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Forums - Politics Discussion - Israel-Hamas war, Gaza genocide

SvennoJ on 11 August 2024

Israeli list of fighters killed in Gaza City contains misinformation, Palestinian sources say

Our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic, citing Palestinian sources, are reporting that the list of 19 fighters that Israel claimed were targeted in the attack on al-Tabin School carried misinformation.

Two of the men were in fact killed days before the attack in other areas of the Gaza Strip, the sources said.

They are Montaser Dahir, who was killed along with his sister in his apartment a day before the school attack and Youssef al-Wadiya, who was killed two days before in a different location, they said.

Another man on the list – Mohammed al-Taif – was an academic and a former school principal and was not involved in any military activity, they added.

The Palestinian Quds News Network also reported that the list was “full of misinformation” and said “more than half of those listed were not involved in any political or military activities”.

It's all lies, can't trust anything the IDF and Israel claim, nor the US for that matter.

Horrific testimonies unfold over Israel’s massacre in Gaza City

The extent of the brutality of the attacks on al-Tabin School in Gaza City keeps unfolding with more horrific testimonies.

These are either from the medical staff at al-Ahli Arab Hospital (Baptist Hospital), who were treating the wounded and dealing with a huge influx of injuries arriving, or from the civil defence crews who were at the bombsite after receiving the news of the strikes.

There are stories of remaining family members still searching for their missing children in the attack, who somehow evaporated with no signs of them any more.

The medical staff would describe injuries arriving at the hospital, and admitted right away to the operating theatre for surgeries, removing flesh and bones of other bodies.

They say they had to remove other people’s body parts shredded into pieces and stuck to these wounded people that needed to be operated.


A man carries the body of a family member following an Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Gaza City

Australia condemns Israeli raid on school sheltering displaced Palestinians

Australia has joined the international community in condemning the deaths of more than 100 civilians in an Israeli bombing of a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Gaza City.

“Innocent Palestinians cannot continue to pay the price of defeating Hamas,” Foreign Minister Penny Wong said in a post on X, calling for an “immediate” ceasefire in the besieged enclave.

“Australia condemns the deaths of civilians from Israel’s strike on al-Tabeen School. Israel must comply with international humanitarian law,” Wong said. Dozens were also injured as an Israeli aircraft targeted Palestinians performing dawn prayers at the school in the city’s Daraj neighbourhood.

So stop your arms trade with Israel, impose sanctions.

Germany’s Scholz says it’s time to finalise truce deal

Many military objectives in Israel’s fight against Hamas have been achieved while civilian casualties and human suffering in Gaza are enormous, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a phone conversation, according to a German government statement.

The statement said Scholz told the Israeli leader it is important to break the destructive spiral of violence in the Middle East.

“An end to the war in Gaza would be a decisive step towards a regional de-escalation,” it said. Scholz also told Netanyahu it is time to finalise an agreement on the release of captives and a ceasefire in Gaza.

Killing sheltering civilians ‘unacceptable’: Germany

“The reports from Gaza are terrible. Civilians seeking shelter getting killed is unacceptable,” it said, adding that the repeated attacks on schools by the Israeli army must stop and be investigated quickly.

“The suffering of women, men and many children seeking protection, who have been fleeing the fights in Gaza for months, is immeasurable. They must not get in the crossfire any longer. Hamas must stop abusing them as protective shields,” it said.

There is no evidence yet Hamas fighters have used civilians as human shields in the ongoing war.


It's time for you to stop supporting genocide and stop spreading misinformation / making excuses for the IDF.



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SvennoJ on 11 August 2024

Israel’s actions in Gaza ‘require a whole new vocabulary’

Dr James Smith, an emergency physician who returned from a medical mission to Gaza in June, says he never saw anything like what is going on in the enclave over the course of his career as a doctor working in the humanitarian system.

He said what is happening in Gaza “requires a whole new vocabulary”.

