August 10, 2024
Israeli forces
carried out a new massacre on the morning of 10 August when they bombed a
school full of displaced Palestinians near Gaza City, killing at least 100
people and injuring others.
People sift through the rubble inside a Gaza school struck by the
IDF on August 10, 2024 (Photo credit: Omar al-Qattaa/AFP/Getty Images)
The Gaza Civil
Defense issued a statement reporting that “About 100 martyrs and dozens were
injured as a result of Israeli bombing of a school for displaced people in the
Al-Daraj neighborhood, east of Gaza City.”
“The occupation
forces targeted displaced persons with three missiles while they were
performing the dawn prayer at Al-Tabiin School,” the statement added.
Dawn prayer
began at 4:37 am local time. Reports of the bombing emerged minutes later, at
4:44 am.
The head of
emergency services in northern Gaza told Al Jazeera, “No matter how much I talk
about this crime, it cannot be described.”
He said that
upon arriving at the scene, “we saw the bodies and remains on top of each
other. Men, women, and children. The bodies were in pieces and burned.”
“The world and
the international community must take action to stop these massacres against
our people, the Palestinian people,” he demanded.
The Israeli
military issued a statement that acknowledged that precision munitions were
used and justified the killing by claiming Hamas uses civilians as human
shields.
The massacre
comes as the US is set to provide Israel with $3.5 billion to spend on US
weapons and military equipment, multiple officials familiar with the matter
told CNN.
The money comes
from the $14.1 billion supplemental funding bill for Israel that was passed by
Congress in April.
Israel can use
the funding to buy advanced weapons systems and other equipment from the US
through the Foreign Military Financing program.
Israeli forces
have killed at least 39,700 Palestinians in Gaza since the start of the war,
which many have come to recognize as genocide.
The death toll
may be higher as many bodies are thought to be buried under the rubble, and
many more may be killed as an indirect result of Israel’s bombing of civilian
infrastructure in Gaza.
The Lancet
medical journal published an analysis in July which concluded that “it is not
implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be
attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.”
The analysis
stated that “even if the conflict ends immediately, there will continue to be
many indirect deaths in the coming months and years from causes such as
reproductive, communicable, and non-communicable diseases.”
The
US State Department announced on 10 August that Netzah Yehuda, an Israeli
battalion notorious for its crimes against Palestinians in the occupied West
Bank, is eligible for US military assistance.
Secretary
of State Antony Blinken had considered blocking the battalion from receiving US
assistance amid reports of involvement in human rights violations, but
Department of State spokesperson Matthew Miller claimed on Friday that such
abuses had been “effectively remediated.”
The
Reuters news agency reported that Miller said in an email that the decision to
confirm the battalion’s eligibility comes amid “new information” from Israel.
In
April, the State Department said that it had determined that the Netzah Yehuda
battalion, created initially to accommodate ultra-Orthodox Jews in the
military, has committed gross human rights violations.
The
State Department considered restricting US military assistance to the unit
based on the Leahy Law. The law states that the US government cannot assist
military units of foreign allies found to commit human rights violations until
reforms are implemented.
Only
Secretary of State Blinken or the Deputy Secretary of State can determine
whether units remain eligible to receive US military assistance.
CNN
reported that “One of the most shocking and widely reported incidents involving
the Netzah Yehuda battalion was the death of a 78-year-old Palestinian-American
man.”
In
January 2022, troops from the battalion invaded Omar Assad’s home in the
village of Jiljilya in the occupied West Bank. They gagged Assad with his hands
tied until he died.
Current
and former US officials also told CNN that the State Department had found
additional units of the Israeli military guilty of committing human rights
abuses, including from the Yamam special police commandos, Border Police, and
Israeli Internal Security Forces (IISF). However, Blinken’s State Department
has taken no action to cut off US military assistance to these units.
These
abuses included the rape of a 15-year-old boy by an interrogator from the IISF
at a detention facility known as the Russian Compound in Jerusalem in January
2021.
Josh
Paul, a former director of the State Department’s political-military affairs
bureau, stated that a charity reported the rape to the State Department, which
raised the “credible” allegation with the Israeli government.
“And
do you know what happened the next day? The IDF went into the [charity’s]
offices and removed all their computers and declared them a terrorist entity,”
Paul told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.
Paul
told CNN that there was “not even the slightest basis” to suggest that Israeli
units accused of human rights abuses had done anything to reform.
The
fact that the US has never imposed sanctions on any Israeli military unit shows
“the lack of political will and moral courage to hold Israel accountable,” Paul
added.
US
officials have not sought to investigate Israeli military units committing
atrocities in Gaza since the start of the war in October, despite evidence
brought to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that Israel is committing
genocide.
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