April
10, 2024
Israel's
onslaught made me a refugee, a bereaved sister, and a mother to starving
children. My journalistic endeavors have become almost impossible.
Palestinians wait to receive the bodies of their relatives who were
killed in an Israeli airstrike at Al-Najjar Hospital, in the city of
Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, October 24, 2023. (Abed Rahim
Khatib/Flash90)
For
the past six months, I have been moving from one address to the next across the
Gaza Strip with my husband and two children, aged 7 and 9, in an elusive search
for safety. Our home in the Tal el-Hawa neighborhood, southwest of Gaza City,
was bombed soon after the war began, and since then we have been homeless.
At
first, we moved between residences in the north. But sooner or later, every
neighborhood in Gaza City became a target, and every apartment in which we
sought refuge was damaged by Israel airstrikes.
Eventually,
my husband and I decided to flee south with our children, to the city of Khan
Younis. It was a journey filled with adversity. Again, we moved from one
address to another, until we ended up at Al-Amal Hospital.
Sheltering
at the hospital grounds in the middle of winter, we slept only on a blanket,
with a second blanket on top of us to provide warmth for my children and I. It
was the first time I had felt extreme cold; the severity, along with the fear I
felt for my children, brought me to tears.
After
the occupation army besieged Khan Younis, we fled in early February through the
so-called “safe corridor” under their control. On that journey, we experienced
abuse, insults, humiliation, and the theft of our belongings. We continued back
northward to the city of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, prolonging the
bitterness of displacement until this day.
It
has been six months, three cities, and countless places of refuge — and with
the war showing no signs of ending, we know that we may not be able to shelter
in our current spot for much longer.
A
daily struggle for survival
Recently,
my daughter fell ill and lost half her body weight. The doctor told us she was
suffering from severe fatigue and a bacterial infection, and that she needed to
eat sweet foods.
I
went to the market and looked everywhere for sweets, but the only ones I found
were extremely expensive. I thought about making her a cake or a sweet
porridge, but a kilo of sugar nowadays costs $30, plus I only had a spoonful of
milk and there was no more at the market.
In
the end, I bought a small cake for $4 for my two children to share, as well as
a lemon for $2 to eat with a can of tuna that we had received in an aid parcel
along with canned beans, chickpeas, and peas.
“When
can you buy us chicken again?” my daughter asked while we ate this modest meal.
I smiled and promised to try at the earliest opportunity, as soon as it becomes
available in the market.
This
is our situation in Gaza after six months of war. We rarely find vegetables,
fruit, or meat in the markets — it’s only canned foods, which contain a high
percentage of harmful preservatives. If on a rare occasion you do find fresh
food, the prices are too high for most families to afford it.
Aside
from food, we lack gas and electricity, relying instead on firewood to prepare
our meals and to heat up canned food. Safe drinking water is scarce, and so too
is the infrastructure for sanitation.
On
top of my increased responsibilities to my children and husband, I have tried
to continue my work as a journalist. But doing so has never been so dangerous.
The number of journalists that have been martyred in the past six months is so
high that friends have shut their doors on my family because they didn’t want a
journalist staying with them, believing us to be a target.
Getting
stable internet connection has been a daily struggle due to the weak
communication networks, while many people in Gaza have been reluctant to be
interviewed or to offer any statement that will be made public for fear of
being targeted by the Israeli army. Even keeping our phones charged has been
difficult, and sometimes impossible.
And
as if that weren’t enough, I’ve also had to deal with the martyrdom of my
brother, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on March 14, and the month-long
detention of my father by Israeli forces. These events have deeply affected my
heart, changed my personality, and severely impacted my mental state. I have
become inclined toward silence, and struggle with the inability to carry out my
journalistic tasks. No matter what we write, our pens feel powerless in the
face of the magnitude of death, destruction, and fear that we’re living
through.
Abdul
Rahman
Israel
has killed 14,350 Palestinian children between Oct. 7 and April 4. This means children account for 44 percent of
all Palestinians killed in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, Palestinian Central
Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) said ahead of Palestinian Child’s Day.
Women
and children constitute nearly 70 percent of over 7,000 additional persons
missing in the same period, and the majority of the over 75,000 Palestinians
who are wounded are women and children.
Out
of a total of 455 Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank by the Israeli
forces in the same period, 117 were children.
Over
17,000 Palestinian children have also been orphaned or separated from their
parents as a result of Israel’s genocidal attacks, according to UNICEF data,
after either both or one of their parents were killed in the Israeli bombings
and ground offensives since Oct. 7.
Palestinians
celebrate Child’s Day on April 5 every year. Human rights groups such as
Defense of Children International Palestine, Palestinian Network for Children’s
Rights (PNCR) and others mark the day as International Day of Solidarity with
the Palestinian Children in order to highlight Israel’s systematic crimes
against them.
Israel
Starves Palestinian Children to Death
At
least 31 Palestinian children have been starved to death in Gaza in the last
couple of months. The starvation is a product of the deliberate blockade and
restrictions imposed by the Israeli forces on the delivery and distribution of
food and other humanitarian aid in the besieged territory. The entire
population of Gaza is now facing acute levels of food insecurity.
The
around 20,000 children born since Oct. 7 in Gaza are now at severe risk of
malnutrition. The prolonged lack of nutrition has raised the possibility of
stunted growth for the children of Gaza.
A
large number of pregnant women in Gaza are deprived of adequate medical care as
well, due to the genocide and Israel’s repeated attacks on the health
facilities and workers.
According
to the PCBS, by the middle of this year, there would be around 2.4 million
children below the age of 18 in the occupied Palestinian territories, 43
percent of the total Palestinian population in West Bank and Gaza. The
population of children in Palestine is almost equally divided between the West
Bank (over 1.3 million) and Gaza (over 1 million).
Around
816,000 children in Gaza need psychological assistance due to trauma caused by
the ongoing genocide. Around 620,000 have been out of school, with eight out of
10 schools destroyed by the invading Israeli forces in indiscriminate bombings
on civilian infrastructures and deliberate acts of sabotage. Another 133
schoolsare used as temporary shelters for displaced people.
Child
Prisoners
Since
Oct. 7, Israeli forces detained over 500 Palestinian children, although some
have since been released. However, there are still over 200 Palestinian
children in various Israeli jails. Forty one Palestinian child prisoners are
being held as administrative detainees, according to the human rights and
prisoner support group Addameer.
Palestinians
children detained by the Israeli forces have often been subjected to torture
and abuse both during their arrests and in the prison. In a large number of
cases, Palestinian children have been treated like criminals when arrested by
Israeli forces — blindfolded and with their hands tied. They are often tried in
military courts.
In
a report submitted last year by Francesca Albanese, U.N. special rapporteur on
human rights in the Palestinian territories, said that over “10,000 Palestinian children have
experienced institutionalized ill treatment during arrests, prosecutions,
sentencing and consequent traumas on themselves and their families.”
Some
children released from Israeli prison recently have also testified that they
were isolated in the prison and tortured and severely beaten, Addameer said.
Wendell Griffen
April 9, 2024
You
might be excused for not knowing that the United Nations Security Council
finally passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza on March 26 after
the United States abstained from voting.
Almost
six months have passed since Hamas fighters invaded Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
More than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli Defense Forces in
retaliation for that attack. Nations across the world have called for a
ceasefire for months, but the United States vetoed ceasefire resolutions until
March 26.
You
might be excused for not knowing that the Security Council passed such a
resolution on March 26. After all, the Biden administration shipped more bombs
and other war tools to Israel since then. President Joe Biden signed
legislation that defunds UNRWA, the U.N. agency that provides humanitarian
relief and assistance to Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem the day after
the resolution was adopted.
The
ceasefire resolution came too late for thousands of Palestinians, including more
than 100 courageous journalists killed by IDF forces because they were covering
the carnage and other inhumane conduct of the Israeli war machine. The
resolution is not making a difference to cold, unhoused, starving and
war-sickened Palestinian refugees in Rafah.
Judging
from how Israel and its allies (led by the United States, Britain and France)
are behaving, it is foreseeable that the Israeli war machine will ramp up its
genocidal campaign in Gaza when Ramadan ends. Thousands more Palestinian men,
women and children will be killed. Those who survive will not be allowed to
return to their homes unless and until they agree to the same military
occupation that Israel conducts in the Occupied West Bank.
Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet do not care what the
Security Council or anyone else in the world thinks or says about its genocide
in Gaza, ethnic cleansing, land theft and apartheid in the West Bank, and
flagrant support for settler violence against Palestinians in East Jerusalem
and the West Bank. No matter what Biden says about Israel shelling humanitarian
aid vehicles and slaughtering workers delivering food to starving Palestinians
in Gaza — days after the Security Council’s ceasefire resolution — Netanyahu
knows that Biden’s “outrage” is worthless.
What
matters is that the U.S. and Israel have thumbed their noses
at the ceasefire resolution — and the Security Council itself — unless the
Security Council allows them to do as they please, for whatever reasons they
choose, to anyone besides the other permanent members of the Security Council
(China, France, the Russian Federation and the United Kingdom). Politicians and
diplomats in Israel and the United States know the Security Council will not
sanction Israel for violating the ceasefire resolution. Nor will it sanction
the United States for flaunting the resolution by sending Israel additional
weapons to kill and defunding UNRWA to starve defenseless, unhoused, sickened
and starving Palestinians.
The
harsh truth is that the United Nations always has been a stage for diplomatic
showboating by privileged nations, not a forum for global diplomacy, justice
and peace. People in nations marginalized by imperial capitalism, materialism,
white supremacy, fascism and hypocrisy know this is the case. They know the
U.N. never has been ashamed of promoting tyrants, bigots, despots and thieves.
They also know the U.N. never has sanctioned Israel for violating other
resolutions concerning violations against Palestinians for 75 years.
What
can we do? Name the hypocrites. Name the warmongers. Name the genocidal
actors and their enablers. Declare their names to the world and to future
generations. And include the United Nations Security Council.
This
is what Palestinians are doing. If we won’t do anything else, we can at least
join them in denouncing the Security Council as a sham for privileged nations
addicted to settler colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, militarism, bloodlust
and white supremacist hegemony.
Australian
medical workers continue to speak out in solidarity with their colleagues in
Gaza where 84 percent of health facilities have been damaged or destroyed and
over 500 health workers killed.
Australian
and New Zealand Doctors for Palestine demonstrate in Sydney, Australia, April
2024 [Photo: Instagram/anzdoctors4palestine]
Israel’s recent
targeted assassination of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers and
destruction of Al Shifa Hospital, where 400 bodies, including medical staff and
patients, have been found in the ruins, are only the latest horrors in the
six-month genocide.
Australian
medical workers who have spoken against these and previous Israeli war crimes
are viciously attacked by local Zionists in a campaign of threats and
intimidation, particularly targeting members of the Australian and New Zealand
Doctors for Palestine and similar social media groups.
Zionist thugs
have used the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA)
complaints process to lodge bogus allegations of antisemitism. They have doxxed
medical professionals opposing Israel’s ethnic-cleansing attacks on
Palestinians in Gaza.
The Health
Workers Rank-and-File Committee (HWRFC) has been conducting a defence campaign
against this anti-democratic intimidation since January and has turned to
health workers across Australian and internationally for support. The World
Socialist Web Site has published numerous statements in support of this
campaign from individual health workers, as well as other rank-and-file
committees, including NHS Fightback in Britain, the Sri Lankan Health Workers
Action Committee and the Committee for Public Education in Australia.
The HWRFC urges
medical professionals and other sections of the working class in Australia and
internationally to oppose these unprecedented attacks on freedom of speech and
democratic rights.
Statements and
letters of support can be sent to these addresses:
Email:
sephw.aus@gmail.com
Twitter:
@HealthRandF_Aus
Facebook:
facebook.com/groups/hwrfcaus
This week the
Health Workers Rank-and-File Committee received the following comment from a
New South Wales GP:
I was saddened,
if not surprised, when I saw reports about the October 7th attacks but the
horrific scenes from that day were soon to be eclipsed by the genocide
inflicted on the entire population of Gaza by the Israeli regime.
I joined online
conversations on a GP social media group to defend human rights for the people
of Palestine, but those exchanges were deliberately targeted for shutdown by
pro-Zionist doctors.
I was disturbed
by this successful silencing of human rights advocates on this doctors’ group
and joined another Facebook group called Australia and New Zealand Doctors for
Palestine (ANZDFP). This group provided a place where healthcare workers could
discuss the harrowing events of Gaza in the context of being silenced or
shunned in our workplaces if we expressed any sympathy for the victims of
targeted mass slaughter in Gaza.
But ANZDFP was
infiltrated by Zionists who would take screenshots of posts and then re-post on
their Instagram doxxing pages. The method used is to post a screenshot of a
social media statement of the healthcare worker and edit it with a Zionist
narrative scrawled at the top with the aim of intimidating and harming the
reputation of the doctors. There were repeated threats to target these
healthcare workers for supposedly being pro-Hamas or pro-terrorist.
The Zionists
have also posted personal photographs of these doctors, including their
children, as a way of doubling-down on the intimidation and fear. They also
send links of their handiwork to the employers of doctors and make malicious
AHPRA notifications and boast that they will get us fired.
They routinely
conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism so that they can silence any doctor who
opposes genocide as an antisemite. If any doctors reply to these posts to
defend their reputations, their comments are deleted so there is no right of
reply.
The people who
organise and contribute to these Zionist pages feign outrage about the
targeting of the 600 Zionists on WhatsApp but they dox and smear Australian
doctors every day for opposing genocide.
We have
responded to the doxxing by following the series of actions recommended on the
e-safety commission’s website for victims of doxxing. All to no avail.
This
intimidation has been going on since November 2023. When the Zionist group of
600 was doxxed (an action that neither I or my colleagues knew about or
supported) we were bemused to see the government spring to the defense of
Zionists. Yet pro-Palestinian victims of this Zionist witch-hunting have been
ignored for many weeks.
I hope the
promised anti-doxxing legislation is applied evenly to all, but fear that it is
being introduced only as a cudgel to silence the free speech of Australians who
oppose genocide.
Australian
medical professionals protest in Sydney [Photo: Instagram/anzdoctors4palestine]
We doctors of
ANDFP remain undeterred and will continue to speak out against the systematic
silencing of Australian doctors and the complicity of the Australian government
with the Gaza genocide. We feel it is part of a medical doctor’s ethical
obligation to oppose genocide.
We share social
media posts to increase awareness, we engage in letter-writing campaigns and
petitions, and we attend marches in our towns and cities organised at a
grassroots level. We march shoulder to shoulder with our courageous
anti-Zionist Jewish allies to demonstrate that many Australians oppose the
attempt to dehumanise and annihilate the people of Gaza.
We have been
encouraged to see more and more Australians engage in attempts to boycott the
genocide and to oppose the transfer of weapons to Israel to kill more
civilians. Yet, it is not enough. Now is the time to oppose apartheid and
genocide being committed by the Israeli regime. We need to see freedom of
expression for widespread solidarity from the Australian people.
It should be
natural for the workers’ unions to be at the vanguard of this mobilisation in
support of justice and the protection of civilian life as stated in the Geneva
Convention but many of the large workers’ unions in Australia are just as
beholden to Israel as the Labor Party seems to be.
Yet, the winds
of change are stirring. Even as the media may try to blackout the genocide and
our unions and political parties bow to their donors, the average Aussie does
not support genocide if they are made aware of it.
We at ANZDFP
call for Zionist doxxing social media pages to be subject to takedown notices
as they are causing harm in the Australian health community.
We also believe
it is time for the Australian people to send a message to government:
Stop arming a
regime that is accused in the ICJ of committing genocide and call for an
immediate ceasefire!
The people of
Gaza must be set free of the burden of Israeli domination and collective
punishment!
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