It appears the Israelis have reached, indeed exceeded, a ten-to-one citizen death toll in their war upon Gaza; that being an unfortunate measure of DISPROPORTIONATE killing. Primarily by air even before ground force entry across the border. [UPDATED]
RAMALLAH,
Nov 15 (Reuters) - Palestinian health authorities said on Wednesday it
was becoming increasingly difficult to obtain accurate casualty figures
from Gaza due to the collapse of the hospital and health system in parts
of the Israeli-besieged enclave.
The
Palestinian health ministry has been issuing a constantly updated total
of the casualties from the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, launched in the
wake of the deadly attack on Israel by Hamas gunmen on Oct. 7.
But
as Israeli forces have pushed deep into the Gaza Strip and
communications infrastructure has been degraded, contact with hospitals
has buckled and systematic data collection has become more problematic,
the ministry said.
"For
the fourth consecutive day, the ministry faces challenges in updating
the number of casualties because of services and communications
collapsing in hospitals in the north," it said in a statement.
The
latest total since Oct. 7 shows 11,320 people killed, including 4,650
children or minors. In addition, 202 medical personnel have been killed
and 3,600 civilians, including 1,750 children, have been declared
missing, the ministry said.
An
official from Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls the Gaza
Strip, said on Tuesday that 25 of the 35 hospitals in the enclave were
out of use due to the bombardment.
Savagery seems lessened with air power depolyment more indiscriminate than ground operations. With Israeli state goal of eliminating Hamas, meaning to kill every person believed to be part of Hamas, perhaps family members also, with there being no certain marking pattern between pure civilian, and Hamas members. Overkill seems the rule, to the extent uncontested air power was used to lessen ground force loss of life over the period before ground force entry. It appears such an operational approach has held Israeli troop losses lower than otherwise.
Al Shifa hospital
had become the chief target of a Gaza City incursion by Israeli forces,
who said the "beating heart" of the Hamas fighters' operations was
headquartered in tunnels beneath it. Hamas denied the accusation and on
Wednesday dismissed the Israeli statements as "lies and cheap
propaganda".
Israeli
military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said the troops were
still searching, having entered the hospital early on Wednesday after
days of clashes around it.
[...] Israel
has consistently said the hospital sits above a Hamas headquarters, an
assertion the United States said on Tuesday was supported by its own
intelligence.
Hailing
the entry of his forces into the hospital, Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement: "There is no place in Gaza that
we cannot reach. There are no hideouts."
"We will reach and eliminate Hamas and we will bring back our hostages. These are two sacred missions," he said.
Hopefully the Netanyahu statement was mistranslated. Using the word "sacred" about this butchery bastardizes all true meaning the word holds. More, quote:
Israel
began its campaign to wipe out the Islamist group that rules Gaza after
militants rampaged through southern Israel on Oct. 7. Israel says 1,200
people were killed and some 240 captives taken in the deadliest day of
its 75-year-old history.
Since
then, Israel has put Gaza's population of 2.3 million under siege,
battering the crowded strip with air strikes. Gaza health officials,
considered reliable by the United Nations, say about 11,500 Palestinians
are now confirmed killed, around 40% of them children, and more are
buried under the rubble. Israel has ordered the entire northern half of
Gaza evacuated, and around two-thirds of residents are now homeless.
[...]
HUMANITARIAN PAUSES SOUGHT BY UN
The United Nations Security Council on Wednesday called for urgent and extended humanitarian pauses in fighting
between Israel and Hamas militants for a "sufficient number of days" to
allow humanitarian aid access. It also called for the immediate and
unconditional release of all hostages held by Hamas. The 15-member
council overcame an impasse in four attempts to take action last month.
Israel
has so far rejected calls for a ceasefire, which it says would benefit
Hamas, a position backed by Washington. But a pause in fighting has been
discussed in negotiations mediated by Qatar to release some of the
hostages held by Hamas.
An official briefed on the negotiations
said Qatari mediators were seeking a deal that would include a
three-day truce, with Hamas releasing 50 of its captives and Israel to
release some women and minors from among its security detainees.
The official said Hamas had agreed to the outlines of the deal but Israel had not and was still negotiating terms.
The Israelis have thus taken counter-hostages, with the term "security detainees" inclusive of women and children, to where counter-hostages is the only sensible way of reading things. Possibly women and children targeted as suspected family members of suspected Hamas personnel make them "security detainees." The report is silent beyond use of the "security detainees" wording. Continuing quote:
The
head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom
Ghebreyesus, told reporters the Israeli incursion into Al Shifa Hospital
was "totally unacceptable".
"Hospitals are not battlegrounds," he said in Geneva.
Dr
Ahmed El Mohallalati, a surgeon, told Reuters by phone that Al Shifa
staff had hidden as fighting unfolded around the hospital overnight. As
he spoke, the sound of what he described as "continuous shooting from
the tanks" could be heard in the background.
"One
of the big tanks entered within the hospital from the eastern main
gate, and ... they just parked in the front of the hospital emergency
department," he said.
The
Israelis had told the hospital administration in advance that they
planned to enter, he said. By mid-morning, he and other staff had yet to
receive instructions from the troops, although the soldiers were
"metres away" from them.
After
five days during which he said the hospital had come under repeated
Israeli attack, it was a relief at least to have reached an "end point",
with troops now inside the grounds instead of outside shooting in,
Mohallalati said.
BaltimoreSun reports:
As the Palestinian death toll rises, thousands of bodies lie buried in rubble in Gaza
By Wafaa Shurafa and Samy Magdy
Associated Press
•
Palestinians
recover the bodies of the al Meghari family killed in the Israeli
bombardment of the Gaza Strip in Bureij refugee camp, Gaza Strip,
Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2023. U.N. humanitarian monitors say at least 2,700
people, including 1,500 children, are missing and believed buried under
the rubble. (Adel Hana/AP)
[The image shows a heavy equipment item - whether stalled absent fuel is unclear]
DEIR
AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — The wreckage goes on for block after devastated
block. The smell is sickening. Every day, hundreds of people claw
through tons of rubble with shovels and iron bars and their bare hands.
They
are looking for the bodies of their children. Their parents. Their
neighbors. All of them killed in Israeli missile strikes. The corpses
are there, somewhere in the endless acres of destruction.
More
than five weeks into Israel’s war against Hamas, some streets are more
like graveyards. Officials in Gaza say they don’t have the equipment,
manpower or fuel to search properly for the living, let alone the dead.
Israel
says its strikes target fighters and the infrastructure of Hamas, the
group behind the deadly Oct. 7 attack that killed about 1,200 people in
Israel. Hamas often operates in residential areas, and Israel accuses it
of using the civilian population as human shields, though it does not
explain specific targeting reasons for most strikes.
The victims are often everyday Palestinians, many of whom have yet to be found.
Omar
al-Darawi and his neighbors have spent weeks searching the ruins of a
pair of four-story houses in central Gaza. Forty-five people lived in
the homes; 32 were killed. In the first days after the attack, 27 bodies
were recovered.
The five still missing were al-Darawi’s cousins.
The victims are often everyday Palestinians, many of whom have yet to be found.
They
include Amani, a 37-year-old stay-at-home mom whose husband and four
children also died. There’s Aliaa, 28, who was taking care of her aging
parents. There’s another Amani, who died with her 14-year-old daughter.
Her husband and their five sons survived.
“The
situation has become worse every day,” said the 23-year-old, who was
once a college journalism student. The smell has become unbearable.
“We can’t stop,” he said. “We just want to find and bury them” before their bodies are lost in the rubble forever.
More
than 11,400 Palestinians have been killed, two-thirds of them women and
minors, according to Palestinian health authorities. The U.N.
humanitarian affairs office estimates that about 2,700 people, including
1,500 children, are missing and believed buried in the ruins.
The
missing add layers of pain to Gaza’s families, who are overwhelmingly
Muslim. Islam calls for the dead to be buried quickly — within 24 hours
if possible — with the shrouded bodies turned to face the holy city of
Mecca. Traditionally, the body is washed by family members with soap and
scented water, and prayers for forgiveness are said at the gravesite.
The
search is particularly difficult in northern Gaza, including Gaza City,
where Israeli ground forces are battling Hamas militants. Hundreds of
thousands of people have fled southward, terrified by the combat and
pushed by Israeli warnings to evacuate. In the south, continued Israeli
airstrikes and shelling mean nowhere is safe in the tiny territory.
The
Palestinian Civil Defense department, Gaza’s primary search-and-rescue
force, has had more than two dozen workers killed and over 100 injured
since the war began, said spokesman Mahmoud Bassal.
More than half its vehicles are either without fuel or damaged by strikes, he said.
In
central Gaza, outside the northern combat zone, the area’s civil
defense director has no working heavy equipment at all, including
bulldozers and cranes.
“We actually don’t have fuel to keep the sole bulldozer we have operating,” said Rami Ali al-Aidei.
At
least five bulldozers are needed just to search a series of collapsed
high-rise buildings in the town of Deir al-Balah, he said.
Better there than next door is an observation hitting home, in that each of us can imagine that level of suffering, next door.
Biden has offered close to unconditional support for Israel in the
aftermath of the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7 that killed around 1,200
people.
But that position is looking increasingly out of step with
many Democratic voters amid Israeli reprisals that have killed around
11,000 Palestinians, displaced more than 1 million people and left Gaza
in a dire humanitarian crisis.
Almost six weeks on from the
original Hamas attack, there is growing evidence that voters take a more
ambivalent view of Israel’s response than the president does — and the
trend is especially true for left-of-center Americans.
A new poll
released Wednesday found that 56 percent of Democrats — and 38 percent
of all Americans — believe Israel’s military response has been “too
much.” The Democratic figure rose a startling 21 points since a poll
from the same organizations — NPR, PBS NewsHour and Marist — roughly a
month before.
The poll also found that 34 percent of Democrats disapprove of the way Biden is handling the conflict.
To
be sure, it’s possible that some of those Democrats believe Biden
should be even more supportive of Israel. But the working assumption in
political circles is that the dissenters are overwhelmingly those who
believe Biden has given excessively free rein to the Israeli government
led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“This is a terrible
miscalculation,” Rashid Khalidi, a Columbia University professor and the
author of several acclaimed books on Palestine, told this column.
“Participating to this degree with absolute support for Israel is
something most Americans don’t agree with.”
There are warning signs flashing for the Biden policy in many other polls, too.
A
new Economist/YouGov survey, also released Wednesday, found a plurality
of Democrats — 34 percent — believe Israel’s response to the Oct. 7
attack has been “too harsh,” compared to 30 percent who believe it has
been “about right” and 7 percent who believe it has been “not harsh
enough.”
Yet, at the same time, Democrats leaned toward Israel in their overall view of the conflict.
Twenty-three
percent of Democrats in the poll said their sympathies were with the
Israelis, against 17 percent who favored the Palestinians. A plurality,
39 percent, said their sympathies were “about equal,” while the
remainder declined to express an opinion.
Findings like that point
to the arduous political terrain Biden faces on the conflict. Jewish
voters are an important bloc of support for Democrats, and they tend to
favor Democrats over Republicans by a roughly 2-to-1 margin.
But
poll after poll has found younger Democrats tend to be more sympathetic
toward the Palestinians. Other important pillars of the Democratic
coalition, notably progressive votes and Black voters, also tend to lean
more toward the Palestinians than their centrist and white counterparts
do.
In the NPR poll, for example, 48 percent of all adults
younger than 45 took the view that Israel’s actions had been excessive,
whereas only 31 percent of the older-than-45s took the same view.
Forty-eight percent of nonwhite adults said Israel’s actions had been
too much, compared to 33 percent of white people who felt that way.
The
intensity of the feeling around the conflict may end up being just as
politically important as the raw numbers. The situation is literally one
of life and death for thousands of people. As such, it strikes far more
viscerally than many domestic political battles.
Amen. Trump can sit and be silent about this carnage, Biden is stuck. Trump, if in power, has been so close to Netanyahu's worse instincts that we can only imagine as close a support of Israel, or closer, as has been displayed by Biden and his people, the State Department and military in particular.
Bless the young for having their minds right, per polling reporting.
Patients,
staff and displaced people left Gaza’s largest hospital Saturday, with
one describing a panicked and chaotic evacuation as Israeli forces
searched men who were leaving and took some away
Palestinians
flee to the southern Gaza Strip along Salah al-Din Street, on the
outskirts of Gaza City, during the ongoing Israeli bombardment on
Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)The Associated Press
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip -- Patients,
staff and displaced people left Gaza’s largest hospital Saturday, with
one describing a panicked and chaotic evacuation as Israeli forces
searched and face-scanned men among the evacuees and took some away.
Israel’s military has been searching the hospital for a Hamas command
center that it alleges is located under the building — a claim Hamas and
the hospital staff deny.
The
evacuation from Gaza City's Shifa Hospital, which Israel says was
voluntary, left behind only Israeli forces and a small number of health
workers to care for those too sick to move.
“We
left at gunpoint,” Mahmoud Abu Auf told The Associated Press by phone
after he and his family left the crowded hospital. “Tanks and snipers
were everywhere inside and outside.” He said he saw Israeli forces
detain three men.
Elsewhere
in northern Gaza, dozens of people were killed in the urban Jabaliya
refugee camp when what witnesses described as an Israeli airstrike hit a
crowded U.N. shelter in the main combat zone. It caused massive
destruction in the camp's Fakhoura school, said wounded survivors Ahmed
Radwan and Yassin Sharif.
So now, a skeletal Palestinian medical presence, Israeli ground troops, making it put up or shut up time for the Israelis to find and neutralize and document this alleged big time Hamas hot spot under the hospital. If it proves not there, or there is some explosion making it unclear, Israel intelligence over Gaza tunnel placement will look bad. Moreover, airstrikes continue elsewhere than the hospital. Persons being seized via face recognition software, detail absent.
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