JD Vance has been attacking Tim Walz's 24 years in the National Guard. Trump's a 5 time draft dodger and Vance, in his military service, never saw combat, unless you count his war on women, LGBTQ civil rights and decency
— Paul Rudnick (@PaulRudnickNY) August 7, 2024
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
We look now at how the Middle East is bracing for a possible broader regional war after Hamas’s top political leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran and a top Hezbollah commander was assassinated in Beirut last week. Israel took credit for the Beirut strike and has been widely accused of being behind the Haniyeh killing.
On Tuesday, Hamas named Yahya Sinwar to be the group’s new political leader replacing Haniyeh. Yahya Sinwar has served as Hamas’s top leader in Gaza since 2017, is credited with being the mastermind of the October 7th attack on Israel that killed more than 1,100 people.
For more on boiling tensions in the region, we go to Croatia, where we are joined by Jeremy Scahill of Drop Site News. His recent piece is headlined “'Something came from the outside': An Eyewitness Account of the Aftermath of Ismail Haniyeh’s Assassination.”
Jeremy, welcome back to Democracy Now! Can you start off by finding out who you spoke to and what you found out?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, Amy, first, let’s set the scene here. Benjamin Netanyahu, the week before these assassinations, had celebrated his victory tour in the United States, where he not only stood before the U.S. Congress and got repeated standing ovations as though he was on some sort of a bloody bizarro version, you know, world version of a concert, where he was celebrating his genocidal war and receiving generous applause from both Democrats and Republicans, and he not only met with the sitting president, but also Kamala Harris, as well as Donald Trump, and the message that he heard from all three of them was that they were ironclad in their support for what they characterized as Israel’s security. Now, there was some difference in how each of those three people interacted with Netanyahu, but the most important thing for people to remember is that all three of them firmly support the bipartisan U.S. policy, which has led to this genocidal, scorched-earth war against the Palestinians of Gaza.
So, Netanyahu then comes back to Israel and immediately greenlights a series of assassinations. You have the killing in Beirut of Fuad Shukr, who was a senior Hezbollah commander. Also killed in that strike, we understand, was an Iranian military adviser to Hezbollah. And that was followed, just some hours later, by the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’s political bureau. And Haniyeh had just returned back to a guest residence that is housed within a compound in northern Tehran that is controlled and guarded by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the most elite military force in the country.
I spoke to Dr. Khaled Qaddoumi, who is Hamas’s senior representative in Tehran and also a member of its Arab and Muslim world outreach division of Hamas. He was on the second floor of this building. You know, they call it a guesthouse, but it’s basically like an apartment complex. And Dr. Qaddoumi was on the second floor. Ismail Haniyeh and his bodyguard were on the fourth floor. Dr. Qaddoumi described to me how he had not gone to the state dinner, which was held in honor of Iran inaugurating its new president. Ismail Haniyeh was there, as were many leaders from the region. Haniyeh gets back to the guest complex around 11:30. Dr. Qaddoumi and others gather with Haniyeh. He says that they were discussing the assassination of Fuad Shukr in Lebanon and what they were assessing might be the regional implications for a broader war and Netanyahu’s game plan. And then they retired to their rooms to go to sleep.
And Dr. Qaddoumi described hearing a massive shaking of the building. And he, you know, was disoriented, woke up, didn’t know what it was. He thought at first maybe there had been an earthquake on what he said was a kind of great scale. He gets out of the bedroom and just sees smoke. He discovers that the bathroom walls and part of the ceiling had collapsed in the room where he was. He goes out into the hallway. Other members of the Hamas delegation told him that there had been some sort of a strike on Ismail Haniyeh’s apartment.
Dr. Qaddoumi, who is a medical doctor, ran then up to the fourth floor, and he entered the guest suite where Ismail Haniyeh had been staying, and he discovered the body of Ismail Haniyeh, as well as his bodyguard. And he described to me seeing what appeared to be a massive hole in the exterior wall. It also had some windows. But he said it appeared to him as though some sort of a missile or other projectile had crashed into the room from the outside and that that was what had in fact killed Ismail Haniyeh.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Jeremy, what do you make of the New York Times report that came out a few days later claiming that the explosion was a result of a bomb that had been smuggled into that residence months earlier? And, of course, that report was from Ronen Bergman, who is the New YorkTimes reporter probably most — closest to Israeli intelligence.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah, Juan, that’s correct. You know, Israel has been clearly spinning a narrative. In fact, today, some of the top Israeli propagandists on social media have been pushing more details about this story, and they say that Mossad was able to coopt Iranians to go into the guest complex and plant these explosives. And they say that the perpetrators of the bombing of Haniyeh were captured on CCTV.
