffering faced by the people in Gaza.
“After non-stop bombings that failed to defeat Hamas, they are still talking about a sustainable ceasefire … It’s just not in touch with reality.”
The humanitarian situation has become very desperate, not only for the residents of Rafah city but also for the one million displaced Palestinians here who are becoming hungry, thirsty and traumatised as the war pounds on.
Whatever the amount of aid has been let in, it is not enough. People are without anything – without a home, without access to food, without water and without medical supplies. So the scenes at Rafah crossing are a natural response; when people starve to death, when they are hungry, this is what we will see happening.
People are trying to survive, they’re in survival mode right now.
The UN has been warning that people in Gaza have become so “desperate for food” that they are stopping aid trucks and immediately eating what they find.
The deputy head of the UN World Food Programme on Thursday also confirmed that about half of all people in Gaza “are starving”, with no idea where their next meal is coming from.
The death toll in Gaza is now up to 18,787 deaths, 50,897 wounded with another 8,000 missing, stuck under collapsed buildings.
In the West Bank it's up to 297 killed, 3,365 wounded
Israel 1,139 killed (revised down from 1,400), 8,730 wounded, 121 soldiers killed.
Jakarta protests outside the US embassy
Biden pull the plug. Nobody is going to trust the US anymore. The Middle East is already looking more towards China and Russia with this genocide raging out of control. This is not enough, not even close, rather just an insult to what's going on:
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will push Israeli officials to define milestones for its war against Hamas in Gaza, a senior US defense official tells CNN, marking the second visit of a top US official aimed at communicating US expectations to Israel as civilian casualties mount.
During his visit on Monday, the senior defense official said Austin will “receive specific updates on how the war cabinet Minister of Defense (Yoav) Gallant and the Israel Defense Forces assess their progress in the current phase of the campaign in Gaza to dismantle the military infrastructure of Hamas.”
Austin, the official added, will press Israeli officials on “what metrics they're looking at in order to transition to the next phase of their campaign in Gaza,” noting that he will work to “drill down” on efforts to increase humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza and also work to mitigate harm to civilians.
"Drill down", the next step after "extremely serious conversations". No doubt followed by we stand firmly behind Israel, unconditional support etc.
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