Yves here. In case you harbored any doubts, Larry Wilkerson said in passing in an interview we highlighted today that the IDF was using aid distribution to get Palestinians to cluster in large groups in order to kill them. So yes, this is policy.
By Jake Johnson, staff writer at Common Dreams. Originally published at Common Dreams
Israeli forces on Tuesday gunned down dozens of people, including children, close to a privatized aid distribution site in southern Gaza, marking the third consecutive day that Israel’s military has opened fire on Palestinians seeking food amid an increasingly dire humanitarian emergency.
A doctor at nearby Nasser Hospital, which is barely functioning and unequipped to handle an influx of patients, toldThe New York Times that the facility received 19 of those killed in Tuesday’s massacre. Most of the victims, according to Dr. Ahmad al-Farra, were children between the ages of 10 and 13, “many with gunshot wounds to the head or chest.”
The Israeli newspaper Haaretzreported that “the incident shocked local residents and activists, who describe it as ‘another aid massacre’ targeting defenseless civilians.”
“It is one of the deadliest incidents since the beginning of aid allocation in the southern Gaza Strip,” the newspaper observed.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed that its soldiers opened fire near the aid site operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, but claimed “shots were directed near individual suspects who advanced toward the troops.” The Times reported that an IDF spokesperson “declined to explain the nature of the perceived threat.”
Testimony from witnesses, health officials, and humanitarian workers on the ground contradicted the IDF’s account of limited firing at “individual suspects.”
According toThe Associated Press, “Hisham Mhanna, a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said its field hospital in Rafah received 184 wounded people.”
AP went on to cite several Palestinians who witnessed Tuesday’s massacre:
Yasser Abu Lubda, a 50-year-old displaced Palestinian from Rafah, said the shooting started around 4 am in the city’s Flag Roundabout area, around one kilometer (1,000 yards) away from the aid distribution hub. He said he saw several people killed or wounded.
Neima al-Aaraj, a woman from Khan Younis, gave a similar account.
“There were many martyrs and wounded,” she said, saying the shooting by Israeli forces was “indiscriminate.”
She said she managed to reach the hub but returned empty-handed. “There was no aid there,” she said. “After the martyrs and wounded, I won’t return,” she said. “Either way we will die.”
Rasha al-Nahal, another witness, said “there was gunfire from all directions.” She said she counted more than a dozen dead and several wounded along the road. She said she also found no aid when she arrived at the distribution hub, and that Israeli forces “fired at us as we were returning.”
At least 27 people were killed by Israeli forces Tuesday morning, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
The deadly incident occurred after IDF troops killed more than 30 people and wounded dozens of others near the privatized aid distribution site on Sunday and Monday.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Monday that “it is unacceptable that Palestinians are risking their lives for food.”
“I call for an immediate and independent investigation into these events and for perpetrators to be held accountable,” Guterres said. “Israel has clear obligations under international humanitarian law to agree to and facilitate humanitarian aid. The unimpeded entry of assistance at scale to meet the enormous needs in Gaza must be restored immediately. The U.N. must be allowed to work in safety and security under conditions of full respect of humanitarian principles.”
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I’ll repeat my comment that I made in links a little while ago.
The Israelis set up a fire sac – and baited it with food.
‘ “Patients told [Doctors Without Borders] they were shot from all sides by drones, helicopters, boats, tanks, and Israeli soldiers on the ground,” the humanitarian medical organisation wrote in a statement, calling GHF’s system “dehumanising, dangerous and severely ineffective”.’
https://www.newarab.com/news/calls-shut-down-ghf-grow-after-deadly-gaza-witkoff-massacre
A Witkoff massacre indeed. Since this “aid’ was all Trump’s doing, it should be made to stick to his name like s*** to a blanket.
Tanks and boats. Sounds plausible. Don’t suppose anyone had their phone out to capture it? Oh wait, everyone did and not a frame captured.
I’m sure that the Internet is working great in Gaza and that these aid camps have excellent free cellphone battery charging stations.
Phones are being charged with solar charging panels.
And the coverage of these massacres has been more extensive than usual because the Israelis appear to have turned on cellphone reception in the areas around the GHF aid distribution firing ranges.
Some of us have been paying attention to Gaza for some time.
The actions described, as you said, using food aid as bait to continue the killing, are so barbaric as to be beyond belief. And that may be what the Israelis are counting on: conduct and behavior so outrageous to not be credible to those not eyewitness to it. With AI now widespread, it can be plausibly claimed that phone videos are faked. What cannot be faked are the tens of thousands of Gazans dead, mass murdered.
Sickening indeed. I won’t link to the NYPost, but its especially galling, not surprising, to see corporate media spin: ‘the shooters are Hamas’
Hundreds of thousands of dead. When trump came into office, he cited a palestinian population down to 1.7-1.8 mil compared to 2.2-2.3 mil before oct 2023, depending on your sources.
It is vastly worse than most people know.
They are normalising enormities.
No one is allowed to witness the catastrophe and tragedy beneath the rubble created.
As ‘we’ (our political representatives who isolate reality as practise) grit their well flossed teeth to polexplain these ‘events’ they drive all towards a full stop at human improvement.
Its a terrible thing to think, but I would not be young again, right now.
My heart weeps.
The average Israeli seems to be among the most coward out there. When shooting its own, half naked and brandishing white flag and speaking their language and you shoot out of “fear”. But they are full of themselves.
That is not material for a soldier. Those slavs would make meancmeat outof them. Just remembering the balls of steel of the Palestinians sneaking out of holes and coming to the Mekva tanks to place mines on them…
It’s hard to believe it now, but just about a year ago the Israeli propagandists could effectively use the debater’s question “Do you agree that Israel has a right to exist?”. As if anyone who objected to (or even mentioned) Israel’s initial terrorist ethnic cleansing of Palestinians was an extremist.
Now I can’t imagine anything more obviously wrong than saying that this evil nation should exist.
…And this genocide was made possible by: the finances, weapons, and political protection of the US, UK and vassals…and by viewers like you, thank you. (sorry for the dark sarcasm)
Actually (and forgive me for not running it down again), we ran a link to an academic study that said no nation has a right to exist. Lotta citations and good arguments. A nation does have the right to protect its citizens/residents.
It’s simply reality, common sense. Look at all the nations that have ceased to exist in my lifetime, from the USSR to Yugoslavia to Czechoslovakia to South Vietnam to East Germany to apartheid South Africa to Rhodesia to the United Arab Republic and so on. Israel is headed there.
Francesca Albanese, excellent comment re: whether
Israel ‘has right to exist’:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/k12E7LuD2_4
spoiler: ‘Israel exists. It is protected as a member of the UN…There is no such thing in international law as a state’s right to exist.’ Does this justify the erasure of another people? No’
Are those who voted for L or C in the UK, those who voted for D or R in the US somehow complicit?
The desperate, naive and gullible voters fell for the same lines of BS over and over again. Nothing personal, just an observation. Nothing has changed, only a different mentally-ill emperor.
I certainly think so.
By not withholding their votes for the duopoly that has repeatedly hurt them, they’ve sent a clear signal that politicians can do whatever they want and there’ll be no electoral consequences.
Voting for these politicians means supporting them, and legitimizes their actions.
Why is the UN calling for an immediate investigation rather than a UN-sponsored military response to what is clearly a war crime? Pretty clear who did it, so what exactly would be the point of investigating??!!??
PR
The UN is an intergovernmental org. it is powerless to act without the UNSC5 approval. How many vetoes has the US used to protect Israel and promote the genocide?
We are now in a world where only planes and tanks and destroyers and subs and guns and missiles talk.
The UN doesn’t have any of these and so it is essentially voiceless.
Israel does not want food to go to Gaza. They want a full blockade to continue. This wasn’t their idea after all.
Since they’re being ‘forced’ to (by outside forces) Israel decided to set up aid sites only in the south as it will help their end goal of corralling the Palestinians to the south and hope they can be expelled from there somehow (if they don’t die first).
WIth no outside international impartial media allowed in Gaza, it’s hard to tell what is actually going on. For all we know, Israel is shooting people because they want the aid effort to fail and be disbanded so they can continue the blockade. That’s the most likely explanation.
Isn’t it time to replace the word ‘kill’ with a more appropriate one, in the case of what the IDF is doing to the Palestinians? It only applies when the IDF fights other soldiers.
In my view, it is far too mild, and even misleading – particularly in the case of this story, where they attack civilians!
Murder, massacre, slaughter are all far more appropriate words to use.