Israel’s brutal attacks on Gaza, Lebanon, and the truth – Day 351

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Israel’s brutal attacks on Gaza, Lebanon, and the truth – Day 351
Palestinians flee Israeli attacks on Jabalia refugee camp. [Mahmoud İssa/Anadolu] (photo)

Compilation of news reports – IAK staff 

ISRAEL’S WAR ON GAZA: Few headlines, but Israeli attacks continue

Various outlets report:

Israeli attacks killed at least 24 Palestinians and injured dozens across the war-torn Gaza Strip on Sunday.

Israeli jets reportedly bombed the Khaled bin al-Walid School in Nuseirat camp where displaced people are sheltering.

Earlier in the day, at least seven people were killed and others injured in an Israeli bombing of the Kafr Qasim School in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City.

Internet services were suspended in Khan Younis and Deir el-Balah due to ongoing Israeli bombing in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian telecommunications company Paltel said in a post on Facebook.

“We are working hard to restore services as soon as possible,” Paltel said.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has said that trash in Gaza keeps piling up as hundreds of thousands of people take shelter in an increasingly small portion of land in the besieged coastal enclave.

“This is a landfill site in Khan Younis,” said the UN agency, which provides relief to Palestinians, showing pictures of piles of trash. “Waste is everywhere. UNRWA and partners work to dispose of it, but the war and access restrictions pose severe challenges.”

RECOMMENDED READING: Netanyahu examining siege plan for Hamas in north Gaza: Report
Landfill in Khan Younis, Gaza, is out of control due to Israeli restrictions and hostilities
Landfill in Khan Younis, Gaza, is out of control due to Israeli restrictions and hostilities (photos)

ISRAEL’S WAR ON THE TRUTH: Armed Israeli military forcibly shut down Al Jazeera office in West Bank

Various outlets report:

Early Sunday morning, heavily armed Israeli soldiers raided Al Jazeera’s offices in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, seizing and destroying equipment Al Jazeera’s bureau chief Walid al-Omari reports.

The soldiers confiscated the equipment even though the order only refers to shutting down the office.

Al Jazeera aired footage of the raid. Soldiers seized the microphone from Al Jazeera’s West Bank bureau chief Walid al-Omari while he was live on air with correspondent Givara Budeiri outside the building.

Al Jazeera said the forces also removed a poster of Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian American correspondent murdered by Israeli forces in 2022, from the building.

The September 22 military order accused the broadcast’s West Bank operations of “incitement to and support of terrorism.”

“This is part of a larger campaign against the Palestinian outlets and media in general aimed at erasing the truth,” bureau chief al-Omari said in an interview. “We’ve been under increasing incitement since the beginning of the war.”

In May, the Israeli cabinet voted to ban Al Jazeera’s operations in Israel after the country’s parliament passed a law authorizing the shutdown of foreign channels’ broadcasts if the content was deemed to be a threat to the country’s security during the ongoing war.

Until Sunday the broadcaster had continued to operate from Ramallah, a Palestinian city in the West Bank under Israeli military occupation; it still operates in Gaza, where the Israeli military has killed numerous Al Jazeera staff and freelancers since the start of the Israel-Gaza war in October 2023.

Statement from the International Federation of Journalists on the closure of Al Jazeera in Ramallah:

Tim Dawson, deputy general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, has said that the Israeli military closure of Al Jazeera’s bureau in Ramallah in the West Bank is “utterly shocking” and “comes as part of a long drawn-out policy to try and stop free reporting”.

Speaking to Al Jazeera from London, Dawson said:

There have been journalists who have been locked out of the Gaza Strip. There’s been the targeting of journalists in Gaza. There’s been suppression of critical media within Israel, and the attempt to stop Al Jazeera from reporting is atrocious on so many levels.

It’s atrocious that they sent combat troops to deal with journalists who had nothing but microphones and notebooks. That’s clearly designed to terrify people. Why it was done at three in the morning, I suspect because they thought it would terrify people even more.

