Humanitarian crisis in Gaza

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Fishnut
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Re: Humanitarian crisis in Gaza

Post by Fishnut » Mon Oct 28, 2024 10:45 pm

I meant to post on the anniversary but it's also my birthday and I didn't really feel up to it. The TL:DR is that Israel has created hell on earth in Gaza and the rest of the world is just looking on, shrugging its shoulders and saying 'nothing we can do'.

The BBC has done a retrospective that included these maps:
Damaged areas shown in red.jpg
Damaged areas shown in red.jpg (36.07 KiB) Viewed 215 times

They say a picture speaks a thousand words and four of them speak of over 42,000 people known to have been killed, more than 100,000 injured and more than 10,000 missing. The scale is unbelievable and the fact we are doing nothing to stop it - and are indeed facilitating it through arms sales - is baffling.

The following facts and figures are from OCHA's impact snapshot for 22 October 2024.

Casualties
- 42,718 fatalities up to 7 October 2024 who have been fully identified, including 13,319 children and 3,447 elderly.
- More than 10,000 people reported as missing, most likely crushed under rubble
- 100,282 people injured

Food security
- 60-70% of livestock has been killed or prematurely slaughtered
- 68% of cropland has been damaged as of 1 September 2024
- 44% of greenhouse areas have been damaged as of 1 September 2024
- 70% of the fishing fleet has been destroyed as of August 2024

Nutrition
- Over 96% of women and children under 2 are not getting their nutrient requirements
- more than 50,000 children are estimated to need treatment for acute malnutrition

Water and Sanitation
- there is less than a quarter of the water supplied prior to October 2023 is reaching Gaza
- there are 395,000 tons of accumulated solid waste

Infrastructure
- 80% of commercial facilities have been damaged
- 68% of roads have been damaged

Shelter
- 87% of homes have been destroyed or damaged
- each person has an average of 1.5m2 in shelters, below the minimum emergency space of 3.5m2
- 1.34 million people are in need of emergency shelter and essential household items
0.9 million people need help to survive the winter - the second winter since this massacre began

Health
- 19 out of 36 are out of service
- 17 hospitals are partially functional
- 130 ambulances have been damaged

Education
- at least 87% of school buildings either need to be completely rebuilt or undergo major work as of 6 September 2024
- 35 university buildings have been destroyed and 57 damaged as of 7 October 2024
- 10,839 students and 441 educational staff have been killed as of 22 October 2024

Humanitarian aid
- since 1 October, an average of 28 trucks a day have been allowed access to Gaza, compared to a pre-October 7 2023 average of 500.
- there has been a steady decline in trucks over the last few months, with a peak in April of 165 (still only a third of the pre-crisis average), reducing to 88-80 trucks a day between May and July, 67 in August and 54 in September.

Media access
Back in 2020, UN Secretary-General António Guterres, gave a statement via his Spokesman on the importance of journalists in conflict zones,
The fundamental role of journalists in ensuring access to reliable information is essential to achieving durable peace, sustainable development and human rights. The Secretary-General recalls that civilians, including civilian journalists engaged in professional missions in areas of armed conflict, must be respected and protected under international humanitarian law. He calls on all parties to conflict, and the international community as a whole, to protect journalists and enable conditions for the exercise of their profession.
Yet foreign haven't been allowed into Gaza unless they agree to be escorted by the Israeli military and the visits are often highly controlled. An open letter to the Israeli government by 55 foreign correspondents and a second letter by more than 30 international news organisations was published early this year calling for open access to Gaza for journalists. A further open letter was written in July, again urging media access. Yet the Israeli High Court said Israel can continue to prevent journalists from entering Gaza and the government has shown no signs of allowing journalists in.

An editorial in Haaretz, published in September, called on the Israeli government to allow in journalists,
When Israel prevents journalists from going into Gaza it prevents them not only from reporting on the horrors of the warfare, but also from examining the claims of Hamas in real time – something that is a clear Israeli interest. When Israel prevents foreign journalists from covering what is happening in Gaza we must ask: What does the state have to hide? How does it benefit from journalists not entering Gaza?
...
In any case, precisely during wartime there is great importance to permitting the entry of journalists who are not a party to the conflict: people who can cover the event without fear of pressure from their own society or government. In wartime today, when any image risks the accusation of having been generated using artificial intelligence, the role of the journalist in the field is more important than ever.
Jodie Ginsburg from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) wrote in an opinion piece in Haaretz in July,
Israel's ban on independent media access to Gaza falls outside the norm.

While restrictions on reporting are common in war, seasoned correspondents have told CPJ that the effective total ban on journalists entering Gaza—both foreign nationals and Israeli and Palestinian journalists from outside the territory—is unprecedented in modern times.
---
Elsewhere around the world journalists have been able to report from the frontlines in almost every major conflict over the past three decades: from Ukraine to Rwanda. The world's largest news organizations understand the risks and are prepared to take them because they know how important these stories are.
...
Media access to Gaza is only one example of a regime of censorship that is denying the Israeli people their right to know what is happening there and closing the door to international oversight. The emergency legislation that allows Israel's government to ban foreign broadcasters such as Al Jazeera, the shadowy arrests of journalists both in Gaza and the West Bank, and alleged direct attacks on journalists—these are the hallmarks of authoritarian regimes.
Yet foreign media are still banned from entering Gaza, meaning that Palestinian journalists are put in the unbearable position of reporting on the very hell they are trying to survive.

The CPJ has confirmed 128 journalists and media workers have been killed since 7 October 2023, making it the deadliest year on record since the CPJ began documenting journalist killings back in 1992.
All of the killings, except two, were carried out by Israeli forces. CPJ has found that at least five journalists were specifically targeted by Israel for their work and is investigating at least 10 more cases of deliberate targeting.

The killings, along with censorship, arrests, the continued ban on independent media access into Gaza, persistent internet shutdowns, the destruction of media outlets, and displacement of the Gaza media community, have severely restricted reporting on the war and hampered documentation.
Jewish Currents put out a statement on 24 October 2024 stating,
Jewish Currents condemns Israel’s targeting of Palestinian journalists in the strongest terms, and calls upon every media institution in the United States to do the same... The normalization of Israel’s flagrant targeting of journalists has implications for reporters around the world. Media institutions have a responsibility to speak out to deter the Israeli military from any further attacks on Palestinian journalists.

Israel’s threats against Palestinian journalists should be treated as a crisis for the international media. When journalists cannot safely inform the public, a crucial check on state violence disappears. And when states are allowed to kill journalists with impunity, it threatens journalists around the world.
Israel has now begun targetting journalists in Lebanon.

I'm focusing on journalists because I think they highlight the difference between what's going on in Gaza right now and other conflict zones. It reinforces the asymmetrical nature of this conflict. Israel has complete control of the borders of Gaza. It is walled off completely. The only way for independent verification of what's going on there right now is satellite images. To call it a 'war' as many in the media are doing only serves to play into the idea that this is a fair fight. This is the human version of shooting fish in a barrel. People are trapped and are being bombed to oblivion and starved to death.

That the Israeli government hasn't really been challenged on this and is still being supplied weapons at an incredible rate ($17.9 billion in arms from the US alone since the crisis began) means that it is feeling a level of impunity that has led it to start bombing Lebanon and Iran.

The Knesset has voted today to ban UNRWA from Gaza and declared it a terrorist group. A member of the UN is calling a UN organisation a terrorist group! Israel continues to take 'unprecedented' action again and again and no-one is stopping them. They may think that it's ok because Israel is one of the good guys (though if these are the actions of a 'good guy' I'd f.cking hate to see a bad guy) but by allowing Israel to do this, there is no way any country can condemn another for breaking the rules of war.

Bomb a hospital? Israel's done it, so many times it's become impossible to count and seemingly impossible to care.

Bomb a refugee camp? Israel's done it, again so many times that the incidents all blur into one.

Remember how they did their best to pretend it wasn't them, or that it was but it was an accident? Now they aren't bothering to deny it because no-one's stopping them so why bother.

Kill humanitarian aid workers? Israel's done that too.

Bomb civilians? Done.

Bomb journalists? Done.

Bomb schools? Done.

Capture civilians, call them terrorists and then torture them? Done that too, and been proud of it.

Prevented humanitarian aid from reaching civilians? Done that for a year now, and it's not exactly like the borders weren't already restricting what could come into Gaza beforehand.

And in recent months they've bombed other countries and even done a massive terrorist attack of their own, planting bombs in hundreds of pagers and walkie talkies. And instead of saying 'holy f.ck, they've just shown that every electronic device could be a potential bomb, we're going to have to massively increase our surveillance on supply chains and airport security because this could be replicated by malign actor, we've somehow collectively gone "wow, that's awesome!"

From Popular Mechanics,
Organizations of all kinds now have added reason to inspect personal communication devices received in bulk for their personnel, particularly as successful novel attacks often inspire copycat attempts. Furthermore, future terrorist groups may attempt supply chain gambits with the intent of causing indiscriminate harm rather than targeting a specific group.
Where does this end? It's increasingly clear where Israel wants it to end. With Gaza empty of Palestinians and Israeli settlements built in their place. NPR reported on a recent rally where 'government minister May Golan said permanently claiming land in Gaza was appropriate punishment',
“What in the end will we do that will really hurt them? Only taking territory will really hurt them…those who got territory and took advantage of it to plan a holocaust will, God willing, receive another Nakba,” she said, using the Arabic term for the mass displacement of Palestinians in Israel's founding war.
The Times of Israel reports that Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told a conference recently,
Israel must free itself “from wrong concepts” and make an “unequivocal Israeli statement to the Arabs and the entire world that a Palestinian state will not be established,” through “the establishment of new cities and settlements deep in the [West Bank] and bringing hundreds of thousands of additional settlers to live in them.”
...
"Those who do not want or are unable to put aside their national ambitions will receive assistance from us to emigrate to one of the many Arab countries where the Arabs can realize their national ambitions, or to any other destination in the world,” he [continued].
Meanwhile ITV reports on a small, and relatively fringe, group of settlers who have friends in the government and we've seen what happens when fringe groups have friends in high places and it's not good.
Just on the other side of the border, some Israelis are already plotting to move into the land that’s currently being evacuated. The war in Gaza has become a twisted kind of tourist attraction for families of Israel's right-wing settlers. They pose for pictures - family smiles, with Gaza smouldering in the background. We asked one woman what her message to the people of Gaza would be. “To the Arabs?” she asks in response, as if surprised at the idea she would say anything to them. “Just go away!”
Looking further than Gaza, and even Israel, where this ends is nowhere good for any of us. Israel has broken so many conventions - both formalised in law and informal but globally understood - that they've broken protections that all of us unknowingly rely on. Israel has been allowed to act with impunity for the last year and has made conflict so much more dangerous. By allowing Netenyahu to get away with so much for so long the global north has lost any sort of moral high-ground when it comes to calling out rogue states. Now any country that wants can target civilians with impunity and when called out say 'Israel did it' and also, and more importantly, recognise that world leaders might 'condemn' them but won't actually do anything to stop them.

I'm f.cking terrified by what's going on right now. Gaza is almost completely destroyed, it's going to take decades to rebuild and billions of dollars. Israel seems to have gone insane. It's bombing so recklessly now that it feels like they are just goading their neighbours into all-out war in the middle east. I don't know how we get sanity to prevail, but I feel that we are seeing the beginnings of a permanent reshaping of Israel both geographically and politically. There's no going back to how things were.
it's okay to say "I don't know"

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Fishnut
After Pie
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Re: Humanitarian crisis in Gaza

Post by Fishnut » Tue Oct 29, 2024 10:30 am

At least 93 people have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on Beit Lahiya in Northern Gaza today.
[Director-general of the Gaza government’s media office, Ismail al-Thawabta] said that the building Israel attacked housed 200 people. Dozens of people are reported missing and 150 others estimated to be injured. Medics said 20 children were among the dead.
it's okay to say "I don't know"

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