Israel Cries “War Crimes” as a Hospital is Hit by Iran, While Sickeningly Ignoring its Genocidal 20-Month “War” on Gaza’s Hospitals
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In Iranian attacks on Israel yesterday, as part of its ongoing retaliation for Israel’s initial unprovoked attacks a week ago and its repeatedly ongoing aggression, an Iranian missile reportedly struck the Soroka Hospital in Beersheba, the largest hospital in southern Israel.
Iranian sources claimed that, rather than striking the hospital, they had struck two military targets nearby, “the Israeli Defense Forces’ Command and Intelligence (IDF C4I) headquarters, as well as a military intelligence facility located in the Gav-Yam Technology Park.” The hospital is located between the two sites, and, according to Iran, “sustained minor damage from the blast shockwave.”
Israel disputed this, claiming that it was a direct attack, and footage showing a plume of smoke rising from the caved-in top of the building would seem to vindicate their analysis.
However, even if the hospital was directly hit, a third possibility has not been addressed. According to reports, a barrage of 20 to 30 Iranian missiles were aimed at the Beersheba area and other targets, so it may be that, while targeting and hitting the military targets, another missile inadvertently fell on the hospital.
UN Report Confirms Israel Guilty of War Crimes and “Extermination” in Attacks on Gaza’s Hospitals
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With grimly appropriate good timing, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel issued a hugely significant report on October 10 in which it found that, as described in an accompanying press release, “Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.”
The timing was grimly appropriate because, although its focus on Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s hospitals only covers the period from October 7, 2023 to August 2024, a terrible, genocidal version of Groundhog Day is currently taking place yet again in the Gaza Strip, where, although its relentless slaughter has not stopped for the last year, it is currently amplifying its horrors in northern Gaza, ordering the evacuation of the last three remaining partly-functional hospitals there, as part of a new plan to ethnically cleanse the whole of the north — where an estimated 400,000 civilians remain, having refused, or been unable to comply with evacuation orders issued a year ago — with a renewed depravity plumbing previously unthinkable depths.
Because the wheels of international justice revolve so slowly, it has taken over three years for the Commission’s report to be compiled and published. It was initially commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council in May 2021, with a brief to investigate “all alleged violations of international humanitarian law and all alleged violations and abuses of international human rights law leading up to and since 13 April 2021.”
The Horror of Israel’s Bragging, Self-Righteous, Live-Streamed Genocide in Gaza That Also Seeks to Eliminate Fundamental Human Decency
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It’s over two weeks since I’ve written about Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, but it’s not because I’ve “moved on”, or forgotten about it. On the contrary, it still consumes my every waking hour, an aching anguish that only ever goes away when I somehow manage to distract myself through immersion in some other activity: my long-running work on Guantánamo, for example, or working on my music, or managing to snatch some precious time with my family on a recent weekend break in Dorset.
Mostly, though, the horror engulfs me permanently — the unending horror of one group of people, the State of Israel, whose leaders, media and citizens in vast numbers are committed, with a delirious, maniacal and alarmingly self-righteous enthusiasm, to the annihilation of another, the Palestinians, trapped in the Gaza Strip, a small sliver of land where their ancestors were ethnically cleansed when the State of Israel was created 76 years ago.
Everywhere I look, I see other people struggling to maintain their mental equilibrium in the face of the relentless slaughter that, over the last four months, has claimed 36,671 lives, including 14,031 children and 8,122 women — with the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, which compiled the figures, estimating that 33,590 of those killed (91.6%) were civilians, and also pointing out that an additional 70,180 people have been wounded, many of them severely. Over a thousand children have lost one or both legs, with many amputations having to be conducted without aesthetic, because of Israel’s refusal to allow medical supplies into Gaza, and over 17,000 have been orphaned, known by a new designation of Israel’s making: ‘WCNSF’, which stands for “wounded child, no surviving family.”
Who's still at Guantánamo?
