Alexa stopThe new world order: “Israel can slaughter to its heart’s delight”
This quote from Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy sums up the horror occurring in Gaza as the world’s inaction signals the impending extinction of the post World War II legal order. In the words of journalist Joe Gill, “Brazen crimes against humanity have become the norm. World powers do nothing in response. At best, they put out weak statements of concern. Now, the US does not even bother with that. It is fully on board with the war crimes of starvation and depopulation being inflicted on two million Palestinians….This is the age of lawlessness.”
Six weeks after it announced that it would be blocking the entry of all humanitarian aid to Gaza, including water, food, fuel, medicine, and tents, Israel is again openly embracing the policy of genocide. “Not even a single grain of wheat will enter the Gaza Strip,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced on April 7, after markets had been nearly emptied and bakeries had run out of flour. With thirst and starvation impacting the population, as many as 400,000 people have once again been forced to move from their ruined homes. US-supplied bombs have recently blasted schools serving as shelters in Rafah and Gaza City, entire neighborhoods, a media tent where yet another journalist, Hilmi al-Faqawi, was killed and others were badly wounded, warehouses that stored food and medical supplies, the main pipeline providing water to Gaza City, a desalination plant, and, on April 13, Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City.
One massacre has received international attention. On March 23, fifteen Red Crescent paramedics in ambulances, a firetruck and UN vehicles went missing as they responded to an emergency call about an attack on colleagues driving in a clearly marked ambulance that had been dispatched earlier in the day to help those injured during an airstrike on western Rafah. What unfolded over the following week is documented with vivid photos here. On March 27, OCHA finally made it to the site where the paramedics had disappeared. They found crushed ambulances and other partly buried vehicles and the fire truck that had been “reduced to a pile of scrap metal.” Three days later a mass grave dug by Israeli bulldozers was unearthed containing the bodies of eight Red Crescent paramedics, six civil defense responders and an UNRWA employee, leaving one paramedic unaccounted for. One of the bodies was found with tied handsand all appeared to have been executed with bullets fired at close range.
According to the “initial assessment” made by the military, its troops had fired on vehicles “advancing suspiciously toward IDF troops without headlights or emergency signals” which were in “an active combat zone”. An Army spokesman said nine of those killed were fighters. Munther Abed, who had been with two colleagues in the ambulance that was first dispatched to help those injured by the airstrike and subsequently witnessed the attack on the Red Crescent paramedics, gave a very different account to Drop Site and in an April 2 BBC interview. By April 4th, a seven-minute video found on the cellphone of one of the murdered paramedics had totally debunked the army’s version of events, forcing it to admit that its initial account had been partly “mistaken.” The video shows the clearly marked Red Crescent convoy traveling with all its lights on. It stopped when it reached the abandoned ambulance that had originally been sent to rescue the injured. The paramedics were ambushed when they left their vehicles and moved towards the ambulance. A postmortem on the exhumed bodies showed they had been deliberately executed.
The surfacing of the video forced the Israeli hasbara (propaganda) industry to spring into action. In the words of Yoana Gonen writing in the April 8th Haaretz, “Even when the military is caught in a blatant lie, the media frames it as a slip-up caused by haste….What changed was the discovery of a video exposing the lie – forcing the IDF spokesperson to invent a new version to justify firing on paramedics and burying them in a mass grave. The truth is, the soldiers didn’t even need justification – just as they haven’t in tens of thousands of other cases involving the killing of innocent civilians.” She then cited a Golani Brigade commander telling his troops before they enter Gaza: “Everyone you encounter is an enemy. You see a person – open fire, eliminate and move on.”
So much for the self-described ‘most moral army in the world.’ Worth reading are the testimonies of soldiers who served in the Gaza war during 2023-2024 which are available here. Among other army practices is the regular use of Palestinians as ‘human shields’ who are forced to enter houses first to see if they are booby-trapped. It is described here by a soldier who states: “We operate a sub-army of slaves.”
Some 360 Israeli physicians and other medical workers have signed onto a letter expressing shock and demanding an investigation of the killing of the health workers. This is not the only sign in Israel of dissatisfaction with the way the war is going. On April 10, a letter was published bearing the signatures of nearly one thousand military reservists and retired air force officers including a former chief of staff demanding that the hostages be brought home and the war stopped. The letter was immediately termed “unforgivable” by Netanyahu and the active duty soldiers who signed it have been dismissed. The following day some 250 reservists and former soldiers with the Intelligence Unit 8200 published another letter in solidarity with the Air Force reservists and their demands. An estimated 100,000 people have failed to show up for reserve duty.
Israel now is in full control of half of the Gaza Strip, including a new ‘Morag Corridor’ carved across southern Gaza, and is reportedly forcing Palestinians out of two-thirds of the tiny territory. On April 9, Haaretzreported that there are plans to entirely obliterate the city of Rafah where 200,700 people used to live and incorporate that area into a southern buffer zone cutting Palestinians off from the border with Egypt – see the map here. With at least 1,560 Palestinians killed since the war resumed and 100 children being killed or injured every day, with starvation looming and the Gaza Strip being cut into smaller and smaller pieceswhere Palestinians are being forced to go, Israel is transmitting the message that the population should be prepared to be kept barely alive in concentration camps or ‘voluntarily’ leave. According to Haaretz Israel has negotiations underway with several countries about resettling Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
Israel is meanwhile steadily moving ahead with its takeover of the West Bank: see the destruction of Jinbain the South Hebron Hills by 140 soldiers and settlers and the ongoing violent attacks on herding communities in the Jordan Valley. The army incursions into refugee camps are also ongoing, with houses in Dheisheh camp in Bethlehem vandalized by soldiers on April 2 and the army raiding Balata Camp near Nablus on April 8, where they forced many families out of their homes and began the construction of military barracks. It took the fatal shooting on April 6 of a 14-year-old Palestinian American, Amer Rabee, in the village of Turmus Aya near Ramallah for the casual killing of Palestinians by soldiers and settlers to break into the US mainstream press. Originally from Saddle Brook, New Jersey, the boy was killed by soldiers who alleged he had been throwing stones. Elected officials in New Jersey have demanded an investigation.
Israel is moving ahead with plans to build in the ‘E1’ area between Jerusalem and the settlement city of Ma’ale Adumim which the international community had long opposed on the grounds that it would cut off the north from the south of the West Bank. The government’s ‘solution’ is to construct a new apartheid road for Palestinians which would, in the words of Peace Now, “allow Israel to close off a vast area in the heart of the West Bank to Palestinians by diverting Palestinian traffic to a special bypass, and to annex the entire Ma’ale Adumim area to Israel.” The plan, involving the construction of a small road and tunnels, threatens the forced displacement of Bedouin in the E1 area and would create additional hurdles for West Bankers trying to access Jerusalem or maintain commercial connections between such economic centers as Hebron and Ramallah.
What attitudes towards Israel are now held by Americans, who are keeping Israel afloat by providing it with $30 billion of their tax dollars since the war began? According to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center the majority of Americans – some 53 percent – now regard Israel unfavorably, a climb of 11 percent since 2022. Among Democrats the number is 69 percent while only 37 percent of Republicans view Israel unfavorably. Sixty-two percent of Americans oppose the Trump plan to take over Gaza.
These numbers appear beneath the notice of Congress, which, on April 3, overwhelmingly voted downSenator Bernie Sanders’ attempt to stop $8.8 billion in arms sales, including of thousands of 2,000 and 500 pound bombs. MA Senators Markey and Warren were among the 15 supporters in the Senate of Sanders’ two Joint Resolutions of Disapproval. Netanyahu might not have been able to persuade Trump to lift the 17 percent tariff on Israel and launch a war against Iran when he visited the White House on April 7 immediately after getting a red carpet welcome in Hungary, which had defied the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court. But he left knowing that the weapons will keep flowing to Israel despite the fact that Pentagon officials are worried that US arms stockpiles are running low given the intensity of US bombardments on Yemen, which have so far cost more than a billion dollars according to the April 8 New York Times. During his meeting with Netanyahu, Trump announced he intended to boost the Pentagon budget to $1 trillion.
Meanwhile the Trump Administration is waging a domestic war against universities, student protestors, and at least one lawyer defending them, using unsubstantiated claims of ‘antisemitism’ as an all-purpose weapon. As of April 11, more than 840 student visas had been revoked without grounds being specified or the students even being notified. The actual number may be considerably higher. Many appear to be from Muslim-majority countries. While courts hear their cases, both Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts Ph.D. student Rümeysa Öztürk remain in ICE detention in Louisiana, where Rümeysa has received little treatment for several severe asthma attacks.
On April 11, immigration judge Jamee Comans ruled that Khalil could be deported as the government “established by clear and convincing evidence that he is removable” and she had no authority to question the determination of Secretary of State Rubio. That “convincing evidence” was contained in a two-page memo which Rubio wrote concerning Khalil and another student who is not named. However lawful Khalil has been, the memo states, “the public actions and continued presence of (redacted name) and Khalil in the United States undermine U.S. policy to combat anti-Semitism around the world and in the United States, in addition to efforts to protect Jewish students from harassment and violence in the United States.” Khalil’s lawyers say they will appeal the ruling and a federal judge in New Jersey has temporarily blocked his deportation.
In an insightful op-ed dictated by Mahmoud Khalil from the Louisiana detention camp, he warns “the students who remain apathetic to Columbia’s disregard for human life and its willingness to discard student safety: As pressure from the federal government intensifies, know that your neutrality on Palestine will not protect you. When the time comes for the federal government to target other causes, it will be your names that Columbia will offer on a silver platter, it will be your pleas that fall on deaf ears, it will be your just causes that are stonewalled…. The student movement will continue to carry the mantle of a free Palestine. History will redeem us, while those who were content to wait on the sidelines will be forever remembered for their silence.”
Nancy Murray, Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine
