As Israel Murders Hossam Shabat, and the Gaza Death Toll Passes 50,000, Did you Know Israel Has Killed Over 500 Times More Children Than Were Killed on Oct. 7?
25.3.25
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I no longer know what to say or do.
Yesterday, Israel deliberately targeted and murdered Hossam Shabat, the brave, beautiful 23-year old journalist who somehow dodged death for over 17 months, reporting relentlessly from the front lines of Israel’s brutal attacks, including the four months from October last year until a ceasefire began on January 19, when Israel implemented an exterminatory “genocide within a genocide” in northern Gaza.
After hanging up his press vest and helmet two months ago, when the now aborted ceasefire began, he only put them on again four days ago, after it became abundantly clear that Israel had deliberately shredded the ceasefire, reimplementing a “complete siege” on all humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip on March 1, and then, under the cover of night on March 18, resurrecting its genocidal aims with renewed fury, launching a hundred simultaneous attacks across Gaza that killed at least 436 people, “including at least 183 children, 94 women, 34 elderly people, and 125 men”, as Al Jazeera explained, adding that at least 678 others were injured, “many critically, with more still trapped under the rubble.”
Just yesterday, Gaza’s beleaguered health ministry announced that these deaths — to which another 356 have been added in the following days, has pushed the official death toll to over 50,000 since October 7, 2023 — 50,021 in total, including 15,613 children, of whom 872 were under one year old. The health ministry added that over half of those killed were women and children. The figures don’t include 14,222 other people who are almost certain dead, their bodies “trapped under the rubble or in areas inaccessible to rescuers”, as Al Jazeera reported on February 3, noting that the total number of children killed or presumed dead at that time was 17,492.
Israel’s killing of at least 500 times more children than were killed on October 7, but it could be 2,400 times as many
This, shockingly, is almost 500 times the number of Israeli children killed by Hamas and other militants on October 7, 2023, when they broke out of the “open-air prison” of the Gaza Strip, and killed 1,068 Israelis and 71 foreign nationals in total, according to Israeli Social Security records that were released in December 2023 — with 695 of those being “Israeli civilians, including 36 children, as well as 373 security forces.” Please note that the “40 beheaded babies” lie, which is still doing the rounds in Zionist circles, and which continues to be used in an apparent effort to justify the annihilation of the entire Palestinian people, cannot possibly be true, as only two of these 36 children killed were babies.
What this means is that, since October 7, Israel has killed 485 times as many Palestinian children as the number of Israeli children killed on October 7, although the true total will be much, much higher, as experts in warfare have long known that between three and 15 times as many people die from indirect deaths as are killed during the active phases of war involving direct killing.
These indirect deaths occur through the spread of “easily preventable diseases”, or “from hunger and malnutrition”, as “a result of the loss of access to basic health care, adequate food and shelter, clean water, or other necessities of life”, all of which have been deliberately implemented by Israel in Gaza.
Last summer, in a letter to The Lancet, three medical researchers suggested, using a moderate multiplier of five, that the death toll could be as high as 186,000, based on the known death toll at the time, of 37,396 individuals.
As of today, then, the five-fold multiplier would mean over 250,000 deaths (over 10% of Gaza’s pre-October 7 population), although, given the extent of Israel’s deliberate destruction of all of Gaza’s infrastructure, including most of its homes, its water supplies and sewage treatment plants, and all of its hospitals and healthcare centres, as well as the sieges implemented throughout most of the last seventeen and a half months, which have prevented the delivery of food, water, medicine, medical equipment and fuel, it would not be surprising if, in the end, the multiplier is higher — perhaps 500,000 people, or even 750,000.
Even with the more modest multiplier, however, this means that Israel has killed — or has doomed to death — 87,460 Palestinian children, or over 2,400 times as many children as were killed on October 7.
The unprecedented scale of Israel’s genocide
Nothing like this level of child-killing has taken place in any armed conflict in living memory, as is also the case with the number of women killed, but these statistics are only part of Israel’s multitude of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide.
Hossam Shabat, for example, was not even the only journalist killed yesterday. Earlier, Israel targeted and killed Muhammad Mansour, a journalist for Palestine Today, with his wife and son in their apartment in southern Gaza, and, since October 2023, has targeted and killed with impunity over 220 journalists in Gaza, far more than in any other military conflict in history.
Every time, however, when challenged, Israel has alleged that these journalists were not journalists, and were, instead, Hamas operatives, as it did last year when it made groundless allegations against Hossam and five other journalists it was targeting.
Hossam, it was alleged, was a Hamas sniper, even though he was only 21 when Israel’s “war” on Gaza began, and, last year, provided a perfectly coherent explanation of his life before October 7 stating, in an interview a year ago, “Before the war, my goal was to build a media and marketing company and achieve financial stability. I was also passionate about the hospitality sector and depended on an alternate source of livelihood, namely a restaurant that the occupation has now bulldozed.”
The lies about Hossam are being slanderously repeated today by the IDF, and by Israel’s media and pundits, no doubt with the deliberate intent of stifling any of the outrage that western journalists should be feeling, keeping Hossam’s smile off the front pages of western newspapers and TV news reports, even though that is where he should be, because it has become verboten to challenge Israel’s Goebbels-style propaganda.
So here’s the truth. Hossam filmed what he saw, and reported on what he saw, and what he saw, incessantly, was the carnage of Israel’s largely indiscriminate slaughter of civilians. This wasn’t propaganda; it was the bravest of reporting in extremely perilous conditions, and it provided evidence — not opinions, but filmed evidence — of genocidal aims and genocidal intent, without which we would all have been kept in the dark, just as Israel intended.
No foreign journalists were present, as they have been banned from entering Gaza since the “war” began, and, in any case, even if they had been allowed, most would have thought twice about entering the deadliest war zone for journalists in history. Our eyes and ears, when they were allowed to pierce the protective walls of Israel’s control of western media messaging, were the handful of extraordinarily brave individuals like Hossam and his colleagues, always trying to tell and show the world the truth, even as they were picked off one by one.
Similar lies have been spread by Israel regarding the entire medical establishment in Gaza, with 1,151 doctors and medical staff killed since October 7, including “at least 165 doctors, 260 nurses, 300 management and support personnel, 184 health associate professionals, 76 pharmacists and 12 other health workers”, as part of a breathtakingly cynical and illegal war on Gaza’s hospitals, condemned by a UN Commission of Inquiry as constituting war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination. This has been persistently justified by Israel because of the alleged presence of Hamas in these hospitals, or their use as Hamas command centres, even though no evidence has ever been provided to justify these claims.
As of last month, it has also been confirmed that 339 healthcare workers, including doctors, had been abducted, and were held in Israel’s horrendous prisons for Palestinians, where torture and abuse are rife, and that that 162 “remained in Israeli detention, including some of Gaza’s most senior physicians, and a further 24 were missing”, as the Guardian explained in a significant report.
Several doctors have been murdered in Israeli custody, possibly through their refusal to make false confessions under torture, while the most prominent of those still held, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, who held out for months against an Israeli siege intended to shut the hospital down at the end of last year, was finally seized and “disappeared” in December into Israel’s prisons, where, according to his lawyer, who was not initially allowed to meet with him at all, he has been classified as an “unlawful combatant”, although he has not been charged, has been subjected to 25 days in solitary confinement, and has also been subjected to torture and beating during interrogations, one of which lasted for 13 days, leaving him “physically, mentally, and psychologically exhausted”, the intention being, presumably, to get him to make a false confession that the entire hospital was a Hamas facility.
The same pattern of lying has also persistently applied to administrative officials working as part of the Hamas government. In the first few months of the genocide, when Israel was killing everyone it could in almost uncountable numbers, it used AI programs to target anyone even tangentially connected to Hamas — or whose role was clearly not military. Just as Israel has created an appalling and unsubstantiated narrative whereby all journalists, and all doctors and medical staff are Hamas, so it presumably justified its killing of judges, lawyers, police chiefs, administrators, librarians, archivists, water engineers, sewage engineers (the list could go on and on) on the same basis.
Since March 18, Israel has specifically targeted senior Hamas officials — with their families — falsely claiming that they were all “terrorists.” Two days ago, the second floor of Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza was bombed, because Ismail Barhoum, the head of Hamas’s financial affairs, was being treated there for wounds suffered in an air strike four days before, but an IDF spokesman falsely alleged that he had been in the hospital for weeks “in order to commit acts of terrorism.”
In its seemingly insatiable hunger for killing Palestinians, Israel has repeatedly targeted allegedly significant individuals while they were at home — again using an AI program for targeting, with this particular one sickeningly codenamed “Where’s Daddy?” — which has contributed to the extremely high civilian casualties.
Israel erases the notion of proportionality in warfare
The extremely high civilian casualty rate has completely shattered any notion whatsoever about the necessity for proportionality in warfare, although it doesn’t take much digging to find assertions across Israel’s political class, and on its TV channels, that it is appropriate for all these children to be killed, because they will only grow up to be Hamas, and it isn’t much of a leap from this to a realization that, actually, because any living person in Gaza may refuse to accept that the only valid basis for Palestinian existence is to unquestioningly submit to a life of apartheid, persistent violence by the oppressor, and arbitrary seizure and imprisonment, the only solution to the problem of Palestinians who might refuse to accept total subjugation is to kill them all — and no, I’m not exaggerating.
I believe this is a genuinely valid explanation of the genocidal Israeli mindset. The young might grow up to be “terrorists”, and no one else can be trusted not to support resistance to their oppressor, so everyone must be killed.
All of this has been enabled because western leaders, led by the US, have persistently failed to push back against Israel’s lies, used to deliberately flout international law and its prohibition on attacks on civilians and civilian facilities, with the result that Israel has learned that it has the impunity to kill civilians without any explanation, and certainly without having to provide any military justification, as has happened, and continues to happen relentlessly, without any fear that its officials will be subjected to any kind of questioning.
In October, when, after flailing in its aims for months, Israel implemented the “Generals‘ Plan”, which Hossam Shabat and a handful of his colleagues played such a prominent part in chronicling, it completely abandoned any pretence that what it was doing was militarily justifiable.
The stated aim of the plan was to order everyone in the north of Gaza — hundreds of thousands of people — to evacuate, and then, if they failed to do so, and with no concern for how many might have been unable to comply with the orders, because of their age or infirmity or illness, to regard everyone who remained as “enemy combatants” who could be slaughtered on the spot. No provision of international law justifies, or has ever justified this, but Israel didn’t care, and most of the west refused to even acknowledge that the “Generals’ Plan” was even taking place.
The renewal of the genocide, and the lies about “voluntary emigration”
Within Israel, the far right’s push for the violent renewal of the genocide has been reinforced by Donald Trump’s enthusiasm for the forced displacement of the entire population of the Gaza Strip, which he first started pushing shortly after overseeing the implementation of the ceasefire. His calls for Egypt and Jordan to commit political suicide by taking in two million refugees threatened to instantly undo everything achieved by the negotiators, including his Middle East Envoy, Steve Witkoff, and, on February 4, when Trump welcomed the wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House, he went even further, portraying the grotesque war crime of total ethnic cleansing as a humanitarian gesture, before spiralling off into a fantasy about taking over Gaza, and remaking it as “the Riviera of the Middle East.”
Since the two-month ceasefire was deliberately destroyed by Israel, the unfettered violence of the early days of its assault on Gaza and the “Generals’ Plan” has returned with extraordinary intensity, with what is clearly a concerted effort to make Gaza even more unliveable than it was already, even though that is difficult for any rational person to imagine, and also to make it even more ungovernable than it was already. This, also, is difficult to imagine, because, as noted above, Israel has already killed so many administrators and those maintaining law and order.
For the far right, however, the release of so many Palestinian prisoners and hostages during the ceasefire, and, especially, the visible return of Hamas — both its soldiers, who emerged from their tunnels to, in particular, preside over the release of hostages, and its police and surviving administrators — has been intolerable. Disgracefully, Netanyahu needs to keep them onside to preserve his power, and to keep his ongoing corruption trial at bay, and so he has overridden the brief, two-month tolerance that he finally showed to the persistently sidelined families of the remaining hostages seized on October 7 by finally prioritizing the return of their loved ones, returning to his endless lust for murdering Palestinian children every hour of every day.
It may be that, within Israel itself, opposition to the resumption of the “war” and the accompanying disdain for the surviving hostages’ safe return, may topple Netanyahu, but it cannot be taken for granted. As NPR reported today, “On Saturday, more than 100,000 people turned out at protests in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and other cities”, calling for the resumption of the ceasefire and a deal to release the remaining hostages, and also demonstrating against Netanyahu’s latest political maneuvering, including attacks on the independence of the judiciary, which he first tried to implement before October 7, and which led to some of the biggest protests in Israel’s history.
As NPR noted, “Polls show a majority of Israelis are against the end of the ceasefire and want negotiations to continue”, and Netanyahu is clearly rattled, as he has taken to social media to refute claims that Israel is heading for some kind of civil war.
While the dissent is real, however, those driving the renewed genocide continue to behave as though they have a just and coherent plan — not just via the ever-elusive promise to eradicate Hamas, but also through their grotesque efforts to pretend that everything they are doing is to encourage the “voluntary emigration” of the entire Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip.
This proposal is as unviable as it has been since it was first proposed in the earliest days of the “war”, however, and not just because, as noted above, it would be politically suicidal for Egypt or Jordan to take in two million refugees and to be complicit in the final erasure of Palestine — with the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank no doubt following — but also because no other country is going to help. Refugees aren’t welcome anywhere these days, and especially not when they’ve all been so persistently tarred as terrorists or terrorist sympathizers.
And so, instead, we’re back with genocide as Israel’s core abiding policy — and, indeed, its entire raison d’être these days, with most western leaders, and most western mainstream media editors, still happy to support it, or not to fundamentally question it, and certainly not to condemn it, even as it inverts reality throughout the west, persuading governments to treat pro-Palestinian protestors as terrorists, to welcome genocidal war criminals as heroes, and to bury the very notion of human decency in the Gaza Strip.
What can we say or do? How can we reclaim the world from these monsters, at home and in Israel, who insist that this last gasp of genocidal colonialism is anything other than the darkest stain on our collective existence, which, if it is not overcome, and the rationale behind it throughly dismantled, will leech its life-hating poison throughout the rest of the world?
Hossam Shabat’s final words
I leave the final words to Hossam Shabat, who wrote the following in anticipation of his death, which was published on X by those who worked with him. Please also read the last article he filed with Drop Site News just hours before he was killed. May his memory be the catalyst that brings to an end the absolutely unforgivable renewal of Israel’s genocide over the last eight days, and that leads to the eventual liberation of the Palestinian people.
“If you’re reading this, it means I have been killed — most likely targeted — by the Israeli occupation forces. When this all began, I was only 21 years old — a college student with dreams like anyone else. For past 18 months, I have dedicated every moment of my life to my people. I documented the horrors in northern Gaza minute by minute, determined to show the world the truth they tried to bury. I slept on pavements, in schools, in tents — anywhere I could. Each day was a battle for survival. I endured hunger for months, yet I never left my people’s side.
“By God, I fulfilled my duty as a journalist. I risked everything to report the truth, and now, I am finally at rest — something I haven’t known in the past 18 months. I did all this because I believe in the Palestinian cause. I believe this land is ours, and it has been the highest honor of my life to die defending it and serving its people.
“I ask you now: do not stop speaking about Gaza. Do not let the world look away. Keep fighting, keep telling our stories — until Palestine is free.”
See below for a feature on Democracy Now! about Hossam’s death:
* * * * *
Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer (of an ongoing photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’), film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (see the ongoing photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo”, which you can watch on YouTube here.
In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of the documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and, in 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to try to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody.
Since 2019, Andy has become increasingly involved in environmental activism, recognizing that climate change poses an unprecedented threat to life on earth, and that the window for change — requiring a severe reduction in the emission of all greenhouse gases, and the dismantling of our suicidal global capitalist system — is rapidly shrinking, as tipping points are reached that are occurring much quicker than even pessimistic climate scientists expected. You can read his articles about the climate crisis here. He has also, since, October 2023, been sickened and appalled by Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and you can read his detailed coverage here.
To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s new Substack account, set up in November 2024, where he’ll be sending out a weekly newsletter, or his RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, The Complete Guantánamo Files, the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, and the full military commissions list.
Please also consider joining the Close Guantánamo campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.
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57 Responses
Andy Worthington says...
When I posted this on Facebook, I wrote:
As the official death toll in Gaza passes 50,000, and the journalist Hossam Shabat is ruthlessly targeted and murdered by Israel, I examine how, when secondary deaths are taken into account, a more realistic death toll may be as high as 250,000. I also point out how almost 500 times as many Palestinian children (17,492) have been killed by Israel compared to the number of Israeli children (36) killed on October 7, and point out how, again, when secondary deaths are taken into account, that total may rise to over 87,000 Palestinian children, more than 2,400 times as many as the number of Israeli children killed on October 7.
I also celebrate the life and work of Hossam Shabat, and discredit the lies told about him and the more than 220 journalists murdered by Israel, who have all been falsely accused of being Hamas operatives, and I also point out how these same lies have been applied to the more than 1,500 doctors and medical staff killed or disappeared into Israel’s horrendous prisons for Palestinians, and how, in addition, Israel continues to kill Hamas administrative officials from all walks of life, blatantly ignoring the fact that they were not connected with the military or involved in the October 7 attacks.
With the resumption of the genocide eight days ago, I express my horror that this is happening, as it confirms how an entire country has lost its way, and now lives only to kill as many Palestinians as possible, and I condemn the western countries, and the western mainstream media, who largely continue to support Israel, and who, as a result, are dragging us all down into depraved and unprecedented depths of inhumanity.
I end with Hossam Shabat’s final words, which I encourage you to read in full, and which end with the following request for our continued support: “I ask you now: do not stop speaking about Gaza. Do not let the world look away. Keep fighting, keep telling our stories — until Palestine is free.”
...on March 25th, 2025 at 9:03 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Yesterday, after news of Hossam’s death broke, I posted the following on Facebook, which providing the starting point for the article above:
I no longer know what to say or do.
As we mark the first week of the resumption of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, in which at least 730 Palestinians have been killed — mostly civilians — bringing the total number of those killed to over 50,000, the latest casualty is Hossam Shabat, the brave, beautiful 23-year old journalist who somehow dodged death for months as Israel implemented a “genocide within a genocide” in northern Gaza that began in October last year, but who has now been killed in a deliberate targeted attack.
What can we say? What can we do? Israel is destroying our very humanity through its grotesque insistence that absolutely no restraints apply to its actions — that everything and everyone trapped in the Gaza Strip, with almost no means of escape for any of them — is a legitimate target.
How can we stop them before nothing of our shared humanity is left?
How can we stop them before the death toll — already critically underestimated — reaches 500,000? A million? Two million? Israel will kill everyone if they can, all while pretending that they have a god-given right to do so, and that the Palestinians can all leave voluntarily, even though no country has yet shown any willingness to take them in — in large part because doing so would endorse the absolutely unforgivable ethnic cleansing, or forced displacement of an entire people.
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10163245726303804&set=a.10150687732288804
...on March 25th, 2025 at 9:42 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Michael Harank wrote:
Dreadful Andy and it goes on and on and on …
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:01 pm
Andy Worthington says...
It’s a struggle to retain our sanity right now, Michael, that’s for sure. Hossam wasn’t the only journalist killed yesterday. Earlier Israel targeted and killed Muhammad Mansour, a journalist for Palestine Today, with his wife and son in their apartment in southern Gaza. https://x.com/Paltodaytv/status/1904141738219798688
How are the Palestinians, starving after the month-long renewed siege, and once more being forced to evacuate, meant to endure this? Hamas administrative officials targeted and murdered with their entire families, civilians slaughtered indiscriminately, and all this undertaken as Israel initiates an agency to oversee the “voluntary migration” of Palestinians from Gaza, even though there is nowhere for them to go, and no justification whatsoever under international law for their forced displacement. As Al Jazeera reported, when announcing the plan, “Netanyahu’s spokeswoman did not specify which third countries might be willing to cooperate with Israel in implementing the plan” – because there are none. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/3/24/israel-building-agency-to-steer-palestinian-voluntary-departure-from-gaza
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:01 pm
Andy Worthington says...
“I am Hossam Shabat, from the resilient northern Gaza Strip.” Please read this interview, published almost a year ago, in which Hossam talks about his life and the importance of his work as a journalist: https://english.legal-agenda.com/hossam-shabat-from-northern-gaza-resistance-in-the-time-of-genocide/
Excerpt here: “I refused to leave the northern Gaza Strip even though I faced dozens of dangerous situations. I refused because I know how important and serious journalistic work is. I refused to leave the north of the strip because I believe in the importance of the mission I bear, namely to convey the truth and document the occupation’s crimes. I was defiant in the face of this army fighting us for being journalists, bombing us everywhere while my colleagues and I working in northern Gaza report, film, and talk about the crimes it commits. I have [been] and still am putting myself at risk and offering up my life in exchange for footage and to convey the truth. I did not leave the northern Gaza Strip, and I will not leave, despite all the pressure I have been under. As I said, the mission is important, and only image and audio can expose the truth.”
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:02 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Natalia Rivera Scott wrote:
It’s very difficult to bear witness to all of this and at the same time I believe we have to, we can’t turn our back on this.
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:03 pm
Andy Worthington says...
We absolutely can’t turn away, Natalia, but our powerlessness to do anything to bring it to an end is quite soul-destroying. We cannot give up, however. Only the strength and resilience of millions will ensure that, eventually, Israel will collapse and all those responsible, and all those who aided and abetted it, are held accountable.
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:04 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Natalia Rivera Scott wrote:
Soul destroying indeed, Andy.
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:04 pm
Andy Worthington says...
The light in my life has been extinguished again, Natalia, as it was for 15 and a half months, when Israel resumed its barbaric attacks a week ago. Whatever glimpses of normality – or even of pleasure or joy – that I have now are fleeting, as the weight of the genocide crushes me.
I say this not to belittle in any way what the Palestinians themselves are going through, which remains fundamentally unimaginable to all of us safely outside Gaza, but simply to bear witness to my own small role as a caring, compassionate individual grief-stricken by the enormity of these crimes.
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:04 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Jessy Mumpo wrote:
Andy, yes, we weep collectively. It’s so appalling, unbelievable evil acts are being committed.
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:05 pm
Andy Worthington says...
We need to take back our world after we grieve, Jessy. Our lives are mostly as fundamentally meaningless to our leaders as those of the Palestinians, as we will learn in the years to come, I suspect, unless we work out how to fight back. Hossam is the emblem for me more than anyone I can recall from the whole of the last 17 and a half months, along with some of the extraordinary doctors. He was so full of life, while the oppressors everywhere – Israel, the US, the UK, Germany, the EU – are increasingly inhuman, devoid of all joy and steadily removing from themselves whatever last shreds of compassion remain.
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:05 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Peter Searles wrote:
Tragic, appalling, despicable!!!
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:06 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Very much so, Peter. There was more humanity in Hossam’s smile than in the whole of the depraved Israeli state.
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:06 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Ward Reilly wrote:
The only thing that can stop Netanyahu and the IDF are the Israeli people, and even if they do stop them, Gaza can never be un-destroyed, and the innocent victims, such as Hossam, are gone forever.
