Hizbollah is likely an even match for Lebanon's armed forces proper. It is basically an occupying force financed and armed by the Iranian regime, similar to Hamas in Gaza. Once they take control over territory and get their people elected for positions of power, they are very hard to kick out.
[RD] War in Gaza News: Pas de Deux
- Thread starter Birdjaguar
- Start date
Hizbollah is likely an even match for Lebanon's armed forces proper. It is basically an occupying force financed and armed by the Iranian regime, similar to Hamas in Gaza. Once they take control over territory and get their people elected for positions of power, they are very hard to kick out.
The U.N. dismisses Alice Wairimu Nderitu, their Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide - allegedly because she "has stood firm in her belief that Israel’s war with Hamas isn’t genocide".
Bonyduck Campersang
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It is an opinion piece after all
I think it's more amusing that any correlation with the alleged reason is hidden behind the paywall.
Though I've got to say, "the UN lost credibility long ago, so bear with us while we extol the many and recent virtues of someone who until very recently worked for the UN" is close.
Broken_Erika
Play with me.
Israel warns against returning to 60 Lebanon villages
The Israeli military has warned Lebanese citizens not to return to 60 villages in the south of the country, three days into a ceasefire after more than a year of fighting with the Shia armed group Hezbollah.The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) published a map showing a swathe of territory several miles deep, which it said residents must not return to. Anyone who did, it said, would be putting themselves in danger.
More than a million Lebanese have been displaced by the fighting, mostly from the south. Tens of thousands of Israelis have also been displaced.
The truce came into effect on Wednesday morning, though officials in Israel and Lebanon have accused each other of already breaching it.
On Thursday, the IDF said its forces fired artillery and carried out air strikes against targets in southern Lebanon. It added that it had fired at suspects after spotting activity at a Hezbollah weapons facility, and vehicles arriving in several areas, which it said breached the ceasefire.
Lebanon accused Israel of violating the agreement “multiple times” and said it was monitoring the situation.
A multinational monitoring group which includes representatives from the US, France, and the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) was set up as part of the ceasefire to oversee compliance with its terms.
In his first interview since the ceasefire was declared, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had instructed the IDF to wage "an intensive war" should Hezbollah commit a "massive violation" of the ceasefire.
The ceasefire "can be short", he said in the interview with Israel's Channel 14.
Under the terms of the agreement, which was brokered by the US and France, Israeli forces will withdraw from south Lebanon as the Lebanese army deploys there simultaneously with no other armed groups allowed to operate in the area. This is meant to happen within 60 days from the start of the ceasefire.
The zone which the IDF said residents should not yet return to stretches from Mansouri on the coast to Shebaa in the east.
On Wednesday, the Lebanese army warned residents not to return to areas where Israeli forces were before they had withdrawn.
Israel invaded southern Lebanon at the start of last month after the IDF intensified military action against Hezbollah.
Hezbollah began the current conflict with Israel by firing rockets in and around northern Israel on 8 October 2023, a day after Hamas' unprecedented attack on Israel from Gaza which killed about 1,200 people.
Hezbollah said it was acting in solidarity with the Palestinians after Israel responded to the Hamas attack with a massive military campaign in Gaza. The Hamas-run health ministry says at least 44,330 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive.
Since 8 October, Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged fire with increasing intensity. The Lebanese health ministry said Israeli strikes had killed at least 3,961 people and injured 16,520 others in that period. The figures do not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
Hezbollah’s attacks have killed 31 soldiers and 45 civilians inside Israel, Israeli authorities say. Another 45 Israeli soldiers have been killed fighting in southern Lebanon.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdxv1727g5lo
Broken_Erika
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UN halts aid shipments through Gaza's main crossing after looting
UNRWA head cites 'political decisions to restrict the amounts of aid'
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees said Sunday it is halting aid deliveries through the main cargo crossing into the war-ravaged Gaza Strip because of the threat of armed gangs who have looted recent convoys. It blamed the breakdown of law and order in large part on Israeli policies.The decision could worsen the humanitarian crisis in Gaza as the cold, rainy winter sets in, with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in squalid tent camps and reliant on international food aid. Experts were already warning of famine in the territory's north, which Israeli forces have almost completely isolated since early October.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, the main aid provider in Gaza, said the route leading to the Kerem Shalom crossing is too dangerous on the Gaza side. Armed men looted nearly 100 trucks travelling on the route in mid-November, and he said gangs stole a smaller shipment on Saturday
Kerem Shalom is the only crossing between Israel and Gaza that is designed for cargo shipments and has been the main artery for aid deliveries since the Rafah crossing with Egypt was shut down in May. Last month, nearly two-thirds of all aid entering Gaza came through Kerem Shalom, and in previous months it accounted for an even larger amount, according to Israeli figures.
In a post on X, Lazzarini largely blamed Israel for the breakdown of humanitarian operations in Gaza, citing "political decisions to restrict the amounts of aid," lack of safety on aid routes and Israel's targeting of the Hamas-run police force, which had previously provided public security.
COGAT, the Israeli military department responsible for aid transfers, denies it is hindering humanitarian relief into Gaza, saying there is no limit on supplies for civilians and blaming delays on the United Nations, which it says is inefficient.
Israel accuses UNRWA of having allowed Hamas to infiltrate its ranks — allegations denied by the UN agency — and passed legislation to sever ties with it last month.
Israeli strikes overnight
Israeli strikes in Gaza, meanwhile, killed at least six people overnight, including two young children, ages six and eight, who died in the tent where their family was sheltering, medical officials said Sunday.The strike in the Muwasi area, a sprawling tent camp housing hundreds of thousands of displaced people, also wounded the children's mother and their eight-month-old sister, according to the nearby Nasser Hospital. An Associated Press reporter at the hospital saw the bodies.
A separate strike in the southern city of Rafah, on the border with Egypt, killed four men, according to hospital records.
The Israeli military said it was not aware of strikes in either location. Israel says it only targets militants and tries to avoid harming civilians, but its daily strikes across Gaza often kill women and children.
In a separate development, a projectile fired by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen set off air raid sirens in central Israel. The Israeli military said it intercepted the projectile before it entered Israeli territory.
Ethnic cleansing accusation
A former top Israeli general and defence minister has accused the government of ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza, where Israeli forces have been waging the latest in a series of offensives against Hamas since early October.The army has sealed off the northern towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya, and the Jabalia refugee camp, and allowed almost no humanitarian aid to enter. Tens of thousands of people have fled, while the United Nations estimates up to 75,000 remain.
Moshe Yaalon, who served as defence minister under Benjamin Netanyahu before quitting in 2016 and becoming a fierce critic of the prime minister, said the current far-right government is determined to "occupy, to annex, to ethnically cleanse."
Pressed by an interviewer with a local news outlet on Saturday, he said: "There is no Beit Lahiya. No Beit Hanoun. (They are) operating now in Jabalia, and (they) are actually cleaning the territory of Arabs."
Yaalon doubled down on the remarks Sunday in an interview with Israeli radio, saying "war crimes are being committed here."
Netanyahu's Likud party criticized his earlier remarks, accusing him of making "false statements" that are "a prize for the International Criminal Court and the camp of Israel haters."
- International Criminal Court issues arrest warrants for Netanyahu, former Israeli defence minister
- Analysis
Israel has deliberately made northern Gaza unlivable, say Palestinians. What comes next?
Israel rejects the allegations and says both courts are biased against it.
No end in sight to Gaza war despite ceasefire with Hezbollah
The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around people 250 hostage, according to Israeli officials. Some 100 captives are still being held inside Gaza, around two-thirds of whom are believed to be alive.Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed over 44,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which does not say how many of the dead were combatants. Israel says it has killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.
The war has destroyed vast areas of the coastal enclave and displaced 90 per cent of the population of 2.3 million, often multiple times.
Israel reached a ceasefire with Lebanon's Hezbollah militants last week that has largely held, but that agreement, brokered by the United States and France, did not address the ongoing war in Gaza. Iran — which supports Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis and armed groups in Syria and Iraq — has exchanged fire with Israel twice this year.
The United States, Qatar and Egypt have spent much of the past year trying to broker a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of the remaining hostages, but those efforts stalled as Israel rejected Hamas's demand for a complete withdrawal from the territory. The Biden administration has said it will make another push for a deal in its final weeks in office.
