For Palestinians, it is death by bombs, deliberate starvation, and now incineration after the occupier forces of Israel callously bombed a refugee camp of displaced Palestinians in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, killing at least 45 people.
It was shocking—yes, but surprising—no. The attack adds to the killing fields of blood Israel has already spilled in its war on Palestinians under the guise of a war on Hamas—the Palestinian resistance group—raging since October of last year.
As destruction continues throughout Gaza, notably unsettling was the May 26 shelling of the Tal al-Sultan neighborhood in Rafah that set ablaze a UN tent camp, incinerating people to death and maiming others. Previously, the camp was declared a safe zone, and thousands of Palestinian families settled there.
The attack followed weeks of chest-thumping threats by Israeli officials about a military offensive in Rafah, that is now in motion. Ignoring global objection and an explicit order from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) not to do so days earlier, Israel opted to spill blood and take more lives.
“It’s really unprecedented in its horror and depravity, even from the Israelis in this period,” said Muhammad Sankari, spokesman for the U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN)-Chicago.
“They literally dropped incendiary bombs on top of tents with children sleeping in them,” he told The Final Call. “I’m not sure if you saw the photos, but just horrifically graphic photos of the corpses of children incinerated by U.S.-supplied weapons,” observed Mr. Sankari.
The Chicago-based activist noted that the attack came after the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced applications for arrest warrants naming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and three top Hamas leaders.
The attack also followed an explicit order from the International Court of Justice to immediately stop its Rafah incursion. But despite the courts and global opposition, the ruthless act was Israel giving the proverbial “middle finger” to global detractors of their plans, said Mr. Sankari.
It was “a direct challenge to the so-called international rules-based order,” he reasoned. “The Israelis are, at this point, just spitting in the eye of international institutions,” Mr. Sankari stated, adding that such deadly defiance is part of Israel’s playbook.
After eight months of massive destruction and loss of life, all eyes are on Rafah because the city represents a final war front for the Zionist State, and the final refuge location for Palestinians escaping the bombardment that leveled the rest of Gaza. Palestinians find themselves in a vicious cycle of death and repeated displacement with nowhere else to flee.
Crisis has its roots
Their actions will ultimately be weighed on the scale of justice by the God of Justice. Peace rests on the question of justice. Since the arrival of the European Jews, they have been disagreeable to live with in peace.
Warnings concerning the consequences of European Zionists usurping Palestinian land came from the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan and his teacher before him, the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, Eternal Leader of the Nation of Islam. For decades both divine servants cautioned from scripture that every nation will be judged from their own books and recorded deeds.
“They [Israel] said they have to destroy Rafah because that is where the break started with Hamas, through Rafah, through the southern part of Gaza,” said Minister Farrakhan, during his annual Saviours’ Day address on Feb. 25, titled, “What Does Allah The Great Mahdi And The Great Messiah Have To Say About The War In The Middle East?”
The Minister continued, “So now they [Israel] have to ‘get even,’ so they [Israel] say: ‘No, no, no! We’ll [Israel] fight, and we’ll [Israel] fight through Ramadan,’” said Minister Farrakhan.
“And then they said ‘there are safe routes to the South’—but they started bombing those routes! They have killed so many of our people, and thousands are lost under the rubble. And all the atrocities that they said we were watching Hamas do, ‘beheading babies,’ ‘raping women,’ all of that was found to be false,” said Minister Farrakhan.
Denunciation of Israeli actions was swift
The horrific massacre at the refugee camp was real. Qatar, a central player at the negotiation table in the Israel-Palestinian crisis, denounced the targeting of displaced persons’ tents in Rafah and the Gaza Strip as a blatant challenge to international norms and a subversion of the negotiation process, it said in a statement on its website.
In a scathing reaction, Türkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan posted on X (formerly Twitter), that the attacks revealed the “bloody and treacherous face of the terrorist state.”
“As long as Netanyahu and his murder network cannot break the heroic resistance of the Palestinian people, they are cornered in their country” and “trying to extend their political life by shedding more blood,” he said.
Mr. Netanyahu will be “remembered with a curse, just like (Adolf) Hitler, (Slobodan) Milosevic, (Radovan) Karadzic and other pharaohs in history, whom he imitates,” Mr. Erdoğan wrote, adding Türkiye will do everything to hold these “murderers,” and “barbarians,” to account.