“There is no way to effectively describe what Israel is doing to the Palestinians in Gaza,” he told Al Jazeera, adding that the Israeli strikes on a Gaza City school sheltering people is the latest Israeli “massacre” in the enclave.

“The definition of a massacre is a deliberate brutal barbaric attack on a large group of people. Typically a massacre provokes or prompts a widespread condemnation and action,” he said.

“It is inconceivable to me that we are talking about hundreds of massacres that have happened in the course of the last 10 months,” he added.

“It is absolutely wild to me that the US government can publicly state ‘deep concern’ while providing military support for the violence that Israelis enacting against the Palestinian people.”



‘The more you move, the more suffering and destruction you see’

Salim Oweis, a communications officer at UNICEF’s Middle East and North Africa office, has recently returned from Gaza and tells Al Jazeera the reality is much worse than what people see on TV screens.

“We don’t see on the screens the depth of the deaths and destruction, the depths of people suffering and their daily struggles for the basics of the basics,” he said. “So the situation there is really dire.”

“I was based in Deir el-Balah and Khan Younis and also north of Gaza, and to be honest, the more you move, the more suffering and destruction you see. The situation is really beyond description,” he said.

He described the impact of repeated attacks on schools as devastating.

“Those schools are not schools any more. They are very basic shelters for so many families, and we have unfortunately seen in the last 10 months so many of those attacks on schools, on hospitals, on civilian infrastructure that children and families rely on, which makes life even more miserable.”



SvennoJ on 11 August 2024

The International Criminal Court – fit for purpose?

The International Criminal Court (ICC), established in 2002, seeks to hold to account those guilty of some of the world’s worst crimes.

Supporters say it deters would-be war criminals, bolsters the rule of law, and offers justice to victims of atrocities. But it has only had 11 successful convictions in nearly a quarter of a century, having spent nearly $2bn. The United States, China and Russia are not among its members, and many African governments say its prosecutions single out Africa.

Now, as the world waits to see if the ICC will issue arrest warrants for the leaders of Israel and Hamas, People and Power asks whether the court is fit for purpose.



That's a month old documentary. The ICC is obviously not fit for purpose. They're not overwhelmed with cases like regular courts, overwhelmed with political interference instead.

Can you notice a pattern... https://www.icc-cpi.int/cases

War on Gaza ‘falsely portrayed as conflict. It is genocide’

Abdullah Al-Arian, associate professor of history at Georgetown University in Qatar and a specialist in the modern Middle East, tells Al Jazeera the situation in Gaza is often “falsely portrayed as a conflict between two equal parties when, in reality, it is a genocide being carried out by one side against a defenceless, besieged population”.

Al-Arian suggests that instead of relying on negotiations, there needs to be strong political will from international actors to stop Israel’s actions.




SvennoJ on 11 August 2024

International law is dead, apart from invoking article 51 (Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security) Since the UNSC won't (can't) do anything:

Iran’s top diplomat pledges ‘legitimate and decisive action’ against Israel

Iran’s Acting Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani reiterated the promise during a phone call with his Belgian counterpart, Hadja Lahbib, saying such action was necessary to defend the country’s “national security, territorial integrity and sovereignty”, according to Iranian media.

Kani spoke with Lahbib on Sunday.

The Iranian diplomat added that Israel “has violated the stability and security of West Asia by targeting a school in Gaza and killing innocent people praying there, attacking a residential area in Beirut, and cowardly assassinating Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran”.

The Belgian minister, in a read-out of her call with Kani, said she expressed “our deepest concern about the risk of regional escalation in the Middle East” and called “on Iran, like all regional players, to exercise the utmost restraint”.

Haniyeh’s killing violated Iran’s sovereignty: China’s top diplomat

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi says his country supports Iran in defending its “sovereignty, security and national dignity”, according to a statement by the ministry.

In a phone call with Iran’s acting foreign minister, Wang repeated Beijing’s condemnation of the assassination of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, saying the strike had violated Iran’s sovereignty and threatened regional stability.

Wang told Ali Bagheri Kani that Haniyeh’s killing “directly undermined the Gaza ceasefire negotiation process and undermined regional peace and stability”, China’s Foreign Ministry said.

Iran and Hamas have accused Israel of carrying out a strike that killed Haniyeh on July 31. Israel has not claimed or denied responsibility for the killing. Iran has promised to “harshly punish” Israel over the assassination.



SvennoJ on 11 August 2024

Palestinians in Jenin protest against Israel’s school ‘massacre’

The Wafa news agency is reporting that Palestinians in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin held a demonstration to condemn the Israeli deadly attack on Gaza City’s al-Tabin school.

The protesters marched through the city’s streets, chanting slogans “denouncing the occupation’s crimes and ongoing massacres” in the Gaza Strip, Wafa reported.

They also called on the international community to intervene and end Israel’s war on Gaza.


Israeli military carries out arrests across the occupied West Bank

The Israeli military has arrested six people from the town of al-Issawiya, northeast of occupied Jerusalem, the Wafa news agency reports.

Israeli forces have also arrested three men from the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, Wafa reports, while another man has been arrested in the town of Bani Naim, east of Hebron.

Three people have also been arrested following clashes in the el-Ein camp near Nablus, where Israeli forces shot and wounded a Palestinian man earlier, while a man has also been arrested in the town of Azzun, east of Qalqilya.


Israeli forces detain 16 in occupied West Bank

The overnight arrests have taken place in occupied East Jerusalem, Hebron, Jenin, Qalqilya and Nablus, according to the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society.

Among those detained were former prisoners and a journalist, a statement by the organisations said. Since the war began, Israeli forces have detained about 10,000 Palestinians, they added.


Israeli citizen killed in shooting attack near illegal settlement of Mahola

At least one Israeli citizen has been killed and another injured in a shooting attack near the illegal Israeli settlement of Mahola in the occupied West Bank, according to an Israeli army spokesman.

The announcement on X said the shooting came from a passing vehicle at several vehicles at the Mahola intersection on Route 90 in the area of the army’s Bekaa and Emekim division.

Israel’s Army Radio reported that troops are chasing the car.

Medical teams “pronounced a man in his 20s dead” while a 33-year-old man was evacuated by helicopter “with gunshot wounds to his lower limbs”, a statement said.

Israeli troops closed the entrances and exit points of Jericho City nearby, Wafa reported, while soldiers raided two adjacent villages – Kardala and Bardala – in the Jordan Valley, near the illegal settlement of Mehola.



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SvennoJ on 11 August 2024

Casualties reported as Israel bombs Khan Younis

Several Palestinians were wounded at dawn after Israeli forces shelled a house in the town of Abasan al-Kabira, east of Khan Younis, according to local media reports.

Videos of the aftermath of the attack, posted online by the Palestinian Information Center, showed people carrying the wounded, including a bloodied child covered in dust. The attack came as Al-Aqsa TV also reported that Israeli fighter jets were carrying out air attacks on the town of Bani Suheila, also east of Khan Younis.

Earlier, we reported that Israel’s military ordered Palestinians living in more areas of Khan Younis to evacuate ahead of a planned operation there.


Israel issues new evacuation orders for Khan Younis

The Israeli military is ordering civilians in the al-Jalaa neighbourhood of Khan Younis to evacuate, saying there had been “numerous acts of terrorism” in the area.

“The early warning is carried out in order to reduce the damage to the civilian population and keep them away from the combat area,” the military said in a post on X, showing a colour-coded map further adjusting the boundaries of the “humanitarian zone” in southern Gaza.

The notice is the second such order in the past few hours. Earlier, the Israeli military issued an evacuation order for Palestinian civilians in areas south of Khan Younis city centre, including Sheikh Nasser, Barbakh and Maen.

According to the UN, up to 70,000 people have already been forcibly displaced recently as a result of Israel’s evacuation orders for eastern parts of Khan Younis, while more than 86 percent of the Gaza Strip’s land area is currently subject to such notices.


‘We’re running from death to death’: Palestinian in Khan Younis

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been forced to leave their homes and shelters in the middle of the night in Khan Younis, heading west towards al-Mawasi and north towards Deir el-Balah, already overcrowded with hundreds of thousands of displaced people.

“We’re exhausted. This is the 10th time I and my family have had to leave our shelter,” said Zaki Mohammad, 28, who lives in the Hamad housing project in western Khan Younis, where the occupants of two multistorey buildings were ordered to leave.

“People are carrying their belongings, their children, their hopes and their fears and running towards the unknown, because there is no safe place,” he told Reuters. “We are running from death to death.”

‘Their whole lives in one small bag’: UNRWA chief

Philippe Lazzarini, head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, says people in Gaza are trapped and have nowhere to go.

In a post on X, he said more than 75,000 people have been displaced in southwest Gaza in the past few days.

“Some are only able to carry their children with them, some carry their whole lives in one small bag,” he added.

Lazzarini also said: “They are going to overcrowded places where shelters are already overflowing with families. They have lost everything and need everything. Unlike in other wars, the people of Gaza are trapped and have nowhere to go.”



SvennoJ on 11 August 2024

Israeli army says it struck fighters in Rafah

A military statement on X says the fighters were hit in an air attack after they were seen emerging from a tunnel shaft in the city located in southern Gaza.

The fighters were spotted by surveillance teams, the statement said. In a separate development in Rafah, Israeli soldiers launched an air strike on a building where they had spotted fighters, according to the army.

It added that about 30 other targets were hit by Israeli air attacks across the enclave over the past day, including buildings used by fighters, antitank positions, and weapon depots.


Dozens wounded as Israeli military carries out attacks across Gaza

The Israeli military has carried out several attacks across the Gaza Strip in recent hours, injuring dozens of people, the Wafa news agency reports. The attacks include:

  • Israeli fighter jets bombed two towers in the Hamad residential district north of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, injuring five people.
  • Israeli forces blew up residential buildings west of Rafah and shelled the western and northern areas of the city.
  • Israeli forces shelled and fired heavy weaponry at homes in the Zeitoun and Tal al-Hawa neighbourhoods of Gaza City.
  • Israeli gunboats shelled the port area and the outskirts of the Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City.
  • Israeli artillery shelled eastern areas of the Bureij camp and northern areas of the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza.
  • An Israeli quadcopter drone shot a girl in the face east of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza. She has been transferred to al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital and her condition is not known.


Al-Quds Brigades claims attacks on Israeli targets near Khan Younis

The armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad says it has bombarded Israeli soldiers and vehicles northeast of the city. The group said on Telegram that its fighters also bombed an Israeli command centre near an area called Hill 86 in the same region.


‘Israel keeps shrinking al-Mawasi evacuation zone’

The tragedy of the new wave of evacuations can be explained by the fact that the evacuation zone is being shrunk by eating up part of it and including it in the Red Zone.

This is just not giving enough space in an already small area for people who have been ordered sharply to evacuate to. We are talking about the al-Mawasi evacuation zone in the western part of Khan Younis city.

This area extends from the western part of Deir el-Balah city on the coastal road to Khan Younis city as well as Rafah city in southern Gaza.

It is mainly agricultural land, but unfortunately, it lacks the major basic necessities and supplies for the people to sustain their lives and cope with the hard living conditions – let alone the summer heat and many diseases spreading.

Really difficult living conditions have been created by the intense bombing campaign in the last few months.


Btw every American tax payer has already contributed over $109 dollars each to blow up Gazans.

(IRS processed 164,997,000 individual tax returns in 2022, 3.5 billion annual military assistance plus 14.5 billion extra this year)



SvennoJ on 11 August 2024

Ben-Gvir says Israel should occupy Gaza permanently

Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir took to X moments ago to call for the permanent occupation of the Gaza Strip.

