The Latest:
- Gaza death toll hits 212, including 61 children and over 1,400 injuries, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health; 17 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank.
- 10 Israeli casualties, including one child.
- According to UN OCHA on May 16, there are 38,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) seeking protection in 48 UNRWA schools across Gaza. Over 2,500 people have been made homeless due to the destruction of their homes.
- The Biden Administration is reportedly blocking a UN Security Council statement calling for a ceasefire for the third time. This reflects a traditional pattern on the part of the U.S.: Israel “feels it needs” to destroy a certain amount of opposition in Gaza before the U.S. will join calls on it to cease fire, Barbara Plett Usher observed on BBC today.
- Thirty Senators, almost all Democrats, have signed a statement calling for an immediate ceasefire “to prevent any further loss of civilian life and to prevent further escalation of conflict in Israel and the Palestinian Territories.”
- That letter and the news and political climate in the United States are “dangerous” signs to Israel about its operations, Chuck Freilich, a former national security aide in Israel, said today on i24 News. The letter equates Israel’s actions and Hamas’s, a sign of a “collapse” in sympathy for Israel on the Democratic side in the U.S. Today it is hard to find a young Democrat who supports Israel, and a similar trend is occurring inside the Jewish community, Freilich warned.
-updated 6:41 pm GMT
Palestinians call for massive general strike throughout historic Palestine on May 18
Watch this explainer from Yumna Patel on the call for tomorrow’s general strike and how you can support it:
Also, see here and here for more resources.
‘They ran barefoot in the streets,’ Palestinians detail fleeing shelling and airstrikes
Tareq Hajjaj reports a harrowing account of how Palestinians in Gaza have survived the Israeli onslaught over the past week:
The Raffeqs lives on al-Mansoura Street, the last boulevard before the open field that makes up the buffer zone with Israel. It stretches 300 yards at its narrowest, extending up to a mile. “It started with heavy shelling fired randomly near us” Raffeq, said describing Israeli tanks firing from across the border. Most of the artillery struck “in empty lands around us, they wanted to terrify us,” he said.
The firing began “at sunset,” he recounted. “So many sounds for different weapons were heard: warplanes, artillery, flash bombs, and another sound we were hearing for the first time,” he described. A sound so loud, “it could explode your head.”
“The people who fled first warned others,” Raffeq said. Residents remembered the 2014 war where entire tracks of Shuja’iyya were leveled in Israel’s ground operations. The neighborhood was the flashpoint for violence and fighting that resulted in some of the deadliest days of that two-month escalation. Fearing a similar onslaught of violence loomed, many grabbed what they could and darted west.
Earlier that day the Raffeq’s made go-bags filled with clothes, food, and important documents such as ID cards, in anticipation the family may need to head to a shelter without notice.
“We are unarmed and have kids and women with us. So we had to flee, for now, then we can decide to go back or stay away from our homes,” Raffeq said.
Read the rest here.
Biden administration blocking UN call for cease fire, for the third time; agrees to $735 million weapons sale to Israel
The Times of Israel reports that the U.S. is blocking statement in the Security Council statement was introduced by Norway, Tunisia and China that calls for, “de-escalation of the situation, cessation of violence and respect for international humanitarian law.”
From the Times of Israel:
The Times of Israel obtained a copy of the draft statement early Monday morning. It “expressed [the council’s] grave concern regarding the crisis related to Gaza and the loss of civilian lives and casualties, and called for de-escalation of the situation, cessation of violence and respect for international humanitarian law, including the protection of civilians, especially children.”
“The Members of the Security Council emphasized that civilian and humanitarian facilities, including those of the UN, must be respected and protected, called on all parties to act consistently with this principle and stressed the need for immediate provision of humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza,” the statement reads.
Also, the Washington Post is reporting that on May 5, before this current Israeli attack on Gaza began, the Biden administration approved the sale of $735 million in precision-guided weapons to Israel. Now, some Democratic lawmakers want to exercise oversight over the deal:
“In the past week, the Israeli military’s strikes have killed many civilians and destroyed the building that housed the Associated Press, an American company reporting on the facts in Gaza,” a Democratic lawmaker on the House Foreign Affairs Committee told us. “Allowing this proposed sale of smart bombs to go through without putting pressure on Israel to agree to a cease-fire will only enable further carnage.”
The administration is required to inform Congress of such sales, although official notification generally comes only after Congress has informally agreed. Once the formal notification is made, lawmakers have 20 days to object with a nonbinding resolution of disapproval.
“There’s truth to the notion that there’s major shifts in the party about how we rubber stamp Israel writ large,” a Democratic Senate aide told the Post, although the article also says it is doubtful a resolution of disapproval will be passed by Congress.
Update: Rep. Ilhan Omar has released a statement on the proposed arms deal:
And so has Rep. Joaquin Castro:
-updated 9:20 pm GMT
Previous Reports:
- Live blog: Israel has killed 58 Palestinian children in one week of airstrikes on Gaza (May 16, 2021)
- Live blog: Israeli airstrikes target international media offices, civilian homes in Gaza (May 15, 2021)
- Live blog: U.S. blocks UN Security Council statement on conflict, and 8 Palestinians reported dead in West Bank protests (May 14, 2021)
- Live blog: Israel threatening ground invasion in Gaza, mobilizes army to police Palestinian citizens (May 13, 2021)
- Live blog: Israel kills two Palestinians in West Bank raids, Gaza death toll rises as airstrikes continue (May 12, 2021)
- Live blog: Israel levels apartment buildings, dozens dead in Gaza as Netanyahu government vows to step up strikes (May 11, 2021)
- Israel kills 20 Palestinians in Gaza, injures hundreds in Jerusalem as Al-Aqsa tensions flare (May 10, 2021)
- Hundreds injured as Israeli forces attack Palestinian worshipers in Jerusalem (May 8, 2021)
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210517-ex-israeli-pilot-our-army-is-a-terrorist-organisation-run-by-war-criminals/
Ex-Israeli pilot: ‘Our army is a terrorist organisation run by war criminals’…A former Israeli Air Force pilot, Yonatan Shapira, has described the Israeli government and army as “terrorist organisations” run by “war criminals.”…”I realised during the Second Intifada what the Israeli Air Force and Israeli military are doing are war crimes, terrorising a population of millions of Palestinians. When I realised that, I decided to not just leave but to organise other pilots that will publicly refuse to take part in these crimes…”
Up until this happened, I had thought of Biden as just a tired old man with little wisdom nor courage when it came to international affairs. Now I see that there is evil in him. How else to explain his giving Israel all the cover he can as president to carry out yet another massacre in Palestine?
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For the record:
Zionists have been murdering Palestinians en masse since 1948 and getting away with it.
https://www.haaretz.com/1.5262454
Ari Shavit interviews Benny Morris, January 8, 2004
EXCERPT:
“According to your findings, how many acts of Israeli massacre were perpetrated in 1948?”
“Twenty-four. In some cases four or five people were executed, in others the numbers were 70, 80, 100. There was also a great deal of arbitrary killing. Two old men are spotted walking in a field – they are shot. A woman is found in an abandoned village – she is shot. There are cases such as the village of Dawayima** [in the Hebron region], in which a column entered the village with all guns blazing & killed anything that moved.
“The worst cases were Saliha (70-80 killed), Deir Yassin (100-110), Lod (250), Dawayima (hundreds) & perhaps Abu Shusha (70). There is no unequivocal proof of a large-scale massacre at Tantura, but war crimes were perpetrated there. At Jaffa there was a massacre about which nothing had been known until now. The same at Arab al Muwassi, in the north. About half of the acts of massacre were part of Operation Hiram [in the north, in October 1948]: at Safsaf, Saliha, Jish, Eilaboun, Arab al Muwasi, Deir al Asad, Majdal Krum, Sasa. In Operation Hiram there was a unusually high concentration of executions of people against a wall or next to a well in an orderly fashion.
**THE MASSACRE AT Al-DAWAYIMA On October 28/48, as part of Operation Yoav, the prosperous and mainly agricultural Palestinian village of al-Dawayima was captured ‘without a fight’ by the 89th Commando Battalion of the Israel Defence Forces’ 8th Brigade. An Israeli soldier eyewitness described what then happened: ‘[First the IDF] killed about 80-100 [male] Arabs, women and children. The children they killed by breaking their heads with sticks.’ There was not a house without dead. The remaining Arabs were then closed off in houses ‘without food and water,’ as the village was systematically razed.” (cont’d)
How are these casualty figures generated? There must be established procedures for reporting casualties to Gaza’s Ministry of Health and the meaning of the figures will depend on these procedures. However, I think we can be sure that the figures are vastly understated. There must be many dead and dying people buried under all the rubble whom no one has detected or reported. Many people must have grounds to suspect that missing relatives, neighbors, colleagues, and friends are dead but no way to find out for sure.
It is nighttime in Gaza, and people are hiding in terror inside their homes hoping that they will be spared from the pounding, and the bombs that take lives. This is state terrorism no doubt about that. Another night and the baby killers are going to strike.
Anthony Blinken states HE has not seen any evidence of the presence of Hamas in the building housing the media, the justifications by Israel to bring the building down. How long is the Biden administration and members of Congress going to pretend Israel is the victim in what is going on?
200 Palestinians killed 50 of them children. Is that okay with US leaders?
Biden and Harris are disappointing. Their silence on babies and women being massacred simply shows they are giving Israel the green light to keep killing.