Media Analysis

Live Blog: Protests continue as Palestinians begin holding funerals for 61 killed in Gaza

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Relatives of 8-month-old Laila al-Ghandour mourn during her funeral in Gaza City on May 15, 2018. According to Gaza’s Health Ministry al-Ghandour died of tear gas the Israeli military shot at Palestinian protesters in Gaza on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Nakba. (Photo: Mahmoud Ajour/APA Images)

Palestinians in Gaza today began holding funerals for protesters killed by Israeli forces at yesterday’s Great March of Return near the buffer zone between Gaza and Israeli, which coincided with the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem. Overnight casualties increased to 61, with the youngest killed was identified as 8-month old Laila al-Ghandour who died of tear gas inhalation.

According to the Gaza Ministry of Health (as of 18:30 GMT):

Two Palestinians had been killed today during clashes east of the al-Bureij refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip. One of the two slain Palestinians was identified as Nasser Ghorab, 51. The ministry added that 417 people were wounded during Tuesday’s protests, with injuries ranging from live ammunition to tear gas.

Here are the total number of killed and injured according to the Gaza Ministry of Health:

  • 63 killed, including 8 minors and 1 paramedic
  • ~3,188 injured – including at least 225 minors, 11 journalists, 17 paramedics
  • At least 1,360 shot by Israeli soldiers using live Israeli ammunition.

Since the beginning of the Great March of Return on March 30th, 111 Palestinians have been killed, almost 3,400 protesters have been shot with live ammunition, and almost 13,000 injured.

We will be updating this post with updates throughout the day and have embedded our Twitter feed below that will most likely include the most up-to-date news.

Updated 20:20 GMT

Protests have spread across Israel today with Israelis and Palestinians condemning the Israeli military’s killing of 61 protesters yesterday. Tonight in Jerusalem demonstrators lined the sidewalks outside of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence.

Earlier in the day in Tel Aviv around 500 shut down traffic at a busy intersection, chanting “no more killing civilians – end occupation now.”

In the morning Knesset member and head of the Joint List Ayman Odeh joined a march in the northern town of Umm al-Fahm.

Updated 18:45 GMT

The head of the Palestinian mission in Washington DC, Ambassador Husam Zomlot is being recalled back to Ramallah at the “direct instructions” of the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, reports the Palestinian Authority’s Wafa News reports. Zomlot took up his post in Washington in 2017 at the personal request of Abbas.
Palestinian Ambassador and head of the PLO Mission in DC Husam Zomlot, with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, in Ramallah.

Updated 18:35 GMT

Yumna Patel: Thousands protest across the occupied West Bank and besieged Gaza Strip to mark the 70th anniversary of the Nakba

Palestinian protesters carry a banner saying “The right of return is a red line, we will never give it up” in the southern occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem (Photo: Akram al-Wara)

Updated 18:25 GMT

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made a second statement on Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan this afternoon, now going after Erdogan’s use of force on Kurdish civilians:

“The man who sends thousands of Turkish soldiers to maintain the occupation of northern Cyprus and invades Syria, will not preach to us when we defend ourselves against invasion by Hamas. A man whose hands are drenched in the blood of countless Kurdish civilians in Turkey and Syria is the last one who can preach to us about military ethics.”

Updated 17:30 GMT

Israel’s diplomatic relations are taking a hit following the killing of protesters in Gaza yesterday. After both South Africa and Turkey announced yesterday they are recalling ambassadors from Israel, Turkish-Israeli relations have continued to fray with reports surfacing today that Turkey today asked the Israeli ambassador to leave the country. Anadolu Agency reports, 

The Foreign Ministry summoned Ambassador Eitan Naeh and told him it would be “appropriate” for him to return to his country “for a while”, said the sources, who refused to be named due to restrictions on speaking to the media.

This morning Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the head of an “apartheid state” on social media.  Netanyahu responded, “Erdogan is among Hamas’s biggest supporters and there is no doubt that he well understands terrorism and slaughter. I suggest that he not preach morality to us.”

 

Meanwhile Erdogan is rallying international support for Palestinians. Today Turkey delivered more than $100,000 in humanitarian aid to the Palestine Red Crescent in Gaza, reports Anadolu Agency. 

Aside from Turkey, Belgium and Ireland today summoned Israeli ambassadors.

Updated 15:10 GMT

This morning the Israeli military tweeted the following:

Even putting aside the question of how the military identifies “terrorists” or “terror backgrounds,” this is a stark admission that the military murdered at least 37 other people in Gaza.

Jonathan Ofir adds on Facebook:

But what is the meaning of this message anyway? Do the snipers check the background of those people they execute beforehand? Obviously, not. The “inquiry” happened after the fact of their killing. This suggests the notion of kill first, and then check if you got a “terrorist”. By Israeli standards, it would appear that a “collateral” of OVER 50% is still something to boast about.

Updated 14:55 GMT

Be sure to watch this news clip of Noura Erakat on CBS News talking about yesterday’s massacre in Gaza.

Updated 14:40 GMT

The Daily News has an astonishing cover today underlining the tone deafness senior Trump administration officials during the opening ceremony of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, juxtaposed with a scene from Gaza where Israeli soldiers killed 60 Palestinian protesters.

 

We will be updating this post with updates throughout the day and have embedded our Twitter feed below that will most likely include the most up-to-date news.

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This is a huge moment. Gaza can’t take any more Israeli cruelty. The humanitarian situation drove the March. Israel murdered at will. The comments of people like Jon S and Naftush are indicative of Jewish Israeli opinion. American Jews do not share Israeli Jewish values. This point needs to be hammered home. Mondo values are mainstream values. Zionism is beyond the pale.

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The picture of the little baby, is heart breaking. Putting myself in the shoes of that poor mother, I can under the sadness, and pain, but I can even sense the anger she must feel. It would make ME feel like retaliating, even at the risk of my life. This is unjust, inhumane, cruel, and unacceptable, this time this is the work of Trump/Jared/Ivanka, Adelson, AIPAC, Congress.
Chuck Schumer applauded Trump profusely for giving his people Jerusalem.
The US is complicit in all Israel’s crimes as we can see. No wonder the Palestinians are mad and have lost all hope.

Every time these massacres happens, it only makes me understand why the US and Israel are hated so much.

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Zios are braindead inhumane Fascist thugs. They have and continue to get away with atrocities such as the murder of the innocent baby without any recriminations from their sugar daddy US and no real sanctions on their actions from the Europeans.

They have become so blinded by their own arrogance and the fact they are not being truly called to account and punished by the West that they cannot see the real disaster unfolding:
https://news.un.org/en/story/2017/07/561302-living-conditions-gaza-more-and-more-wretched-over-past-decade-un-finds

Forget the de facto Apartheid for which they are loathed. Forget the Fascist approaching Nazi rhetoric and behaviour for which they are loathed. When the population of Gaza ( nearly 45% under the age of 14 estimated in the year) 2014 start to simply die in their hundreds and thousands Zio Israelis will become international pariahs who will not be welcome in civilised countries. All the “whataboutism” in the world will not change that simple basic fact. They have simply lost the plot, are terminally self brainwashed and will suddenly wake up to the reality of what they have done , have failed to do and what they have become. And in that reality there are only two options. Either an acceptance of a single multi racial and multi religious state or the Nazi option of overt full scale scientific ethnic cleansing.

Jeremiah 5:21‘Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not’

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