The assault on Gaza continues as THE WALL STREET JOURNAL reports, "A surgeon at the Al-Shifa complex said it was without basic utilities. Israel's military said there were clashes between Israeli troops and Hamas fighters outside the complex. The World Health Organization said that it had lost communication with its Al-Shifa contacts and that it was concerned about those remaining at the complex." NBC NEWS explains, "On Saturday the Palestine Red Crescent Society said in a post on X that Israeli tanks were attacking the Al-Quds Hospital, 'creating a state of extreme panic and fear among 14,000 displaced people.' In another post, the society pleaded to the 'international community and humanitarian institutions to intervene immediately'."
Heavy fighting near Gaza’s largest hospital has left it in a “catastrophic situation,” with patients and staff trapped inside, ambulances unable to collect the wounded and life-support systems without electricity, health officials and aid agencies are reporting.
Hostilities around the hospital, Gaza’s largest, “have not stopped,” according to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), also known as Doctors Without Borders, with constant bombardment preventing evacuations and making it too dangerous for ambulance journeys, according to the organization.
A freelance journalist told CNN the situation is dire, with medics working by candlelight, food being rationed, and other resources dwindling.
Three newborn babies died after the hospital went “out of service” amid intense fighting in the area, according to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health, which claims the hospital is surrounded on all four sides by Israeli forces and under “complete siege.”
Dr Mohammad Abu Salmiya, the director of Al-Shifa Hospital, warned on Saturday that hundreds of injured people as well as newborn babies needed to be urgently transported to an operational medical facility as his hospital was crumbling under the strain of a lack of fuel and medicine – as well as Israeli bombardments.
“It’s a tragedy. The dead bodies – we can’t put them in freezers as they’re not functioning so we decided to dig a pit in the vicinity of the hospital. It’s a very inhumane scene. The situation is totally out of control. Hundreds of bodies are decomposing,” Abu Salmiya told Al Jazeera.
Andre Damon (WSWS) reports, "Throughout the day Friday, Israel bombed and burned hospitals in Gaza City, which is being invaded by Israeli forces. Israel attacked six hospitals, including two children’s hospitals, in the span of 24 hours." The world watches as the US government participates and condones these War Crimes. Jake Johnson (COMMON DREAMS) reports:
A Norwegian physician who has volunteered in Gaza for decades said Friday that Western leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden, are complicit in Israel's intensifying assault on the Palestinian enclave's hospitals, which are overwhelmed with airstrike victims and displaced people seeking refuge.
In a video message posted to social media as Israeli forces bombarded al-Shifa—Gaza's largest hospital—and other medical facilities, Dr. Mads Gilbert asked, "Can you hear the screams from innocent people, refugees sheltering, trying to find a safe place, being bombed by the Israeli attack forces this morning inside the hospital, hospitals that are the temples of humanity and protection?"
"When are you going to stop this?" Gilbert added, with audio of screams
from Gaza's al-Shifa hospital playing in the background. "You're all
complicit."
Gilbert's plea for immediate action from world leaders who are supporting and arming Israel's military came as Israeli forces surrounded al-Shifa and other hospitals in northern Gaza, claiming that Hamas is using the facilities as command centers—an assertion that hospital directors have denied.
Targeting hospitals is a war crime under international law.
Israeli airstrikes and sniper fire on Gaza hospitals have forced thousands of people who were sheltering at the facilities to flee, but many others "remain trapped inside," the U.K.-based humanitarian group Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) said Saturday.
Kaamil Ahmed (GUARDIAN) notes, "At least 70% of Gaza’s population has been displaced, according to the UN, and many families have clustered together, crowding dozens of them into their homes in the hope they can avoid the heavy bombardment or at least pool increasingly scarce resources such as water, fuel and food."
Mumia Abu-Jamal (WORKERS WORLD) explains, "It’s a war for that which is no longer being produced -- land." Paul Larudee (DISSIDENT VOICE) offers:
Israel is losing the battle. They cannot afford to remain fully mobilized this long, even with unlimited US financial support. It is estimated that despite limited commercial flights, more than a quarter million Israelis have left the country. This is also the number that have evacuated settlements in both the south, in a large radius around Gaza, and in a wide ribbon along the northern border with Lebanon.
Israel is not used to this, and despite its sophisticated military equipment, it depends upon concluding its combat quickly and overwhelmingly. The problem is that it can’t. Hamas is too well dug in, and Hezbollah is too strong. Both have their own sophisticated equipment, despite an absence of navy and air force. Their strategy has been to make air and naval forces largely useless against them by means of a vast and well equipped underground network of reinforced, sealed and well defended tunnels. Their strategy is attrition: to draw out the conflict longer than Israelis are willing or able to endure.
It appears to be effective. Israelis are taking casualties at a rate to which they are not accustomed. This is making them slower and more cautious, except in the air, and it is disrupting civilian life to an unprecedented extent. The resistance forces of the Palestinians and their allies have planned for a confrontation of unlimited duration, while Israel plans only short, massive attacks designed for a quick, decisive victory, which in this case is illusive.
This is the main reason they have chosen genocide as a tactic. They reason that massive, horrible deaths of vulnerable civil Palestinians, mainly women and children, will force Hamas, Hezbollah and their allies to take risks and expose themselves. But genocide is not working. And when it doesn’t, Israel’s answer is to use more genocide.