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump has vowed to end the wars in the Middle East, without saying how. He was a staunch defender of Israel and its policies toward the Palestinians during his previous term.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/gaza-aid-shipments-1.7398141
Broken_Erika
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She fled Israeli bombing four times. It still found her
Rihab Faour fled her home. Then she fled again. Then a third time. Then a fourth. And by the fourth time, a year after the first, she had been fleeing Israeli bombs for so long that nowhere in Lebanon felt safe.Her journey had begun in October 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel. That prompted Hezbollah, the Lebanese political and militant group, to fire rockets into Israel and Israel to retaliate by bombing southern Lebanon.
The Israeli bombs fell close enough to Rihab’s village that the 33-year-old and her husband Saeed, an employee of the municipal water company, gathered their daughters Tia, eight, and Naya, six, and fled to Rihab’s parents’ house in Dahieh, a suburb of the capital Beirut.
In Dahieh, for a while, life went on almost as normal, with the exception that Naya and Tia missed their friends, their own beds, their toys and all clothes they had had to leave behind.
Most of all they missed going to school, which had been replaced by online learning. They were excited when, back in August, Rihab enrolled them in a new school in Beirut and took them to buy brand new school uniforms.
But before their first day could arrive, Israel expanded its bombing of Lebanon to include parts of Beirut, particularly the Dahieh suburb that the family now called home.
Israel was assassinating senior Hezbollah figures in the suburb, but it was using large, bunker-busting bombs, each capable of destroying a residential building. In some strikes, Israel dropped dozens of these bombs in one go and flattened entire city blocks.
So the Faour family packed up and fled again, this time to a rented house in another Beirut neighbourhood, Jnah. After a powerful air strike in Jnah, they moved to Saeed’s parents’ house in the neighbourhood of Barbour. There, they lived with 17 others in a single house - people piled on people.
For Tia and Naya though, now nine and seven, it was a rare joy to be surrounded by their cousins day and night. So much so that even when Rihab’s father, a retired Lebanese army sergeant, found a rental apartment in the Basta neighbourhood just for the four of them, the girls did not want to go.
“Naya begged us to stay there with all the family,” Rihab recalled. “We told her we just had to go for one sleep in this new house, then we would come straight back to the family and to all the children.”
And she offered the girls a bargain - come to stay at the new apartment and you can choose your dinner. So on the way home they stopped for rotisserie chicken and other treats from the shop, and at about 7.30pm, with the streets still alive with people, the family pulled up to a rundown building in Basta in central Beirut.
Back in 2006, during the previous war between Israel and Hezbollah, the bombing was confined to certain areas of Lebanon - the south, Dahieh, and some infrastructure targets. This time, as senior members of Hezbollah spread out around the country, Israel bombed them where they went.
This brought bombs to places previously thought safe, including parts of central Beirut.
None of that was weighing on Tia and Naya as the family unloaded their belongings into the new apartment. For now, the girls were more concerned with returning to their cousins at the earliest opportunity.
Unlike Saeed's parents' house, the new Basta apartment had running water and a generator for electricity. The girls were happy when they saw that the family finally had their own space. Rihab and Saeed relaxed a little. Most likely, there would have been an Israeli drone buzzing overhead, but the sound had become so common over Beirut that it was possible to tune it out.
Rihab put the food and treats on the table. “We sat down to eat and we were talking and laughing,” she said. “And that was it, my last memory of them.”
The bomb was a US-made Jdam. It hit the building on 10 October at about 8pm, half an hour after the family had arrived. It levelled all three storeys and destroyed parts of adjacent buildings and cars, and killed 22 men, women and children, making it the deadliest strike on central Beirut since the beginning of the fighting a year earlier.
The Israeli military issued no warning ahead of the strike, so the building was full of people. Israel was reportedly targeting Wafiq Safa, the head of Hezbollah’s co-ordination and liaison unit, but Safa was never reported to be among the dead. He had either survived, or he wasn't there to begin with. The IDF declined to comment on the strike or the lack of a warning ahead of it.
Rihab woke up in Beirut’s Zahraa Hospital, unable to move. Her back and arm were badly injured and she needed at least two operations. She drifted in and out of consciousness. Everything in her mind between laughing with her daughters at dinner and waking up in the hospital was blank.
