Bob Sheak, Oct 29, 2023 (edited on March 1, 2024)
Introduction
This post considers evidence on the brutal, terroristic, surprise attack by Hamas on Israel and how Israel’s response to the attack, including massive bombing, collective punishment, ethnic cleansing, and genocide, are also brutal and in violation of international law. Amidst this unfolding and devastating war, the Biden administration wholeheartedly supports Israel.
The Hamas attack
There is no doubt that the barbaric attack on Oct. 7 by Hamas in Israel must be condemned. Reporting for ABC News, Bill Hutchinson describes the attack on southern parts of Israel (https://abcnews.go.com/international/timeline-srprise-rocket-attack-hamas-isreal-story?id=103816006). The article was published on October 19.
“The conflict was touched off by the Oct. 7 sneak attack, which included thousands of armed Hamas fighters breaching a border security fence and indiscriminately gunning down Israeli civilians and soldiers taken off guard. Other militants stormed beaches in Israel in motorboats and some brought death from the sky, swooping in on paragliders.
“More than 1,400 people have been killed in Israel, including children, and more than 4,500 people have been injured, Israeli officials said. At least 32 of those killed in Israel are Americans, according to the U.S. State Department.
“The Israel Defense Forces said 203 people [the number is over 220 hostages, as of Oct 25] have been taken hostage by Hamas and it’s believed they are being held in Gaza.” There is no knowledge of exactly where the hostages are being held. Four hostages have been released.
Some details on the Hamas attack
Muhammad Darwish and his colleagues at CNN report on some of the grisly details of what Hamas inflected on a number of Kibbutzim in Israel (https://cnn.com/2023/10/10/middleeast/israel-kibbutzim-kfar-aza-beeri-unim-hamas-attack-intil/index.html). Here’s what they write about one of the Kibbutzim.
“Bodies of Israeli residents and Hamas attackers lay outside burned-out homes in the Israeli kibbutz Kfar Aza on Tuesday, days after the Palestinian militant group launched a large-scale surprise assault on Israel.
“Houses in Kfar Aza were ransacked and set ablaze. Overturned mattresses, destroyed furniture, broken trinkets and unexploded grenades lay strewn across the grounds, along with bodies – a window into the scale of devastation wrought by Hamas in this area.
“‘I’ve never seen anything like this in my career, never in 40 years of service this something I never imagined,’ Maj. Gen. Itai Veruv told CNN on Tuesday, just a few hours after Israeli troops secured the kibbutz from Hamas assailants.”
Biden’s support of Israel
The Biden administration immediately rallied in support of Israel. The administration condemned Hamas. It now has two carrier groups off the coast off Israel, as reported by Tara Copp for the Associated Press (AP) (https://apnews,com/article/israel-hamas-military-navy-carrier). Overall, within hours of the horrific attack by Hamas on Oct 7, 2023, the U.S. began moving warships, aircraft, and other military munitions to the region and planned to provide Israel with whatever it needed to respond and protect itself. Copp reports that “Special operations forces are now assisting Israel’s military in planning and intelligence.”
Biden has also asked the U.S. Congress to provide Israel with an unprecedented package of aid to support the country after the Hamas raid. He is asking that Congress approve “$14.3 billion for Israel, as part of a larger request of $106 billion that includes money for Ukraine, Israel, countering China in the Indo-Pacific and for enhancing border security. The assistance to Israel is for air and missile defense, military financing and embassy support.
Polls of American show a majority in support of the administration’s policy
Nathaniel Rakich provides an overview of recent polls on the Israel-Palestinian conflict in an article published on Oct. 24, 2023 (https://abcnews.com/538/americans-war-israel?id=104150059).
“…most Americans side with Israel in the conflict, according to the polls. The exact numbers vary widely, but across five recent polls, between three and five times as many Americans said they sympathized with Israelis than said they sympathized with Palestinians. (Although it’s worth noting that, in most of the surveys, a sizable minority said that they sympathized with both sides equally. And when not pitted against each other, both Israelis and Palestinians garner overwhelming sympathy from Americans: The SSRS/CNN poll found that 96 percent of Americans have at least some sympathy for Israelis and 87 percent have at least some sympathy for Palestinians.)
“Back in 2013,” according to Rakich, “Gallup found that Americans sympathized with Israelis over Palestinians 64 percent to 12 percent, but earlier this year, that gap was down to 54 percent to 31 percent.
“Interestingly, Gallup found that most of that shift was due to changing attitudes among Democrats and independents. For example, Democrats went from sympathizing with Israelis over Palestinians 55 percent to 19 percent in 2013 to sympathizing with Palestinians over Israelis 49 percent to 38 percent earlier in 2023. Meanwhile, Republicans remained steadfast in their support of Israelis — 78 percent sympathized with them in 2013, and 78 percent sympathized with them 10 years later.”
