Incubator babies and dialysis patients hooked up to machines dependent on fuel are at particular risk – especially as Al-Aqsa is the sole facility for kidney patients in the central Gaza Strip governorate, Khalil al-Dakran, the hospital’s spokesperson, told Al Jazeera’s fact-checking agency Sanad.
“If electricity and water outages persist and fuel depletes, patients will be transferred to mass graves if the aggression continues,” al-Dakran warned.
“And the world [just] watches,” he continued bitterly.
Writing on social media platform X, the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said having managed to establish contact with the largest hospital, Al Shifa, in the past few hours, "the situation is dire and perilous."
He said medics had been three days without electricity and water "and with very poor internet which has severely impacted our ability to provide essential care.
"The constant gunfire and bombings in the area have exacerbated the already critical circumstances. Tragically, the number of patient fatalities has increased significantly", he added.
He said the hospital "is not functioning as a hospital anymore", concurring with the regional directors that there must be international intervention.
News reports quoting the health ministry, said earlier on Saturday that five wounded patients have died because they could not be operated on due to a lack of fuel.
Two babies in the intensive care unit there were reported to have died on Saturday, with water, food and electricity cut off.
Tedros expressed grave concern for the safety of staff and patients caught in crossfire late on Saturday noting that Israeli tanks were reportedly surrounding Al Shifa.
The Israeli military has repeatedly denied its forces are targeting hospitals, claiming that Hamas and other militants are using the facilities as shields with their headquarters located beneath Al Shifa.
“Intense hostilities surrounding several hospitals in northern Gaza are preventing safe access for health staff, the injured, and other patients”, said the statement released by Laila Baker of UNFPA, UNICEF Regional Director Adele Khodr, and Dr. Ahmed Al-Mandhari, of WHO.
Meanwhile on Monday, the UN flag flew at half-mast at the Organisation’s offices around the world in memory of the 101 staff members of the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, killed in Gaza since the start of Israel’s retaliation for Hamas’ massacres perpetrated in southern Israel on 7 October.
“Today, we join the UN community in a moment of silence to mourn and honour our colleagues killed in Gaza,” UN World Food Programme chief Cindy McCain wrote on social platform X.
At a solemn ceremony at the UN Office in Geneva, Director-General Tatiana Valovaya thanked staff for their sacrifice, highlighting the importance of their work at a time when multilateralism was under threat.
Staff at UN offices in Geneva bowed their heads as a candle was lit in memory of the 101 employees of UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) killed in the Israeli assault on Gaza.
"This is the highest number of aid workers killed in the history of our organization in such a short time," said Tatiana Valovaya, Director-General of the United Nations in Geneva.
"We are gathered here today, united in this very symbolic location, to pay respect to our brave colleagues who sacrificed their lives while serving under the United Nations flag."
UNRWA has said that some staff members were killed while queuing for bread while others were killed along with their families in their homes in Israel's aerial and ground war against Hamas in response to the Oct. 7 cross-border assault by the group.
As the assault continues, the protests increase. Jake Johnson (COMMON DREAMS) notes, "Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of London on Saturday to demand an immediate cease-fire in Gaza as Israeli forces ramped up their aerial and ground assault on the Palestinian enclave's hospitals and other civilian infrastructure, intensifying the territory's humanitarian crisis." BBC NEWS explains, "It was the biggest UK rally since [. . .] 7 October." We've removed the phrase "since the war between Israel and Hamas began on" because the war didn't begin that day. October 8th? That's when the latest assault on Gaza began because Gaza's been under assault for years. Fatima al-Kassab (NPR) adds, "Protesters marched overwhelmingly peacefully through the city, meeting at London's Hyde Park and walking to the U.S. Embassy. The Met police reported 'no issues'' with the protest itself, saying that it had stuck to the prescribed route. The route for Saturday's march, which coincided with Armistice Day, was intentionally drawn up by protest organizers to avoid London's war memorials such as the Cenotaph, where two minutes of silence were held to commemorate the U.K. war dead an hour before the march began." Mark Townsend, Tobi Thomas, Rajeev Syal and Toby Helm (GUARDIAN) quote activist Rachel Solnick, "I feel really appalled by how some of the framing around liberation for Palestine has been as if there’s an opposition, or some kind of binary between Jewish safety and Palestinian safety. I absolutely disagree with that framing. I think that loads of us who have Jewish ancestry feel really strongly that what is taking place in Palestine is ethnic cleansing and we don’t want it to happen in our names. It feels so important to gather here in numbers, as Jews and as members of the British public in general, to counter that narrative." Chris Marsden (WSWS) observes, "Sir Keir Starmer’s backing of Israel has made him the most despised Labour leader since Tony Blair took Britain into the Iraq war in 2003 based on lies. This has led to mass resignations and a collapse of support in inner city areas. Many demonstrators carried homemade banners targeting Starmer as an accomplice to war crimes." UK SOCIALIST WORKER reports:
The national march for Palestine—of at least 800,000 people—in London on Saturday made even the massive protests of the last month seem small.
“Now I have hope, now I think we can make a real difference to help stop the agony of Gaza,” protester Rania told Socialist Worker. She was born in Ramallah in Palestine and fears for her family and friends.
It was so big that there was a demo to the demo. Half an hour before the advertised start time, around 50,000 or more marchers packed the mile-long street from Oxford Circus to the assembly point at Marble Arch
Marcher Alex said, “I have been on the sit-ins and marches. I can’t rest and just go back to ‘normal life’. It’s hard for me to understand why even more of us aren’t on the streets and closing down buildings and places where people work. We need to stop society.”
Mariam is a GP. She told Socialist Worker that she couldn’t stand aside and watch a genocide happen in real-time. “As a health worker I have to stand against what’s happening in Gaza,” she said. “Israel is bombing hospitals and ambulances and killing my colleagues.
Raw fury at Israel and its backers was everywhere. Maryam came from Manchester to be at the demonstration because she was “just so angry” “I can’t take the double standards,” she told Socialist Worker.
“Why is it that when the Ukrainian people fight back with Molotov cocktails everyone celebrates them but if the Palestinians do the same they are terrorists? I’m also sick of the media saying things like ‘Palestinians were killed’—no they were murdered.
“I know why this double standard exists—because the Palestinians are mostly Muslims.”
Marchers were proud to have defied the cops’ and home secretary Suella Braverman’s attempts to halt the demonstration and slur protesters.
“Piss off Braverman, we’re on the streets and you can’t stop us. Your lies about ‘hate marches’ are so rubbish,” said health worker Andy Wollerton from the West Midlands. “Braverman’s the hate-person.”
At the rally at the end of the march, Lindsey German from the Stop The War Coalition said, “The police wanted to call off the march. The prime minister wanted it called off. Braverman wanted to ban the march. But we marched and we will keep marching.
“If there is any violence today it is the fault of pound shop Enoch Powell, the home secretary. She should be sacked.”
Encouraged by Braverman, the thugs of the far right fought the cops at the Cenotaph war memorial in Whitehall as they showed how they remember wars. Meanwhile, their fuhrer, Nazi Tommy Robinson, drove to safety in a taxi.
Demonstrators knew who to blame for Western support for Israel. As they arrived at the US embassy in south London, they chanted, “Joe Biden—blood on your hands. Rishi Sunak—blood on your hands. Keir Starmer—blood on your hands”.
Anger at Starmer ran through the march. Hazel from east London said, “He’s a murderer, I hate him more than Sunak because he’s supposed to be the opposition. He will do anything to keep in with the rich, even ignore kids’ deaths.”
Imran Hussain, the MP who resigned as a Labour shadow minister this week, told the rally, “It was the people of Bradford who sent me to Westminster. They expect me to stand up against injustice. This is beyond a humanitarian crisis, it’s a breach of international law and a war crime.”
Labour MP Apsana Begum said, “The situation is urgent. It is chilling—as are the attempts to vilify those opposing mass killing.
“History will judge those that have the green light to slaughter. Demand an immediate ceasefire and an end to the oppression of the Palestinians. None of us are free till we are all free.”
There is a point—very rare—when a march moves from a normal demonstration to a city-halting, government-defying, revolt-inspiring social force.
Saturday 11 November was one of those. All of those who were part of it will speak of it to friends, workmates and those they live alongside in the next few days. They will remember it for years to come.
People speak sometimes of a change “from quantity to quality”. It means that increasing size doesn’t mean an event is bigger than another one, but that it becomes much more significant.
This should be the spur to urgent and more militant resistance that’s desperately needed to break the British government from its full-throated support for Israel’s crimes. The magnificent march has to be a launch pad for even more effective action.
There must be more demos, more sit-ins, more occupations and blockades, more campuses disrupted. And we need more discussion, more debate, more educating ourselves and talking about a stronger socialist fight on all the class issues workers face, as well as Palestine.
This was by far the biggest ever march for Palestine in Britain—and that’s partly because it’s not just about Palestine, but all the injustice people face. The trade union block on the march was bigger than previous ones with banners from branches or the national NEU, UCU, Unite, CWU, RMT, Aslef and PCS.
Stop The War has called a workplace day of action for Wednesday—15 November. Everyone should try to build it and make it disruptive.
Those who are already set to strike that day should make Palestine a theme of their day and urge others to join them. This includes 15 further education colleges, the Go North East bus strikers, the Barnet mental health social workers and others.
The organisers of Saturday’s march called for local protests across Britain next Saturday 18 November, and said they will announce another national demonstration soon.
Freeing Palestine will take a revolution. This movement, if it escalates still further, can point the way to building the forces that can make one.
- Around 15,000 people took to the streets of Glasgow.
- Around 2,000 people joined a march for Palestine in Cardiff. Some protesters then occupied Cardiff Central station.
Another notable protest was one in Austin, Texas. Pooja Salhotra (TEXAS TRIBUNE) reports, "Thousands of Texans descended upon the state Capitol Sunday afternoon in support of Palestinians to call for a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to U.S. and Texas aid to Israel. [. . .] The crowd stretched across multiple blocks and spilled onto sidewalks. One group climbed onto a nearby parking garage and held banners over the roof. Another group carried a white banner that listed the names of every person killed in Gaza since Oct. 7. The protest was organized by a coalition of pro-Palestine groups, including the Palestinian Youth Movement and the Party for Socialism and Liberation." Bianca Moreno-Paz (AUSTIN-AMERICAN STATESMAN) adds, "Chants of 'From Palestine to Mexico, the walls have got to go,' thundered through the crowd as they unrolled a scroll measuring 100 feet, listing the Gazan children killed by Israeli attacks since Oct. 7. Overhead, an airplane circled the Capitol, its banner saying, 'Save Palestine, Cease Fire Now'." Tan Radford (FOX 7) quotes Abdullah Alqaroot stating, ""It's incredible, I don't think Austin has seen this big of a crowd. It's just a testament of what the people want, and it is a testament for what Palestinians are going through, which is a pretty hard time right now."
Today's protest in Austin follows a Thursday walk-out on the UT Austin campus. Lily Kepner (AUSTIN-AMERICAN STATESMAN) reports:
More than 1,000 University of Texas students and community members gathered in pouring rain Thursday afternoon in support of Palestinians.
The Palestinian Solidarity Committee, which serves as both the community and UT student organizing group for Palestinians in Austin, held a “Walk Out” event Thursday at the Gregory Gym. Students left class to gather and chant for the end of the occupation of Gaza and the end of aid to Israel.
An estimated 1,200 attendees then marched to the UT Main Mall, chanting under umbrellas.
Thursday’s walkout was part of a national walkout held by Students for Justice in Palestine chapters. There are more than 180 chapters on U.S. college campuses.
Thousands marched in the streets of Chicago again on Sunday to protest the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Demonstrators gathered around the Water Tower Place on Michigan Avenue along the commercial shopping district of the Magnificent Mile.
The demonstration on Sunday followed one on Thursday evening where over 5,000 protested the visit of President Joe Biden’s visit to Chicago for a fundraiser, chanting “Genocide Joe” over and over at the heavily policed event.
At the march on Sunday, a number of protestors came to the IYSSE table, purchased literature and signs and spoke at length with a number of reporters from the WSWS.
“It’s atrocious what Israel has been
doing against Palestinians for years, and I never supported anything
they were doing against Palestinians,” said Han, a public school teacher
in a Chicago suburb.
“As far as what Republicans and Democrats
have been doing for Palestinians, there were apparently peace talks for a
while but I think that turned out to be all fluff, considering they
were supporting Israel the entire time. They are two sides of the same
coin. If Israel benefits them, why would they support Palestinians?”
When asked how the billions spent on war funding every year affects the US working class, he said, “There’s a hundred things that it could be used for. For one thing, it could go to education. Since I’m a teacher that’s the first thing that comes to mind. It could go toward social programs for the elderly and working class children, to infrastructure in rural areas that don’t have much maintenance done on roads, public transportation access, housing. I don’t want to sound like an isolationist, but there are a hundred things that can be solved here at home instead of going abroad to police the world, so to speak.
“There needs to be an alternative to capitalist and imperialist society and politics, for that matter. They say money’s the root of all evil, but when you follow the dollar signs of what’s going on between Palestine and Israel, you see a lot of it’s tied to US war profiteering companies. And these major corporate interests are supporting Democrats and Republicans during their campaigns.”
Han also spoke to the broader context of opposition to capitalism: “It’s hard for me to justify the belief that capitalism is helping people, and the nonsense that there is a ‘trickle down effect’ of capitalism. Everyone at the top is living fine, but down here we’re all suffering.
“Why do we have to struggle just to make it out here to demonstrate and support Palestinians? I work in a Republican district where a lot of officials are Trump supporters, and I’m concerned for my job if they knew I was here. Why should it be that way? Why does it have to be a struggle for people to put food on the table and have housing? It shouldn’t be that way. These are basic necessities for every human being. It shouldn’t be a struggle to live in any country.”
Ryan, a young actor and worker said, “I’m out here because what’s happening here is incredibly wrong. And because what’s happening is not just relegated to Palestine, not just relegated to Gaza, it’s the entire world. When we fight for the liberation of the Palestinian people, we’re fighting for everybody’s liberation.
“The people who are oppressing the Palestinian people are the same people who are saying that it’s okay to destroy the world for their own profits, for their own profits.
“So for me, with what Biden is doing, it’s just incredibly disgusting. What’s happening in Gaza and the West Bank is on display for the entire world to see. We just talked about Motaz Azaiza, who is documenting so clearly what is happening on the ground. It’s so easy to get on Instagram and see what he’s posting and see what he’s sharing.
“And then for all that to be in the face of the world, for the president of the United States to authorize billions more dollars to this genocidal government that is trying to eradicate these people… Meanwhile, we have our own problems in this country that can be solved with all that money. It’s just disgusting to me.
“I did vote for Biden in 2020. But now do I even want to vote for anybody at this point? What is the point of engaging with this system, if all it does is it fuels governments like Israel who are committing genocide against innocent people?
“People who are working class or lower class in terms of the social hierarchy rising up and saying, ‘no, this is wrong’ is a beautiful, wonderful thing.”
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report.
We return to Omer Bartov, professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University. The Israeli American scholar has been described by the U.S. Holocaust Museum as one of the world’s leading specialists on genocide. He spoke to us on Wednesday, one day after the House voted to censure Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American member of Congress, for her criticism of Israel.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Bartov, you are a professor at Brown University in Providence. You’re in Cambridge right now. And I wanted to ask you about the dissent on college campuses and how they’re being dealt with. In Cambridge, at Harvard, you know about the students who were protesting on behalf of Palestinian rights. A truck carries around their faces, and above their faces, it says, “antisemite.” And on television, you’ll see pieces on antisemitism, which is very real in the world, for example, the burning of the Austrian cemetery in Vienna and many other situations. But they will be blended together — this is on the mainstream networks — with images of people protesting, holding a Palestinian flag. Can you talk about what’s happening on college campuses and people fearing that their concern for justice is being translated as antisemitism and cause for them to be blacklisted?
OMER BARTOV: So, look, this is a very complex issue, I agree. I think part of it is, frankly, ignorance about the reality on the ground in Israel-Palestine. And that has to do, obviously, not with your show, but with much of how the mainstream media in the United States is presenting things. But also, young people, students can find other sources of information to better know what is happening on the ground. So, generally, I think there’s a little bit of an issue of information.
Antisemitism is real, as you say, and has been growing, and is a not just lamentable, but frightening phenomenon. And obviously, I have no sympathy with it. But there is, and there has been for a long time, a tendency to label any criticism of the state of Israel, any criticism of the policies of any particular government, let alone criticism of Israel as a state as such, as antisemitism. And that is a policy of the right wing in Israel, and that’s a policy of the right wing in this country, and it has nothing to do with the truth. One can be a Zionist or a non-Zionist or an anti-Zionist, and not be antisemitic. One can be, again, Zionist, but against particular Israeli policies. I very strongly support the existence of the state of Israel, and I’m highly critical of its policies, and some people would call me a self-hating Jew. But that is nonsense. That has to do with criticism of policies that not only function as oppression of Palestinians over a very long period of time, 56 years of occupation of Palestinians, a refusal by the Israeli government to ever talk about what happened in 1948, so this kind of shutting up the entire conversation, and at the same time a belief that Jews, like other nations, have a right of self-determination. So we have to separate the two.
I think that at the moment, in the demonstrations, there is a sort of heightening of passions, and in part it is because of the policies of the Israeli government. I do feel that when people march in support of Palestinian lives — and I’m very much in favor of that — one does also have to remember what happened on October 7. On October 7th, over a thousand Jewish civilians, Israeli Jewish civilians — there were actually some Arabs there, too, some Bedouin, who live there, too — were butchered in the most heinous manner. And this was live-streamed. This has been deeply wounding to Israeli society. Almost every person in Israel knows people who were killed there or kidnapped, including myself. Members of my own family were either killed or are now in Gaza. And one has to recall that there are 240 people now held as hostages. And so, I think that when when protests the policies of Israel, for the sake of — and this has to do also with what Representative Tlaib said, which I completely agreed with. I thought it was a very moving speech. But I think it’s important to also stress that other side.
There has been a dehumanization of both sides. Occupation dehumanizes people. It dehumanizes the occupier, and it dehumanizes the occupied. And the way to deal with this is to talk about the political future: How do we move forward? A ceasefire would be wonderful, and I’m very much in support of it, but it won’t put an end to the violence. The end to the violence will come only as a result of a peaceful resolution of this 100-year-old conflict which has caused so much blood. That is, I think, what we should try to push the American administration to do, to change its policies, to put pressure on the Israeli government to finally relent and to begin again negotiations with the Palestinians.
AMY GOODMAN: And let me ask you about the term “from the river to the sea,” which the Israeli government takes, and those who charge others with antisemitism say, it means the annihilation of the Jewish population of Israel. I’m looking at the Likud party platform of March 1977, “The Right of the Jewish People to the Land of Israel (Eretz Israel),” which is the land of Israel. And it says, “The right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is eternal and indisputable and is linked with the right to security and peace; therefore, Judea and Samaria will not be handed to any foreign administration; between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.” That’s between the sea and the Jordan River, between the river and the sea. Can you talk about that term?
OMER BARTOV: Yes. You know, the originators of the Likud party, the Revisionist part of Zionism, under the great leader Jabotinsky, had a song that they used to sing. And the song was, “The Jordan has two banks / this one belongs to us, and the other one, too.” That is, they were not only talking actually about so-called historical Palestine, which is Mandatory Palestine of the interwar period; they were actually talking also about parts of the Jordan, of what is now the Kingdom of Jordan, as belonging to the future Jewish state.
So, when we talk about “from the Jordan to the sea,” we are talking about the territory that is now controlled by Israel. In that territory, there are now 7 million Jews and 7 million Palestinians — 2 million Palestinians who are Israeli citizens, 3 million Palestinians who are in the West Bank, and two to two-and-a-half million Palestinians — most of the population of Gaza are refugees in Gaza. So it’s 7 million versus 7 million.
