The health crisis in Gaza has gotten worse.
Alice Cuddy (BBC NEWS) reports:
Doctors
across Gaza have described operating on patients without anaesthetic,
turning people with chronic conditions away, and treating rotting wounds
with limited medical supplies.
"Because of the shortage of painkillers we leave patients to scream for hours and hours," one told the BBC.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has described the state of healthcare in Gaza as being "beyond words".
It said 23 hospitals in Gaza were not functioning at all as of Sunday - 12 were partially functioning and one minimally.
The health agency said air strikes and a lack of supplies have "depleted an already under-resourced system".
Nasser Hospital in Rafah has been the most recently targeted. The Israeli government, in the last week alone, began shooting at people leaving the hospital. It then blew out a wall and raided the hospital. Those who haven't been killed by the bullets from Israeli guns die in other ways.
FRANCE 24 notes "that a WHO team was not permitted access to the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis." Yes, the Israeli government does not want the World Health Organization to see the crimes being carried out.
Australia's ABC adds, "Mr al-Qidra said water supply to
the hospital had halted because generators had been out of action for
three days, sewage was flooding emergency rooms and the remaining staff
had no way of treating intensive care patients. Lack of oxygen supplies and no power has caused the deaths of at least seven patients, he said."
CNN notes, "Around 200 patients remain in the medical facility, which WHO teams were
not permitted to enter on Friday or Saturday, and at least 20 patients
need to be 'urgently referred' to other hospitals for medical treatment,
according to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus."
ALJAZEERA reports:
Osaid
Alser, a Gaza surgeon and medical resident at Texas Tech University,
says he has never seen any military activity while working at several
medical centres in Gaza since 2010, including at the al-Shifa and Nasser
hospitals.
“When we talk about tunnels and all of that, I think this is Israeli
propaganda that everybody should get used to at this point,” he told Al
Jazeera.
“Anybody who has worked in any of these hospitals, they can easily
say this is just nonsense. We never had our access limited to any area
in these hospitals. We could go to literally any area in the hospital
and nobody would say stop.”
Gaza remains under assault. Day 135 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."
FRANCE 24 notes "at
least 28,985 people have been killed and 68,883 wounded in
Israeli strikes on the enclave since October 7, the vast majority women and children." 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."
AFP reports, "Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva accused Israel Sunday of
committing 'genocide' against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip
and compared its actions to Adolf Hitler's campaign to exterminate Jews." They also note that Israeli President Isaac Herzog is having a pissy fit over the comment. This is a genocide and the abused, over time, can become the abusers. That's nothing new in the world of psychology. But Herzog does realize that the state of Israel was created in 1948, right? Not during the Holocaust.
Jorge L Ortiz (USA TODAY) adds:
Netanyahu said on social media that the Brazilian
ambassador to Israel would be called in for “a stern reprimand,” and
said Lula crossed “a red line.”
In a
translation of his post in Hebrew, Netanyahu called Lula’s statements
“shameful” and added. “This is about trivializing the Holocaust and
trying to harm the Jewish people and Israel’s right to defend itself.”
Netanyahu is murdering innocents and facing legal charges of corruption but he's calling Lula "shameful"?
What's happening in the Gaza Strip isn't a war, it's a genocide. It's not a war of soldiers against
soldiers. It's a war between a highly prepared army and women and
children. What's happening
in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people hasn't happened at any
other moment in history. Actually, it has happened: when Hitler decided
to kill the Jews.
His words aren't shameful. The actions of the Israeli government's are shameful. And, as usual, when called out on their s**t, they try to distract by smearing the person calling them out.
The nation of Israel, which didn't even exist during WWII, is trying to act as though the Holocaust gives them immunity and that they can kill as many children, as many reporters, as many medical workers, as many civilians as they want.
The government of Israel cheapens the tragedy of the Holocaust by using it as an excuse to target others in the 21st century.
ALJAZEERA notes:
Balakrishnan
Rajagopal, the UN rapporteur on the right to housing, says he is
“hoping for justice” as the ICJ starts hearings on Monday about Israel’s
occupation of Palestinian land.
“Occupation is always illegal, no matter how long it has existed.
Land theft and home demolitions are the main tools of converting
occupation to annexation,” Rajagopal wrote in a social media post.