Will there ever be ‘justice served’ for these crimes against humanity? Nope, the world has gone mad.
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:07 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Good to hear from you, Ward, and I’d say you’re right. With the most powerful leaders in the west having completely lost their consciences – or having none in the first place – whatever decency remains in Israel needs to rise up and reclaim their humanity, although, as you say, even if that happens, the damage that has been inflicted on Gaza, the almost unthinkable loss of life, cannot be undone.
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:07 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Clare Hanrahan wrote:
Thank you for speaking truth. We must all find a way to make our dissent visible.
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:08 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks for the supportive words, Clare, and good to hear from you. Our hearts bleeding for the Palestinians is the sign of our humanity, but we cannot rest, we must not rest, or the future will be bleak for all of us.
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:08 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Ruth Gilburt wrote:
I’m beyond angry … it’s the bitterest sense of despair. What else can we do????
I never imagined this level of depravity, ruthless blood lust for the deaths of thousands of people, so many children and babies.
I am soul-sick, as there appears to be no end to this most heinous onslaught.
If evil does exist, this is it.
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:14 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Yes, this is evil, Ruth, the giddy genocidal intoxication of an entire nation that has succumbed to the most dismal failure of the human imagination – to see nothing but endless death as a way of life.
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:15 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Cathy Teesdale wrote:
Heartbreaking evil, meted out with belief-beggaring glee. I’m soul-sick too.
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:16 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Kären Ahern wrote:
I have never experienced more courageous and dedicated people than the Palestinians. It is born of their love and faith. As my friends were huddled with their children in terror last night, bombs all around them, they were still present with love, reaching out, as we hoped for a miracle together.
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:17 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Their love and faith, and, I think, their extraordinary connection to the land – their land – and the solidarity that comes from being imprisoned together, Kären. No one would wish it, but when it happens, it’s the opposite of our atomized cultures with our fake freedoms.
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:17 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Kären Ahern wrote:
Andy, yes, their land. I know how it gutted them to see their homes and the land in rubble. The filmmaker of No Other Land was arrested by Israel, no word from my friends in Gaza.
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:20 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Not even arrested, Kären. Hamdan Ballal was brutally attacked and then abducted from an ambulance. He was released today, but what a complete disgrace. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/25/hamdan-ballal-witnesses-describe-israeli-settler-attack-no-other-land-director
I hope you hear from your friends.
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:20 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Rick Albee wrote:
This death was well planned and the footage indicates a weapon designed specifically to cause ‘minimal’ damage but to the target. We are seeing the testing ground for these weapons daily.
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:20 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Yes, as Antony Loewenstein so presciently noticed years ago, Rick, in his book “The Palestine Laboratory”, and in his recent two-part documentary for Al Jazeera English: https://www.aljazeera.com/program/featured-documentaries/2025/1/30/the-palestine-laboratory-ep-1
https://www.aljazeera.com/program/featured-documentaries/2025/2/6/the-palestine-laboratory-ep
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:21 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Indie At Inn wrote:
Insane times, may he rest in power.
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:21 pm
Andy Worthington says...
He’ll never be forgotten by the Palestinians, Indie, that’s for sure, but I think we need to do all we can to raise him up in the west as the antidote to the grey genocidal hearts of the Israeli killers. He was so full of life and joy, so irrepressible.
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:22 pm
Andy Worthington says...
S Brian Willson wrote:
The madness is unspeakable, but is it unstoppable if the US remains a co- belligerent? Everything is made so difficult because neither Trump nor Netanyahu are truthful.
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:23 pm
Andy Worthington says...
It’s hard to know, Brian. Yesterday, Reuters reported that sources at a meeting had told them that Egypt had proposed a plan suggesting that “Hamas release five Israeli hostages each week, with Israel implementing the second phase of the ceasefire after the first week” – its “full withdrawal from Gaza, backed by US guarantees.” According to the sources, “Both the US and Hamas agreed to the proposal”, although, predictably, “Israel had not yet responded.”
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/egypt-makes-new-proposal-restore-gaza-ceasefire-deal-between-israel-hamas-2025-03-24/
I thought it was interesting that the sources suggested that the US – presumably via Witkoff – was supportive, but who knows if it’s at all viable.
It seems to me that the Israelis themselves need to rise up against the genocide. I know the hostage families are implacably angry that their family members are once more being sacrificed for Palestinian blood, but I don’t know if they have the leverage to defeat the far right.
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:23 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Colleen Folsch wrote:
Ugh Andy
And America’s blatant unwavering f*cking support
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:24 pm
Andy Worthington says...
As you say, Colleen – the US and Israel, colonizers bought by colonizers. It’s sickening.
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:24 pm
Andy Worthington says...
David Barrows wrote:
It makes me rage, it makes me sob, it shows me that by myself I can not stop the diabolical behavior coming from Congress, the White House, or Zionist psychopathic liars, nor stop that very monster itself: Israel. I must continue to witness this tragedy. But, at least I can say I’ve publicly called this a genocide, I’ve interrupted Congressional hearings doing so, I’ve protested at the White House and continue to join anti-genocide peace demonstrations. It’s only when we the people of complicit nations put real pressure on our own governments to stop supplying arms, to stop supporting lies, to stop preventing the United Nations from doing its job that we have a chance to end this vile continuation of genocide that is decimating – and inflicting paraplegic wounds upon – Palestinian civilians.
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:25 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Well said, David, and congratulations for interrupting Congressional hearings. We can all – and must – bear witness in whatever way we can, but you’re right: direct action is required.
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:25 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Jessy Mumpo wrote:
It’s so sad and tragic. The injustice is so plain to see, and is ignored by so many. Thanks for being a journalist and for standing beside the brave heroic Palestinian journalists Andy, it’s so hard to bear this endless blood bath.
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:26 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks for the kind words, Jessy. I’m a journalist, so my obligation is to bear witness. It’s just a pity that so many other “journalists”, working for major outlets with a significant reach, have become nothing more than stenographers for a genocidal regime. There really needs to be a reckoning.
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:26 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Damien Morrison wrote:
what a f*cking world we live in now
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:29 pm
Andy Worthington says...
I admired him so much, Damien, and he was such a beautiful soul. And now, having murdered him, the lying Israeli media machine will once more insist – as they shamefully contended last autumn – that he was actually a Hamas operative. There are no depths of depravity to which they will not sink.
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:30 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Damien Morrison wrote:
nothing supprises me anymore I think we’re all becoming numb and unshockable on and on and on is humanity’s race to the bottom dragging everything with it
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:30 pm
Andy Worthington says...
I agree with you about the numbers of the “numb and unshockable”, Damien, but there are millions of us around the world – who still feel, who still have empathy – who are screaming inside, unable to accept that an entire population can be murdered as brutally as the Nazis did to the Jews, and that this depravity can be allowed to continue.
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:31 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Damien Morrison wrote:
we have to rise up there is now no alternative
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:31 pm
Andy Worthington says...
We do indeed, Damien. The path of practical political solutions under the existing models has been definitively revealed as too broken and corrupt to be supported anymore in any way at all.
...on March 25th, 2025 at 10:32 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Shamefully, Israel has today committed to keeping Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, imprisoned without charge or trial for six months as an “unlawful combatant.” As The New Arab explains, “The Be’er Sheva court ruling, confirmed by the Palestinian Prisoners’ Information Office, comes under Israel’s 2002 Unlawful Combatants Law, which allows the state to detain Palestinians indefinitely based on alleged ‘secret evidence’, without judicial review – a measure increasingly used against Gaza residents since 2005.”
https://www.newarab.com/news/israeli-court-upholds-detention-dr-abu-safiya-without-charge
...on March 26th, 2025 at 12:08 am
Andy Worthington says...
Natalia Rivera Scott wrote:
Andy, he was one of the many journalists I follow on instagram … so brave and he, especially, seemed to be so sweet.
...on March 26th, 2025 at 2:59 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Yes, so sweet, Natalia. That’s exactly right. And the light shone out of him. I’m not going to forget him, and we should all try not to let him be forgotten. Of course, there are so many murdered by Israel who we shouldn’t forget, but right now with this unforgivable resumption of the genocide his memory calls out to me as the focal point for our disgust at the monstrosity that Israel has become.
...on March 26th, 2025 at 2:59 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Natalia Rivera Scott wrote:
Andy, he won’t be forgotten 🇵🇸♥️
...on March 26th, 2025 at 3:00 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Sylvia Posadas wrote:
Andy, has there ever been a regime more openly, proudly fascist and unaccountable than Israel?
...on March 26th, 2025 at 3:11 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Not in the co-called democratic world, Sylvia, that’s for sure, and its crimes are more extreme than in most dictatorships too. Its insistence on relentlessly targeting and killing civilians, while incessantly lying that there is, fundamentally, no such thing as a Palestinian civilian, is unprecedented in its scale and intensity over the last year and a half, and its entire quasi-legal basis for imprisoning Palestinians is also an absolute disgrace – essentially operating, on a huge scale, imprisonment without charge or trial (an inspiration for what the US did at Guantanamo), and with torture for its own sake, and for false confessions, sexual abuse and even murder taking place (an inspiration for the US when it set up its global network of CIA “black sites”).
...on March 26th, 2025 at 3:11 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Kären Ahern wrote, in response to 24, above:
Thank you, Andy, I heard from my friends and so far, safe, but terrified. I read the Guardian article and am glad to hear from you he was released as that was not known yet. Any bit of good news helps me immensely, just to keep some bit of hope.
...on March 26th, 2025 at 3:28 pm
Andy Worthington says...
So glad to hear that you heard from your friends, Kären, even though “safe but terrified” isn’t something anyone should have to endure. We need to keep hope alive through Hossam’s final message to the world: “I ask you now: do not stop speaking about Gaza. Do not let the world look away. Keep fighting, keep telling our stories — until Palestine is free.”
...on March 26th, 2025 at 3:29 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Kären Ahern wrote:
I have no choice, I have been possessed by a flame that burns night and day to want my Gaza Family Safe, Free, to Govern Themselves, that no one takes their water rights, their oil, their gas, their land. They only want to live in Peace and be left to live as all have a right to on their land. I hope there are still Olive Trees that have survived. I visualize a place for Palestinian Community to return, schools, hospitals, universities, farms and Olive Groves where people never have to fear again. Where there is Right of Return. May they be safe, may they heal, may they release grief and trauma to live as their ancestors could not. These are my hopes as I await miracles they deserve.
...on March 26th, 2025 at 3:30 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thank you, Kären. That’s a beautiful visualization of what should be – of what, we hope, must be. It’s such a condemnation of the prevailing mindset in Israel that, even after 75 years of oppression, the hardliners remain committed to the absolute removal – whether through death or expulsion – of every single Palestinian who still lives on their own land, so they can claim it all. And for all of this to be supposedly justified by one day of violence is sickening. We still don’t know how many of the 1,068 Israelis kllled on Oct. 7 were killed by their own people, through the Hannibal Doctrine, just as we don’t know how many of those killed would not have wanted this all-consuming vengeance to be their country’s response, but history will one day record that never before, in living memory, have so many been murdered, and an entire territory destroyed, as a result of the murder, not of millions, or of tens of thousands of individuals, but of hundreds.
...on March 26th, 2025 at 3:30 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Lizzy Arizona wrote:
Plus West Bank killings.
...on March 26th, 2025 at 8:07 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Of course, Lizzy, yes. I see that Francesca Albanese, the formidable UN Rapporteur for Palestine, issued a devastating press release last week about mass ethnic cleansing in the West Bank: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/03/tragedy-foretold-and-stain-our-collective-humanity-special-rapporteur-warns
And the UN Human Rights Council also issued a report about Israel “ramp[ing] up settlement and annexation in West Bank with dire human rights consequences” between November 2023 and October 2024: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/03/israel-ramps-settlement-and-annexation-west-bank-dire-human-rights
...on March 26th, 2025 at 8:08 pm
Andy Worthington says...
This is heartbreaking. Iraq Body Count has translated the names of the 50,000+ confirmed deaths in Gaza into English. Be warned. The pages of those killed who were under 1 year old takes up the first 17 pages. https://www.iraqbodycount.org/pal/moh_2025-03-23.pdf
...on March 26th, 2025 at 8:09 pm
Andy Worthington says...
A deeply moving tribute to Hossam Shabat by those who worked with him, and knew him well:
“While many knew Hossam as a fearless journalist, there was so much more to him. He was a young man with dreams, with a sense of humor, and a heart full of life. He loved dressing well, even in the middle of chaos, once joking: ‘What if I run into a cute girl while reporting? I want to look good!’
“Hossam had crushes. He wanted to fall in love, to build a family, to be a husband and a father. He talked about the future like he believed in it — like it was something real and reachable. He wanted more than headlines and frontlines. He wanted soft mornings, quiet dinners, laughter with loved ones.
“He dreamed of leaving Gaza someday, saying, ‘When this is all over, I’m taking a long break — I want to visit a beautiful country.’
“He longed for peace — not just for his people, but for his own soul. A chance to breathe freely, to explore, to just be.
“He grew up by the sea and loved seafood deeply. The ocean was part of him — he’d smile and say, ‘I love everything seafood — I grew up with it.’ There was something about the water that calmed him, something that reminded him of home, even as the world around him was in pieces.
“At night, you’d find him with his headphones on, listening to music — especially Palestinian songs. He’d spend time during the day downloading them so he could escape into melodies once the city quieted down. It was his small form of peace — rhythm in the middle of ruin.
“He was pure. He was innocent.
“There was a gentleness in him that never hardened, even in war. A softness that stayed untouched by the noise around him. He believed in beauty, in love, in something better. And that is how he should be remembered — not just as a journalist, but as a young man who wanted to live.”
https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1904986051661164762
...on March 26th, 2025 at 9:52 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks to the Palestinian American writer Ahmed Moor for researching and writing this compelling in-depth account of child amputees from Gaza, evacuated to the US and Egypt, struggling to come to terms with the childhood taken from them so violently by the deranged Israeli state: https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/mar/27/gaza-palestine-children-injuries
...on March 27th, 2025 at 4:58 pm