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By Rick Sterling

27 Dec 2024 – Following are some key points from a discussion with my friend Qusay (not his real name) in Damascus. He is a translator and university professor.   The situation in Syria continues to evolve. See the X account of Tim Anderson @TimAnd2037 for videos showing ongoing atrocities which contradict the western and allied  media narrative.

Syria is secular

“I’m Muslim but we celebrate Christmas. Syria is a secular country. We celebrate all other religions and sects. I remember when I was a child, my father used to celebrate this day and say, ‘this is the day of the birth of Jesus Christ, our prophet. So we must enjoy it. We must spread love, peace.’ This is part of the Syrian mentality to celebrate all these events because we learn from this love, sacrifice, peace and these things. So this is something of our tradition. We hope this will not end.”

Situation in Damascus

“The first four days after Assad’s departure were chaos, looting and stealing. After that, there has been a kind of peace in Damascus. But today, the situation is very dangerous again. My wife and I went to buy some things for the house. But there was too much firing of weapons. We had to return home. It’s now dangerous again.”

Situation in Aleppo

“In Aleppo, they banned one of the prominent minority religious sites. Because of this, there have been demonstrations. Two people were killed. There was a pretrial hearing and yesterday three judges were killed while they were going home. Things are getting worse. Some people are now saying ‘We are going to arm our people. You are unable to protect us, you are against us.’ This is the dangerous situation today.”

Curfew

“We have curfew for 12 hours. People are not allowed to go out.  Before this, things were calm and they were quiet. But for today, yes, things are getting worse. We hope they will not get out of control.”

Food, electricity, and fuel

“There is electricity in Aleppo only one half or one hour per day. At the beginning in Aleppo, the new rulers brought in power generators and for two or three days there was much more electricity. Before they took over the rest of Syria. Now people rarely have electricity. I live in Dummar project, one of the good areas in Damascus. We have electricity for one hour every 12 hours, just two hours per day.

“Food prices have recently gone down. But many people don’t have money and cannot pay.  The new government said that people will not get their salary for this month because in Syria people used to get their salaries in advance. They said, we will not give you your salary because you already took it at the beginning of December. So people now are really starving because of this.

“Transportation costs have increased four to five times. It is almost not worth it for many people to go to work. The new leadership say that they are now studying this and will raise the salaries three or four times. But according to what we see, these are all just false attempts to calm people down.

“Before they took over the rest of Syria, they promised the people of Aleppo that it would be paradise. They said they are going to give people the salary equivalent to  250 US dollars per month. That is a big increase and people were very happy for this. Now, after they took over the rest of Syria, they said, okay, we cannot do this because there are a lot of obligations and now we will study salaries and let’s see. ”

Threats to Syrian industry

“The entry of Turkish goods are now threatening Syrian industry. Turkish goods are coming into Syria with low prices and better quality. Syrian industry has been damaged by western sanctions, the high prices of fuel and electricity, and other factors. So they cannot compete with those of Turkey. Just yesterday, a leader of industry called on the new government to impose taxes on imported goods. Syrian industry needs some protection. So we don’t know where things will go. Rumors are everywhere in Syria.”

Security

“So far the only security are those who came from HTS.  They are very few in number.  Recently, they made announcements for the previous soldiers or policemen to return. The new leadership said they will make a reconciliation for all previously recruited soldiers or policemen. They said to go to these centers and if they see that you didn’t make any crimes against the opposition or any torture or things, they’re going to recruit you within the new staff of police. We will see.”

Colleges and Universities

“They changed the names of universities into other names. They changed everything related to Baath Party or Assad  to other names. The public universities are now open. Each day has a daylight prayer inside the university. They stop all lectures and have this prayer and all people group to have it. But it’s free for you to pray or not to pray. They don’t force anyone to participate. Yet. So far they are not enforcing any Islamic rules. For instance, women can go to streets without hijab or scarf.

“Private universities were looted and still have postponed classes. Classes are to resume on January 4.”

West and Allies are coming to Damascus

“The new rulers are receiving delegations from all around the world.  But so far we haven’t seen any good coming from this. People start to lose their patience because they see rich countries come to us and nobody brings any fuel, oil or needed supplies.  So why are they coming if they don’t have immediate solutions? There are delegations from USA, Qatar, Saudi Arabia,Turkey, Jordan and many other countries. So people say, okay, it’s good that now they have these relations, but what is the effect?  Why hasn’t anything changed?”

Syrians returning or departing?

“Many friends told me that the moment they can leave the country, they’re going  to depart.  They are seeing the situation very dark with the advancements of Israel into Syrian lands. And unfortunately now we don’t have any power to resist because Israel destroyed all the military capacities of the Syrian army. So people, they know that things are not going to be in a good situation. People are very afraid. Many people  don’t have money to go to their work or to feed their babies or to do anything.

“Are people returning from abroad?  It is hard to tell. At the beginning there were estimates that around 20,000 Syrians returned from Turkey to their villages. Turkey is facilitating the return of Syrians. This is part of the whole program.  But other Syrians have left.  Especially Shia Musims.  I know a lot, especially who were soldiers. They left for Lebanon because they were afraid for their security and safety. ”

Why did the Syria army collapse?

“This is a mystery because there are no true data about this. Some people say that Assad was informed by Russia that they can’t protect him any more. So he informed the army that they should surrender and they don’t need to fight back. There are many stories. What is true?  Unfortunately President Assad didn’t leave any statement behind him, which makes people very angry to be frank with you.”

Public reaction to Assad’s departure

“Soldiers were fighting for the country when they found out that Bashar al Assad left the country. This was irresponsible from his side because there were people who were depending on him, they were believing in him and suddenly he left everything. At least he should tell people that I’m leaving, you can surrender.

“He really turned people against him. He didn’t warn his soldiers or high officials or anyone else that he’s leaving.  Another thing is that the images from Sednaya Prison were really terrifying. And this is the thing that turned all people against the regime because they have live video broadcasting from Sednaya Prison. So people have seen this live broadcasting. Why should you torture these people? So yes, these two things turned people against him.

“When Aleppo was lost, he never spoke out. He never showed up. He never encouraged people, he never said, we will get  Aleppo back. Any normal person would say something. But he lived in his ivory tower. The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Turkey  said that two days before the fall they contacted him and wanted to speak with him, to negotiate.  But he refused.  I don’t know why he committed these mistakes. By his mistakes, all has been lost.

“And then you leave without telling your people, the people who lost their lives, the people who sacrificed their children for you because they believed you are going to unite Syrians. We know that he could unite Syrians, we know this, but by these mistakes that he made, all of us are lost.”

Rick Sterling is a member of the TRANSCEND Network and an investigative journalist who lives in the SF Bay Area, California.

30 December 2024

Source: transcend.org

19 Dec 2024 – Authorities’ Widespread Deprivation of Water Threatens Survival

• Israeli authorities have deliberately inflicted conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of part of the population in Gaza by intentionally depriving Palestinian civilians there of adequate access to water, most likely resulting in thousands of deaths.
• In doing so, Israeli authorities are responsible for the crime against humanity of extermination and for acts of genocide. The pattern of conduct, coupled with statements suggesting that some Israeli officials wished to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, may amount to the crime of genocide.
• Governments and international organizations should take all measures to prevent genocide in Gaza, including discontinuing military assistance, reviewing bilateral agreements and diplomatic relations, and supporting the International Criminal Court and other accountability efforts.

(Jerusalem) – Israeli authorities have intentionally deprived Palestinian civilians in Gaza of adequate access to water since October 2023, most likely resulting in thousands of deaths and thus committing the crime against humanity of extermination and acts of genocide, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

In the 179-page report, “Extermination and Acts of Genocide: Israel Deliberately Depriving Palestinians in Gaza of Water,” Human Rights Watch found that Israeli authorities have intentionally deprived Palestinians in Gaza of access to safe water for drinking and sanitation needed for basic human survival. Israeli authorities and forces cut off and later restricted piped water to Gaza; rendered most of Gaza’s water and sanitation infrastructure useless by cutting electricity and restricting fuel; deliberately destroyed and damaged water and sanitation infrastructure and water repair materials; and blocked the entry of critical water supplies.

Extermination and Acts of Genocide:  Israel Deliberately Depriving Palestinians in Gaza of Water

“Water is essential for human life, yet for over a year the Israeli government has deliberately denied Palestinians in Gaza the bare minimum they need to survive,” said Tirana Hassan, executive director at Human Rights Watch. “This isn’t just negligence; it is a calculated policy of deprivation that has led to the deaths of thousands from dehydration and disease that is nothing short of the crime against humanity of extermination, and an act of genocide.”

Human Rights Watch interviewed 66 Palestinians from Gaza, 4 employees of Gaza’s Coastal Municipalities Water Utility (CMWU), 31 healthcare professionals, and 15 people working with United Nations agencies and international aid organizations in Gaza. Human Rights Watch also analyzed satellite imagery, photographs, and videos captured between the beginning of the hostilities in October 2023 and September 2024, as well as data collected and estimates produced by doctors, epidemiologists, humanitarian aid organizations, and water and sanitation experts.

Human Rights Watch concluded that Israeli authorities have intentionally created conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza in whole or in part. This policy, inflicted as part of a mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, means Israeli authorities have committed the crime against humanity of extermination, which is ongoing. This policy also amounts to one of the five “acts of genocide” under the Genocide Convention of 1948. Genocidal intent may also be inferred from this policy, coupled with statements suggesting some Israeli officials wished to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, and therefore the policy may amount to the crime of genocide.

Immediately after the attacks in southern Israel by Hamas-led Palestinian armed groups in Gaza on October 7, 2023, which Human Rights Watch has found amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity, Israeli authorities cut all electricity and fuel to the Gaza Strip. On October 9, then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced a “complete siege” of Gaza, stating: “There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything is closed.”

That same day, and for weeks thereafter, Israeli authorities cut off all water and blocked fuel, food, and humanitarian aid from entering the strip. Israeli authorities continue to restrict the entry of water, fuel, food, and aid into Gaza and to cut Gaza’s electricity, which is required to operate life-sustaining infrastructure. This continued even after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued provisional measures in January, March, and May 2024 ordering Israeli authorities to protect Palestinians in Gaza from genocide and, in so doing, provide humanitarian aid, specifying in March that this includes water, food, electricity, and fuel.

Israeli authorities have also barred nearly all water-related aid from entering Gaza, including water filtration systems, water tanks, and materials needed to repair water infrastructure.

Between October 2023 and August 2024, the Gaza Coastal Municipalities Water Utility, the UN, and other sources reported that people in Gaza did not have access to the minimum amount of water needed for survival in long-term emergency situations. In northern Gaza, the UN reported that people did not have access to potable water for over five months, between November 2023 and April 2024. While a study of water access in August showed that people’s access to water had increased, most people still did not have adequate water needed for drinking and cooking.

Human Rights Watch found that Israeli forces have deliberately attacked and damaged or destroyed several major water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) facilities. In several cases, Human Rights Watch found evidence that Israeli ground forces were in control of the areas at the time, indicating that the destruction was deliberate.

30 December 2024

Source: transcend.org

By Tareq S. Hajjaj

25 Dec 2024 – Patients are trying to sleep inside the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip. But just outside, they can see a remote-controlled robot carrying explosives sent by the Israeli army. It’s only a matter of time before the bomb is detonated. Tanks and bulldozers move around the hospital and in front of its entrances all day long. The sounds of explosions and bullets do not stop.

Inside the hospital, there is a constant state of panic. With each new explosion or round of fire, patients flee from one wing of the hospital to another, crowding in the narrow hospital corridors to sleep like sardines, hoping that they will be safe.

This is the current reality at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, one of the last semi-functioning hospitals in northern Gaza. For 75 days, the hospital has been under siege by the Israeli army, which has banned the entry of food, medicine, and water, while periodically cutting off communications inside the hospital, preventing doctors and patients from communicating with the outside world. Not to mention the constant bombings.

In recent days, the army has stepped up its attacks on the hospital. According to witnesses, the Israeli army has deployed the use of remote-controlled robots, which approach the hospital gates, the surrounding areas, and its courtyard, dropping boxes filled with explosives that are later detonated remotely. The Israeli army has attacked the hospital dozens of times over the past 10 days, and in addition to the remote-controlled explosives, the army has been firing live bullets and artillery fire at the hospital, and has also been using drones and quadcopters in its attacks.

“Yesterday we went through a difficult night that no one can imagine. At dawn, there was violent and direct targeting of the intensive care unit, Dr. Muhammad Barid told Mondoweiss from inside the ICU at the hospital on Tuesday, December 24.

“Some of the effects are still present. Shells fell and set fires inside the department. The department is crowded with cases because the intensive care unit in Kamal Adwan Hospital is the only department operating in the northern Gaza Strip,” he said.

Dr. Barid highlights the grim reality facing patients in the intensive care unit, emphasizing that most patients are heavily dependent on ventilators, and require constant care from medical staff.

The intensive care unit, which is designed to accommodate only 16 patients, is now treating 47 individuals. Due to lack of supplies and a staff who are stretched thin, patients receive treatment only once a day instead of the usual three times, while patients with wounds struggle are given just one dressing change without further evaluation. Those inside, including both patients and medical staff, rely on limited supplies that have managed to enter the hospital via humanitarian organizations and medical delegations amidst the prolonged siege.

Ahmed Al-Barawi, a wounded man lying in the hospital recounts the horrific experiences that have made it impossible for him to recover. He expresses that the dire circumstances he faces—due to treatment shortcomings and a lack of essential medical supplies—has transformed the hospital into something unrecognizable.

“It’s a hospital in name only. The [Israeli] occupation has stripped even the most basic levels of care from us,” he said. “We suffer daily due to inadequate medical supplies, receiving only what amounts to first aid. Meanwhile, the shelling and continuous gunfire at the hospital add to our despair,” Al-Barawi explains.

He details the events from the previous day, December 23, when the hospital and its vicinity were targeted over ten times. According to him, electric generators were set ablaze, buildings were damaged, and patients were harmed by shattered doors and glass.

“Yesterday, they placed a robot next to the hospital and detonated it. We had to flee from our beds and spent the whole night in the corridors. Shelling and shooting were everywhere.”

Al-Barawi continues: “The hospital has become a place where people die rather than receive care,” adding that not only is medicine in short supply, but so are food and water.

“We urge the world to pay attention, to stand with us even just once, and help us against this enemy and this siege—the pain we experience is unbearable for any human being. We are humans, if you know what humanity means, not the animals the Israeli occupation claims we are.”

Dr. Barid expresses profound frustration at the lack of international response to months-long calls from doctors at the hospital to stop the army’s attacks. “There is no justification that gives anyone the right to target such places. We have repeatedly appealed to the world to provide protection for hospitals, but unfortunately, no one responded. There are no messages left to send.hank you to the world,” he finishes sarcastically.

‘We will fulfill our oath as doctors’

The current situation at the Kamal Adwan Hospital underscores the dire situation facing healthcare providers and patients across Gaza. What were once places of healing have been turned into war zones by Israel.

Since October 5, the Israeli army has been carrying out an ethnic cleansing campaign in north Gaza, as part of ‘The General’s Plan’. Starting in Jabalia, the army imposed a crippling siege aimed at starving residents out, while also intensifying its military attacks. Since then, the army has extended the siege and attacks to all areas in the north, such as Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun, forcing people to go south, towards Gaza City. It is estimated that of the more than 200,000 inhabitants of northern Gaza that were present as of October this year, some thousands remain.

Part of the army’s strategy to force people out of the north, residents say, is by further crippling the already devastated healthcare system. Throughout the siege, the army has stepped up its attacks on civil defense teams and first responders, bombing their outposts and attacking their crews, essentially making it impossible for the wounded to be rescued or treated.

As the last functioning hospital in north Gaza, the Kamal Adwan Hospital has become one of the primary targets of the Israeli military operations. According to doctors at the hospital, over the course of 75 days, the Israeli army has killed 17 medical personnel from the hospital, injured over 50 others, and arrested 46 individuals from the hospital grounds.

Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the hospital director, who himself has been targeted by Israeli army bullets, says the attacks on the hospital are unfounded. He noted that the Israeli army had previously raided the hospital’s ICU in November 2023, at which time no evidence was found to justify Israel’s claims that hospitals were being used by Hamas or other armed groups. The Israeli army is “aware of its [the hospital’s] purpose, as there are no other facilities providing such care in the northern Gaza Strip,” Dr. Abu Safiya states,describing the targeting of the hospital as violent and terrifying, likening it to a war zone.

“I don’t know why we are being bombed in this way. It is clear that the bombing was done with the aim of killing, based on the level of fire on the walls,” Abu Safiya says. “This is a dangerous matter, and we have asked the world, and are still asking, for international protection.”

“What we seek is to neutralize the hospital from bombing and targeting. This facility provides humanitarian services and is filled only with patients, companions, the injured, and medical staff. Why we are being bombed in this way, I don’t know,” he says.

Since the onset of the Israeli army’s invasion of the northern Gaza Strip in early October, Dr. Abu Safiya has been actively urging for measures to be taken to safeguard the lives of patients and assist the wounded. However, in the wake of no international response, the Israeli army has continued to enforce a suffocating siege on the facility in an effort to drive the patients and doctors out, along with all residents who refuse to leave northern Gaza.

“For 75 days, we have been calling on the world for international protection for the health system. These are laws established by the Geneva Conventions, which stipulate the protection of the health system,” Dr. Abu Safiya says. “Where are these laws? What sin did we commit in this hospital to be bombed and killed in this way?”

As Dr. Abu Safiya speaks, two massive explosions can be heard in the background.”This is the case all day and night; we are bombarded with these bombs. The shrapnel is flying as we speak in front of the world. We are bombed all day and night like this, either around the hospital or inside it.”

Despite the horrific conditions at the hospital, doctors inside Kamal Adwan insist that they are dedicated to the humanitarian oath they took when they began their medical careers, vowing to provide care to those in need. They are resolute about remaining in the hospital, refusing to leave under any circumstances.

“We will leave when the last Palestinian leaves the northern Gaza Strip,” Dr. Abu Safiya declared defiantly. “We will stay and serve those who are here. This is a humanitarian mission, and our message to the world is that we deliver humanitarian care and should not be obstructed. We committed ourselves to providing for those in need, and we will fulfill our oath as doctors here at Kamal Adwan Hospital.”

Tareq S. Hajjaj is the Mondoweiss Gaza correspondent and a member of the Palestinian Writers Union.

30 December 2024

Source: transcend.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- A newborn Palestinian baby died Monday morning from the extreme cold in Gaza, becoming the sixth infant to freeze to death in recent nights. His twin brother had died from the cold the day before, as the ongoing Israeli siege worsened the harsh winter conditions, making life uninhabitable.

Joma’a al-Batran died on Sunday, and his twin brother, Ali, followed him on Monday morning despite the efforts of medical staff at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza to save him.

