In northern Gaza (and elsewhere), Israel is out of control – Day 373
Compilation of news reports – IAK staff
“Israeli forces killed 62 people and injured 220 others in four massacres of families in the last 24 hours,” the Gaza health ministry said.
Northern Gaza
Israel is turning northern Gaza into a killing cage
Drop Site News reports:
With the full support of the Biden administration, Israel is waging a merciless war of extermination against the 400,000 Palestinians remaining in the northern Gaza Strip as the government of Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly considering a plan to annex the territory. No food, water, or medicine have entered the north since October 1 as Israeli forces have conducted a campaign of intense airstrikes and ground forces have invaded and encircled much of the area.
In the early morning hours of Monday, Israel bombed a crowded tent encampment for displaced people on the grounds of Al Aqsa hospital, engulfing civilians in a massive ring of fire. Video from the scene showed patients—some of whom appeared to be in beds attached to IV cords—being burned alive as others in the encampment tried desperately to extinguish the fires with small buckets of water.
Saleh Al-Jafarawi, an independent Palestinian journalist who filmed the massacre, said, “I swear to God the scenes that will remain in our memories, will remain in our hearts forever. We will never forget the scene that I witnessed today: The scene of the child and he is burning in the heart of the fire and no one was able to help him.”
At least four people died and 70 others, mostly women and children, were wounded with many suffering severe third degree burns. The death toll is expected to rise dramatically, as local medical officials have described many of the injured as being in critical condition.
The Israeli military characterized its incineration of civilians in tents at the hospital as a “precision” strike against “terrorists who were working in a command and control complex that was established in an area previously known as the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah.”
The IDF, which vowed to continue such attacks, provided no evidence to support its claims about Hamas using the hospital. This pattern of justifying attacks on civilians and protected sites by claiming Hamas uses them as human shields or command centers has been a hallmark of Israel’s genocidal war, a lethal narrative that has been repeatedly bolstered by senior U.S. officials.
A recent report by an independent UN Commission found that “Israeli security forces asserted that over 85 percent of major medical facilities in Gaza were used by Hamas for terror operations, but did not provide evidence to substantiate that claim.”
Israel subjects Palestinians in northern Gaza to starvation, bombing, assassin drones
Euro Med Monitor reports:
Due to the ongoing Israeli siege, about 200,000 Palestinians in the northern Gaza governorate have been without food or drinking water for 10 full days now. This is occurring as the Israeli army continues its invasion of the region, killing over 350 Palestinians and injuring hundreds more, while also destroying numerous homes and residential buildings.
After their limited food supplies ran out, some Palestinians in the Jabalia refugee camp went to the main UN warehouse on Monday morning in order to secure food for their families.
However, the Israeli army targeted them with shells and quadcopter drones, killing 10 and injuring at least 40 more. Many of the victims are still lying in the streets and cannot be taken to the hospital due to the threat of further Israeli violence.
Axios reports: Israeli officials said that Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant told U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in a phone call on Sunday that Israel will not carry out a plan proposed by former Israeli generals to seal off aid to northern Gaza. [This is in spite of reporting in Israeli media that the so-called “generals’ plan” is already underway.]
Oxfam – Palestinians ‘ready to die in their homes’ rather than doing a ‘death march’
Al Jazeera reports:
Bushra Khalidi, from the British charity Oxfam, says the situation in besieged northern Gaza has deteriorated so drastically that people have resorted to eating animal feed, donkeys and horses just to survive.
The Israeli military has blocked food from entering northern Gaza for 10 days, something Khalidi called “unacceptable”.
“People are not surviving. People are very likely dying of starvation as they have been since the beginning of the war. The problem is, we’re talking about levels of destruction that didn’t exist several months ago,” Khalidi told Al Jazeera.
“I don’t know how people will survive. It’s likely they’ll die of starvation, die from the massacres we’re seeing in the north, or die trying to evacuate to the south,” she added.
Khalidi said most Palestinians were “ready to die in their homes” rather than doing the “death march” to southern Gaza.
WHO says two northern Gaza hospitals resupplied after nine attempts
Al Jazeera reports:
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said a WHO-Palestine Red Crescent operation managed to resupply two hospitals in northern Gaza.
“WHO and partners finally managed to reach Kamal Adwan and Al-Sahaba hospitals yesterday after 9 attempts this past week,” he posted on X late on Sunday.
“The missions were completed amid ongoing hostilities,” he added.
He said drivers had been subjected to “humiliating security screening” and temporarily detained at a checkpoint, “which is unacceptable”.