While she lay there that night, her family searched Beirut’s hospitals. By midnight, they knew that Saeed and Tia were dead. DNA tests would be required to confirm that Naya had been killed, as well as another girl her age brought to the same hospital, because their injuries prevented straightforward identification.
Rihab’s doctors advised the family not to tell her any of this. They were worried that, still facing significant surgery, the news would be too much for her. So for two weeks, as she underwent and then recovered from her operations, her mother Basima reassured her that Saeed and the girls were being treated in different hospitals.
But Rihab sensed that something was wrong, and she began to insist on seeing pictures and videos of the girls. “She could feel it in her heart,” Basima said.
Eleven days after the strike, the DNA test confirmed that Tia was dead, and on the 15th day a hospital psychiatrist told Rihab that Saeed and the girls were gone.
Six weeks later, Rihab was sitting in a stiff plastic chair in an apartment in Beirut, her eyes dark and her face drawn. She was still recovering from her surgeries - to install eight screws into her spine and another three into her arm. She had been lying down for a long time, and now she was trying to sit up more and to walk a little, though every movement caused her pain.
Naya’s eighth birthday had been four days earlier. Rihab was passing her time “either crying or sleeping”, she said. But she wanted to talk about her family.
“Naya was very attached to me, she followed me wherever I went. Tia loved her grandparents and she was happy if I left her with them. Both of the girls loved drawing, they loved playing with toys, they missed going to school. They would play teacher and student together for hours.”
Above all they loved to watch videos together on TikTok. Rihab and Saeed thought they were still too young to post their own videos online, so Rihab would film them dancing and playing and tell the girls she was posting them on the app, which seemed to satisfy them, for now.
Saeed had come into Rihab’s life in 2013. Rihab was raised in Beirut but her family would visit the village of Mays El Jabal in the summer, because the air was cooler there and the village was surrounded by countryside, and that summer she met Saeed through mutual friends.
Rihab completed her undergraduate law degree and began studying for a masters, but the couple became engaged and then married, and soon Tia was born, so Rihab put her budding law career on hold.
Now, in the midst of her loss, she has tentatively begun to think of studying again. “I am going to need something to fill my days,” she said.
Saeed and Tia were buried the day after they died, by Rihab’s father and uncles, in temporary wooden caskets in an unmarked grave in Dahieh. Two weeks later, the men of the family dug again in the same spot and buried Naya. Rihab’s uncle placed two sprigs of artificial cherry blossom atop the grave, for the two girls, and later someone else laid a wreath for a stranger buried beside them.
Then an Israeli air strike hit the building directly adjacent to the cemetery and the resultant blast wave and debris smashed gravestones and churned up the earth around them. About the same time, another Israeli air strike hit the family home in Dahieh, destroying several items Rihab had wanted to keep, including two new, unworn school uniforms.
Not long after that, it was all over. A ceasefire announced last week allowed thousands of displaced people to stream back to their villages in the south of Lebanon. Rihab and Saeed’s village was heavily bombed by the Israelis and their family home there destroyed, her uncle said, but Rihab cannot return home anyway, because she will be in a backbrace for several more months and cannot travel.
As joy spread through Lebanon at the news of the ceasefire, new pictures emerged of Wafiq Safa, the reported target of the bomb that killed Saeed, Tia, Naya and 19 others. Safa had not been seen in public since the strike, but he appeared to be alive and well.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce8984g9gdgo
Bonyduck Campersang
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I supposed that I had been jaded by the events of the past year, but Broken_Erika's post still devastated me
Broken_Erika
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Israeli defence minister threatens to expand Lebanon war if Hezbollah truce collapses
Despite last week's truce, Israeli forces has continued strikes in southern Lebanon
Israel threatened on Tuesday to return to war in Lebanon if its truce with Hezbollah collapses, and said this time its attacks would go deeper and target the Lebanese state itself, after the deadliest day since the ceasefire was agreed last week.
In its strongest threat since the truce was reached to end 14 months of war with Hezbollah, Israel said it would hold Lebanon responsible for failing to disarm militants who violated the truce.
"If we return to war, we will act strongly, we will go deeper, and the most important thing they need to know: that there will be no longer be an exemption for the state of Lebanon," Defence Minister Israel Katz said.
"If until now we separated the state of Lebanon from Hezbollah ... it will no longer be [like this]," he said during a visit to the northern border area.
Despite last week's truce, Israeli forces have continued strikes in southern Lebanon against what they say are Hezbollah fighters ignoring the agreement to halt attacks and withdraw north of the Litani River, about 30 kilometres from the Israeli-Lebanese border.
On Monday, Hezbollah shelled an Israeli military post, while Lebanese authorities said at least 12 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon.
Katz called the Hezbollah attack "the first test" and described Israel's strikes as a strong response.
- 11 dead after Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon, authorities say
- Israel, Hezbollah blame each other for violating ceasefire a day after truce takes effect
Lebanon asks U.S., France to press Israel on holding truce
The Beirut government must "authorize the Lebanese army to enforce their part, to keep Hezbollah away beyond the Litani, and to dismantle all the infrastructure," Katz said."If they don't do it and this whole agreement collapses, then the reality will be very clear."
Top Lebanese officials urged Washington and Paris to press Israel to uphold the ceasefire, after dozens of military operations on Lebanese soil that Beirut has deemed violations, two senior Lebanese political sources told Reuters on Tuesday.
The sources said caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri, a close Hezbollah ally who negotiated the deal on behalf of Lebanon, spoke to officials at the White House and French presidency late on Monday.
Mikati, quoted by the Lebanese news agency, said that diplomatic communications had intensified since Monday to stop Israeli violations of the ceasefire. He also said a recruitment drive was under way by the Lebanese army to strengthen its presence in the south.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Matt Miller told reporters on Monday that the ceasefire "is holding" and that the U.S. had "anticipated that there might be violations."
Neither the French presidency nor the foreign ministry were immediately available to comment. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot spoke to his Israeli counterpart Gideon Saar on Monday, saying both sides should adhere to the ceasefire.
The truce came into effect on Nov. 27 and prohibits Israel from conducting offensive military operations in Lebanon, while requiring Lebanon to prevent armed groups including Hezbollah from launching attacks on Israel. It gives Israeli troops 60 days to withdraw from south Lebanon.
International monitoring
A mission chaired by the United States is tasked with monitoring, verifying and helping enforce the truce, but it has yet to begin work.Berri on Monday called on the mission to "urgently" ensure Israel halts its breaches, saying Beirut had logged at least 54 Israeli violations of the ceasefire so far.
Israel has said its continued activity in Lebanon is aimed at enforcing the ceasefire.
Lebanon's Mikati met in Beirut on Monday with U.S. Gen. Jasper Jeffers, who will chair the monitoring committee.
Two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters that France's representative to the committee, Gen. Guillaume Ponchin, would arrive in Beirut on Wednesday and that the committee would hold its first meeting on Thursday.
"There is an urgency to finalize the mechanism, otherwise it will be too late," the source said, referring to Israel's gradual intensification of strikes despite the truce.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/israel-lebanon-war-latest-1.7399510
Broken_Erika
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Antiwar protesters calling for Israeli embargo ousted from Ottawa building housing MPs' offices
Group made up of more than 100 Jewish Canadians and Palestinian supporters
Dozens of antiwar protesters who occupied the lobby of the Confederation Building in Ottawa to call for an arms embargo on Israel have now been ejected.The demonstration started around 8:45 a.m. The protesters said they would allow MPs with offices in the building to pass through the crowd, but those MPs would have to listen to the demonstrators' demands on the way in.
Officers of the Parliamentary Protection Service (PPS) and Ottawa Police were on the scene, asking people if they had any business inside the building before letting them in.
By 10 a.m., protesters removed from the building were chanting outside. Police and PPS members intercepted and then released 14 protesters without charges.
"All of the individuals were released unconditionally, however they were issued Trespass to Property notices on Parliament Hill by PPS," Ottawa Police said in a media statement.
- World Central Kitchen pausing work in Gaza after vehicle hit by Israeli airstrike
- UN halts aid shipments through Gaza's main crossing after looting
- Federal government adds Yemen-based Houthis to terror list
"Our politicians cannot be complacent in these marble hallways while Israel continues to burn Palestinians alive in their tents," said Niall Ricardo, one of the organizers of Tuesday's action.
The group said in a media statement that it wants the Canadian government "to admit its role in arming Israel and stop hiding Canada's complicity" in the war in Gaza.
The group also wants Canada to impose a two-way arms embargo on Israel, and cancell all active military export permits to the country.
The protesters want Canada to halt any weapons exports to the United States that may be funnelled to Israel, and to end the import of military goods and technology from Israel.
"The warplanes and attack helicopters raining destruction on civilians could not fly without hundreds of Canadian-made components," Ricardo said.
"Canada's ongoing arms exports and diplomatic support make it complicit in these atrocities."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/protesters-confederation-building-removed-israel-1.7399567
Broken_Erika
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US Taxpayers Destroy Sacred Christian Site
The Mausoleum of Simon Peter Has Been DestroyedThe mausoleum of Simon Peter, the Apostle of Christ, stood in southern Lebanon for over 2,000 years – a sacred testament to faith, resilience, and the history of humanity. Today, it has been obliterated, reduced to rubble by an attack that defies justification. And here’s the bitter truth: U.S. taxpayer dollars are funding this destruction.
This is not self-defense. This is not security. This is the deliberate targeting of a sacred Christian site, a war crime, and a crime against humanity. This isn’t collateral damage – this is calculated devastation. The fact that such actions are being carried out while cloaked in the rhetoric of defense is an affront to every value the U.S. claims to stand for.
Worse still, these assaults are part of a pattern. Lebanon has been targeted over 50 times since a supposed ceasefire was agreed upon. Meanwhile, historic and cultural landmarks are being systematically erased, leaving behind a legacy of loss that will outlast any political dispute. What justification can be offered for obliterating a 2,000-year-old mausoleum? What kind of ally uses the funding and complicity of another to destroy the sacred and irreplaceable?
It’s brutally clear that this isn’t just an attack on Lebanon or its history. This is an attack on the shared cultural and religious heritage of humanity. It’s a betrayal of the very taxpayers who unwittingly finance these atrocities under the guise of foreign aid. It’s a desecration of values and history, a crime that demands accountability.
As an American and a critic of this ongoing complicity, I refuse to accept this as inevitable. The destruction of sacred sites, particularly those tied to any faith, is not justifiable under any circumstance. These are not defensive measures; they are deliberate acts of aggression that disregard international law and basic humanity.
It’s time for Americans to wake up to the fact that their hard-earned dollars are being funneled into actions that go against their beliefs, their values, and their faith. This is not who we are – at least, it shouldn’t be. The obliteration of Simon Peter’s mausoleum is not just a loss for Lebanon; it’s a loss for all of us. And if we don’t speak out, it won’t be the last.
https://medium.com/@thewildcraftway/us-taxpayers-destroy-sacred-cristian-site-cae177cf281f
Broken_Erika
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Amnesty accuses Israel of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza
Amnesty International has accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza war, which Israel strongly denies.The UK-based human rights group said its conclusion was based on “dehumanising and genocidal statements” by Israeli officials, digital images and witness testimony and must serve as “a wake-up call” to the international community.
Israel’s foreign ministry described the 295-page report as “entirely false and based on lies”, while the Israeli military said the claims were “entirely baseless and fail to account for the operational realities” it faces.
In the past day, meanwhile, local medics say at least 50 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza.
The biggest number of people were killed in the al-Mawasi tent camp for displaced people, where Israel says it was targeting Hamas operatives.
Amnesty says that its research over months “has found sufficient basis to conclude that Israel has committed - and is continuing to commit - genocide against Palestinians”.
The 1948 Genocide Convention, enacted following the mass murder of Jews in the Nazi Holocaust, defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.
Agnès Callamard, Amnesty’s secretary general, said Israeli actions “include killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction".
“Month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them,” she continued.
The report by the global campaign group comes as the UN’s top court, the International Court of Justice at The Hague, continues to examine allegations by South Africa that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Israel has called the case "wholly unfounded" and based on "biased and false claims".
Responding to the allegations by Amnesty, Israel’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Oren Marmorstein, described the human rights group as a “deplorable and fanatical organisation”.
“The genocidal massacre on 7 October 2023, was carried out by the Hamas terrorist organisation against Israeli citizens,” he stated, adding that Israel as acting in self-defence and “fully in accordance with international law".
The Israeli military said it was “actively working to dismantle Hamas’ military infrastructure” in Gaza and that it “takes all feasible measures to mitigate harm to civilians during operations".
About 1,200 people in southern Israel, mostly civilians, were killed during the Hamas-led attacks 15 months ago, which triggered the Gaza war.
Since then, at least 44,532 people have been killed in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures are seen as reliable by the UN.
In the past day, Israel has continued to carry out attacks across the length of the Palestinian territory.
At least 23 people were killed and many more wounded in an air strike on a camp for displaced people in al-Mawasi in Khan Younis. Social media video shows residents battling fires overnight.
At the nearby Nasser Hospital, a local BBC cameraman filmed the arrival of the wounded, including blood-stained children and a disabled man. The bodies of two small children were among the dead brought wrapped up in blankets.
Israel’s military said its attack targeted senior Hamas operatives acting in what it considers a humanitarian zone. “Following the strike, secondary explosions were identified, suggesting the presence of weaponry in the area,” it said in a statement.
It said it had taken steps “to mitigate the risk of harming civilians” and accused Hamas of using civilians “as human shields for terrorist activity".
On Thursday, BBC footage showed people picking through the mangled wrecks of shacks and piles of ash.
“The strike hit us without any warning and did this big massacre,” Mohammed Abu Shahli said. “The people here are refugees from different places - from Rafah and the north. They came to a place they thought was safe.”
His head bandaged, Abdul Rahman Jamaa said seven members of his family were killed including his father and three brothers.
He told the BBC: “There are no protected safe areas as the Israelis say. These are all lies. May God protect us.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjwl0v4w5j3o
Lexicus
Deity
Photos of a boy in a wheelchair, body riddled with bullet holes, from an Israeli quad copter drone which was being controlled by an IDF soldier.
Meanwhile the actual White House issued a disgusting statement of grief over the death of an IDF soldier from Long Island who was killed by the resistance on October 7th.
The depravity really is next-level.
Meanwhile the actual White House issued a disgusting statement of grief over the death of an IDF soldier from Long Island who was killed by the resistance on October 7th.
The depravity really is next-level.
Meanwhile... the so-called "cease-fire" is already collapsing under the weight of its own bad-faith fraudulence...
So now Lebanese civilians will be treated as Hezbollah combatants... sounds all too familiar
Israeli and Hezbollah strikes test limits of ceasefire
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c98ly11k9rwo
So now Lebanese civilians will be treated as Hezbollah combatants... sounds all too familiar
Lexicus
Deity
Yes, the Greater Israel freaks have had designs on southern Lebanon for a long time.
Bonyduck Campersang
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The most moral army in the world kills more doctors and guts yet another hospital
Joij21
🔥Deny, Defend, Depose!🔥
Then nothing will change. Politics operates on blackmail and leverage, there's no such thing as personal responsibility and honor within the discipline. Such virtues are for the plebians.
Broken_Erika
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Some Gaza mothers forced to reuse diapers, sell jewelry to afford them
Hundreds gather at the Al-Buhaisi shopping centre in Khan Younis to buy diapers, many leave empty-handed
From her tent made up of blankets, tarps and wood beams, Asala Shehata, 32, lays her three-year-old daughter Heba down on a mat on the ground to change her diaper. What used to be a simple routine has stretched into a complex undertaking, another aspect of life that over a year of war has altered in Gaza.She starts by placing a towel on the child and wrapping it in a plastic bag around her waist. Then, she puts the diaper on Heba. This way, she can wash and reuse the diaper for a few more weeks, because it only gets a little soiled.
The cost of diapers has skyrocketed — and that's if they're available when the mother of four goes out to buy them. A pack of 30, which once cost 13 shekels ($5 Cdn), can now run up to 70 shekels ($28 Cdn), an increase of over 400 per cent.
The Israeli government said that it's given the green light to allow aid trucks into the area, but says much of the aid is looted before it reaches the civilians it's meant to help. Last week, UNRWA also halted shipments of aid into Gaza after more trucks were looted.
But that leaves mothers like Shehata, who is living in Khan Younis on what was once the campus of Al-Aqsa University, desperate for diapers, and having to turn to alternatives as they wait for more supplies to come in.