IN THESE TIMES offers Adam Johnson's superficial media criticism:
As the staggering number of civilian deaths in Gaza grows every day, and as fresh reports of Israel’s brazen attacks on mosques, hospitals, churches, refugee camps, and other civilian targets come across our social media timelines every few hours, there’s a mounting urgency among Israeli officials, pro-Israel groups in the United States, and the U.S. media and political establishment that’s backing these manifest war crimes to downplay the horrific mass killing of Palestinian noncombatants.
With polls showing that a majority of voters, including 80% of Democrats, back a cease-fire — putting the vast majority of Democratic politicians at odds with their own constituents — excuses are needed to justify and handwave away the reports of carnage coming out of Gaza every day.
There are three popular tropes commonly employed by U.S. media, politicians, and pundits tasked with supporting President Biden and his lockstep backing of the Gaza bombing to effectively, ex post-facto, militarize civilians being killed and maimed by Israel:
Why is it superficial? Did you read it? The three are 'terror' tunnels, human shields and Hamas blending in. Adam just types. Thought's apparently not required.
Thought? You'd note that these were the three used to promote the Iraq War. You might even note NEWSWEEK's in depth underground tunnel coverage ahead of the Iraq War. It's a popular lie that stokes fear. If you can't connect this campaign to sell war with the earlier campaign, you might as well just write for THE PROGRESSIVE because you're not helping anyone.
Has any outlet on the left been more uselless in the last weeks than THE PROGRESSIVE. They've got a 'hard hitting' piece by Kathy Kelley finally I do understand why people see her as a joke. But setting that aside, that's the big thing THE PROGRESSIVE's going to offer? The piece of astroturf posted at every other website -- DISSIDENT VOICE, COUNTPUNCH, ZNET . . .
At ZNET, Brett Wilkins offers real media criticism:
U.S. corporate media outlets have granted Israeli military commanders pre-publication review rights for “all materials and footage” recorded by their correspondents embedded with the Israel Defense Forces during the invasion of Gaza, a precondition condemned by press freedom advocates.
“Journalists embedded with the IDF in Gaza operate under the observation of Israeli commanders in the field, and are not permitted to move unaccompanied within the Gaza Strip,” Fareed Zakaria, host of CNN‘s “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” explained in a segment on Sunday.
“As a condition to enter Gaza under IDF escort, outlets have to submit all materials and footage to the Israeli military for review prior to publication,” he added. “CNN has agreed to these terms in order to provide a limited window into Israel’s operations in Gaza.”
In a clip featuring correspondent Raf Sanchez—who is embedded with an IDF unit tasked with finding and destroying Hamas tunnels in Gaza—NBC News also acknowledged that it has “agreed to share raw footage” as “an operational security requirement.”
Responding to Zakaria’s admission, U.S. journalist Dan Cohen asserted that “CNN is explicitly acting as a propaganda mouthpiece for the genocidal Zionist regime.”
U.S. photojournalist Zach D. Roberts said on social media that “what CNN is doing here is creating ad b-roll for the IDF. It’s nothing resembling news and the CNN employees that participated in it aren’t anything resembling journalists.”
Omar Suleiman, founder and president of the Texas-based Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research, said Sunday on social media that “Israel is killing the journalists that expose their crimes, then bribing the journalists that cover for them.”
Letting government officials vet your copy? That's not journalism. If you don't grasp that, call Gina Chon and ask her why THE WALL STREET JOURNAL fired her.
On media criticism, let's return to the lie of mis-connection that every outlet rushes to repeat. Doug G. Ware and STARS AND STRIPES? Only the latest and no link to garbage. US troops in Iraq and Syria are under attack. That is true. And apparently that's why Ware and others in the media need to lie and misrepresent.
I am so damn sick of seeing these stories insisting that the attacks are from Iraqi groups "linked to Iran." This nonsense of lying about Iran is all over the media. Let's all lie and start another war -- that appears to be the goal. Linked to Iran? You mean part of the Iraqi security forces -- because that's what they are. And the Iraqi people are not complaining. Stop trying to pretend like Iran is orchestrating something. The actions of those forces are embraced by Iraqis. The forces doing this are under the umbrella of Iraq's security forces. Stop pretending it's some small rogue element in Iraq.
Maybe you have to lie like that to avoid calling out Joe Biden out because, as we've noted before, his actions and statements with regards to the assault on Gaza have put a target on the backs of US troops in the Middle East. As Andre Damon (WSWS) notes, "The actions of the Netanyahu regime have the active support and are being coordinated with the US-NATO powers, and in particular the Biden administration, which repeatedly and insistently rejects a ceasefire and any limits or conditions on Netanyahu’s actions."
As the Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate has noted, "Even by the low standards set by media coverage of previous massacres in Gaza, the media discourse surrounding recent events represents a new low for the principles of journalistic integrity. Shorn of any pretence of objectivity or truth, some Western media organisations have parroted Israeli government talking points, failed to challenge or even attempt to verify blatant misinformation and propaganda, and adopted dehumanising and violent language about the Palestinian people."
I'll come back and add "The following sites updated:" in a bit -- at least three community sites are abou to post. ADDED: The following sites updated:
