الكاتب: kafej

Drop by disappearing drop, water is an ever more precious resource on Mayotte, the poorest place in the European Union.

Taps flow just one day out of three in this French territory off Africa’s eastern coast, thanks to a drawn-out drought compounded by years of underinvestment and mismanagement.

Diseases like cholera and typhoid are on the rebound, and the French army recently intervened to distribute water and quell tensions over supplies.

The crisis is a wake-up call to the French government about the challenges and cost of managing human-caused climate change across France’s far-flung territories.

Racha Mousdikoudine, a 38-year-old mother of two living in Labattoir, washes dishes with bottled water, when she can get it. When the water taps run, she says, “I have to choose between taking a shower or preserving my water supply.

“This shortage will be global in a few years. This is an opportunity for all French people to stand in solidarity with us. To be with us, to find solutions and make visible the situation happening in Mayotte,” Mousdikoudine said. “Because this can happen in all French departments.”

She is helping coordinate a protest movement called “Mayotte is Thirsty,” which is demanding accountability for alleged embezzlement, leaks and lack of investment in sustainable water supplies.

At one recent protest, residents sang, shouted and banged empty plastic bottles as they marched into the Mayotte water management company.

“It is important to keep talking with the authorities, but we are not going to sit idly by,” said Mousdikoudine. “If we stay at home, politicians will still say that the population is resilient, that we can manage this situation. But we cannot do it. Lives are at stake, our physical and mental health, as well as our children’s lives.”

The Israeli military is doing all it can to get civilians out of harm’s way amid its war in Gaza, but its attempts to minimise casualties are “not successful,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Israeli leader’s comments came after he was asked by US television channel CBS News on Thursday whether the killing of thousands of Palestinians in retaliation for the October 7 attack by Hamas would fuel hatred in a new generation.

“Any civilian death is a tragedy. And we shouldn’t have any because we’re doing everything we can to get the civilians out of harm’s way, while Hamas is doing everything to keep them in harm’s way,” Netanyahu said.

“So, we send leaflets, [we] call them on their cell phones, and we say: ‘leave’. And many have left,” Netanyahu said.

The same day, Israel’s air force dropped leaflets in parts of south Gaza telling people to evacuate for their own safety.

It was not clear where they were supposed to evacuate to as Israel continues to wage war across the besieged territory.

Weeks earlier, Israel also used leaflet drops in northern Gaza to warn civilians to move to the south.

Hundreds of thousands have done so, in a mass displacement that many Palestinians fear could become permanent.

Israel has said the goal of its military campaign is to destroy Hamas.

“The other thing that I can say is that we’ll try to finish that job with minimal civilian casualties. That’s what we’re trying to do: minimal civilian casualties. But unfortunately, we’re not successful,” the Israeli prime minister said.

Netanyahu then said he wanted to draw a parallel with something related to Germany, but he was interrupted by the CBS interviewer, who asked him a question about Gaza’s post-war security.

Palestinian civilians have borne the brunt of Israel’s weeks-long military campaign, which has come in response to the attack by Hamas that Israel says killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

Hamas also took about 240 people of different nationalities as captives, according to Israel.

On Friday, the Israeli military said it had retrieved the body of one of the captives, a female soldier, from a building near Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital which has become the main focus of the Israeli assault this week.

The soldier’s death was confirmed on Tuesday after Hamas issued a video of her alive, followed by images of what the group said was her body after she was killed in an Israeli air strike.

The Israeli military claimed to have found a tunnel shaft used by Hamas at al-Shifa Hospital. A video, which could not immediately be verified, showed a deep hole in the ground, surrounded by rubble, wood, and sand.

It appeared the area had been excavated; a bulldozer appeared in the background.

The army said its troops also found a vehicle in the hospital containing a large number of weapons.

Hamas said in a statement on Thursday evening that claims by the Pentagon and US State Department that the group uses al-Shifa for military purposes “is a repetition of a blatantly false narrative, demonstrated by the weak and ridiculous performances of the occupation army spokesman”.

The United States is confident in an assessment from its own intelligence agencies on Hamas activities in al-Shifa Hospital and will neither share nor elaborate on it, White House spokesperson John Kirby said on Thursday.

Protected by law

Human Rights Watch said hospitals have special protections under international humanitarian law.

“Hospitals only lose those protections if it can be shown that harmful acts have been carried out from the premises,” the watchdog’s UN Director Louis Charbonneau said.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, on his first visit to Israel since the October 7 Hamas attack, called on Israel to do more to protect civilians in Gaza.

“I understand your rage but let me ask you not to be consumed by rage,” Borrell said.

Gaza health authorities deemed reliable by the United Nations say at least 11,500 people have been confirmed killed in an Israeli bombardment and ground invasion – more than 4,700 of them children.

Two-thirds of the Gaza Strip’s population of 2.3 million has been made homeless by the war.

Demonstrators the world over have rallied in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, condemning the high rate of civilian casualties in Israeli attacks and calling for an immediate ceasefire.

Protests were held on Thursday across Spain and in Mexico City, Rotterdam, New York, Rabat and elsewhere.

People also showed solidarity with the Palestinian people and called for a ceasefire during various 2026 FIFA World Cup qualifiers across Asia.

Students across Spain held a second strike following similar action last month. University and high school students gathered in 38 cities, including Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Malaga, Bilbao, Zaragoza and Madrid.

Calls for a ceasefire to protect civilians in Gaza have grown more than a month into the war, which started after Palestinian group Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7.

Israel responded to Hamas’s attack with air strikes and a ground invasion of northern Gaza, vowing to remove Hamas from power and crush its military capabilities.

At least 11,500 Palestinians have been killed, two-thirds of them women and minors, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2,700 have been reported missing, believed to be buried under rubble.

Internet and telephone services collapsed across the Gaza Strip on Thursday over a lack of fuel, triggering a blackout of communications that could be long term.

Israel has signalled its offensive against Hamas could next target the south, where most of the enclave’s two-million-strong population has taken refuge.

Israeli troops again entered the al-Shifa Hospital en masse on Thursday, for the second time in as many days.

Their searches so far appear to have failed to uncover the alleged Hamas underground command centre that the Israeli side adamantly insists lies below the medical facilities.

Hamas, the hospital staff and several international organisations that had access to the hospital all assert that there are no military installations or soldiers at al-Shifa. They have said it only houses exhausted doctors and overworked nurses tending to the swelling numbers of patients in ever more difficult conditions, exacerbated by hundreds of terrified Palestinians who escaped from the destruction of their homes to the relative safety of the compound.

One of Israel’s main claims, obviously intended to justify the attacks against Gaza hospital compounds, was that Hamas had nullified the protected status of medical facilities, using them for military purposes, thus giving Israel the right to attack and enter hospitals, all while blaming the Palestinian armed group.

The Israeli army went to great lengths to “prove” their allegations but the results so far don’t back those up. Earlier this week reporters from a US TV station embedded with the invading forces were taken to al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital by none other than its chief spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari. The news team was shown a few Kalashnikovs and a motorcycle, of all things. Hagari bent over backwards trying to convince the media and the world that those were proof of his side’s allegations.

His claims were mirrored at al-Shifa by his subordinate, Lt Col Jonathan Conricus, who presented as “evidence of terrorist activities” half a dozen AK assault rifles with magazines removed, a laptop and, in a Monty Pythonesque moment, two cans of WD40 anti-rust spray.

Anyone who spent time in the Middle East or in any war knows that the venerable Kalashnikovs are present virtually everywhere. It is normal, and legal, for hospitals to have armed guards to protect them from criminals, looters and anyone wanting to misuse them.

But apart from the ignorance of these claims and the huge discrepancy between demonstrating a few guns and claiming a main command centre from where Hamas conducted its operations, the location where those guns were allegedly found is curious: the gloating Conricus was adamant that they were hidden in the MRI room.

Anyone who has been examined by an MRI machine knows that they have had to remove every metallic object.

I asked a radiology specialist whether it would be possible to hide guns in that room. The response: “The moment the machine was turned on, it would pull the guns and attach them to itself.” The MRI machine cannot function with rifles on it. Asking someone to believe that any hospital in Gaza would relinquish one of its main diagnostic machines to hide a grab bag with a few guns is simply absurd.

The Israeli army has been successful in taking the ground in Gaza, at least on the fringes of the city proper with a few incursions deeper into the urban areas, like the advance to al-Shifa, with fairly low numbers of casualties and limited material losses.

But it has failed to uncover – and show – any underground command centres or major tunnels. It was seen and filmed going down a few shafts, unopposed, but it did not appear to have gone underground in earnest.

Failing to produce the underground command centre, late on Thursday, the Israeli army showed a hole in the ground claiming it to be the entrance of a Hamas military tunnel. Until the media is allowed to enter and check for itself, it will have to balance that claim against the counter-suggestion that it is an access point for an underground electrical cable.

I have no doubt that there are Hamas underground bunkers, communications nodes, power stations, storage facilities and – command centres.

If you take your cause underground, as Hamas obviously has, dedicating substantial resources and huge efforts to building the network, then you do construct an integrated network. Anything short of building several command facilities deep underground would be amateurish and outright foolish.

Every expert must be certain that such a “beating heart of Hamas”, as the Israeli army called it, is indeed ticking somewhere under Gaza. But apparently, maybe even certainly, not under al-Shifa Hospital.

As the aerial bombardment continues, many observers have failed to notice that apart from the raids on the hospitals, there has been very little movement on the ground for almost a week now. Big Israeli columns are dug in awaiting orders, but nothing indicates when they might advance further, nor in what direction and by what means.

For its part, Hamas has also been very quiet. It had put up some resistance to the initial Israeli advance, but kept it limited to opportunistic attacks that were intended more to probe the enemy and show the flag than to really stop the army before it got to the city. Its Qassam Brigades seem set to remain low-key, knowing that sooner or later the Israeli army will have to move under the ground to find and destroy the tunnels and command centres. They cannot win by remaining on the ground.

So, what happens next?

If the fighting is to continue, Israel will have to move first. Hamas can wait longer than the Israeli army. The Palestinians can let the Israelis simmer in their own stew, knowing that the displeasure at the failure to produce tangible results will further strengthen the voices of protest and opposition to the continuation of war.

There are signs that the army is aware of the need to show some success to the domestic public in Israel and is resorting to classic public relations stunts.

On Wednesday evening the 35th Paratroopers Brigade awarded the maroon berets to new recruits inside Gaza territory. There is hardly any military justification in choosing to hold the ceremony amid destroyed and depopulated buildings.

But someone in the Israeli army obviously hopes that the sentiment aroused by the symbolic raising of Israeli flags on occupied Palestinian territory – and several more flags were raised among the Gaza rubble on Thursday – might buy them some time before the public starts asking the unpopular question: “Are we beating Hamas?”

In Gaza, a child is killed every 10 minutes. Since October 7, Israel has killed more than 4,000 children. Now, premature babies at Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital are dying because the institution is out of power after over a month of Israel’s siege, and so is unable to operate incubators.

Israel knows it risks losing international support for its ongoing slaughter of children. Western allies like French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who have until now been steadfast in supporting Israel, have in the past week publicly asked the Israeli government to stop killing children, even if Macron has since softened his tone.

As a result, Israel’s propaganda and disinformation machine is finding new ways to justify the killing of children and the bombing of medical facilities.

Usually, Israel’s first response to accusations of atrocities is denial. When that fails, the second strategy is to blame Hamas or other Palestinian armed groups for Palestinian deaths.

It hasn’t given up on those strategies, but is also trying to directly link Palestinian children to Hamas, and thereby seek to portray them – and the places where they are sheltering – as legitimate targets.

Blaming Hamas

On November 11, the official Arabic account run by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted a video of a nurse, apparently agitated, talking about Hamas overrunning the al-Shifa Hospital, and taking all the fuel and morphine. She claimed that because Hamas had stolen morphine, she couldn’t use it on a five-year-old with a fracture.

The video, which was retweeted thousands of times, was a clear fake. No staff in the vicinity appear to recognise the individual featured, casting doubt on her identity and role. Robert Mackey, a journalist with the research agency Forensic Architecture, spoke to three Doctors Without Borders staff members working at the al-Shifa Hospital, none of whom recognised her.

The video was almost comic in its absurdity. The nurse spoke with a non-Palestinian accent, and her dialogue seemed to perfectly echo Israeli military talking points about Hamas stealing all the fuel from hospitals.

Moreover, the strategic placement of a Palestinian Health Ministry logo was a contrived attempt to mislead or create a ‘honeytrap’ for open-source intelligence. Adding to the suspicion were the stock audio-sounding bombing effects, and her immaculately clean white coat and perfect makeup, all of which seemed out of place in a supposedly dire setting.

The purpose of the video was clear, to blame Hamas for the suffering of children and legitimise the Israeli military’s claims that Hamas is using civilians and children as human shields.

Eventually, as the Israeli government was called out over the video, the Foreign Ministry quietly deleted its post – without any explanation.

But spreading disinformation and then deleting it has become routine, raising the question: Why is the Israeli military’s propaganda so sloppy? After all, doesn’t Israel risk losing credibility this way?

No, because the benefits outweigh the costs. The old adage, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes”, tells us most of what we need to know about propaganda. The key is not truthfulness, but rather speed and primacy.

Controlling the narrative means getting information out faster than your enemy, and making that information sensational – regardless of whether it is factual. One study showed that 86 percent of people do not fact-check news they see on social media.

Once something false goes viral, the people who see it are unlikely to see the fact-checked version. The audience for such videos aren’t astute fact-checkers. In Israel’s case, large numbers of the audience are English-speaking, Western viewers who won’t catch fake accents and have no reason to believe such information is false.

It’s important to remember, propaganda does not need to be sophisticated to be effective – just fast and sensationalist. Social media is perfect for this.

Hate-filled, Mein Kampf-reading children

Beyond blaming Hamas, a more sinister stage in the legitimisation of Israel’s killing of children is emerging – the attempt to smear Palestinian children as recipients of evil, anti-Semitic Hamas propaganda. That Palestinian children are only trained to become ‘terrorists’.

On November 5, Israel’s official Arabic account tweeted a cartoon showing that Israel brings its babies up with ‘love’, while Hamas fills babies in Gaza with ‘hate’.

Then, on Monday, the official Foreign Ministry-run Israel account claimed on X  that the Israeli military had found a copy of Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ in a child’s room in Gaza. Pristine, with perfect notes and highlights, the ‘finding’ of the book was an attempt to bolster the narrative that Palestinian children are being filled with hate, are beyond redemption and are thus valid targets for killing.

Mein Kampf represents the epitome of anti-Semitism. It is Hitler’s autobiography. The significance of this will not be lost on many in the West, often the intended audiences for Israeli propaganda. The use of Mein Kampf, a copy of which was brandished theatrically by Israeli President Isaac Herzog, demonstrates that Israel is trying to portray older Palestinian children as brainwashed anti-Semites – it’s a simple tool to push that narrative.

Bunker under a children’s hospital

On Monday night, Israel doubled down on its attempts to legitimise its attacks on children. The Israeli military posted a video of its spokesperson Daniel Hagari walking around an alleged Hamas bunker beneath the Rantisi Children’s Hospital in Gaza. In one of the scenes, Hagari is kneeling by guns, grenades and other weapons, in the background, a painting of a tree seemingly created by children.

In another video, also purportedly from the Rantisi hospital basement, Hagari draws attention to a chair and the remnants of a rope that he claims were used to tie hostages. Then, he points to a baby bottle lying above a World Health Organization-marked electrical junction box.

The juxtaposition of childlike innocence in the form of the painting or the bottle with guns serves to legitimise Israel’s narrative of Hamas as inhuman ‘terrorists’ who use children and hospitals as human shields or captives. That in turn is used to justify Israel’s strikes on civilian targets – even if the lives of children are at risk, and even if a UN organisation is involved.

However, the video is clearly a propaganda stunt. Hagari points at a handwritten table written in Arabic pinned to the wall. Hagari then says the list names Hamas fighters. “This is a guardian list where every terrorist writes his name, and every terrorist has his own shift guarding the people that were here”.

The only problem is the list said no such thing. It was a list of the days of the week.

Why is Israel doing this?

Over the weekend, Israel offered al-Shifa Hospital a meagre amount of fuel, after enforcing a total blockade on the Gaza Strip since October 7 that has crippled medical facilities.

The hospital’s director, Muhammad Abu Salmiya, said of the attempt to supply some fuel, that “Israel wants to show the world that it is not killing babies”.

But now that Israel can no longer deny that it is killing Palestinian babies, it is trying to legitimise their murder. In his work on ‘image restoration theory’, William Benoit calls this ‘reducing offensiveness’. Put simply, you blame the victim, or make the victim seem deserving of their suffering.

As the death toll rises, so do the outlandish attempts to shift blame on innocent victims.

But no amount of manufactured videos or planted “evidence” can obscure the truth. Children are dying by the hundreds in Gaza, their blood spilled by Israel’s bombs, bullets and siege.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.