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zaterdag 12 april 2025
Mike Huckabee confirmed; most Americans hold unfavorable views of Israel
Beyond Outrage: Israel’s Execution of Medical Workers
Beyond Outrage: Israel’s Execution of Medical Workers
APRIL 11, 2025
Photograph Source: Tasnim News Agency – CC BY 4.0
The Israeli killing of medical workers in Gaza is further proof of a lack of any restraint on the part of Israel’s Defense Forces (IDF). They have been accused of executing 15 handcuffed medics before burying them in a mass grave underneath their crushed ambulances in southern Gaza. As Middle East Eye reported on the medics: “They were found over the weekend in a mass grave with around 20 multiple gunshots in each one of them.” According to Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson for the Palestinian Civil Defence in Gaza; “At least one of them had their legs bound, another was decapitated and a third topless,” he added.
Here are some of the reactions to the execution:
The top United Nations interim official for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Jonathan Whittall, told journalists: “What is happening here defies decency, it defies humanity, it defies the law. It really is a war without limits. It’s an endless loop of blood, pain, and death.”
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) was “outraged.” IFRC Secretary General Jagan Chapagain stated: “Even in the most complex conflict zones, there are rules. These rules of International Humanitarian Law could not be clearer – civilians must be protected; humanitarians must be protected. Health services must be protected.”
“Preliminary analysis suggests they were executed, not from a distant range,” a forensic consultant who examined the exhumed bodies told The Guardian, “since the locations of the bullet wounds were specific and intentional,” he said. “One observation is that the bullets were aimed at one person’s head, another at their heart, and a third person had been shot with six or seven bullets in the torso.”
What was Israel’s explanation? “When Hamas terrorists operate in active combat zones — while using humanitarian vehicles as cover, launching rockets from hospitals and stealing aid — Israel will do whatever it takes to protect its soldiers and citizens,” justified Jonathan Harounoff, a spokesman for Israel’s mission to the U.N.
The New York Times contradicted Israel’s version of what happened: “The video obtained by the Timesshows that the approaching ambulances and fire truck were clearly marked and had their emergency signal lights on when Israeli troops hit them with a barrage of gunfire.” The video was discovered on the cellphone of one of the dead paramedics.
After watching the video, Farnaz Fassihi and Christoph Koettl described what they saw and heard in the Times. It is worth repeating the gruesome details:
“Rescue workers, at least two of whom can be seen wearing uniforms, are seen exiting a fire truck and an ambulance marked with the emblem of the Red Crescent and approaching the ambulance derailed to the side. Then, sounds of intense gunfire break out. A barrage of gunshots is seen and heard in the video hitting the convoy. The camera shakes, the video goes dark. But the audio continues for five minutes, and the rat-a-tat of gunfire does not stop. A man says in Arabic that there are Israelis present.
The paramedic filming is heard on the video reciting, over and over, the ‘shahada,’ or a Muslim declaration of faith, which people recite when facing death. ’There is no God but God, Muhammad is his messenger,’ the paramedic is heard saying. He asks God for forgiveness and says he knows he is going to die.
‘Forgive me, mother. This is the path I chose — to help people,’ he said.’”
After reports on the video went public, Israeli officials modified their initial justifications. “The Israeli military on Saturday [April 5] acknowledged that the initial accounts from troops involved in the killing last month of 15 people in southern Gaza — who the United Nations said were paramedics and rescue workers — had been partially ‘mistaken,’” journalist Isabel Kershner reported from Jerusalem. Israel now says the episode was “under thorough examination.” (TheTimes has interviewed several witnesses to the shootings Eyewitnesses Recount Deadly Israeli Attack on Medics in Gaza – The New York Times)
The outright assassination of medical workers is a new and different form of Israeli violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) in its continuing refusal to respect international norms. Over 50,000 people, including women, the elderly and children, have died in Gaza. An entire infrastructure has been destroyed. Millions have been displaced. IHL in all its complexities is only effective if it is respected by all parties to a conflict. Israel signed the Geneva Conventions on Dec. 8, 1949, and ratified them on July 6, 1951.
What happens if a party to a conflict like Israel continues to violate IHL in the most egregious manner? So far, very little. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visits Hungary and the United States as if they were normal diplomatic trips, ignoring the fact that the International Criminal Court has issued search warrants for his arrest. (The U.S. and has no obligation to arrest Netanyahu since is not party to the Rome Treaty.)
For years, my dear friend Eugene Schulman often wore a keffiyeh to honor the Palestinian people. He would regularly unfurl a Palestinian flag on his Geneva balcony in support of a Palestinian state. A non-practicing Jew, Gene was constantly outraged at how Palestinians were treated by Israel. Gene died five years ago next month – Matthew Stevenson movingly described him in CounterPunch (Our Friend Eugene Schulman – CounterPunch.org.). Gene would be beyond outrage today at what is happening to Palestinians.
Hunters have seasons to shoot. Their prey have respites. The IDF and Israeli military have shown it is an open season in Gaza. Nothing is out of bounds. There is no respite for anyone, including humanitarian workers and medics. Even the erudite Gene Schulman would not find words to describe what is taking place. He would be, as we all should be, beyond outrage.
CHRIS HEDGES: 'Israel is About to Empty Gaza'
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Israel is About to Empty Gaza
The Israeli government, backed by the Trump administration, is laying the groundwork for the full expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, a move that has the potential to ignite a regional conflagration.
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Legacy - by Mr. Fish
SubscribedIsrael is poised to carry out the largest campaign of ethnic cleansing since the end of World War II. Since March 2, it has blocked all food and humanitarian aid into Gaza and cut off electricity, so that the last water desalination plant no longer functions. The Israeli military has seized half of the territory — Gaza is 25 miles long and four to five miles wide — and placed two-thirds of Gaza under displacement orders, rendered “no-go zones,” including the border town of Rafah, which is encircled by Israeli troops.
On Friday Defence Minister Israel Katz announced that Israel will “intensify” the war against Hamas and use “all military and civilian pressure, including evacuation of the Gaza population south and implementing United States President [Donald] Trump’s voluntary migration plan for Gaza residents.”
Since Israel’s unilateral ending of the ceasefire on March 18 — which was never honored by Israel — Israel has been carrying out relentless bombing and shelling against civilians, killing over 1,400 Palestinians and wounding over 3,600, according to the Palestinian health ministry. An average of one hundred children are being killed daily according to the United Nations. Israel is, at the same time, inciting tensions with Egypt to lay what I suspect will be the groundwork for a mass expulsion of Palestinians into the Egyptian Sinai.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, echoing Katz, said Israel would not lift the total blockade until Hamas was “defeated” and the remaining 59 Israeli hostages were released.
“Not even a grain of wheat will enter Gaza,” he vowed.
But no one in Israel or Gaza expects Hamas, which has weathered the decimation of Gaza and sustained mass slaughter, to surrender or disappear.
The question no longer is will the Palestinians be deported from Gaza but when they will be pushed out and where they will go. The Israeli leadership is apparently torn between driving Palestinians over the border into Egypt or shipping them to countries in Africa. The U.S. and Israel have contacted threeEast African governments – Sudan, Somalia and the breakaway region of Somalia known as Somaliland – to discuss the resettlement of ethnically cleansed Palestinians.
The consequences of wholesale ethnic cleansing will be catastrophic, jeopardizing the stability of the Arab regimes allied with Washington and setting off firestorms of protests within Arab countries. It will likely mean the severing of diplomatic relations between Israel and its neighbors Jordan and Egypt, already close to the breaking point, and push the region closer to war.
Diplomatic relations have fallen to their lowest point since the signing of the Camp David Accords in 1979. The Israeli embassies in Cairo and Amman are largely empty with Israeli staff withdrawn over security concerns following the Oct. 7 incursion into Israel by Hamas and other armed Palestinian factions. Egypt has refused to accept the credentials of Uri Rothman, who was appointed to be the Israeli ambassador last September. Egypt did not name a new ambassador to Israel when former ambassador, Khaled Azmi, was recalled last year.
Israeli officials are accusing Egypt of violating the Camp David accords by increasing its military presence and building new military installations in the Northern Sinai, charges Egypt says are fabricated. The peace treaty’s annex permits additional Egyptian military hardware in the Sinai.
Former Israeli chief of the general staff, Herzi Halevi, warned of what he calls Egypt’s “security threat.” Katz said that Israel would not allow Egypt to “violate the peace treaty” between the two countries signed in 1979.
Egyptian officials note that it is Israel that has violated the treaty by occupying the Philadelphi Corridor, also known as the Salahuddin Axis, which runs along the nine mile border between Gaza and Egypt and is supposed to be demilitarized.
“Every Israeli action along Gaza’s border with Egypt constitutes hostile behavior against Egypt’s national security,” Egyptian General Mohammed Rashad, a former military intelligence chief, told the Arabic language newspaper, Asharq Al-Awsat.
“Egypt cannot sit idly by in the face of such threats and must prepare for all possible scenarios.”
Israeli officials are openly calling for the “voluntary transfer” of Palestinians to Egypt. Knesset member, Avigdor Lieberman, stated that “displacing most Palestinians from Gaza to the Egyptian Sinai is a practical and effective solution.” He contrasted the high population density — Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on the planet — with the vast “untapped lands” in the Egyptian Northern Sinai and noted that Palestinians share a common culture and language with Egypt, making any deportation “natural.” He also criticized Egypt because it allegedly “benefits economically from the current political situation,” as a mediator between Israel and Hamas and “reaps profits from smuggling operations through the tunnels and the Rafah crossing.”
The Israeli think tank Misgav Institute for National Security, staffed by former Israeli military and security officials, published a paper on Oct. 17, 2023, calling on the government to take advantage of the “unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the entire Gaza Strip,” and resettle Palestinians in Cairo with the assistance of the Egyptian government. A leaked documentfrom the Israeli Intelligence Ministry proposed resettling Palestinians from Gaza to the Northern Sinai and constructing barriers and buffer zones to prevent their return.
Any expulsion would likely happen swiftly with Israeli forces, which are already mercilessly herding Palestinians into containment areas in Gaza, carrying out a sustained bombing campaign against the trapped Palestinians while creating porous evacuation portals along the border with Egypt. It would entail a potentially lethal standoff with the Egyptian military, instantly throwing the Egyptian regime of Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, who has described any ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in Gaza as a “red line,” into crisis. It would be a short step from there to a regional conflict.
Israel has seized territory in Syria and southern Lebanon, part of its vision of “Greater Israel,” which includes occupying land in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. It covets the maritime gas fields off Gaza’s coast and has floated plans for a new canal to bypass the Suez Canal, to connect Israel’s bankruptEilat Port on the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. These projects require emptying Gaza of Palestinians and populating it with Jewish colonists.
The anger on the Arab street — an anger I witnessed over the past few months during visits to Egypt, Jordan, the West Bank and Qatar — will explode in a justifiable fury if mass deportation takes place. These regimes, simply to hold on to power, will be forced to act. Terrorist attacks, whether by organized groups or lone wolves, will proliferate against Israeli and western targets, especially the United States.
The genocide is a recruitment dream for Islamic militants. Washington and Israel must, on some level, understand the cost of this savagery. But it appears as though they accept it, foolishly trying to obliterate those they have cast out of the community of nations, those they refer to as “human animals.”
What do Israel and Washington believe will happen when the Palestinians are expelled from a land they have lived in for centuries? How do they think a people who are desperate, deprived of hope, dignity and a way to make a living, who are being butchered by one of the most technologically advanced armies on the planet, will respond? Do they think creating a Danteesque hell for the Palestinians will blunt terrorism, curb suicide attacks and foster peace? Can they not grasp the rage rippling through the Middle East and how it will implant a hatred towards us that will endure for decades?
The genocide in Gaza is the greatest crime of this century. It will come back to haunt Israel. It will come back to haunt us. It will usher to our doorsteps the evil we have perpetrated on the Palestinians.
You reap what you sow. We have sown a minefield of hatred and violence.
The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
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