Foreign volunteers try to protect Gaza hospital from Israeli missile strikes
Category Archives: IDF
A ‘quiet night’ in Gaza? Just five deaths and 25 sites bombed
Just imagine if in the space of 12 hours there were 25 bomb attacks in Israel and five people were killed.
In the United States, the cable news networks would devote round-the-clock coverage to the “terrorist bloodbath” (or whatever other sufficiently dramatic branding they chose) and this would go down as an important date in history.
But when the dead are Palestinians, it’s a completely different story.
The New York Times reports that last night was:
… a relatively quiet night, in which the Israeli military bombed 25 sites in Gaza, killing five Palestinians in the southern cities of Rafah and Khan Younis, according to the Gaza Health Ministry; about 1,400 others have been wounded.
Ashraf al-Qedra, the Health Ministry spokesman, and local journalists said that Ismail and Mohammed Najjar, relatives in their 40s who worked as guards on agricultural land in a former Israeli settlement in Khan Younis, were killed early Tuesday. In Rafah, drone strikes killed Atwa al-Amour, a 63-year-old farmer, and Bushra Zourob, 53, a woman who was near the target, a man on a motorbike, who was wounded.
Perhaps reporters Jodi Rudoren and Anne Barnard are employing Benjamin Netanyahu’s novel definition of quietness, that being: the silence that follows explosions.
The Israeli prime minister said:
[I]f Hamas does not accept the cease-fire proposal, as it looks now, Israel will have all the international legitimacy in order to achieve the desired quiet.
So far Israel has launched 1,609 air strikes, detonating hundreds of tons of explosives in order to create quietness.
Thousands of families flee north Gaza
Al Jazeera reports: After more than 12 hours of work, the bulldozers were still clearing what was once the al-Batsh family’s three-story house in eastern Gaza City, reduced to rubble after Israeli warplanes hit it with two bombs.
The air strike took place just before midnight on Saturday, the fifth day of Israel’s aerial assault on Gaza. Eighteen people from the same extended family were killed, the highest death toll in a single attack so far in the offensive, which has claimed more than 165 Palestinian lives to date.
The bombing in the Shaaf neighbourhood was said to be targeting the local police commander, Tayseer al-Batsh, who survived the strike with serious injuries. Shortly after the house was destroyed, Israel also struck several police and security posts in Gaza City.
“There was no reason to hit the house,” said Mohammed al-Batsh, a lawyer in his 30s, as dozens of people gathered to inspect the home and examine the severe damage to nearby houses.
He added that the airstrike killed Majed al-Batsh, the police commander’s cousin, and 10 members of his family – parents, children, daughters-in-laws and grandchildren. “They posed no threat to Israel. They were not firing rockets. They were civilians, children and women.” [Continue reading…]
Israel Defense Forces — a religious militia?
The Times of Israel reports: An IDF infantry brigade commander has come under criticism after composing a letter to his subordinate officers in which he called upon the divine to assist Israel in fighting a “blasphemous” foe in the Gaza Strip.
In an official dispatch sent to battalion and company commanders on July 9, Givati Brigade commander Colonel Ofer Winter told his subordinates that “History has chosen us to spearhead the fighting (against) the terrorist ‘Gazan’ enemy which abuses, blasphemes and curses the God of Israel’s (defense) forces.”
The letter came to light as Israel gears up for possible ground operations against Hamas in the Palestinian territory. A ground incursion would in all likelihood involve the Givati Brigade.
“We have planned and prepared for this moment and we take the mission upon ourselves out of commitment, complete humility, and because we are prepared to endanger ourselves and lay down our lives in order to protect our families, our people and our homeland,” he wrote in the letter.
Winter then invoked the Shema — the traditional Jewish prayer of allegiance to the one God — and called upon “the God of Israel” to “make our path successful as we go and stand to fight for the sake of your people of Israel against a foe which curses your name.”
Mickey Gitzin, executive director of Israel Hofshit — an organization which promotes religious freedom — called the letter outrageous, according to a report on Walla News.
“It turns the conflict from a one against terror to a religious war on any resident of Gaza,” Gitzin said. He added that there was a growing phenomenon of religious terminology entering the military and called the trend extremely dangerous.
“I would expect IDF commanders to remember that the IDF is the army of the people and not a religious militia,” Gitzin said.
‘We stay together, or we leave this world together’
Samer Badawi writes: From the rehabilitation hospital he heads, Dr. Basman Alashi can see where Gaza ends and Israel begins. If he needed a reminder of just how close the border is, it came early Friday morning, when Israel fired two “warning” rockets at the El Wafa Hospital, stoking fears that its 14 remaining patients – all elderly and all dependent on round-the-clock professional care to survive – would become the next victims of a bombing campaign that has so-far killed more than 120 people.
I spoke with Dr. Alashi moments ago, and he told me about one patient whose situation sums up the sense of dread – and determination – at the hospital.
“Her name is Hiba Kalli, and she is 85 years old. Every time a bomb explodes, she’s transported back to memories of the many wars she’s survived. You can see the panic in her face. When I hold her hand, she won’t let go, murmuring ‘please don’t leave me, please don’t leave me.’ I am not going to leave my patients. We either stay together, or we leave this world together.”
Hoping to dissuade Israel from attacking the facility, international solidarity activists “have planned a shift system to maintain a presence at the hospital,” according to one of the activists, American Joe Catron. [Continue reading…]
What the media isn’t telling you about Israel’s attack on Gaza
In its latest assault on Gaza, so far Israel has killed 21 children
It’s too soon to know what the ultimate death toll will be from Israel’s current assault on Gaza, but it’s noteworthy that even the Washington Post is paying attention to the number of children getting killed.
If media attention given to the World Cup has provided Netanyahu some extra latitude in conducting this military operation, the welcome escape of watching football offered no safety for one group of fans in Gaza.
As AFP reports:
It was supposed to be an evening of entertainment in Gaza, watching the World Cup semi-final at a cafe, a welcome break from 48 hours of Israeli air strikes.
But the evening was cut brutally short when an Israeli raid flattened the Fun Time Beach cafe in the southern Gaza Strip in the early hours of Thursday, killing nine people and wounding 15.
All that is left of the popular seaside cafe — where dozens broke their Ramadan fast on Wednesday night before settling down to watch Argentina play the Netherlands — is a large crater and a few mounds of sand.
The cafe’s multicoloured sign is still standing, somewhat crookedly, as colourful bunting and canvas windbreakers lay strewn on the floor, torn down by the force of the blast.
The Israeli missile scattered the dead and wounded across the beach, and made a hole so deep that seawater filled it up from underground after impact.
The New York Times adds: Tamer al-Astal, 27, was lying in a hospital bed being treated for shrapnel wounds in his face and leg from the blast on the beach. Mr. Astal, a construction worker, said he lived near the cafe and went there every night.
“We were watching news on the television and waiting for the match to begin,” he recalled. “I heard a terrible boom and felt myself suffocating. I woke up to find myself here in the hospital.”
Three of Mr. Astal’s cousins were among the dead.
Samah Sawalli, 29, said her brothers had been spending their nights at the cafe and coming home at dawn when the daily fast starts in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
“They would break their fast there,” she said, wearing a black veil and surrounded by her mother, who was unable to speak, and other women at the family’s home in Khan Younis. Weeping, she recalled their assuring her that Fun Time Beach “was a safe place.”
Death toll rises past 80 on third day of Israeli assault on Gaza
Al-Akhbar reports: Israel pressed on with an intensive aerial offensive in Gaza for a third day on Thursday, raising the death toll to 81, Palestinian officials said, as Israel indicated a ceasefire was “not on the agenda.”
The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the deadliest single bombing raid since the start of the offensive which killed eight members of a family including five children in a predawn strike. The attack destroyed at least two homes in Khan Younis in southern Gaza while residents were asleep, killing the eight people, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.
At least 81 Palestinians have been killed since the beginning of the Israeli military operation on Tuesday, more than 50 of them civilians, Palestinian health ministry sources said. The ministry of health added that 537 Palestinians have been injured in Israeli attacks since the Tuesday.