According to the father, the family evacuated from Beit Lahiya to the central Gaza Strip eight months ago and did not have a tent.

“There are no tents or shelters. May God hold accountable everyone who caused this catastrophe. This is Juma, what was his fault for dying from the cold and freezing?” the infant’s father asks in one clip.

Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, said he has warned for months that “more than a million Palestinians lack shelter” for winter conditions.

“Now babies are freezing to death,” Rajagopal added, noting that this is another “achievement” of Israel’s so-called “most moral army in the world”.

Six Palestinian babies have frozen to death in the past few nights in Gaza, including three who died of hypothermia in the so-called “humanitarian zone” in al-Mawasi.

Palestinian nurse Ahmed al-Zaharneh, who was among the crews working at the European Gaza Hospital, also died on Friday because of “extreme” weather conditions, according to the Health Ministry.

The Ministry said, “His body was found inside his tent in al-Mawasi area, west of the city of Khan Younis, southern Gaza.”

“This incident comes in light of the difficult humanitarian conditions that displaced citizens are experiencing, as the suffering of Gaza residents increases due to low temperatures and the lack of heating means in tents,” the Ministry added.

The deaths highlight the dire conditions in Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are crammed into makeshift tents, fleeing Israeli shelling from various parts of the strip.

Gaza’s Government Media Office stated on Saturday that 110,000 out of 135,000 tents used by displaced Palestinians in the war-torn Gaza Strip are now out of service and have “completely deteriorated”.

The Office accused the Israeli military of “causing a tragic humanitarian crisis” that is once again putting the lives of thousands of civilians at risk as the freezing winter sets in.

“This catastrophic humanitarian situation is a direct result of the genocide committed by the ‘Israeli’ occupation army, which has completely destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes of these citizens, forcing them to resort to living in tents that lack the minimum requirements for a decent life,” the statement said.

30 December 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Priti Gulati Cox

What follows is the final installment of ‘October 7: A History in Threads,’ which connects the present to the past 141 years of Zionism and Israel’s occupation of Palestine. Please go here to see all of the 11 threads in this series that includes embroidered portraits of the ongoing Palestinian struggle for liberation.

According to professor Joseph Massad, “European Christian colonization of [Palestine] throughout much of the 19th century was the prelude to Zionist Jewish colonization at the end of it… By the 1850s, Palestine’s population was under 400,000 people, including about 8,000 Jews.”

As Israeli historian Ilan Pappé says, It was in the year 1882 — “the date of the first Zionist colony in Palestine” — that the settler colonization of Palestine began. Thirty-five years later, on November 2, 1917, UK’s foreign secretary, Arthur James Balfour completely changed the face of historic Palestine with the stroke of a pen by issuing the infamous “Balfour Declaration,” which favored the establishment in Palestine “of a national home for the Jewish people.”

Pappé tells us that soon after the 1967 war, defense minister Moshe Dayan opened the West Bank to Israelis for settler tourism: “Our guides were from the ‘Israel Exploration Society,’ founded in 1913 in an attempt to substantiate the Zionist claim for Palestine with archaeological finds.With such tour guides, you see what allegedly had been there thousands of years ago, but you do not see the present. You gaze at ancient ruins while ignoring the humanity around them. The early Zionists, pre-state, were taken on a similar tour upon their arrival to the ‘land without people.’”

Only a settler Zionist, head full of phantom ideas, could lay claim to a “land without people” while surrounded by the people of that land.

And only a settler Zionist backed by US arms could do this to one of their own, and then blame Hamas for it…

… or this to a beloved Palestinian educator…

… or this to the niece of 22-year-old Palestinian journalist and commentator Abubaker Abed…

… or this to the library of a Palestinian writer & poet…

… or this to a Palestinian toddler…

… or this to the great martyr and resistance fighter Yahya Sinwar…

… or this to a Palestinian prisoner…

…who was gang raped by a group of reservists in the infamous Sde Teiman detention camp in the Negev desert, east of the Gaza Strip, prompting this year’s “right to rape” riots in which Israeli protesters, politicians and TV commentators defended the right of soldiers to rape Palestinian prisoners in detention.

On November 13, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor released an infographic that included a host of shocking statistics. Since the start of the war on Gaza, the Israeli military has engaged in a scorched earth policy, completely destroying “the strip’s civilian infrastructure, property and essential buildings,” including 845 mosques, 3 churches, and 203 heritage sites. 90% of hospitals, 74% of the buildings, and 85% of the schools and universities have been destroyed or damaged.

Furthermore, 90% of the population has been forcibly displaced, violently driven to “relocate in schools and makeshift tents.”

At least 52,030 Palestinians have been killed, according to Euro-Med, with 33% of the casualties being children and 21% women. And of 46,410 civilians killed, 190 of the casualties were journalists, and 2,313 were healthcare professionals, including 83 doctors.

Out of the 108,320 Palestinians injured by Israeli attacks, “several thousand have suffered amputations or permanent impairments, with over 10,000 children losing at least one leg.”

To make matters worse, adds Euro-Med, “97% of the per capita share of the water has decreased due to the extensive destruction of water infrastructure; [and] 96% of the population face high levels of acute food insecurity. Around 100 Palestinians, including 42 children, have died due to severe malnutrition.”

According to HuMedia, the most dangerous place in the world to be a child is the Gaza Strip, where, among other horrors, 17,000+ children have been killed by Israel since October 7; 90% suffer from severe hunger, and 1 million are in dire need of mental health support.

Reporter Abubaker Abed—who, in the face of a Zionist genocide that has engulfed him and his people (a holocaust supported by Western governments, especially the United States), has been taking care of a yellow rose bush, among other plants—told The Electronic Intifada in an April 27 interview, “This is our yellow rose [and] we see hope through it. Despite the destruction, despite the truly unbearable circumstance we are living under at the moment, we still seek out hope [and] we see hope in you.”

I later asked Abubaker to elaborate a little on the situation on the ground in Palestine, and the role of the West in stoking this genocide with no end in sight.

Q: Abubaker, what are your earliest memories of your family under the siege? And what did your parents do for a living?

It has been all wars since 2008. It was a normal life where we would wake up, have our breakfast, and go to school. But at any time, you could expect a war to rage on. It’s just like this. My mom is a housewife. My dad is an art teacher at UNRWA.

Q: What is your message to the governments of the most powerful countries in the western world who have done nothing to hold Israel and the United Staes accountable for this genocide happening in clear view of the world in real time?

My message is, I am not a party to this war, and you’ve forced me to dream to live, while you and your sons and daughters live to dream. You’ve forced hell on me, and this is something I’ll never forget or forgive you for, no matter what you do in the future. You killed my friend and my aunt’s family and forced this horror upon me. Every single moment will never fade away from my mind. It pains me that my biggest dream has become a cup of clean water. This is a symptom of your barbarity.

Q: How, in your view, has the mainstream media and the so-called international community failed you and your people?

In every way. They’re paid propagandists. What they do is just dehumanize us as Palestinians. I’ll never forget these people, who I call “linguistic criminals.” Just robotized journalists who’ve remained silent and never shown Palestinian journalists or people support. They were afraid of being humans, and that’s why they will remain “cheap” for all eternity, just as they preferred money and sold their humanity.

Q: Do you believe that one day the Israelis and their children will be haunted by what they have done?

I never wished and will never wish hardships for children. Children are the birds of the world. If they have a good environment they’ll be educated. I wish eternal peace, ease and comfort for all the people around the world. But again, there’s no such thing as an “Israeli.” Israel is a colonial state that has expelled Palestinians from their lands. And the children of Israel will someday understand that their grandparents were just murderous and vile. I believe they will be haunted. The day of tasting what has been inflicted upon us will come to them. And it’ll be unprecedented.

Q: And what do you have to say to people who insist on asking, “Well, do you condemn Hamas?”

Regardless of political affiliations, do you really condemn someone who defends you and has your back against a terrorist state? Israel has been butchering, dehumanizing, torturing, and bombing us for 76 years. And it has really imposed a strict siege on us in Gaza for 17 years. In this context, where does this question fit? It’s incredibly enraging that people are trying to justify Israel’s genocide by asking such silly questions.

Q: In light of Donald Trump’s victory, what is your message to the Democratic Party and the people who voted for Kamala Harris?

I don’t have trust in you. I am sure you’ll continue the legacy of genociding us. I don’t care about the U.S. administrations. But I do care about its human and noble people.

*  *  *

Joseph Massad said the following in 2008, and it remains true today: “Palestinians have resisted and resist the Nakba with steadfastness and a refusal to leave their lands… While land acquisitions started in the 1880s and the en masse theft of the country occurred in 1948, Israel has still not been able to take over the entire land… [and] while Israel has used this situation to project itself as a victim of its own victims who refuse to grant it legitimacy to victimize them, Israel understands not only in its unconscious but also consciously that its project [of the Nakba] will remain reversible.”

The holocaust that is going on in Gaza didn’t start on October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.” A century-and-a-half-long thread connects us to the origins of that day. A thread that was wound up in a messy clump of  Zionist occupation, siege, death, destruction, torture, displacement and ruin. This ball held within it an indigenous struggle that on that October morning finally breached a hole, and Gaza’s resistance fighters broke free from their prison, out of the clump, and carried out a successful military operation. As pointed out by Asa Winstanley’s groundbreaking reporting for The Electronic Intifada on the first anniversary of the breakout, “Al-Aqsa Flood was the first time in history that Palestinian armed groups were able to retake Palestinian territories lost since 1948, however briefly.”

Through these threads, I have sought to make the point that October 7 is not separate from this ball of loose threads; it’s the thread that got away and might just bring down Zionism and the military occupation once and for all, Insha’Allah. Whether through Refaat Alareer’s Expo marker, or martyr Yahya Sinwar’s stick, or Abubaker’s hope-giving yellow rose, occupied Palestine is sending us a clear message that we need to heed. We — the privileged West — must not stop exposing our government’s complicity in this genocide. Abubaker and Aylool and all of Palestine are counting on us.

Zionism will be defeated. Palestine will be free.

‘October 7: A History in Threads’ is inspired by Tatreez which is an ancient art of Palestinian folk embroidery. There is a stunning film directed by Carol Mansour titled Stitching Palestine that you can watch at Solidarity Cinema.

Priti Gulati Cox, (@PritiGCox), is an artist and writer.

28 December 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Chris Hedges

Dear Refaat,

We are not silent. We are being silenced. The students who, during the last academic year set up encampments, occupied halls, went on hunger strikes and spoke out against the genocide, were met this fall with a series of rules that have turned university campuses into academic gulags. Among the minority of academics who dared to speak out, many have been sanctioned or dismissed. Medical professionals who criticize the wholesale destruction by Israel of hospitals, clinics and targeted assassinations of health workers in Gaza have been suspended or terminated from medical school faculties with some facing threats to revoke their medical licenses.

Journalists who detail the mass slaughter and expose Israeli propaganda have been taken off air or fired from their publications. Jobs are lost over social media posts. The tiny handful of politicians who condemn the killing have seen millions of dollars spent to drive them from office. Algorithms, shadow-banning, deplatforming and demonetizing – all of which I have experienced – are used to marginalize or ban us on digital media platforms. A whisper of protest and we are disappeared.

None of these measures will be lifted once the genocide ends. The genocide is the pretext. The result will be one huge step towards an authoritarian state, especially with the ascendancy of Donald Trump. The silence will expand, like a great cloud of sulfurous gas. We choke on forbidden words. They killed you. They are strangling us. The goal is the same. Erasure. Your story, the story of all Palestinians, is not to be told.

The Zionists and their allies have nothing left in their arsenal but lies, censorship, smear campaigns and violence, the blunt instruments of the damned. But I hold in my hand the weapon that will, ultimately, defeat them. Your book, “If I Must Die: Poetry and Prose”.

“Stories teach life,” you write, “even if the hero suffers or dies in the end.”

Writing, you told your students, “is a testimony, a memory that outlives any human experience, and an obligation to communicate with ourselves and the world. We lived for a reason, to tell the tales of loss, survival, and of hope.”

It has been a year since an Israeli missile targeted the second-floor apartment where you were sheltering. You had been receiving death threats for weeks online and by phone from Israeli accounts. You had already been displaced multiple times. You fled in the end to your sister’s home in Al-Sidra neighborhood in Gaza City. But you did not escape your hunters. You were murdered with your brother Salah and one of his children and your sister and three of her children.

You wrote your poem “If I Must Die” in 2011. You released it again a month before your death. It has been translated into dozens of languages. You wrote it for your daughter Shymaa. In April 2024, four months after your death, Shymaa was killed in an Israeli airstrike along with her husband and their two-month-old son, your grandson, who you never met. They had sought refuge in the building of the international relief charity Global Communities.

You write to Shymaa:

If I must die,

you must live

to tell my story

to sell my things

to buy a piece of cloth

and some strings,

(make it white with a long tail)

so that a child, somewhere in Gaza

while looking heaven in the eye

awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—

and bid no one farewell

not even to his flesh

not even to himself—

sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above

and thinks for a moment an angel is there

bringing back love

If I must die

let it bring hope

let it be a tale

You have joined the martyred poets. The Spanish poet Federico García Lorca. The Russian poet Osip Mandelstam. The Hungarian poet Miklós Radnóti who wrote his final verses on a death march. The Chilean singer and poet Víctor Jara. The Black poet Henry Dumas, shot dead by New York City police.

In your poem “And We Live On…” you write:

Despite Israel’s birds of death

Hovering only two meters from our breath

From our dreams and prayers

Blocking their ways to God.

Despite that.

We dream and pray,

Clinging to life even harder

Every time a dear one’s life

Is Forcibly rooted up.

We live.

We live.

We do.

Why do killers fear poets? You were not a combatant. You did not carry a weapon. You put words on paper. But all the might of the Israeli army and intelligence services were deployed to track you down.

In times of distress, when the world is enveloped by cruelty and suffering, when lives are perched on the edge of the abyss, poetry is the sad lament of the oppressed. It makes us feel the suffering. It is intuitive. It captures the mix of complex emotions — joy, love, loss, fear, death, trauma, grief — when the world falls apart. It creates in its beauty a salvific meaning out of despair. It is an absurd act of hope, a defiant act of resistance, taunting those who dehumanize you with erudition and sensitivity. Its fragility and beauty, its sanctification of memory, experience and the intellect, its musicality, mock the simplistic slogans and cant of the killers.

In your poem “Freshly Baked Souls” you write:

The hearts are not hearts.

The eyes can’t see

There are no eyes there

The bellies craving for more

A house destroyed except for the door

The family, all of them, gone

Save for a photo album

That has to be buried with them

No one was left to cherish the memories

No one.

Except freshly baked souls in bellies.

Except for a poem.

Writing, as Edward Said reminds us, is “the final resistance we have against the inhuman practices and injustices that disfigure human history.”

Violence cannot create. It only destroys. It leaves nothing of value behind.

“Don’t forget that Palestine was first and foremost occupied in Zionist literature and Zionist poetry,” you said in a lecture given to your students in Advanced English Poetry at the Islamic University in Gaza. “When the Zionists thought of going back to Palestine, it wasn’t like, ‘Oh, let’s go to Palestine.’”

You snapped your fingers:

It took them years, like over fifty years of thinking, of planning, all the politics, money, and everything else. But literature played one of the most crucial roles here. This is our class. If I tell you, ‘let’s move to the other class.’ you need guarantees that we’re going to go there, we’re going to find chairs — right? That the other class, the other place, is better, is more peaceful. That we have some kind of connection, some kind of right.

So, for fifty years before the occupation of Palestine and the establishment of the so-called Israel in 1948, Palestine in Zionist Jewish literature was presented to the Jewish people around the world [as]… ‘a land without a people [for] a people without a land.’ ‘Palestine flows with milk and honey.’ ‘There is no one there, so let’s go.’

Killers are trapped in a literal world. Their imaginations are calcified. They have shut down empathy. They know poetry’s power, but they do not know where that power comes from, like an audience left gaping at the deft skill of a magician. And what they cannot understand they destroy. They lack the capacity to dream. Dreams terrify them.

The Israeli general Moshe Dayan said that the poems of Fadwa Tuqan, who was educated at Oxford, “were like facing twenty enemy fighters.”

Taqan writes in “Martyrs Of The Intifada” of the youth throwing stones at heavily armed Israeli soldiers:

They died standing, blazing on the road

Shining like stars, their lips pressed to the lips of life

They stood up in the face of death

Then disappeared like the sun.

Many Palestinians can recite from memory passages of the poems “To My Mother” and “Write Down I am an Arab” by Palestine’s most celebrated poet Mahmoud Darwish. Israeli authorities persecuted, censored, imprisoned and kept Darwish under house arrest before driving him into exile. His lines adorn the concrete barriers erected by Israel to wall off the Palestinians in the West Bank and are incorporated into popular protest songs.

His poem “Write Down I am an Arab” reads:

Write down:

—I am an Arab

And my ID number is 50,000

I got eight kids

And the ninth is due after summer.

So will you be mad?

—I am an Arab

And I work along with my labor buddies in a stone quarry

And I got eight kids

I secure them bread, clothing and notebooks

Hacked out of the rocks

And I don’t beg for charity at your door,

And don’t lower myself at the footsteps of your court

—So will you be mad?

Write down:

—I am an Arab.

I am a name without an epithet,

Patient in a country where everything

has a tantrum.

—My roots

—Were deeply entrenched before the birth of time

—And prior to the ushering of eras,

—Before cypresses and olive trees,

—And even before the grass grew.

My dad hails from a family of plowers, not blue-blood barons

My grandpa was a farmer, totally unknown

Taught me about the zenith of the soul before teaching me how to read

And my home is a cabin made out of sticks and bamboos

So are you displeased with my status?

I am a name without an epithet!

Write down:

—I am an Arab.

Hair color: coal-like; eye color: brown

Distinguishing marks: I wear a headband on top of a keffiyeh

—And my palm is rock-solid, scratches whoever touches it

As to my address: I am from an isolated village, forgotten

—Its streets are unnamed

—And all its men are in the field or in the stone quarry

—So will you be mad?

Write down.

—I am an Arab

You stole the meadows of my ancestors and a land I used to cultivate

—Together with all my kids

—You didn’t leave to us or to my offspring

—Anything – except these rocks

—So will your government take them away as well, as it’s been announced

—In that case

—Write down

—On the top of the first page:

—I don’t hate people and I don’t rob anyone

—But… If I starve to death, I’m left with nothing else but

—The flesh of my usurper to feed from

—So beware, beware of my hunger and anger

You wrote about your children. Your words were to be their legacy.

To your daughter Linah, then eight-years-old, or as you say “in Gazan time, two wars old,” you told bedtime stories when Israel was bombarding Gaza in May 2021, when your children “all sat up in bed, shaking, saying nothing.” You did not leave your home, a decision you made so “we would die together.”

You write:

On Tuesday, Linah asked her question again after my wife and I didn’t answer it the first time: Can they destroy our building if the power is out? I wanted to say: “Yes, little Linah, Israel can still destroy the beautiful al-Jawharah building, or any of our buildings, even in the darkness. Each of our homes is full of tales and stories that must be told. Our homes annoy the Israeli war machine, mock it, haunt it, even in the darkness. It can’t abide their existence. And, with American tax dollars and international immunity, Israel presumably will go on destroying our buildings until there is nothing left.”

But I can’t tell Linah any of this. So I lie: “No, sweetie, they can’t see us in the dark.”

Mass death was not new to you. You were shot by Israeli soldiers with three rubber-coated metal bullets when you were a teenager. In 2014, your brother, Hamada, your wife’s grandfather, her brother, her sister and her sister’s three children were all killed in an Israeli strike. During the bombardment Israeli missiles destroyed the offices of the English Department at the Islamic University of Gaza, where you stored “stories, assignments, and exam papers for potential book projects.”

The Israeli army spokesman claimed they bombed the university to destroy a “weapons development center,” a statement later amended by the Israeli defense minister who said “IUG was developing chemicals, to be used against us.”

You write:

My talks about tolerance and understanding, Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) and nonviolent resistance, and poetry and stories and literature did not help us or protect us against death and destruction. My motto “This too shall pass” became a joke to many. My mantra “A poem is mightier than a gun” was mocked. With my own office gone by wanton Israeli destruction, students would not stop joking about me developing PMDs, “Poems of Mass Destruction,” or TMDs, “Theories of Mass Destruction.” Students joked that they wanted to be taught chemical poetry alongside allegorical and narrative poetry. They asked for short-range stories and long-range stories instead of normal terms like short stories and novels. And I was asked if my exams would have questions capable of carrying chemical warheads!

But why would Israel bomb a university? Some say Israel attacked IUG just to punish its twenty thousand students or to push Palestinians to despair. While that is true, to me IUG’s only danger to the Israeli occupation and its apartheid regime is that it is the most important place in Gaza to develop student’s minds as indestructible weapons. Knowledge is Israel’s worst enemy. Awareness is Israel’s most hated and feared foe. That’s why Israel bombs a university: it wants to kill openness and determination to refuse living under injustice and racism. But again, why does Israel bomb a school? Or a hospital? Or a mosque? Or a twenty-story building? Could it be, as Shylock put it, “a merry sport”?

The existential struggle of the Palestinians is to reject the barbarity of the Israeli occupiers, to refuse to mirror their hatred or replicate their savagery. This does not always succeed. Rage, humiliation and despair are potent forces that feed a lust for vengeance. But you heroically fought this battle for your humanity, and ours, until the end. You embodied a decency your oppressors lacked. You found salvation and hope in the words that captured the reality of a people facing erasure and death. You asked us to feel for these lives, including your own, which have been lost. You knew that there would come a day, a day you understood you might never see, when your words would expose the crimes of those who murdered you and lift up the lost lives of those you honored and loved. You succeeded. Death took you. But not your voice or the voices of those you memorialized.

You, and they, live on.

Chris Hedges, who graduated from seminary at Harvard Divinity School, worked for nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, National Public Radio and other news organizations in Latin America, the Middle East and the Balkans.

28 December 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- Ramy Abdu, Chairman of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, stated that they have obtained “harrowing testimonies of sexual violence” committed by Israeli occupation soldiers against nurses, patients, and their companions following Friday’s Israeli raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza.

The testimonies included horrific details of degrading assaults, where soldiers forced women to strip under threats and humiliation at the Kamal Adwan Hospital and in front of al-Farid Hall.

One testimony mentioned that a soldier forced a nurse to remove her pants and groped her. When she tried to stop him, he slapped her forcefully across the face, causing her nose to bleed.

Another testimony stated that the soldiers threatened the women, saying, “Take it off, or we will strip you by force.”

When one woman refused to remove her hijab, a soldier assaulted her by tearing her abaya, exposing part of her body.

One of the victims described being dragged by a soldier across his chest as he told her, “Take it off now,” while using obscene language.

Other young women suffered similar assaults, as soldiers grabbed their heads, tore at their hair violently near one of the hospital halls, and used degrading gestures and words.

[https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1872781448224145890]

On Friday morning, Israeli occupation forces stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital, forcing patients, the wounded, and medical staff to leave, arresting others, including the hospital director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, and torching large sections.

28 December 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- Gaza’s Health Ministry confirmed on Saturday that Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, has been abducted by Israeli occupation forces following a raid on the last remaining medical facility in the area.

In a statement on Saturday morning, the Ministry said Abu Safiya has been arrested by the Israeli forces. Abu Safiya’s fate was unknown.

On Friday morning, Israeli soldiers stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital, torching large sections and ordering hundreds of people to leave.

The Ministry said that contact had been lost with staff inside the hospital in Beit Lahiya, which has been under siege and heavy pressure from Israeli forces for weeks. It had no information on the fate of patients who were inside, it added.

The Israeli army issued a statement confirming it launched a raid on the Kamal Adwan Hospital, claiming without evidence that the medical facility “serves as a Hamas terrorist stronghold in northern Gaza”.

The Ministry said Kamal Adwan is “suffering from a stifling siege, as the operating and surgery departments, laboratory, maintenance, ambulance units and warehouses have been completely burned”.

The Ministry also added , “the [Israeli] occupation army is forcibly transferring patients and the injured under the threat of weapons and gun barrels to the Indonesian Hospital, which lacks medical supplies, water, medicines, and even electricity and generators.”

Munir al-Bursh, the director of the Ministry, said the Israeli army had ordered 350 people to leave Kamal Adwan for a nearby school sheltering displaced families. This included 75 patients, their companions, and 185 medical staff.

Last night, the Ministry reported that Israeli forces took dozens of Kamal Adwan Hospital staff, including Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, to a detention center for interrogation. This followed threats made against the director, warning him of arrest if he did not comply with their orders.

“Too Late”

On Monday, Abu Safiya urged the international community to act “before it is too late”, calling the situation “horrifying”.

He said obeying an Israeli order to empty the facility would be “next to impossible” because nearly 400 civilians remain inside, including babies who need oxygen and incubators.

“The bombing continues from all directions, affecting the building, the departments and the staff. This is a serious and extremely horrifying situation,” Abu Safiya said.

Abu Safiya said: “The world must understand that our hospital is being targeted with the intent to kill and forcibly displace us,” adding that the Israeli bombing did not stop throughout Sunday night, destroying homes and surrounding buildings.

