The Electronic Intifada Podcast 19 December 2024
Ali Abunimah, Jon Elmer, Asa Winstanley and I discussed the impact of Syria’s collapse on the Axis of Resistance, the history of the Palestinian Authority’s collusion with Israel and the US, how activists and journalists in the UK are defending themselves against state repression, and much more.
We also shared our book recommendations and analyzed the history and future of the Palestinian struggle for liberation.
In his regular resistance report, Jon analyzed this week’s battle in eastern Rafah and a complex ambush in the Jabaliya refugee camp.
And I delivered the news report, focusing on the last week of attacks on Gaza and the West Bank.The text of the report follows.
This photo of Jabaliya camp shows the extent of the last 14 months of genocide, and the more than 70 days of relentless, targeted obliteration of north Gaza.Israel’s campaign of systematic slaughter, forced displacement, destruction, starvation and airstrikes continue across all areas of the coastal enclave.
In north Gaza, Israel’s attacks on Beit Lahiya on Tuesday killed at least eight Palestinians who were sheltering in a home near the Kamal Adwan hospital.
The near-daily attacks on the hospital itself have escalated this past week, with the hospital’s director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, reporting that debris and explosions are shattering doors and windows, and Israeli attacks have damaged water tanks, electricity generators and the oxygen supply network.
The United Nations reported that due to ongoing insecurity and the lack of ambulances and equipment, medical staff at Kamal Adwan hospital have generally been unable to assist people trapped under the rubble in the surrounding areas or have themselves been hit.On 12 December, the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza announced that Dr. Saeed Joda, the last orthopedic doctor in north Gaza, was killed while en route from Kamal Adwan to the nearby Al-Awda hospital to treat patients. A nurse, Karim Jaradat, was also killed the same day, while traveling to Kamal Adwan.
The health ministry said that Saeed Joda was injured two weeks ago, but he continued to treat patients.
His nephew was killed last month. This video shows Joda grieving his nephew in the hospital.
In a report issued this week, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor stated that Joda was shot in the head by an Israeli quadcopter drone.His killing, they say, demonstrated that it was a premeditated and deliberate murder, especially given that he was the only orthopedic physician in the northern Gaza Strip.
Euro-Med added: “The few medical teams that have remained in northern Gaza are being targeted by the Israeli occupation army in a methodical, obvious and recurring pattern. This makes it extremely difficult to provide medical care to the tens of thousands of residents who have been under siege” for the last 11 weeks.
The human rights group added that the number of Palestinian medical personnel who have been killed since 7 October 2023 is 1,057, and more than 135 scientists and academics have also been killed.
Over the weekend, the World Health Organization and its partners reached Kamal Adwan hospital to deliver essential supplies.
The head of the WHO said that fuel, food and medicine were delivered, and they were able to transfer a few patients and their companions to al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. Kamal Adwan hospital is still without specialized physicians for surgical and maternal care.
The conditions, the WHO head stated, are “simply appalling.”
The hospital’s director, Hussam Abu Safiya, said that on Monday, Israeli snipers had targeted the intensive care unit and destroyed all the windows, forcing medical staff to treat patients in the hallways.And on Wednesday morning, a fire broke out in the intensive care unit due to heavy Israeli fire on the hospital.
Abu Safiya recorded this video from the intensive care unit at Kamal Adwan hospital, under intense smoke and destruction.
A small group of civil defense workers announced that they were resuming operations in Jabliya after more than 60 days of being prevented from working by the Israeli army.Massacre in Beit Hanoun
On Sunday 15 December, the Israeli military carried out a massacre on displaced Palestinian families sheltering at the Khalil Oweida school in Beit Hanoun, in the northernmost area of the Gaza Strip. The Gaza government media office said that at least 43 people were killed.
According to the United Nations, at least 10 people were burned alive.Israeli soldiers detained male Palestinians and forced women and children to move southwards.
Eyewitnesses told the Palestinian civil defense that they saw decomposing bodies in the alleys and streets and that several inhabited houses near the school were subjected to heavy shelling. People reported hearing cries of others who were trapped under the rubble.The school had housed about 1,500 displaced persons.
Israel attacked another school shelter on Saturday 14 December, in western Gaza City.
Hossam Shabat, one of the few surviving journalists working in north Gaza, reported from the scene.
On the same day, Israeli forces bombed a home in Shujaiya, northern Gaza City, killing at least six people.Israeli armed quadcopter drones opened fire on a group of people in Beach refugee camp, northwest of Gaza City on Monday, tearing their bodies apart, according to reporters.
Reporting for Al Jazeera, Hani Mahmoud said, “The Israeli military uses [drones] packed with little pieces of metals that fly at such a high speed that when they explode, they cut through the flesh and cause severe bleeding.”
Attacks in central Gaza
The Israeli army committed a series of massacres in so-called humanitarian safe zones.
On Monday, Israeli forces besieged al-Mawasi, an area on the southern coastal sand dunes where Palestinians have been forcibly displaced.
Doctors Without Borders reported that 12 of its team members and their families were surrounded by bombing and heavy shootings in their homes, while more than 30 others were trapped in the group’s office.
A staff member stated that “tanks were invading the area where we live. It was terrifying. We were lying on the ground in our homes for hours and it seemed like the gunfire was coming directly towards us.”
Israeli forces bombed the municipal building of the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah, killing the city’s mayor, Diab Ali al-Jarou, along with a group of city employees and residents on Saturday 14 December.
Our contributor Abubaker Abed reported from the scene of the attack in its aftermath.
On Sunday 15 December, Israel bombed the field headquarters for the civil defense in nearby Nuseirat, killing four high-level staff and volunteer rescue workers.That same day, Israel bombed the Ahmed bin Abdulaziz School, a UN school which has sheltered displaced people, near the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis.
The UN stated that within minutes, Nasser’s emergency department was flooded with casualties, most of them women and children. Many were severely injured and died on site or en route to the hospital.
In testimonies collected by Medical Aid for Palestinians, which operates at Nasser medical complex, a physician stated that the group “received a huge number of casualties. The emergency department was full of women, children and elderly patients with severe injuries. I lost count of the number of patients that came in with injuries I’ve never seen in my entire career. I counted at least 18 victims who died in the emergency department, of these there were 12 children under the age of 12 years old.”
“The very first patient that came in,” the physician said, “was a 3-year-old girl who had the left side of her forehead torn open by shrapnel fragments that had penetrated her skull. Due to the limited amount of painkillers and anesthetics that we had available, we had to undertake the procedure in the emergency room with very little access to medications.”
The Gaza government media office said that an attack on a residential area in Nuseirat refugee camp on 12 December killed more than 30 Palestinians. Another bombing was reported in al-Bureij refugee camp.
On 18 December, the Sameer Project, a local aid group, reported that an airstrike hit a tent encampment adjacent to its Refaat Alareer Camp in Deir al-Balah. At least two people were killed, according to reports.
Children feel death is “imminent”
A recent study based on data collected in June by several international human rights groups including War Child Alliance was published this week, revealing that of the children in the surveyed households, where at least one child is injured, disabled, unaccompanied or separated from parents, 96 percent of those children felt that their death was imminent. And nearly 50 percent of the surveyed children expressed a desire to die.
The study also found that 90 percent of children had a “bleak outlook,” 83 percent displayed exhaustion and 73 percent exhibited aggressive behavior.
Four journalists murdered
Israel killed four journalists over the past eight days in Gaza.
The Gaza government media office says that the number of reporters and media workers who have been killed since October 2023 now stands at 196.
Ahmed Bakr al-Louh, a cameraman for Al Jazeera, was killed in a bombing in Nuseirat on Sunday. According to the network, he was killed while covering rescue operations by the civil defense crews in the aftermath of an earlier bombing, and was wearing his press vest and helmet.
His home, where he lived with his wife and family, was “utterly destroyed” by Israel in a bombing in Nuseirat camp just days before.
Muhammad Jabr al-Qarnawi, a correspondent for Sanad News Agency, was killed along with his wife and three children in an Israeli bombing of al-Bureij refugee camp also on Sunday. And Muhammad Baalusha, who worked for the Al Mashhad satellite channel, was killed on Saturday in a drone attack in Gaza City.Baalusha was the reporter who first discovered the tiny decomposed corpses of premature babies at al-Nasr pediatric hospital in late November 2023.
The babies had been left to die, cold, hungry, alone and in pain, over a period of 17 days, after Israeli forces ordered hospital staff to leave the facility.
As we reported at the time, the parents of the fragile newborns were apparently told by the Israeli military that the Red Cross would evacuate their babies safely, according to testimonies. But that did not happen.
Baalusha was shot in the thigh by an Israeli sniper a month later, while he was reporting in Jabaliya refugee camp. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, he lost consciousness for about 30 minutes, before being revived by the nuzzling of cats he had been feeding before he was shot.
Al Mashhad TV said that Israeli forces blocked ambulances from reaching him, delaying his transfer to hospital for treatment.Al Jazeera stated that after surviving the sniper attack, Baalusha continued reporting on the war for months, despite his injuries, before he was killed in an Israeli drone attack in Gaza City, on Saturday.
On 11 December, journalist Eman Hatem al-Shanti, who was a broadcaster for Sawt al-Aqsa Radio, was killed in an Israeli bombing of a residential apartment in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City, along with her son and other relatives.
Palestinian Authority proves loyalty to Israel and US
Turning to the occupied West Bank, The Electronic Intifada’s Tamara Nassar published two reports for us this week on how the Palestinian Authority is, as she writes, “demonstrating its value and proving loyalty to its Israeli and American masters through a deadly military operation in the northern occupied West Bank city of Jenin.”
Nassar wrote over the weekend, “The Palestinian Authority recently launched a deadly military operation in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin and its refugee camp, assassinating a member of an armed group on Saturday and killing both a Palestinian teen and a child.”
More than 20 Palestinians have been injured in the Israeli-style military raid since 14 December.
On Tuesday, Nassar updated the developing story.
“Since the military operation began, PA forces have occupied the Jenin government hospital, cut off electricity and water to the camp, shot and killed two youths in addition to a member of the armed resistance, creating a state of fear and uncertainty in the camp.”
Highlighting resilience
Finally, as we always do, we wanted to share images of people expressing defiance and resilience in the face of Israel’s campaign of destruction.
This video, reposted by Translating Falasteen and Eye on Palestine, shows a man in north Gaza emerging from beneath the rubble of a recent bombing, alive and relatively unharmed. He says that this is the second time that this has happened to him.
He had been healing from a previous injury that has left him with a colectomy, but he thanked God for his survival. “Praise God, we’re steadfast here,” he says.
Maha Husseini, a researcher with Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor who has been on this livestream before, posted this photo of sprouting seedlings that her mother planted. These two toddlers rejoiced at the sight of a few eggs, which have become a precious and scarce commodity in north Gaza. And finally, our contributor Abubaker Abed posted this photo of himself washing his t-shirt and his little niece coming to play with him. You can watch the program on YouTube, Rumble or Twitter/X, or you can listen to it on your preferred podcast platform.Tamara Nassar produced and directed the program. Michael F. Brown contributed pre-production assistance and Eli Gerzon contributed post-production assistance.
Past episodes of The Electronic Intifada livestream can be viewed on our YouTube channel.
Photo: Omar Ashtawy / APA images
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