Israel has committed 3,300 massacres in Gaza since October 7th – Day 251

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Israel has committed 3,300 massacres in Gaza since October 7th – Day 251
Palestinians flee from one so-called safe zone to another, bringing with them whatever they can carry. (screenshot)

Israel has carried out thousands of massacres; Gaza pier in trouble again; Blinken pledges $400m in aid (while doing nothing to stop carnage); US intelligence-sharing with Israel may be getting out of control; UN acknowledges Israel’s use of Hannibal Directive; Israel on the “list of shame” and reactions; Israel’s war on food suppliers, journalists, West Bank economy and people; more

By IAK staff, from reports.

Israel committed 3,300 massacres against Gaza since 7 October – GMO:

Middle East Monitor reports: Israel has committed more than 3,300 massacres against the Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip since 7 October, claiming the lives of about 40,000 victims, a majority of them women and children, the government media office (GMO) in Gaza has said.

In a statement issued on Thursday, the GMO warned that the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip are suffering from starvation, famine and thirst, especially in Gaza city and northern Gaza governorates as a result of closing all Crossings to the area and limiting the number of aid trucks allowed to enter.

The statement stressed that Israel’s use of starvation, thirst and denial of medical care as a weapon during this barbaric aggression constitutes an aggravated war crime and a genocide, in flagrant violation of international laws and in disregard of all relevant calls, demands and resolutions.

It called on international and humanitarian organizations, including the UN, to take urgent action and provide the necessary food and humanitarian aid to the people in Gaza, and to force the Israeli Occupation to bring in aid, calling on the Arab and Islamic countries to also exert pressure to break the siege, open the Crossings and provide relief to the people there.

US military considers temporarily dismantling Gaza pier (again) due to rough sea conditions:

CNN reports: The US military is considering temporarily dismantling the humanitarian pier it constructed off the coast of Gaza and moving it back to Israel on Friday amid concerns that heavy seas could once again break it just days after it resumed aid delivery operations, multiple US officials said.

It would be the second time in a matter of weeks that the fragile pier and causeway system, known as Joint Logistics over the Shore or JLOTS, has had to be moved back to the Israeli port of Ashdod. A final decision is not expected to be made until Friday, officials said.

Earlier this month, the pier broke apart and sustained damage in heavy seas and had to be towed to Ashdod for repairs that took over a week. It was moved back to Gaza last week and resumed operations on Saturday but had to pause again due to heavy seas on Monday and Tuesday.

Blinken announces $400M in aid to Gaza, while turning blind eye to atrocities, war crimes:

From State Department briefing Thursday:

Last night, Secretary Blinken wrapped his eighth trip to the Middle East since the October 7th terrorist attacks, visiting four countries and meeting with leaders from across the region and the world at a conference in Jordan.

During the trip, the Secretary continued to push for a ceasefire agreement that would secure the release of all hostages, surge humanitarian assistance to Gaza, and set the conditions for an end to the war.

He announced an additional $404 million in humanitarian assistance to Gaza, bringing the total U.S. contribution since October 7th to more than $674 million – making the U.S. the largest contributor of humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people in the world.

The Biden administration has so far not used its leverage as the provider of billions of dollars in military aid to Israel (with one exception), a move that could potentially end the war in short order.

NOTE: 
The US has contributed large sums and has built an expensive pier, but has not succeeded in getting much aid into the hands of starving Gazans.
The US has for months expressed its desire to see appropriate amounts of humanitarian aid reaching the people of Gaza on one hand, while undermining Gaza’s largest aid organization on the other – not to mention shipping billions in weaponry to Israel; meanwhile Israel has consistently stalled efforts to bring aid to where it is needed.
In mid-March, Israel promised to “flood” Gaza with aid, but has failed to do so – although thousands of aid trucks wait just outside the Gaza border.
Meanwhile, the US has built a “temporary pier” off the Gaza coast to receive a relatively small amount of aid by sea – at a cost of at least $320 million – and has, along with other countries, airdropped packages of aid into Gaza – a practice that has caused over 20 Palestinian deaths due to malfunction.

In the search for hostages, U.S. is Israel’s key intelligence partner

Washington Post reports: The daring and deadly hostage rescue that Israeli military forces mounted in Gaza last Saturday relied on a massive intelligence-gathering operation in which the United States has been Israel’s most important partner.

Since the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, the United States has ramped up intelligence collection on the militant group in Gaza and is sharing an extraordinary amount of drone footage, satellite imagery, communications intercepts and data analysis using advanced software, some of it powered by artificial intelligence, according to current and former U.S. and Israeli intelligence officials.

The result is an intelligence-sharing partnership of rare volume, even for two countries that have historically worked together on areas of mutual concern, including counterterrorism and preventing Iran from building a nuclear weapon.

In interviews, Israeli officials said they were grateful for the U.S. assistance, which in some cases has given the Israelis unique capabilities they lacked before Hamas’s surprise cross-border attacks. But they also were defensive about their own spying prowess, insisting that the United States was, for the most part, not giving them anything they couldn’t obtain themselves. That position can be hard to square with the obvious failures of the Israeli intelligence apparatus to detect and respond to the warning signs of Hamas’s planning.

In a briefing with reporters at the White House last month, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Washington “has provided an intense range of assets and capabilities and expertise.” Responding to a May 11 Washington Post report, Sullivan said that the intelligence is “not tied or conditioned on anything else. It is not limited. We are not holding anything back. We are providing every asset, every tool, every capability,” Sullivan said.

Other officials, including lawmakers on Capitol Hill, worry that intelligence the United States provides could be making its way into the repositories of data that Israeli military forces use to conduct airstrikes or other military operations, and that Washington has no effective means of monitoring how Israel uses the U.S. information.

(Read the full article here.)

UN report details Israel’s use of the Hannibal Directive on October 7th:

A new report from the UN Human Rights Council entitled “Detailed findings on attacks carried out on and after 7 October 2023 in Israel” exposes again what alternative media sites have been discussing for months: Israel’s use of the Hannibal Directive – a form of deliberate friendly fire – against its own citizens.

One example from pages 44 and 45 of the report:

A video statement by an Israeli Security Forces tank driver, viewed by the Commission, confirms that at least one individual tank team knowingly applied the ‘Hannibal Directive’ that day.

In a statement given to an Israeli news channel, a tank driver and commander stated that they targeted two Toyota vehicles with militants and Israelis. This occurred at point 179, close to kibbutz Nir Oz. They noted that there were many people standing in the back of the pickup trucks and what appeared to be a “pile of other people” next to them.

The tank team could not confirm whether the people they saw were alive or dead at the time. They shot towards the two vehicles and assessed that they hit the first vehicle and may have missed the second one.

Asked why he decided to shoot at the vehicles, the commander said “something in my gut feeling made me think that they [his soldiers] could be on them [on the vehicles]. Yes, I could have killed them, but I decided that this is the right decision. I prefer stopping the abduction so they won’t be taken.”

The tank commander also clarified that the Hannibal Directive involves several stages: “when you implement the order itself, there are several gradual things you need to do. You need to direct fire to ‘blocking locations’ and ‘control points’, and, when you have recognition, you have to also do that thing [referring to the Hanibal Directive]”.

Blinken is dragging the US ever deeper into Israel’s quagmire:

Middle East Eye reports: It takes a lot to get the diplomats of the Middle East to agree on anything. The behavior of one man over the last eight months of the war in Gaza has, however, forged a consensus rare among such a group: Antony Blinken cannot be trusted.

The US secretary of state’s powers of turning reality on its head have raised the eyebrows of even practiced cynics. It is a complaint that resounds from Doha to Amman, Cairo, Tel Aviv and Ankara.

Blinken is currently engaged in what one of his predecessors, James Baker, called “dead cat diplomacy”. Baker’s pupil, Aaron David Miller, wrote on X (formerly Twitter): “The objective is not to reach a deal but to ensure if it fails, the dead cat is on other’s doorstep.”’ (Read the full article here.)

[During Israel’s 2014 onslaught against Gaza, Blinken helped Israel obtain a  quarter of a billion dollars of Americans’ money.]

‘Ultimate list of shame’ is published: Israel’s army makes UN’s child-harm report:

The United Nations added the Israeli army to its “blacklist” of countries that have committed abuses against children in armed conflict.

Chris Guinness, a former spokesman for the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees, says it is the “ultimate list of shame”.

“It gets to the very depths of which humanity can sink. And you have to remember that some of the groups and countries on this list include Boko Haram, ISIS [ISIL], al-Qaeda, Russia, and Myanmar. This puts Israel on a list of some of the most appalling regimes and groups in the world,” he told Al Jazeera.

“I think given the totality of what we’re seeing in terms of accountability mechanisms – we’ve got the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, and reports coming up from the Human Rights Council – as things build up so will the isolation and the pariah status of Israel.”

RECOMMENDED READING (Al Jazeera): Explainer: Israel in Gaza, Palestinian fighters in Israel, what the UN accuses them of

Israel’s UN ambassador again rails against army’s addition to UN child harm list:

“The secretary-general’s decision to include the [most] moral army in the world along with terrorist organizations and human rights violators is a despicable and despicable decision by a Secretary-General who hates Israel”, Israeli media quoted Gilad Erdan as saying of UN chief Antonio Guterres.

This follows the release of the report in which the Israel army was officially listed as part of the “blacklist” of those who harm children in conflict. Hamas and other Palestinian groups were also on the list.

Today, Erdan also called on Guterres to resign.

NOTE: The use of the word “terrorist” for a group that resists occupation and oppression is a political, not fact-based choice. In reality, The United Nations supports the efforts of resistance groups against an occupying power, even to the point of armed resistance. Hamas has clearly and openly stated that its enemy is not the Jewish people, but the racist ideology of Zionism – the ideology under which Israel dispossessed 750,000 Palestinian people,  exiled them to Gaza and other locations, and continues to oppress and ethnically cleanse their population. 

Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s farming, fishing, baking adds to food insecurity: UN inquiry:

We’ve been reporting on the independent UN Commission of Inquiry report that found Israeli authorities are responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

The report also found that Israel has “weaponized the withholding of life-sustaining necessities” through the “siege it imposed” on the Gaza Strip.

In a section of the report titled “total siege”, the commission listed a number of causes of food insecurity in Gaza, beyond restrictions and delays imposed by Israeli forces on humanitarian aid supplies at the enclave’s borders.

The causes of food insecurity include:

    • Destruction and prevention of local food production, including agriculture, fishing and baking in Gaza.
    • Preventing the import of adequate food supplies.
    • Dangers faced by humanitarian workers in distributing the limited food supplies available.
    • Cutting off water pipelines.

Palestinian Journalists Syndicate reports 84 incidents of theft by Israeli forces since October:

WAFA reports: The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate announced Thursday that 84 incidents have been documented where Israeli occupation forces have stolen journalists’ personal property since the beginning of the aggression on the Palestinian people in October 2023.

A report by the Syndicate’s Freedom Committee revealed that since the start of the Israeli aggression, 50 incidents of seizing journalists’ cell phones have been documented, particularly during home raids and arrests.

Additionally, eight laptops were confiscated or destroyed, eight Palestinian printing presses were targeted, and three drones used for journalistic photography were taken by Israeli soldiers. Other stolen items included work cables, microphones, protective vests, while numerous cameras were smashed.

Commenting on the report, Mohamed Al-Lahham, head of the Freedom Committee, highlighted that these incidents occurred solely in the West Bank. He noted that the scale of theft and destruction in the Gaza Strip is significantly higher, with about 86 media office headquarters bombed and destroyed, making it difficult to account for all damages due to the ongoing bombardment and aggression.

Al-Lahham condemned the actions of the Israeli forces, stating that what the Israelis call “confiscation” is simply theft, occurring both day and night. He criticized the lack of legal documentation or proof of confiscation, likening the actions to those of criminal gangs.

West Bank – Israeli forces kill three Palestinians:

WAFA reports: Three Palestinian youths were killed this evening by Israeli occupation forces in the town of Qabatiya, north of the occupied West Bank, according to local and medical sources.

Two of those killed were inside a house that Israeli forces besieged, bombarded, and then demolished. The two are yet to be identified.

Israeli forces also heavily fired live ammunition at the house and at passers-by.

The Israeli occupation army reportedly withheld the bodies of two of the three martyrs.

Transferring Palestinian tax revenues to Israeli families ‘unprecedented’ step for Israel:

Al Jazeera reports: Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has signed an order to deduct $35m of Palestinian tax revenues and transfer the funds to Israeli families whose members were killed in Palestinian attacks.

Israel collects Palestinian tax as part of the 1994 Paris agreement between the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) and it deducts 3 percent of the amount as a collection fee. The total revenue is estimated to be approximately $220m a month, making it the main source of income for the Palestinian Authority.

Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, says this an “unprecedented” step for Israel.

“They’ve legislated Palestinian money away, giving the finance minister in Israel the power to do with that money as he sees fit, whether it’s to compensate Israeli families affected by Palestinian attacks or to even direct it elsewhere and now he’s putting that into action,” Odeh said.

“This could potentially open the floodgates to a very serious financial crisis in the Palestinian Authority (PA) rooted in the political fact that Israel controls every aspect of life not just of ordinary Palestinians, but of the coffers of PA that is supposed to take care of them.”

Another economic blow – Israel freezes work permits for 80,000 West Bank Palestinian workers:

Palestine Chronicle reports: “The Israeli Civil Administration, which is a unit in the Ministry of Defense, has begun freezing nearly 80,000 work permits for Palestinian workers from the West Bank,” the Israeli public broadcaster is cited as saying on Thursday.

Since the start of Tel Aviv’s genocidal assault on Gaza on October 7 last year, Israel has prevented workers from the West Bank from accessing the Israeli labor market.

Prior to the war on Gaza, more than 170,000 Palestinians were working in Israel, constituting an important source of income for the Palestinian economy.

Israel does not allow Palestinian workers to pass through Israeli checkpoints except after obtaining permits from the Israeli army.

Previous estimates from the Israeli Ministry of Finance indicate that the absence of Palestinian workers in the construction, agriculture, and industrial sectors resulted in a monthly loss of 3 billion shekels (840 million dollars).

The Israeli KAN news outlet reportedly said that the freezing of the work permits will “last until the government decides to lift the lockdown in Palestinian cities and villages in the West Bank.”

Support for armed struggle rises among Palestinians, poll shows:

Middle East Eye reports: A poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) shows that support for armed struggle as the best means to end Israeli occupation and achieve statehood has risen among Palestinians.

Support for armed struggle climbed by eight percentage points to 54 percent of those surveyed in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, while support for Hamas also increased by six percentage points to 40 percent.

Support for the Palestinian party Fatah, led by President Mahmoud Abbas, meanwhile is at 20 percent.

Thousands of Gazans had previously tried a massive nonviolent demonstration for almost two years; Israeli forces had killed and maimed participants week after week:

Smotrich: Palestinian corpses should be ‘put in carts and dragged through streets’ as lesson to others:

The New Arab reports: Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has called for the dead bodies of Palestinian prisoners to be “put in carts and dragged through the streets” to serve as a lesson for those planning to “carry out operations against Israeli targets”.

The extremist MK made the chilling comments at an Israeli cabinet meeting last Sunday where the release of prisoners’ bodies to their families was under discussion.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir commented at the meeting, “This is a democratic state. I believe releasing the bodies of Israeli terrorists shows negligence. It also undermines the possibility to release them in exchange for hostages or the bodies of hostages. I don’t understand what is the motive for the panic and rush to release them. The bodies must be kept.”

CAIR calls out Biden administration for “enabling the starvation of children in Gaza”:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today called on the Biden administration to stop enabling and backing the starvation of children in Gaza by the far-right Israeli government.

That call came after the head of the UN World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that “a significant proportion of Gaza’s population is now facing catastrophic hunger and famine-like conditions.” To date, more than 8,000 young people have been diagnosed and treated for acute malnutrition, including 1,600 children with the most dangerous form of the condition, the WHO Director-General said.

The UN secretary-general added the Israeli armed forces to the “list of shame” of warring parties committing grave violations against children in armed conflict. The UN verified 5,698 “grave violations” by the Israeli army against children, including the killing and maiming of children and attacks on schools and hospitals..

In a statement, CAIR Deputy Executive Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said:

Our government is complicit in one of the most barbaric atrocities to take place before the eyes of the world in recent memory. The World Health Organization has verified that thousands of children in Gaza are now facing starvation because of the Biden administration’s support for the Israeli government’s campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Enough is enough. It is time for President Biden to stop enabling this atrocity, start using American leverage, and force the Israeli government to end its genocidal war.

Also from CAIR:

MORE NEWS:

Scheerpost: Palestinian Scholar Detained by Israeli Police for Alleged Incitement to Terrorism
Electronic Intifada: When Israel killed twins in front of their father
IMEMC Reports.

STATISTICS OCTOBER 7 – JUNE 13:

Palestinian death toll from October 7 – June 13: at least 37,780* (37,232 in Gaza* – 4,959 women (20%), 7,797 children (32%). This is expected to be a significant undercount since thousands of those killed have yet to be identified – and at least 548 in the West Bank (~134 children). This does not include an estimated 10,000 more still buried under rubble (4,900 women and children). Euro-Med Monitor reports 43,640 Palestinian deaths. (Ralph Nader has estimated 200,000 Palestinians may have been killed in Gaza.)
At least 42 Palestinians have died in Israeli prisons (27 from Gaza, 14 from West Bank).
At least 37 Palestinians have died due to malnutrition**.
About 1.7 million, or 75% of Gaza’s population are currently displaced.
About 1.1 million (out of total population of 2.3 million) are facing Catastrophic levels of food insecurity.
Palestinian injuries from October 7 – June 13: at least 90,237 (including at least 85,037 in Gaza and 5,200 in the West Bank).
It remains unknown how many Americans are among the casualties in Gaza.
Reported Israeli death toll from October 7 – June 13: ~1,449 (~1,139 on October 7, 2023, of which ~32 were Americans, and ~36 were children); 295 military forces since the ground invasion began in Gaza; 16 in the West Bank) and~8,730 injured.
Times of Israel reports: The IDF listed 41 soldiers killed due to friendly fire in Gaza and other military-related accidents – nearly 16%.
NOTE: It is unknown at this time how many of the deaths and injuries in Israel 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. 
Find previous daily casualty figures and daily news updates here.

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

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