Palestinian pain and outrage are being ignored, but will not be erased – Day 366

Compilation of news reports – IAK staff 

On the first anniversary of Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army continued its deadly strikes on Monday, killing 42 Palestinians across the devastated enclave.

The health ministry in Lebanon said that Israeli airstrikes killed 22 people and injured 110 others in southern Lebanon on Sunday.

On October 7th, top US politicians focus on crime against Israel, barely nod to Palestinian pain, ignore US complicity

President Biden: On this day last year, the sun rose on what was supposed to be a joyous Jewish holiday. By sunset, October 7 had become the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust…We will not stop working to achieve a ceasefire deal in Gaza that brings the hostages home, allows for a surge in humanitarian aid to ease the suffering on the ground, assures Israel’s security, and ends this war.

VP Kamala Harris: We must uphold the commitment to repair the world, an idea that has been passed on throughout generations of the Jewish people and across many faiths.  And to that end, we must work to relieve the immense suffering of innocent Palestinians in Gaza who have experienced so much pain and loss over the year.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump commemorated the one-year anniversary of the October 7 attack by lighting a memorial candle at his resort in Florida. In his comments, he said, “I will not allow the Jewish state to be threatened with destruction, I will not allow another Holocaust of the Jewish people, I will not allow a jihad to be waged on America or its allies, and I will support Israel’s right to win its war on terror.”

Trump also spoke about antisemitism, claiming it is only a problem within the Democratic Party: “The Republican Party has not been infected by this horrible disease, and hopefully it won’t be. It won’t be as long I’m in charge.”

The armed wing of the Palestinian Hamas resistance group on Monday added historical context when it said the Al-Aqsa Flood operation on Oct. 7 last year “was preemptive as the (Israeli) occupation aggression reached a dangerous level.”

The spokesperson added, “A year has passed and we are still fighting in an asymmetrical battle a criminal enemy that doesn’t hesitate to commit all crimes.”

 

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Israel has killed 146 doctors in Gaza: Ministry

Anadolu Agency reports:

Israel has killed 146 doctors from various specialties in Gaza, while most medicines and medical supplies have been depleted amid the Israeli military’s genocide in the enclave, the Gaza Health Ministry announced Sunday.

In a statement marking one year since the start of the Israeli genocide, the ministry said that 83% of medical supplies and 60% of medications are unavailable in hospitals and health centers.

The ministry also noted that there are 25,000 patients and injured people in need of treatment outside the besieged territory.

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Israeli Army Reservist Shown Reading Talmud Passage to Cuffed Palestinians in Viral Video – is this even legal?

Ha’aretz reports:

A video circulated on social media shows an IDF reservist soldier reading a passage from the Talmud to three cuffed Palestinians in the West Bank.

In the footage, which was filmed in recent weeks, the soldier is seen reciting the passage while the three Palestinians lie on the ground, blindfolded. Another soldier, who filmed the incident, can be heard laughing and encouraging the reservist. The social media post has been removed.

In response, the IDF announced that both soldiers involved have been suspended from their duties and will face disciplinary action. The Israeli army added, “The soldier’s behavior in the video is serious and does not align with the values of the IDF or the standards expected of its soldiers.”

Something is happening in northern Gaza – who is telling the truth?

Various agencies report:

The Jerusalem Post reports: The IDF has expanded the humanitarian area in Al-Mawasi in northern Gaza [to accommodate Palestinians it has expelled from Jabaliya and other locations in the north], it announced Sunday morning.

This expansion included field hospitals established since the outbreak of the war, tent compounds, and supplies of food, water, and medicine.

Local Palestinians in Jabaliya report that there is nowhere to receive healthcare, nowhere to live, as buildings have been turned to rubble, As has been reported for 12 months, Israel has destroyed hospitals, schools and residential areas

According to Refugees International: In some areas of Gaza, prolonged food scarcity has driven families to desperate measures. Lacking access to food for extended periods, some Gaza residents told Refugees International that they resorted to consuming whatever was available, including non-food items.

A resident from northern Gaza reported that his family went without food for 17 days during the early months of the war, with the scarcity lasting nearly four months. To survive, the family ate animal feed, local weeds, and tree leaves. He recounted, “For four months, the north had no food supplies, and people ate tree leaves.”

One UN official told Refugees International that Gaza was “always two weeks away from a famine” due to the IDF’s refusal to normalize free-flowing aid. UN health officials have reported a significant surge in documented malnutrition cases, with a 170 percent increase across Gaza and a staggering 300 percent rise in the northern region.

Far from providing food, water, and medicine to the people of Gaza, Israel is preventing it – and has been for the last year. 

Israel’s year of war on the West Bank

Mondoweiss reports:

For a year now in the West Bank, Israel has launched a war against Palestinians. While the genocidal assault on Gaza has claimed the lives of tens of thousands, and according to some estimates, hundreds of thousands, the onslaught in the West Bank has ramped up in the form of displacement, the unprecedented expansion of settlements, rampant settler violence and pogroms, economic warfare, mass incarceration, and the launching of a military offensive on centers of resistance across the West Bank.

