Sunday, March 31, 2024

Gaza day 177

Australia's ABC notes, "Tens of thousands of people have demonstrated against Benjamin Netanyahu's government in Jerusalem, calling for new elections and a ceasefire to return the remaining hostages held by the Hamas militant group in Gaza."  ALJAZEERA adds, "The protesters on Sunday demanded the government secure a ceasefire deal that would also free Israeli captives held by Hamas in Gaza and called for early elections." Melanie Lindman, Wafaa Shurafa and Samy Magdy (AP) report:


Hostages' families believe time is running out, and they are getting more vocal about their displeasure with Netanyahu.

“We believe that no hostages will come back with this government because they’re busy putting sticks in the wheels of negotiations for the hostages,” said Boaz Atzili, whose cousin, Aviv Atzili and his wife, Liat, were kidnapped on Oct. 7. Liat was released but Aviv was killed, and his body is in Gaza. “Netanyahu is only working in his private interests.”

PROTESTERS HAVE MANY GRIEVANCES

Protesters blame Netanyahu for the failures of Oct. 7 and say the deep political divisions over his attempted judicial overhaul last year weakened Israel ahead of the attack. Some accuse him of damaging relations with the United States, Israel’s most important ally.

Netanyahu is also facing a litany of corruption charges which are slowly making their way through the courts, and critics say his decisions appear to be focused on political survival over the national interest. Opinion polls show Netanyahu and his coalition trailing far behind their rivals if elections were held today.


THE TIMES OF INDIA adds, "Haaretz and Ynet news sites said the protest drew tens of thousands of protesters chanting, 'Elections now!'"


 In other news, Dave Lawler (AXIOS) notes, "Pope Francis called for a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of Israeli hostages during his traditional Easter address on Sunday."  The call comes as Fareha Naaz (THE MINT) reports:

World Health Organization (WHO) chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was at ‘loss for words’ following an Israeli strike on Gaza hospital that killed four and injured numerous others.

The Director-General of WHO highlighted the dreadful situation at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza amid ongoing hostilities between Israeli forces and the Hamas militant group. These hostilities took the shape of a war following Hamas's attack on Israel six months ago, on October 7, following which Israel declared war.

Gaza's Al-Shifa hospital came under siege on March 18, since then 21 patients have lost their lives and the situation remains critical, the UN health agency reported.


ALJAZEERA notes:


Antony Loewenstein, the author of The Palestine Laboratory, who has been reporting on Israel and the Palestinian territories for 20 years, has been speaking to Al Jazeera following Israel’s latest withdrawal from Al-Shifa.

He said the dozens of bodies the Health Ministry has discovered there are an indication of just how many people had been sheltering in the complex.

“Even though hospitals have been targeted extensively by the Israelis, many civilians have nowhere else to go,” he told Al Jazeera. “Many Palestinians need intense medical care and hospitals are – well there’s nowhere safe in Gaza – but it’s somewhere to go and after Israel [first] pulled out of Al-Shifa, the hope was that it would remain a safe place and clearly, it was not.

“Not just bombing but air striking areas around these hospitals is not just a breach of international law, these are the actions of a rogue state, not a so-called democracy.”


Reportedly, Israeli soldiers have now left the area surrounding that hospital but the Israeli government continues to target hospitals.  THE HINDUSTAN TIMES reports, "The strike at Al-Aqsa hospital was witnessed by a World Health Organization team sent there to assess needs and to collect incubators for the north of Gaza."  On this attack, Rushdi Abualouf  and George Wright (BBC News) report, "Seven journalists, including a freelancer working for the BBC, have been injured in an Israeli air strike in the courtyard of a hospital in Gaza."  ALJAZEERA adds:


Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, says its team working at the Al Aqsa Hospital had to stop work and “seek cover” when the compound came under Israeli air attack on Sunday.

Writing on X, MSF said the area just outside the emergency unit was hit. The group provides medical and surgical wound care at the hospital, the only place in central Gaza to offer trauma care.

“When our team heard a loud explosion nearby, they stopped what they were doing right away to seek cover inside the hospital, until confirmed that the attack was over,” it quoted one of its coordinators as saying.

MSF reiterated its call for an “immediate and sustained” ceasefire.


Gaza remains under assault. Day 177 of  the assault in the wave that began in October.  Binoy Kampmark (DISSIDENT VOICE) points out, "Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion.  The ongoing campaign in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction.  But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge for the propaganda outlets:  How to justify it?  Fortunately for Israel, the United States, its unqualified defender, is happy to provide cover for murder covered in the sheath of self-defence."   CNN has explained, "The Gaza Strip is 'the most dangerous place' in the world to be a child, according to the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund."  ABC NEWS quotes UNICEF's December 9th statement, ""The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. Scores of children are reportedly being killed and injured on a daily basis. Entire neighborhoods, where children used to play and go to school have been turned into stacks of rubble, with no life in them."  NBC NEWS notes, "Strong majorities of all voters in the U.S. disapprove of President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll. The erosion is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza."  The slaughter continues.  It has displaced over 1 million people per the US Congressional Research Service.  Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) points out, "Academics and legal experts around the world, including Holocaust scholars, have condemned the six-week Israeli assault of Gaza as genocide."   The death toll of Palestinians in Gaza is grows higher and higher.  United Nations Women noted, "More than 1.9 million people -- 85 per cent of the total population of Gaza -- have been displaced, including what UN Women estimates to be nearly 1 million women and girls. The entire population of Gaza -- roughly 2.2 million people -- are in crisis levels of acute food insecurity or worse."  THE HINDUSTAN TIMES notes, "Israel's retaliatory campaign has killed at least 32,782 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza."  Months ago,  AP  noted, "About 4,000 people are reported missing."  February 7th, Jeremy Scahill explained on DEMOCRACY NOW! that "there’s an estimated 7,000 or 8,000 Palestinians missing, many of them in graves that are the rubble of their former home."  February 5th, the United Nations' Phillipe Lazzarini Tweeted:








And the area itself?  Isabele Debre (AP) reveals, "Israel’s military offensive has turned much of northern Gaza into an uninhabitable moonscape. Whole neighborhoods have been erased. Homes, schools and hospitals have been blasted by airstrikes and scorched by tank fire. Some buildings are still standing, but most are battered shells."  Kieron Monks (I NEWS) reports, "More than 40 per cent of the buildings in northern Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, according to a new study of satellite imagery by US researchers Jamon Van Den Hoek from Oregon State University and Corey Scher at the City University of New York. The UN gave a figure of 45 per cent of housing destroyed or damaged across the strip in less than six weeks. The rate of destruction is among the highest of any conflict since the Second World War." 


Today, Cindy McCain appeared on CBS' FACE THE NATION.





ED O'KEEFE: Our thanks to Holly William's reporting from Jerusalem.

One of the international aid groups working to get relief into Gaza is the World Food Programme and on Friday we asked its executive director, Cindy McCain, what needs to change on the ground so her teams can operate there.

(Begin VT)

CINDY MCCAIN (World Food Programme Executive Director): We need access. We need full unfettered access. And right now we don't have that. We can occasionally get a few trucks in. We can occasionally get up all the way to the north. But it's not consistent and it's not to scale either. All of the other issues regarding maritime and air drops and all those are all good. We need any way to be able to get food in and any way we can.

But they can't take it to scale. We really need access to the road and we need to be able to get up to the north all the way without caught at checkpoints and turned around.

ED O'KEEFE: I read the World Food Programme estimates simply addressing the basic food needs will require at least 300 trucks to enter Gaza every day and distribute food especially in the north as you mentioned. But you've only managed to get about nine convoys of trucks in since the start of the year. That's nothing, right?

CINDY MCCAIN: It's nothing. It really is. We were able to, yesterday, or today I guess it was, get nine trucks in, period. We also were part of an air drop today that was 6.1 metric tons. That's nothing. We just cannot continue this way. As you know, famine is imminent in the north. And so unless we can really convince our diplomatic groups and our political groups around the world to help convince the Israelis that we must get in and we must do it in a sustained and unfettered way, we can't – people are going to die otherwise and they are already dying.

ED O'KEEFE: When you or your colleagues speak with Israeli officials about getting that access, what is the reason they're giving you why they are not letting you in? Do they not understand the situation or is there some other reason?

CINDY MCCAIN: Well, I'm not sure where the mistake has been made. But I do know that there's been accusations that somehow the U.N. isn't doing their job which couldn't be further from the truth. So I think, again, it's politics, I think it's something that – you know, various factions are involved in. All I want – all I need to know is when and where we could take the food in and make sure that we could distribute it. That's what I want to know from the Israeli government. 

ED O'KEEFE: You're especially concerned as well about what's happening in parts of Africa, specifically Sudan, South Sudan and Chad. And you said this could become the world's largest hunger crisis. Why is that?

CINDY MCCAIN: Well, quite frankly, it's a forgotten crisis now. Sudan is no longer paid attention to in the world media. And things haven't stopped there. People are still fighting. There is no food. We have no access. And we're also fighting a climate change issue there as well. So it's almost a combination of a perfect storm. With 2.2 million refugees across the borders in various countries especially Chad and the funding sources that we have right now and our ability to be able to fund, it just isn't matching.

We don't have enough money and we need to be able to make sure that we can feed the refugees that cross the border and also get access into Sudan from the western side, the southern side, through South Sudan and through the north. We've got to get food in there as well because it can be and will be – I hope not and I pray not – the next largest humanitarian crisis that we will know.

ED O'KEEFE: And not only humanitarian crisis, you suggested it could be a real national security risk for the United States, right?

CINDY MCCAIN: Very much so. People migrate. You know, the bad guys get mixed up in all of this. Food is the major element here in being able to keep populations stable and keep healthy as well. With those two things not tended to, then people migrate, they run, they take their families, they do anything they can to feed their families.

ED O'KEEFE: You've made an interesting point that I think is a good reminder to all of us, that these hunger crises around the world are not being caused by natural disasters, but by manmade events and conflict, and nowhere right now, perhaps at least in this hemisphere where we sit, is that most apparent than in Haiti. What is the situation there as you understand it?

CINDY MCCAIN: It's catastrophic. We at WFP are still in there and we still are working in the north somewhat and somewhat down towards the center. But it is a very dicey situation. We are continuing our school feeding programs but once again, as you've seen, there have been evacuations of U.N. personnel out of there. It's just a – again, this is a diplomatic solution. This is a manmade crisis and we need a diplomatic solution to it. And we need it now, we need it right now. 

ED O'KEEFE: You know, we'd be remiss if we didn't ask you, while we have you, about the death of the late senator Joe Lieberman who of course was such a good friend to you and to your late husband. What did he mean to the McCain family?

CINDY MCCAIN: Oh, he was Uncle Joe to my children. He was a friend to my family, and I had the extreme opportunity of watching two men together not only navigate the difficulties that the world offered up to them as – in what they did, but also watched them solve problems together in a way that was gracious and kind and loving towards humanity. And I had the good fortunate being able to call him my friend, too.

ED O'KEEFE: Executive director Cindy McCain of the World Food Programme, thank you for joining us.

CINDY MCCAIN: Thank you for having me.

ED O'KEEFE: And we'll be right back. 


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