A Massacre Within a Massacre: Israel Is Exterminating Palestinians in Northern Gaza and Killing Palestinian Journalists Reporting on It
Over 180 media workers have been killed and 60 detained as Israel’s methodical destruction of the brutalized Gaza Strip continues.
The US and UN have given Israel free reign to methodically kill the population of northern Gaza Palestinians. This is a genocide within a genocide.
In spite of experiencing two Israeli wars on Gaza, I never imagined the horrific scenes coming out of northern Gaza now: Israel is exterminating the population in broad daylight, broadcast for all the world to see.
And no one is doing a damn thing to stop it.
As of October 21, Israel has besieged northern Gaza for 17 consecutive days, preventing humanitarian aid from entering, putting the population of 400,000 already starved Palestinian civilians in the north at severe risk of full starvation.
More recently, the Israeli parliament has voted to ban UNRWA, the United Nations agency for humanitarian aid, which has been the sole lifeline for many Palestinians.
Israeli forces have also bombarded water stations and wells, depriving Palestinians there of water, and cut off communications with the outside world, leaving the civilians trapped, isolated, and unable to communicate to the outside world what terrorism Israel is unleashing on them.
According to Euro-Med Monitor, as of November 2,
“For nearly a month, a full-scale invasion of northern Gaza has been unfolding openly, aiming to eradicate the Palestinian population and forcibly displace residents through terror. In addition to a crippling siege that blocks aid, prevents ambulance services, and shuts down hospitals, the Israeli army has conducted numerous massacres, killing over 1,300 people and injuring around 2,000 more.“
As they did elsewhere throughout the Gaza Strip during the past over one year of genocide, Israeli forces are targeting hospitals in Gaza’s north. Euro-Med reported that,
“Israeli army forces surrounded the Indonesian Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahia. They fired two artillery shells at the hospital, cut off its electricity, and targeted anyone moving in the area.”
The army is firing on medics and other rescuers, as they’ve done throughout 2023-2024, as they did in 2009 when medics I was with came under Israeli sniper fire, another medic I knew killed by Israeli shelling with a flechette (dart) bomb. By killing the rescuers and destroying the hospitals, Israel ensures maimed Palestinians will go without medical care, and probably die.
This is, of course, illegal under international law. But as Israel’s genocidal actions have shown the world, the Israeli government (and army and illegal colonists) believe laws don’t apply to them.
Take the horrific video of an Israeli drone precision-targeting a Palestinian child, killing it, and then bombing the civilians who ran to try to rescue the child. Par for the course for the Israeli army. Were the perpetrator one of the United States’ enemies, there would be calls for No Fly Zones, sanctions and corporate media howling 24/7.
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Not content to merely murder Palestinian civilians by bombing, sniping and starvation, the Israeli army has been deploying robots with explosives and leaving booby trapped barrels to remotely detonate.
The scenes which journalists have been able to publish are surreal, like science fiction, with quadcopters policing the streets. A few weeks ago, a friend messaged me that he had to choose between starving or risking being shot dead by Israel soldiers or quadcopters if he tried to get bread.
Some days later he messaged me at 4 in the morning: Israeli tanks were outside his home, the audio he sent was terrifying. He chose to stay in his home, not endure another Nakba.
I don’t know if he is alive now.
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Israel’s War on Journalists
In early October, Palestinian cameraman Fadi al-Wahidi was shot in his neck by an Israeli quadcopter, leaving him paralyzed.
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Aside from al Jazeera, for which Fadi worked, most Western media and journalist projection organizations are unsurprisingly not reporting on Fadi being targeted by Israel.
Reporters Without Borders, which I previously wrote about for its downplaying the number of Palestinian journalists killed by Israel, has no entry on Fadi.
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The Committee to Protect Journalists, at least, does. Its entry notes:
“Al Wahidi was critically injured in the neck by a bullet fired from an Israeli reconnaissance aircraft while Al Wahidi and correspondent Anas Al-Sharif were covering an Israeli siege on northern Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp. Both men were wearing “Press” vests and clearly identifiable as journalists.”
Anas al-Sharif—who continues to courageously report from northern Gaza—told CJP they’d been in an area
“completely far from the areas of operations of the Israeli occupation forces,” and full of residents when, “an Israeli reconnaissance drone fired at us. After the shooting, we tried to move to another safer place and hide from any danger, but a bullet from the plane hit our colleague Fadi Al-Wahidi in the neck, which led to his complete paralysis.”
Wahidi has since fallen into a coma. His colleagues and friends are pleading for some sort of international intervention to allow him to be taken abroad for medical care, to save his life.
In central Gaza, Ali Al-Attar is likewise in critical condition after an Israeli airstrike. He, too, needs lifesaving medical care unavailable in Gaza (because Israel destroyed Gaza’s health care system). See this.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported, citing the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS), that (between 7 October 2023 and 10 October 2024) 168 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed in the Gaza Strip, including 17 women, 360 were injured, and 60 were detained (taken hostage).
Al Mayadeen updated on November 2 that the number of Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza is now 183.
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Israel’s Mass Extermination Campaign Continues
It’s absolutely devastating to watch every day pass with alarming new updates from or on northern Gaza. Like Anas al-Sharif, Palestinian journalist Hossam Shabat courageously reports apocalyptic scenes of Israeli bombarding in northern Gaza.
In a live update on X recently, he said:
“We are witnessing genocide and ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza, specifically in Jabalia, which is under siege from all directions. Israeli occupation forces are bombing displaced civilians, detaining them, and attempting to ethnically cleanse them. They are targeting shelters for displaced civilians, and bodies are scattered everywhere in the north, along the roads. Thousands of civilians are being forcefully displaced (ethnically cleansed) from the north.”
Meanwhile, in a bout of meaningless theatrics, US Secretary of State and Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin have, “demanded Tel Aviv improves the humanitarian situation in Gaza within 30 days or risk losing US military aid and face possible legal action.”
But clearly Israel’s biggest backer is spouting nonsense: there will be no cut to military aid, there will be no legal action, the US will never take a position to cease the Israeli genocide of Gaza. In fact, giving Israel one month before any supposed repercussion is, in my opinion, giving Israel a green light to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza as quickly as possible.
Israel seems hell-bent on implementing former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s ‘Five Fingers’ project, which envisioned carving Gaza into segments, all under Israeli security control.
If this is Israel’s intent, we will see block by block Israel repeating its extermination campaign of northern Gaza all over the rest of the already brutalized Strip.
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Featured image: Palestinian families walk through destroyed neighbourhoods in Gaza City on 24 November 2023 as the temporary truce between Hamas and the Israeli army takes effect (MEE/Mohammed al-Hajjar)