“Given Americans’ sympathies for Israelis, it makes sense that they also approve of Israel’s retaliation against Hamas’s attacks. SSRS/CNN found that 50 percent of Americans thought the Israeli government’s military response was fully justified, and another 20 percent thought it was partially justified. And a YouGov/The Economist survey from Oct. 14-17 found that only 18 percent of Americans thought the Israeli government’s response has been too harsh; 32 percent thought it was about right, and 22 percent thought it was not harsh enough.
“J.L. Partners/DailyMail.com, polling Oct. 10-12, also asked Americans about specific measures that Israel could or is taking against Palestine. The most popular countermeasure was conducting airstrikes on Hamas targets; 60 percent of respondents to the poll felt that that was a reasonable response by Israel. By contrast, 50 percent said that a full invasion and occupation of the Gaza Strip was reasonable, and 45 percent said that a blockade of electricity, food, water and fuel was reasonable.
“Not only do Americans support the Israeli government’s response, but they also want their own government to come to Israel’s aid. Seventy-one percent of Americans told YouGov/The Economist that protecting Israel was a very or somewhat important U.S. policy goal. And Quinnipiac University’s Oct. 12-16 survey found that 76 percent of registered voters thought supporting Israel was in the U.S. national interest.”
In terms of specific policies, between 41 and 64 percent of Americans supported sending weapons and/or military aid to Israel, depending on which poll you look at (YouGov/The Economist, J.L. Partners/DailyMail.com or Quinnipiac). A consistent 28-29 percent opposed it in all three polls. Between 49 percent and 55 percent also supported sending financial aid to Israel in the first two polls, while only 21-27 percent opposed it. However, J.L. Partners found that Americans opposed sending U.S. troops to fight alongside Israel. Only 32 percent were in favor of that, while 48 percent were opposed.
“So far, Americans seem to be happy with the level of U.S. involvement in the conflict. In an ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted Oct. 13-14 using Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel, 49 percent of Americans thought the U.S. was doing about the right amount to support Israel in its war against Hamas. Only 18 percent thought the U.S. was doing too much, and 29 percent thought the U.S. was doing too little. Quinnipiac’s poll had similar numbers.”
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GAZA
Gaza is home to 2.2 or 2.3 million Palestinians. In 1948, 750,000 Palestinians were driven out of what was to become the first Israeli state and over time the population grew. One can get a sense of the history of Palestine and Israel in Rashid Khalidi’s best-selling book, The Hundred Year’s War on Palestine (publ. 2020). Here are some current facts.
Presently, 40 to 50 percent of Gaza’s population are youth, aged under 19. Wikipedia offers the following analysis (https://en/wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip).
“The Gaza Strip (/ˈɡɑːzə/;[4] Arabic: قِطَاعُ غَزَّةَ Qiṭāʿ Ġazzah [qɪˈtˤɑːʕ ˈɣaz.za]), or simply Gaza, is a Palestinian exclave on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea,[5] bordered by Egypt on the southwest and Israel on the east and north. Together, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank make up the State of Palestine, which has been under Israeli military occupation since 1967.[6]
“The smaller of the two Palestinian territories,[7] Gaza is separated from the West Bank by Israel. Both are nominally under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority,[8] however Gaza is governed by Hamas, a militant, Sunni Islamic organization,[9] which has ruled the territory since an internal conflict between Palestinian factions in 2007 that followed their electoral victory in 2006.[10][11] Since then, Gaza has been under a full Israeli-led, and Egyptian supported, land, sea and air blockade. This prevents people and goods from freely entering or leaving the territory, leading to the territory often being called an ‘open-air prison’.[12]
“The Gaza Strip is 41 km (25 mi) long, from 6 to 12 km (3.7 to 7.5 mi) wide, and has a total area of 365 km2 (141 sq mi).[13][14] With around 2 million Palestinians[15] on approximately 365 km2 (141 sq mi) of land, Gaza has a high population density (comparable to that of Hong Kong).[16][17] The majority of Palestinians in Gaza, which contains eight refugee camps, are descendants of refugees who fled or were expelled from the area that became Israel after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.[18] Sunni Muslims make up most of Gaza’s population, with a Palestinian Christian minority. Gaza has an annual population growth rate of 2.91% (2014 est.), the 13th-highest in the world.[14]”
Hamas
Kali Robinson identifies a little known fact about the origin of Hamas in an article on the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) website, Oct. 9, 2023 (https:///cfr.org/backgrounder/what-hamas). Here’s some of what she writes.
“A spin-off of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in the late 1980s, the Islamist militant group Hamas took over the Gaza Strip after defeating its rival political party, Fatah, in elections in 2006.”
At this point in time on Oct. 28, 2023, Israel’s principal objective appears to be to find and destroy Hamas regardless of how much death and destruction it’s military forces perpetrates in pursing this goal and with little apparent concern about the 200+ hostages. Israeli bombing in Gaza increases and a Israeli ground invasion is in process, beginning on Oct. 28 and 29.
Some Israeli government officials. including Netanyahu, would like to push all Palestinians in Gaza out of the strip, though presently there is nowhere else for them to go and it would be in violation of international rules of war (an issue taken up later in this post).
Israel helped to create Hamas
Mehdi Hasan and Dina Sayedahmed report that Israel helped to create Hamas
(https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-conflict). Here’s what they write.
“But did you also know that Hamas — which is an Arabic acronym for “Islamic Resistance Movement” — would probably not exist today were it not for the Jewish state? That the Israelis helped turn a bunch of fringe Palestinian Islamists in the late 1970s into one of the world’s most notorious militant groups? That Hamas is blowback?
“This isn’t a conspiracy theory. Listen to former Israeli officials such as Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who was the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s. Segev later told a New York Times reporter that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a ‘counterweight’ to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat (who himself referred to Hamas as ‘a creature of Israel.’)
“Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades, told the Wall Street Journal in 2009. Back in the mid-1980s, Cohen even wrote an official report to his superiors warning them not to play divide-and-rule in the Occupied Territories, by backing Palestinian Islamists against Palestinian secularists. ‘I … suggest focusing our efforts on finding ways to break up this monster before this reality jumps in our face,’ he wrote.” They did not listen to him.
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Hamas (continued)
Back to Robinson. “Hamas is an Islamist militant movement and one of the Palestinian territories’ two major political parties. It governs more than two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, but the group is best known for its armed resistance to Israel.”
“Dozens of countries have designated Hamas a terrorist organization, though some apply this label only to its military wing. Iran provides it with material and financial support, and Turkey reportedly harbors some of its top leaders. Its rival party, Fatah, which dominates the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and rules in the West Bank, has renounced violence. The split in Palestinian leadership and Hamas’s unwavering hostility toward Israel have diminished prospects for stability in Gaza.
“Hamas, an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya (“Islamic Resistance Movement”), was founded by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a Palestinian cleric who became an activist in local branches of the Muslim Brotherhood after dedicating his early life to Islamic scholarship in Cairo. Beginning in the late 1960s, Yassin preached and performed charitable work in the West Bank and Gaza, both of which Israel occupied following the 1967 Six-Day War.
Yassin established Hamas as the Brotherhood’s political arm in Gaza in December 1987, following the outbreak of the first intifada, a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem…. In 1988, Hamas published its charter, calling for the destruction of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic society in historic Palestine. In what observers called an attempt to moderate its image, Hamas presented a new document [PDF] in 2017 that accepted an interim Palestinian state along the “Green Line” border established before the Six-Day War but that still refused to recognize Israel.”
“Hamas has a host of leadership bodies that perform various political, military, and social functions. General policy is set by an overarching consultative body, often called the politburo, which operates in exile. Local committees manage grassroots issues in Gaza and the West Bank.
“Ismail Haniyeh currently serves as political chief, having replaced longtime leader Khaled Meshaal in 2017. Haniyeh has operated from Doha, Qatar, since 2020, reportedly because Egypt restricts his movement into and out of Gaza. Hamas leaders established a presence in Qatar after falling out with their previous host, Syria, when Palestinian refugees participated in the 2011 uprising that preceded the Syrian Civil War. Some senior Hamas figures reportedly operate out of the group’s offices in Turkey.
“Day-to-day affairs in Gaza are overseen by Yahya Sinwar, who previously headed Hamas’s military wing and served twenty-two years in an Israeli prison for masterminding the abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers. He was among the more than one thousand Palestinian prisoners freed in 2011 in exchange for an Israeli soldier held by Hamas. As of June 2021, Gaza’s de facto prime minister is Issam al-Da’alis.”
“As a designated terrorist entity, Hamas is cut off from official assistance that the United States and European Union (EU) provide to the PLO in the West Bank. Historically, Palestinian expatriates and private donors in the Persian Gulf provided much of the movement’s funding. In addition, some Islamic charities in the West have channeled money to Hamas-backed social service groups, prompting asset freezes by the U.S. Treasury.”
“Today, Iran is one of Hamas’s biggest benefactors, contributing funds, weapons, and training. Though Iran and Hamas briefly fell out after backing opposing sides in Syria’s civil war, Iran currently provides some $100 million annually [PDF] to Hamas, PIJ, and other Palestinian groups designated as terrorist organizations by the United States. Iran was quick to praise Hamas’s assault on Israel in late 2023 and pledge its continuing support for the Palestinian group.
“Turkey has been another stalwart backer of Hamas—and a critic of Israel—following President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rise to power in 2002. Though Ankara insists it only supports Hamas politically, it has been accused of funding Hamas’s terrorism, including through aid diverted from the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency.”
How Hamas govern Gaza?
Robinson continues. “As Hamas took over the remnants of PA institutions in the strip, it established a judiciary and put in place authoritarian institutions. In theory, Hamas governs in accordance with the sharia-based Palestinian Basic Law, as does the PA; but it has generally been more restrictive than the law requires, including by controlling how women dress and enforcing gender segregation in public during the early years of its rule. The watchdog group Freedom House found in 2020 that the “Hamas-controlled government has no effective or independent mechanisms for ensuring transparency in its funding, procurements, or operations.” Hamas also represses the Gazan media, civilian activism on social media, the political opposition, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), leaving it without mechanisms for accountability.”
How do Palestinians view Hamas?
Robinson: “The political bifurcation of the West Bank and Gaza is widely unpopular: a June 2023 poll [PDF] by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) showed that one-third of Palestinians consider it the most damaging development for their people since the state of Israel’s 1948 creation. The same poll found that more than half of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank would vote for Hamas’s Haniyeh over PA President Mahmoud Abbas in a presidential election, while just one-third of Palestinians would choose Abbas. Additionally, Abbas has indefinitely postponed national elections scheduled for 2021, citing Israel’s alleged refusal to let Palestinians in East Jerusalem vote, though observers suspect that Abbas aims to prevent a likely Hamas victory.
How has Hamas challenged Israel?
Robinson: “Hamas has fired rockets and mortars into Israel since the group took over the Gaza Strip in the mid 2000s. Iranian security officials have said that Tehran provided some of these weapons, but that Hamas gained the ability to build its own missiles after training with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and proxies. In recent years, Israel estimated that Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups in Gaza had about thirty thousand rockets and mortars in their arsenal. Hamas militants have flown balloons carrying incendiary devices toward Israel, which have sometimes caused fires. The group has also carried out incursions into Israeli territory, killing and kidnapping soldiers and civilians.”
Israel’s response to the Hamas attack
The Israeli claim of precision bombing – an oxymoron
Israeli officials says that the massive and increasing bombing of Gaza is precise and aimed at non-civilian targets. They also claim that the 1.1 million Gazan residents in the northern parts of Gaza have been notified to move south, away from the Gaza/Israel border and ostensibly away from Israeli bombing. However, the Israeli bombing is occurring everywhere in Gaza,
The idea of precise bombing to avoid Palestinian deaths and injuries, and the destruction of residences and building of all kinds, including schools, hospitals, residences, and other structures, is hard to believe, given the dense population of the tiny Gazan strip and the extensive and increasing destruction and death that now results from the bombing.
Ethnic cleansing
Israel has demanded that the 1.1 million Palestinians in the northern parts of Gaza move south. Otherwise, they will be viewed as supporters of Hamas and will be targeted as complicit in the attacks on Israel, that is as enemy combatants and relevant military targets. On Democracy Now, a weekly program on the internet, the host Amy Goodman refers to this issue in an interview with Jehad Abusalim, Palestinian scholar, policy analyst from Gaza and the executive director of The Jerusalem Fund (https://democracynow.org/2023/10/23/jehad_abusalim_gaza).
“AMY GOODMAN: Jehad, I wanted to get your comment on the Israeli military informing Palestinians in Gaza that they would be identified as a partner in a terrorist organization if they didn’t follow forced displacement orders and move south. This message came in leaflets that were dropped from the sky by drones on Saturday, after Israel ordered 1.1 million residents in the northern part of Gaza to move south — of course, not clear if they could ever return.”
The result is that, out of fear, hundreds of thousands of Gazans, perhaps 700,000 Gazans, have moved to the south. Tragically, Israel’s military forces have bombed them anyway, bombing all parts of Gaza.
As the bombing goes on, there is very little aid allowed by Israel to enter the strip. Belen Fernandez hones on the inadequate humanitarian aid allowed to enter Gaza by Israel, referring to the “Trickle of Aid Amid Unyielding Gaza Onslaught,” as nothing more than a PR Trick (https://commondreams.org/opinion/gaza-aid-as-pr-stunt). The article was published on Oct. 22, 2023.
“According to United States President Joe Biden – who continues to wholeheartedly back the Israeli slaughter-fest in Gaza both morally and financially while pretending to care a tiny bit about the victims of the whole arrangement – Israel had agreed to allow some 20 humanitarian aid trucks to enter the besieged Palestinian enclave on Friday via the shuttered Rafah crossing from Egypt. [Since this report, the number of trucks has approached 70.]
“A statement from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office on Wednesday [Oct. 18] affirmed that, ‘in light of President Biden’s demand, Israel will not thwart humanitarian supplies from Egypt as long as it is only food, water and medicine for the civilian population in the southern Gaza Strip.’
Fernandez is wary of Israeli claims about aid. She writes:
“To be sure, the non-thwarting pledge would have been slightly more credible had Israel not repeatedly bombed Rafah and the other areas of southern Gaza to which thousands of civilians from the north have evacuated under orders from Israel itself. As might have been predicted, the aid trucks were held up all day Friday [Oct. 20] on the Egyptian side of the border as the Israeli army continued its pulverisation efforts in the Palestinian territory.” Since then, a few dozen more trucks have been allowed to enter southern Gaza.
Prior to the current attacks on Palestinians in Gaza, 500 trucks entered Gaza every day, as reported by Michelle Nichols for Reuters (https://reuters.com/world/middle-east/gaza-aid-monitoring-must-change-allow-more-trucks-un-chief-2023-10-27).
If Netanyahu and his political war coalitions gets their way, Palestinians will somehow be eliminated from Gaza. as well as from Jerusalem, and the West Bank. Not clear where they would go. Both Jordan and Egypt reject the idea of admitting hundreds of thousands of Gaza’s residents to their land.
Nonetheless, as Brett Wilkins reports, Netanyahu has shown a map of the “new Middle East” to the United Nation’s General Assembly, and it does not include any Palestinian areas (https://commondreams.org/news/netanyahu-map). Wilkins reports,
“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu angered Palestinians and their defenders Friday after presenting a map of “The New Middle East” without Palestine during his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York” on Oct. 27, 2023.
“Speaking to a largely empty chamber, Netanyahu—whose far-right government is widely considered the most extreme in Israeli history—showed a series of maps, including one that did not show the West Bank, East Jerusalem, or Gaza. These Palestinian territories have been illegally occupied by Israel since 1967, with the exception of Gaza—from which Israeli forces withdrew in 2005, while maintaining an economic stranglehold over the densely populated coastal strip.”
“Palestinian Ambassador to Germany Laith Arafeh said on social media that there is “no greater insult to every foundational principle of the United Nations than seeing Netanyahu display before the UNGA a ‘map of Israel’ that straddles the entire land from the river to the sea, negating Palestine and its people, then attempting to spin the audience with rhetoric about ‘peace’ in the region, all the while entrenching the longest ongoing belligerent occupation in today’s world.”
Starve them
Jon Queally reports on how Israel’s blockade and siege of Gaza is negatively affecting the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza, particularly Israel’s refusal to allow fuel to enter the strip
(https://commondreams.org/news/un-fuel-gaza-hospital-collapse). The article was published on Oct. 22, 2023
Queally quotes Philippe Lazzarini, the Commissioner-General of the United Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East [UNRWA].
“Without fuel, there will be no water, no functioning hospitals and bakeries,” Lazzarini continued. “Without fuel, aid will not reach those in desperate need. Without fuel, there will be no humanitarian assistance. No fuel will further strangle the children, women, and people of Gaza.”
Noting that the UNRWA runs the largest humanitarian operation in the Gaza Strip, he said that without fuel, “we will fail the people of Gaza whose needs are growing by the hour, under our watch.”
Following the first “totally insufficient” convoy of aid trucks allowed to enter Gaza from Egypt on Saturday, another 17 trucks were permitted Sunday. Neither of the deliveries contained fuel, which medical personnel on the ground have said is vital if the health system is to remain capable of keeping the wounded and sick alive.
“‘In three days, UNRWA will run out of fuel, critical for our humanitarian response across the Gaza Strip,’ Lazzarini said.”
The death toll and the wounded in Gaza steadily rise
Unsurprisingly, the number of reported Palestinian deaths goes up day by day and the devastation of medical facilities, schools, whole communities, UN facilities also increases. No place is safe. Hamas also has launched hundreds or thousands of missiles toward Israel, but most have been destroyed by Israeli defenses. As it stands, the combination of the blockade, siege, the severe limiting of humanitarian aid, the attempted ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza, all contribute to a rising human catastrophe of enormous and tragic consequences.
Becky Sullivan reports that Gazan health officials say the “reported death toll in Gaza nor approaches 7.000 by Oct. 26 (https://npr.org/2023/10/26/1208680784/death-toll-in-gaza-approaches-7-000=as-aid-groups-raise-alarm-about-fuel). This number may underestimate the death toll, as an unknown number of Palestinians are buried and unrecovered in rubble from the bombing. Nonetheless, according to Sullivan, Biden dismisses the number and said he has “no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed.”
Sullivan continues.
“The Palestinian agency that produces the death tolls, the Ministry of Health, is nominally operated by the Palestinian Authority, which provides funding and supplies and maintains close contact with hospitals in Gaza. Hamas governs Gaza and likely has close oversight over information Gaza health officials put out. [Still] The daily casualty counts are broadly considered to be accurate by humanitarian groups and have been cited by the State Department.
“Gaza’s borders are effectively closed, limiting the ability of aid groups and journalists to access the territory in order to independently verify the numbers.
Humanitarian groups warn that the death toll could dramatically increase if Israel follows through with its threats of a ground invasion, as it plans to do.
Collective punishment
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)offers the following information (https://casebook.icrc.org/a_to_z/glossary/collective-punishments). It appears that the internationally recognized war crime of collective punishment is applicable to what Israel is doing in its war and siege against Palestinians in Gaza. Here’s what the ICRC says generally about the unlawful concept of “collective punishment.”
“The term refers not only to criminal punishment, but also to other types of sanctions, harassment or administrative action taken against a group in retaliation for an act committed by an individual/s who are considered to form part of the group. Such punishment therefore targets persons who bear no responsibility for having committed the conduct in question.”
“International humanitarian law prohibits collective punishment of prisoners of war or other protected persons for acts committed by individuals during an armed conflict.
“The imposition of collective punishment is a war crime.”
Genocide and Accountability
Marjorie Cohn, author and legal expert, argues in an article published on Oct. 20, 2023, that both Israeli and US leaders “must be held accountable for the genocide of Palestinians” (https://truthout.org/articles/israeili-and-us-leaders-must-be-held-accountable-for-the-genocide-of-palestine). Genocide is about the destruction of an “enemy.” Ethnic cleansing is about the forceable removal of a population from selected places. Israel is engaged in both.
“In retaliation against the Palestinians in Gaza for Hamas’s October 7 killing of hundreds of Israeli civilians, Israel has intensified its 16-year siege of Gaza to a ‘complete siege.’ Israel is slaughtering Gazans, cutting off their food, water, electricity and fuel, ordering more than 1 million of them to leave their homes and then bombing their evacuation routes, and trapping them with nowhere to escape.
Israeli forces are amassing tanks on the border in preparation for an imminent invasion. The United States is sending massive firepower to help Israel.”
The idea of “complete siege” is a euphemism for ethnic cleansing. It “explicitly indexes a plan to bring the siege to its final destination of systematic destruction of Palestinians and Palestinian society in Gaza,” Raz Segal wrote in Jewish Currents.
“There is a plausible and credible case that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian population in Gaza, as a significant part of the overall Palestinian population, as a protected group,” the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) wrote in its October 18 emergency legal briefing paper titled ‘Israel’s Unfolding Crime of Genocide of the Palestinian People & U.S. Failure to Prevent and Complicity in Genocide.’”
The CCR brief also implicates the U.S.
“There is a plausible and credible case to be made that the United States’ actions to further the Israeli military operation, closure, and campaign against the Palestinian population in Gaza, with the knowledge of Israel’s intention to destroy the Palestinian population in Gaza through killings, causing serious mental and physical harm, and creating conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, rise to the level of complicity in genocide.
Therefore, Cohn maintains, “Israeli and U.S. Leaders Should Be Prosecuted Under the Genocide Convention and Rome Statute.”
“The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention) includes in the definition of genocide the commission of any of the following acts when committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
“Crimes punishable under the Genocide Convention include genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, incitement to commit genocide, attempt to commit genocide and complicity in genocide. Parties to the Genocide Convention — which include Israel and the U.S. — are obligated to prevent and punish genocide.
“Moreover, the Rome Statute can be used by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to prosecute the crime of genocide, which is defined the same way as it is in the Genocide Convention. The Rome Statute also provides for the prosecution of individuals who have aided and abetted the commission of genocide. Although neither Israel nor the U.S. is a party to the Rome Statute, the ICC has determined that it has jurisdiction over crimes committed in the occupied Palestinian territory, including the Gaza Strip.”
Cohn’s evidence
“The Israeli Air Force is conducting a continual aerial bombardment of Gaza. It has dropped more than 6,000 bombs on Gaza [as of Oct 24], one of the most densely populated areas in the world. That’s more bombs than the U.S. government launched in Afghanistan in a year. Some of Israel’s bombs contain white phosphorus, which burns to the bone and cannot be extinguished with water. It is prohibited by Protocol III of the Convention on Conventional Weapons.”
“Israeli forces have hit at least 24 United Nations installations during the past week, killing at least 14 staff members. A UN school in central Gaza in which 4,000 had taken refuge was shelled by Israeli tanks, killing six people and wounding dozens. The Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza was hit with airstrikes that leveled a whole block of homes and wounded dozens of people.
“The Gazan health ministry said in a statement that hospitals ‘have entered the stage of actual collapse due to power outages and fuel scarcity.’”
“Besides hospitals and schools, Israeli warplanes are targeting homes, mosques, churches and other civilian buildings. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared, ‘No electricity, no food, no water, no gas — it’s all closed,’ stating that, ‘We are fighting animals and are acting accordingly.’”
