Israel kills civilians in Gaza, Lebanon, as US Prepares to Send More Troops, Weapons to the Region – Day 352

by If Americans Knew, published on Israel Palestine News, September 24, 2024

*Featured Image:  Palestinians, who took refuge in Deir al-Balah, wait in line to receive food distributed by charitable organizations during World Humanitarian Day which is held every year on August 19 to emphasize the importance of humanitarian aid and to draw more attention to humanitarian action around the world in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on August 18, 2024. [Abed Rahim Khatib – Anadolu Agency] (photo)

Compilation of news reports – IAK staff 

At least 24 Palestinians have been killed and 70 others injured in Israeli attacks in Gaza in the last 24 hours, the enclave’s health ministry has said.

Five people, including four children, were killed in another strike at dawn targeting a house in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, while at least three Palestinians were killed in an Israeli attack on a school in the Nuseirat camp.

A child was killed and others were injured after Israeli quadcopter drones bombed a group of civilians in the town of Khuza’a east of Khan Younis.

The death toll from the Israeli strikes on Lebanon since Monday reached 558, including 50 children and 94 women, with 1,835 wounded, Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said on Tuesday. “The majority of the victims in the Israeli attacks since Monday morning are defenseless civilians in their homes. This refutes the enemy’s allegations of targeting fighters,” the minister stressed.

Lebanese network Al Mayadeen reported that a strike in the Beqaa Valley killed 10 members of the same family.

The bodies of the Palestinians who were killed in recent Israeli attacks are taken by their relatives from the morgue of Nasser Hospital in the city for funeral prayers and burial, on September 19, 2024 [Doaa Albaz/Anadolu Agency] (photo)

Heavy rains flood tents in Gaza

Middle East Monitor reports:

The first heavy rains of the autumn season flooded tents of displaced Palestinian families in Khan Younis, south of the Gaza Strip, exacerbating the people’s suffering, UNRWA said yesterday.

The UN agency explained that the displaced persons’ crisis is worsening due to the severe shortage of basic materials needed to protect them from winds, rain and floods.

Dozens of families in Khan Younis were forced to evacuate their tents after the city’s municipality warned that staying near rainwater pools with the approach of the rain storms could endanger their lives.

Many feared the prospect of having to find new shelters in the besieged enclave before the winter season sets in.

Following yesterday’s rainfall, the Emergency Committee in the Deir Al-Balah Municipality in the central Gaza Strip launched a distress call demanding immediate intervention to save citizens and displaced persons from the risk of drowning in rainwater.

Palestinians, living in makeshift tents in the Al-Mawasi, pose for a photo as people struggle with the strong winds and torrential rains along with Israeli attacks in Khan Yunis, Gaza on September 22 , 2024. [Mahmoud Bassam – Anadolu Agency] (photo)

Gaza war increasing speech disorders among children: UN

Middle East Monitor reports:

The United Nations has warned of a significant increase in speech disorders among children in the Gaza Strip, due to the fear and anxiety caused by the ongoing Israeli war.

In a statement published on its website yesterday, the UN explained that the relentless bombardment and widespread destruction are causing severe psychological stress, which is affecting children’s ability to speak.

The UN cited speech therapist Amina Al-Dahdouh, who works in a temporary camp for displaced people in the west of Al-Zawayda in Deir Al-Balah, warning that “six out of ten children in the camp currently suffer from speech difficulties.” “Stuttering is the problem that has increased the most,” she added.

Traumatized children escape the al Mawasi area – an Israeli-designated “safe zone” – after an intense and unexpected Israeli bombing on Saturday, July 13. (screengrab)

Israel considers plan to impose siege, expel 300,000 Palestinians from northern Gaza

The Cradle reports

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told lawmakers that he is considering the so-called “generals’ plan” to lay total siege to northern Gaza and expel all its Palestinian residents.

When retired major general Giora Eiland presented the plan last week, he claimed it would “change the reality” on the ground in Gaza.

We have to tell the residents of north Gaza that they have one week to evacuate the territory, which then becomes a military zone, [a zone] in which every figure is a target and, most importantly, no supplies enter this territory,” he said.

The remaining Hamas fighters would then be forced to surrender or starve.

Israeli national broadcaster Kan reported on Sunday that Netanyahu said that the plan “makes a lot of sense.”

Eiland said, “What matters to [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar is land and dignity, and with this maneuver, you take away both land and dignity,” he said.

Eiland has been critical of Israel’s current strategy in the war, saying it has not been harsh enough against the Palestinian population.

