Saturday, November 18, 2023

Can we protest war crimes yet?

Giving citizens a notice to flee before bombing their homes is unconscionable, so what in the world do we call this?
Israeli military has repeatedly dropped leaflets and sent messages telling residents they must leave their homes and "evacuate" to areas it claims are safer, which are south of the Wadi Gaza wetlands.

[...]

But what awaits Palestinians who move south is still life-threatening. The "evacuation" areas are both heavily bombarded and in a dire humanitarian crisis, as Israel's blockade of fuel and control of aid into the Gaza Strip leaves people searching for food and access to clean water.

[...]

Witnesses' accounts, satellite data and expert assessment gathered by NPR show that Israeli airstrikes and artillery fire occur daily in the areas Israel has said are "safer" for civilians, and have hit schools, residential towers and overcrowded United Nations refugee shelters.

[...]

Families have risked journeys through the blasted landscape of destroyed buildings and corpses, along the road that Israel has designated as a "humanitarian corridor" through the war. For the few hours each day that the road is open, people carry or drag wounded loved ones. They push wheelchairs with patients just out of surgery in hospitals that have now stopped working.

[...]

The dangers for those fleeing south are evident from the high number of people killed there. So far, a total of 11,470 people — of which more than two-thirds are children, women and elderly — have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its military offensive last month, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. A map by the United Nations' humanitarian affairs office, relying on the health ministry's data, shows that more than 3,600 people — roughly one-third of the total — were killed in areas where Israel has told civilians in northern Gaza to escape to.

  NPR

No comments: