Israel’s victims include more preemie babies, center for the blind – Day 132

Mondoweiss reports: In an interview on Israeli television, former Mossad official Rami Igra said all Palestinians in Gaza over the age of 4 are “involved” and deserve to face Israel’s collective punishment policy of withholding food and humanitarian aid.

“In Gaza, everyone is involved. Everyone voted Hamas. Anyone over the age of four is a Hamas supporter. And our goal at the moment, and this is in continuation of what you said, is to turn them from Hamas supporters to Hamas dislikers.”

This unhinged, delusional message is coupled with a supposedly “humanitarian” approach:

“And the way is supplying the humanitarian aid, through us [Israel].” Read the full article here.

The Al Jazeera network has released the following statement following Israel’s targeting of 2 Al Jazeera journalists with a drone this week:

Al Jazeera Media Network rejects the Israeli occupation forces’ attempt to justify the killing and targeting of journalists.

The Network condemns the accusations against its journalists and recalls Israel’s long record of lies and fabrication of evidence through which it seeks to hide its heinous crimes.

Al Jazeera ensures that all its journalists and correspondents adhere to the editorial standards.

The Network recalls the systematic targeting of Al Jazeera by the Israeli authorities, which includes the bombing of its office in Gaza twice, the assassination of its correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh, the killing of colleagues Samer AbuDaqa and Hamza Al-Dahdouh, the deliberate targeting of a number of Al Jazeera journalists and their family members and the arrest and intimidation of its correspondents in the field.

Given Israel’s unprecedented campaign against journalists, Al Jazeera urges media outlets worldwide to exercise the utmost caution and responsibility when headlining Israel’s justifications for its crimes against journalists in Gaza.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reports: The Israeli army’s deliberate and pervasive targeting of educational institutions and cultural objects in the Gaza Strip is an additional manifestation of the ongoing crime of genocide that it has been committing since 7 October 2023, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said.

The current Israeli military attacks on the Gaza Strip have completely disrupted the educational process in all universities and colleges there, according to Euro-Med Monitor. Three university presidents have been killed in since 7 October, along with more than 95 university deans and professors. 88,000 students have been deprived of receiving their university education and 555 students who were granted international scholarships have not been able to travel abroad.

Israel’s actions fall within the framework of its public policies of making the Gaza Strip uninhabitable and expelling its Palestinian residents. Israel is accomplishing precisely this by establishing a coercive atmosphere devoid of basic services and necessities for survival, i.e. by destroying people’s physical safety and psychological stability, which may ultimately force the Strip’s inhabitants to evacuate. (Read the full report here.)

Shocking footage shows unimaginable destruction in📍#Gaza city, including our health centre.

+70% of civilian infrastructure- including homes, hospitals & schools- have been destroyed or severely damaged.

84% of health facilities have been affected by attacks.

Nowhere is safe. pic.twitter.com/9yRjJGvSMA

— UNRWA (@UNRWA) February 15, 2024

The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) says that Israeli claims that 20 “terrorists disguised as medical personnel” were arrested from al-Amal Hospital on Friday were “fabricated”.

The Israeli army raided the Khan Younis hospital last week after it had come under heavy bombardment for weeks. Thousands of displaced people had taken shelter there.

“The PRCS believes that these accusations are only part of a series of excuses fabricated by the occupation forces to justify the siege, bombing, storming of hospitals, and killing of PRCS medical staff and others in the Gaza Strip,” the group said in a post on X.

The aid organization added that Israeli forces arrested nine of its medical and administrative staff as well as nine elderly patients and their companions.

Al Jazeera reports: Orphaned children lose family, identity in Gaza:

Lying on a bed at the European Hospital in southern Gaza, hidden behind bandages that enveloped his disfigured face, five-year-old Ahmed Abu Zariaan remained unidentified for more than a week.

The injured boy was one of a growing number of children in the war-torn enclave to be registered as “unknown”, or under the acronym WCNSF – wounded child, no surviving family.

Ahmed’s family was wiped out in an Israeli air raid as they travelled southwards along Salah al-Din Street, a route Israel designated for safe passage from northern Gaza, in early November.

Heeding the Israeli army’s order for residents in the northern part of the enclave to evacuate to the south, the family of five left Beit Hanoon on a donkey cart and headed for Rafah, on the border with Egypt.

A strike targeting a nearby house along the way killed the whole family but spared the five-year-old…

Reuters reported on November 15: “Bombarded twice in Gaza, 4-year-old Ahmed loses parents, then legs”

Defense for Children International-Palestine reports: Neehel Ziad Mohammad Bregheith, 16, was shot in the head by Israeli forces on February 14 in the Palestinian town of Beit Ummar, in the occupied West Bank.

He is the 100th Palestinian child killed in the occupied West Bank since October 7, according to documentation collected by DCIP.

Neehel sustained a gunshot wound to the head as he and other students were leaving school for the day amidst intermittent confrontations with Israeli soldiers.

Israeli snipers were deployed on the rooftops of buildings in the town, while other Israeli soldiers deployed on the streets, opening fire with live ammunition. More than 10 injuries were reported,.

“Decades of systemic impunity has created a situation where Israeli forces shoot to kill without limit,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability program director at DCIP.

Ha’aretz reports: Six Israelis were wounded on Friday morning in a shooting attack in southern Israel; at least 2 have now died.

According to police sources, the suspect arrived at the Re’em-Masmiyya intersection and began firing at a bus stop. He was later shot.

This is a developing story.

Al Jazeera reports: Hamas has rejected Israeli allegations that the group uses Nasser Hospital, saying that they are in a “new episode in the series of lies” that Israel is using to justify its war crimes and attacks on medical facilities in Gaza.

Israeli forces raided the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis Thursday on the pretense that Hamas fighters and the Israeli captives they still hold are located inside. A spokesperson for the Israeli army said earlier that early searches of the hospital had not yielded evidence of the captives.

“We have repeatedly said that the policy of our Palestinian resistance was and remains to distance public and civilian institutions and the health sector from any military activity,” Hamas said in a statement.

“We have asked the United Nations and relevant organizations on several occasions to bring an international committee to examine the hospitals and prove that Israel’s narrative is a lie. But our demands have not been heard.”

US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller was questioned about investigations into the killings of 6-year-old Hind Rajab and her family and Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abudaqa, and in Gaza. From 2011-2023 Miler was a partner at Vianovo, which announces:

Vianovo is a public strategy firm that specializes in high-stakes brand, political, and crisis issues. Drawing upon high-profile work and relationships from presidential elections, the White House, Capitol Hill, corporate boardrooms and Wall Street, our team moves at campaign speed to win for clients.

Washington Post reports: A report this week from U.K.-based Sinai Foundation for Human Rights, which has a monitoring team in northern Sinai, suggested that Egyptian authorities were creating an area to house Palestinian refugees who crossed the border.

Footage obtained by the organization and shared exclusively with The Post shows trucks and bulldozers clearing debris from a rectangular plot of land measuring about eight square miles adjacent to the Gaza border, with a concrete wall being built around the perimeter. The Post verified some of the footage and obtained satellite images that show that two square miles within that area were cleared between Feb. 5 and Wednesday.

Despite its public refusal to entertain any scenario in which Palestinians are pushed into Egypt, the country is probably preparing contingency plans, a former Egyptian official said.

“If as a result of the attacks [in Rafah] tens of thousands of Palestinians cross the border, do you think the Egyptian army would shoot at them? The answer is no,” they said. “Any responsible government would have to think, ‘Okay, if we have the worst-case scenario, how would we deal with that?’”

Times of Israel reports: Gaza will need a new “Marshall Plan” to recover from Israel’s ongoing attack, a UN official says.

“This will need a new Marshall Plan,” said Richard Kozul-Wright, director at the UN trade body UNCTAD, referring to a plan for Europe’s economic recovery after World War II.

Early estimates suggest reconstruction could cost up to $50bn. It remains unclear who will pay for the devastation.

Reuters reports: Top ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government rejected Palestinian statehood on Thursday following a Washington Post report that Israel’s main ally the United States was advancing plans to establish a Palestinian state.

“We will in no way agree to this plan, which says Palestinians deserve a prize for the terrible massacre they carried out against us: a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said.

NOTE: Between 1947 and 1949, at least 750,000 Palestinians from a 1.9 million population were made refugees beyond the borders of the state. Zionist forces had taken more than 78 percent of historic Palestine, ethnically cleansed and destroyed about 530 villages and cities, and killed about 15,000 Palestinians in a series of mass atrocities, including more than 70 massacres.

After that, Zionists won the “prize” of the State of Israel. (Read more here.)