Israel kills dozens in Rafah as US approves billions for more weapons
The Cradle, Apr 21 2024
Israeli airstrikes on Rafah in southern Gaza killed 22 people, including 18 children, on the night of Apr 20, just hours after the US Congress voted to send an additional $26b in aid to Israel. In recent weeks, Israel has carried out almost daily airstrikes on Rafah, a city on the Egypt border where more than one million Gazans have sought refuge to escape Israeli bombing elsewhere in the enclave. Many are living in vast makeshift tent cities amid acute food shortages caused by Israel’s brutal siege. ABC News reports that the first Israeli strike in Rafah Saturday killed a man, his wife, and their 3-year-old child, according to the Kuwaiti Hospital. The wife was pregnant, but doctors managed to save the baby, the hospital said. The second Israeli strike killed 17 children and two women from the same extended family, the hospital reported. Mohammed al-Beheiri said his daughter Rasha and her six children were killed. One of the children was an 18-month-old baby. Rasha’s husband’s second wife and their three children remain under the rubble, al-Beheiri said.
Netanyahu has vowed to also attack Rafah in a ground offensive, which the UN and rights groups have warned would kill massive numbers of Palestinian civilians who have nowhere to flee further. The bill passed by Congress is expected to pass the Senate next week. Biden will then sign it. Reuters reports that the bill provides $26.38b in aid to Israel and reimburses US military operations in support of Israel. Of the $26b, $5.2b is earmarked to replenish and expand Israel’s missile and rocket defense system. $3.5b is allotted to purchase advanced weapons systems, $1b to enhance weapons production, and $4.4b for other supplies and services provided to Israel. In response to the passage of the aid package in Congress, Hamas issued an official statement saying:
We consider this step a confirmation of the official American complicity and partnership in the war of extermination waged by the fascist occupation army against our Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. Which claimed the lives of tens of thousands of innocent martyrs, in addition to the systematic destruction of cities and residential neighborhoods, and all civil facilities and infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.
The aid to Israel is part of a broader spending package that will also send $60b to Ukraine to continue the war with Russia. Biden and Blinken have been unwavering in their support and commitment to funding Israel’s war on Gaza since it began in October, despite harsh criticism from elements in their own Democratic Party. Israel has killed over 34k people in Gaza, including some 14k children, in what many view as genocide.
Chilling evidence of Israeli war crimes unearthed in Gaza’s mass graves
The Cradle, Apr 21 2024
Over 200 bodies were discovered in mass graves in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Yunis, authorities in the strip announced on Apr 21.
Two mass graves were discovered at Khan Yunis’ Nasser Medical Complex. Gaza’s Government Media Office said on Sunday:
About 700 bodies are expected to be found. We found in the Nasser Complex corpses without heads and bodies without skins, and some of them had their organs stolen. The occupation executed dozens of displaced, wounded, sick, and medical staff.
Among the bodies found were those of children and elderly. Rescue teams reported seeing bodies wrapped in plastic bags with Hebrew writing on them. Many of the bodies had shown that their hands were tied behind their backs, indicating that they were executed, according to the media office. Gaza’s Civil Defense said:
More than 150 martyrs [have been recovered], and about 500 people are missing after the massacres in Khan Yunis following the occupier’s withdrawal. It is unknown whether the missing people are detained or buried underground.
The civil defense said that the Israeli army uses forced disappearance as a systematic policy against the people of Gaza. It said that overall, 2k Palestinians are missing across the strip.
Some of the bodies found have evaporated and turned to ash. International institutions must identify the type of weapons used.
The Israeli army withdrew a large bulk of its forces from the Gaza Strip in early April. Following the withdrawal, families returning to Khan Yunis witnessed scores of bodies, many trapped under rubble. Hundreds of bodies have also recently been recovered in the northern Gaza Strip, particularly in and around Al-Shifa Hospital, where Israeli troops launched a violent and destructive military operation that lasted from 18 March until 1 April. WAFA reported on Apr 9, citing the civil defense
The bodies of 409 martyrs, some of them decomposed, have so far been recovered by civil defense teams from the Al-Shifa Medical Complex and its surroundings in Gaza City.
More bodies were found at Al-Shifa Hospital last week, as well as another mass grave in the northern city of Beit Lahiya. Mass graves have also been discovered in Khan Yunis’ Kamal Adwan Hospital in recent months. The continuous unearthing of more and more bodies has resulted in concerns that Israel is going to great lengths to conceal the number of killings and executions it has committed in Gaza over the past several months.
US may impose sanctions on Israel army unit for human rights violations
The Cradle, Apr 21 2024
Blinken is expected in the coming days to announce sanctions against the Netzach Yehuda battalion of the Israeli army for human rights violations in the occupied West Bank, Axios reported on Apr 20. The US has never imposed sanctions on an Israeli military unit in the past, despite many reports the Israeli army commits war crimes and targets civilians from international rights groups and the UN during decades of occupation.
