Israel tags Palestinian journalists for assassination – Day 382

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Israel tags Palestinian journalists for assassination – Day 382
Displaced families fleeing Israeli army operations in Jabaliya in northern Gaza (AFP via Getty Images)

Compilation of news reports – IAK staff 

Wednesday was the nineteenth consecutive day of the Israeli occupation forces’ aerial, ground, and naval bombardment of northern Gaza. The siege has included blocking supplies of food, water, medicine, and fuel, destroying homes, demolishing entire residential blocks, attacking hospitals, and assassinating individuals trying to escape.

Over 770 Palestinians have been killed since Israel began its siege of Jabaliya and northern Gaza.

Medical sources in Gaza say 74 people were killed across the enclave Wednesday, with 130 injuries.

FLASHBACK: Gaza Genocide

DAY 18 (OCT 24, 2023) If Americans Knew wrote:

  • Hamas released two elderly hostages Monday for “compelling humanitarian” reasons. One said said that while she was beaten by militants as she was taken into Gaza on Oct. 7, she was treated well during her two-week captivity. All of her needs had been taken care of, and she was visited by a doctor. The Israelis were released despite Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza, and without a reciprocal release of any of the 10,000 Palestinian prisoners currently being held in Israel.

Israel names 6 Palestinian journalists “terrorists” – marking them for assassination

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed Wednesday that intelligence recovered during the ongoing invasion of Gaza revealed that Al Jazeera journalists Anas Al-Sharif, Alaa Salama, Hossam Shabat, Ashraf Saraj, Ismail Abu Amr, and Talal Aruki are affiliated with either Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

This, the IDF said, “unequivocally proves that they function as military terrorist operatives of the terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip.”

However, critics accused Israel of targeting the six journalists for exposing Israeli war crimes to the world.

As the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Public Accuracy noted:

Shabat… wrote Tuesday: “I’m a reporter on the ground in North Gaza, and I’m here to tell you that no aid has entered the besieged area for the past 21 days. The Israeli and American governments are spreading inaccurate information.

Al-Sharif yesterday posted a video of children killed, one with their head literally blown off. He just posted a video of civil defense crews working five hours to rescue a child.

“This is an assassination threat and an attempt to preemptively justify their murder,” U.S. investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill said of Israel’s claim against the six Al Jazeera journalists.

“Anyone claiming Israel has offered ‘irrefutable’ proof to back up these allegations is either ignorant of the systematic campaign of lies, propaganda, and fake news unleashed by Israel or is trying to aid and abet the murder of more journalists,” he added. “That is what is irrefutable.”

“Al Jazeera categorically rejects the Israeli occupation forces’ portrayal of our journalists as terrorists and denounces their use of fabricated evidence,” the network said in a statement.

(Read more about this issue here.)

Israel launches widespread arrest campaigns in northern Gaza: Palestinian group

The Israeli army has launched widespread arrest campaigns against Palestinians in northern Gaza, the Palestinian Prisoner Society said on Wednesday.

“Hundreds of Gaza detainees are still being forcibly disappeared in Israeli occupation prisons and camps,” the NGO said, including “dozens of women, children, and medical teams, who have been specifically targeted, along with hospitals, which have been a key target of the genocide.”

“Some detainees were executed on the field, while others were subjected to continuous torture, abuse, and humiliation around the clock to this day,” the statement said.

The group said testimonies and statements gathered from released detainees showed “shocking and horrifying details, including crimes of starvation, medical neglect, and torture.”

In this video, shared by Israel’s national broadcaster, Kann News, dozens of blindfolded Palestinian men can be seen being taken away in Israeli military trucks. The outlet said the men were from Jabalia in north Gaza.

UN office reports ridiculously low rate of aid delivery to Gaza

Israel has permitted only four out of 66 planned humanitarian aid missions to northern Gaza during the first 20 days of October, with no food aid allowed for 14 days, the UN humanitarian office (OCHA) said.

OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke detailed a severe deterioration in humanitarian access, revealing that Israeli authorities rejected 28 requests and blocked seven others for coordinated aid movements to Beit Hanoun, Jabalia, and Beit Lahiya regions in northern Gaza.

“For the first two weeks of October, 85% of the movements (aid attempts) were denied,” Laerke said.

The humanitarian crisis has deepened following Israel’s ground operations in Rafah, with aid deliveries dropping dramatically. “For all entry points, the daily average of humanitarian truckloads in September (54) was only a third of what it was in April (165),” Laerke noted.

Palestinians from Jabalia refugee camp move to southern areas of Gaza
Palestinians from Jabalia refugee camp move to southern areas of Gaza (Mahmoud İsleem/Anadolu Agency)

Hospitals besieged as ‘disaster’ unfolds in northern Gaza

Doctors and medical officials at northern Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital warn of a disaster unfolding as Israeli forces continue to intensify their siege and bombing campaign in the northern strip.

“We cannot provide health services to the injured and sick due to the depletion of medical supplies,” said the hospital’s director, Hussam Abu Safiya, on 23 October. “More than 150 injured people inside the hospital are in critical condition, we demand the opening of a safe humanitarian corridor to bring in fuel and medical supplies before it is too late,” he added.

Doctors Without Borders surgeon Dr Mohammad Obeid said on Tuesday that there is “death in all types and forms” across the hospitals and that Kamal Adwan Hospital is under fire.

“The bombardment does not stop. The artillery does not stop. The planes do not stop. There is heavy shelling, and the hospital is targeted too. It just looks like a movie; it does not seem real,” he said.

Another doctor at Kamal Adwan said the situation has become “disastrous.”

RECOMMENDED READING: The Murderous Logistics of Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing Campaign in Northern Gaza
Bodies are seen outside the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, after an Israeli strike on the town of Beit Lahiya killed scores of Palestinians
Bodies are seen outside the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, after an Israeli strike on the town of Beit Lahiya killed scores of Palestinians (Screengrab/X)

Rescuers halt operations in north Gaza during Israeli attacks

The Gaza civil defense agency says three of its rescuers were wounded in northern Gaza in what it called a “targeted strike” that aimed to force them out of the besieged Jabalia refugee camp.

Later, it said all its operations in northern Gaza were suspended after Israeli forces detained five staff members and bombed the only fire truck.

Israeli attack kills northern Gaza police chief

Israeli forces have killed the director of the municipal police of the northern Gaza Strip. Mazen al-Kahlout was shot by an Israeli drone near al-Yaman al-Saeed Hospital in the Jabalia refugee camp.

Scene of Palestinians fleeing their homes and neighborhoods in northern Gaza
Scene of Palestinians fleeing their homes and neighborhoods in northern Gaza (photo)

Palestinians in northern Gaza chased by Israeli quadcopters

Hani Mahmoud reports from Gaza: It’s been 19 days of ongoing bombardment, with the Israeli military having destroyed all means of life, including water tanks on rooftops and solar panels, in order to force people out of their homes. As soon as people came out, they were chased by the quadcopters into narrow areas where the Israeli military set up checkpoints.

We have seen images of Palestinians, in particular men, being lined up by the Israeli military, blindfolded and handcuffed, made to wear white coats, and then led into unknown areas for interrogation outside the Gaza Strip.

We have seen other footage of women and children being led into big holes in the ground where Israeli soldiers kept them before forcing them out and instructing them to take only one road into western Gaza City.

RECOMMENDED READING: ‘This is an extermination’: Israel’s assault on north Gaza’s last functioning hospital

UNRWA staff killed in Gaza

UNRWA spokesperson Juliette Touma stated that a staff member was killed in an Israeli attack in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza Strip as they rode in a clearly marked UNRWA vehicle.

The total number of UNRWA team members killed in Gaza since October last year is 228.

A man carries part of a body as Palestinians mourn loved ones killed in an Israeli attack on al-Mawasi, at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza on October 22
A man carries part of a body as Palestinians mourn loved ones killed in an Israeli attack on al-Mawasi, at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza on October 22 (Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu)

Vaccination halt will ‘seriously jeopardize’ efforts to contain polio: WHO chief

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has renewed his call for a ceasefire in Gaza after Israeli attacks prevented tens of thousands of children from receiving their second polio doses.

“Having a significant number of children miss out on their second vaccine dose will seriously jeopardize efforts to stop the transmission of poliovirus in Gaza,” he wrote in a post on X.