And Ronen Bergman was the first to report this in The New York Times, and he has a very long history of reporting on Mossad activities. He has close ties to Israeli intelligence. He wrote a book called Rise and Kill First, which is about the history of Israel’s assassination program. And really, this narrative is something that is sort of like pulled from the script pages of the series Tehran, the Israeli show about a covert Israeli agent who is operating inside of Iran trying to take down a nuclear reactor.
Now, I should say, in the interest of accuracy and fairness, we don’t know exactly what happened there. It is plausible that what is being promoted by The New York Times and, you know, Israeli propagandists is largely the truth, that they were able to penetrate the building, that they planted these explosives. The Iranians, though, have pushed back very, very strongly against that. They say that some sort of a projectile hit the building. In fact, Juan, within hours of the explosion inside of Haniyeh’s guest suite, Iranian news services were already saying that some sort of a projectile was seen hitting the building.
So, you know, it’s possible that what is being stated about a bomb being planted there is true. The Iranians are pushing back against it. Not just Dr. Qaddoumi from Hamas, but other eyewitnesses also described damage to the scene that appears consistent with a missile or a rocket or some sort of projectile hitting it. There’s been discussion that Israeli intelligence was able to penetrate either the mobile phone of Ismail Haniyeh or his bodyguard and that they were able to use tracking malware to pinpoint a precision missile strike against him. There have been reports that Ismail Haniyeh’s entire upper body was destroyed, which could either be consistent with a bomb under a bed that exploded or a missile directly hitting him if he was near his phone. So, we don’t know.
What we do know is that the Iranians are in a position to release forensic evidence. Presumably, in an IRGC compound, they also have video surveillance capabilities. We know that they did have counterespionage facilities there, as well as radar and, presumably, countermissile technology in the area. So, either way you slice it, though, this is very bad for Iran, because it indicates a security breach. Yes, it would probably be worse if they were able to penetrate the ranks of the IRGC and convert Iranians into agents. But the mere fact that Israel was able to do this assassination on Iranian soil is a very, very bad thing for Iran. And that lends some legitimacy to the fact that they’re saying that it was a missile strike, because even admitting that is very, very bad. But at the end of the day, the Iranians are in the best position to present evidence to the world of what happened.
I must say, though, that while this discussion is relevant — how did Israel assassinate thew leader of Hamas, the top negotiator in a process that Joe Biden is claiming is so central, that he wants a ceasefire right now — every time we talk about this or what the Israelis have succeeded in doing is distracting from the fact that the genocide in Gaza continues, that Netanyahu is serving as the chief arsonist in the Middle East, that he’s trying to draw the United States into war with Iran, that he’s trying to draw the United States into war with Hezbollah.
And, you know, for all the talk of Western countries about how Iran needs to show restraint, the truth is, and this is just a fact — it’s not politically correct to say it, but it’s factual — both Iran and Hezbollah, given what they’ve been facing, have already shown quite a bit of restraint. And the last time the Iranians responded to the Israelis was when Israel, on April 1st, launched a strike inside of Syria, in Damascus. They bombed the Iranian Consulate. They killed a dozen people. About half of them were IRGC personnel. Yes, Iran rained missiles down on Israel and sent fleets of drones toward Israel, but they did it in a highly telegraphed manner that allowed the United States and other countries to amass a very effective countermissile defense operation. I believe one person was killed in that Iranian missile strike.
So, you know, the devil is often in the details here. It’s very clear that Netanyahu has no intention of engaging in a ceasefire. He’s going to continue with the genocide in Gaza. And he really wanted to strike not just at Hamas, but, in many ways, this was a very bold operation to tell Iran, “We can strike whenever and wherever we want against you.”
AMY GOODMAN: We just have less than a minute, Jeremy, but your response to the latest news that Hamas has chosen Yahya Sinwar to replace Ismail Haniyeh, of course, who was assassinated and was the chief negotiator with Israel around the issue of a ceasefire?
JEREMY SCAHILL: My sources, Amy, have told me — within Hamas, have told me that this was a wartime decision, that they didn’t have time to assemble the full Shura Council and that the only sensible decision they could make was to fully support the on-the-ground commander of the military operations, which right now is Yahya Sinwar. This is also in line with recent polls that they’ve done in the Palestinian Occupied Territories that indicate that the popularity of Sinwar and Hamas, in general, are rising as the popularity of Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority are going down. It’s a statement that they understand Israel wants to fight to, quote-unquote, “total victory,” and they’re going to continued their operations, which they feel have been successful militarily in repelling and causing great harm to the Israeli military.
AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill, we want to thank you so much for being with us, of Drop Site News. We’ll link to your recent piece headlined “'Something came from the outside': An Eyewitness Account of the Aftermath of Ismail Haniyeh’s Assassination.” Jeremy is former senior reporter and correspondent at The Intercept.
More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza and the occupied West Bank since the start of Israel's war on the enclave, which entered its eleventh month on Wednesday, according to the latest death toll provided by Gaza health authorities.
Israeli attacks in the West Bank have killed 620 people, including 145 children and nine women, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.
In Gaza, the death toll rose to 39,699, with more than 91,700 injured since the war broke out on October 7 after a Hamas attack on Israel that killed about 1,200 people.
The ministry says most of the deaths there have been of women and children.
Israeli forces stormed a Gaza City home on December 21, 2023, throwing grenades inside and opening fire on a room where a civilian family was sheltering, Human Rights Watch said today.
The attack killed seven people, including a pregnant woman, and severely injured two, including a 5-year-old. Witnesses also allege that Israeli forces shot a blind 73-year-old man after securing the building and forcing all other family members out. The incident should be investigated as a possible war crime, and forces involved should be held accountable.
“There is no excuse for soldiers storming into a home full of civilians and firing without precaution,” said Belkis Wille, associate crisis, conflict, and arms director at Human Rights Watch. “They decimated a Palestinian family and orphaned a small child who may never be able to walk again.”
Human Rights Watch interviewed three al-Khalidi family members, two who witnessed the attack and were interviewed over the phone, and in June 2024 they met with Faisal, the injured 5-year-old, in Qatar, where he was receiving medical care. Researchers also analyzed a video uploaded to the Israeli armed forces’ X (formerly known as Twitter) account, IDFonline, parts of which were verified as having been filmed between December 20 and 21. It shows Israeli soldiers and armored vehicles in the vicinity but no ongoing fighting or soldiers coming under fire.
Mohammed al-Khalidi, 40, and Mu’min al-Khalidi, 21, cousins, said that in the night between December 20 and 21, a munition hit a home in Sheikh Radwan, in north Gaza City, near five schools sheltering displaced people. Mohammed, Mu’min, and 29 other family members were in the house next door, having fled their homes following an evacuation phone call from the Israeli military. They said that Mohammed’s sister-in-law Fatma al-Khalidi, 32, who was seven months pregnant, suffered a broken leg during the munition attack.
About 30 minutes after the attack, Mohammed said, Israeli forces arrived with armored vehicles and bulldozers. “We looked out and saw them smashing windows, running over cars with their tanks, destroying electricity lines, destroying everything else they could,” Mohammed said. Many residents of the area fled south, but the al-Khalidis did not, as older family members were unable to flee quickly. Both said no one in the house was armed or had any ties to an armed group, nor did they know of any fighters in the vicinity at the time.
At about noon the following day, both Mu’min and Mohammed said, Israeli forces fired munitions at the first floor of their building. Then, at about 5 p.m., over a dozen Israeli soldiers rammed through the gate into the yard and, without warning or provocation, tossed a grenade through a window of the home’s empty front room. After, Mohammed said, soldiers threw another grenade into the house’s main corridor, proceeded down it, kicked down a door and threw at least 2 more grenades into a room in which 12 people were sheltering, including Mu’min and Mohammed.
Both said when they heard soldiers approaching, they had grabbed their identity documents and were holding them up in their hands. Mu’min said he was injured and fell to the ground against the wall, with his uncle Amjad al-Khalidi, 42, on top of him.
The women screamed and a soldier entered and opened automatic rifle fire on everyone, both men said. Fatma, who was killed, along with her husband, Ahmed, was holding Faisal, who was seriously injured. When the shooting stopped, Fatma’s 6-year-old son, Adam, ran out of the room on seeing his father, Mohammed’s brother, Ahmed al-Khalidi, 34, “lying on the floor in a puddle of blood, like a slaughtered sheep,” Mohammed said. Adam was uninjured.
The cousins said the attack killed seven members of the family: Fatma; Ahmed; Mohammed’s brothers-in-law Shaaban Abu Jabal, 33, and Adham Abu Jabal, 20; and Nawal al-Khalidi, 70, and her children Raed al-Khalidi, 49, and Amjad al-Khalidi.
“One soldier said in Arabic, ‘Whoever is alive, stand up,’” Mohammed said. “I stood and he looked at me and said, ‘You survived, you fucker didn’t you?’ They took me outside and scanned my face with a machine.”
Abd Rabu al-Khalidi, Nawal’s 73-year-old husband, who was blind and uninjured, did not leave the room. Other family members – all children and women – who had been sheltering in a different room were also ordered outside by the soldiers. Mohammed said soldiers strip-searched the surviving men and searched the women and children. They asked where the original residents of the house were, and Mohammed said they didn’t know.
Then, Mohammed said, “We heard bullets being fired inside. I think that’s when they killed whoever had survived inside. They told us, ‘Your last chance to live is to walk in a line behind that soldier.’ We asked, ‘Where are you taking us?’ He said, ‘Shut up and just walk behind him.’”
Mu’min had also been unable to leave the room. “I couldn’t move, and I couldn’t hear anything because the explosions made me temporarily lose my hearing,” he said. “I quickly lost consciousness.” When he came to the next day, he realized he was lying under a pile of bodies.
“There are no words to describe what I felt,” he said. “All I want to know is why? Why did I have to live though such a massacre? Why did I lose all these people? What did we do to deserve all this? There were no resistance fighters in the house, no weapons of any kind, just civilians.”
Metal fragments from the explosion had wounded Mu’min in his knee, calf and foot, and a bullet hit his thigh. He said that when he regained consciousness, he was able to reach for a bottle of water, but soon lost consciousness again, and only was able to revive himself and drag himself out from under the bodies the following day, able only to move his hands. By this point Abd Rabu had been killed, apparently once soldiers reentered the house after evacuating Mohammed and others.
Mohammed found Mu’min when he returned four days later with a doctor to retrieve the bodies. “The legs of Amjad, Raed, and Shaaban had been shattered by the grenade explosion,” Mohammed said. “They looked like mincemeat, and metal fragments had pierced Ahmed in the stomach and neck. I saw Fatma’s belly and face full of metal fragments. Blood was sprayed all over the wall. Adham had a bullet wound that went in through his jaw and exited the back of his head…. Abd Rabu was also dead, with bullet wounds.”
Mohammed said he found over 60 bullet casings in the house.
Faisal had four surgeries in Gaza for ruptured intestines, a punctured bladder, and multiple hip fractures, and three more in Qatar. Six months after the attack, a plaster cast encased him from the waist to the top of his legs. Doctors say he may never walk again. Abdulhafith al-Khalidi, Faisal’s uncle and now his guardian, who accompanied him to Doha, said the attack had dramatically changed the child: “[Faisal] used to be so social and outgoing. He was always independent, running around and talking to new people. He was never afraid. Now if I go to the other room, he starts calling for me. He can never be left alone.”
Mu’min said he has not received clearance to leave Gaza and remains in the north with no medication, his injuries largely untreated, including multiple ruptured tendons.
Surviving al-Khalidi family members identified the house where the attack took place on a map. Human Rights Watch analyzed a video made up of seven clips posted online by the Israeli military on December 24. One shows Israeli forces operating less than 160 meters from the home the al-Khalidis identified.
The Israeli military report accompanying the video said the units appearing in the video are the 13th Shayetet and 401st Brigade. Human Rights Watch established that at least one clip from the video was filmed between the morning of December 20 and late afternoon on December 21. It shows at least 17 Israeli military personnel outside the Al-Taqwa Mosque, 170 meters southwest of the home.
In the same X post, the Israeli military posted a photograph and said it raided a school, which Human Rights Watch located on the opposite side of the street, and found a cache of weapons and explosives. The Israeli authorities have not publicly provided any further information about the attack. Additionally, they did not respond to a July 15 Human Rights Watch letter summarizing its findings and requesting specific information about the incident.
“This incident highlights the deadly cost of Israeli forces’ failure to safeguard, and in some cases to apparently target civilian lives in Gaza, including children,” Wille said. “Other governments should press the Israeli government to end unlawful attacks, and avoid complicity in possible war crimes by halting arms transfers to Israel.”
Gaza remains under assault. Day 307 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 NATIONAL notes, "At least 39,699 Palestinians have been killed and 91,722 others injured in Israel's war on Gaza since October 7, the enclave's Health Ministry said on Thursday. In the past 24 hours, 22 people were killed and 77 injured, the ministry added." 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:
