A viral video highlights chaotic and indiscriminate Israeli military aerial attacks on civilians fleeing the Supernova music festival in southern Israel on 7 October. The army published the video, claiming it shows “helicopter gunships striking Hamas terrorists as they streamed across the breached border from Gaza.”
“Many men decided to stay and guard their properties” in the northern half of Gaza, writes Sahar Qeshta from the besieged territory. “They do not want a repeat of the Nakba, to spend the rest of their lives with keys to their homes around their necks, unable to return.”
Sewar Elejla, who worked as a doctor at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, describes the impossible situation for the estimated 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza, including her friend Nadia.
Israel lobby groups are urging US universities to designate students who are protesting the slaughter in Gaza as supporters of foreign “terrorist” groups. Brandeis University revoked its recognition of the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter on campus after students planned to hold a candlelight vigil for the Palestinians killed in Israel’s month-long attacks.
Rana al-Shorbaji writes that her cousin Israa and her husband Yousef saved up for years to buy a home in Gaza, finally moving in during April. It was destroyed in the current war, leaving the couple and their newborn baby without a place of their own.
The trial of eight activists who have sought to disrupt Israel’s arms business within the UK will start on 13 November. Known as the Elbit Eight – after the Israeli weapons firm they targeted – the defendants are members of the group Palestine Action.
Palestinian families fleeing Gaza City and other parts of northern Gaza on 10 November.
APA images
Volker Türk, the UN human rights chief, said that Israel must end its bombing and shelling in densely populated areas and the attacks “must be investigated.” Regarding strikes on and in the vicinity of hospitals, Türk added that “international humanitarian law is clear: it extends special protection to medical units and requires that they be protected and respected at all times.” He said that Palestinian armed groups’ use of civilians and civilian objects as shields “is in contravention of the laws of war. But such conduct by Palestinian armed groups does not absolve Israel of its obligation to ensure that civilians are spared – that the principles of distinction, precautions in attack and proportionality are respected.”
Palestinians at al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital made a plea for international protection as the medical center was besieged by Israeli tanks and ordered evacuated without the presence of the Red Cross or any other guarantor for the protection of civilians. Hundreds of civilians are present at the hospital.
More than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip since 7 October, Palestinian officials said. Reuters meanwhile reported that Israel’s foreign ministry has revised its death toll from the 7 October attack led by Hamas fighters, saying that some 1,200 people were killed after reporting for weeks that more than 1,400 had died.
Mohammad Abu Selmeyah, the director of al-Shifa hospital, said that at least 25 people were killed in Israeli strikes on al-Buraq school in Gaza City, “where people whose homes had been destroyed were sheltering,” Reuters reported.
The International Committee of the Red Cross urgently called “for the respect and protection of medical facilities, patients and healthcare workers in Gaza,” warning that the healthcare system in the territory “has reached a point of no return risking the lives of thousands of wounded, sick and displaced people.” The Red Cross added that “the ICRC urgently calls for the immediate protection of all civilians, including humanitarian workers and medical personnel. This protection is not only a legal obligation but a moral imperative to preserve human life in these terrible times.”
The spokesperson for the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza reported heavy Israeli bombing in the area of al-Shifa hospital, the largest medical facility in the territory. At least six people were killed in strikes around the hospital’s campus and others were injured. Hamas warned of the repercussions of the escalated bombing around al-Shifa and said that it held the American government responsible. Amateur footage from the scene shows corpses in the yard of the hospital, where medics, patients and family members of patients remain, but no members of the media. Israel claims that Hamas uses al-Shifa as its command center. Omar Shakir, a program director with Human Rights Watch, said that “Israel hasn’t put forward evidence that justifies stripping al-Shifa of its protections, its warning is ineffective as there’s no safe place to go in Gaza and hospitals cannot be free-fire zones.”
In footage broadcast by Al Jazeera, the director of the Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza held up shrapnel from an Israeli weapon used against the medical facility and said that the hospital only had enough fuel to operate for 24 hours.
During a visit to India, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters that “far too many Palestinians have been killed; far too many have suffered these past weeks.” The Biden administration’s State Department has refused to say whether the US recognizes that the Fourth Geneva Convention applies to Gaza and the West Bank. During a press briefing on 9 November, reporter Sam Husseini asked what legal framework the US believes applies in Gaza, saying “it’s a free fire zone if you’re not going to abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention.”
Israel attacked several hospitals in Gaza between 9 and 10 November: al-Rantisi Pediatric Hospital, Al-Nasr Children’s Hospital, where at least three were reported killed, and the yard of Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital, where displaced people are staying and journalists are stationed, was hit as well. The Palestine Red Crescent Society said that one of its paramedic volunteers was injured and two ambulances were taken out of service when Israel targeted the surroundings of al-Awda hospital in northern Gaza. Indonesia’s foreign ministry condemned “savage attacks on civilians and civilian objects” after explosions near the Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza. Al Jazeera reported that displaced people seeking sanctuary at the hospital and patients fled after “violent Israeli raids” on the vicinity of the hospital.