Israeli strike on Gaza school kills more than 100 people as they pray – Day 307

Israel drops 6,000 pounds of bombs on Gaza school; US poised to send Israel $3.5 billion, including to extremist battalion; two more journalists killed; waiting for “inevitable” polio outbreak as Israel blocks vaccines; new possible war crime revealed; more displacement; water and sanitation systems in shambles; more on Israeli torture of Palestinian prisoners – as Biden admin shrugs; Israeli alleged rapist calls for support;

yet another anti-boycott bill introduced in Senate;

more.

By IAK staff, from reports.

we can hear the screams of families trapped in the school being burned alive in Gaza city , but are unable to help due to Israeli occupation forces cutting water access .

— حسام شبات (@HossamShabat) August 10, 2024

Israeli strike on Gaza school kills more than 100 people

Al Jazeera reports: More than 100 Palestinians have been killed and dozens wounded in an Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced people in Gaza City, according to officials in the enclave.

Three Israeli bombs hit al-Tabin school, located in the Daraj district, Gaza’s civil defense agency said of the attack on Saturday, which it described as a “horrific massacre”.

Women, children and the elderly are reported to be among the dead and the toll was expected to rise. The attack took place while people were performing morning prayers and triggered a fire that ripped through the building.

Ismail al-Thawabta, the head of Gaza’s Government Media Office, told Al Jazeera that the Israeli army used three bombs weighing 2,000 pounds (907kg) each in its attack.

Without providing evidence, the Israeli military said that it had intelligence indicating there were 20 Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters, including senior commanders, operating from the school.

Israeli forces have repeatedly attacked schools used as shelters in Gaza, claiming they are command centers for Hamas, the Palestinian group that governs the territory, to hide fighters and manufacture weapons.

Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for the civil defense agency, said: “The school area is strewn with dead bodies and body parts. It is very difficult for paramedics to identify a whole dead body. There’s an arm here, a leg there. Bodies are ripped to pieces.”

Al Jazeera’s Mahmoud said among those killed were survivors of attacks in different evacuation centers over the last 10 days.

MIDDLE EAST EYE ADDS: The civil defense said the strikes targeted two floors of the school, with the first striking an area inhabited by displaced women, and the second hitting the ground floor area which was used as a prayer hall.

Gaza: In the largest and most shameful concentration camp of the 21st century, Israel is genociding the Palestinians one neighborhood at the time, one hospital at the time, one school at the time, one refugee camp at the time, one 'safe zone' at the time. With US and European… https://t.co/bHmrFbySYi

— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) August 10, 2024

As rape charges multiply, US to release $3.5 billion in military assistance for Israel

AntiWar reports: The State Department is set to release $3.5 billion in Foreign Military Financing to Israel. The massive transfer of funds comes as the White House is asking Israel to investigate claims of rape in its detention centers for Palestinians.

CNN reported speaking with multiple officials who confirmed the funds will be released. The money was allocated by Congress in the $95 billion foreign military aid bill that included $61 billion for Ukraine and $14 billion for Israel.

Foreign Military Financing (FMF) is a State Department program that gives US taxpayer dollars to foreign governments to purchase weapons from American arms dealers. However, Tel Aviv is allowed to use some of the FMF funds on Israeli-made weapons.

As the funds are used to contract with arms deals, the weapons are typically not delivered immediately.

Israel is heavily dependent on the US to arm its military, giving Washington significant leverage over Tel Aviv. Over the ten-month Israeli onslaught in Gaza, the White House has resisted domestic pressure to condition arm sales to Israel.

The release of funds will likely be viewed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a green light for Israel to continue its brutal treatment of the Palestinians.

AL JAZEERA ADDS: The new funds for Israel to spend on US weapons and military supplies come from a supplemental funding bill of $14.5bn that was passed by Congress in April and has been announced as criticism of Israel grows over the killings of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

Part of the new military aid will also go to an Israeli army unit, which has been accused of carrying out serious human rights violations against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and which had faced sanctions amid an investigation by US authorities into its abuses.

RECOMMENDED READING: To continue the Gaza genocide, Israel and the US must destroy the laws of war.

US declares controversial Israeli battalion eligible for assistance

Al Jazeera reports: The United States has announced that Netzah Yehuda, a controversial Israeli battalion notorious among Palestinians for repressive activities in the occupied West Bank, is eligible for US military assistance.

The administration of President Joe Biden had considered blocking the battalion from receiving US assistance amid reports of involvement in human rights violations, but Department of State spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Friday that such abuses had been “effectively remediated”.

Under federal regulations known as the Leahy Law, the US is required to cut off assistance to military units involved in gross violations of human rights, but critics say that the US has long failed to apply the rule to Israel.

In a column for the legal forum Just Security, Charles Blaha, who directed the office of the State Department tasked with enforcing the Leahy Law from 2016 to 2023, said, “The decision [to fund Netzah Yehuda] strongly suggests that the US position is likely a result, in significant part, of pressure by Prime Minister Netanyahu.

“Months ago, when news broke that the State Department was considering Netzah Yehuda for ineligibility, Netanyahu expressed outrage and vowed to oppose application of the law,” the column reads.

“Against that backdrop, the Secretary’s decision sends a terrible message to Israel and others: that pressure on US officials works, and that Israel is essentially de facto exempt from US law.”

ELSEWHERE: The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) says the US secretary of state has “knowingly violated US law by backtracking” on plans to sanction the Netzah Yehuda battalion over rights abuse allegations.

The Israeli military unit “has clearly committed gross human rights violations using US weapons”, CAIR Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said in a statement.

“Secretary Blinken’s cowardly, morally reprehensible and blatantly illegal decision confirms what numerous State Department whistleblowers have said: he is disregarding the conclusions of career diplomats, as well as experts on federal and international law,” Mitchell said.

RECOMMENDED READING: Inside Netzah Yehuda Battalion, Israel’s army unit bracing for US sanctions

Two more journalists killed in Gaza

Al Jazeera reports: Gaza’s government media office has identified the latest journalist fatalities as:

• Tamim Abu Muammar, who worked for Palestine TV.
• Abdullah Maher al-Suwaisi, who worked for al-Aqsa news channel.

This brings the total number of journalists killed in Gaza since the start of Israel’s assault on the besieged enclave to 168, the office said.

“The media office strongly condemns the targeting and killing of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli occupation,” it said in a statement. The number of journalists killed since October 7th is now 168.

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Polio outbreak in Gaza ‘inevitable’ and a matter of ‘days or weeks’: Experts

Andalou Agency reports: Warnings of an imminent polio outbreak in Gaza are growing as Israel shows no signs of either ending its deadly assault on the devastated Palestinian enclave or lifting a crippling blockade on essential supplies.

Gaza’s Health Ministry declared the Palestinian territory a “polio epidemic zone” on July 30 after samples of the virus were detected in wastewater, triggering fears of a resurgence of a disease eradicated from the region over 25 years ago.

With millions of displaced Palestinians living in appalling conditions with no healthcare facilities or even basic medical supplies, experts see an outbreak of the viral disease as “inevitable.”

“We’re expecting a polio outbreak in the next number of days or weeks,” Francis Hughes, Gaza Response Director for global humanitarian agency CARE International, told Anadolu.

Polio is a particular threat to children under age 5 and especially infants less than 2 years old. The virus attacks the nervous system, leading to spinal and respiratory paralysis, and can prove fatal.

ELSEWHERE: The Palestinian Health Ministry accused Israel on 7 August of preventing the entry of over a million desperately needed polio vaccines into the Gaza Strip.

“The Gaza Strip needs 1.3 million doses of polio vaccine … Israel is still refusing to allow vaccines into the Strip,” said Musa Abed, Director of Health Care at the ministry.

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HRW: Pregnant woman among seven killed in possible Israeli ‘war crime’

Human Rights Watch reports: In its latest report, Human Rights Watch documented an incident on 21 December in which Israeli forces stormed a home in Gaza City, “throwing grenades inside and opening fire on a room where a civilian family was sheltering”.

The organization said the attack killed seven people, including a pregnant woman, and severely injured two, including a five-year-old.

“Witnesses also allege that Israeli forces shot a blind 73-year-old man after securing the building and forcing all other family members out,” the report read.

“The incident should be investigated as a possible war crime, and forces involved should be held accountable.”

Belkis Wille, the associate crisis, conflict and arms director at Human Rights Watch, said: “There is no excuse for soldiers storming into a home full of civilians and firing without precaution. They decimated a Palestinian family and orphaned a small child who may never be able to walk again.”

Wille added that “this incident highlights the deadly cost of Israeli forces’ failure to safeguard, and in some cases to apparently target civilian lives in Gaza, including children”.

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Israel targets shelter schools in systematic forced evacuation of the displaced people of Gaza

Euro-Med Monitor reports: The Israeli army is increasingly targeting schools that provide shelter for the displaced population in Gaza City, killing and wounding hundreds of them in the process. It has also issued orders for the illegal forced evacuation of Gaza from the north to the south, in a systematic effort fueled by revenge to drive residents from their homes and places of displacement and rob them of any stability.

In just eight days, Israeli aircraft attacked nine schools in Gaza City that served as shelters for thousands of displaced people. They destroyed the schools above the heads of the occupants, killing 79 Palestinians and injuring 143 more—mostly women and children—in addition to several other victims who were buried beneath the rubble and could not be retrieved due to the lack of the necessary tools.

(Read the full article here.)

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As many as 70,000 Palestinians displaced from Khan Younis

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) says an estimated 60,000 to 70,000 people have been forced to flee the southern Gaza city towards al-Mawasi since Thursday.

“Displacement continues for thousands of families across Gaza,” UNRWA said.

“People in Gaza are exhausted, and they have nowhere to go.”

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Gaza’s water, sanitation, and hygiene systems in shambles, at high risk of flooding

OCHA reports: Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) Cluster partners are ramping up preparedness actions for the winter season, with a particular focus on flood risks, amid severe shortages of essential WASH supplies and widespread damage to WASH infrastructure, including the stormwater drainage system.

Already before the war, approximately 180 locations across Gaza were identified as being at high-risk of flooding and the stormwater drainage network was deemed inadequate.

The situation is estimated to have significantly deteriorated due to extensive damage to wastewater networks, storm drainage and canals, combined with blockages caused by debris and rubbish.

In heavily affected areas such as Khan Younis, where over 80 per cent of infrastructure has been assessed as compromised, there is already significant clogging and flooding, and raw sewage is accumulating in streets and at IDP sites, particularly in areas where there is a high concentration of people such as Al Mawasi.

During the rainy season, this deterioration poses a dual threat of increased flooding and water source contamination, which could lead to serious public health risks, the WASH Cluster warned.

Israeli minister Ben-Gvir extends visitor ban for Palestinian prisoners

A video shows a large Israeli bomb dropped on Khan Yunis yesterday.

Thousands of Palestinians were forced to flee eastern Khan Yunis amid heavy Israeli bombardment following the military's renewed evacuation orders for the southern governorate. pic.twitter.com/CEhhRAcC3f

— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) August 9, 2024

Video of sexual abuse at Israeli prison is just latest evidence that Sde Teiman is a torture site

The Intercept reports: As early as the first month of Israel’s war on Gaza, Sde Teiman, a secretive Israeli military prison in the Negev desert, had been raising alarm bells for Israeli human rights attorney Roni Pelli and other rights advocates.

Pelli and her colleagues started to hear reports from whistleblowers about poor conditions for Palestinians imprisoned inside Sde Teiman. They heard of instances of violence committed by soldiers against detained Palestinians, and, in one case, a Palestinian who died there.

Since then, media reports about the prison have mounted. A CNN investigation in May revealed that Palestinian detainees were restrained, beaten, and blindfolded; wounded Palestinians were strapped down onto beds, forced to wear diapers, and fed through straws; and prisoners’ limbs were amputated due to untreated wounds from restraints, and such operations took place without anesthesia.

Later in May, an Intercept investigation found that hundreds of Palestinian doctors have disappeared into Israeli detention. A month later, a separate report from Haaretz revealed the Israel Defense Forces were investigating 48 deaths of Palestinians from Gaza who were in Israeli custody, among them 36 who were detained at Sde Teiman. Israeli media began to refer to the prison as “Israel’s Guantánamo Bay.”

The U.S. State Department only commented on Sde Teiman when pressed by reporters after the release of the CNN report. In May, Vedant Patel, deputy spokesperson for the department, said “we’re looking into these and other allegations of abuse against Palestinians in detention.” He added that the U.S. had been “clear and consistent with any country, including Israel, that it must treat all detainees humanely, with dignity, in accordance with international law, and it must respect detainees’ human rights.”

He then claimed the U.S. had asked the Israeli government to investigate the claims itself.

(Read the full article here.)

NOTE: This US State Dept response is typical after allegations are made against Israel: framing the issue as a hypothetical while refusing to acknowledge the facts as presented by multiple human rights organizations – and ignoring the fact that Israel is incapable of investigating its own crimes.

Israel’s self-investigations consistently whitewash its crimes and fail to appropriately punish the perpetrators. Israeli sources, including the government itself, have a long track record of lying (for example, this and this and this.)

Israeli soldier, accused of raping a Palestinian prisoner, reveals his identity