Five-year-old Arkan Shaqqura was with his mother when she was shot by an armed Israeli quadcopter. The last thing she told her child as she lay bleeding was to run away and save himself. Her family now doesn’t know if she is dead or alive.
Israel claims there is not a policy to forcibly expel Palestinians in Gaza, but direct testimonies from people arriving in Rafah reveal there is a ethnic cleansing campaign taking place around Gaza City.
Sameh Jindiyya’s daughter was born nine days ago in Al-Shifa hospital. Ever since he has been frantically searching for food for his nursing wife. “This is how we’re born in Gaza,” he tells Mondoweiss. “We are born with death hovering over us.”
Some have argued that the ICJ ruling on the Gaza genocide proves that international law is a tool of the dominant, too corrupted by the great powers to achieve true justice. But the ICJ offered a way of isolating Israel, and that is a source of hope.
Egyptian border officials are charging Palestinians in Gaza thousands of dollars to escape death in Gaza. And even those who manage to raise the exorbitant price through GoFundMe campaigns have not been let through for months.
Israeli forces bomb Gaza’s perimeter to prepare for a “buffer zone” as medical staff in Nasser Hospital dig graves in anticipation of a large number of fatalities due to Israel’s ongoing siege on the hospital.
Even in areas like Rafah, where the Israeli ground invasion has not reached, Gaza’s society has been decimated. Its economy no longer exists and basic goods can only be found on the black market where they cost ten times their prewar price.
As Israel has murdered over 118 journalists during its genocidal war on Gaza, many journalists have been forced to stop reporting on the unfolding horror for fear of being deliberately targeted.
Bearing witness to Israel’s genocide in Palestine has changed people forever. This is leading many to not only solidify their opposition to Zionism, but to reject the role of the West as a whole.
Diana Buttu discusses the experience Palestinians are sharing of watching a genocide of their people play out on their mobile phones.