The plan does not reveal whether Palestinians could ever return to northern Gaza, one of its backers told CNN.

Many Israelis wish to conquer and destroy Gaza, ethnically cleanse it of Palestinians, and build settlements for Jews in their place.

NOTE: The so-called Generals’ Plan does not appear to take into consideration the existence of tunnels throughout Gaza, where Hamas fighters could hide or escape to the south in the event of a siege. 

Israeli Strikes Kill hundreds in Lebanon

Various outlets report:

The death toll from the Israeli strikes on Lebanon since Monday reached 558, including 50 children and 94 women, with 1,835 wounded, Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said on Tuesday. “The majority of the victims in the Israeli attacks since Monday morning are defenseless civilians in their homes.” This refutes the enemy’s allegations of targeting fighters,” the minister stressed.

Israel dramatically escalated its military operations in Lebanon on Monday, launching strikes against residential areas across the south and east of the country.

Israel also launched an airstrike in Beirut and said it targeted Ali Karaki, the head of Hezbollah’s southern command. But Hezbollah said Karaki was “fine and God willing is in full health and wellness” and that he was “transported to a safe area.”

Tens of thousands of residents of southern Lebanon fled the Israeli bombardment and headed north.

To justify its bombing of civilian homes in Lebanon, the Israeli military claimed Hezbollah was storing large missiles and missile launchers inside houses. Israel offered no evidence for the claim besides animated videos and overhead footage that purported to show homes in Lebanon.

(Photo credit: AFP via Getty Images) (photo)

Israel’s “humanitarian” evacuation warnings are nothing of the kind

Drop Site News reports:

The IDF’s Arabic-language spokesperson Avichay Adraee also posted several ominous messages on Twitter, also known as X, instructing people to leave their homes, including in the Bekaa Valley region.

If you are inside or near a house containing Hezbollah weapons- you must leave it and move away from it within two hours to a distance of no less than 1,000 meters outside the village, or go to the central school near you and do not return until further notice,” he wrote, adding, “Anyone who is near Hezbollah elements, facilities, and weapons is putting his life and the lives of his family members at risk.” Israeli forces subsequently bombed the area.

Civilians cannot be expected to know where weapons stores might be—adding to the sense that Israel is carrying out a “psychological war,” as Lebanon’s official news agency called it, in addition to a harsh bombing campaign.

While the IDF has portrayed these orders as humanitarian-motivated evacuation warnings, it has issued identical communications throughout its 11-month war against the Palestinians of Gaza only to later bomb areas to which it told residents to flee.

People have seen what’s happened in Gaza and they know that the Israelis are fully capable and they understand that basically the West has given up even pretending to do anything about it,” said Karim Makdisi, a professor of international politics at the American University in Beirut.

There’s no reason to believe that the Israelis will not go ahead and basically try to empty out a large section of the south and try to make the whole place totally uninhabitable for the foreseeable future.”

(Read the full article here.)

People gather on Sept. 21, 2024 at the scene of an Israeli strike that targeted Beirut’s southern suburbs a day earlier. Israeli officials said another Israeli airstrike on Sept. 23 targeted Hezbollah’s southern front commander. Photo: -/AFP via Getty Images (photo)

Israeli minister calls for the occupation of Lebanon

Middle East Eye reports:

Amichai Chikli, Israel’s Minister for Diaspora Affairs, has proposed a plan to establish a “buffer zone, free of the enemy population” in southern Lebanon.

In a detailed post on X, Chikli outlined the plan and shared a map of the Lebanese towns that would be included in the zone. He described the forcible removal of the population as the “most just thing to do” from a security, political, and moral standpoint.

Chikli, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, argued that Israel would be justified in “taking over” the area, claiming that Lebanon had “failed to exercise its sovereignty” there.


Israel Bombed Lebanon Monday, Killing Hundreds. Biden Is Sending More Bombs.

The Intercept reports:

The Israeli military has embarked upon a massive bombing campaign in Lebanon. Last week, it began with the remote detonation of thousands of personal electronic devices. On Friday, an Israeli strike leveled a building in the Beirut suburbs. On Sunday and into Monday, the bombings expanded into the largest attack on Lebanon since Israel’s 2006 invasion. All told, the Israeli military bombed 1,300 targets, killing at least 490 people, including more than 90 children and women. 

The death toll is already the highest since the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah War, and certainly the worst since October 7, when Israel and Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shia group backed by Iran, began exchanging strikes. The Israeli government continued its attacks over the course of the day Monday. While Israel said it targeted Hezbollah’s weapons supplies, Lebanon’s health minister also said the strikes hit hospitals, medical centers, and ambulances.

