Global Research

Targeting Palestinian Civilians

As of Saturday morning October 28,  Israel’s genocidal attacks on Gaza have killed more than 7,300 Palestinians including about 3,000 children according to Al Jazeera. 

Another 1,650 Palestinians are trapped under the demolished remains of their homes and buildings destroyed by Israeli bombing, with half of them being children. 

This is an Israeli war which specifically targets Palestinian civilians especially children as the IDF has bombed: 

•  schools,
• hospitals,
• mosques and churches,
• homes, residential areas, apartment buildings,
• bakeries, 
• communications infrastructure, phone and internet cut-off

Water, electricity and fuel have been cut off to Gaza and more than 200,000 housing units have been destroyed entirely or partly by Israel. 1.4 million Palestinians about half the population of Gaza, have been displaced.

The Netanyahu government has instructed Palestinians to leave Northern Gaza for the south but it continues to indiscriminately bomb both parts so that there is no safe place for the Gaza population.   

Israel escalated its war even more on Friday night with the imposition of a total communications blockade on Gaza making medical rescue efforts impossible. 

This is designed to provide cover for even more atrocities by Tel Aviv as its aerial bombing has intensified to an unprecedented degree and a ground operation by Israeli soldiers has commenced in Gaza. 

Pure Horror. “Ball of Fire”

The bombing is so extreme that it has turned Gaza into “a ball of fire” according to Al Jazeera. “Pure horror” is what Palestinians are living through says the NGO Save the Children.   

“Situation is now catastrophic” emphasizes Shehab Younis, a Palestinian photographer who managed to send a WhatsApp voice note message to the BBC’s correspondent Tom Bateman based in Jerusalem.  “We have lost contact with people who have been targeted or injured.”  According to Bateman, ambulances cannot be called for people injured in Israeli airstrikes due to the communications blackout. 

On Saturday morning, Shehab posted a video of a “badly wounded man being rushed out of a building.” An ambulance cannot be brought for him so he has to be put in a truck.

Shehab highlights the dire plight of Palestinian civilians by explaining that

“When there is bombardment of houses the situation has become really very hard because of the lack of communications, of internet services.  All this is negativity impacting a large number of medical facilities and public service buildings when there are bombings in their areas.”  

With almost half the casualties of Israel’s bombing being children, Palestinian parents are resorting to “desperate measures” (according to Al Jazeera) “so that children or at least their memories survive.”

Doctors at Al-Shifa hospital are writing the names of children killed on their bodies.  Sara Al-Khalidi, mother of four children, says “The world should know about these children who were murdered by Israel because they are not numbers but names, stories and dreams killed by the Israeli occupation in Gaza.”

As the Al Jazeera article by Lina Alsaafin and Ruwaida Amer explains

“writing the names of children on their arms or legs is an attempt to bring the families closure in case their children are killed so that they are able to bury them in marked graves as opposed to mass graves.” 

Israeli attacks on homes have torn apart bodies making identification impossible. 

According to the Gaza health ministry, 200 bodies are “mangled beyond recognition” and so “impossible to identify”. Gazan Mohammad Abu Odeh believes Israel deliberately targets children. Indeed this Israeli policy has been well-documented by Chris Hedges during his time as correspondent for the New York Times in Israel and Palestine. 

Abu Odeh says that

“parents should not have to live through the painful reality of trying to identify the bodies of their children which have been disfigured in the most gruesome way by Israeli missiles.”

He asks “Can anyone in the world bear the thought of what our children are going through?”  

Image Bombing of Church

On Thursday, October 26, six U.N. special rapporteurs accused Israel of committing crimes against humanity in Gaza.  “There are no justifications for these crimes and we are horrified by the lack of action by the international community” they wrote in a statement. 

The U.N. General Assembly has overwhemingly approved a non-binding resolution calling for a truce in the Gaza war with 120 countries backing this including France, Spain, Ireland and Belgium. This has marginalized the United States which opposed the resolution along with only 13 other countries including the U.K.

John Kirby, speaking for the Biden administration, stated that “Israel had every right and responsibility to defend itself and take the fight to Hamas and its leaders [who were] sheltering behind civilians in Gaza.”  

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has condemned Israel’s bombing and invasion of Gaza and said that Turkey is preparing to declare Israel “a war criminal.”

Erdogan has called the west “the main culprit” responsible for the deaths of civilians in Gaza.   

Unprecedented War Crimes. UN Turns a Blind Eye 

“Nakba is ongoing” in October 2023, and the United Nations Secretary General remains “Deaf Mute”. 

In his presentation, UNSG Antonio Gueterres  (October 24), casually dismisses the issue of war crimes:

“He does not condemn Tel Aviv for the massive killings of Palestinian civilians (in the carpet bombing of Gaza) which so far have resulted in more than 5,000 Palestinian deaths, nor does he raise the issue of a “cease fire”  (Global Research Report)

According to Guterres in a twisted statement:

“the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas.  And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.” 

Genocide: Violation of the  Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC)

The self-proclaimed “international community” as well as the Western media (with some exceptions) have failed to acknowledge that extensive war crimes are being committed in violation of the UN Charter, international law including the Four Basic Principles of  The Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC):

“….respect for and protection of the civilian population and civilian objects, the Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives.” [Additional Protocol 1, Article 48]

Civilian population (children) and civilian objects (schools, hospitals, residential areas) are the deliberate object of Israeli attacks in blatant violation of the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC). 

The president of the I.C.C. Piotr Hofmanski does not have the foggiest understanding of Article 48. of the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC). Is this an issue of incompetence? Or has Piotr Hofmanski been co-opted into endorsing crimes against humanity? 

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The ICC Narrative: “Blaming Both Sides”

In 2021, the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor (OTP)  opened an investigation on the situation in Palestine:

This came in the wake of the OTP’s determination that  “war crimes have been or are being committed by Palestinian and Israeli actors in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip”. (emphasis added)