“We urge the international community to intervene quickly and stop this fierce assault on us to protect the healthcare system, the workers and the patients within it,” the hospital director said.

The hospital was running out of any meaningful medical care, given the hardship and the fact the past two months have been very strict in terms of what can enter the northern part of Gaza as there is a complete siege, military siege, on the area with no humanitarian aid – medical supplies, water, or life-sustaining resources – available to people there because of the ongoing deliberate prevention by the Israeli military.

28 December 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- The World Health Organization (WHO) condemned Israel’s ongoing attacks on Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure, stating that these actions are systematically dismantling the health system. The latest raid, which occurred this morning, targeted Kamal Adwan Hospital, the last major health facility in North Gaza, rendering it inoperable while the fate of dozens of the hospital’s medical workers is still unknown after Israel’s army kidnapped them.

Key departments were severely damaged during the raid, and 60 health workers, along with 25 critically ill patients, remain in the hospital, according to the WHO. Many patients, including those on ventilators, were forced to evacuate to the nearby Indonesian Hospital, which is also non-functional and emptied of medical workers.

[https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1872760436124467487]

[https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1872757069562175787]

WHO expressed deep concern for the safety of those still in the hospital, highlighting that these attacks are part of a broader pattern of Israeli hostilities that have repeatedly targeted or occurred near the facility since early October.

The organization warned that the continued destruction of Gaza’s health system is putting the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians at risk. The UN body called for an immediate ceasefire, stressing that healthcare must be protected in accordance with international law.

The Israeli occupation forces set large sections of Kamal Adwan Hospital on fire, leading to the deaths of some medical staff while they attempted to extinguish the flames.

28 December 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Mazin Qumsiyeh

Shocking statistics on the 450th consecutive day of the genocide on the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Government Media Office published an update on the most important statistics (deemed reliable even by the UN, WHO and even USA). PLEASE READ and disseminate that Israeli occupation forces (with US tax money and munitions and to a lesser extent other countries) did this:

– Dropped 88,000 tons of explosives on the Gaza Strip (more than dropped on Vietnam, and four times the explosive power of a Hiroshima-size nuclear bomb in an area of a mere 360 sq km or 250 square mile)

– Committed 9,973 massacres (killing many people at one time by bombing or shelling; 70% women and children)

– 56,714 killed and missing persons: 45,514 reached hospitals (Ministry of Health recorded), 11,200 missing persons did not reach hospitals (under rubble or bodies missing). Those killed and documented include:
*1,413 Palestinian whole families gone (no surviving members) while 3,467 Palestinian families had only one surviving family member, and the number of members of these families is 7,941 martyrs. (Ministry of Health).
*17,818 children killed (most under age of 5 years, 238 infants were born and killed n the period of the genocide).
*12,287 women killed
*1068 from the medical staff (Ministry of Health).
*94 civil defense/first responders and 728 police officers (civil)
*201 journalists (higher than those killed in WWII)
*520 exhumed from seven mass graves on grounds of targeted hospitals.

-The numbers do not include those dying from lack of food, medicine, water, from diseases and from cold. Specifically
+ 44 children were recorded starved to death, many hundreds are not recorded
+ Six infants died from hypothermia in tents, many hundreds are not recorded
+ Data do not include deaths among the 12,500 cancer patients (largely lacking treatments)
+ Data do not include deaths or debilitation from infectious diseases: 2,136,026 cases of such diseases due to displacement forcing unsanitary conditions including hepatitis, polio, skin diseases, lung disorders, intestinal disorders (Ministry of Health)
+ + Data do not include deaths or debilitation from chronic disease patients (350,000 patients such as diabetes) due to the occupation preventing the entry of medicines or allowing operation of facilities like kidney dialysis

-108,189 wounded and injured arrived at hospitals including 399 journalists and media professionals), 12,650 wounded need to travel abroad for treatment. (Ministry of Health)

-21 displacement centers (declared “safe zones”) targeted by the Israeli occupation (only 10% of the area of the Gaza Strip is claimed by the Israeli occupation to be “humanitarian areas”)

-35,060 children live without their parents or without one of them (orphans).

-12,125 women lost their husbands during the genocidal war.

-More than 60,000 pregnant women lack of OB/GYN healthcare (risk)

-Nearly 10,000 were abducted and incarcerated without trial including 331 medical, 43 media, and 26 civil defense personnel. Over 30 died under torture in Israeli prisons (3 medical personnel executed in prison by torture)

-2 million displaced people in the Gaza Strip. 110,000 tents were worn out and became unfit for the displaced.

-Infrastructure including most buildings were destroyed intentionally (in most cases after Israeli infantry occupied them). This includes

*135 schools and universities completely and 353 schools and universities partially destroyed (12,780 students were killed during the war): 756 teachers and educational employees in the education sector were killed by the occupation during the war. 148 scientists, academics, university professors and researchers were executed by the occupation. 785,000 students were deprived of education by the Israeli occupation.
*823 mosques were completely destroyed and 158 mosques were severely destroyed by the occupation and need to be restored.
*3 churches targeted and destroyed.
*19 cemeteries were completely or partially destroyed by the occupation out of 60 cemeteries. 2,300 bodies were stolen by the occupation from several cemeteries in the Gaza Strip.
*161,600 housing units completely destroyed and 194,000 housing units are partially destroyed
*162 health care facilities targeted by the occupation (most clinics and hospitals destroyed and/or rendered out of service).
*136 ambulances targeted
*213 government civil headquarters
*206 archaeological and heritage sites.
*3,130 kilometers of electricity networks.
*125 number of underground electricity distribution transformers destroyed.
*330 kilometers of water networks destroyed.
*655 kilometers of sewage networks destroyed.
*2,835 kilometers of road and street networks destroyed.
*42 community facilities, playgrounds and sports halls destroyed.
*717 water wells destroyed by the occupation and put out of service.
*This is 86% destruction rate in the Gaza Strip. $37 billion is the initial direct economic losses of the genocide war
*This does not include the environmental damage; some of it not repairable and some areas of Gaza are now uninhabitable for decades to come….see our research papers on this such as this one: https://www.palestinenature.org/research/Impact-of-the-Israeli-military-activities-on-the-environment.pdf

Mazin Butros Qumsiyeh is a Palestinian scientist and author, founder and director of the Palestine Museum of Natural History and the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability at Bethlehem University where he teaches.

30 December 2024

Source: popular-resistance.blogspot.com