Canadian physician Dr. Tarek Loubani was shot in both legs by Israeli soldiers while treating Palestinians injured during the Great March of Return on Monday: “One paramedic, Musa Abuhassanin, was killed while attempting a victim rescue under fire. One hour before he was shot in the thorax and killed, Musa was one of my rescuers when I was shot by live ammunition.”
Jonathan Cook: “For seven decades, the west has pampered Israel at every turn. The lack of any meaningful punishment for violating Palestinian rights led directly to Monday’s massacre.”
After more than 70 years of the Nakba, Gaza refugees have raised their voices through the Great March of Return. A day after the bloodiest day in Gaza since the 2014 war, Ahmad Kabariti asked protesters what they were thinking about on this Nakba Day.
Israeli lawmaker Avi Dichter and former head of the Shin Bet intelligence agency warns Palestinians in the Great March of Return that they are bringing a “Great Nakba” upon themselves.
Reuters photographer Ibraheem Abu Mustafa: “I call this place a place of death, there is death here, it is not a place of comfort, any second someone could die.”
Many Palestinian families have their narratives of the Nakba, especially in Gaza where nearly 70% of the population are refugees. Hamza Abu Al-Tarabeesh shares the stories of three Gaza families, including his own. Each story share incredible pain and loss, but also hope for the future and the hope of return.
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.
At least 58 Palestinians were killed and more than 2,700 wounded by Israeli forces on Monday as protest spread across Gaza in the bloodiest day in the strip since 2014. According to the Great March of Return organizers, around 50,000 protesters were gathered along the Gaza border as the new U.S. Embassy opened in Jerusalem. “I am waiting for those youth if they could pull down the fence, then I will cross with them into my father’s land,” said Ahmed Abu Reyaleh, a 65-year-old retired chemistry teacher, whose family was originally from the Bayt Jirja village (15.5 km northeast of Gaza). “We have not been created to be under occupation for our whole life, so it’s time to say enough.”
Gilad Erdan, Israel’s minister of Strategic Affairs and Hasbara, referred to Gazans as “Nazis” twice within five minutes today. “The number of killed doesn’t indicate anything – just as the number of Nazis who died in the world war doesn’t make Nazism something you can explain or understand,” he tweeted.
The Israeli military claims its soldiers are “in danger” from the protests across the fence in Gaza, but a simple review of the facts proves this is not the case. Here are the questions any journalist talking to the Israeli military should ask.
It took a visiting New York Times reporter from Cairo to finally tell some truths about Israel’s ongoing massacre of Palestinian demonstrators inside Gaza. Meanwhile, the paper’s Israel correspondents continue to distort and whitewash.
Today is unfolding as a horrifying and tragic day in Palestine. The Israeli military has opened fire on Gaza protesters as the U.S. and Israeli governments prepare to mark the move of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.
Early reports on Monday suggested that Gaza’s demonstrators were being massacred by the Israeli army. Amnesty International called the events a “horror show”. But for more than a month, Israel has been working to manage western perceptions of the protests – and its response – in ways designed to discredit the outpouring of anger from Palestinians.
On Friday, Israeli snipers killed a Palestinian and wounded 170 protesters in Gaza in the final Friday protest before the culmination of the March of Return on Nakba Day, May 15th. “People here are tired of life and futile peace negotiations for 25 years with a state does not want peace and denies right of the other people to exist,” Etaf Wadi, 56, told Mondoweiss. “The United States has used 43 vetoes against the Palestinians, but we have the right to freedom, and the superpowers will not give it to us so that we will take our right by our own hands.”
Francesca Albanese writes that the Great March of Return is a sobering reminder of the conspicuous lack of political will that has been maintaining the Palestinian refugees in a status of oblivion: “It is a reminder to all of us that the Palestinian question was a ‘refugee question’ first and foremost, and without a just solution for the refugees, a resolution of the conflict will not be sustainable.”
A video taken on May 4, 2018 east of the town of Khuza’a in the southern Gaza Strip shows an interaction between Israeli troops and protesters taking part in the Great March of Return. An Israeli officer threatens to shoot protesters for as little as waving a stick.
At least 70 Palestinians were injured by Israeli live fire Friday, the lowest casualty toll since the protests began at the Gaza fence five weeks ago. Medics also treated 1,073 people, for tear gas inhalation, the Gaza health ministry said, but it was the first day no Palestinian was killed by Israeli sniper fire.
Since the “Great March of Return” in Gaza began on March 30th, Israeli forces have violently suppressed the protests, killing over 40 Palestinians and injuring over 6,000 more. Doctors in Gaza have expressed concern that protesters have been targeted in the legs by Israeli live fire, noting Israel’s use of expanding or explosive bullets, that tear through soft tissue and make injuries extremely difficult to treat. Mondoweiss visits the Médecins Sans Frontières clinic in Gaza to hear who doctors are handling this situation and meet the injured Palestinians whose lives have been changed forever.
After activist Adi Shosberger called Israel snipers “terrorists” for killing Gaza protesters, mainstream Israeli radio host Shai Goldstein called her “filth,” “retarded” and a “bitch,” and suggested that she be sent to Gaza, where he said she would be raped and murdered.
Israel killed four more Palestinian demonstrators on the fifth Friday of Gaza protests, April 27. The fourth victim, Azzam Hillal, 15, died of his wounds on Saturday after being shot in the head. The demonstrations were marked by enormous kites with flaming coals on their tails, destined for fields in Israel.
What happens when you call Israeli soldiers who kill unarmed protesters ‘terrorists’? Adi Shosberger did it and she has been ostracized by Israeli society, condemned by the prime minister, and subject to death threats.
“We speak out as health workers concerned about this ongoing impunity of the Israeli military to use lethal and harmful force.”
For the fourth week yesterday, on a peaceful and unilateral battlefield, thousands of angry young Palestinian men went close to the border fence separating Gaza and Israel to protest, facing dozens of Israeli soldiers who lay positioned behind sandy hills. Four Palestinians were killed by live ammunition, and another 152 injured.
Yousef al-Kurnz, a 20-year-old Gazan photojournalist, lost his left leg after being hit with an explosive bullet from an Israeli sniper while he was covering the Great Return March. “I don’t regret that I went to the demonstration,” al-Kurnz tells Karama Fadel from We Are Not Numbers. “I am so proud of my work, I will succeed and I will achieve my dream to be a famous photographer. I still have two hands to hold my camera with.”
A photo essay of homemade gas masks demonstrates the creativity and resilience of Palestinian protesters demanding their rights in Gaza.