Israel kills Gazans by every method: airstrike, starvation, imprisonment, shooting, stillbirth; South Africa calls for stronger language from ICJ to end the famine in Gaza; flour shipment from US still sitting in port after nearly 7 weeks – enough to feed 1.5 million Gazans for five months; West Bank violence and illegal construction; WaPo says the US has “quietly approved and delivered more than 100 separate foreign military sales to Israel since the Gaza war began”; poll: majority of Americans want weapons shipments to stop, more
By IAK staff, from reports
NEW – VETERANS FOR PEACE LAUNCHES PETITION: Veterans For Peace is calling on US House and Senate leaders to investigate the Biden administration for criminal violations in their arms shipments to Israel. The petition text is brief:
U.S. State Department violates federal law with every weapon shipped to Israel. Citizens cannot sue to uphold the law, only Congress can do so. Do your jobs! Hold hearings! These shipments disgust Americans and make the world despise us.
Veterans For Peace also penned a detailed open letter, addressed to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other officials. The letter demands termination of provision of military weapons and munitions to Israel, listing “at least six laws” that the Biden administration has broken by conducting these arms transfers.
Those who want to be signatories to the petition can go here.
GAZA – Al Jazeera reports: UN special rapporteur for the rights of displaced people Paula Gaviria Betancur noting that a “staggering” five percent of Gaza’s population has been killed and wounded in Israeli attacks, while more than 75 percent have been displaced.
She stated that the world “must abandon the fiction that Israel will respect the principles of international humanitarian and human rights law in its military operations”.
(Read more of Betancur’s comments here.)
GAZA – Al Jazeera reports: A 15-year-old child died at al-Shifa Hospital and a 72-year-old man died at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, as a result of malnutrition and dehydration, Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra says in a statement. bringing the official death toll of those who have succumbed to malnutrition and dehydration to 20.
Al-Qudra emphasized that the announced death toll only reflects cases that have reached hospitals.
📍#Gaza flour distribution today – @UNRWA teams continue to distribute flour in southern governorates, reaching over 370K families so far.
But the meager supplies allowed into the besieged #GazaStrip have little effect in the face of overwhelming needs of an entire population. pic.twitter.com/NkM3AAWMYH
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) March 5, 2024
PRISONERS – Ha’aretz reports: 27 Gaza detainees have died in custody at Israeli military facilities since the outbreak of the war, according to figures obtained by Haaretz.
The detainees died at the Sde Teiman and Anatot facilities or during questioning in Israeli territory. The IDF Spokesperson’s Office said the Investigative Military Police has opened investigations into the deaths. The IDF did not detail the circumstances of the deaths, but said that some suffered from prior health conditions or were wounded during the war.
Palestinian prisoners’ advocacy groups report that Israel is currently holding 9,100 Palestinian political prisoners, not including those from Gaza. Israel has released over 1,000 Gazans, and is estimated to have 3,000 more.
GAZA – Al Jazeera reports: Eight people have been wounded after Israeli forces fired live rounds at people waiting for humanitarian aid at the Nabulsi roundabout in the southwest of Gaza City.
A week ago, at least 112 Palestinians waiting for food aid were killed and 760 wounded after being shot at by Israeli forces in Gaza in the same area. Since then, Israeli forces have committed several similar attacks on hungry Palestinians in Gaza City.
GAZA – WAFA reports: ActionAid International said that women in the Gaza Strip are giving birth to stillborn babies due to the increasing risk of famine and the collapse of humanitarian operations.
In a statement, the group said, “There are many operations that have been performed, like caesarean sections to remove fetuses, [which] died due to malnutrition among women. More than 95% of women [who] come to the hospital and undergo the necessary medical examinations [are suffering] from anemia.”
RECOMMENDED READING (Al Jazeera): For midwives in Rafah, ‘childbirth means chaos and suffering’
GLOBAL COMMUNITY – The South African presidency says the country has “approached the International Court of Justice (ICJ) with an urgent application for the provisional measures the court ordered on 26 January 2024 to be strengthened” to prevent famine in Gaza.
“United Nations experts warn that the number of deaths will increase exponentially unless military activities are halted and the blockade is lifted,” the statement continued, demanding that the court order an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
“The situation is urgent. South Africa has no choice but to approach the Court for the strengthening of the Provisional Measures in place to try [to] prevent full-scale famine in the Gaza Strip.”
GAZA – Al Jazeera reports: Approximately 250 aid trucks entered Gaza on Tuesday through the Rafah and Karem Abu Salem border crossings, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters.
“We need to see dramatically more go in,” Miller said, adding there has been some improvement in the distribution of aid but enough is still not entering Gaza.
GAZA – Times of Israel reports: A large US shipment of flour for Gaza remains stalled, nearly two weeks since Israel agreed to a new framework for its delivery and 46 days since it was first announced by the White House, a US official tells The Times of Israel.
The official does not elaborate on what is causing the continued delay but says the the flour capable of feeding 1.5 million Gazans for five months should be delivered in the coming days.
GAZA – Al Jazeera reports: Aerial footage has captured the scale of the destruction in the Shati refugee camp, also known as “Beach Camp”, near Gaza City.
Gutted buildings and piles of rubble appear to be all that is left of one of the world’s most densely populated areas after intense and prolonged Israeli bombing.
Shati is the third-largest refugee camp among the eight in the Gaza Strip and one of its most crowded. Before the war, more than 90,000 people lived in the area, which is less than half a square kilometer.
مشاهد جوية ترصد للمرة الأولى حجم الدمار بمخيم الشاطئ في مدينة غزة #حرب_غزة #فيديو pic.twitter.com/PEmyYaTocB
— الجزيرة فلسطين (@AJA_Palestine) March 6, 2024
Translation: Aerial scenes show for the first time the extent of the destruction in the Shati camp in Gaza City.
Below is footage of the camp nine years ago:
WEST BANK – Defense for Children International-Palestine reports: Israeli forces killed a 16-year-old Palestinian boy in the northern occupied West Bank yesterday then confiscated his body.
Mohammad Hisham Mohammad Shehada, 16, was shot and killed by Israeli forces on March 5, near the illegal Israeli settlement Yitzhar, after he allegedly attempted to carry out a stabbing attack. Israeli forces shot him several times, then continued shooting him after he fell to the ground.
The Israeli forces refused to allow an ambulance to reach the scene, which caused Mohammad to bleed out without receiving medical care. Mohammad’s body was transported by an Israeli ambulance to an unknown location and remains withheld.
WEST BANK – WAFA reports: A Palestinian young man, Mohammad Mahmoud Raja Eid, age 19, has Wednesday evening died after being shot in the chest during an Israeli occupation forces’ raid into the village of Burin, south of Nablus, last Monday.
WEST BANK – Al Jazeera reports: The Israeli government is green-lighting 3,500 housing units in three different illegal settlements across the occupied West Bank.
Israel’s finance minister, ultra-nationalist Bezalel Smotrich, promised settlement expansions in retaliation for a shooting that took place at one of these settlements in February.
Additionally, Smotrich said that in the last year, 18,515 housing units in illegal settlements have been approved.
WEST BANK – The Wall Street Journal reports: Five illegal outposts and 15 roads have been built by settlers across the West Bank since October 7. The statement was based on videos recordings and local eyewitness accounts.
The roads and outposts were constructed in a matter of days by unmarked heavy machinery and were secured by Israeli forces.
The report adds that several of the new outposts were financed by government funds.
NOTE: Israel has illegally built around 280 settlements on Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, which are home to more than 700,000 illegal settlers. Israeli settlements and settlers on Palestinian land are a violation of international law. Settlers, moreover, have a history of violence against Palestinians, often with the assistance of Israeli military forces.
Only two approved foreign military sales to Israel have been made public since the start of conflict: $106 million worth of tank ammunition and $147.5 million of components needed to make 155 mm shells.
But in the case of the 100 other transactions, the weapons transfers were processed without any public debate because each fell under a specific dollar amount that requires the executive branch to individually notify Congress.
Taken together, the weapons packages amount to a massive transfer of firepower at a time when senior U.S. officials have complained that Israeli officials have fallen short on their appeals to limit civilian casualties, allow more aid into Gaza and refrain from rhetoric calling for the permanent displacement of Palestinians.
MEDIA BIAS – New report from the Center for Media Monitoring (CfMM): The report is a result of months of qualitative and quantitative analysis by researchers at the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM). The report scrutinized a vast array of data, analyzing 176,627 television clips from over 13 broadcasters, and 25,515 news articles from over 28 UK online media websites.
The data was analyzed for the framing of events, language utilization, and the representation of Palestinian voices in mainstream media. The report aimed to assess the extent of bias and distortion in the portrayal of the conflict by various media outlets. A few findings:
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- Language Utilization: Emotive language describes Israelis as victims of attacks 11 times more than Palestinians.
- Framing of Events: Most TV channels overwhelmingly promote “Israel’s right” to defend itself, overshadowing Palestinian rights by a ratio of 5 to 1.
(A summary and link to the full report can be found here, highlights here.)
AMERICANS POLLED – A new poll from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) says: 52% of Americans agree that the US should halt weapons shipments to Israel until Israel stops its attacks on Gaza, according to a new YouGov poll commissioned by CEPR.
62% of respondents who voted for Biden in 2020 agree with the statement, “The US should stop weapons shipments to Israel until Israel discontinues its attacks on the people of Gaza,” while just 14% disagree. 24% of self-identified Biden voters remain unsure.
30 percent of Trump voters support halting US weapons shipments; 55% oppose, and 15% are unsure.
Among those who did not vote in 2020, fully 60% agreed that the US should block weapons shipments, while just 17%disagreed and 23% remained unsure.