The bloodshed is likely to continue unabated, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Knesset members on Thursday that a ceasefire was not in the plans.
“I am not talking to anybody about a cease-fire right now,” Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted Netanyahu as saying. “It’s not even on the agenda.” [Continue reading…]
Miko Peled and Ali Abunimah on Democracy Now: ‘The incitement comes from Netanyahu.’
Israel steps up Gaza offensive and prepares for possible ground invasion
The Guardian reports: Israel has launched what it described as an open-ended and escalating offensive against the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, as air strikes and naval gunfire hit 50 sites overnight.
As part of a new offensive dubbed “Operation Protective Edge”, Israeli troops have been mobilised along the Gaza border and a limited number of reserves called up for a possible ground invasion.
The strikes came after Israeli army sources said troops were being put on notice of “preparation for escalation”. The Guardian saw columns of tank and armoured personnel carriers moving along the main highway between Jersualem and Erez, on the Gaza border.
Rocket attacks from Gaza – initially from Islamic factions other than Hamas – have been increasing in recent weeks against the backdrop of a major Israeli operation against Hamas on the West Bank following the kidnapping and murder of three teenagers whose bodies were found last week.
Air strikes by Israel, both following the discovery of the bodies and in response to rocket fire, have escalated in recent days despite assessments by analysts in Gaza and Israel that neither Hamas nor Israel wants a prolonged or bloody conflict.
Despite the continuing rocket fire, Israel’s prime minister, Binyanim Netanyahu, had shown a marked reluctance to be drawn into a military operation, offering Hamas “quiet for quiet” despite increasing political pressure from hardliners in his cabinet.
The Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, on Monday formally announced his party was leaving the Netanyahu coalition over the Gaza issue.
But despite this alleged government reluctance, the army has reportedly been ordered to prepare a significant expansion of its operation. [Continue reading…]
Asmaa al-Ghoul reports: During the past few days, news has circulated about indirect communication between Cairo and Hamas to set up a cease-fire agreement in Gaza with Israel. A Hamas official confirmed to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity that there has been no Egyptian brokerage for the truce and that “Egypt has distanced itself this time.”
In previous statements, Hamas leaders had set the lifting of the blockade in Gaza as a condition for any truce. However, this has yet to materialize.
“We agreed with the factions during a meeting held two days ago not to launch missiles, but 20 missiles are launched every day. Therefore, it seems that some parties have breached the agreement,” the Hamas official said. [Continue reading…]
Three Israeli settlers in the West Bank murdered, thousands of Palestinians in Gaza punished
The Guardian reports: Israeli jets and helicopters launched dozens of air strikes across the Gaza Strip overnight on Monday, just hours after the bodies of three abducted Israeli teenagers were found in a shallow grave near the southern West Bank city of Hebron.
The air strikes, ostensibly in response to an ongoing barrage of rocket fire from Gaza into southern Israel, came after the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, vowed the militant Islamist group Hamas, blamed by Israel for the kidnapping, would “pay a heavy price”.
The United Nations human rights office urged on Tuesday all Israelis and Palestinians to exercise “maximum restraint” as the tension across Israel and occupied Palestinian territory escalated.
Eyal Yifrah, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Frenkel, 16, who also had US citizenship, went missing while hitchhiking home from their religious schools in settlements on the West Bank on 12 June.
Their bodies were found by soldiers and volunteers in a valley covered with stones and brush on Monday afternoon.
The air strikes, which struck 34 locations in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip that Israel says were associated with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, came as troops on the West Bank killed an 18 year-old Palestinian during a raid in Jenin. Israeli authorities claim the teenager was a Hamas member who threw an explosive device at Israeli soldiers.
In Hebron, meanwhile, it was reported that the Israeli military had blown up the houses of two Hamas members named by Israel as suspects in the abduction Marwan Qawasmeh and Amer Abu Eisheh – the first punitive house demolitions since Israel halted the practice in 2005. The two men disappeared from their homes shortly after the abduction and have not been arrested.
Sheera Frenkel reports: Israeli intelligence officials… remained divided over whether Marwan Qawasmeh and Amer Abu Aisha…had direct ties to Hamas. The Qawasmeh family, one of the better-known families in Hebron, had recently distanced itself from Hamas.
“What we do know, is that this was likely an opportunistic move. The men behind this may have ties to a larger terror group, but this does not have the markings of a well-planned, complex operation,” one Israeli officer, based in the West Bank, told BuzzFeed earlier this month.
In Hebron, local residents who knew the families of the suspects expressed doubt that Hamas was responsible, especially after the Hamas’ senior leadership distanced itself from the kidnapping.
“That family, the Qawasmehs, often acted without the knowledge or signing-off of the senior Hamas leadership,” said Mahmoud Zabir, a Palestinian resident of Hebron who knows the family well. “They were considered troublemakers, even by Hamas.”
Shlomi Eldar adds: Each time Hamas had reached an understanding with Israel about a cease-fire or tahadiyeh (period of calm), at least one member of the family has been responsible for planning or initiating a suicide attack, and any understandings with Israel, achieved after considerable effort, were suddenly laid waste. If there is a single family throughout the PA territories whose actions can be blamed for Israel’s assassination of the political leadership of Hamas, it is the Qawasmeh family of Hebron.
As Alex Kane notes, while Isreal conducted its #BringBackOurBoys campaign, it already had strong evidence that the teens were already dead but through a media gag order, kept that information secret.
It was a bid to exploit the uncertainty about the youths and strike a blow against Hamas and the unity deal the Islamist movement struck with Fatah. In the process of the Israeli operation across the occupied West Bank, hundreds were arrested, at least five Palestinians were killed and the economy — especially Hebron’s — took a big hit.
Ma’an reports: Hamas is not interested in any confrontation with Israel, but if a confrontation is imposed, the movement is ready, says a spokesman of the Islamist movement.
Sami Abu Zuhri told Ma’an that “Hamas isn’t a superpower (ready) to fight a war against Israel, harming our people.”
Asked about the disappearance and killing of three Israeli teenagers, Abu Zuhri said there was only an Israeli version of the story which the occupation is trying to employ against Hamas and the Palestinian people.
Footage of Palestinian boys being shot is genuine, says Israeli rights group
The Guardian reports: The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has concluded that footage capturing the moment two Palestinian teenagers were shot dead by Israeli soldiers despite posing no risk to them is “genuine and consistent”, contradicting Israeli army claims that the footage is likely to have been forged.
A short section of edited CCTV footage was released earlier this week showing Nadim Nawara, 17, and Mohammad Salameh, 16, being shot and killed. Since then Israeli military sources have been quoted anonymously on several occasions in the local media trying to undermine the tape’s credibility.
The two boys were killed on Thursday last week during a rally involving stone-throwing outside Ofer prison on the West Bank on “Nakba Day”, when Palestinians mark the mass displacement that occurred during the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948. [Continue reading…]
Video prompts look at killing of Palestinian teens
The Associated Press reports: Security-camera video showing two unarmed Palestinians crumpling to the ground during a lull in a stone-throwing clash with Israeli soldiers revived allegations by human rights activists Tuesday that the troops often use excessive force.
The Israeli rights group B’Tselem said the images back its findings that troops killed the teens without cause by firing live rounds from more than 200 meters away. The soldiers were in “zero danger” at the time, said Sarit Michaeli of B’Tselem.
Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said, “It was a life-threatening situation, so the officers acted accordingly.”
He said he hadn’t seen the video, but alleged the images had been manipulated through editing.
Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a senior spokesman, said preliminary findings show forces fired only rubber-coated steel pellets, a standard means of crowd control, and did not use live fire.
The United Nations and the U.S. State Department called on the Israeli authorities to conduct a transparent investigation. [Continue reading…]
Video: The Israeli army’s war against children in the West Bank
Star Wars-style laser shield aims to protect all of Israel from short-range rockets
The Associated Press reports: An Israeli state-owned arms company developing a laser-based missile shield that evokes “Star Wars” style technology says its deployment over the country is closer to becoming a reality.
Rafael Advanced Defense Systems said development of the system was advanced enough for the company to be comfortable with publicizing it at this week’s Singapore Airshow, which is Asia’s largest aerospace and defense exhibition.
