Horror and Horror

People are shot on site as they even try to evacuate injured people, medical personnel are targeted, hospitals are bombed. No food or water allowed. Israel simply rejected UN and humanitarian organisation access. In truth the United Nations Relief and Works Agency [UNRWA] which has provided education, health care, and other essential services to Palestinian refugees since 1949, could soon disappear. People are dying by injuries and by thirst. It would be more merciful to drop a nuclear bomb on them. In some places they simply rounded people up, forced the women and girls to the south and took men and boys. It is more like ethnic cleansing of 1948. In other cases they simply sent robot explosives to clear neighbourhoods or bombed people (men, women and children) from the air. The horror is beyond description.

"Our Job Is to Flatten Gaza. No One Will Stop Us. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.” This is what the deputy commander of Israel’s 749 Combat Engineering Battalion, Lieutenant Colonel AdiBekore, posted on his personal Facebook account on October 9, 2023, just two days after the Hamas attacks of October 7. It is a quote from a biblical passage in which the biblical nation of Israel is commanded to attack the Amalekites, an ancient biblical nation that was a recurrent enemy of the Israelites. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also invoked this reference early in the war—a moment cited by South Africa in its case to the ICJ as a piece of genocidal rhetoric .. At the time of writing, the 749 Battalion is operating in northern Gaza and Jabalia. Israel’s campaign has intensified to the point of executions and depopulation. There, the battalion is seemingly racing to destroy as many buildings as possible. As one soldier put it, “We will leave them nothing!” Maya Radoszkowicz, a soldier in the 749 Battalion, filmed the explosion of Al-Azhar University, captioning it, "Goodbye to higher education in Gaza” with an emoji of hands in the form of a heart. They want to deny basic education and health-care to future generations of Palestinians. People in Gaza have forgotten to dream---they cannot think of normal life for decades to come.

The Gaza Health Ministry strongly condemned the Zionist entity's targeting of the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza and setting it on fire. Since the beginning of the Israeli criminal aggression on Gaza, there has been a deliberate targeting of the healthcare system in the northern part of the strip. This includes its siege and direct bombing of medical, health, and emergency teams, culminating in the burning of the Indonesian Hospital.

As noose tightens, some in the north determined to stay. In Jabaliya, the situation has become increasingly dire. Several days of relentless airstrikes and artillery bombardment have left the once vibrant town in ruins. Families are terrified, finding themselves trapped and unable to escape due to blocked routes. Israeli troops besieged several shelters housing displaced civilians before storming them. Videos circulated on social media showing dozens of detained men, and potentially also boys, blindfolded and their hands bound. Some people have been displaced several times in a year.

People are sick, hungry and desperate. And yet, many refuse to leave. Palestinians learn lessons from history. They remember well how two-thirds of the Palestinian people were ethnically cleansed in 1948, never to be allowed to return.

[Contributed]

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Frontier
Vol 57, No. 21, Nov 17 - 23, 2024