التصنيف: estaql

In a recent segment on how Hamas “frames the civilian casualties” of Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip, CNN’s Jake Tapper starts out by acknowledging that we “do know that innocent civilians in Gaza continue to be killed by Israeli strikes”. It is impossible to “not be affected by these horrific images that we’re seeing”, he states, as the humanitarian crisis in the enclave grows “increasingly dire”.

What is the solution, then? In Tapper’s view, apparently, it is for Israel to continue killing innocent civilians and presiding over a humanitarian catastrophe, because it is all Hamas’s fault anyway.

Near the beginning of the segment, we are shown a clip of Queen Rania of Jordan responding to those who argue that a ceasefire will help Hamas – an argument she says amounts to “endorsing and justifying the death of thousands of civilians”.

Then it is back to Tapper, who calls Queen Rania’s remarks an “interesting turn of phrase” and goes on to wonder condescendingly whether it did not occur to Hamas, when the organisation undertook its operation on October 7, that Israel would “retaliate in a way that would cause innocent Palestinians in Gaza to die”.

To start with, the “interesting turn of phrase” is not so much “interesting” as a straightforward statement of fact. If you insist there should be no ceasefire in an Israeli onslaught that has now killed over 11,000 people in Gaza in just over a month – well, yeah, you are straight up “endorsing and justifying” civilian deaths.

And you are especially endorsing and justifying them if – instead of blaming Israel for slaughtering men, women and children in Gaza with abandon – you blame Hamas for failing to foresee the unprecedentedly psychotic nature of Israel’s “retaliation”. Were the American media and political establishment not so firmly committed to transmitting a thoroughly decontextualised version of this war – and of Israel/Palestine in general – perhaps a news anchor would ask whether it never occurred to Israel that the Palestinians would ever “retaliate” for 75 years of ethnic cleansing, suffocating blockades and massacres.

Tapper forges ahead with his assault on logic and humanity with the help of an arsenal of video clips, several of them courtesy of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), itself an unofficial Zionist propaganda arm – although CNN and other US media outlets are doing a fine job in that respect, as well.

From these clips, featuring former Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal among others, Tapper draws three convenient conclusions, which he conveys with Orientalist smugness and disdain: that Hamas is totally content to have Palestinian civilians die; that Hamas does not care about protecting civilians and only cares about their own military tunnels; and that Hamas is determined to keep attacking Israel for eternity.

In case anyone remains unconvinced, he has also thrown in a clip of former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is evidently unsatisfied with the quantity of blood she already has on her hands and requires more: “People who are calling for a ceasefire now do not understand Hamas. That is not possible. It would be such a gift to Hamas.”

Near the end of the segment, we are presented with the “point of view of Israel”, as if that is not what we have been receiving this whole time: “They [the Israelis] hear all the calls for a ceasefire. What they do not hear is anyone in the international community proposing any way for them to get back their 240 hostages that Hamas kidnapped.”

This is funny, since, as NPR reported this month, a recent opinion poll in Israel found that almost two-thirds of the Israelis surveyed were in favour of a prisoner exchange – something Hamas has repeatedly offered – in which Israel would release its Palestinian detainees in exchange for the hostages held by Hamas. Why look to the “international community” when there is a solution right there?

It bears emphasising that prisoner exchanges are nothing new. In 2011, for example, Israel freed no fewer than 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for a single soldier held by Hamas since 2006 – chalk the ratio up to the superior value placed on Israeli lives.

And, in 2008, Israel acquired the remains of two Israeli soldiers in exchange for five Lebanese nationals and the remains of 199 Lebanese and Palestinian captives.

As of the Hamas operation of October 7, there were over 5,000 Palestinians languishing in Israeli jails; two weeks later, the number had doubled, as Israel went about maniacally arresting people.

But, hey, we are only supposed to see the “point of view of Israel”.

Proceeding in his defence of that viewpoint, Tapper laments that the Israelis “don’t hear anyone proposing any way for Hamas to be removed from the leadership of Gaza.” This is an “interesting turn of phrase”, to borrow Tapper’s own words, seeing as removing Hamas from leadership isn’t really anyone else’s business at all.

Recall that, after Hamas won democratic elections in 2006, the US decided it was indeed their business, and helpfully sparked a civil war in Gaza – to Hamas’s eventual advantage. Oops.

Anyway, who needs a Palestinian civil war when you can just annihilate Gaza altogether?

Tapper’s segment received praise from various US media figures, with Brit Hume of Fox News lauding his “excellent analysis”. It is an “analysis”, of course, that is shared by President Joe Biden and across the US politico-media spectrum: That a ceasefire is off the table and Palestinians must continue to die.

And as Tapper continues to audition for the role of Israeli military spokesperson, an immediate ceasefire needs to be called on bloodthirsty journalism.