The laser technology behind the missile shield called Iron Beam is not that far removed from fiction.
“It’s exactly like what you see in Star Wars,” said company spokesman Amit Zimmer. “You see the lasers go up so quickly like a flash and the target is finished.” [Continue reading…]
Israeli commanders praise Hamas for maintaining ceasefire
The Washington Post reports: Just a year ago, Israel and the Gaza Strip’s Hamas rulers fought a lopsided eight-day war in the skies that the United Nations said left more than 160 Palestinians and six Israelis dead.
The period since last November’s cease-fire, though, has been the calmest between the two sides in more than a decade.
Israeli military commanders, although still wary of armed factions in Gaza, offer unexpected praise for Hamas, the Islamist militant and political organization that governs the enclave. Not only have Hamas and its armed military wing shown restraint, the Israeli commanders say, but they also have demonstrated that they can rein in the more radical factions, such as Islamic Jihad, that operate alongside them.
“Hamas was able to prove to us that it can control rocket fire from Gaza,” said Brig. Gen. Mickey Edelstein, commander of the Israeli military’s Gaza division. “This is an achievement.” [Continue reading…]
Palestinian villages subject to Israeli mock raids not told they are exercises
The Guardian reports: Palestinian civilians are being embroiled in Israeli military training, including mock arrests, raids on private homes and incursions into villages, without being told they are involved in army exercises.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) defended the training exercises following complaints from an Israeli human rights group, Yesh Din, about two separate drills held earlier this year. In the first, a large number of troops in full combat gear spread out in a small Palestinian village for several hours, causing alarm and fear among its population. In the second, about 15 armed soldiers raided the house of a family while they were finishing their evening meal during Ramadan. In neither case were residents told that it was a training exercise.
The Palestinians caught up in training drills are not informed in advance that an arrest or raid is an exercise. According to the testimonies of former Israeli soldiers, civilians with no connection with militant activity are usually selected for such exercises. “We used houses, streets, people like cardboard practice targets,” said one. [Continue reading…]
How close did Israel come to nuclear war in 1973?
Avner Cohen writes: week is the 40th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, perhaps the most traumatic moment in Israel’s history. On Oct. 7, 1973 — the second day of the war — Israel’s borders along the Suez Canal in the south and the Golan Heights in the north collapsed under a massive assault by a coalition of Arab armies. Israel was caught unprepared.
The previous morning, Oct. 6, Moshe Dayan, Israel’s defense minister and a hero of the 1967 Six-Day War, had been so confident of Israel’s security that he’d opposed mobilizing the entirety of the reserve force, despite intelligence reports indicating that an Arab military offensive was imminent.
Just one day later, after visiting the front lines, Mr. Dayan was transformed into a prophet of doom. In a well-documented episode, he warned his generals of the demise of the “Third Temple,” a reference to the modern state of Israel. Mr. Dayan believed the country was fighting for its survival, and his mind turned to options of last resort. Israel’s nuclear arsenal, which first came into being on the eve of the 1967 war, had by 1973 grown to 10 or 20 atomic weapons. It was Israel’s ultimate insurance policy at a time of existential threat.
In the four decades since the 1973 war, rumors have blossomed that Israel stood at the nuclear brink during that war’s darkest hours. A number of journalists and scholars have asserted that during a dramatic meeting in one of the war’s early days, a panic-stricken Mr. Dayan persuaded the Israeli war cabinet, including the prime minister, Golda Meir, to arm the country’s weapons with warheads for possible use.
Some analysts have even claimed that Israel used this “nuclear alert” to blackmail the Nixon administration into providing Israel with a huge airlift of military supplies. Although these stories were based on anonymous sourcing and circumstantial evidence, they have become a central part of the lore surrounding the Yom Kippur War. Even my own early scholarship was to some degree influenced by this mythology. But in a January 2008 interview I conducted, Arnan Azaryahu, a senior aide to an Israeli cabinet minister at the time of the war, negated and refuted the nearly four-decade-old mythology alleging that Israel almost reached the nuclear brink in 1973. [Continue reading…]
See more interviews at The Avner Cohen Collection.