To talk about a Palestinian state or a Jewish state between the Jordan and the sea, the question, of course, arises: So, what happened to the — what will happen to the other half? That is really the question. If one talks about a Palestinian state that refuses to recognize the Jewish right of self-determination — that is, of the right of Jews to have a state of their own — the question is: What will happen to the Jews there? Would they go back to Europe, as some people say, whatever that actually means? And if you have a state the way the Israeli right, the Likud party, and now the much more radical, really Jewish supremacist elements in Netanyahu’s government, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, these people who sort of trace their roots back to Rabbi Kahane, who are really Nazis — if you think — if you ask yourself, “What do they mean?” they want to create a Jewish state that does not have Palestinians in it, nor Arabs in it. And the policy has been consistently to make life as unbearable for the Palestinians there, so that either they will finally move out, which they have no intention of doing, or to use an emergency situation, such as exists right now, under the cover of which they could be ethnically cleansed. And that’s a major worry now among Palestinians who are Israeli citizens, who are worried about a second Nakba, a second expulsion of Palestinians after 1948, something that has been mentioned by a number of Israeli politicians, and, of course, a major worry in the West Bank and in Gaza.
So, what we need to think of is not the term “from the Jordan to the sea,” which is the territory that Israel now controls, but how does that territory get to be shared by these two groups in ways that do not include oppression, lack of any rights, lack of equality, and certainly does not include violence and expulsion.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Professor Omer Bartov, the issue of a two-state solution or a one-state solution, if you could take that on in a nutshell?
OMER BARTOV: Yeah. So, you know, I used to be a strong supporter of the two-state solution. And I gradually realized that this was a sort of fig leaf of the Israeli left, while the country kept settling the West Bank and making it impossible to create an independent Palestinian state there. And we kept saying, “Well, but at the end, there will be a two-state solution.” So, the traditional two-state solution, to my mind, is no longer viable. ’
So what is viable? And I think — and I belong to a group of people who have been talking about it for quite a while — that the only solution is a confederation, which would mean that there would be two states. There would be a Jewish state and a Palestinian state. They both would have full sovereignty. And they would be along more or less the borders of 1967, the Green Line, so-called, but they will make a distinction between residency and citizenship, so that people, say, Jews who live in a Palestinian state, could remain Israeli citizens, who have rights of residency in a Palestinian state, but have to then adhere to all the laws, rules and regulations of that Palestinian state. And Palestinians who live, say, in Nablus and would like to live in Haifa, like a French man from Paris who would like to live in Berlin, could move to Haifa, and they could have rights of residency, but they’d have to conform to all the rules and regulations of the Israeli state, but they would vote for — to a Palestinian parliament. And Jerusalem would be the joint capital of both. And above that, there would be institutions that will take care of the mutual affairs of these two states, which are very tightly woven together now by the infrastructure, electricity, water and so forth. It’s really impossible to cut them apart. That is — right now, of course, sounds like a pipe dream. But I think that in the long run, that is probably the only viable solution.
And I’ll add one last thing to that, which is very important both to Jews and Palestinians, which is that both states would have the right of return. The Jews could say, as they say now, that Jews who want to become Israeli citizens, wherever they live, can come. And Palestinians in the Palestinian state could say all Palestinian refugees who would like to come back to Palestine could come and become Palestinian citizens, and, under certain rules, could also move to the Israeli part of so-called Mandatory Palestine as residents.
AMY GOODMAN: And why not simply a one-state solution?
OMER BARTOV: I think a one-state solution is something that neither one side nor the other wants, because the Palestinians, quite rightly, want the right of self-determination, want to have their own state, as do the Jews. And both sides are afraid that the other side would be more powerful. Obviously, right now, under current conditions, the state of Israel is much more powerful militarily, economically than the Palestinian part of the land. And so, in that sense, a one-state solution would actually perpetuate Jewish supremacy in the whole country.
AMY GOODMAN: Omer Bartov is professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University. The Israeli American scholar is one of the world’s leading specialists on the subject of genocide. He recently signed an open letter warning of Israel committing a potential genocide in Gaza.
Coming up, three Palestinian groups have petitioned the International Criminal Court to investigate Israel for committing genocide and apartheid. Back in 30 seconds.
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