Truth takes a hit: another Palestinian journalist killed
Anadolu Agency reports:
One more Palestinian journalist was killed by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip, the local authorities said on Monday.
The Government Media Office in Gaza issued a statement mourning photojournalist Ayman Ruwaished, who worked for the Al-Aqsa Satellite channel and was killed by the Israeli army but did not specify where he was killed in Gaza.
The statement urged the international community and international press groups to deter Israel and prosecute it in international courts for its crimes against Palestinians, particularly journalists.
Ruwaished’s death brings the total number of journalists killed by Israel in Gaza since Oct. 7 of last year to 177, according to the media office.
Second phase of polio vaccination campaign begins in Gaza
Al Jazeera reports:
The World Health Organization says the second phase of the campaign has started in central Gaza.
“We urge all parents and caregivers to ensure that their child receives the vaccine,” it said.
Aid groups carried out a first round of vaccinations last month after a baby was partially paralyzed by the type 2 poliovirus in August, the first such case in the territory in 25 years.
Lebanon: At least 18 killed by Israeli airstrike on residential building in Christian town
The Cradle reports:
An Israeli airstrike on a residential apartment building in the village of Aitou in north Lebanon’s Zgharta District killed at least 18 people on 14 October, marking the first time the Christian-majority area has been attacked since the 2006 war.
Local reports confirmed the building housed multiple families, reportedly displaced from the south by the Israeli aggression. According to the Lebanese Red Cross, four others were injured in the attack on Aitou–Ehden road.
The Israeli army issued immediate evacuation orders for residents of 25 towns in southern Lebanon on Monday amid a huge air campaign on the country. More than 1.34 million people are now displaced.
RECOMMENDED READING: Israel Escalates Attacks on Lebanese First Responders, Potentially a War Crime – The A, B, Cs of Ethnic Cleansing
Report: Israel Is Facing a ‘Serious’ Shortage of Interceptor Missiles
Financial Times reports:
Israel is facing a shortage of interceptor missiles, according to sources in the aerospace industry, former military personnel and analysts, British newspaper Financial Times reported. The deployment of the U.S.’ anti-ballistic missile defense system to Israel will help fill gaps in its air defense ahead of an anticipated Israeli attack in Iran.
“Israel’s munitions issue is serious,” Dana Stroul, a former senior U.S. defense official with responsibly for the Middle East, said. A response from Iran, joined by Hezbollah, would stretch Israel’s air defenses, Stroul said, adding that the U.S. is also reaching a tipping point. “The U.S. can’t continue supplying Ukraine and Israel at the same pace,” she said.
With the daily firing by Hezbollah, analysts said Israel has had to chose which locations to focus its defense attention. And, “We are not seeing Hezbollah’s full capability yet. It has only been firing at around a tenth of its estimated prewar launching capacity,” according to Assaf Orion, a former Israeli brigadier general and head of strategy at the Israel Defense Forces.
The deployment of the U.S. air defense system to Israel will help to fill the gaps of Israel’s ‘serious’ munitions shortage, but another Iranian attack would stretch its air defense system.
NOTE: This suggests that the Biden administration’s leverage over Israel may be even higher than usual: Israel’s desperation for more interceptors would make this an opportune time to make demands for more humanitarian aid, fewer civilian casualties, no ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza, or even a ceasefire.
Biden administration has lots of suggestions for Israel
Various agencies report:
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said on Sunday he underscored the need for Israel to pivot away from military operations to a diplomatic pathway in Lebanon, raised the “dire humanitarian situation” in the Gaza Strip, and stressed that steps must be taken to address it.
Austin also reiterated “the importance of ensuring the safety and security of UNIFIL forces and Lebanese Armed Forces”, after the latest alleged violation of the UN peacekeeping force’s neutrality, when Israeli tanks entered a UNIFIL base in southern Lebanon.
He offered “condolences” over the killing of four Israeli soldiers, following a Hezbollah drone attack on a military base in northern Israel on Sunday night, and “reaffirmed the United States’ unwavering, enduring, and ironclad commitment to Israel’s security.”
US Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday called on Israel to take more steps to ensure flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza: “The UN reports that no food has entered northern Gaza in nearly 2 weeks. Israel must urgently do more to facilitate the flow of aid to those in need,” Harris said on X. “International humanitarian law must be respected,” she added.
A National Security Council spokespersontold Anadolu on condition of anonymity that the White House “made our concerns clear to the Israeli government” after seeing images of displaced Palestinian civilians burning alive in the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike in Gaza
“Israel has a responsibility to do more to avoid civilian casualties — and what happened here is horrifying, even if Hamas was operating near the hospital in an attempt to use civilians as human shields,” the spokesperson said.
A spokesperson for the Biden administration, which has sent Israel more than 50,000 tons of military equipment since the Hamas-led October 7 attack last year, said in response to the hospital strike that the White House has “made our concerns clear to the Israeli government.”
U.S. Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) retorted that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “clearly doesn’t care about our concerns.”
“The only time he’s ever changed behavior is when we’ve exerted our leverage,” Jacobs wrote on social media. “It’s time to do that now.”
[NOTE: Israel regularly alleges that Hamas was operating near wherever it bombs, but has yet to provide evidence.]
US officials attend Gaza aid meetings on site of Israeli prison accused of ‘horrific’ torture
IAK analysis:
The Guardian reports that officials from the US’s main humanitarian agency, USAID, attend daily coordination meetings at Sde Teiman – the Israeli military base that also hosts a notorious prison for Palestinian detainees, where torture reportedly runs rampant.
According to three officials with the US Agency for International Development (USAID), staff from the American organization have been meeting on the site since July 29, although bombshell reports from CNN and the New York Times broke news of torture, including rape, in early May and early June, respectively.
Sde Teiman was set up as a temporary holding facility for detainees from Gaza after last year’s 7th October attack and the ensuing war. Human rights groups and released detainees say the thousands of Palestinians who have been through the facility have been subjected to severe abuse and torture. Other prisons and holding facilities around Israel have similar reputations, although Sde Teiman is perhaps the best-known.
Israel is requiring American humanitarian workers to meet daily at the site well-known for horrific torture, to discuss supposed distribution of humanitarian aid: “USAid is working closely to ensure more effective dialogue between humanitarian partners and the Israeli government to improve the safety, efficiency, and effectiveness of humanitarian movements into and throughout Gaza,” a USAid spokesperson wrote by email.
But this aid distribution has been thwarted at almost every turn by Israel, as humanitariangroups have attested consistently over the last year – that is to say, Israel brings American humanitarian workers for daily meetings to a torture site, in order to discuss humanitarian aid that is not being delivered to those in need.
Samantha Power, the USAid administrator, has acknowledged that the humanitarian work in Gaza is challenging, but has failed to call out Israel for genocide or implicate it for blocking aid.
USAID staff are apparently expected to operate within the system as though they are legitimately working to resolve a humanitarian crisis, rather than prolonging a man-made famine, all the while within walking distance of a torture chamber.
According to the Guardian report, disgruntled USAid staff have tried to make their voices heard coordinated dissent memos on private group chats, held vigils for slain aid workers outside of the Washington office, and confronted USAid leadership in meetings. Seventy-six staffers sent a letter in March to the leadership of the agency’s Bureau for Resilience, Environment, and Food Security criticizing USAid’s “silence on the suffering of Gaza”.
“I can’t sleep at night knowing that it’s going on,” one USAID official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It’s another form of psychological torture to make someone work there.”
West Bank: Israeli Forces Kill Two Palestinians, Injure Four, in Jenin
IMEMC reports:
On Monday, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian youth and a former prisoner, and injured four young men during a military assault on the northern West Bank city of Jenin and the Jenin refugee camp.
According to Fawaz Hammad, the director of the Al-Razi Hospital in Jenin, said that the youth, Rayan Ibrahim Al-Sayed, 17, succumbed to serious injuries inflicted on him when soldiers shot him with live ammunition.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) announced the death of the young man, Mahmoud Mamoun Abu Al-Rab, 23, as a result of live gunshot wounds in the “Al-Sibat” neighborhood in Jenin city.
It is important to mention that Abu al-Rab was a former prisoner who was released 5 months ago after spending 4 years in occupation prisons.
The medical sources added that Israeli forces shot and injured at least four other young men with live rounds in several areas of the city and its camp during the attack.
The Guardian: Police arrest pro-Palestinian protesters outside of New York Stock Exchange
AntiWar: Report: Israel Plans To Strike Iran Before US Presidential Election
Mondoweiss: Critics charge Ta-Nehisi Coates didn’t spend enough time in Palestine to learn the truth. They’re wrong.
Al Jazeera: Zionist ‘safety patrols’ on campus have little concern for Jewish safety
STATISTICS OCTOBER 7, 2023 – OCTOBER 14, 2024:
Palestinian death toll from October 7, 2023 – October 14, 2024: at least 43,043* ( 42,289 in Gaza* – 69% are women and children, according to Gaza’s Media Office). [The Ministry’s figures have been contested by the Israeli authorities, although they have been accepted as accurate by Israeli intelligence services, the UN, and WHO. These data are supported by independent analyses, comparing changes in the number of deaths of UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) staff with those reported by the Ministry, which found claims of data fabrication implausible.]
This is expected to be a significant undercount since thousands of those killed have yet to be identified – and at least 754 in the West Bank (~165 children). This does not include an estimated 10,000 more in Gaza still buried under rubble (4,900 women and children). Euro-Med Monitor reports 49,032 Palestinian deaths.
Lancet: “Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death9 to the 37,396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.
Ralph Nader earlier estimated 300,000 Palestinians may have been killed in Gaza.
- At least 45 Palestinians have died in Israeli prisons (27 from Gaza, 25 from West Bank).
- At least 41 Palestinians have died due to malnutrition (at least 37 of them children)**.
- About 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million population are currently displaced.
- Almost 500,000 Gazans are currently experiencing catastrophic levels of food insecurity.
Palestinian injuries from October 7 – October 14, 2024: at least 104,884 (including at least 98,684 in Gaza and 6,200 in the West Bank, including 830 children). [It remains unknown how many Americans are among the casualties in Gaza.]
Reported Israeli death toll from October 7, 2023 – October 14, 2024: ~1,457 (~1,139 on October 7, 2023, of which ~32 were Americans, and ~36 were children); 293*** military forces since the ground invasion began in Gaza; 25 military and civilians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Israel) and~10,000 injured.
The death toll in Lebanon since October 8, 2023 is at least 2,309 and 10,782 injuries. An estimated 1.34 million have been displaced.
NOTE: It is unknown at this time how many of the deaths and injuries of Israelis on October 7 were caused by Israeli soldiers.
*Previously, IAK did not include 471 Gazans killed in the Al Ahli hospital blast since the source of the projectile was being disputed. However, given that much evidence points to Israel as the culprit, Israel had previously bombed the hospital and has attacked many others, Israel is prohibiting outside experts from investigating the scene, and since the UN and other agencies are including the deaths from the attack in their cumulative totals, if Americans knew is now also doing so.
**Euro-Med Monitor reports that Gaza’s elderly are dying at an alarmingly high rate. The majority die at home and are buried either close to their residences or in makeshift graves dispersed across the Strip. There are currently more than 140 such cemeteries. Additionally, according to Euromed, thousands have died from starvation, malnourishment, and inadequate medical care; these are considered indirect victims as they were not registered in hospitals.
***The figure does not include the reportedly 56 Israeli soldiers – nearly 16% of the total Israeli military deaths – killed due to friendly fire in Gaza and other military-related accidents.
† For most of the conflict, women and children accounted for about 70% of deaths in Gaza, with children making up a little over 40% of those killed, according to official statistics.
Find previous daily casualty figures and daily news updates here.
Source: IsraelPalestineTimeline.org
- Human rights reports on Israel-Palestine (regularly updated)
- How Israel killed hundreds of its own people on October 7
- The most precarious place in the world to be a child: Israel’s year of war on children
- Every accusation a confession: Israel and the double lie of ‘human shields’
- Most Americans want to stop arming Israel. Politicians don’t care.
- Happy 100th birthday, Jimmy Carter – loved by many, smeared by some
- You can’t arm a genocidal state into moderation. So why does the West keep trying?
- How Does Israel Justify Mass Killings? It Starts in the Schools.
- From the Americas to Gaza: Spreading disease has long been used by colonizers to commit genocide
- Contrived charges of antisemitism are the new ‘Red Scare’
- How Israel’s quadcopters traumatize, maim and kill Palestinians in Gaza
- Israeli society’s dehumanization of Palestinians is now absolute
- The unpublished genocide diaries of Refaat Alareer
- An arms embargo on Israel is not a radical idea — it’s the law
- Israel is redrawing the West Bank, cutting into a prospective Palestinian state
- Gaza breakdown: 20 times Israel used US arms in likely war crimes
- U.S. universities spent the summer strategizing to suppress student activism. Here is their plan.
- ‘Words like Slaughter:’ A comparative study of The New York Times reporting in Ukraine and Gaza
- Cracks in the Dome: Israel’s security mirage
- Israel Suddenly Has A Problem With Attacks On Population Centers
- Americans are always the last to know…about Israel’s crimes
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