Bombing Tents: Hell in Rafah
The unspeakable horrors of the war on Gaza have, improbably, got worse.
Laith Arafeh, Ambassador; Head of the Palestine Mission to the Federal Republic of Germany, writes: “One day after the ICJ ordered Israel to cease its aggression on Rafah, Israel bombs tents sheltering hundreds of displaced Palestinians in the city, setting the make-shift camp on fire.” A follow-up video reveals an unspeakable massacre in which scores of innocent civilians were burnt alive.
The United Nations Palestinian refugee agency, Unrwa, has said that reports of attacks on families seeking shelter in Rafah in southern Gaza were “horrifying”.
“There are reports of mass casualties including children and women among those killed. Gaza is hell on earth. Images from last night are yet another testament to that.”
Palestinian health and civil emergency service officials said on Sunday Israeli airstrikes killed at least 35 Palestinian people and injured dozens of others in an area in Rafah designated for those who have been displaced.
For those people who denied that what we were witnessing was genocide – any pretence is now over. The relationship between the ICJ and the atrocities is clear, this is a total breakdown of international law and a rogue state acting with complete impunity, but as Yanis Varoufakis put it:
Israel commits a massacre in #Rafah this evening, dropping several 2,000 pound bombs on civilian tents and #UN compounds, murdering dozens of civilians seeking shelter. This was Israel’s response to the @CIJ_ICJ ruling Friday that it must halt its offensive on Rafah. pic.twitter.com/vS1ouUU8Oj
— Husam Zomlot (@hzomlot) May 26, 2024
The coverage of these atrocities is horrendous and needs called out again and again. Here’s the BBC:
This is the BBC coverage of the massacre in Rafah:
•an ‘explosion’ killed people;
•repeats IDF propaganda that Hamas are hiding in the tents;
•no mention of Israel ignoring the rulings of the ICC.The media are complicit in genocide. Expose them.pic.twitter.com/LNJyzdBrMm
— Howard Beckett (@BeckettUnite) May 27, 2024
SKY’s coverage is identical.
What we are also beginning to see is the IDF acting as Netanyahu’s personal army, here’s one soldiers statement:
IDF soldier released this video claiming the soldiers will only listen to Netanyahu and won’t listen to the Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant…
The soldier claims they will not leave Gaza until every man, woman and child is dead..
He also claims there will be no 2 state solution… pic.twitter.com/jGHtrDlFFv
— Pelham (@Resist_05) May 25, 2024
This is important. As Mohammed El-Kurd, an award-winning poet, writer and journalist from Jerusalem explains:
“Netanyahu’s goal is to destroy Gaza’s political and social infrastructure, not destroy Hamas. Destroying Hamas is merely a battlecry, a promise he’s selling the Israeli public. If he believes it, then he has no basic understanding of history or physics. Netanyahu wants to exert Statelessness over the Palestinian People, both as a physical state of being and—most importantly—as an inescapable political fate. It will be his swan song, as he knows his position as Prime Minister will likely end with the end of this war. The targeting of government ministries, hospitals, universities, and media institutions (and the professionals that run them) isn’t arbitrary or irrational. It is a precise and calculated effort to render Gaza irredeemably uninhabitable.”
Understanding this basic framing of the war on the people of Gaza is the key to understanding what we are witnessing. This is reiterated over and over by senior commanders and will be the basis for their prosecution.
Commander & Major. Avinoam Goelman, 98 division has fought in Gaza and taken several pictures among the pictures in Gaza.
In this post he writes this (translated to English):
“We need to kill them mercilessly. Without distinguishing between Hamas and civilians because there is no such thing”.
“I consider myself a liberal, in favor of equal human rights…. We need to kill them mercilessly. Without distinguishing between Hamas operatives and the civilian population because there is no such thing… To me, anyone who lives in the Strip is a potential murderer. The “innocent” civilians in Gaza are not innocent at all… The residents of Gaza as a society must pay with their bodies and souls the price of nurturing this evil regime. Gaza must be conquered, and all its leadership, including the mid-level leadership, must be killed. All the mosques in Gaza must be destroyed… We need to break the Gazan society from within, sowing in it pain, sorrow, and loss in such a way that it cannot rehabilitate itself as a society with a murderous, evil narrative. We will have no choice.“
It’s harrowing witnessing such atrocities from afar, but we need to try to channel that distress into acts of solidarity, sharing, support and action. That can and should include protest, direct action, fund-raising, reporting from reliable witnesses (on the ground) and other political and human actions.
We are supported only by our readers. We don't have corporate backers and we don't take advertising, so we rely entirely on your support.
Help to support independent Scottish journalism
Horrific.
Thank you, Michael, as ever for your trenchant and humane reportage. Please continue. (I’ve been locked out of X/Twitter for about a month, and it appears to be permanent–but I still post your articles at BlueSky).
The UN, Amnesty International, Oxfam etc are all pretty clear in their condemnation of IDF actions in Palestine. These organisations are primarily interested in civilian’s welfare regardless of their religion or colour of skin. I would pay more heed to what they say than Israeli government or Palestinian Authorities.
Simon Tidsall’s article in Guardian of 25th May is excellent in clearly describing the hypocrisy and double standards of US, UK and other western governments.
Who is nurturing which evil regime? I think the answer is abundantly clear, but to address the point
“Understanding this basic framing of the war on the people of Gaza”
in terms of the few artists who are activists versus the vast majority who are not (at least for good causes):
Art, violence and resistance: Raoul Peck and Viet Thanh Nguyen
“Filmmaker Raoul Peck and author Viet Thanh Nguyen discuss their road to making art that’s political and subversive.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/program/studio-b-unscripted/2024/5/27/art-violence-and-resistance-raoul-peck-viet-thanh-nguyen
although I am struck by the pattern whereby those most negatively by colonial crimes become often-eloquent critics; so what about those artists who are more-or-less comfortably living off the spoils of imperialism? What is their responsibility when they whitewash the crimes of their own Empires, and even blame the victims?
In other works, is the establishment role for even ‘independent’ art the manufacture of a state of exceptionalism, even if it doesn’t seem Jingoistic, by selective distortion and silencing of history, and yes the ‘literary’ authors that Viet Thanh Nguyen criticises for their focus of style and wilful ignorance of politics and history, and directors that Raoul Peck criticises for not finding a way to bring critiques to popular audiences? Who, as they say, are the most voiceless?