This is the worst possible behavior from a country that claims to be a defender of free speech. It’s clear evidence of a determined policy to quell any kind of criticism.

Statement from the Committee to Protect Journalists:

CPJ is deeply alarmed by Israel’s closure of Al Jazeera’s office in the occupied West Bank, just months after it shuttered Al Jazeera’s operations in Israel after deeming it a threat to national security,” said CPJ’s program director, Carlos Martínez de la Serna, in New York.

Israel’s efforts to censor Al Jazeera severely undermine the public’s right to information on a war that has upended so many lives in the region. Al Jazeera’s journalists must be allowed to report at this critical time, and always.

Brief statement from Reporters Without Borders:

Once again, RSF denounces Israel’s relentless assault on @alJazeera, after Israeli soldiers invaded the #Ramallah newsroom last night, forced the evacuation of the team, imposed a 45-day closure and tore down a poster of reporter #ShireenAbuAkleh.

RECOMMENDED READING: Israel closes Al Jazeera bureau in Ramallah: All you need to know and Israel’s war on Gaza is the deadliest conflict on record for journalists.

Translation: Occupation forces tear up a picture of killed journalist Shireen Abu Akleh during a raid on Al Jazeera’s office in the center of Ramallah.

ISRAEL’S WAR ON LEBANON: Israel escalates conflict with Hezbollah, to Biden’s dismay

Various outlets report:

Hezbollah and Israel exchanged heavy fire Sunday, as the Lebanese militant group sent rockets deep into northern Israeli territory after facing some of the most intense bombardment in almost a year of conflict from Israel.

Hezbollah deputy chief Naim Qassem told mourners at the funeral of one of the group’s commanders killed last week in Beirut: “We have entered a new phase, the title of which is the open-ended battle of reckoning.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video statement Sunday, “In recent days we have inflicted a series of blows on Hezbollah that it never imagined. If Hezbollah has not understood the message, I promise you, it will understand the message.”

Friday saw one of the fiercest Israeli bombardments of the nearly year-old conflict with Hezbollah. In southern Lebanon, people described huge explosions that lit up the night sky and shook the ground as Israel carried out its latest strikes.

Hezbollah-aligned Transport Minister Ali Hamieh told reporters at the scene of Friday’s deadly attack in a Beirut suburb that

At least 45 were confirmed killed, and at least 23 people were still missing. Among the dead were 16 Hezbollah members along with women and children. More than 60 people were wounded.

“The Israeli enemy is taking the region to war,” Hamieh said.

RECOMMENDED READING: The history of conflict between Hezbollah and Israel

Biden admin says war with Lebanon is a bad idea, but supports it anyway

Biden officials are choosing to look at Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah as a separate issue from its war with Gaza. This in spite of the fact that Hezbollah has specifically said that it will keep fighting Israel until there is a ceasefire with Gaza – that is, a ceasefire with Gaza would bring an end to fighting on all fronts.
Israel claims its objective on this front is to return 60,000 Israeli citizens, who have been evacuated for almost a year, to their homes near the border with Lebanon, no matter what it takes.
Meanwhile, nearly all of the 2.3 million residents of Gaza have been evacuated from their homes – many of them displaced multiple times. Hundreds of thousands of Gazan residences have been damaged or destroyed.

Ha’aretz reports:

Rather than linking the Israel-Lebanon border conflict to Gaza, the Biden administration is attempting to downplay the correlation between the two by stressing that the Hezbollah and Hamas conflicts are on two separate tracks.

It should be noted that despite the lack of U.S. involvement in the escalation, coupled with the absence of Israel giving the U.S. advanced notice regarding specific strikes – including Friday’s, which killed more than a dozen senior Hezbollah commanders, including Ibrahim Aqil in southern Beirut – the Biden administration is not voicing criticism of Israel’s actions.

One area where there is no disagreement, for now, is with Israel’s apparent approach of seeking de-escalation through escalation. Senior U.S. officials have, however, spent the weekend in direct contact with their Israeli counterparts stressing that this calibration could rapidly spin out and do more harm than good.

“We do not think a war in Lebanon is the way to achieve the objective to return people to their homes. We also fully stand with Israel in their defense of their people and their territory against Hezbollah,” McGurk said.

Those comments came shortly after a Wall Street Journal report claimed that U.S. officials have given up on prospects for a Gaza cease-fire before the conclusion of Biden’s presidency and the possibility of Donald Trump returning to the White House.

White House National Security Spokesperson John Kirby said on Sunday that the U.S. is doing everything it can to prevent “all-out war” with Hezbollah along Israel’s northern border.

NOTE: The one effective thing that the Biden administration has not done to prevent war is end arms sales to Israel.

Israeli hospitals move underground, schools close as Hezbollah strikes deepen

The Cradle reports:

Northern Israeli Hospitals have moved to emergency protocols, and schools have been closed amid Hezbollah’s heavy rocket barrages and speculation that a wider war with the Lebanese resistance movement may erupt, Israeli media reported on 22 September.

Elective procedures in several hospitals have reportedly been canceled, and supplies and medicines are being stockpiled, as underground spaces are being turned into operating wards.

Schools were also ordered shut in the occupied Syria Golan Heights and parts of northern Israel.

These precautionary measures in Israeli hospitals and schools come after Hezbollah rockets successfully targeted the Ramat David Military Airport southeast of Haifa earlier in the day Sunday. The base houses air force squadrons and fighter jets.

The Hezbollah operations came after Israel carried out multiple terror attacks in Lebanon this week.

NOTE: While Israel benefits from the ability to relocate medical facilities and stockpile medical necessities, Israel has seen to it that Gaza’s healthcare sector has suffered continuous shortages of supplies, including fuel to keep lifesaving equipment running. Moreover, Israel has bombed Gaza’s hospitals and kidnapped and/or killed Palestinian medical professionals.

Israeli government chose revenge, not hostages: Ex-Mossad chief

Andalou Agency reports:

A former head of Israel’s Mossad spy service has accused the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of prioritizing revenge over the lives of Israeli hostages held in Gaza.

Tamir Pardo, who served as director of the Mossad between 2011 and 2016, said the government should have accepted Hamas’ offer for a prisoner swap on Oct. 8, 2023.

“Israel, however, chose revenge. It knew that the hostages could not all be freed through a military offensive,” he added in an interview with Israeli news outlet Srugim on Sunday.

Pardo said the Israeli government realizes that some hostages could be killed in its ongoing airstrikes in Gaza.

“However, the government was not bothered. It rather launched a campaign to convince the public of false narrative as an absolute victory,” he added.

“Instead of pursuing revenge, the government should have reached a deal to secure the hostages’ release first and then pursued military objectives,” he said.

UN Security Council is ‘no longer fit,’ South African president says in call for reform

Andalou Agency reports:

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa called for UN reform on Sunday, stating before the General Assembly that the Security Council is “clearly no longer fit” to address contemporary challenges.

Cyril Ramaphosa, president of South Africa
Cyril Ramaphosa, president of South Africa (photo)

“Placing the fate of the world’s security in the hands of a select few when it is the vast majority who bear the brunt of these threats is unjust, unfair and unsustainable,” Ramaphosa said at the UN’s Summit of the Future in New York.

Highlighting ongoing wars, conflicts, and climate change, he stressed that the Security Council’s structure “does not represent all countries” and fails to consider diverse viewpoints.

Ramaphosa described the Pact for the Future, adopted by the General Assembly, as a chance to “reinvigorate the multilateral system” and fulfill promises to reform global governance.

“We must pursue the attainment of just and sustainable peace based on international law,” he said.

Ramaphosa’s government took Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for genocide over Tel Aviv’s indiscriminate offensive on the besieged Palestinian enclave of Gaza since Oct. 7 last year.