The Netzah Yehuda battalion is a special unit for male ultra-orthodox Jewish soldiers. It became a magnet for “Hilltop Youth,” religious settlers not accepted into other combat units. The unit was stationed in the occupied West Bank, allowing its soldiers to terrorize Palestinians. The sanctions will ban the battalion and its members from receiving US military assistance or training, three US sources with knowledge of the issue told Axios.
Any such sanctions would be based on the “Leahy Law,” passed in 1997 and authored by then-Senator Patrick Leahy. The law prohibits the US from providing military aid and training to foreign security, military, and police units credibly alleged to have committed human rights violations. On Thursday, ProPublica reported that a special State Dept panel recommended in December that Blinken blacklist multiple Israeli military and police units from receiving US aid on the basis of the Leahy Law. But Blinken sat on the recommendation and took no action, according to current and former State Dept officials. One official said:
They’ve been sitting in his briefcase since then.
At the same time, Blinken used emergency measures to accelerate US weapons shipments to the Israeli army for its war on Gaza. The army has killed some 13,800 children and laid waste to wide swathes of the besieged enclave since the start of the war in October. The incidents upon which the recommendation to impose sanctions on Israeli army units are based mostly took place in the West Bank before the Gaza war began. The allegations include extrajudicial killings by the Border Police; the killing of an 80-year-old Palestinian-American man, Omar Assad, who was gagged, handcuffed, and left in the cold to die; the rape and torture of a teenager who had been accused of throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at soldiers. At a press conference in Italy on Friday, Blinken was asked about the recommendation and said he was finally prepared to act. Blinken said:
You can expect to see them in the days ahead.
One source speaking with Axios said several other army and police units were investigated but did not have sanctions imposed on them after they allegedly changed their behavior. The Commander of the Netzah Yehuda Battalion responded to the anticipated US sanctions by claiming to Maariv:
The ethics of our army are higher than those of the American army.
Netanyahu said Saturday on Twitter:
Sanctions must not be imposed on the Israel Defense Forces. The intention to impose the measures on the Israeli army is the height of absurdity and a moral low. My government will act by all means against these moves.
Blinken imposed sanctions on a handful of Jewish Israeli settlers in February for violence against Palestinians. However, the sanctions were limited to banning the settlers from carrying out foreign financial transactions and traveling to the US. After several Israeli banks closed the accounts of the settlers and blocked access to their assets in response to the sanctions, the US Treasury intervened to ensure the banks reopened the accounts. As the US presidential election nears, officials from the Biden White House are under pressure from their Democratic Party voting base to end support for Israel due to its ongoing genocide in Gaza. At the same time, they are under pressure to satisfy the major Jewish donors to the party, who are demanding continued military and diplomatic support for Israel.
West Bank on strike following Israel’s Tulkarem massacre
The Cradle, Apr 21 2024
A comprehensive strike was declared across the occupied West Bank city of Tulkarem on Apr 21 in mourning of at least 19 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces during a three-day raid there. Israeli troops withdrew from the city earlier on Apr 21, after inflicting widespread destruction in Tulkarem’s Nour Shams refugee camp. Hamas said in a statement after midnight on Saturday:
We call upon all our people to ignite confrontations with the criminal Zionist occupation in the West Bank and Al-Quds, in response to the criminal massacre in Nour Shams camp in Tulkarem. As we mourn the noble martyrs of Tulkarem who faced the occupation forces with determination and defiance, we affirm that Zionist criminality will not bring security to the occupation and that the resistance of our people continues. We also call on our people in the West Bank to adhere to the general strike tomorrow, Sunday, and for all squares and confrontation points to turn into a blaze of flames in the face of the occupation.
Streets were emptied after the strike was called. The Palestinian Authority’s Fatah party also called for a strike and an escalation across the West Bank in response to the massacre in Tulkarem and the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Israeli troops invaded Tulkarem’s Nour Shams refugee camp on Apr 18. Clashes between the army and several Palestinian resistance factions in the camp were ongoing until Israeli forces withdrew fully on Sunday morning. Several Israeli soldiers were injured by the resistance. Among the at least 19 Palestinians killed were several resistance fighters. At least four of their bodies are being held by Israel. Children are among those who were killed by Israeli forces during the raid, including 16-year-old Qais Nasrallah.
The Israeli army cut off water, electricity, and internet services across Nour Shams camp on Apr 20. Ambulance crews were prevented from entering and retrieving the bodies of several who remained inside the camp. Snipers were deployed in the homes of several residents, who were detained and kept in Israeli custody inside their houses. Israeli army bulldozers persisted with deliberate destruction of infrastructure across the camp. Video footage from Saturday afternoon showed an Israeli bulldozer destroying Nour Shams’ Haifa bakery.
Violent and destructive army raids in West Bank cities, particularly Tulkarem, have increased, and settlers continue to launch wide-scale attacks on villages, burning homes and vehicles and attacking Palestinian civilians. As a result, resistance operations have surged in the occupied West Bank. An Israeli reservist was wounded on Apr 21 after kicking over a Palestinian flag that had been rigged with explosives. The operation took place in Al-Mughayyir in the city of Ramallah, where settlers had rampaged violently last week.
Niqnaq 