The beginnings of ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza, as Year Two of the revolution begins – Day 365

Israeli troops bombard, besiege northern Gaza as ethnic cleansing unfolds

AntiWar reports:

The Israeli military has launched a fresh assault on northern Gaza and ordered all Palestinian civilians living in the north to head south, signaling Israel may be enacting an ethnic cleansing plan that has been reviewed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Known as the “general’s plan” since it was drawn up by retired IDF generals, the plan would result in the complete ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from areas in Gaza north of the Netzarim Corridor, a strip of land controlled by the Israeli military that separates Gaza City and other parts of the north from the south.

Itsik Zuaret, a reporter for Israel’s public broadcaster Kan, said the general’s plan was underway. “In the future, the entire northern area of ​​the Gaza Strip will be cleansed according to the general’s plan,” he wrote on X.

The first step of the plan is to transfer the estimated 300,000 Palestinian civilians out of northern Gaza, then impose a full siege on the north to starve out remaining Hamas fighters and other Palestinians who remain. Northern Gaza would be declared a “closed military zone,” meaning anyone who remains will be targeted by the IDF.

Palestinian leaders are encouraging residents of the north to stay, reminding them there is no safe place in Gaza.

ANADOLU AGENCY ADDS: At least 30 Palestinians were killed and dozens injured in Israeli airstrikes on northern Gaza early Sunday, marking the deadliest Israeli escalation since May.

Palestinian medics reported that 30 bodies and several injured people were transported to hospitals in northern Gaza following Israeli airstrikes that struck Jabalia and Beit Lahia.

NOTE: In 1948, Israel dispossessed 750,000 Palestinian people and exiled them permanently to Gaza and other locations in what Palestinians refer to as the Nakba (“catastrophe”). Many Palestinians see the current situation as another Nakba – already 75% of the population of Gaza has been internally displaced –  and fear that they will never be allowed to return to their homes.

Forced transfer of a people group is a crime against humanity.

Report: US To Give Israel ‘Compensation’ If It Hits Only US-Approved Targets in Iran

AntiWar reports:

The US has offered Israel a “compensation package” if it avoids hitting certain targets in its planned attack on Iran, The Jerusalem Post reported Sunday, citing the Israeli TV channel Kan 11.

Amichai Stein, a correspondent for Kan 11, said the package would include military aid and a guarantee that the US would provide total diplomatic support.

“An American official said, ‘If you don’t hit targets A, B, C, we will provide you with diplomatic protection and an arms package,” Chair said. “Israeli officials responded saying, ‘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.’”

The US is coordinating with Israel on its plans to respond to the Iranian missile barrage that hit Israel last week, which came in response to several Israeli escalations throughout the region, including the July 31 assassination of Hamas’s political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran.

The US has said it will ensure Iran faces “severe consequences” but has warned against certain types of attacks, including attacks on Iran’s civilian nuclear facilities. President Biden said the US and Israel were discussing the idea of strikes on Iranian oil sites, but later said if he was in Israel’s shoes, he would be thinking about “other alternatives than striking oil fields.”

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.

Israel destroyed 611 mosques, eight cemeteries and three churches and caused the partial destruction of 214 mosques during its year-long aggression against the besieged Gaza Strip which began on 7 October 2023, the Palestinian Ministry of Endowments has said.

In a report issued Sunday, the ministry pointed out that over the past year, Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank have stormed and desecrated Al-Aqsa Mosque 262 times, performing Jewish prayers in the Muslim holy site.

According to the report, Israeli National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque along with ministers of his far-right government six times, and threatened to establish a Jewish synagogue on the site. Ben-Gvir has relentlessly worked to intensify the Jewish presence at the mosque through government support and by giving it a legal cover, it added.

The report indicated that “extremist Jewish religious groups have attacked and spat on Christians and Christian pilgrims in the occupied city of Jerusalem, specifically around ​​the Church of the Prison of Christ, and restricted them during Christian holidays, and prevented them from reaching the Nativity Church in Bethlehem in southern occupied West Bank and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in East Jerusalem.”

Gaza’s Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs also said that 19 of 60 cemeteries were targeted, with bodies exhumed and desecrated.

The ministry also reported that 238 of its staff members were killed and 19 were detained by Israeli forces.

Palestinian journalist killed in Israeli bombing after threats against his life

Middle East Eye reports:

Israeli forces killed a Palestinian journalist on Sunday, weeks after he received threatening messages instructing him to stop filming Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip.

