Israel kills 11 members of one family with no warning – war on Gaza Day 550

contact@ifamericansknew.org April 9, 2025 Ayman Abdel-Hadi Qudaih, campus protest, cory booker, hamas tunnels, israeli lies, itamar ben gvir, Omar Rabea, prisoner death, rafah buffer zone

A collapsed building belonging to the Abdulhadi family after an airstrike carried out by the Israeli military, in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis, on April 06, 2025 (Abed Rahim Khatib – Anadolu Agency)

Compilation of news reports – IAK staff

At least 58 Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, the Health Ministry said on Tuesday.

At least 11 members of same family confirmed killed in Gaza’s Deir el-Balah

It was another bloody morning.

Gazans woke today to the sound of Israeli fighter jets producing sonic booms, terrifying everybody in Deir el-Balah. This area was the epicenter of Israeli air raids for hours.

Al Jazeera received confirmation from Gaza’s Health Ministry that a house was hit in the western part of Deir el-Balah city. The initial death toll we have received is 11. All of the victims are from the same family. Their house was attacked with no warning.

Gaza medic deaths just the latest in Israel’s long history of changing its story over civilian killings

The Israeli military’s changing account of its killing of 15 Palestinian medics and civil defense workers is part of a long familiar pattern in high profile cases involving the killing of civilians.

Often, at first, the IDF denies involvement. Sometimes – in the context of Gaza – it suggests one of Hamas’s own rockets fell short, causing the casualties.

Otherwise, it might allege that those killed were either combatants themselves, or collateral damage from the targeting of combatants.

And the case of the Gaza medics is only the latest incident when Israel has altered its account of a high profile killing.

The killing of the celebrated Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who worked for Al Jazeera, while covering a protest on the West Bank in 2022, saw a similar shifting of explanations (continue reading here).

RELATED: Shireen Abu Akleh’s death exposes Israel for what it is – a murderous regime

Palestinians struggle to survive their daily lives amid the rubble of buildings destroyed by Israeli attacks in Beit Lahiya, Gaza on March 17, 2025 (Abdalhkem Abu Riash – Anadolu Agency)

Israel Preparing to Turn Rafah – One-fifth of Gaza – Into Part of Buffer Zone

The Israeli military is preparing to incorporate the southern Gaza city of Rafah and its surrounding neighborhoods into the buffer zone it is establishing along the border.

The area, located between the Philadelphi route to the south and the Morag route to the north, was home to around 200,000 Palestinians before the war. In recent weeks, however, it has been left almost entirely deserted following widespread destruction caused by the Israeli military.

Following the end of the cease-fire, the army called on the remaining civilians to evacuate and move to the designated humanitarian zone along the coastline, around Khan Yunis and the Muwasi area.

Until now, the military has refrained from incorporating large cities like Rafah into the buffer zone. According to defense officials, the move to include Rafah came after the government’s decision to resume the war in February, and against the backdrop of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement that Israel would seize large areas of Gaza.

In some respects, it appears the army is seeking to replicate in the south the methods it employed in northern Gaza (continue reading here).

An aerial view of destroyed residential buildings in the Tel Al-Sultan neighborhood, following the withdrawal of the Israeli army, Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, January 19, 2025. (Ali Hassan/Flash90)

Israel estimates ‘only a quarter of Hamas tunnels destroyed’ since war began

According to officials speaking to Israeli outlet Mako, despite more than 18 months of onslaught on the Gaza Strip, there still remains an extensive tunnel network through the territory, including from Egypt.

The Mako report quoted experts as saying that Israel’s control of the Philadelphi Corridor – a 14km-long, 100 meter-wide demilitarized buffer zone that runs along the entirety of the border between Egypt and Gaza – failed to stymie the construction of tunnels.

In February, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the Philadelphi Corridor would remain a buffer zone despite the continuing proliferation of tunnels.

“I saw with my own eyes quite a few tunnels penetrating Philadelphi,” Katz said.

Members of Al-Quds Brigades keep guard at tunnels in Gaza on March 30, 2023 (Ashraf Amra/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Palestinian man died in Israel’s jail after he disappeared in October 2023, family told

The Red Cross has informed the family of Ayman Abdel-Hadi Qudaih of his death inside Israeli prisons, the Quds news Network reported today. Qudaih, a Palestinian worker from Khan Younis, disappeared in October 2023 during the early days of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Relatives say Qudaih died after being tortured in Israeli custody.

He had worked in Israel and went missing at the start of the genocide. His family had received no information about him for nearly two years.

His death adds to a growing list of Palestinians who have died in Israeli detention. Since the start of Israel’s genocide in Gaza on 7 October 2023, 63 Palestinian prisoners have been killed inside Israeli prisons, according to human rights monitors.

According to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, more than 10,000 Palestinians remain in Israeli jails. The figure excludes many detainees from Gaza, where hundreds face forced disappearance.

Since 1967, Israel’s prison system has recorded 233 Palestinian deaths. That number does not include the recent surge in deaths since the genocide began.

Amer Mohammad Sa’ada Rabea’, 14 — 14-year old Amer, a U.S. citizen, was visiting with his family and other relatives in Ramallah. (source)

US State Dept skirts question about probe into Palestinian-American teen’s killing

State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce was asked whether the Trump administration is calling on Israel to investigate the killing of a Palestinian-American teenager by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank.

14-year-old Omar Mohammad Rabea was fatally shot on Monday near the West Bank town of Turmus Aya.

“We are certainly aware of that dynamic,” Bruce told reporters, without directly answering whether Washington had called on Israel to investigate.

“We sent condolences to the families involved; these were teenagers. There is an investigation that is going on. We are aware of the reports from the [Israeli army] that this was a counter-terrorism act,” she said during a briefing.

“We need to learn more about the nature of what happened on the ground, but we’re aware of that, yes.”

NOTE: This follows the pattern of the Biden administration: acknowledging the fact that an incident happened, asserting the pro-Israel perspective, declaring there is not enough information, and claiming that Israel is “investigating.”

Israel’s self-investigations – on the rare occasions when they do take place – consistently whitewashits crimes and fail to appropriately punish theperpetrators.

Trump freezes over $1bn in funds for US universities over Israel protests

The Trump administration has blocked more than $1bn in funding for Cornell University and $790m for Northwestern University, citing civil rights investigations, Reuters reports.

A US official, speaking anonymously, said the suspended funds cover grants from multiple federal departments, including health, education and defense.

This crackdown follows a warning to 60 universities over what the Trump administration claims is antisemitism on university campuses. However critics argue that in reality the administration working alongside pro-Israeli and Zionist groups is seeking to silence pro-Palestinian voices.

Last week, the government began reviewing $9bn in grants to Harvard, and last month, it scrapped $400m for Columbia – ground zero for last year’s pro-Palestine protests.

Trump has accused student demonstrators of being antisemitic and backing Hamas. But protesters, including Jewish activists, argue the administration is conflating criticism of Israel’s war on Gaza with hate speech.

NOTE: Pro-Israel organizations consistently work to silence Palestine advocacy on campus – a free speech violation. Strategies include blockingprestigious appointments of and events with supporters of Palestinian rights, threatening to withhold major donations, and more.

Typically, any move by university administration that defies the standard pro-Israel position is followed by an apology like the one Sonoma State University’s president Mike Lee issued – an apology that recognizes only the sentiments of pro-Israel students and ignoring the actual issues of free speech and divestment from Israel.

Pro-Palestine demonstrations on college campuses have overall been peaceful and non-confrontational, and have notably included a significant number of Jewish students. When there has been violence, it has come from pro-Israel counter-protesters and police.

The silencing of pro-Palestine campus protest violates students’ and professors’ rights to free speech.

It is also notable that pro-Israel orgs regularly sponsor trips to Israel for influencers and theinfluence-able – trips that invariably provide a whitewashed view of Israel and no exposure to the Palestinian narrative, and by withholding the truth, “buy” new Israel partisans.

Hundreds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gather in front of Donald Trump’s Wall Street building to protest his policies on Gaza and condemn Israel’s attacks in Palestinians, New York, March 19, 2025. (Selçuk Acar – Anadolu Agency)

Cory Booker spoke for 25 hours and barely mentioned Gaza. That’s no surprise

It was not until hour 13, more than halfway through his oratorial marathon, that Cory Booker engaged at any length with the subject of Israel and Palestine. It was not about the war. Instead, he was condemning the Trump administration’s attacks on free speech at universities and its summary deportation of legally resident foreign students who “espouse certain views on topics like Israel and Palestine”.

The senator recounted the abduction of Rumeysa Ozturk, the Turkish Tufts University graduate student who was surrounded on the street by masked plainclothes agents, handcuffed and hustled into an unmarked vehicle, then shipped to a hellish Louisiana detention center, where she faces deportation – all apparently because she co-wrote an op-ed in the student newspaper urging the college to divest from Israel. “Her arrest,” said Booker, “looks like a kidnapping that you might expect to see in Moscow rather than in the streets of Boston.” True.

Denouncing censorship, the senator self-censored. “Certain views on topics”: he neglected to specify which views. He didn’t say that punishment is being meted out exclusively to critics of Israel and never to its supporters, or that those supporters are supplying homeland security with the names of the critics – in other words, collaborating in the very violations of constitutional rights that he decries.

The atrocities Israel has been committing in Gaza since the temporary ceasefire collapsed are arguably the worst yet. Trump is cheering Bibi on like a fan at a wrestling match. His support of Israel’s policies is not only unconsciously racist, like Biden’s, but blatantly racist. Yet few Democrats are saying – or, more importantly, doing – anything to stop him.

In fact, a few days after the speech, Booker voted against Bernie Sanders’ resolutions to block $8.8bn in arms sales to the Netanyahu government. Only 14 of his colleagues voted in favor (continue reading here).

RELATED: Israel’s genocide aims to revive the old Zionist dream of Gaza without Palestinians

Ben-Gvir to Embark on Official Visit to U.S. After Being Boycotted by Biden Administration

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir will travel for an official visit to the U.S. after Passover, after the previous administration boycotted him and U.S. State Department even considered imposing sanctions on him at the time.

Ben-Gvir’s office told Haaretz that he is expected to meet during the visit in Washington with U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem.

Ben-Gvir also plans to visit Miami and New York, where he is expected to meet with members of the Jewish community and activists from his party, Otzma Yehudit.

MORE NEWS:

Anadolu Agency: 1,700 millionaires left Israel amid Gaza war: Report

Middle East Eye: Organization of American Historians votes to condemn Israeli ‘scholasticide’ in Gaza

The Intercept: Trump Appears to Be Targeting Muslim and “Non-White” Students for Deportation

Anadolu Agency: Microsoft fires engineers over protesting AI supply to Israeli military

IMEMC Daily Reports

STATISTICS OCTOBER 7, 2023 – APRIL 8, 2025:

At least 51,647 Palestinians killed, 123,410 injured – including:
at least 50,695 killed in Gaza (~15,600 children)
at least 952 killed in the West Bank (~187 children)
at least 115,338 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 8, 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

Wednesday, 9 April 2025