Cohn continues. “The Israeli government gave 1.1 million Palestinians in northern Gaza 24 hours to leave their homes and travel south or risk being killed when Israel’s imminent ground invasion occurs.
“More than 1 million Gazans have left their homes. Sixty percent of them are now in an eight-mile long area south of the evacuation zone.
“There continues to be no water for the vast majority of the population in Gaza. We’re talking about 2 million people in the Gaza Strip who do not have water. And water is running out. And water is life. And life is running out of Gaza.”
Two of Gaza’s eight refugee camps, where hundreds of thousands of refugees live, have been bombed. Israel made them refugees 75 years ago in the 1948 Nakba (or “catastrophe”) when Israel conducted a violent campaign of ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes to create the state of Israel. Mass atrocities, including dozens of massacres, killed roughly 15,000 Palestinians. The Nakba caused the forced displacement of 85 percent of the Palestinian population.”
“‘Over the past 75 years, successive Israeli governments have pursued deliberate, calculated, and explicit campaigns against Palestinians of forced expulsion, transfer and displacement, killing, fragmentation, arbitrary imprisonment, torture, and denial of fundamental rights,’ CCR wrote in its brief.”
“Statements made by Israeli leaders are evidence of an ‘intent to destroy, in whole or in part” a ‘national group.’ The Palestinians in Gaza comprise a substantial part of the Palestinian nation, and Israeli leaders are targeting them because they are Palestinian.
“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on October 16, “This is a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle.”
“Defense Minister Gallant’s declaration, ‘we are fighting animals,’ dehumanizes Palestinians to rationalize wiping them out. He pledged, ‘Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything.” Gallant threatened to ‘bomb those attempting to provide aid to the Gaza Strip.’”
“Israeli Defense Forces Spokesperson Daniel Hagari said that ‘the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.’
“Netanyahu, Gallant and other Israeli leaders should be charged with genocide in national courts and the ICC. Biden, Blinken, Austin and other U.S. leaders should be charged with complicity in genocide.
U.S. Leaders Are Aiding and Abetting Israeli Genocide
“The Rome Statute provides that an individual can be convicted of genocide in the ICC if he or she aids, abets or otherwise assists’ in the commission or attempted commission of genocide,” which includes ‘providing the means for its commission.’
“In addition to the $3.8 billion a year the U.S. furnishes Israel for military assistance, the Biden administration is sending overwhelming firepower and providing diplomatic cover for Israel’s war on the Palestinian people.”
“President Joe Biden called Hamas’s October 7 attack ‘an act of sheer evil.’ But he has never condemned Israel’s indiscriminate killing, starvation and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in Gaza.”
“On October 18, the U.S. vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have called for a ceasefire and urged Israel to rescind its order to 1.1 million Gazans to leave their homes and move to southern Gaza.”
“Netanyahu, Gallant and other Israeli leaders should be charged with genocide in national courts and the ICC. Biden, Blinken, Austin and other U.S. leaders should be charged with complicity in genocide.
“More than 800+ scholars and practitioners of international law, including me, have signed a public statement warning of potential genocide in Gaza. Referring to the ‘complete siege’ of Gaza, the statement notes, ‘This terminology itself indicates an intensification of an already illegal, potentially genocidal siege to an outright destructive assault.’”
Biden appears to go along with whatever Israel decides
Biden traveled to Israel to express his unequivocal support for the country (https://www.npr.org/2023/10/19/1206832708/biden-israel-trip-mideast-peace)
Ralph Nader points out that Biden’s trip accomplished little to end the continuing Israili bombing of Gaza, ordered his UN Ambassador to veto “a widely supported resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire, did not counsel the Israeli government to “obey the laws of war,” had no influence on the hostage situation, expressed little concern for the dire effects on Palestinians from the bombing, had nothing to say about Israel’s blockade of Gaza or how Israel has severely limited the number of supply trucks entering Gaza through the Rafah, or how Israel refuses to allow any fuel to enter the country (https://counterpunch.org/2023/10/23/biden-returns-from-israel-empty-handed).
Nader also criticizes the Biden administration’s request for $14 billion in additional aid for Israel and writes,
“That sum of money, to be authorized without any Congressional hearings or Congressional oversight, is greater than the combined annual budgets of the FDA, OSHA, NHTSA and the section of HHS, whose missions are to reduce the loss of hundreds of thousands of preventable American fatalities in the workplace, on the highways, and in the marketplace and the hospitals. (See, the 2016 peer-reviewed study from the John Hopkins University of Medicine).
“Lastly, still not calling a ceasefire, Biden is disregarding his own military’s private advice against an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza as raising the risk of a larger war in the Middle East that would clearly be against the national interests of the American people and U.S. security.
“He could have done what President Eisenhower did in 1956, when he demanded that the Israeli, British and French attack on Egypt stop immediately.
And stop, they did!”
