Israel’s War on Hospitals

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#1 [Permalink] Posted on 24th November 2023 20:07

Chris Hedges – The Unz Review Nov 20, 2023
Israel is not attacking hospitals in Gaza because they are “Hamas command centers.” Israel is systematically and deliberately destroying Gaza’s medical infrastructure as part of a scorched earth campaign to make Gaza uninhabitable and escalate a humanitarian crisis. It intends to force 2.3 million Palestinians over the border into Egypt where they will never return.

Israel has destroyed and nearly emptied the Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. The Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia is next. Israel is deploying tanks and armored personnel carriers around the hospital and has fired rounds into the building, killing twelve people.

The playbook is familiar. Flyers are dropped by Israel over a hospital telling people to leave because the hospital is a base for “Hamas terrorist activities.” Tanks and artillery shells rip away parts of the hospital walls. Ambulances are blown up by Israeli missiles. Power and water is cut. Medical supplies are blocked. There are no painkillers, antibiotics and oxygen. The most vulnerable, premature babies in incubators and the gravely ill, die. Israeli soldiers raid the hospital and force everyone out at gunpoint.

This is what happened at Al Shifa hospital. This is what happened at Al Rantisi Children’s Hospital. This is what happened at Gaza’s main psychiatric hospital. This is what happened at Nasser Hospital. This is what happened at the other hospitals that Israel has destroyed. And this is what will happen at the few hospitals that remain.

Israel has shut down 21 of Gaza’s 35 hospitals, including Gaza’s only cancer hospital. The hospitals still operating have severe shortages of basic medicine and supplies. One by one the hospitals are being picked off. Soon there will be no health facilities left. This is by design.

Tens of thousands of terrified Palestinians, forced to evacuate by Israel, their homes blasted into rubble, seek refuge from the relentless bombing by camping out in and around Gaza’s hospitals. They hope the medical centers will not be targeted by Israel. If Israel abided by the Geneva Conventions they would be correct. But Israel is not carrying out a war. It is carrying out a genocide. And in a genocide, a population, and all that sustains a population, is obliterated.

In an ominous sign that Israel will turn on the Palestinians in the West Bank once it is done flattening Gaza, armored vehicles have surrounded at least four West Bank hospitals. The Ibn Sina Hospital has been raided by Israeli soldiers along with the East Jerusalem Hospital.

Israel’s settler colonial state was founded on lies. It is sustained by lies. And now, when it is grimly determined to carry out the worst slaughter and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians since the 1948 Nakba, or “catastrophe,” that saw 750,000 Palestinians ethnically cleansed and some 50 massacres by Jewish militias, it spits out one grotesque absurdity after another. It speaks of Palestinians as a dehumanized mass. There are no mothers, fathers, children, teachers, doctors, lawyers, cooks, poets, taxi drivers or shopkeepers. Palestinians, in the Israeli lexicon, are a single contagion that must be eradicated.

Watch this video of Israeli school children singing, “We Will Annihilate Everyone” in Gaza.

Hitler Youth used to sing songs like this about Jews.

Those who embark upon projects of mass killing lie to avoid demoralizing their own populations, lull the victims into believing they will not all be exterminated and stop outside forces from intervening. The Nazis claimed that Jews packed on trains and sent to extermination camps were on work details and had good medical care and adequate food. As for the infirm and elderly, they were cared for in rest centers. The Nazis even created a mock camp for the “resettlement” of Jews “to the East,” – Theresienstadt – where international bodies such as the Red Cross could see how humanely the Jews were treated, even as millions were being exterminated.

At least 664,000 and possibly as many as 1.2 million Armenians were massacred or died of exposure, disease and starvation during the genocide carried out by the Ottoman Empire from the spring of 1915 to the autumn of 1916. The Armenian genocide was as public as the genocide in Gaza. European and U.S. consular missions provided detailed accounts of the campaign to cleanse modern day Türkiye of Armenians.

The Ottoman government, in an attempt to hide the genocide, banned foreigners from taking photographs of Armenian refugees or the corpses that lined the roads. Israel too has blocked the foreign press from Gaza, carrying out only a handful of brief and carefully staged visits arranged by the Israeli military. Israel periodically cuts off internet and phone services. At least 43 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed by Israel since the Hamas incursion into Israel on Oct. 7, many undoubtedly targeted by Israeli forces.

Armenians, like Palestinians, were forced from their homes, gunned down and denied food and water. Armenian deportees were sent on death marches to the Syrian Desert where tens of thousands were shot or died from starvation, cholera, malaria, dysentery and influenza. Israel is forcing 1.1 million Palestinians into the southern tip of Gaza and bombing them as they flee. These refugees, like the Armenians, lack food, water, fuel and sanitation. They too will soon succumb to epidemics of infectious diseases.

Talat Pasha, the de facto leader of the Ottoman Empire, told the United States ambassador, Henry Morgenthau Sr., in words that replicate Israel’s stance, on Aug. 2, 1915, “that our Armenian policy is absolutely fixed and that nothing can change it. We will not have the Armenians anywhere in Anatolia. They can live in the desert but nowhere else.”

The longer the genocide continues the more absurd the lies become.

There are big Israeli lies. The obliteration of Gaza and wanton killing of thousands of Palestinians, Israel insists, is a targeted effort to get rid of Hamas rather than a campaign to reduce Gaza to a pile of rubble, carry out mass murder and ethnically cleanse Palestinians.

There are small Israeli lies. Forty beheaded babies. Al Shifa Hospital is a “Hamas command center.” A calendar in Arabic on the wall of a hospital, according to IDF Spokesperson, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, is “a guardian [guard] list, where every terrorist writes his name and every terrorist has his own shift guarding the people that were here.” An Israeli actor dressed up as a nurse and speaking heavily accented Arabic claims to be Palestinian doctor and to have seen Hamas use civilians as human shields. She says members of Hamas “attacked Al Shifa Hospital” and stole “the fuel and medicine.” Palestinian militants, rather than Israeli tanks, Israel says, are responsible for shelling Al Shifa Hospital. Israel struck a car full of “terrorists” in southern Lebanon, “terrorists” who turned out to be three girls, their mother and grandmother. The explosion at the Al Ahli Hospital was the result of an errant rocket fired by the Palestinians, a claim questioned by The New York Times when it discredited the video based on analysis of its time stamp. Israel said it “responded to the request of the director of Shifa Hospital to allow Gazan citizens who were sheltering in the hospital and who wish to evacuate from Shifa Hospital towards the humanitarian crossing in the Gaza Strip via a secure axis,” a statement Mohammed Zaqout, director general of hospitals in Gaza, said was “false,” adding “we were forced to leave by gunpoint.” Israeli Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, in a video pilloried by the BBC, shows viewers a meager stash of automatic weapons in a promotional video that magically increases once foreign reporters arrive for a guided tour. The IDF later deleted it.

The lies will be written into the Israeli school books. The lies will be repeated by Israeli politicians, historians and journalists. The lies will be told on Israeli television and in Israeli films and books. Israelis are eternal victims. Palestinians are absolute evil. There was no genocide. Türkiye, a century later, still denies what happened to the Armenians.

In wartime people believe what they want to believe. The lies fill a hunger within the Israeli public that sees the conflict as a binary struggle between “the children of light and the children of darkness.” The lies are a defense against accountability, for if Israel refuses to acknowledge reality, it is not forced to respond to reality. The lies create cognitive dissonance, where fact becomes fiction and fiction becomes truth. The lies make any discussion of genocide, or reconciliation, impossible.

Israel, with the backing of the Biden administration, will continue to snuff out all systems that sustain life in Gaza. Hospitals. Schools. Power plants. Water treatment facilities. Factories. Farms. Apartment blocks. Houses. Then Israel will pretend, like the killers in past genocides, it never happened.

The lies used by Israel to absolve itself of responsibility will eat away at Israeli society. They will corrode its moral, religious, civic, intellectual and political life. The lies will elevate war criminals to heroic status and demonize those with a conscience. Israel’s genocide, as with the 1965 mass killings in Indonesia, will be mythologized, an epic battle against the forces of evil and barbarity, just as we mythologized the genocide of Native Americans and turned our settlers and murderous cavalry units into heroes. The killers in the Indonesian war against communism are cheered at rallies as saviors. They are interviewed about the “heroic” battles they fought nearly six decades ago. Israel will do the same. It will deform itself. It will celebrate its crimes. It will turn evil into good. It will exist within a self-constructed myth. The truth, as in all despotisms, will be banished. Israel, a monster to the Palestinians, will be a monster to itself.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report.

(Republished from Scheerpost by permission of author or representative)
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#2 [Permalink] Posted on 27th November 2023 08:19

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Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has reported¹ “concerns” that the Israeli regime has stolen organs from Palestinian corpses, citing medical professionals who have documented evidence of “possible organ theft by the Israeli military,” that includes, “missing cochleas and corneas as well as other vital organs like livers, kidneys, and hearts” from bodies of dead Palestinians returned by the Israeli military to southern Gaza.

The corpses subjected to organ theft were themselves stolen from the vicinities of Al-Shifa and The Indonesian hospitals in Gaza, as doctors and journalists have reported on Nov 18 and Nov 20. According to Euro-Med Monitor, “the Israeli army also dug up and confiscated the bodies from a mass grave that was established more than 10 days ago in one of the Al-Shifa Medical Complex’s courtyards.”