Hassan Hamad, 19, died when his home in Jabalia refugee camp was struck by artillery fire.

Hamad was reporting on the new Israeli incursion just moments before he was killed.

A colleague with access to his account on X said that Hamad had been sending videos about the assault late into the night.

During their last phone call at 6am (3am GMT), Hamad said: “There they are. There they are. It’s over.”

A few months before his killing, Hamad shared a screenshot with his colleagues of a threatening WhatsApp message he received from an Israeli number.

The message read: “Listen… If you continue spreading lies about Israel, we’ll come for you next and turn your family into… This is your last warning.”

RECOMMENDED READING: Israel has killed more journalists in Gaza than in any conflict in 30 years

Lebanese authorities called on Sunday for piling pressure on Israel to halt its attacks against the health sector in Lebanon amid air and ground attacks on the country.

In a statement, the Lebanese Order of Nurses (ONS) accused Israel of deliberately targeting hospitals, doctors, nurses, and paramedics “in a blatant defiance of international laws and conventions,” and called on international groups to pressure Israel to cease.

Israel has launched massive airstrikes on Lebanon against what it calls Hezbollah targets, killing more than 2,011 victims since Sept. 23, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.

At least 97 medical and emergency personnel have been killed and more than 10 hospitals damaged in the attacks.

RELATED: Israeli airstrikes targeted areas in a southern suburb of Beirut on Sunday following Israeli army warnings to evacuate two areas.

Israeli aircraft carried out strikes on three different locations in the southern suburbs of Beirut, an Anadolu correspondent said.

RELATED: Israel has killed more than 100 children in Lebanon over the past 11 days, while 690 others have been wounded during the last six weeks of the Israeli onslaught, the  United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) announced.

RELATED: The Syndicate of Chemists in Lebanon (SCL) has warned that the extent of destruction and the depth of damage to buildings and the ground confirms the use of internationally banned bombs containing depleted uranium by Israeli forces, warning of the risk of contracting many diseases as a result of inhaling the dust caused by the bombing.

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Man attempts self-immolation at pro-Palestine protest near White House

Anadolu Agency reports:

A man attempted to self-immolate Saturday during a pro-Palestine protest near the White House, according to footage on social media.

The man, who claimed to be a journalist, was seen in the video with burns to his left arm as those around him poured water on it. He raised his left arm high with flames engulfing it.

The man is heard screaming that he is a journalist. “We spread the misinformation,” he screams at one point. “I’m a journalist and I said it was okay.”

Police detained the man and established a perimeter around the area; one report said he was transported to an area hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Witnesses said the man is a CBS-affiliated journalist and he was accusing the network of “spreading misinformation.”

Four people so far have staged self-immolations in the US to protest Washington’s support of the war in the Gaza Strip.

RECOMMENDED READING: Ignoring Immolators Lulls the Society to Sleep: Aaron Bushnell at the Israeli Embassy: “FREE PALESTINE!”

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Remembering Archbishop Desmond Tutu, defender of Palestine

Middle East Monitor looks back:

When the world lost Archbishop Desmond Tutu on 26 December 2021, it lost more than just a Nobel Peace Prize laureate or the former Archbishop of Cape Town. It lost a moral compass, a voice that refused to be silenced in the face of injustice, whether in the townships of South Africa or Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine.

Tutu displayed a rare foresight that was lacking in most public figures. As early as 2002, in an article for the Guardian titled ‘Apartheid in the Holy Land’ he described Israel as an apartheid state, a stance taken at a time when such comparisons were still relatively rare.

The former US President Jimmy Carter was the only other global figure to describe Israel as such in a 2006 book titled ‘Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid’. Many have followed since, and over the past few years, a wall-to-wall consensus has formed within the international human rights community about Israel’s practice of apartheid.

Talking to South African media, Tutu would say: “I have witnessed the systemic humiliation of Palestinian men, women and children by members of the Israeli security forces. Their humiliation is familiar to all black South Africans who were corralled and harassed and insulted and assaulted by the security forces of the apartheid government.”

Often he’d describe the racism perpetrated by Israel as being worse than the racism in South Africa. “In many instances [Israeli apartheid] is worse” than South Africa under white minority rule, said Tutu in a 2012 interview with David Frost.

Tutu’s journey to becoming a leading voice for Palestine began in the townships of South Africa, where he witnessed the daily indignities and injustices of apartheid. As Tutu rose to prominence in the Anglican Church and the anti-apartheid movement, he developed a theology that emphasised what he would describe as God’s concern for justice and human dignity.

