Jon Queally / Common Dreams & Ali Abunimah / Global Research & Gaza Ministry of Health – 2014-07-31 02:46:55
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/07/30/world-stands-disgraced-israel-bombs-another-un-designated-shelter-gaza
‘World Stands Disgraced’ as Israel Bombs Another UN-Designated Shelter in Gaza
An intensified Israeli bombardment promises no place to hide for Palestinians living in walled-off enclave as even refugee centers are repeatedly hit
Jon Queally / Common Dreams
(July 30, 2014) — A United Nations school in the northern Gaza Strip, where hundreds of Palestinians were seeking refuge from Israeli bombing, was itself hit by missile strikes on Wednesday night, killing at least 16 people and wounding close to one hundred others.
“Last night, children were killed as they slept next to their parents on the floor of a classroom in a UN designated shelter in Gaza,” said Pierre Krahenbuhl, the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), in a statement. “Children killed in their sleep; this is an affront to all of us, a source of universal shame. Today the world stands disgraced.”
Krähenbühl voiced outrage over the behavior of the Israeli military, who he says was repeatedly given the coordinates of the school:
The precise location of the Jabalia Elementary Girls School and the fact that it was housing thousands of internally displaced people was communicated to the Israeli army seventeen times, to ensure its protection; the last being at ten to nine last night, just hours before the fatal shelling.
I condemn in the strongest possible terms this serious violation of international law by Israeli forces.
This is the sixth time that one of our schools has been struck. Our staff, the very people leading the humanitarian response are being killed. Our shelters are overflowing. Tens of thousands may soon be stranded in the streets of Gaza, without food, water and shelter if attacks on these areas continue.
We have moved beyond the realm of humanitarian action alone. We are in the realm of accountability. I call on the international community to take deliberate international political action to put an immediate end to the continuing carnage.
The devastating strike came shortly after new promises by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — despite international calls for an end to the bombing — that his military forces are prepared for a “protracted” campaign and just hours after Gaza’s sole power plant — which provided the population’s main source of drinking water — was destroyed by Israeli missiles on Tuesday.
The Ministry of Health in Gaza reports that nearly 60 people were killed across the Gaza Strip since midnight on Wednesday, continuing what has been the deadliest 48-hours for Palestinians since fighting first began on July 8.
According to the Ma’an News Agency:
In another attack later Wednesday morning, four Palestinian children and three others, all from the Khalili family, were killed in an Israeli shelling on the al-Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City.
The Israeli army said in a statement around 8:00 a.m. that it had targeted “75 terror sites in the Gaza Strip” overnight.
The latest killings brought the number of dead since the start of Israel’s assault on Gaza to more than 1,283, according to health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra.
UN figures indicate at least three quarters of the dead were civilians.
The more than 240 Palestinian children who have died represent at least 29 percent of civilian casualties, the United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, said in a statement, adding that another six children in Israel had been wounded from Gaza rocket fire.
So far, UN figures show more than 215,000 people have fled their homes in a territory which is home to 1.7 million Palestinians, leaving one in eight people homeless.
On the implications of Israel’s bombing of Gaza’s power plant on Tuesday, historian and Middle East expert Juan Cole writes:
Without electricity, the water purification plants cannot operate and the drinking water ends up being mixed with sewage or salt water. Without electricity, patients on life support in the hospitals just die, even if Israel does not bomb the hospital, as it has in some instances.
The power plant will take the good part of a year to rebuild even after the war ends. Gaza gets some electricity from Israel and Egypt, but many of those lines have been damaged in the fighting. […]
While one can argue about whether this mortar fire or or that aerial bombing was justified, the destruction of the power plant and therefore of civilian water-purification is certainly a war crime.
Babies in particular are vulnerable to dirty water, and often take revenge on their parents for the inability to give them clean water by dying. Israel is, as Rashid Khalidi argues, collectively punishing the entire Palestinian population of Gaza to punish it for being insufficiently cowed and for refusing to accept being ethnically cleansed from what is now Israel.
“Gaza is a Graveyard! There’s no School Tomorrow, All the Children Are Dead!” Sing Joyful Israeli Youths
Ali Abunimah / Global Research
(July 30, 2014) — In her latest post, my colleague Rania Khalek makes reference to “a new racist chant mocking the more than two hundred children slaughtered by Israel’s merciless bombing campaign in Gaza: ‘Tomorrow there’s no school in Gaza, they don’t have any children left.'”
This video shows an Israeli mob actually singing in celebration of children’s deaths in the style of a soccer fans’ song: “In Gaza there’s no studying, No children are left there, Ole, ole, ole-ole-ole.”
The mob also incites directly against Ahmed Tibi and Haneen Zoabi, two prominent Palestinian citizens of Israel who are members of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.
The video of the 26 July event in Tel Aviv was published by Israeli journalist Haim Har-Zahav.
The words of the repulsive song have been translated for The Electronic Intifada by Dena Shunra:
Tibi — Ahmed Tibi
I wanted you to know
The next kid to be hurt will be your kid
I hate Tibi
I hate Tibi the terrorist.
Tibi — is dead!
Tibi — is dead!
Tibi — is dead!
Tibi is a terrorist.
Tibi is a terrorist.
Tibi is a terrorist.
They’ll take their papers away.
They’ll take their papers away.
They’ll take their papers away.
Ole, ole, ole-ole-ole
In Gaza there’s no studying
No children are left there,
Ole, ole, ole-ole-ole,
[Three lines, not entirely clear]
Who is getting nervous, I hear?
Zoabi, this here is the Land of Israel
This here is the Land of Israel, Zoabi
This here is the Land of the Jews
I hate you, I do, Zoabi
I hate all the Arabs.
Oh-oh-oh-oh
Gaza is a graveyard
Gaza is a graveyard
Gaza is a graveyard
Gaza is a graveyard
Israel Delivers Death and Destruction: The Deliberate Killing of Palestinian Children by the IDF
Global Research News
GAZA MINISTRY OF HEALTH, Palestine (July 29, 2014) — Eid al fitr. The end of Ramadan, the end of the fast. New clothes, lots of sweets, family visits. Celebrations of life and love.
Not in Gaza. Instead, Israelis delivered a hefty dose of death and destruction in al-Shati Camp, splitting families and bodies alike.
Two adults and eight children killed as they rode the Ferris wheel or in a TukTuk in the park, over 40 injured, one of whom has since died.
This barbaric and deliberate attack on children in a public place on one of the two most significant Muslim holy days seals the Israeli reputation as one of the most perverse war criminals imaginable.
Many considered the calculated murder of the four children playing football on the beach on July 16, 2014 to be an atrocity and a clear war crime — nine more dead children in al-Shati’s park is an even more gross excess.
And still the international community does nothing.
How many more young lives must be stolen before the world says “Enough!”
How many more before the United Nations (UN) enforces international law without fear or favour, and demands the rogue ‘state’ of Israel comply with international law?
When will the UN impose sanctions, and an arms embargo, to prevent the Israeli enabler, the United States, from furnishing it with the tools of death? From financing the pathological Zionist expansionist project?
When will the UN expel this rogue ‘state’ from amongst its ranks — this rogue ‘state’ that claims all the benefits of UN membership but scorns each and every responsibility incumbent upon it to act with even the barest modicum of civilised behaviour or humanity?
For the United Nations to remain silent now is for it to be complicit in these war crimes.
Contacts:
Dr Yousef AbuAlrish, Deputy Minister of Health
Dr Medhat Abbas, Director General, Ministry of Health
Gaza Genocide: Last 24 Hours, 120 People Killed
Global Research News
Press Release
Gaza Ministry of Health, Palestine
Muslim holy days marred by genocide in Gaza
(July 29, 2014) — The Ministry of Health Gaza is pained to express its deep sadness and outrage at the Israeli attacks on Gaza on our holy days of Eid al-Fitr. In the last 24 hours, 120 people have been killed, bringing the total to 1,156.
Particularly distressing was the death in Al Bureij refugee camp of Diana Abu Jaber and her unborn baby only a week before his estimated date of delivery. Diana’s home was struck by an F-16 airstrike.
“As it collapsed a concrete pillar fell on her,” reported Dr Kamal Khatab, Medical Superintendent of Al Aqsa Hospital. “A shell ripped her abdomen open, the unborn baby fell out and was hit in the head with shrapnel, and his brain matter was extruded. Both mother and baby died immediately.”
Dr Khatab added that Diana, in her mid-twenties, was one of 19 members of the same family to die in that airstrike, and there are still other family members missing.
The entrance to the Outpatient Clinic of Shifa Hospital in Gaza city was shelled yesterday afternoon, bringing the number of attacks on medical facilities to 34. Windows in the Medical Library were shattered, an exterior wall was partially destroyed, and several trees were severely damaged. It is pure good fortune that none of the displaced people sheltering in the outpatients area, or staff working in the library, were killed or injured.
“There is a deliberate strategy of attacking to kill Palestinians in two ways — one in their homes with bombs and bullets, and the other by depriving them of essential medical services,” observed Deputy Minister of Health Dr Yousef Abu Al-Rish.
Israeli airstrikes before dawn on the sole Gaza power plant destroyed fuel tanks, and put the plant out of production. This will have an immense impact on the provision of services in Gaza’s hospitals, and significantly contribute to a looming humanitarian disaster in the Gaza Strip.
Despite numerous appeals by both Palestinian and international organisations to cease attacks on children and women, to cease attacks on medical facilities, and to cease attacks on civilian infrastructure
Israeli military strikes on civilian targets have not abated.
The Ministry of Health Gaza calls on the United Nations, the international community, human rights organisations, and all people of good conscience wherever they may be to act immediately to stop the genocide in Gaza.
In the words of Bishop Desmond Tutu, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
Contacts:
Dr Yousef AbuAlrish, Deputy Minister of Health
Dr Medhat Abbas, Director General, Ministry of Health
Posted in accordance with Title 17, Section 107, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.