Health workers carry containers filled with polio vaccines in Zawayda, the central Gaza Strip, on Sept. 1, 2024. Photo by Eyad Baba/AFP via Getty Images.
Health workers carry containers filled with polio vaccines in Zawayda, the central Gaza Strip, on Sept. 1, 2024. (Eyad Baba/AFP via Getty Images)

Lebanon news

Lebanon suffers worst night of Israeli attacks on Beirut’s southern suburbs

The Israeli occupation army unleashed a wave of air strikes on southern Beirut on Wednesday night, killing and wounding a number of people, Lebanese state media said. It was said to be the worst night of Israeli attacks on the capital’s southern suburbs since the occupation state started its latest aggression against Lebanon on 23 September, the Palestinian Information Centre has reported.

Lebanese state media reported 17 Israeli raids on Beirut, with six apartment buildings leveled to the ground and the empty offices of Al-Mayadeen satellite channel hit. Six buildings were destroyed around the suburb of Laylaki, including a residential complex hit by four Israeli air strikes “causing a large fire,” according to the state media.

Local TV footage showed a massive explosion followed by smaller blasts in the Lebanese capital’s embattled southern suburbs after the Israeli army issued evacuation warnings for the area, which is a Hezbollah stronghold.

Smoke and flame rise after the Israeli army launched an airstrike on the Dahieh region in Beirut, Lebanon on 23 October, 2024
Smoke and flame rise after the Israeli army launched an airstrike on the Dahieh region in Beirut, Lebanon on 23 October, 2024 (Houssam Shbaro/Anadolu Agency)

Israeli strikes on financial institution in Lebanon violate international humanitarian law: UN expert

Multiple recent Israeli bombings of a financial institution in Lebanon were illegal attacks on civilian objects under international humanitarian law, a UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights said Wednesday.

“International humanitarian law does not permit attacks on the economic or financial infrastructure of an adversary, even if they indirectly sustain its military activities,” Ben Saul, special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights, said in a statement.

“Bombing banks obliterates the distinction between civilian objects and military objectives which is fundamental to protecting civilians from violence. It opens the door to ‘total war’ against civilian populations, where fighting is no longer limited to attacking militarily dangerous targets,” the expert said. “Such attacks jeopardize the right to life.”

The site of an overnight Israeli airstrike that targeted a branch of the Al-Qard Al-Hasan financial group in Beirut
The site of an overnight Israeli airstrike that targeted a branch of the Al-Qard Al-Hasan financial group in Beirut (AFP - Getty Images)

Israel news

Netanyahu Declines Blinken Request To Publicly Reject Gaza Ethnic Cleansing Plan

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his aides rejected a request from Secretary of State Antony Blinken to publicly say that Israel is not implementing an ethnic cleansing plan in northern Gaza, known as the “general’s plan.”

Netanyahu and his top aide Ron Dermer reportedly told Blinken that the general’s plan was “absolutely not our policy” and that the perception has been “deeply damaging to us.” But when asked to state that publicly, they declined.

While Israeli officials have told the US they’re not carrying out the ethnic cleansing plan, Israeli soldiers told Haaretz last week that it’s already underway in northern Gaza.

The general’s plan calls for the forced evacuation of all Palestinians from northern Gaza, and could pave the way for Jewish settlements in Gaza, an idea favored by many Israeli ministers and members of the Knesset.

RECOMMENDED READING: What is the ‘Generals’ Plan’? Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza, explained
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomes the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Tel Aviv.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomes the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Tel Aviv. (Handout/Israeli GPO/Kobi Gideon/Anadolu via Getty Images)

US news

Cops in riot gear storm UPenn student activists’ house

Last Friday, 13 police officers gathered in the early morning hours outside an off-campus residential building where several University of Pennsylvania students live.

Donning their full tactical gear, including riot helmets, and armed with assault rifles and handguns, the police threatened to break down the door with a battering ram, and pointed guns at the students’ heads as they came out of their rooms.

Police identified themselves as 12 officers from the UPenn PD and one from the Philadelphia PD, but refused to provide names, badge numbers, or a warrant.

A warrant was later produced for suspicion of vandalism, related to an incident in September where red paint was thrown on the Benjamin Franklin statue on campus.

Penn has shown stark imbalances in how it’s responded to activism for Palestine and activism for other causes, one student said. “It’s no surprise that Penn police are trained by the Israeli occupation forces…It’s also no surprise that Penn is funding this genocide and terrorizing their own students,” they said.

