OUTRAGE HAS RESULTED FROM AN IMAGE OF A PALESTINIAN STRAPPED TO AN ISRAELI SECURITY VEHICLE

Many Accusing The Military Of Using Him As A “Human Shield”. Israeli Military Promises Investigation. That Promise Is Very Questionable Given Israel’s Record.

Social media footage of the man, identified by medics at 24-year-old Mujahid Raed Abbadi, went viral on the Saturday after the incident.

Abbadi can be seen strapped horizontally to the bonnet of a military jeep as it passes through a narrow alley in the West Bank city of Jenin.

On Sunday, the Israeli military said it was investigating the incident, which took place during a “counterterrorism operation” to arrest wanted suspects in the area of Wadi Burqin, near Jenin.

“In violation of orders and standard operating procedures, the suspect was taken by the forces while tied on top of a vehicle,” it said, adding that he was later transferred to the Palestinian Red Crescent for treatment.

“The conduct of the forces in the video of the incident does not conform to the values of the IDF [military] – the incident will be investigated and dealt with accordingly.”

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories, said the Israelis had been using Abbadi as a human shield.

“HumanShielding in action”, Albanese wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

Abbadi said, while recovering in hospital, that he was hit and wounded as he stepped out of his uncle’s house in Jabriyat, a Jenin neighbourhood.

“I tried to withdraw and get inside the house, but they started shooting”, hitting him in the hand.

“When they [the soldiers] arrived, they stomped on my head and hit my face, my injured leg and hand,” Abbadi said. “They were laughing and playing while they hit me.”

He said the Israeli soldiers lifted him and threw him on the ground before they tied him to the bonnet of the jeep, which left him with “burns on his back from neck to lower back” according to a doctor at Ibn Sina hospital.

A number of social media users criticised the reporting of the incident, noting that many outlets in the past reported on Israeli claims that Hamas used human shields during attacks on the Gaza Strip. Of course, reporting abuses by Hamas is fine but of those of Israel are not supposed to be known about at all.

THE ISRAELI OPERATION THAT KILLED OVER 200 PALESTINIANS IN NUSEIRAT WAS SUPPORTED BY AMERICAN DRONE FLIGHTS OVER GAZA

A Team Of American Special Operations Soldiers And Intelligence Personnel Based In Israel Assisted In The Operation.

Israel received intelligence support from the American regime in its Saturday operation in central Gaza’s Nuseirat camp that killed over 200 Palestinians and freed four Israeli hostages.

The intelligence support included information provided by American drone flights over Gaza. The American regime began flying MQ-9 Reaper drones over Gaza days after October 7^th and deployed special operations forces to Israel, demonstrating that American military support for Israel goes beyond providing weapons.

The Washington Post reported that a team of American special operations soldiers and intelligence personnel based at the American Embassy in Jerusalem provided the intelligence support. Besides the drone flights, the American regime provided communications intercepts, and Israel also received intelligence support from the UK.

Local residents said the Israeli special forces who carried out the raid were disguised as displaced Palestinians from Rafah, and others entered the camp in an aid truck. The Israeli military denied it used an aid truck, but Israeli media reported Israeli soldiers meant to blend in as Arabs were part of the attack. Israeli warplanes pounded Nuseirat as the Israeli commandos on the ground moved to locate the hostages.

According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, 274 Palestinians were killed in the attack on Nuseirat, and 678 were wounded. Gaza’s Media Office said 64 of the dead were children, and 57 were women. The total death toll in Gaza since October 7^th has surpassed 37,000.

Israel claimed it killed less than 100 people in the assault, while the American regime said it didn’t know how many people died. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan celebrated the assault and also acknowledged that “innocent people” were killed.

“We, the United States, are not in a position today to make a definitive statement about that. The Israeli defense forces have put out one number. The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry has put out another number,” Sullivan said. “But we do know this … Innocent people were tragically killed in this operation.”

Hamas alleged that the Israeli attack killed three other Israeli hostages, including an American citizen. The Palestinian group released a video of three corpses, but they were unidentifiable.

ISRAEL IS NOT WAGING WAR ONLY ON GAZANS, IT IS DOING SO ON ALL PALESTINIANS

It’s Genocidal Assault On Gaza Is Part Of Its War Of Annihilation Against The Palestinian People Carried Out With Increasing Fervor Across Historic Palestine, Including The West Bank.

This is being done under the most right-wing government in Israeli history.

As it lays waste to Gaza, slaughtering tens of thousands of Palestinians and forcing nearly two million people to flee their homes, the Israeli government is also barreling toward de facto annexation in the occupied West Bank.

Settlement expansion and killings by the Israeli military and settlers have skyrocketed in the months following October 7^th. In this context, Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza must be understood as part of its larger war of annihilation against the Palestinian people, one being carried out with increasing fervor across historic Palestine under the most right-wing government in Israeli history.

Last year was the deadliest for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since the United Nations (UN) started counting the dead, in 2005. After October 7^th, that violence only got worse: 299 of the at least 507 Palestinians murdered in the West Bank in 2023 were killed by Israeli forces and settlers between October 7^th and December 31. In the seven months since the Gaza genocide began, Israeli forces and settlers have murdered over four hundred Palestinians, more than one hundred of whom were children.

Illegal Israeli settlements are also expanding at lightning speed. Between November 2022 and the end of October 2023, the Israeli government advanced over twenty-four thousand illegal housing units in already-existing settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, which UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said “risk eliminating any practical possibility of establishing a viable Palestinian State.”

The months following October 7^th have seen an explosion in settler activity, with nine new settler “outposts” established in the last three months of 2023 alone. These outposts are illegal even under Israel’s warped conception of international law, but that hasn’t stopped its ultra-right-wing government from “legalizing” a record number of settlement outposts.

In April 2024, Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who once remarked that there is “no such thing as the Palestinian people,” announced that an additional sixty-eight outposts were to be treated as so-called legal settlements, despite the fact that all settlements on occupied Palestinian territory are illegal under international law.

As illegal settlements expand across the occupied West Bank, settlers are being emboldened by Israel’s government to take up arms against Palestinians and steal their land. When the Israeli government launched its genocidal war on Gaza, it called up over five thousand settler military reservists, armed them, and assigned them to “defend” the West Bank, giving them free rein to terrorize and murder Palestinians with impunity.

In the months following October 7^th, settlers have carried out hundreds of attacks, displacing over 1,200 Palestinians across over a dozen different communities. Seven Palestinian communities in the West Bank have been completely uprooted as a direct result of settler violence. Hundreds of other Palestinians were displaced after the Israeli government demolished their homes because they lacked government-issued building permits, which are notoriously difficult for Palestinians to acquire.

A WAR ON ALL PALESTINIANS

Israeli violence against Palestinians is getting worse, but this violence is not new. Yet the American government insists on treating this violence as an aberration from, rather than the center of, the Zionist colonial project.

Earlier this month, ProPublica revealed that American secretary of state Antony Blinken had been balking for months at recommendations from fellow State Department officials to cut American funding to an Israeli military battalion that committed rape, murder, and other grave violations against Palestinians.

Almost immediately, reports emerged that the State Department would soon announce a ban on American funding to Netzah Yehuda, the Israeli battalion in question, in accordance with the Leahy Law, which prohibits the transfer of American weapons to foreign militaries accused of serious human rights violations.

In December 2023, the State Department said it was adopting a “new visa restriction policy” targeting individuals believed to have been involved in undermining peace, security, or stability in the West Bank.” In February, the State Department imposed financial sanctions on four Israeli settlers, and in March, it sanctioned an additional three settlers and two settler outposts.

As welcome as these steps toward accountability are, the administration’s piecemeal approach belies the systematic nature of Israeli crimes against Palestinians. As if to prove that very point, war cabinet minister Benny Gantz immediately condemned reports that the State Department may cut American funding to Netzah Yehuda, insisting that it was an “inseparable part” of the Israeli military.

An indefinite military occupation cannot be maintained without extreme violence. Though this violence has become more pronounced since the most right-wing government in Israeli history took power, and especially after October 7^th, it is not unique to the current Israeli government, nor is it unique to the last seven months.

Some of the most well-known abuses committed by the Netzah Yehuda Battalion — the murder of an eighty-year-old Palestinian American man and the rape of a Palestinian teenager in their custody, for example — took place in 2021 and 2022, shattering any illusion of “peace” before October 7^th.

In one settler pogrom last June, Illinois state representative Abdelnasser Rashid was forced to barricade himself inside his family home as hundreds of armed settlers, accompanied and protected by Israeli soldiers, rampaged through the Palestinian village of Turmus Ayya, shooting live rounds and setting homes and cars on fire. A twenty-seven-year-old father of two was killed.

The State Department was quick to condemn the attacks in Turmus Ayya and demand “full accountability” for those responsible, but Palestinians aren’t counting on it. Why should they? For seven months, the American government has armed and funded their butchers.

What’s happening in Gaza cannot be understood outside the context of the war being waged against Palestinians across historic Palestine. Instead of sanctioning individual extremists, the American government should cut off the state arming and enabling them.

PLEASE, DON’T LET THEM DELUDE YOU OR DISTRACT YOU FROM WHAT’S HAPPENING IN GAZA

We’re Not SUPPOSED To Be Unaffected By This Sort Of Thing. We’re Not SUPPOSED To Be Able To Find A State Of Psychological Comfort With Genocide.

It’s not natural, and it’s not right. Man-made nightmares unleashed upon the waking earth are SUPPOSED to disturb us.

It’s so very easy to let ourselves become numb to the horrors of what’s being done there day after day and month after month — but it’s so very, very important not to.

It would be so very easy to get overwhelmed and start letting one day of lies and atrocities blend into the next until it becomes this amorphous gray blob on the periphery of our attention. Reports like IDF sniper drones playing the sounds of distressed women and children to lure civilians out into the open and then shooting them, or Israeli officials ridiculously claiming they had no idea that blowing up a consulate building full of Iranian military officers would be seen as an escalation, have been coming out on a daily basis now, and it’s tempting to let yourself become overwhelmed and stop caring as much.

And it isn’t an accident that we are confronted with that temptation every day. Since day one the Israelis have been yanking public consciousness this way and that with astonishing atrocities, ridiculous denialism and high octane narrative spin, backed by the full might of the western empire and its peerlessly powerful propaganda machine. Every day we’re smacked in the face with new horrors, coupled with new statements from the Israeli regime taunting our sense of reality like “Heeheehee, did we do it? Who knows? No, we didn’t! But if we did it was good!” while western officials make vague obfuscatory statements that they need more information about each incident before taking a position and suggesting that the IDF needs to investigate itself to find out what happened. You’ll see them pour tons of energy into indignantly denying the very idea that Israel would ever attack a hospital, only to have them arguing that it’s fine and good for Israel to destroy every hospital in Gaza just weeks later.

This can break you, if you let it. It’s hard for the mind and heart to take such systematic pummeling, especially if you don’t understand that it is being done deliberately with a very specific goal in mind. The more westerners can be psychologically shoved into throwing up their hands and filing Gaza away in our mental “bad things in the world I try not to think about” drawer, the easier it is for Israel and its imperial backers to do the monstrous things they want to do there.

So we do what we can to help keep the reality of what’s happening in Gaza on the surface, not just in terms of the factual truth but the emotional truth of it as well. The horror. The suffering. That empathetic connection to the plight of our fellow human beings that can drive us to act, and to push for real change.

Don’t let these pricks numb you to what’s happening in Gaza. You can see plainly that that’s what they want, and you can see plainly what they’d stand to gain by pushing people into that state of numbness. So don’t give it to them. Ensure that, by the measure of at least one person, they fail toward that endeavor. And do what you can to ensure that they fail with others as well.

We’re not supposed to be unaffected by this sort of thing. We’re not supposed to be able to find a state of psychological comfort with genocide. It’s not natural, and it’s not right. Man-made nightmares unleashed upon the waking earth are supposed to disturb us.

Don’t let them take that away from you. Feelings are meant to be felt. Feel the grief. Feel the outrage. Feel the anger. Feel the pain. Let it come to you and say everything it wants to say to you, like you would with a small child telling you about their fears or their hurts. Write it down, sing it out, paint it, dance it, roar it into a pillow, throw rocks at it into a stream, whatever you can do to bring it into the world in a more tangible form. Let it wash through you, feel it completely until it has had its say, then get up, and keep fighting.

As we work our way into the monumental endeavor of creating a healthy world together, it’s not enough for us to be informed about what’s going on in the world — we’ve also got to have a mature emotional relationship with it. We don’t just need to have conscious minds, we need to have conscious hearts as well. If we don’t have a conscious relationship with our emotions, and if our emotions don’t have a conscious relationship with what’s going on in the world, then how can we hope to steer the world toward health? Caring and compassion are the only useful compass we have to navigate us there.

So shelter your caring from the efforts of the oligarchs to snuff it out, like a precious candle flame on a windy day. Even if we lose the battle in the short term, and even if we lose the war in the long term, at the very least you can deprive these freaks of that one little victory by continuing to care.

IT IS DIFFICULT TO DEFEAT AMERICA IN THE PROPAGANDA WAR

The American Empire Has By Far The Most Sophisticated And Effective Propaganda Machine Ever To Have Existed, Operating With Such Complexity That Most People Don’t Even Know It Exists.

One under-appreciated moment from Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with Vladimir Putin came after Putin implied that NATO powers were behind the 2022 bombing of the Nord Stream pipeline. Carlson responded by asking why Putin wouldn’t present evidence of this to the world, so as to “win a propaganda victory.”

“In the war of propaganda it is very difficult to defeat the United States because the United States controls all the world’s media and many European media,” Putin replied, adding, “The ultimate beneficiary of the biggest European media are American financial institutions.”

We don’t know about the specific nature of his Nord Stream insinuations, but Putin is definitely correct about the strength of the American propaganda machine. Of all the fronts one could possibly choose to challenge the United States on, propaganda is surely the least favorable. The American empire has by far the most sophisticated and effective propaganda machine ever to have existed, operating with such complexity that most people don’t even know it exists.

In a “fact-checking” article titled “5 lies and 1 truth from Putin’s interview with Tucker Carlson”, Politico Europe labels the above claim a lie on the basis that Russia has state-run media whereas American media is privately owned.

“The biggest news media companies are privately owned and operate without direct government control, in contrast to the state-controlled media landscape in Russia,” writes Politico’s Sergey Goryashko. “Russian state TV and the primary news agencies there are the property of the government, and the Kremlin controls other media or destroys those not willing to collaborate.”

At the bottom of the article is a line which reads as follows: “Sergey Goryashko is hosted at POLITICO under the EU-funded EU4FreeMedia residency program.”

EU4FreeMedia is a European Union narrative management operation set up to help integrate “Russian journalists in exile” into leading European publications, i.e. to provide maximum media amplification to Russian expats who have a bone to pick with the current government in Moscow. It is run with participation from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, an American government-funded media op under the umbrella of the American propaganda services umbrella USAGM.

We really couldn’t have come up with a more perfect illustration of what we are talking about here than the American government and its European lackeys running a complex and elaborate project to further slant European media against the Russian Federation, which then manifests as a Politico article calling Putin a liar and claiming propaganda does not exist in the west.

There’s an old joke that goes like this:

A Soviet and an American are on an airplane seated next to each other.

“Why are you flying to the US?” asks the American.

“To study American propaganda,” replies the Soviet.

“What American propaganda?” asks the American.

“Exactly,” the Soviet replies.

In reality the nature of the American centralized empire allows it to run a massive, nonstop international propaganda campaign through mass media platforms which are mostly privately owned. Anyone who’s wealthy enough to control a mass media platform is going to have a vested interest in preserving the status quo upon which their wealth is premised, and they will cooperate with establishment power structures in various ways toward that end.

The fact that these mass media outlets look independent but function as propaganda organs for the American empire allows its propaganda to fly into people’s minds without triggering any gag reflex of critical thinking or skepticism, which wouldn’t be the case if people knew those outlets were feeding them propaganda. Propaganda only really has persuasive power if you don’t know it’s happening to you.

The invisibility of American propaganda is further aided by the subtle methods by which it is administered, which we’ve seen exemplified beautifully in the coverage of Israel’s ongoing American backed mass atrocity in Gaza.

In an article titled “Coverage of Gaza War in the New York Times and Other Major Newspapers Heavily Favored Israel, Analysis Shows,” The Intercept reports that a review of 1,000 articles from the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times about Israel’s war on Gaza found that the outlets consistently used word choices which served Israeli information interests.

“Highly emotive terms for the killing of civilians like ‘slaughter,’ ‘massacre,’ and ‘horrific’ were reserved almost exclusively for Israelis who were killed by Palestinians, rather than the other way around,” The Intercept’s Adam Johnson and Othman Ali report. “The term ‘slaughter’ was used by editors and reporters to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 60 to 1, and ‘massacre’ was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 125 to 2. ‘Horrific’ was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 36 to 4.”

This is the sort of manipulation that a casual news consumer wouldn’t notice. Unless you’re on alert for bias and are keeping track of what words are and aren’t being used where, you’re probably not going to notice the absence of emotionally-charged words when reporting on Palestinians who are killed by Israelis.

This type of slant shows up in all sorts of ways, like today’s headlines about the IDF killing a six year-old Palestinian girl named Hind Rajab along with her family. Reliable propaganda organs of the empire like CNN, The New York Times and the BBC have respectively gone with the headlines “Five-year-old Palestinian girl found dead after being trapped in car under Israeli fire”, “Missing 6-Year-Old and Rescue Team Found Dead in Gaza, Aid Group Says,” and “Hind Rajab, 6, found dead in Gaza days after phone calls for help”. In contrast, Al Jazeera reports on the same story with the headline “Body of 6-year-old killed in ‘deliberate’ Israeli fire found after 12 days,” and Middle East Eye goes with “Hind Rajab: Palestinian girl found dead after being trapped under Israeli fire for days”.

It’s easy to spot the difference when they’re placed next to each other like we just did, but unless you’re really watching out for it and have a good background on what’s going on here you’re likely to miss what’s happening. If you’re like most people and don’t read past the headline, you’d never know from the imperial media headlines that the child was killed by Israel, and you’d certainly never know about her terrified phone call for help while trapped by IDF fire and surrounded by the bodies of her dead relatives. If you look to the legacy media and its algorithmically-boosted online iterations for information about the world, you went one more day with a distorted perspective of what’s happening in Gaza.

The western press constantly write headlines like this when trying to minimize the impact of someone’s death at the hands of a party they sympathize with, particularly with regard to Palestinians. Last month the BBC published an article titled “Record number of civilians hurt by explosives in 2023”, as though they were mishandling fireworks or something instead of being actively killed by Israeli bombs. The BBC later revised their atrocious headline, but revised it in the opposite direction, replacing “Record number” with “High number” to further minimize the impact.

Contrast this with the BBC’s headlines when it’s reporting on Ukrainians killed by Russian airstrikes.  Here’s a recent one titled “Ukraine war: Russian air strikes claim five lives in Kyiv and Mykolaiv”, and another titled “Ukraine war: Baby killed in Russian strike on Kharkiv hotel”.

Got it? In Ukraine people die from bombs because Russia launched Russian airstrikes and killed them very Russianly, whereas in Gaza people get hurt by explosions because they got too close to some type of explosive material.

Last week The Washington Post ran an opinion piece titled “Is America complicit in Israel’s bloody war in Gaza?”, which is already a ridiculously skewed headline because the answer is self-evidently yes — implying that there’s any question of this skews things in America’s favor. But even this was too much for the Post’s editors, who re-titled the piece “Has the Israel-Gaza war changed your feelings about being American?” to keep Americans from thinking too hard about Israel’s bloody war in Gaza and their country’s complicity in it.

In a Wednesday article titled “Biden Tries Again With Arab Americans in Michigan”, New York Times editorial board member Farah Stockman wrote the absolutely insane line “The Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel seems to be affecting Biden’s election prospects.” And then The New York Times actually printed it.

Read that line again. She’s saying Arab Americans are rejecting Biden because of the October 7^th Hamas attack, which is of course absurd; they’re rejecting Biden because he’s backing a genocide in Gaza. She wrote this nonsensical line because in the New York Times you can’t say things like “Israel’s genocide in Gaza” or “the president’s facilitation of crimes against humanity”, and you won’t be hired if you’re the sort of person who’d be inclined to. Instead we’re pretending that for some inexplicable reason Arab Americans are just hopping mad at Biden because October 7^th happened.

But again, these little manipulations fly under the radar if you’re not on the lookout for them. Such is the brilliance of the American empire’s invisible propaganda machine. That’s why it’s very difficult to win a propaganda war against the United States, that’s why westerners have been so successfully manipulated into accepting a status quo of endless war, ecocide, injustice and exploitation, and that’s why the world looks the way it looks right now.

LEARN ABOUT HOW ISRAEL HAS DESTROYED MOST OF GAZA’S SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES

All Schools In Gaza Have Been Shut And No University Has Survived Israel Military’s More Than 100 Days Of Onslaught.

Fifth and sixth grade students at the Rosary Sister’s School in Gaza were supposed to sit for a science test on October 9^th, 2023, two days after Israel launched its devastating military assault on Gaza. But they never got to take the test.

The school along with its library and theatre was destroyed by the Israeli army on November 4^th, according to Ruwaida Amer, who taught science at the private school.

Hundreds of schools, including those run by the UN, in the besieged Palestinian enclave have been bombed, and students and teachers killed, in more than 100 days of Israeli bombardment that has ravaged educational infrastructure and caused mental trauma to thousands of beleaguered students.

January 24^th marks the sixth International Day of Education as proclaimed by the UN General Assembly, but tens of thousands of Gaza students cannot go to schools, which are lying in ruins.

Here’s a look at how the war has taken a toll on Gaza’s education infrastructure:

HOW MANY SCHOOLS AND STUDENTS ARE IN THE GAZA STRIP?

More than 40 percent of schools (288) in Gaza are run by the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), while the rest are either directly operated by the Palestinian Authority or privately managed.

All of them are currently shut as more than 85 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced amid continued Israeli ground and air offensive that has killed more than 25,000 people, including 10,000 children.

According to UNRWA data from 2018, Gaza had 737 schools. At least 9,367 teachers work in the 288 UNRWA schools.

How many children are out of school in Gaza? No Gaza student has been able to attend school since November 6^th, 2023, when the Ministry of Education suspended the 2023-2024 school year due to the war that has seen indiscriminate targeting of residential areas, including offices and schools. Israel has defended itself, saying it was battling Hamas fighters but rights groups say Tel Aviv has made little efforts to protect civilians.

OCHA reported on October 27, 2023 that there were more than 625,000 pupils and more than 22,500 teachers in Gaza.

HOW MANY SCHOOLS HAVE BEEN TARGETED IN GAZA?

Up to 280 government schools and 65 UNRWA-run schools have been destroyed or damaged, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Education.

Ninety percent of Palestinian Authority schools have been subject to direct or indirect damage. About 29 percent of school buildings are out of service after being demolished or severely damaged.

Save the Children’s director for Palestine, Jason Lee, said in October: “Attacks on civilian infrastructure, including schools and hospitals where children are seeking refuge, are beyond unconscionable. This war is eroding humanity and is spiralling out of control.”

It’s the same story with private schools. “It was a painful first month because schools were directly targeted,” said Amer.

At least 133 schools are being used as shelter for internally displaced Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. These schools are sheltering far more people than their capacity as more than 1.9 million people have been displaced.

Israel has attacked multiple schools serving as shelters, killing displaced Palestinians. In November 2023, Israeli forces attacked the UNRWA-run Al Fakhoura school, killing at least 15 people. A week after that, at least 25 people were killed in Al-Buraq school. In December 2023, several were killed in attacks on Shadia Abu Ghazala School.

WHY EVERY UNIVERSITY IN GAZA WAS DESTROYED

It is not just schools that have borne the brunt of the Israeli onslaught. Centers of higher education, including universities, have been completely paralysed. Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that 12 higher education institutions in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, completely disrupting university education.

Geneva-based independent Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said that Israel systemically destroyed every university in Gaza in stages. The first stage included the bombing of the Islamic and Al-Azhar universities, the monitor said in a statement issued on Saturday.

Israa University, located in the south of Gaza city, was demolished by Israeli forces, as evident from a video released by Israeli media on January 17^th. The university authorities said Israel occupied and used the campus as a military base and detention facility for months before destroying it.

Additionally, the Israeli army has killed 94 university professors, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said. The monitor deemed the Israeli destruction of schools an “intentional destruction of Palestinian cultural and historical properties”.

“The targeted academics studied and taught across a variety of academic disciplines, and many of their ideas served as cornerstones of academic research in the Gaza Strip’s universities,” the monitor said in a statement.

Euro-Med said that it would be very difficult to return to academics post-war in the wake of the shear scale of the destruction of life and properties.

Palestinians have one of the highest literacy rates in the world, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics in 2018. Palestinian graduates have ended up performing high in fields such as mathematics, engineering and business.

HOW MANY STUDENTS AND TEACHERS HAVE BEEN KILLED AND INJURED IN GAZA?

Up to 4,327 students have been killed and 7,819 others have been injured as of January 16^th, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Education, which added that 231 teachers and administrators were also killed.

WHEN WOULD STUDENTS BE BACK IN SCHOOL?

It is uncertain when students in Gaza would be back in school as Israel’s war continues. It will likely take months, even years, to repair all damaged school buildings.

There are plans to launch e-learning for Gaza school students. Teaching, however, would be delivered from the occupied West Bank, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Education.

The e-learning model would be difficult to apply to Gaza, where telecommunications blackouts are common and students and teachers do not have access to stable electricity and internet. Moreover, most people have been forced to flee their homes and shelter at refugee camps.

“It is impossible for there to be e-learning. There is no shelter, no internet and no suitable conditions,” Amer, the science teacher from Gaza, said.

Meanwhile, schools and universities in the occupied West Bank are already shifting to an e-learning model with online classes as raids and settler violence have dramatically risen since October 7^th. This includes 55 schools located in the West Bank’s “seam zone” – an area separated from the rest of the occupied West Bank by Israel’s separation wall.

The occupied West Bank has been reeling from rising settler and Israeli forces attacks, with at least 371 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces and settlers since October 7^th.

Since her school was forced to shut down, Amer has met some of her students in public or spoken to them online. Three of her students have been killed in the war and some of them have lost their homes. The students in Gaza, she said, need psychological support for the trauma they suffer due to the war.

“I want to support them psychologically, but the circumstances they are living in are difficult,” she said.

ISRAEL ADMITTED IT KILLED DOZENS IN IT’S CHRISTMAS “MASSACRE” IN GAZA

An Israeli Army Spokesperson Says They “Regret” Casualties Sustained Alongside Intended Target In A Refugee Camp On Sunday.

The Israeli army admitted on Thursday that it killed dozens of Palestinians in an air strike on the Maghazi refugee camp in Gaza on Christmas Eve.

An army spokesperson said that the military regretted that the attack, which killed 70 people, had harmed people adjacent to the intended target.

“A preliminary investigation revealed that during the attack, additional buildings were damaged adjacent to the targets that were [meant to be] attacked,” the spokesperson said.

“[This] apparently resulted in harm to those not involved… The IDF regrets the harm to those not involved.”

Israel has previously bombed the camp, but the attack on Sunday was described as one of the “deadliest” since the start of the conflict in early October.

The bombing of the camp started just before midnight on Christmas Eve and continued into Christmas Day.

Hamas called the attack “a horrific massacre” and “a new war crime”.

On Wednesday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said the death toll from Israel’s operation had surpassed 21,000, most of them women and children.

Herzi Halevi, the head of the Israeli armed forces, said on Tuesday that the hostilities will continue for “many more months”.

At least 1.9 million Palestinians have been internally displaced since the beginning of the Gaza assault, according to UN estimates.

Only limited amounts of aid have been allowed to enter Gaza since the beginning of the war as Israel has imposed a total blockade on the strip, including cutting off water and electricity supplies, causing severe shortages of water, fuel, food, and medicines.

The conflict in Gaza was triggered by the October 7^th incursion by Hamas-led Palestinian fighters into southern Israel, which killed 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to the Israeli army.

During the operation, around 250 people were taken to Gaza as captives, of whom 129 remain in Gaza after a series of prisoner exchanges.

ISRAEL IS CREATING THE NEXT GENERATION OF HATRED AGAINST ITSELF

An Unbridled And Terribly Cruel Attack Against Gaza Creates Hatred Of Israel At Levels We’ve Never Seen Before, In Gaza, In The West Bank, And Everywhere Else In The World.

A bereaved father, whose 8-year-old son was shot dead by soldiers, stood this week at the entrance to his home at the border of the Jenin refugee camp and stated the simple truth: “These children will never forgive the soldiers. You’re raising another generation of resistance. Now our children want Israeli children to be killed too.”

Their father is Samer al-Ghoul. A visit to the Jenin camp revealed the Israel Defense Forces once again sowed destruction in recent days, to a horrifying extent. About 80 homes were demolished, all the roads in the camp were uprooted from their place and the sewage, whose infrastructure was destroyed, is flowing in the streets and raising a stench. The children of the Jenin camp wallow in it.

At the other end of the realms of the occupation, children are now being killed by the thousands. The recent pictures from Jabalya showed that neither God nor the IDF has mercy on the little children. Every 15 minutes, a child is killed in Gaza. Every few minutes, a child is rushed to what remains of a hospital, tossed onto the filthy floor, sometimes without anyone accompanying him.

Sometimes nobody knows if anyone is left from his family, and the child casts an uncomprehending, glassy-eyed glance at what’s happening around him. His body and face are covered with dust; he was pulled out of the ruins. These sights are broadcast continuously on all the television channels that know the meaning of journalism, with the exception of Israeli and American television, which shows nothing of that, after becoming fully mobilized in the service of the war.

All these children – the dead, dying, bleeding, groaning, wounded, disabled, the orphans, the terrified, the homeless and penniless, have siblings and friends who grow up with them. They’re the next generation, and they’ll never forget. While Israel is preoccupied with its terrible rage at what Hamas did to it, and with healing its wounds and its wounded, almost nobody is upset at what the IDF is doing to Gaza and Jenin.

Nobody thinks about the trauma in whose shadow the children of Gaza will grow up, about the inconceivable suffering of tens of thousands of children who are now walking around helpless, in existential fear, in the ruined streets. They have no bomb shelter and no resilience center, no psychological consultation and not even a home.

Maybe it’s permissible and natural for a nation to focus solely on its own pain and to ignore the far greater pain that it is causing another nation. That’s very doubtful. But this ignoring will also have a price that the Israelis will be forced to pay some day, and the price — at least that —must disturb them.

An unbridled and terribly cruel attack against Gaza creates hatred of Israel at levels we’ve never seen before, in Gaza, in the West Bank, in the Palestinian diaspora, in the Arab world and everywhere in the world where people are seeing what the Israelis don’t see and don’t want to see. And what’s even more terrible is this hatred will be justified. Nothing will be more justified.

Look what hatred was sown in the hearts of almost all Israelis by one barbaric attack. It destroyed the vestiges of the peace camp, it turned the cry “death to the Arabs” into something anachronistic and moderate. Now it’s “death to all the Arabs.” Some say it aloud, some only think it. Imagine what seeds of hatred are budding in every place that’s now being exposed to the horrors, from Shujaiya to Manhattan to Amman.

Can one see the horrors in Gaza and not hate those who are inflicting them? Experience what’s happening in Gaza and not dream of revenge? Generations of Palestinians bequeathed hatred for Israel as a result of the first Nakba, and other generations will now bequeath even greater hatred, as a result of the second Nakba that’s promised to them.

“The next generation is sleeping in the next room / I hear him breathing / The next generation is dreaming in the next room / and murmuring fears in his sleep,” sings Hanan Yovel to the words of Ehud Manor; the next Palestinian generation is murmuring fear in its sleep, but it isn’t in the next room — it has no room.

And in a few months from now, good Israelis will once again travel to Paris and London, Dubai and New York, and will be shocked by how they are hated. Why? What did they do wrong? Can you guess?

AN ISRAELI STRIKE ON RAFAH KILLS 27 AS JENIN RAID CONTINUES IN SOUTHERN GAZA

This Is While A 17-Year-Old Boy Killed Inside A Hospital Becomes The 12th Fatality In The Israeli Raids In The Occupied West Bank.

An overnight Israeli strike on Rafah, the southernmost area of the Gaza Strip, killed at least 27 people on Thursday it was reported.

Rafah is the last area Palestinians have been fleeing to for shelter, as Israel recently designated nearby Khan Younis as a combat zone.

The neighboring Abu Dhbaa and Ashour family homes were destroyed by the air strike as residents were scrambling to find people under the rubble.

Residents told Al Jazeera the buildings housed locals as well as displaced people from other parts of the Gaza Strip who had escaped previous Israeli bombings and the ground invasion.

The Palestinian health ministry announced on Thursday that the death toll in Gaza since the start of the war on October 7^th has now reached 18,787, while 50,897 people have been wounded.

The strike on Rafah comes after a Hamas ambush on Israeli forces in northern Gaza’s Shejaiya neighbourhood killed 10 Israeli soldiers, including a senior colonel.

The attack on Tuesday marked the largest losses for the Israeli army in a single day since the beginning of their ground invasion of the Gaza Strip.

A total of 116 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza since the beginning of the ground incursion.

The attack comes as a new wartime opinion poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research showed a surge of support for Hamas among Palestinians, particularly in the West Bank.

Some 82 percent of respondents in the West Bank and 57 percent in the Gaza Strip said Hamas was correct in deciding to launch its attack on Israel.

In contrast, 88 percent of respondents believe American backed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas should resign.

Some 63 percent of respondents also said they view armed struggle as “the best means of achieving Palestinian goals in ending the occupation and building an independent state”.

Hamas’s continued capacity to fight the Israeli army, despite heavy bombardments from the latter, called into question Israel’s ability to defeat the group without causing further mass destruction.

Pressure is also mounting on Israel, as Joe Biden said earlier this week that his ally may start losing international support due to its “indiscriminate bombing”.

A CNN report also revealed that an American intelligence assessment has said that roughly 40 to 45 percent of the 29,000 air-to-ground munitions Israel has used in Gaza have been unguided, or “dumb bombs”.

STARVING PEOPLE STOP UN FOOD TRUCKS

An United Nations agency said on Thursday that its food trucks are being stopped as Palestinians, starved by the Israeli siege, are taking the food and eating it straight away.

“Hunger has now emerged over the last few weeks and we meet more and more people who haven’t eaten for one, two or three days,” Philippe Lazzarini, the UN’ agency’s commissioner-general, told journalists at a refugee event in Geneva.

Additionally, Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) said it has become increasingly difficult to sustain life in Gaza.

“Staff on the ground say that every day that passes makes it more and more difficult to sustain human life in Gaza, that’s because of the systematic denial of food, water, medicine and fuel to the civilian population in Gaza,” MAP CEO Melanie Ward said on Thursday.

She added that the Israeli bombings will soon lead to the killing of 10,000 children.

JENIN RAID KILLS 12, INCLUDING TEEN

Elsewhere, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin are reportedly running out of food supplies, as Israeli forces have prevented them from leaving their homes for the past three days.

At least 12 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli raids on the city over the past three days, including a 17-year-old teenager.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said in a post on X that Israeli forces shot and killed the unarmed boy, Musa Ahmed Musa Khatib, inside Khalil Suleiman hospital compound in Jenin on Thursday.

“Israeli forces stopped ambulances taking discharged patients home outside Khalil Suleiman hospital. Paramedics and ambulance drivers were ordered out of the ambulances, stripped and made to kneel in the street. The patients were left in the ambulances,” said MSF.

“All of this happened in full view of our team. Since October 7^th, we have seen Israeli forces fire live bullets at the hospital, tear gas the hospital, block ambulances, humiliate and harass medical staff, and now – shoot and kill someone in the hospital compound.

“Hospitals are supposed to be safe spaces. Hospitals must be respected. These attacks must stop,” added MSF.

Israeli forces were also filmed using the public announcement system of a mosque in Jenin refugee camp to play Hannukah songs, in a video that surfaced online on Thursday.

The Israeli military said the soldiers were “removed from operational activity immediately”.

ISRAELI CRIMES IN JENIN WERE BACKED BY THE BIDEN REGIME

This Backing Of Israeli’s Attacks And Other Crimes Is Nothing New For President Joe Biden And His Administration.

On July 3^rd, the Israeli military launched a major assault on the Jenin refugee camp in the Israeli occupied West Bank Palestinian city of Jenin. According to the Israeli government, the goal of Operation Home and Garden is to target militants within the camp.

The Jenin refugee camp was established back in 1953 to house Palestinians who fled/were expelled by Israel in the 1948 Palestine War. This location has been a common place for many incidents in the conflicts between Israel and Palestine, including the recent attacks by both sides.

The Israeli government has been openly critical of the camp, with Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen describing the camp as a “hub for terrorist activities” and accusing Iran of funding its militants.

The attacks also come after members of the right-wing government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu advocating for more extensive military retaliation to address the ongoing violence in the region.

The attack began with drone strikes on what the JDF called “terrorist infrastructure” in the early mornings of July 3^rd. The airstrikes were followed by the deployment of troops who remained inside the camp until midday. The fighting lasted for about 14 hours after the Israeli forces entered the camp. IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht disclosed that around 2,000 soldiers, constituting a brigade-size force, participated in the operation.

The military then began to block roads, seized control of houses and buildings, and positioned snipers on rooftops. Military bulldozers were used to clear paths through narrow streets to allow for the armed forces to press through. This caused damage to the buildings according to The Guardian.

The results have already been brutal for the civilians. Palestinian officials have reported that several thousand have already fled their homes in response. UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said many people in the camp were in desperate need of food, drinkable water, and milk powder.

The Palestinian health ministry said that at least ten people have been killed and 100 injured, with 20 of them critically. This includes a 15 and 17 year old, who were both shot in the head and chest respectively according to the Defense for Children- Palestine. Tragically, most of the victims have been younger folks with the oldest being a 23-year old.

However, Israeli forces pulled after two days of fighting. The Palestinians in the area took the streets and claimed victory in the fighting according to the Mondoweiss.

While Palestine obviously came out against the attacks, other countries offered their support for Palestine. Jordan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) condemned the violence.

However, the United States has offered support the major Israeli offense. “We support Israel’s security and right to defend its people against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist groups,” a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council said, according to AFP.

Furthermore, the United States was informed a week ago that Israel was going to carry out a limited counterterror operation in Jenin according to the Israeli Hayom.

This backing of Israeli’s attacks is nothing new for President Joe Biden and his administration.

In May 2023, Mondoweiss ran a story about how the Biden Administration quietly backed Israel’s deadly assault on Gaza. Hours before Israel began to raining down more bombs, Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen. While the transcript of the call did not mention what were escalating tensions with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), it is clear that the matter was discussed and that Israel’s decision did not catch the United States off guard.

In January 2022, the Israel army murdered an 80-year old man named Omar Asaad, an American left beaten and handcuffed out in the cold at a checkpoint in what they called “poor decision-making on the part of soldiers.”

In another case, three-year-old Mohammed al-Tamimi, who was shot on June 2^nd, the army said that an Israeli soldier violated orders in firing warning shots into the air, causing another soldier to fire on Mohammed’s father’s car, that soldier believing the two people in the car were “terrorists.”

The Army announced there would be no prosecutions in either case. The State Department said they would talk to Israel about the death of Asaad, but that was 18 months ago, and nothing came of it.

In response to the death of Mohammed and his father, the State Department offered its “condolences” and said they would “look into it.”

In response, Joe Biden has said nothing about it. He neither demanded accountability or even denounced the “mistakes.” Instead, he chose to remain silence.

In February 2023, the State Department was asked about an announcement that governing authority over the West Bank had been transferred from the Israeli military authorities to the new office governing settlement activity in Israel’s Ministry of Defense, which would be run by the radical, far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, they responded with that they were “working to better understand this announcement.

Mondoweiss commented that, “The announcement was the culmination of two months of wrangling in Israel, but it was the fulfillment of a promise Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made as part of the coalition agreement that formed his new government. In other words, the administration has had two months to “understand” this announcement and its implications.”

If you support evil, you are evil.