He spoke out against a US-backed mediation effort and said Hamas “must be crushed” until it “completely surrenders”. The transfer of all humanitarian aid and fuel should be stopped until all captives held by Hamas are released and Israeli authorities must “encourage immigration and occupy the territories of the Gaza Strip in order to keep them in our hands permanently”, he wrote.

Earlier, Ben-Gvir told Israel’s Channel 14 that Israel taking part in ceasefire negotiations on Thursday would be “a serious mistake”. He said he told Netanyahu that the Israeli military is “doing a great job in Gaza” and “so why pull them out?”

He added: “Why should we go now and have a dialogue? Hamas is being crushed by this war and we can win it. I have clearly said that I hope and pray that Netanyahu will not conclude a loose deal. We are victorious and advanced.”



Addictions on the rise in wartime Israel

Health professionals say a rise in addictions is common in wartime Israel, noting a surge in drug and alcohol abuse as well as other addictive behaviours.

Yoni, who asked to use a pseudonym to protect his privacy, told AFP he started taking drugs recreationally before, but “after the war it seemed to really get worse”.

“It’s just a way to escape from reality, this whole thing,” said the resident of Beersheba in southern Israel, who lost a friend in the October 7 Hamas-led attack.

Psychiatrist Shaul Lev-Ran, founder of the Israel Center on Addiction, said that “as a natural reaction to emotional stress and as a search for relief, we’ve seen a spectacular rise in the consumption of various addictive sedative substances”.

Lev-Ran told AFP their studies have identified a rise in the use of “prescription drugs, illegal drugs, alcohol, or addictive behaviour like gambling”.



SvennoJ on 11 August 2024

Sonic booms – the war tactic Israel uses to sow fear in Lebanon

The first time Eliah Kaylough, 26, heard the thunderous blast, he was so terrified, he instinctively ran for cover. He had just started his shift as a waiter at a restaurant on bustling Gemmayze Street in east Beirut on Tuesday when he was suddenly startled by the sound of a major blast.

For Kaylough, it immediately triggered memories of the massive port explosion in 2020 and he was terrified the city was either experiencing a new explosion or that it was under attack.

But as he was racing out of the restaurant, a man from a nearby shop stopped him and explained that Beirut wasn’t being bombed. The sound, Kaylough discovered, was a sonic boom, a thunderous noise caused by an object moving faster than the speed of sound.

Israeli jets have been increasingly triggering these sonic booms over Lebanon since October 7 last year, following the attack on southern Israel by Hamas. But the booms which sounded over Beirut on Tuesday were the loudest that had been heard in the city, several residents told Al Jazeera.


Israel increases drone presence over Lebanon: Israeli Army Radio

The Israeli military has doubled the number of drones on duty in the skies of Lebanon, according to the country’s Army Radio. The radio’s report says the move aims to “detect in real time the attempts of strikes” into the Israeli territory.

Israel and Hezbollah have been exchanging fire since the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on October 7.

Hezbollah says it will end its attacks on Israel if a ceasefire is reached in Gaza, where Israel’s war has killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians.


Four rockets fired from Lebanon to Israel

Al Jazeera’s correspondent reports that rockets were fired from southern Lebanon towards a site in northern Israel. This happened as air raid sirens sounded in the Israeli community of Matat on the border with Lebanon.


Hezbollah confirms attack on army site in northern Israel

The Lebanese group says on Telegram that it has struck Israeli soldiers with rockets near a military outpost around the community of Matat. The statement claimed the attack took place at 11:10am (08:10 GMT) and directly hit the target.

 

Hezbollah claims destruction of spy equipment in occupied Kfarchouba

The Lebanese armed group Hezbollah says it has attacked the Israeli military site Ruwaisaat al-Alam in occupied Kfarchouba, a Lebanese village near the border with Israel and the Golan Heights.

The attack at 3:05pm (12:05 GMT) destroyed “espionage equipment”, the group said in a statement on Telegram

Israel attacks areas in southern Lebanon

Israeli fighter jets attacked the village of Taybeh, while Israeli forces shelled the towns of Meiss al-Jabal, Mehaibib and Kafrchouba, Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) reports.

Israeli planes also broke the sound barrier in Beirut, Sidon and Tyre as well as Nabatieh and Iqlim al-Tuffah, in south Lebanon, NNA said.

Two people killed in Israeli attack on Lebanon

Lebanon’s Health Ministry has confirmed that two people have been killed in an Israeli air raid that targeted Taybeh in the southern part of the country.

Four wounded in Israeli raid targeting town in southern Lebanon

Local Lebanese platforms have documented the first moments of an Israeli raid on Maaroub in southern Lebanon, which wounded four people. Footage showed plumes of smoke billowing from a charred and destroyed residence and rubble at the site of the bombing.

The Lebanese News Agency confirmed that Israeli forces targeted the outskirts of the town.

Translation: The raid on a house in Maaroub

Israeli military claims air strikes on southern Lebanon

The Israeli military has claimed the attack on the village of Taybeh that killed two people, saying it was targeting “a terrorist cell”. It also confirmed that its warplanes struck a building allegedly used as a weapons depot in Derdghaiya, and other buildings in Kfar Kila and Jebbayn.

The Israeli military added that a volley of rockets entered a border community from southern Lebanon a few hours earlier, striking open areas and inflicting no casualties.


Hezbollah confirms fighters killed, attacks Israel

After multiple Israeli air strikes on southern Lebanon, Hezbollah confirmed that three of its fighters have been killed. It said Samir Hijazi, Hani Haidar and Hassan Ghadban Mustafa were from southern Lebanon, but did not provide further details about their deaths.

The armed Lebanese group has claimed nine attacks on Israeli positions so far today, with the latest purportedly hitting a gathering of Israeli soldiers along the border with artillery shells.

 

Hezbollah boasts ‘missile and rocket array’ in southern Lebanon

An Israeli-based military research centre reports that Hezbollah has deployed a large variety of rockets and missiles in areas across Lebanon, especially its southern parts.

The weapons include short-range rockets and missiles, along with ballistic, cruise, coastal, antiaircraft and antitank guided missiles, according to Israel-Alma, which notes that the ballistic, cruise and antiship missiles have not been used in the current conflict.

“It is possible that Hezbollah will choose to use them in a targeted manner against quality targets in Israel as part of its response to the elimination of Fuad Shukr,” the centre reports, adding that multiple tactical formations could be deployed simultaneously.

Last edited by SvennoJ - on 11 August 2024

SvennoJ on 11 August 2024

Israel’s war on Gaza threatens Middle East stability: Jordan’s monarch

King Abdullah II has said that the region will remain vulnerable to an expansion of the conflict that threatens its stability, as long as the war on Gaza continues.

The monarch made his statement to a visiting delegation of US Congressional staffers in Jordan’s capital, Amman.

PLO condemns Israeli statement on Jenin refugee camp

Rawhi Fattouh, the head of the PLO’s Palestinian National Council, has condemned Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz’s remarks that claimed the refugee camps in the occupied West Bank are “hotbeds of evil under Iranian influence”.

Fattouh said that Katz’s comments were an attempt to justify ongoing Israeli aggression in the West Bank, particularly in the Jenin refugee camp.

Earlier today, Katz said: “We must address a terrorist hub like the Jenin refugee camp by temporarily evacuating its residents to a secure location and thoroughly dismantling the terrorist infrastructure within the camp, as was done in Gaza.”

Fattouh said that “this is part of the silent war launched by Israel on the West Bank, and it includes everything from land confiscation to home demolitions and destruction of refugee camps”.

Hamas holds US responsible for ‘horrific massacres in Gaza’

The Palestinian group says war crimes and genocide perpetrated by Israel in the besieged coastal enclave “would not be ongoing if it weren’t for the support of some Western capitals, led by Washington”.

In a post on its official Telegram channel, Hamas said the US has provided Israel with political and military support, making it “a direct accomplice in [al-Tabin school] massacre and other crimes and violations”.