NOTE: In five decades, prior to October 7th, the United States blocked at least 53 UN Security Council resolutions critical of Israel.

UK: Labour Party bans words ‘genocide’ and ‘apartheid’ from Justice For Palestine conference

Middle East Monitor reports:

UK Labour Party managers blocked the words “genocide” and “apartheid” in reference to Israel’s conduct against Palestinians from being used in brochures at a side event during its annual conference in Liverpool.

The conference’s start was marked by pro-Palestine protests as over 15,000 people marched through the city on Saturday calling for an end to Britain selling arms to Israel.

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) has revealed that party managers refused to allow the words “genocide” and “apartheid” to appear in the name of its fringe event scheduled for Monday in the conference brochure.

The event, will be described as “Justice for Palestine”, without the phrases “end the genocide” and “end the apartheid.”

PSC director Ben Jamal told Middle East Eye: “I think what this speaks to is the party leadership’s failure to address the root causes of the current violence that is happening in Palestine. It says it wants that violence to end, it says it wants a ceasefire.

“But it fails to acknowledge that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid, a judgement made by the International Court of Justice. It is now on trial at the world’s highest court, the ICJ, which has accepted the plausibility of South Africa’s case that Israel is committing genocide.

“You cannot tackle an injustice unless you’re prepared to name it accurately.”

RECOMMENDED READING: Leaked New York Times Memo Tells Journalists To Avoid Words “Genocide,” “Ethnic Cleansing,” and “Occupied Territory”

Iraqi resistance joins in targeting Israeli sites

The Cradle reports:

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI) announced that it launched multiple missiles and drones at targets in Israel early on 22 September, in opposition to the Israeli military’s ongoing war on Palestinians in Gaza.

The movement issued multiple statements Sunday, stating it had attacked northern Israeli targets with Arqab cruise missiles, as well as targets in southern Israel and the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank with drones.

The statement said the attacks were carried out “In continuation of our approach to resisting the occupation, in support of our people in Gaza, and in response to the massacres committed by the usurping entity against Palestinian civilians, including children, women and the elderly.”

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg at a protest against the ongoing Israeli war in Gaza in Copenhagen
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg at a protest against the ongoing Israeli war in Gaza in Copenhagen (photo)

Greta Thunberg denounces ‘genocide’ in Palestine during protest in Stockholm

Andalou Agency reports:

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg joined thousands of protesters in Stockholm to condemn Israel’s “genocide” in Palestine on Saturday and urge global action.

Israel’s “genocide” in Palestine is “outrageous,” Thunberg told Anadolu at the rally, which drew an estimated 5,000 people to the Swedish capital.

She said she does not understand how people see what is happening in Palestine and go on with their lives without caring.

Thunberg said remaining silent during a genocide is to be complicit and underlined the importance of boycotting Israel, Israeli companies and institutions and imposing sanctions.

MORE NEWS:

IMEMC Daily Reports.
The Guardian: From Munich 72 to 7 October attack: the checkered history of the Mossad
AntiWar: Israeli Diaspora Minister Says Lebanon Isn’t a State, Advocates Taking South

STATISTICS OCTOBER 7 – SEPTEMBER 22:

Palestinian death toll from October 7, 2023 – September 22, 2024: at least 42,147* (41,431 in Gaza* – 11,308 women (30%), 16,715 children as of September 5. [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 716 in the West Bank (~148 children). This does not include an estimated 10,000 more 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, 23 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 – September 22: at least 101,518 (including at least 95,818 in Gaza and 5,700 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 – September 22, 2024: ~1,457 (~1,139 on October 7, 2023, of which ~32 were Americans, and ~36 were children); 293*** military forces since the ground invasion began in Gaza; 25 military and civilians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Israel) and~10,000 injured.

Hezbollah reports a death toll of 502 fighters since October 8, 2023.

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. 

***Approximately twelve of the deaths listed above were Israeli soldiers killed by Hezbollah in fighting at the Israel-Lebanon border. The figure does not include the reportedly 53 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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