“Moreover, Biden seems unwilling to recognize the historical origins of this conflict that now has mighty Israel occupying, colonizing, brutalizing and stealing land and water from the twenty-two percent of the original Palestine left for millions of Palestinians under Israeli daily control.”
What to do?
It is neither lawful nor morally justified for Israel to continue on its current path in Gaza. Therefore, there must be pressure on that country to stop the bombing, the ethnic cleansing, the siege, the collective punishment, and any genocidal policies advanced by Israel. It may begin with a “humanitarian pause” that allows for an adequate supply of aid to enter Gaza, including fuel. It should be accompanied by a cease fire. Ideally, though presently unlikely, there would also be negotiations that ended Israeli bombing and lifted the siege and blockade. Hostages held by Hamas could be released as part of a peace settlement, perhaps in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israeli authorities.
Humanitarian pause
Nidal Al-Mughrabi and Emily Rose report on how the UN, US and Canada have at last appealed for a “humanitarian pause in the Israel-Hamas war to allow safe deliveries of aid to civilians short of food, water, medicine and electricity in the Israeli-besieged Gaza Strip” (https://reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-promises-unrelenting-attacks-hamas-us-obama-urge-caution-2023-10-24).
According to Reuters, “U.N. agencies were pleading ‘on our knees’ for emergency aid to be let into Gaza unimpeded, saying more than 20 times current deliveries were needed to support the narrow strip’s 2.3 million people amid widespread devastation from Israel’s aerial blitz.”
“The United States is negotiating with Israel, neighbouring Egypt and the U.N. to smooth emergency deliveries into Gaza, but have wrangled over procedures for inspecting the aid and over bombardments on the Gaza side of the border.
“While we remain opposed to a ceasefire, we think humanitarian pauses linked to the delivery of aid that still allow Israel to conduct military operations to defend itself are worth consideration,” a senior U.S. official said.”
“U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the Security Council: ‘Palestinian civilians are not to blame for the carnage committed by Hamas,’ referring to the militants’ killing of 1,400 people, mainly civilians, and capture of over 200 in a one-day rampage through Israeli communities near Gaza.
“‘Palestinian civilians must be protected. That means Hamas must cease using them as human shields … It means Israel must take all possible precautions to avoid harm to civilians,’ Blinken said.”
“The World Health Organization, in the latest of increasingly desperate U.N. appeals, called for “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire” to prevent food, medicines and fuel supplies from running out in Gaza.
“HOSPITALS RUNNING OUT OF FUEL”
“Doctors in Gaza say patients arriving at hospitals are showing signs of disease caused by overcrowding and poor sanitation after more than 1.4 million people fled their homes for temporary shelters under Israel’s heaviest-ever bombardment.
“All hospitals say they are running out of fuel to power their electricity generators, leaving them increasingly unable to treat the injured and ill. More than 40 medical centres have halted operations, a health ministry spokesman said.
UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, warned in a post on messaging platform X that it would halt operations in Gaza on Wednesday night because of the lack of fuel.
“However, the Israeli military reaffirmed it would bar the entry of fuel to prevent Hamas from seizing it.”
Calls for a cease fire plus
Pleas for a “humanitarian pause” in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza and for increases in humanitarian aid are often combined with demands of a cease fire. But they also sometimes go beyond such demands to include an end to the blockade. the recognition of the Palestinians’ right to their own independent state, and the reclamation of some of the land in the West Bank taken forcibly by Israeli settlers, with backing by Israeli military forces. Right now, the call for cease fire is needed to end the slaughter of Palestinians and the danger the conflict poses to Israelis.
The United Nations General Assembly calls for a cease fire (https://press.un.org/en/2023/gashc4390.doc.htm).
“Francesca P. Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, said much of what Palestinian paramilitary forces have done against civilians in Israel are war crimes and must be accounted for. In response, Israeli occupation forces have yet again indiscriminately bombarded the Gaza Strip, hitting entire residential areas, schools, hospitals, mosques and churches and killing around 5,000 people [the number now is over 7,000]. Israel has further tightened the unlawful siege of the Gaza Strip, depriving the population of indispensable items of survival and using starvation as a method of war. Palestinian children, constituting half the population under occupation, are the prime victims of this system, Albanese said, reporting that, from 2008 until 6 October 2023, 1,434 Palestinian children were killed, primarily at the hands of Israeli occupation forces.
“Elaborating on the situation further, Navi Pillay, Chair of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel, unequivocally condemned the killing of over 1,000 Israeli citizens by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups as well as the taking of over 200 Israeli hostages. She also unequivocally condemned Israeli military attacks, resulting in the deaths of thousands of Palestinian civilians.
“Calling for an immediate ceasefire, she underscored that the Israeli Government must end its 56-year occupation and recognize the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.”
Vital issues - challenging pol and econ power 