As of this writing, Israeli forces and settlers have killed 743 Palestinians, wounded 5,250, and displaced 5,947. But underlying these numbers is a far deeper reality of Israeli settler encroachment and creeping annexation in the West Bank.

The Israeli offensive in the West Bank is nothing random, nor is it detached from Israel’s policies in Gaza. It follows a strategy in line with Israel’s stated plans to annex the West Bank and undermine any possibilities for a future Palestinian state.

Although these Israeli policies have been employed by Israel for decades of occupation in the West Bank, observers argue that Israel’s strategy in the West Bank after October 7 has aimed to create a new political reality, heading towards achieving definitive Israeli control over the West Bank.

(Read the full article here.)

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“It’s like being in an abusive relationship with the world”: Palestinians in the diaspora grapple with collective grief

Middle East Eye reports:

“We have no map to understand the depth, the breadth, the transgenerational component to it, the multi-generational component to it, the persistence of it, and the impact that it’s going to have on our current generation and generations to follow,” psychiatry professor at the University of California San Francisco, Jess Ghannam told viewers of an online webcast, just weeks into the war.

“In the Palestinian context, there is no ‘post’ in post-traumatic stress disorder,” Ghannam said.

Aside from the week-long ceasefire and prisoner swap in November, there has not been a day in the last 365, when air strikes, sniper fire or the threat of famine and disease have not targeted Palestinians in Gaza.

“I’m watching this happen to my people. And I’m looking at these faces, and they look like me, and they sound like me, and they speak like me, and they have the same names as us, and they eat the same foods as us,” Safa Soueissi, a Palestinian American in Tulsa, Oklahoma, told Middle East Eye.

“So if my children were on the street and they were hit by a car and they were bleeding out on the streets, nobody’s gonna care, because they’re Palestinian children?”

“I’ve never personally experienced this amount of grief in my life,” Nada al-Hanooti, a Palestinian American from Dearborn, Michigan, said in January. “It’s like being in an abusive relationship with the world. So it also makes me kind of go crazy with rage.”

(Read the full article here.)

Powerful. “Daddy,what were you doing when the Gaza Genocide was being carried out?” pic.twitter.com/wvRpLQghgN

— Khalissee (@Kahlissee) October 8, 2024

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Israeli forces beat renowned Palestinian activist to death, kill a 12-year-old child

Various agencies report:

Middle East Eye: Israeli forces on Monday beat to death a renowned 66-year-old Palestinian activist after raiding his home in the occupied West Bank.

Ziad Abu Helaiel was a popular tribal figure in the West Bank, famous for peacefully confronting Israeli soldiers during demonstrations and standing between them and protesters.

Abu Helaiel’s son, Murad, told AFP that around 3am on Monday, a group of Israeli forces stormed their home in Dura, south of Hebron, trying to arrest one of their relatives.

“My father tried to stop them, so they struck him twice on the chest, then pushed him, causing his chest to collide with the door, which led to his martyrdom,” Murad said.

The soldiers then withdrew from the house, leaving Abu Helaiel unconscious on the floor. The activist was taken to hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

IMEMC: On Monday, Israeli soldiers invaded the Qalandia refugee camp, north of occupied Jerusalem, in the West Bank, fatally shot a Palestinian child in the abdomen, shot seven other Palestinians, including three children, and abducted twenty citizens.

In a statement, the Palestinian Health Ministry has confirmed that the soldiers killed a child, identified as Hatem Sami Hisham Gheith, 12.

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South Africa to present new evidence of Israel’s genocide in Gaza to ICJ

Middle East Monitor reports:

South Africa intends to present new evidence in the genocide case filed against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), President Cyril Ramaphosa said Monday.

In a statement on the first anniversary of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, Ramaphosa said the memorandum that his country will submit this month contains “detailed evidence” proving that Israel committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

He called on Israel to implement the provisional measures issued by the court in January, March and May.

South Africa filed a lawsuit against Israel before the World Court in December 2023 on the grounds that it violated the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention of Genocide.

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White House ‘continuing’ to advise Israel on response to Iranian attack

Anadolu Agency reports:

White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Monday that the Biden administration is “continuing to have discussions with the Israelis about their response, obviously responding to Iran’s attack, almost 200 missiles right that went flying into Israel. Our commitment continues to be very clear on Israel’s security, and that’s ironclad.”

US President Joe Biden suggested last week that Israel should not strike Iran’s oil or nuclear facilities.

NOTE: The Israeli paper Jerusalem Post reported Sunday that the US has offered Israel a “compensation package” if it avoids hitting certain targets in its planned attack on Iran.

The package would include military aid and a guarantee that the US would provide total diplomatic support.

“Israeli officials reportedly answered, ‘We consider the United States and listen to them. But we will do anything and everything we can to protect the citizens and the security of the State of Israel.’”

ALSO NOTE: Mainstream media and pro-Israel leaders ignore the context of Iran’s attack, framing it instead as somehow unprovoked. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, however, correctly declared that Iran’s missile attack was an act of “self-defense” that only targeted military and security sites used for attacks on Gaza and Lebanon.

He pointed out that Iran’s measured attack came “after exercising tremendous restraint for almost two months, to give space for a ceasefire in Gaza.”

The foreign minister added that Iran’s action was “concluded” unless Israel “decides to invite further retaliation” – words that indicate that Western leaders who want an end to the conflict ought to counsel Israel to let the matter drop.

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Pope Francis slams world’s ‘shameful inability’ to stop Israel-Palestine war

Reuters reports:

Pope Francis criticized, on Monday, what he called the “shameful inability” of the international community to end the war in the Middle East, one year after Hamas’s devastating attack on Israel, Reuters reports.

“It seems that few people care about what is most needed and what is most desired: dialogue and peace,” he wrote. “Violence never brings peace. History proves this, yet years and years of conflict seem to have taught us nothing.”

Francis has recently become more vocal in his criticism of Israel’s military campaign.

On 29 September, the 87-year-old Pontiff criticized Israeli air strikes in Lebanon that killed Hezbollah leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, as well as non-combatants, suggesting the air strikes went “beyond morality”.

Earlier in September, the Pope called Israel’s actions in Lebanon “unacceptable” and urged the international community to do everything possible to halt the fighting.

In his letter on Monday, Francis directly addressed Gazans:

I am with you, the people of Gaza, long embattled and in dire straits. You are in my thoughts and prayers daily.

I am with you, who have been forced to leave your homes, to abandon schooling and work and to find a place of refuge from the bombing. …

I am with you, who are afraid to look up for fear of fire raining down from the skies.

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Earthquake in Iranian desert – could it be a covert nuclear weapons test?

The Cradle reports:

On 5 October 2024, a 4.5-magnitude seismic event occurred in Iran’s Semnan province, sparking speculation that Iran has tested a nuclear weapon for the first time.

Such a seismic event is typically the result of an earthquake, but speculation has arisen on social media suggesting the event was instead an underground nuclear test carried out by the Islamic Republic in response to Israeli threats to bomb Tehran’s nuclear energy and oil facilities.

The speculation that Iran carried out a nuclear test comes just days after the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank in the US, published a report stating that “Iran can produce nuclear weapons far more rapidly than expected.”

‘A f***ing liar’ and ‘a bad guy’: Quotes from new Bob Woodward book show Biden’s growing frustration with Benjamin Netanyahu

CNN reports:

CNN reported on quotes U.S. President Joe Biden said to and about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that appeared in a new book by veteran journalist Bob Woodward. According to the book, Biden said of Netanyahu privately earlier in the year: “That son of a bitch, Bibi Netanyahu, he’s a bad guy. He’s a bad fucking guy!”

In another interaction, Biden asked Netnayhu: What’s your strategy, man?” in an April phone call. The Israeli prime minister answered, “We have to go into Rafah,” to which Biden responded, “Bibi, you’ve got no strategy.”

“I know he’s going to do something, but the way I limit it is tell him to ‘do nothing,'” Biden told his advisers, according to Woodward, but his frustration with Netanyahu boiled over as the war continued to escalate.

“He’s a fucking liar,” Biden said privately of Netanyahu, after Israel went into Rafah, Woodward writes. “Bibi, what the fuck?” Biden yelled at Netanyahu in July after an Israeli airstrike killed a top Hezbollah military commander and three civilians in Beirut, according to Woodward.

“You know the perception of Israel around the world increasingly is that you’re a rogue state, a rogue actor,” Biden said to Netanyahu, who responded that the target was “one of the leading terrorists.”

“We saw an opportunity and took it,” Netanyahu said. “The harder you hit, the more successful you’re going to be in the negotiation.”

RECOMMENDED READING: Trump blasts Netanyahu: “F**k him”, he never wanted a deal

MORE NEWS:

IMEMC Daily Reports.

The Guardian (Peter Beinart): The mainstream media has failed us after 7 October

Truthout: As a Rabbi, Taking Direct Action Against Genocide Is Part of My Sacred Practice

Palestine Chronicle: One Year into Israel’s Genocide, Gaza Suffers Massive Environmental Damage

 

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STATISTICS OCTOBER 7, 2023 – OCTOBER 7, 2024:

Palestinian death toll from October 7, 2023 – October 7, 2024: at least 42,708* ( 41,965 in Gaza* – 11,308 women (30%), 16,859 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 743 in the West Bank (~160 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, 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 7, 2024: at least 103,790 (including at least 97,590 in Gaza and 6,200 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 7, 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.

The death toll in Lebanon since October 8, 2023 is at least 2,083 (at least 127 children, 194 women) and 9,869 injuries (690 of them children). An estimated 1.2 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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