The numbers keep going up and the horror stories keep growing. Israel’s war on Gaza has killed 40,000 people and most of the dead are women and children.
It is a war for the extermination of the Palestinian people before our eyes. We must not divert our eyes and we must not be silent about these atrocities despite elections, despite mainstream media’s lack of full and fair coverage and despite the never ending lies told by the Israelis and excuses made by the American government.
As the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza passes the dark milestone of 40,000, United Nations rights chief Volker Türk called again on Aug. 15 for stopping the killing “once and for all.” And as UN News reported, he called again for “the release of all hostages, while negotiators prepared to meet in Qatar to renew efforts to halt the conflict and avert a wider war.”
“Most of the dead are women and children. This unimaginable situation is overwhelmingly due to recurring failures by the Israeli Defense Forces to comply with the rules of war,” the High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a statement.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, in the 10 months since last Oct. 7, the official toll is 40,005 killed, the majority of victims are women and children and, at minimum, 92,401 have been injured.
“‘On average, about 130 people have been killed every day in Gaza over the past 10 months,’ Mr. Türk continued, citing estimates based on data from the enclave’s health authorities, before describing the ‘scale of the Israeli military’s destruction of homes, hospitals, schools and places of worship [as] deeply shocking.’”
Homes, hospitals, schools and places of worship were decimated. What manner of war is this? It is a war to destroy the Palestinian people.
Similar to other international bodies, the UN rights chief’s office has “documented serious violations of international humanitarian law by the Israeli military and Palestinian armed groups.”
What UN News describes as a precious few have benefitted from a restored water pumping station that will serve about 100,000 a day in Khan Younis, said UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, which led repairs at the pumping station. It was previously “destroyed, surrounded by shrapnel and potential unexploded ordinance,” said an UNRWA spokesperson.
The severe shortage of clean water throughout Gaza since the war began has compounded families’ efforts to stave off disease and malnutrition, highlighting the importance of the reopened facility in the southern city and beyond, to tens of thousands of people, observed UN News.
Think of the hundreds of thousands of Gazans with no access or limited access to clean water or proper sanitation. The Israeli made destruction of life, backed by America, leads to more deaths because human beings are deprived of water.
Israel, using drones and bombs made by and paid for with U.S. dollars, continues to rain down havoc to destroy an essentially defenseless people, the Palestinian people.
And as ceasefire talks begin again, we should remember the Holy Qur’an’s admonition that the devil, evil ones, promise only to deceive.
Reuters reported Aug. 15 that the Gaza ceasefire talks had started in Doha, the capital Qatar, on Aug. 14. Reuters reported that Israel’s spy chief joined U.S. and Egyptian spy agency chiefs and Qatar’s prime minister for the private gathering.
Hamas, the Palestinian liberation group which is among those fighting Israel, will not attend the meeting. They will, however, be in touch with negotiators, Reuters said.
“Israel’s delegation includes spy chief David Barnea, head of the domestic security service Ronen Bar, and the military’s hostages chief Nitzan Alon, defense officials said on Wednesday.
CIA Director Bill Burns and U.S. Middle East envoy Brett McGurk represented Washington at the talks, convened by Qatari prime minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, with Egypt’s intelligence chief Abbas Kamel also in Doha,” said Reuters.
Reuters also reported Hamas and other Palestinian groups have stated that negotiations “should examine mechanisms to implement what was agreed upon in the framework deal submitted by mediators that would achieve a comprehensive ceasefire, a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces, breaking the siege, opening crossings and reconstruction of Gaza as well as reaching a serious hostages/prisoners deal.”
The Washington Post noted, “These are the first substantive talks since the assassination of a key member of Hamas’s negotiating team, Ismail Haniyeh, on a trip to Tehran last month. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its role in the killing of the Hamas leader—though it told U.S. officials immediately afterward that it was responsible.”
“The first Nakba or ‘catastrophe’ on the Palestinians was done in 1948 when Israel became a state. And they exiled 700,000 Palestinians and made them like vagabonds in the Earth.
But (Israeli Prime Minister) Netanyahu had in mind that he was going to use the pain of their (Israeli) loss to destroy the whole Palestinian community not only in Gaza but the West Bank, East Jerusalem.
It was a genocidal attack that he knew would preserve his place as a ‘great Jewish leader,’” said the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan at Saviours’ Day in Detroit in February.
“People do strange things when their hatred is so great of the people that they are killing; that their intention was to cleanse Gaza of every Palestinian that lived there and cleanse the West Bank and East Jerusalem so that Israel would not be bothered with Palestinians anymore.”
He continued, “Now some of you, my Black brothers and sisters, you are not concerned about the Middle East; you’re concerned about the refugees that are coming into the major cities that you feel may take your place. But to charge Israel with genocide and have the proof of their charge: South Africa stood up and took Israel to the International Court of Justice at The Hague.
“Now, this may not mean anything to you … Here is a book that Brother Malcolm gave me to read when I first came in The Nation; the title of it is: ‘We Charge Genocide: The Historic Petition to the United Nations for Relief from a Crime of the United States Government Against the Negro People (1951).’
The brothers and sisters that put these charges together, they took it before the United Nations. You don’t know anything about it! They charged America with genocide of Black and Brown and Red people in this country. And they (the United Nations) accepted it.
They didn’t do anything about it; but, you didn’t hear anything. You, younger people, you didn’t know that that went on, and to this very day you don’t know that your brothers and sisters, back in the early ’50s, put this book out and charged the government of the United States of America with genocide against us.
“Now you say, ‘Well, what does that got to do with me?’ Your extermination is being planned as well,” he said.
That is more than enough for us to keep our eyes on Gaza and to raise our voices high.
—Naba’a Muhammad, editor, The Final Call