Although the Israeli military has returned many of those stolen corpses to the ICRC, dozens remain in Israeli custody. The theft of dead Palestinian bodies has long been an Israeli policy that serves two purposes: transforming the corpses into bargaining chips for political gain and collectively-punishing bereaved Palestinian families by depriving them of the ability to give their loved ones proper burials. The legality of such necroviolent practices has been upheld both by the Israeli government and the Supreme Court.

Reports of Israeli organ theft not scarce. In 2009, The Guardian reported² that “Israel has admitted pathologists harvested organs from dead Palestinians, and others, without the consent of their families.” (See also: CNN, NBC News, etc).

Euro-Med Monitor cites Over Their Dead Bodies³, a book by Israeli doctor Meira Weiss, in which it is revealed that “organs taken from dead Palestinians were utilized in medical research at Israeli universities’ medical faculties and were transplanted into Jewish-Israeli patients’ bodies.”

Euro-Med Monitor writes, “Even more concerning are admissions made by Yehuda Hess, the former director of Israel’s Abu Kabir Institute of Forensic Medicine, about the theft of human tissues, organs, and skin from dead Palestinians over a period of time without their relatives’ knowledge or approval.”

An Israeli investigative television series titled “Orly and Guy Return with Answers” broadcasted an episode⁴ about the Israeli Institute of Forensic Medicine which dealt in detail with the illicit harvesting of organs from the bodies of dead “Palestinians, immigrants, and foreign workers” (see transcript⁵)

People who have brought this issue to light, including myself, have continually been subjected to harassment and punishment and accused of "blood libel." One example of this is a Montgomery County teacher who has been put on leave over social media posts decrying Israeli necroviolence. The Washington Post's @NicoleAsbury reported on this incident and falsely claimed that "there is no evidence of organ harvesting," despite ample evidence.

@EuroMedHR has called for "the creation of an independent international investigation committee into organ theft suspicions."

1-euromedmonitor.org/en/article/598…
2- theguardian.com/world/2009/dec…
3- kotar.cet.ac.il//KotarApp/View…
4- youtube.com/watch?v=ZnfCkS…
5- meiraweiss.co.il/2015/03/blog-p…

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#3 [Permalink] Posted on 27th November 2023 10:30

Hundreds of dead bodies are still present in the vicinity of Al-Quds and Al-Rantisi hospitals.

The Al-Wafa Hospital in Gaza City has become deserted as a result of Israeli bombardment.

Fuel has not yet reached the hospitals in northern Gaza, and the number of wounded being transported to Egypt via the Rafah crossing is very small, not exceeding 20 per day.

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#4 [Permalink] Posted on 27th November 2023 12:38

26 out of 35 hospitals not functioning

87 ambulances damaged

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#5 [Permalink] Posted on 28th November 2023 21:36

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NHUMANE: “The International Red Cross left four living children, who were patients at Al-Nasser Hospital, to die on life support machines after officially promising the hospital director to transfer them to another hospital.

The Red Cross coordinated the evacuation of the medical staff but left the critically ill children to die.”

— Quds

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#6 [Permalink] Posted on 29th November 2023 12:09

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#7 [Permalink] Posted on 3rd December 2023 23:18

From 2009 coincides with recent stories

FBI ARRESTS 17 JEWISH RABBIS in New Jersey charged with TRAFFICKING HUMAN ORGANS, BABY PARTS and Money Laundering....

twitter.com/ivan_8848/status/1731044772817568137?t=74RC8x...

44 Charged by U.S. in New Jersey Corruption Sweep

Agents led suspects from F.B.I. headquarters in Newark on Thursday. The inquiry began with questions on money laundering.

By David M. Halbfinger
July 23, 2009

A two-year corruption and international money-laundering investigation stretching from the Jersey Shore to Brooklyn to Israel and Switzerland culminated in charges against 44 people on Thursday, including three New Jersey mayors, two state assemblymen and five rabbis, the authorities said.

The case began with bank fraud charges against a member of an insular Syrian Jewish enclave centered in a seaside town. But when that man became a federal informant and posed as a crooked real estate developer offering cash bribes to obtain government approvals, it mushroomed into a political scandal that could rival any of the most explosive and sleazy episodes in New Jersey’s recent past.

It was replete with tales of the illegal sales of body parts; of furtive negotiations in diners, parking lots and boiler rooms; of nervous jokes about “patting down” a man who turned out to indeed be an informant; and, again and again, of the passing of cash once in a box of Apple Jacks cereal stuffed with $97,000.

www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/nyregion/24jersey.html

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Israel’s War on Hospitals

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