Catastrophic damage after second Israeli airstrike hits Gaza refugee camp – CNN
Israel makes a desolation and may call it peace – msn/WaPost
“The scale and speed of what’s taking place has horrified many onlookers. Over the weekend, Craig Mokhiber, the director of the New York office of the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, resigned his post, arguing that the United Nations was once again failing to thwart what he described as a ‘textbook case for genocide.’
“‘The current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist colonial settler ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status as Arabs … leaves no room for doubt,’ Mokhiber wrote in a letter that was widely circulated on social media and panned by some defenders of Israel as effectively calling for the dissolution of the Jewish state.
“Any determination of ‘genocide’ is both highly fraught and usually anchored in clear legal precedents. Raz Segal, an Israeli historian of the Holocaust, argued two weeks ago that Israel was already complicit in violating at least three of the five acts of the U.N. Genocide Convention in its war on Hamas in Gaza, which has triggered a huge dislocation of the Palestinian population there and raised the specter of potential mass expulsion from Gaza.
“On Tuesday, an Israeli military spokesman described the loss of civilian life in Jabalya as an unfortunate ‘tragedy of war.’ But that sentiment belies the views of many in Israel who seek a more definitive outcome — not merely the full defeat of Hamas, but the flattening of Gaza and the entire context where Hamas emerged. Segal cited the rhetoric of numerous Israeli politicians calling for de facto collective punishment of Palestinians living in Gaza in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attack — a body of statements that’s only grown in the days since.
“On Wednesday, Galit Distel Atbaryan, a former minister in Netanyahu’s government, called on social media for the ‘erasing all of Gaza from the face of the earth’ and urged the mass eviction of Palestinians — ‘that the Gazan monsters will fly to the southern fence and try to enter Egyptian territory, or they will die.'”
As commented before: Based on ongoing and historic behavior, the strategic objective of the Israeli government (with military aid from US taxpayers) is, in order to priority: 1) dislocate population of Gaza and West Bank, 2) reduce Palestinian population, 3) eliminate Hamas. If goal #3 isn’t met by current military action, repeat operations supporting goals #1 and #2. If goal #3 is achieved, continue pursuing goals #1 and #2.
Israel does not need, and should not receive, one more dollar of US military aid to achieve these objectives.
“According to a Wednesday assessment from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Israeli settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank has surged from an ‘already high average’ of three incidents per day so far in 2023 to a current average of seven per day since the October 7 attacks on Israel.
“‘In this period, OCHA has recorded 171 settler attacks against Palestinians, resulting in Palestinian casualties (26 incidents), damage to Palestinian properties (115 incidents), or both (30 incidents),’ the UN office said.
“Since October 7, more than 120 Palestinians, including more than 30 children, have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli forces or settlers, the UN office said in a Monday update.
“Additionally, nearly 1,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from their homes in the West Bank amid ‘intensified settler violence’ and increased movement restrictions since the outbreak of the war, according to the UN office.”
Gaza bombing adds to the generations of Palestinians displaced from their homes – Conversation
The GOP wants to hold Israel aid hostage to reward its rich donors – MSNBC
“Johnson has blessed us with one of those moments that makes Republicans’ deviousness over “concerns about the national debt” crystal clear to the public. Robbing the IRS of money needed to make it more efficient will not help reduce the debt, it’ll increase it. What the move reveals is that Johnson is desperate to exploit the hot-button issue of Israel to shoehorn in a favor for the GOP’s high-income and corporate donors.”
There’s a smarter way to eliminate Hamas – CNN
“Israel’s strategy for defeating Hamas — destroying its military and political capabilities to the point where the terrorist group can never again launch major attacks against Israeli civilians — is unlikely to work.
“Indeed, Israel is likely already producing more terrorists than it’s killing.
“To defeat terrorist groups like Hamas, it is important to separate the terrorists from the local population from which they emerge. Otherwise, the current generation of terrorists can be killed, only to be replaced by a new, larger generation of terrorists in the future. (This is described by experts as “counterinsurgency mathematics.” ).”
Israel’s Netanyahu faces reckoning over Hamas disaster – Reuters
Dear Mr. Netanyahu: Why did your government withdraw forces from Israel’s border with Gaza and send them to the West Bank just before the Hamas attack? Why would Israel allow a music festival to blast noise into a concentration camp ruled by terrorists if not to invite aggression? If Israeli intelligence failed to detect Hamas’ months-long preparation to attack, how can it be so precise to know that one Hamas commander was killed by an air attack that also killed hundreds of civilians and left civilians to die under the rubble?