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

The enclave’s second largest hospital is facing fuel shortage, threatening the lives of people seeking treatment and shelter.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) says the al-Quds Hospital, the second largest in Gaza, has ceased operations due to a fuel shortage as Israeli forces continue to bomb the besieged enclave.

“The hospital has been left to fend for itself under ongoing Israeli bombardment, posing severe risks to the medical staff, patients and displaced civilians,” the PRCS said in a statement on Sunday, intensifying fears for the Palestinians seeking treatment and shelter there.

“This cessation of services is due to the depletion of available fuel and power outage. Medical staff are making every effort to provide care to patients and the wounded, even resorting to unconventional medical methods amid dire humanitarian conditions and a shortage of medical supplies, food, and water,” PRCS said.

The organisation said it held the international community and signatories of the Fourth Geneva Convention accountable for the complete breakdown of Gaza’s healthcare system and the resulting dire humanitarian crisis.

Tommaso Della Longa, spokesperson for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said al-Quds Hospital has been cut off from the world in the last six to seven days.

“No way in, no way out,” said the spokesperson.

Al-Quds Hospital joins al-Shifa Hospital – another major healthcare facility in northern Gaza – and is also now closed to new patients, with staff saying that Israeli bombardment and a lack of fuel and medicine meant those already being treated could die.

Hospitals in the north of the Palestinian enclave are blockaded by Israeli forces and barely able to care for those inside, medical staff said. More people are being killed and wounded daily, but there are fewer and fewer places for the injured to go.

“My son was injured and there was not a single hospital I could take him to so he could get stitches,” said Ahmed al-Kahlout, who was fleeing south in accordance with Israeli advice while fearing that nowhere in Gaza was safe.

A plastic surgeon at al-Shifa Hospital said bombing of the building housing incubators had forced them to line up premature babies on ordinary beds, using the little power available to turn the air conditioning to warm.

The Gaza Health Ministry’s spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said Israeli fire was “terrorising medical officials and civilians alike”.

The Israeli attacks have killed more than 11,000 people in Gaza in five weeks, most of them women and children.

The human cost of Israel’s war on Gaza is beyond calculation – lives lost, families destroyed, tens of thousands injured.

But what about the economic cost – and who will pay?

Will Israel contribute anything to rebuild communities devastated by its bombs?

Presenter: James Bays

Guests:

Tamer Qarmout – Assistant professor of public policy at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies; comes from Gaza

Helin Sari Ertem – Associate professor of international relations at Istanbul Medeniyet University; is a Turkish foreign policy specialist

Sultan Barakat – Professor of public policy at Hamad Bin Khalifa University and author of the report, After the Conflict: Reconstruction and Development in the Aftermath of War

On Saturday, Bashar al-Assad, the head of the Syrian regime, gave a speech at the Arab-Islamic summit in Saudi Arabia. His call for an end to the war on Gaza sparked anger among activists in northwest Syria, who saw the denunciation of Israel as hypocritical.

Al-Assad criticised the “vicious circle” of allowing Israel to commit massacres then being content with providing humanitarian aid instead of protection for the Palestinian people.

“A right cannot be restored when the criminal has become a judge and the thief has become a referee,” he said, referring to the role of Western countries in the Israeli bombing campaign of Gaza.

Since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict on October 7, Syrian activists have used the phrase “two sides of the same coin” to describe both the Syrian regime and Israel’s crimes against the Syrian and Palestinian peoples. They consider al-Assad’s accusations of crimes and impunity to also describe what he has done in Syria over the past 12 years.

Bombing under the radar

Munira Baloch, a 34-year-old journalist, said she believes that Assad was able to remain at the head of his regime despite his crimes because he obtained the “green light” to do what he wanted against the Syrian people.

She told Al Jazeera that the regime’s pattern of using flimsy pretexts to justify bombing and crimes, which the world condones, continues to this day.

During October, Gaza wasn’t the only area being bombed. Rather, Idlib witnessed the most intense military escalation in three years. Hundreds of sites, including civilian ones, were targeted by aerial and artillery attacks, leaving dozens of people killed and wounded, and causing a new wave of displacement.

“The policy is the same in both countries of using intense bombing to displace opponents,” said Baloch. She lived in Rankous in the Damascus countryside before being forced into repeated displacement then settling in Idlib six years ago. “We [Gaza and northwestern Syria] are both densely populated areas under siege and continuous bombing.”

Baloch still remembers the months she endured a siege by regime forces while living with six families in a two-room house with no electricity, water, or heating: “We ran out of bread crumbs until we accepted the displacement agreement to Idlib,” she said.

Political hypocrisy

During the past few weeks, there have been many scenes of Palestinians being displaced, on foot, from northern Gaza to the south.

That brought back painful memories for Ali al-Dalati, who was displaced with his family, in search of safety, about six years ago. In January 2017, the 26-year-old activist and his family walked eight kilometres (five miles) from the village of Bassemah – which was being bombed by regime forces with chemical weapons, incendiary phosphorus, and napalm – to the village of Deir Kanon in the Damascus countryside.

“I can’t forget,” he told Al Jazeera, about the scene of people gathering together to reach the safe zone, which “seemed like the Day of Judgment”.

During their displacement, those alongside him were targeted by snipers, similar to the Palestinians being targeted by Israel. Al-Dalati recalled that whoever was walking towards the safe zone could not approach any of the dead on the road. “My neighbour who came with us was killed, and then her son was killed because he tried to drag her body to bury it,” he said.

Al-Dalati, who arrived in Idlib on January 31, 2017, viewed the invitations of al-Assad, who he described as a “war criminal,” and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, whose forces occupy four Arab countries (Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen), to the summit as hypocritical and demonstrating an absence of actual intention to provide assistance to Palestinians.

Al-Dalati said he believes the current “popularity” of the Palestinian cause and the rising number of deaths is what fuels international interest, adding that condemning one crime and not the other is not acceptable.

Same killers

Talal al-Loush, a 61-year-old activist who was displaced from Homs to Idlib nine years ago, told Al Jazeera that he could not listen to Bashar al-Assad’s entire speech because he felt “nauseous”. He was astonished that the man responsible for the killing and arresting of hundreds of thousands and the displacement of millions would speak on behalf of Gaza.

“The killers are the same, but the one that pulls the trigger is different,” al-Loush said, recalling the crimes he witnessed in Homs between 2012 and 2013, when regime forces and allied Iranian and Shiite militias committed horrific massacres and forced civilians into displacement, similar to Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Al-Loush believes that Israel’s military superiority has enabled it to commit crimes within a shorter period than what was required by the Syrian regime. “The videos that show the extent of destruction and killing in Gaza are the same scenes we saw in Homs 10 years ago,” he said.

Torture in the name of Palestine

The crimes of the Syrian regime affected Palestinians and Syrians alike, according to Muhammad Taha, a 25-year-old Palestinian who lived through the two-year siege in the Yarmouk Camp neighbourhood, south of Damascus. There, dozens died of hunger.

Taha, who was born in Damascus and now lives in Idlib after being displaced, believes that the Syrian regime and the leaders of the countries surrounding Palestine are mere shields for Israel. He said he was not surprised by the similarities of the crimes committed against civilians by the Syrian regime and Israel’s attacks on Gaza, such as the bombing of civilians, hospitals, mosques, churches, civil defence teams, and ambulances.

Standing with the Palestinians is a false claim by the Syrian regime, Taha said. He points to the “Palestine Branch”, the notorious military intelligence division in Damascus known for its brutal torture of detainees, as evidence. “No Palestinian family in Syria was spared” having at least one of its members being detained at the facility, he said.

The military says the cause is under investigation, but there are no indications of any hostile activity involved.

Five American service members have been killed in a military plane crash over the eastern Mediterranean Sea during a training exercise.

The US European Command (EUCOM) on Sunday said all five crew members were killed when the aircraft went down on Friday evening “during a routine air refuelling mission as part of military training.”

The military first announced the crash on Saturday and said the cause is under investigation, but there were no indications of any hostile activity involved. It said on Sunday that “search and rescue efforts began immediately, including nearby US military aircraft and ships”.

EUCOM said that out of respect for the families of the service members and in line with US Department of Defense policy, the identities of the crew members are being withheld until 24 hours after the next of kin notifications are completed.

The agency did not specify the type of plane or where it was flying from, but the US has deployed a carrier strike group to the area as part of efforts to prevent the Israel-Hamas war from spiralling into a regional conflict.

Washington rushed military support to Israel and bolstered its forces in the region – including with the USS Gerald R Ford aircraft carrier and other warships – after Hamas, the group that rules the Gaza Strip, carried out a surprise cross-border attack on October 7 that Israeli officials say killed about 1,200 people.

Israel’s military responded with a relentless air, land and naval assault on Gaza that has killed more than 11,000 people in what independent observers have termed a genocide.

The US forces in the region have also faced a spike in attacks linked to the conflict in recent weeks and have been targeted more than 40 times since mid-October, leaving several American personnel with minor injuries.

Washington has blamed Iran-backed groups for the violence and has carried out three strikes against Tehran-linked sites in Syria – two on October 26 and one on Wednesday.

There have been multiple other crashes of US military aircraft in recent years, including an F-35 stealth warplane that went down in September, with the pilot able to eject.

In March, two US Army helicopters crashed during a nighttime training mission in Kentucky, killing all nine soldiers on board.