A weekend of indiscriminate Israeli military attacks on schools, hospitals, refugee camps, and other shelters across Gaza pushed the death toll in the current genocidal war past 45,000, according to numbers reported by WAFA, the Palestinian news agency.
At least 36 people were killed in a devastating strike on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, which the Gaza Media Office described as a “barbaric and heinous massacre.” The camp is situated within a residential block surrounded by apartment buildings.
Photographs from the aftermath of the attack showed several young children emerging from the twisted metal and concrete debris of a collapsed building covered in dust and blood.
Another air strike hit a school in Gaza City Saturday, taking the lives of at least seven people. Bombs fell on the Majda Wasilla school without warning. A young mother and her two-day-old baby were among the casualties.
A woman who was also sheltering there, Ataf Saadat, described the scene to Al Jazeera: “There were those who were burned, and those who were cut up, and the rubble was on top of them.”
Fifteen Palestinians were killed the following day after Israeli soldiers stormed into another school being used as a shelter in the northern Gaza city of Beit Hanoon.
The Palestinians hiding inside the Khalil Oweida school had “nowhere to go,” according to local reporting, “because the Israeli military forces encircled the area with tanks and armored vehicles and hammered the school with heavy artillery.”
Among the dead was a family of four – a mother, father, and their two children – who were huddling in a classroom when it was reportedly hit by a direct artillery strike.
Israel had given no prior warning of its intention to bomb the school, and the injured were left with no treatment options because all the hospitals in Beit Hanoon have been destroyed or rendered useless by Israel.
Even if there were facilities still standing or supplies to treat patients, though, the number of health care workers available to staff them is dwindling. Over 1,000 medical workers have been killed in the past 14 months.
The latest was Dr. Saeed Jouda, who had made his way to Jabalia refugee camp to help those trapped there. He was fired upon by Israel soldiers last Thursday and later died from his injuries.
Then, in the 24-hour period from Sunday to Monday, another 52 Palestinians were murdered in a stunning series of attacks across the Gaza Strip. The highest body counts were recorded in the town of Beit Lahiya.
Journalists silenced
Among those killed this weekend were three journalists. Mohammed Jabr al-Qriwani, a Sanad News Agency reporter, was murdered along with his wife and children in a direct attack on the place where they were sheltering inside the Nuseirat refugee camp.
Mohammed Balousha, a reporter from Al Mashhad Media, was killed in what his news director said was obviously a targeted attack. Balousha broke the original story last year about the decomposing bodies of babies who had been left to die in a hospital ICU by Israeli troops.
Ahmed al-Louh, a veteran cameraman for Al Jazeera and several other agencies, was murdered Sunday in Nuseirat. He was reportedly on duty at the time of his killing, wearing his press vest and helmet.
Al Jazeera Media Network, his employer, issued a statement condemning “the Israeli occupation’s systematic killing of journalists in cold blood.” It called on international legal institutions to help “bring the perpetrators of this heinous crime to justice” and to help “put an end to the targeting and killing of journalists.”
Silencing those who report on the lethal actions and wanton destruction carried out by the Israeli Defense Forces has been a priority for the government in Tel Aviv as part its effort to control what the world sees and hears about Gaza.
Some 196 Palestinian journalists are believed to have been killed since the start of the war. The International Federation of Journalists has documented details for at least 141 news reporters killed to date. According to the federation – which represents over 600,000 journalists from 146 countries – Gaza “has become the world’s largest killing field for journalists and media workers.”
The weekend killing spree by Israeli forces puts the official Palestinian death toll at 45,028, with another 106,962 injured. The majority in both categories are children and women.
The tally by the Gaza Health Ministry records the deaths of victims that have been identified and documented, though the actual number is believed to be far higher. Tens of thousands of bodies have never been recovered from the rubble of bombed-out buildings or crushed beneath Israeli bulldozers carrying out demolitions.
In July, a study in The Lancet medical journal estimated that including indirect deaths – those people who die of lack of health care due to destroyed infrastructure; water, food, and medicine shortages; lack of shelter; and inability to flee to safety – could have brought the total to 186,000 as of June. That was a half-year ago.
U.S. politicians’ profiteering
In the U.S., with Donald Trump – Benjamin Netanyahu’s favorite in the 2024 presidential election – about to retake the White House, the fight to stop American government support for the Israeli military is still being led by peace advocates like Michigan’s Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the first Palestinian-American elected to Congress.
The administration of President Joe Biden continually ignored the voices of those who called for an end to arming Israel, choosing to send billions in weapons for the IDF over the past year-and-a-half. The movement for a ceasefire is now reorienting, unsure of what to expect under Trump.
Speaking on the floor of the House last week, Tlaib submitted Amnesty International’s 296-page report concluding that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians to be included in the official Congressional Record. She called the “silence and indifference” among members of Congress “disturbing.”
She also slammed the nearly $1 trillion defense bill submitted to Congress by the Biden administration. Tlaib called it “another obscene military budget.” She scolded her fellow lawmakers for not asking the question of how the piles of cash being shoveled toward the Pentagon will be paid for.
“We always have money for war, but not to feed hungry families,” she said, as she called for the expansion of programs like SNAP for children and poor families.
“But even more disturbing,” Tlaib declared, “is that many of my colleagues in this chamber are profiting personally, financially, when they vote to pass more funding for war.”
She has previously introduced a bill called the “Stop Politicians Profiting from War Act,” which would ban members of Congress and their families from owning stocks in weapons companies and other military-related industries.
Her proposed law, which would be a blow to the profiteering that defines the relationship between war and politics under capitalism, was shunted off to the Subcommittee on Commodity Markets, Digital Assets, and Rural Development.
With the House remaining in Republican hands, the bill will likely never see the light of day. Although, with several top Democrats also heavily invested in the war economy, even a change of party control would likely not have made a difference.
Tlaib remains undeterred, however, declaring: “Our elected officials should not be able to profit off of death.”
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