Gaza Hostage Exchanges: The 90 Freed Palestinian Women and Children Ignored by the Western Media
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On Sunday (January 19), as the ceasefire in Gaza began, so too did the first phase of the key peace-making element of the deal — the return, over six weeks, of 33 of the remaining 100 or so Israeli hostages seized by Hamas and other militants after they broke out of the “open-air prison” that the Gaza Strip became in 2007, when Israel, having withdrawn its forces and dismantled its settlements in Gaza itself, essentially sealed it shut, imposing a relentless blockade by land, sea and air, and rationing everything, and everyone permitted to enter or leave.
In exchange, Israel has agreed to release thousands of Palestinians held in its gruesome and ever-expanding network of prisons, solely for Palestinians, that it has established over the last 67 years of its illegal occupation of Palestinian land in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, known, collectively, as the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
251 hostages were seized and taken back to the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023, a key aspect of the attacks whose purpose was largely obscured as Israel, and its compliant vassal states in the west, focused almost exclusively on the 1,139 people killed (mostly Israelis but also including 71 foreign nationals), and invented atrocities to justify the genocidal frenzy that followed; in particular, the notorious “40 beheaded babies” story that was pure fiction, as only 36 children were killed on October 7, only two of them were babies, and neither of them were beheaded.
No Return to Genocide As the Gaza Ceasefire Begins and the Extent of Israel’s Policy of Extermination Is Revealed
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As the ceasefire in Gaza began on the morning of Sunday January 19 (delayed for three hours by Israel, when another 19 Palestinians were killed in last-minute bombing raids), I found myself trying to imagine what it must have felt like to be free, for the first time in 15 months — or, at least, since the six-day “pause” for the exchange of hostages at the end of November 2023 — from the constant threat of death, through the devastating Israeli bombings using weapons of maximum destruction relentlessly replenished by Israel’s ever-obliging allies (the US and Germany, in particular, but with numerous other countries involved), through cynical targeting by IDF snipers, and through the equally cynical targeting by armed quadcopters, a specialty of the Israeli “defense” industry. I also tried to imagine how sweet the silence must have been in the absence of what was, by all accounts, the truly relentless buzzing of drones, spying, monitoring, intimidating, and seeking out targets.
Throughout Sunday, the survivors of what had, until the ceasefire was announced last Wednesday, seemed to be a genocidal assault without end, were finally able to begin returning home — on what, as if by some miracle, was a bright and sunny day, in marked contrast to the freezing torrents of rain to which they had recently been subjected. As they walked from the makeshift tent cities to which most of them (an estimated 1.9 million people in total) had been exiled through expulsion orders, as Israel systematically razed Gaza to the ground, from north to south, over the first eight months of its remorseless destruction, what greeted them was a post-apocalyptic landscape of almost unimaginable annihilation.
While some were able to locate their homes, or what remained of them, others were unable even to find where they used to live, as a result of Israel’s determined efforts to erase their homeland. Almost all, however, were primarily preoccupied with finding the remains of their loved ones, buried under the rubble, or shot in the streets — just one of the many dreadful legacies of this unprecedented, and unprecedentedly long assault on a trapped civilian population in which no one — no one — has survived without losing family members, and in which hundreds of entire extended families have been erased from the civil registry (the same civil registry possessed by the Israelis, who used it to maximize their extermination).
Dare We Hope That the Gaza Ceasefire Deal Will End the Horror of Israel’s Extermination of the Palestinian People?
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Is it really true? After 470 days of the most grotesque, publicly-celebrated, western-backed atrocities that any of us have ever seen, dare we hope that a durable ceasefire has been agreed that will bring to an end the soul-draining horrors of Israel’s relentless efforts to exterminate the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip?
On Wednesday (January 15), the Prime Minister of Qatar, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, announced the agreement of a ceasefire deal, agreed to by Israel and Hamas, in negotiations involving Qatar, Egypt and the US. President Biden and the President-Elect, Donald Trump, both claimed responsibility for securing the success of the deal, although it was noticeable that the terms of the deal were almost identical to those agreed to by Hamas over eight months ago, on May 6, 2024, which Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, then refused to accept.
This suggests that, despite their protestations, neither Biden nor the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, who also rushed to take credit for the deal, had actually done much at all in the intervening eight months, except to be publicly humiliated by Netanyahu, while continuing to send an extraordinary amount of deadly weapons to Israel, indicating that they were prepared to accept humiliation because they continued to unconditionally support Israel’s apparently never-ending hunger for Palestinians’ blood.
With Yahya Sinwar’s Death, Israel’s Genocidal Aims Are Exposed More Than Ever Before
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With the death of Yahya Sinwar, Israel’s mendacity and its genocidal intent stand exposed like never before.
Sinwar, the 62-year old leader of Hamas, who never abandoned his homeland, had been portrayed by Israel as hiding deep underground, surrounded by hostages, but in the end that was just another lie, to add to the mountains of lies that Israel has pumped out over the last year. In the end, Sinwar was killed in a chance military encounter in Rafah, not hiding out at all, but engaged in combat with the enemy — in military uniform, and with an AK-47.
His death was the opposite of the humiliation meted out by the US to Saddam Hussein or Moammar Gaddafi, when they were finally seized after the illegal invasions of Iraq and Libya. Nothing could be more inspiring for a resistance movement than for their leader to be killed in active combat, having refused to hide, or to be cowed by the enemy.
The First Anniversary of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza: Depths of Moral Depravity Unmatched in Modern History
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Today is the first anniversary of a day that changed the world, when militants from the paramilitary wing of Hamas, the political and administrative organization responsible for the 2.3 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, 141 square miles of land sealed off from the outside world since 2007 by the State of Israel, broke out of their open-air prison, and, with militants from other organizations, embarked on a brutal killing spree in southern Israel.
The attacks left 1,195 people dead — of whom 739 were Israeli civilians, and 79 were civilians of other countries — although no one knows how many of the dead were killed by Israel itself, via the notorious Hannibal Directive, which advocates killing their own people to prevent them from being captured. 251 hostages were also seized and taken back to Gaza, where many have since died — some, undoubtedly, killed by Israel itself — because of their government’s refusal, since last November, to negotiate a ceasefire and the exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
The October 7 attacks were horrendous, but Israel’s response — launching a relentless all-out assault on the Gaza Strip, which has lasted for a whole year, and is still, malevolently, ongoing — has killed over 40,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, a death toll so disproportionate, borne of destruction so remorselessly vindictive, that it has plunged us into depths of moral depravity that most of us have never witnessed.
A Million Palestinians Face Death by Starvation After Eight Months of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza
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Eight months of unmitigated horror in Gaza demonstrates the absolute moral degradation of Israel, and the unparalleled moral failure of the west.
It’s eight months since Hamas and other militants broke out of the “open-air prison” of the Gaza Strip, where they, and the entire Palestinian population of 2.3 million people, had been subjected to a land, sea and air blockade for 16 years, and embarked on a brief but deadly killing spree in southern Israel, killing 1,068 Israelis (695 civilians and 373 members of the military and the police), as well as 71 foreign nationals, and kidnapping around 235 others, around half of whom were Israeli.
In response, as happened on numerous previous occasions when Israel was attacked by Palestinian military forces resisting the occupation of their land, Israel began carpet bombing the Gaza Strip, destroying key infrastructure, levelling apartment blocks with disproportionately heavy-duty bombs provided mainly by the US and Germany, and killing vast numbers of civilians.
In 2014, when Israel undertook the most savage of its many previous attacks on the Gaza Strip, a seven-week campaign killed over 2,300 Palestinians, wounded nearly 11,000 (including 3,374 children, of whom over 1,000 were permanently disabled), and led to the destruction of 7,000 homes, with an additional 89,000 damaged, before a ceasefire was finally reached.
Ending Israel’s Impunity for Genocide in Gaza, and the Threat to Those, Like Joe Biden, Who Are Most Complicit
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I just want the bombing to stop. Billions of us around the world just want to the bombing to stop. But last night, in Rafah, Israel dropped countless US-supplied 2,000-pound bombs — hideously powerful weapons designed to pierce otherwise impenetrable military targets — on a displaced Palestinian civilian population, living in flimsy makeshift tents in what they were told was a “safe zone,” burning dozens of them alive, including children who were decapitated as their bodies burned.
For seven and a half months, a moral sickness has engulfed the State of Israel, also infecting parliaments and the mainstream media throughout most of the western world, as shrill, bullying and sometime gleeful proponents of genocide have sought to compel us, sometimes through violence, and often through intimidation, not only to turn a blind eye to the murder of 40,000 civilians in the Gaza Strip — killed with bombs of such intensity that they shouldn’t even exist, let alone be dropped onto packed civilian neighbourhoods day after day after day — but to endorse it, to support it as enthusiastically as they do.
For seven and a half months, those of us living in the majority of the countries of the west (or the Global North), have been ordered to believe that, despite the openly genocidal comments that have been regularly and insistently made by Israel’s leaders since the deadly attacks on southern Israel by Hamas and other militants on October 7 last year, (in which 1,139 people were killed), Israel’s response, in which most of the Gaza Strip has been destroyed, and 10,000 decomposing corpses are buried under the rubble, is not a genocide, but simply Israel exercising its “right to defend itself”, to “eliminate Hamas”, and to free the hostages seized by Hamas and other militants on October 7.
For seven and half months, we have been told that “this began on October 7”, in a blatant and frankly sickening effort to erase 76 years of oppression of the Palestinian people by the State of Israel, oppression which began in earnest with the blood-soaked establishment of the State of Israel, in 1948, when 15,000 Palestinians were murdered and 750,000 permanently exiled from their homes, but which actually began decades before, via the Balfour Declaration of 1917, in which the British government, then ruling Palestine as a Mandate after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, announced its support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, and encouraged the migration of hundreds of thousands of European Jews.
As Israel Shuns a Ceasefire and Continues Its “Forever Genocide” in Rafah and Across Gaza, An End Must Be in Sight
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For over seven months, the Israeli military, largely using weapons provided by the United States and Germany, has been bombing the Gaza Strip with an intensity unmatched in modern history. In March, the NGO Humanity & Inclusion assessed that, on average, 500 bombs a day had been dropped on Gaza, meaning that, as of today, the total number of bombs dropped exceeds 100,000.
Hundreds of these bombs have been US-supplied 2,000lb bombs, which, last week, Frank Gardner, the BBC’s Security Correspondent, citing the UN, described as having “a lethal fragmentation radius of 350 metres”, which “can penetrate concrete more than three metres thick”, and which “leave a crater over 15 metres wide, making it completely unsuitable for use in a place heavily populated by civilians.” As Gardner added, “Even for those people several streets away, the effects can be horrific”, with the UN stating that “the pressure from the explosion can rupture lungs, burst sinus cavities and tear off lies hundreds of metres from the blast site.”
The Gaza Strip, which is home to 2.3 million people — largely the descendants of refugees from the brutal and bloody ethnic cleansing that accompanied the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 — covers just 140 square miles (or 365 square kilometres) of land along the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea — roughly half the size of New York City, and a quarter of the size of London.
Ten Weeks of Genocide in Gaza: 25,000 Palestinians Killed, A Land in Ruins, And Still No Sign of a Ceasefire
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In my nearly 61 years on this earth, I’ve never felt as sick as I do now, watching in real time, as I have for the last ten weeks, a genocide taking place in the Gaza Strip, where 2.3 million Palestinians, trapped in an “open-air prison”, as they have been since 2007, with no means of escape, are being killed at a scale that is unprecedented in the history of warfare in my lifetime, while western leaders offer largely unconditional support — and weapons — and Israel continues to portray itself as the victim.
As of December 14, the death toll had reached 24,711, according to the Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, which takes its figures from the health ministry in Gaza, and adds those missing and presumed dead under the rubble of destroyed buildings.
Of the dead — killed for the most part as a result of Israel’s relentless bombing of residential areas — 9,643 were children and babies, 5,109 were women, and 93%, according to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, were civilians.
The death toll is so colossal, and so relentless, that, on average, 365 people have been killed every day, including 140 children and babies; that’s six children every hour, or one every ten minutes over a period of more than two months; in other words, in response to the deadly attacks by Hamas militants on October 7, in which around 1,200 people were killed (and even disregarding the as yet unknown numbers killed by the Israelis themselves), Israel has been killing a comparative number of Palestinians twice a week for the last ten weeks.
Genocide Continues in Gaza, Exposing The Unending Depravity of Israel, and the Ongoing Criminal Complicity of the West
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For 47 days, from October 8 until November 23, the State of Israel relentlessly bombed the 2.3 million trapped civilians of the Gaza Strip — held in “an open air prison” since 2007, when Israel imposed a total blockade on its inhabitants — with such ferocity that 20,031 people were killed, including 8,176 children and 4,112 women, according to the Geneva-based NGO Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. The NGO also noted that over 36,350 people had been injured — many gravely so — and that 1.7 million people, almost three-quarters of the entire population, had been displaced, as nearly a quarter of a million homes were completely or partially destroyed.
To give some necessary perspective to those statistics, what it meant was that, for 47 days, Israel was killing 174 children every day — seven children every hour, or one every eight and a half minutes. To understand quite how grotesque and unprecedented the killing of children on this scale is, on November 7 Al Jazeera analyzed the death rates of children in other major conflicts of the 21st century — in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen — establishing that the death rate of children in those conflicts was between 0.6 and three children per day.
This was carpet bombing on an industrial scale, using some of the heaviest and deadliest bombs ever invented by the depraved individuals who work in the arms industry, many of which were supplied by the US, and yet, despite international experts almost immediately recognizing that this was the collective punishment of an entire civilian population, in response to attacks by Hamas militants on October 7, in which, according to initial reports, 1,400 Israelis had been killed (a figure most recently revised down to 1,200), western leaders were united in their uncritical support for Israel’s unqualified “right to defend itself.”
Who's still at Guantánamo?
