From his city of Dair Albalah, Gaza, a witness says: “Morgues are full, and corpses of our people are put outside under the rain.”
Other witnesses, this time from Nasser Hospital, spoke of Israeli forces positioned at the gates, with snipers in position and shells exploding nearby: “They released a detainee to come to the hospital and instruct people to leave. They shot and killed him when he walked back out.”
The world was witness to the recording of the six-year-old Hind Rajab’s last hours, when she phoned for help while hiding in a car among her family’s corpses. An ambulance arrived; the two paramedics were killed by snipers. Hind died alone.
Last week, Sky News reported that Israeli soldiers killed a mother and father in front of their three children. Then they shot the disabled boy.
A surgeon says he’s lost track of all the new orphans he’s had to operate on. One time, a handful of children, aged 5-8, were brought in, all with single gunshot wounds in the head. Their families had been returning to their homes in Khan Yunis after the Israeli tanks withdrew. But the snipers remained, waiting. No child survived.
A father left his house at 4am to get his family some bread. He came back to find his family dead: “I was just getting them bread. […] Ahmad was supposed to graduate this year, he was going to become a doctor! A doctor!”
Do not call this genocide, says Germany, which knows a thing or two. Its experience with genocides rivals Elizabeth Taylor’s with husbands.
How dare you, said the new French foreign minister in parliament, adding that to accuse Israel of genocide “crosses a moral threshold”.
He was too elegant to boast but French expertise in colonial Algeria long ago established you could decimate a population, in the name of civilisation, without straying into vulgar genocide.
Nonsense, said the UK’s foreign secretary, Lord Cameron, dismissing the mere suggestion of genocide. He knows all about massacres. Thirteen years ago, as prime minister, he bombed Muammar Gaddafi’s forces to prevent them from laying waste to the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi. By the time Cameron was done, Libya was in good working order, with massacres and violence a fading memory.
Last week, Sky News reported that Israeli soldiers killed a mother and father in front of their three children. Then they shot the disabled boy
The president of Israel, Isaac Herzog, has told us why it’s not genocide. It’s because there are no innocents in Gaza and the killing is in the name of Western civilisation.
On October 7, the Gaza-based terrorist group, Hamas, led an attack on Israel that left some 1,200 dead. Hamas brutally massacred Israeli civilians, desecrated many corpses and took 250 people hostage.
Some Palestinian civilians were recorded celebrating. Therefore, none are innocent, not one, not even the children.
Herzog explains: an innocent people would have got rid of Hamas. (Don’t be distracted by the facts. It’s true that the Israeli prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu, is on record as saying he secretly helped Hamas retain power so as to ward off a two-State solution but not even Netanyahu’s friends would ever claim he’s innocent.) Make no mistake. Even the children are Hamas. So are their mothers. It was wise and prudent for the minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, to tell the army earlier this month: “Shoot women and children for the security of Israel.”
Israeli media reported the minister telling lieutenants in Gaza: “There cannot be a situation where children and women approach us from the wall. Anyone who approaches to undermine security must be shot, otherwise we will see October 7 again.”
So, the snipers shoot children. That is, if they survive birth.
Another witness: “One harrowing incident that will forever haunt me is of a woman heavily pregnant and long past her due date, giving birth in a filthy classroom at a UN school in the middle of night. The mother screamed in agony all night, all of us hearing her voice not able to do anything.
“At the time, the school was surrounded by Israeli military forces and none of us were able to move to help. Anyone who moved at the school was instantly shot by an Israeli sniper.
“Our choice was either for the child and the mother to die without trying. Or us to try to move and instantly being shot and killed. Through a miracle from God, the mother eventually gave birth in an unsanitary classroom with no access to painkillers, water or food.”
According to the charity Care: “There is no doctor, midwife, or nurse to support women during labour. There is no pain medication, anaesthesia, or hygiene material when women give birth.”
They are all Hamas. That’s why food supplies are blocked or returned. You can’t trust those thirsty, starving, incontinent wretches not to use the supplies as a weapon.
According to a report published this week by Global Nutrition Cluster (GNC), almost all children aged from six months to two years are “acutely malnourished”.
Almost all children under five “are affected by one or more infectious disease and 70 per cent have had diarrhoea in the past two weeks”.
Palestinians are being forced to eat weeds and leaves to stay alive in Gaza. The UN says Gaza is on the brink of famine. Four out of five households lack access to clean water. The average household can spare less than one litre per person per day.
Around 1.5 million Palestinians have now been displaced to Rafah, which spans just 150 square kilometres. This is where Israel’s next major assault is planned.
Rafah’s population has increased fivefold since war broke out. Over half a million are homeless children living in the streets.
But never forget they are Hamas. That’s why over 13,000 children have had to be killed, two-thirds of them aged under 11, many of them infants.