NEWS ANALYSIS: As The Ceasefire Ends, Remember That For Israel, The Cruelty Is The Point
It’s been hard to nail down a death toll in the Gaza strip, especially since Israel stormed Al Shifa hospital, the HQ of Gaza’s Ministry Of Health which was tallying the death totals. Current conservative estimates put the total at between 15,000 to 20,000, but these are almost certainly undercounts. Not only does it exclude people who were killed and buried without going through a hospital, but it also includes countless hundreds still stuck under rubble. What’s obvious is that this has escalated to be one of the major crimes of the 21st century.
The Israeli English language magazine +972 published a stunning exposé about what they call Israel’s “mass assassination factory” caused by “Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza.” Their analysis found that “Permissive airstrikes on non-military targets and the use of an artificial intelligence system have enabled the Israeli army to carry out its deadliest war on Gaza”
Compared to previous Israeli assaults on Gaza, the current war… has seen the army significantly expand its bombing of targets that are not distinctly military in nature. These include private residences as well as public buildings, infrastructure, and high-rise blocks, which sources say the army defines as “power targets” (“matarot otzem”).
These targeting of civilian structures, one source told the magazine, was intended to “create a shock” in the civilian population. In other words, it’s pure terrorism.
One source told the magazine
Nothing happens by accident. When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed — that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target. We are not Hamas. These are not random rockets. Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home.
The sources understood, some explicitly and some implicitly, that damage to civilians is the real purpose of these attacks
This should have been obvious to anyone paying attention to the conflict. The sheer volume of children killed puts it orders of magnitude beyond any comparable conflict. It’s why the UN warned that Gaza was becoming a “graveyard for thousands of children”:
The propaganda about “human shields” doesn’t even rise to the level of a joke. It is only meant for the fanatics who just need a justification for their viciousness, no matter that facts. For one, when international organizations seriously investigated Hamas’ alleged use of human shields, they found no evidence of their use by Hamas. They actually found extensive evidence of Israel literally using human shields as a constant tactic in their warfare.
Past dishonesty aside, one need only look at a map of what is actually being targeted in Gaza. Today, BBC published satellite analysis that showed that 100,000 buildings in Gaza to be damaged or destroyed.
Democracy Now! reported on a similar analysis last week that is well worth the watch.
Do you believe these were all “legitimate” military targets? Is Israel even seriously trying to make that case?
Another metric of Israel’s heightened cruelty was brought to my attention by the Iraq Body Count project, an organization that maintains a public access database of civilian casualties on various US military conflicts. They analyzed the ratio of killed to wounded in earlier Israeli attacks on Gaza and compared the current operation:
In three previous, air-strike and artillery–heavy assaults by Israel on Gaza—Operations Cast Lead (2008-09), Pillar of Defense (2012), and Protective Edge (2014)—the killed to wounded ratios were 1 to 4.6, 1 to 5.2, and 1 to 6.
During the first 10 days of Israel’s current onslaught the average ratio for killed to wounded was 1 to 4.2, roughly in line with earlier military operations. However from week three onwards—by which time hospitals’ capacity to properly treat casualties would have been overcome—that average had risen to 1 to 2.1.
This operation, they write “is not only creating many thousands of wounded but is ensuring that they cannot receive medical aid, and are destined only to be added to the number killed.”
This wanton cruelty is also why they stormed Al-Shifa hospital and attacked numerous other hospitals in Gaza. The ones they didn’t attack, they are preventing from functioning by starving them of fuel.
For the other hospitals, Israel usually didn’t bother creating a justification for public consumption, but for Al Shifa, the Israelis claimed that there was a Hamas command and control center held under the hospital. While Israel provided no evidence whatsoever beyond some amusing artwork, these claims were backed up by US intelligence - notable truth tellers to be sure.
Predictably when the terror had come to an end, and Israelis raised their flag like conquerors over a civilian hospital, no such evidence was found. The New York Times observed that such evidence “might never come.” Images of weapons and basements flooded the internet to convince the fanatic followers, but for thinking people, their propaganda was so clunky that even Fox News, NBC and CNN were openly questioning its veracity. Who can forget the sinister Hamas calendar? The game was finally given away when Israel announced that Hamas’s HQ was not in fact in Northern Gaza as they had been claiming for weeks, but was actually in the South, in the purported “safe zone” to which they had driven hundreds of thousands of desperate people.
None of this comes as any surprise to anyone who has taken even a casual glance at Israel’s history of violence. One's mind casts back to the devastating United Nations report on Israel’s Operation Cast Lead (2008-9 which found that Israel deliberately intended to “punish” “humiliate” and “terrorize” the people of Gaza. But we need not go back that far. Immediately when this current escalation began, Israelis explicitly announced that they would not distinguish between militants and civilians - they are fighting “human animals”. For Israel in this “textbook case of genocide,” the cruelty is the point. Any subsequent claims to the contrary is simply propaganda for children.
What We’re Reading:
Congressman Jim Banks’s Pressure on Indiana University to Police Antisemitism Is Duplicitous and Dangerous - The Nation 11/29/23
Banks might appear to be a concerned public official who supports civil rights and is sincerely concerned about bigotry on the campus.
But appearances can be deceiving.
Israel Knew Hamas’s Attack Plan More Than a Year Ago (New York Times 11/30/23)
Israeli officials obtained Hamas’s battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened, documents, emails and interviews show. But Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, considering it too difficult for Hamas to carry out.
The approximately 40-page document, which the Israeli authorities code-named “Jericho Wall,” outlined, point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to the deaths of about 1,200 people.
‘They shot her son in her arms and forced her to throw his body’: testimonies from the death march on Salah al-Din Street (Mondoweiss 11/30/23)
It became apparent from the testimonies I heard that the road was not designed to facilitate the flight of civilians but to systematically humiliate, degrade, and, in some cases, kill them. Not everyone survived the journey south, and even now, Salah al-Din Street is littered with dozens of bodies — men, women, and children — in different states of decomposition. The picture that emerges is not a “humanitarian road” but a death march. These are some of the testimonies I gathered from dozens of eyewitnesses.
‘Israeli Prisons Became a Graveyard for Us’: Freed Palestinian Child Prisoner Speaks Out (Palestine Chronicle 11/28/23)
The administrative detention allows Israel to incarcerate Palestinians based on ‘secret evidence’ that is not revealed, even to the defense attorney. The detention can be extended for a period of six months, with no charge nor trial.
“The prison became a graveyard following October 7,” Mohammed said. “Israeli guards often entered the cells and beat the prisoners.”
“One week ago, we were savagely beaten with metal bars. I put my hands on my head to protect it from injury, but the soldiers did not stop until they broke my hands,” Mohammed added.