Huda Fakhreddine, an associate professor of Arabic literature and member of Penn Faculty for Justice in Palestine, said, “As some of us watch with horror the destruction of our homelands and the extermination and displacement of our families in Palestine and Lebanon, UPenn resorts to obscene intimidation tactics to silence anti-genocide speech.”

She added that the university “is also criminalizing grief, shamefully clamping down on students, and threatening them with arrest when they mourn the hundreds of thousands of lives destroyed by Israel’s genocide in Palestine and now Lebanon.”

MORE NEWS:
The Intercept: EU “Bending” Rules to Allow Trade With Israeli Settlements, Leaked Analysis Shows
Drop Site News: “Our Job Is to Flatten Gaza. No One Will Stop Us.”
Middle East Monitor: ICC prosecutor faces ‘smear campaign’ amid Israel war crimes probe
Al Jazeera: Gaza parents’ heartbreak as children’s clothes, shoes fall to pieces

Translation: Getting a loaf of bread is a struggle in the southern Gaza Strip.

STATISTICS OCTOBER 7, 2023 – OCTOBER 23, 2024:

Palestinian death toll from October 7, 2023 – October 23, 2024: at least 43,607* ( 42,847 in Gaza* – 69% are women and children, according to Gaza’s Media Office). [The Ministry’s figures have been contested by the Israeli authorities, although they have been accepted as accurate by Israeli intelligence services, the UN, and WHO. These data are supported by independent analyses, comparing changes in the number of deaths of UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) staff with those reported by the Ministry, which found claims of data fabrication implausible.]

This is expected to be a significant undercount since thousands of those killed have yet to be identified – and at least 760 in the West Bank (~166 children). This does not include an estimated 10,000 more in Gaza still buried under rubble (4,900 women and children). Euro-Med Monitor reports 49,032 Palestinian deaths.

Lancet: “Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the 37,396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.

Ralph Nader earlier estimated 300,000 Palestinians may have been killed in Gaza.

  • At least 45 Palestinians have died in Israeli prisons (27 from Gaza, 25 from West Bank).
  • At least 41 Palestinians have died due to malnutrition (at least 37 of them children)**.
  • About 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million population are currently displaced.
  • Almost 500,000 Gazans are currently experiencing catastrophic levels of food insecurity.

Palestinian injuries from October 7 – October 23, 2024: at least 106,794 (including at least 100,544 in Gaza and 6,250 in the West Bank, including 830 children). [It remains unknown how many Americans are among the casualties in Gaza.]

Reported Israeli death toll from October 7, 2023 – October 23, 2024: ~1,561 (~1,139 on October 7, 2023, of which ~32 were Americans, and ~36 were children); 386*** military forces since the ground invasion began in Gaza (most recent: Oct 22); 39 military and civilians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Israel) and~10,000 injured.

The death toll in Lebanon since October 8, 2023 is at least 2,546 and 11,862 injuries. An estimated 1.34 million have been displaced.

NOTE: It is unknown at this time how many of the deaths and injuries of Israelis on October 7 were caused by Israeli soldiers.

*Previously, IAK did not include 471 Gazans killed in the Al Ahli hospital blast since the source of the projectile was being disputed. However, given that much evidence points to Israel as the culprit, Israel had previously bombed the hospital and has attacked many others, Israel is prohibiting outside experts from investigating the scene, and since the UN and other agencies are including the deaths from the attack in their cumulative totals, if Americans knew is now also doing so.

**Euro-Med Monitor reports that Gaza’s elderly are dying at an alarmingly high rate. The majority die at home and are buried either close to their residences or in makeshift graves dispersed across the Strip. There are currently more than 140 such cemeteries. Additionally, according to Euromed, thousands have died from starvation, malnourishment, and inadequate medical care; these are considered indirect victims as they were not registered in hospitals. 

***The figure does not include the reportedly 56 Israeli soldiers – nearly 16% of the total Israeli military deaths – killed due to friendly fire in Gaza and other military-related accidents. 

† For most of the conflict, women and children accounted for about 70% of deaths in Gaza, with children making up a little over 40% of those killed, according to official statistics.

Find previous daily casualty figures and daily news updates here.

Hover over each bar for exact numbers.
Source: IsraelPalestineTimeline.org

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