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor,” Tutu would say. “If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

In this 2012 interview with Sir David Frost he talks about how Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is ‘in many ways worse than apartheid in South Africa’:

NOTE: Multiple human rights organizations have documented and reported on Israeli apartheid, including: Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Israeli human rights groups B’Tselem, and Yesh Din , the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), and Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic.

Iranian missiles ‘overwhelmed’ Israel’s air defenses: Wall St. Journal

The Cradle reports:

Satellite imagery shows that Iran’s barrage of ballistic missiles earlier this week was successful in overwhelming Israel’s air defenses, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on 6 October.

The Iranian attack on Israel demonstrated Iran’s advanced missile capabilities and caused major damage to three Israeli airbases, where as many as 32 of the roughly 180 Iranian missiles (18 percent) successfully hit within the bases’ perimeters, according to experts.

WSJ concluded that future Iranian strikes “could have much more serious consequences if they target civilian infrastructure or heavily populated residential areas.”

Iran fired the ballistic missiles at Israel on 1 October in response to a series of aggressions committed by Israel, including the assassination of high-level Hamas and Hezbollah leaders.

The Iranian armed forces’ general staff has promised that, if Israel retaliates, Iran will answer with “widespread and comprehensive destruction” of infrastructure within Israel.

Israeli Airstrikes Target Aid Trucks in Central Syria

AntiWar reports:

Israeli attacks against Syria continued apace over the weekend, with strikes reported against humanitarian aid trucks in the Homs Province of Central Syria. The trucks were carrying food and blankets, along with medical aid, from the Iraqi Red Crescent for those fleeing Israel’s attacks in Lebanon.

Details are still emerging. The attacks reportedly took place in an industrial area, near a car factory. Three members of the relief teams sent from Iraq were reported wounded in the strikes, and their condition is not at present clear.

Israel has reportedly been attacking Syria almost daily since its ground invasion of Lebanon started.

Shooting operation kills one Israeli officer, injures several in Beersheba

The Cradle reports:

One female Israeli officer was killed and ten people wounded, two of them critically, in a shooting operation at the central bus station in the city of Beersheba in southern Israel, Israeli media reported on 6 October.

The attacker was identified as Ahmed Saeed al-Uqbi, an Israeli citizen and resident of Hura, a Bedouin village in the Negev Desert.

Uqbi, who wore a bulletproof vest and was armed with a gun and a knife, opened fire at Beersheba’s central bus station, authorities reported, before being shot and killed by police.

RECOMMENDED READING: Cleansing the Negev: Israel plans to evict “tens of thousands” of Palestinian Bedouin

MORE NEWS:

Middle East Monitor: Israel settlers publish children’s book claiming ‘Lebanon is ours’

The Guardian: Disabled Palestinians are facing horrors piled upon horrors. I think of their suffering every day.

STATISTICS OCTOBER 7, 2023 – OCTOBER 6, 2024:

Palestinian death toll from October 7, 2023 – October 6, 2024: at least 42,650* ( 41,909 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 741 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 6, 2024: at least 103,503 (including at least 97,303 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 6, 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 2,011 (at least 127 children, 194 women) and 9,535 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.

• Human rights reports on Israel-Palestine (regularly updated)
• Every accusation a confession: Israel and the double lie of ‘human shields’
• Most Americans want to stop arming Israel. Politicians don’t care.
• Happy 100th birthday, Jimmy Carter – loved by many, smeared by some
• You can’t arm a genocidal state into moderation. So why does the West keep trying?
• How Does Israel Justify Mass Killings? It Starts in the Schools.
• From the Americas to Gaza: Spreading disease has long been used by colonizers to commit genocide
• Contrived charges of antisemitism are the new ‘Red Scare’
• How Israel’s quadcopters traumatize, maim and kill Palestinians in Gaza
• Israeli society’s dehumanization of Palestinians is now absolute
• The unpublished genocide diaries of Refaat Alareer
• An arms embargo on Israel is not a radical idea — it’s the law
• Israel is redrawing the West Bank, cutting into a prospective Palestinian state
• Gaza breakdown: 20 times Israel used US arms in likely war crimes
• U.S. universities spent the summer strategizing to suppress student activism. Here is their plan.
• ‘Words like Slaughter:’ A comparative study of The New York Times reporting in Ukraine and Gaza
• Cracks in the Dome: Israel’s security mirage
• Israel Suddenly Has A Problem With Attacks On Population Centers
• Americans are always the last to know…about Israel’s crimes