In an AIPAC win, Senate refuses to block arms sales to Israel – Gaza war Day 545

contact@ifamericansknew.org April 4, 2025 arms to israel, international criminal court, Momodou Taal, morag axis, nicaragua, orphans in gaza, viktor orban

First responders rescue victims of an April 3, 2025 Israeli airstrike on the Dar al-Arqam school in Gaza City, Palestine. (Ayman Alhesi/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Compilation of news reports – IAK staff

The Israeli army killed at least 112 Palestinians on 3 April in multiple attacks across the besieged Gaza Strip, including 71 in Gaza City, where strikes targeted dozens of displaced families.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have fled the southern city of Rafah in one of the biggest mass displacements of the war, as Israeli occupation forces advanced into the ruins of the city, to make way for what Israel has said is a new “security zone.”

In the West Bank, Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian and injured another Thursday night near the village of Husan, west of Bethlehem. The soldiers then prevented medics from reaching the scene.

The Yemeni health ministry said that US air strikes have killed 92 people since they began on 15 March. At least 165 others have been wounded, the ministry said.

Palestinians flee to Khan Yunis as the Israeli army continues to attack in Rafah, Gaza on March 23, 2025. — Palestinians flee to Khan Younis as the Israeli army continues to attack in Rafah, Gaza on March 23, 2025. (Ali Jadallah – Anadolu Agency)

Over 39,000 Palestinian children lost one or both parents to Israeli war on Gaza

More than 39,000 Palestinian children have been orphaned by Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, official figures showed on Thursday.

“Some 39,384 children in Gaza have lost one or both parents after 534 days of the Israeli genocide,” the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics said in a statement marking the Palestinian Child’s Day, which falls on April 5.

It explained that around 17,000 children have lost both parents in Israeli attacks in Gaza since October 2023.

“These children are living in tragic conditions, with many forced to take refuge in torn tents or destroyed homes, in a near-total absence of social care and psychological support,” it added.

“The Gaza Strip is suffering from the largest orphan crisis in modern history,” the statistics bureau said.

According to the statement, at least 17,954 children have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza, including 274 newborn babies and 876 infants under one year old.

“Seventeen children also froze to death in the tents sheltering displaced people, and 52 others died of starvation and systematic malnutrition,” it added.

The bureau warned that 60,000 children face death due to malnutrition and looming famine in Gaza amid a deadly Israeli blockade on the enclave.

A child mourns beside the bodies of relatives, who lost their lives in Israeli attacks on northern Gaza, at the Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahiya on Wednesday, March 19, 2025 (Anadolu/Getty Images)

Hamas will not respond to Israel’s counter Gaza ceasefire proposal, official says

Hamas will not respond or engage with Israel’s counter-proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza, an official told Reuters yesterday, affirming it is committed to the mediators’ plan instead.

Israel said on 29 March that it conveyed to the mediators a counter-proposal in full coordination with the US, after Hamas agreed to a proposal it received from mediators Egypt and Qatar.

A copy obtained by Reuters yesterday showed the mediators’ proposal was part of the 17 January ceasefire agreement – which Israel violated over 900 times and ultimately made void by returning to bombing Gaza – and would extend the ceasefire for 50 more days.

The negotiations for a second ceasefire phase should be over before the 50-day period ends, as per the copy.

The proposal included the release of New Jersey native Edan Alexander, a 21-year-old soldier in the Israeli army, on the first day after the ceasefire is announced.

Hamas would also release four Israeli captives, with one captive released every ten days in exchange for releasing 250 Palestinians held in Israeli jails and releasing 2,000 of those who were detained after 7 October 2023.

The proposal also entailed the cessation of Israeli military operations, opening the crossings to allow the entry of humanitarian aid and re-opening the Netzarim Corridor to allow the entry of cars from the south to the north and vice versa.

RELATED: Report: Hamas Ready To Free All Israeli Hostages for Permanent Ceasefire

The ‘Morag axis’: What we know about Israel’s latest plan to divide Gaza

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahuannounced this week the capture of an area that he referred to as the “Morag axis” in the southern Gaza Strip.

This area consists mainly of agricultural land located between Khan Younis and Rafah, stretching from east to west across the Gaza Strip, and includes parts of what the Israeli military had previously designated as a “humanitarian zone”, where they had told internally displaced Palestinians to seek refuge.

The area had not been identified as an “axis”, also known as a “corridor”, before Netanyahu’s announcement; the name “Morag” that he used refers to an illegal Israeli settlement that was established in the region between 1972 and 2005.

It remains unclear what Netanyahu meant by “seizing” the area.

According to Israeli Channel 12, the separation of Khan Younis and Rafah is part of the military’s plan to implement US President Donand Trump’s proposal of removing Palestinians* from the Gaza Strip.

A defense source told Israeli newspaper Haaretz that they were surprised by Netanyahu’s announcement that the army had seized the “Morag axis,” adding that the military’s plan to control the area separating Rafah and Khan Younis had not been approved, and its disclosure could endanger troops.

Netanyahu explained that the purpose of controlling the area is to “divide” the Gaza Strip by cutting Rafah off from Khan Younis and to “increase pressure step by step so they will give us our hostages”

**NOTE: Trump’s scheme for removal of Gazans from their homeland through forced population transfer is a* crime against humanity, and a form of ethnic cleansing. If world leaders truly want to offer Gazans a good life outside Gaza, the just solution would be to return them to their homes in historic Palestine.

Amnesty International slams Hungary’s withdrawal from ICC as ‘betrayal of all victims of war crimes’

In a statement, Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard said leaders and officials from ICC member states must not undermine the ICC by meeting with Netanyahu or other ICC fugitives wanted by the Court.

Earlier on Thursday, Hungary announced its decision to withdraw from the International Criminal Court. Gergely Gulyas, chief of staff to Prime Minister Viktor Orban, announced that the withdrawal process from the Hague-based court would begin today.

Hungary announced the decision shortly after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Budapest on a four-day visit.

“By welcoming Netanyahu, Hungary is effectively giving a seal of approval to Israel’s genocide, namely the physical destruction of the Palestinian people in whole or in part in Gaza,” said Callamard.

She added: “Hungary’s purported withdrawal from the ICC is a brazen and futile attempt to evade international justice and to stymy the ICC’s work.”

Callamard defined Orban’s welcoming of Netanyahu as “harboring a wanted ICC fugitive.”

She also underlined that the EU and all ICC member states “must urgently” call on Hungary to arrest and surrender Netanyahu and firmly commit to defending the Court from insidious threats to international justice which a visit of this kind represents.

“Its withdrawal is a betrayal of all victims of war crimes and undermines the protections afforded the Hungarian people, as it removes, in a year, their opportunity to seek justice at the ICC for crimes committed against them,” read the statement.

RELATED: Trump says Netanyahu may visit US next week as Israel expands war on Gaza

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, left, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu review a military honor guard on Thursday in Budapest. (Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/Getty Images)

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont (Wikimedia Commons)

Trying to Block Arms to Israel, Bernie Sanders Denounces AIPAC’s Massive Election Spending

As Israel continued its monthlong blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza and pounded the enclave with American bombs, in Washington the Senate on Thursday voted down two resolutions from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to block the sale of tens of thousands of 2,000-pound bombs and other offensive weapons to Israel.

The resolutions marked the second time since November that Sanders forced a vote on arms sales. Once again, they exposed a deep divide among Democrats and blanket Republican support for Israel.

The Senate voted 15-82 on the first resolution, concerning 2,000-pound bombs, with all Republicans present voting against it, along with most Democrats. Sanders was joined by 14 Democrats.

The second resolution, focusing on other weapons, fared even worse. It was defeated 15-83.

Sanders, in a passionate floor speech, denounced AIPAC for its massive spending on last year’s elections.

“If you are a Republican, and you vote against the Trump–Musk administration in one way or the other, you’ve got to look over your shoulder and worry that you are going to get a call from Elon Musk, the wealthiest man in the world,” Sanders said. “If you are a Democrat, you have to worry about the billionaires who fund AIPAC.”

He cast his resolutions as a chance to stop exporting weapons that enable what he called “barbarism” in Gaza.

“History will not forgive us for this,” Sanders said. “The time is long overdue for us to tell the Netanyahu government that we will not provide more weapons of destruction for them” (continue reading here).

YAY votes:

‘Trump’s lawlessness’: Cornell University student describes why he fled US

A British-Gambian PhD student who fled the United States after immigration officers tried to deport him for his pro-Palestine activism has said his decision to leave was motivated by the “lawlessness” of the Trump administration.

Ph.D. candidate at Cornell University Momodou Taal. (screengrab)

“The decision to leave was very abrupt,” Momodou Taal, a student at Cornell University, told Middle East Eye’s Big Picture Podcast.

“It became increasingly clear to me that even with a court order, my safety was not going to be guaranteed.”

Last month, Taal launched legal proceedings against US President Donald Trump to stop his attempt at deporting international students and scholars who support the Palestinian cuase and have been protesting against the war on Gaza.

Taal’s attorneys said Trump officials had asked the 31-year-old to turn himself in and were planning to revoke his student visa. So he fled.

MEE asked Taal about comments US Secretary of State Marco Rubio made last month, saying that students who engaged in protests against Israel had “no right to a student visa” and that the US was within its right to cancel them because they would never have been granted had the US known the students’ views on Israel.

“I did intend to study and finish my PhD at Cornell University. I did not also … anticipate, a genocide to start. I didn’t … anticipate that the US would not only be complicit, but arm a genocide,” Taal replied when asked to react to Rubio’s statements.

“If the condition of your visa is now conditional on having no moral conscience, then the US can keep their visas… they will continue to lose the best people” (continue reading here).

MORE NEWS:

The Guardian: The Gaza paramedic killings: a visual timeline

The New Arab: West Bank: Thousands of vulnerable children are deprived of education amid Israel’s escalating violence

The Cradle: US gives Lebanon ultimatum to disarm Hezbollah or face war: Report

Anadolu Agency: New Israeli airstrikes pummel Damascus, Syria countryside

Middle East Eye: The losers and worse losers of Trump’s tariffs on the Middle East and North Africa

IMEMC Daily Reports

STATISTICS OCTOBER 7, 2023 – APRIL 1, 2025:

At least 51,347 Palestinians killed, 122,655 injured – including:
at least 50,399 killed in Gaza (~15,500 children)
at least 948 killed in the West Bank (~187 children)
at least 114,583 injured in Gaza
at least 8,072 injured in the West Bank

According to Palestinian authorities, during the ceasefire Jan. 19- March 18 2025, Israeli attacks killed at least 150 Gazans, and Israel committed at least 962 ceasefire violations.

Thousands of those killed in Gaza have yet to be identified, and an estimated 11,000 more are still buried under rubble.

Reported Israeli death toll from October 7, 2023 – April 1, 2025: ~1,592 – including ~1,139 on October 7, 2023 (~36 children), 407 military forces since the ground invasion began in Gaza, 46 military and civilians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Israel.

NOTE: It is unknown at this time how many of the deaths and injuries of Israelis on October 7 were caused by Israeli soldiers.

Hover over each bar for exact numbers. Source: IsraelPalestineTimeline.org

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Friday, 4 April 2025