Aida Touma-Sliman, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and member of the Israeli Knesset, denounced the Netanyahu government for its “madness and vindictiveness.” Writing on X, Ms. Touma-Sliman said, “This bloody government refuses to obey all orders of the tribunal and is taking the madness and vindictiveness to a new criminal level.”
Diplomats in the UN Security Council held an emergency session on May 29 to condemn the move and wrangled over Israel’s recalcitrant posture against stopping the war that has taken over 36,000 lives in the last eight months.
“You cannot unhear the screams of a mother who did everything, everything in her power to save her children and failed,” said Majed Bamya, the deputy permanent representative of Palestine to the UN.
“Parents who having lost a child have to carry the others to safety. Not having the time to mourn and finding safety nowhere. Orphans taken care of by the next closest relative until none of them are left,” he said.
Mr. Bamya told the Security Council the world sees the indiscriminate attacks on civilians; the weaponization of starvation as a war tactic; the summary executions in the streets, including while blindfolded and handcuffed, and hospitals turned into sites of mass graves.
On the camp bombing, Mr. Netanyahu called it a “tragic mistake” and said the Israeli military would investigate it.
“Somehow, one should trust Israel?” Mr. Bamya rhetorically asked. “When it says it is investigating the conduct of the self-proclaimed … ‘most moral army in the world,’… an army committing war crimes on a daily basis,” he added. “Anyone interested in the truth or in accountability should not be interested in Israel’s sham investigations,” said Mr. Bamya.
He argued as an occupying power Israeli investigators and courts are designed to perpetuate and enable the occupation and are not designed to achieve accountability. “That is why Israel rejects international investigations,” he reasoned.
Israel offers a peace deal?
In an interesting turn on May 31, President Joe Biden announced that Israel placed a ceasefire proposal on the table to end the war. The first phase of the deal would be a six-week ceasefire. The second phase would be the return of remaining Israeli hostages from Gaza in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons, and the third, and final stage, a reconstruction plan for Gaza.
President Biden said the deal “creates a better day after” in Gaza “without Hamas in power,” and “sets the stage for a political settlement” that provides a better future for Israelis and Palestinians.
“The United States, Egypt, and Qatar would work to ensure negotiations keep going until all the agreements are reached and phase two is able to begin,” said the president.
However, the timing of the president making the announcement is questionable. Some analysts point out that he needs the deal to redirect domestic pressure.
Five months away from U.S. elections, and sinking approval ratings, President Biden’s re-election bid is being challenged and, in some cases, routed by key voter groups dissatisfied with him upkeeping Israel’s war footing that includes genocide. Some point to Washington’s reaction to the recent carnage at the refugee camp in Rafah.
However, Reuters reported that one day after Mr. Biden’s announcement, Mr. Netanyahu said there will not be any permanent ceasefire until Hamas was destroyed, casting questions on a key part of the proposal Mr. Biden said that Israel reportedly made.
U.S. National Security spokesman John Kirby told journalists on May 28, that there are no U.S. policy changes as a result of the strike on the camp. Notwithstanding, President Joe Biden saying a “major offensive” in Rafah is a “red line” for Washington, Mr. Kirby said the U.S. will wait on the outcome of Israel’s inquiry.
The posture highlights the U.S. hypocrisy of warning Israel against targeting Rafah on the one hand yet providing deadly armaments to Israel on the other hand. It raises the proverbial “red flag,” say observers, that for Israel, America has no “red line” or an “enough is enough” limit.
Washington’s holding Israel accountable for atrocities is lip service, they argue. Like the axiom: “I can show you better than tell you,” Israel continuously does both, understanding America has its back. Critics of the war and U.S. complicity argue that Israel and America—its chief enabler—must be called to the carpet.
“The invasion of Rafah by Israeli occupation forces is a clear assault on the Palestinian civilian population,” the Black Alliance For Peace (BAP), the anti-imperialist organization, posted on X. “This act of genocide funded by the U.S. war machine must be condemned, and both the United States and Israel must be held accountable for their war crimes‼️,” BAP said in the May 27 post.
“There will be no justice without U.S. accountability for the systematic violations of the human rights of Palestinians by their client state,” posted Ajamu Baraka, BAP’S national organizer.
A cross-section of activists and organizations will hold mass demonstrations across the U.S. on June 8, demanding an immediate ceasefire, an end to the siege on Gaza, the freedom of all Palestinian prisoners, and an end to the occupation of Palestine.
“Biden can’t draw the line, but we can,” said one of the march organizers, the Act Now to End War and Racism (A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition), in a statement.