"We buy a diaper, we keep it and wash it for maybe two weeks until it breaks down," Shehata told CBC freelance videographer Mohamed El Saife.
"Diapers are very expensive and are scarce in the market."
All-day waits for diapers
It's noon at the Al-Buhaisi shopping centre in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, and a large crowd has gathered, pushing and shoving each other in an attempt to reach the shop's window.People hold pink packs high in their arms — they're the lucky ones who have managed to snag a few diapers for their kids this time around.
Umm Aseel, 55, had been in line since 8 a.m., but didn't manage to get any diapers for her grandchildren. Their father, her son, has been in jail for 17 years, leaving her and the children's mother to watch over the quadruplets.
"I sold their mother's bracelets so I could buy them diapers … and I still couldn't get them," she told El Saife.
In a report published in December, UNICEF said children in Gaza are facing a "deepening catastrophe" as access to essential goods and services continue to dwindle.
"Everyday supplies parents need to keep their children healthy are either unavailable or too expensive for families to afford," it read.
While the Rafah border crossing bordering Egypt is still closed, the only other option for aid to enter the strip is through the Kerem Shalom border, which connects Gaza with Israel and Egypt.
But issues with crossing the border, coupled with images of trucks lined up ready to cross with aid from international organizations, have caused an uproar among the international community. Israel has previously claimed that Hamas was stealing the aid, while the group in turn claimed Israel was purposely stopping it at the border.
Now, as the war continues into its second year, and Hamas loses its control over the territory, lawlessness has taken over. Looters and gangs have targeted aid trucks and sold much of those supplies to desperate civilians, which then drives up the cost.
Truck drivers told El Saife earlier in December that as they crossed the Kerem Shalom border, looters would shoot at their trucks, targeting their tires and windshields, sometimes forcing drivers to go to undisclosed locations to drop their loads rather than international organizations' warehouses.
Hala Abdel Ghani, 34, was also in line all day for diapers at the shopping centre and left empty-handed.
"I want to leave but I can't because I didn't get anything for my son," she told El Saife. "There's a diaper crisis."
Abdel Ghani says she runs through a pack of diapers a day for her three-year-old son, who has liver issues. Their rising cost makes them difficult to get, and even more difficult to maintain a supply.
The Israel-Hamas war began after a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct.7 killed some 1,200 people and saw 250 hostages taken into Gaza, according to Israeli figures. Israel's responding incursion into Gaza has killed over 44,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Used diapers cause rashes, sores
Back in her tent in Khan Younis, Shehata places the diapers in a basin along with some other laundry. With a soapbar, she begins to clean the diaper and then hangs it on a line in the space between the tents."The children had rashes, allergic reactions, infections, sores," she said. "They've been exposed to so much but I try my best to disinfect the area."
Nearby, little Heba walks off with a smile and a baby bottle of water in hand. Her mother has changed her into a Mickey Mouse sweatsuit and tied her hair up in pigtails. On the outside, the child looks to be living a normal life — unaware of what her mother goes through to secure something as simple as a diaper for her.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/gaza-hamas-israel-war-diapers-1.7405988
Diapers are specifically made in both reusable (cloth) form and disposable (plastic) form. Disposable diapers are really expensive and produce a huge amount of waste. They also contain special absorption materials that would make them pretty difficult to impossible to "wash", whereas cloth diapers are intended to be washed after each use. I can't imagine how you would wash out a disposable diaper without it completely disintegrating. I would have expected people in Gaza to be mostly using cloth diapers, especially by now. But then again, since their access to water is also being restricted, even using cloth diapers would be problematic, since you can't wash them without water. From the article, it seems like some people are using a combination of makeshift cloth and plastic along with disposable diapers, in order to stretch out the life of the expensive disposable diapers.
When I was a baby as well as one of my siblings, we had cloth diapers, which were essentially just a thick towel, which Mom would then wash and re-use. There are even diaper services where people will pick up all the dirty diapers and deliver clean ones. Obviously that kind of luxury isn't going to be available in a war zone like Gaza, but I would have assumed that neither would disposable diapers. The article notes that there are huge shortages, but I am a little amazed that they are available at all.
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