Iraq snapshot
The Common Ills
Monday, April 1, 2024. The Israeli military ends its assault on one hospital to focus on attacking another, War Criminal Netanyahu goes after ALJAZEERA, an active duty US service member starts a hunger strike, and much more.
The Israeli military has withdrawn from Gaza's largest hospital after a two-week raid, leaving behind Palestinian bodies scattered in the dirt and a vast swath of destruction.
Hundreds of residents rushed to the area around Al-Shifa Hospital to check on damage to the surrounding residential districts.
Mohammed Mahdi, who was among hundreds of Palestinians who returned to the area, described a scene of "total destruction".
He said several buildings had been burned down and that he had counted six bodies in the area, including two in the hospital courtyard.
Footage circulated on social media and not yet verified showed the bodies of dead Palestinians, some covered in dirty blankets, scattered on the ground around the charred hulk of the hospital building, which had many outer walls missing.
World Health Organization (WHO) chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was at ‘loss for words’ following an Israeli strike on Gaza hospital that killed four and injured numerous others.
The Director-General of WHO highlighted the dreadful situation at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza amid ongoing hostilities between Israeli forces and the Hamas militant group. These hostilities took the shape of a war following Hamas's attack on Israel six months ago, on October 7, following which Israel declared war.
Gaza's Al-Shifa hospital came under siege on March 18, since then 21 patients have lost their lives and the situation remains critical, the UN health agency reported.
Antony Loewenstein, the author of The Palestine Laboratory, who has been reporting on Israel and the Palestinian territories for 20 years, has been speaking to Al Jazeera following Israel’s latest withdrawal from Al-Shifa.
He said the dozens of bodies the Health Ministry has discovered there are an indication of just how many people had been sheltering in the complex.
“Even though hospitals have been targeted extensively by the Israelis, many civilians have nowhere else to go,” he told Al Jazeera. “Many Palestinians need intense medical care and hospitals are – well there’s nowhere safe in Gaza – but it’s somewhere to go and after Israel [first] pulled out of Al-Shifa, the hope was that it would remain a safe place and clearly, it was not.
“Not just bombing but air striking areas around these hospitals is not just a breach of international law, these are the actions of a rogue state, not a so-called democracy.”
Despite international outcry, the Israeli government attacked the hospital for two weeks. And they had previously attacked it in November. Of the November attack, Niha Masih (WASHINGTON POST) reminds, "A Washington Post analysis in December into whether the civilian harm caused by the IDF’s campaign at the hospital complex was proportionate to the assessed threat found that the evidence presented by the Israeli government fell short of showing that Hamas had been using the hospital as a command and control center." Of the more recent attack, Yolande Knell and Sean Seddon (BBC NEWS) note, "Photos showed that al-Shifa's main surgery building, which housed the intensive care unit, and the neighbouring building where the emergency, general surgery and orthopaedics departments were located had been destroyed." Henry Austin (NBC NEWS) adds, "Kidney and maternity buildings, morgues, cancer and burns refrigeration facilities, and the outpatient clinics building, were also left ruined at the facility in northern Gaza, which was the Strip's main medical facility before the war began, the ministry said."
As the Israeli military backed off one hospital, they continued to attack another. THE HINDUSTAN TIMES reported yesterday on the assault of al-Aqsa Hospital, "The strike at Al-Aqsa hospital was witnessed by a World Health Organization team sent there to assess needs and to collect incubators for the north of Gaza." On this attack, Rushdi Abualouf and George Wright (BBC News) report, "Seven journalists, including a freelancer working for the BBC, have been injured in an Israeli air strike in the courtyard of a hospital in Gaza." ALJAZEERA adds:
Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, says its team working at the Al Aqsa Hospital had to stop work and “seek cover” when the compound came under Israeli air attack on Sunday.
Writing on X, MSF said the area just outside the emergency unit was hit. The group provides medical and surgical wound care at the hospital, the only place in central Gaza to offer trauma care.
“When our team heard a loud explosion nearby, they stopped what they were doing right away to seek cover inside the hospital, until confirmed that the attack was over,” it quoted one of its coordinators as saying.
MSF reiterated its call for an “immediate and sustained” ceasefire.
War Crimes. Over the weekend, it was learned that lawyers for the United Kingdom's government have found that the government of Israel is breaking international law. Toby Helm (THE OBSERVER) explained:
The British government has received advice from its own lawyers stating that Israel has breached international humanitarian law in Gaza but has failed to make it public, according to a leaked recording obtained by the Observer.
The comments, made by the Conservative chair of the House of Commons select committee on foreign affairs, Alicia Kearns, at a Tory fundraising event on 13 March are at odds with repeated ministerial denials and evasion on the issue.
On Saturday night, Kearns, a former Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence official, who has repeatedly pressed ministers, including foreign secretary David Cameron, on the legal advice they have received, stood by her comments and called for the government to come clean.
“I remain convinced the government has completed its updated assessment on whether Israel is demonstrating a commitment to international humanitarian law, and that it has concluded that Israel is not demonstrating this commitment, which is the legal determination it has to make,” she said. “Transparency at this point is paramount, not least to uphold the international rules-based order.”
The revelation will place Lord Cameron and prime minister Rishi Sunak under intense pressure because any such legal advice would mean the UK had to cease all arms sales to Israel without delay.
While this finding should prevent the UK from furnishing more weapons to Israel, the US government will, no doubt, continue to supply the death machine. Yolande Knell (BBC News) explains:
Despite a week of tensions with Israel over its conduct of the Gaza War, Washington is reported to have authorised arms transfers to its ally worth billions of dollars.
These include more than 1,800 MK84 2,000lb (900kg) bombs and 500 MK82 500lb bombs, as well as 25 F35A fighter jets, The Washington Post and Reuters news agency have said.
The larger bombs have previously been linked to air strikes in Gaza causing mass casualties.
Washington gives $3.8bn (£3bn) in annual military assistance to Israel.
But the latest package comes as the Biden administration has been raising concerns about rising civilian deaths in Gaza and humanitarian access to the territory, which the UN says is on the verge of famine.
War Criminal Netanyahu is attempting to dismantle and replace UNRWA the Palestinian aid agency. In addition, THE NATIONAL reports, "Al Jazeera may be shut down in Israel on Monday evening as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed lawmakers to pass a bill outlawing the network in a Monday evening hearing."
Gaza remains under assault. Day 178 of the assault in the wave that began in October. Binoy Kampmark (DISSIDENT VOICE) points out, "Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion. The ongoing campaign in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction. But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge for the propaganda outlets: How to justify it? Fortunately for Israel, the United States, its unqualified defender, is happy to provide cover for murder covered in the sheath of self-defence." CNN has explained, "The Gaza Strip is 'the most dangerous place' in the world to be a child, according to the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund." ABC NEWS quotes UNICEF's December 9th statement, ""The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. Scores of children are reportedly being killed and injured on a daily basis. Entire neighborhoods, where children used to play and go to school have been turned into stacks of rubble, with no life in them." NBC NEWS notes, "Strong majorities of all voters in the U.S. disapprove of President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll. The erosion is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza." The slaughter continues. It has displaced over 1 million people per the US Congressional Research Service. Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) points out, "Academics and legal experts around the world, including Holocaust scholars, have condemned the six-week Israeli assault of Gaza as genocide." The death toll of Palestinians in Gaza is grows higher and higher. United Nations Women noted, "More than 1.9 million people -- 85 per cent of the total population of Gaza -- have been displaced, including what UN Women estimates to be nearly 1 million women and girls. The entire population of Gaza -- roughly 2.2 million people -- are in crisis levels of acute food insecurity or worse." THE GUARDIAN notes, "At least 32,845 Palestinians have been killed and 75,392 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Monday." Months ago, AP noted, "About 4,000 people are reported missing." February 7th, Jeremy Scahill explained on DEMOCRACY NOW! that "there’s an estimated 7,000 or 8,000 Palestinians missing, many of them in graves that are the rubble of their former home." February 5th, the United Nations' Phillipe Lazzarini Tweeted:
The assault on Gaza continues to impact US President Joe Biden's chances of re-election. Alice Herman (GUARDIAN) notes:
In Wisconsin, a campaign by anti-war voters to abandon Joe Biden during the Democratic primary has found an ally in the labor movement – but not from its traditional leaders.
Instead, the Listen to Wisconsin campaign, an effort inspired by the Michigan campaign to reject Biden during the primary over his military support for Israel, has earned the support of rank-and-file trade unionists and a statewide coalition of low-wage workers and immigrants angry about the president’s handling of the war.
“Individuals in labor have been very active,” said Janan Najeeb, a Wisconsin organizer spearheading the Listen to Wisconsin campaign.
Israel’s war on Gaza has laid bare a divide within the labor movement – which has played out largely between union leaders in the AFL-CIO, the largest US labor federation, and the movement’s rank and file, many of whom have vocally opposed the war and turned to their unions as an avenue for political action.
Also in the US, a US service member has announced a hunger strike.
Today active-duty Air Force Senior Airman Larry Hebert will begin a hunger strike to highlight the plight of the starving children of Gaza. pic.twitter.com/qRyVwBtsWS
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