With this new bombing campaign, Israel has opened a new front in its wars on Gaza and the West Bank — and critics of U.S. policy have renewed calls for the U.S. to halt its weapons transfers to Israel as the conflict continues to grow.

It’s easier to stop sending the Israel government weapons to conduct its genocidal wars than it is to evacuate every American in Lebanon,” said Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., on X on Monday, captioning a tweet from the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, urging American citizens to leave the country.

Abbas Alawieh, a co-founder of the Uncommitted” movement, which has been pushing the Democratic Party and Kamala Harris’s campaign to commit to an arms embargo on Israel, reported Monday morning that his family’s village in Lebanon had been hit by Israeli bombs, killing “a mom and her daughters … in their home,” as well as other civilians in his cousins’ village…

(Read the full article here.)

Israel launched deadly airstrikes on Lebanon on Monday, killing at least 558 people, including 50 children and 95 women, and injuring 1,645 others, while thousands of people have fled their homes, according to the Lebanese health minister.

Senior US official doesn’t believe Israeli escalation with Hezbollah will yield de-escalation

Reuters reports:

The U.S. does not support the escalation between Israel and Hezbollah across the border, a senior State Department official said, adding that Washington was going to discuss “concrete ideas” with allies and partners to prevent the war from broadening [even as Biden continues sending weapons to Israel – see above].

Israeli officials have said the recent uptick in airstrikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon was designed to force the Iran-aligned group to agree to a diplomatic solution.

But the U.S. State Department official, briefing reporters in New York on condition of anonymity, pushed back on this Israeli position: “I can’t recall, at least in recent memory, a period in which an escalation or intensification led to a fundamental de- escalation and led to profound stabilization of the situation,” the official said.

Asked if that is a disagreement with the Israeli stance, the U.S. official nodded.

Smoke billows from the site of an Israeli airstrike in Marjayoun, near the Lebanon–Israel border, on Sept. 23, 2024. Photo: Rabih Daher/AFP/Getty Images (photo)

Biden sending additional troops to Middle East as Israel ramps up attacks across Lebanon

Andalou Agency reports:

The US announced Monday that it is sending a “small number” of additional forces to the Middle East as Israel dramatically increased airstrikes across Lebanon prompting unprecedented Hezbollah retaliatory strikes.

The US has about 40,000 troops stationed in the region, and Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder did not specify how many new forces would be sent.

In light of increased tension in the Middle East and out of an abundance of caution, we are sending a small number of additional US military personnel forward to augment our forces that are already in the region,” Ryder told reporters, according to multiple media reports. “I’m not going to comment on or provide specifics.”

(Editor’s Note: There is a Carrier Group on the way.  It left Norfolk on the 23rd of September. [jb])

Smoke billows from the site of an Israeli airstrike in Marjayoun, near the Lebanon–Israel border, on Sept. 23, 2024. Photo: Rabih Daher/AFP/Getty Images (photo)

“Your Village Should Be Burned”: Palestinian Israeli Girl, 12, Suspended From School After Empathizing With Gazan Children

Ha’aretz reports:

In a class discussion in a mixed Israeli-Palestinian school in Israel, a 12-year-old Palestinian girl said that children in Gaza were dying of hunger.

Her classmates at Zilberman High School blamed her of supporting Hamas, cursed her, said things to her like “your village should be burned down,” and allegedly attacked her after class.

The Education Ministry commented that the girl would be suspended for ‘inciting against the army’ until an inquiry into the matter could be completed. The ministry later claimed the suspension was also to prevent tension between her and other students.

The 12-year-old girl, a seventh grader, told Ha’aretz that in a class discussion, she said that small children were suffering and dying of hunger in Gaza. She said her classmates started attacking her when class ended. “The students started saying to me: ‘Our soldiers aren’t murderers,’ even though I hadn’t said that.”

Video clips from the school were spread on social media, triggering many comments inciting to violence against the girl.

Students started gathering around her very quickly,” said her father. “The entire grade came and accused her of calling for the liberation of Palestine, which [she] didn’t.”

[EDITOR’S NOTE: In a democracy, calling for the liberation of Palestine is not only an exercise of free speech, but an expression of a universal human right – the right to a nationality.]

He added, “The teacher didn’t try to help the girl…She simply left the girl on her own against the students, until another teacher noticed the situation and took her to the principal.”

It is ridiculous that during a discussion initiated by the school, in which children were asked to express their opinions, a child gets attacked for saying something,” a lawyer, Shahada Ibn Bari, was quoted as saying by Channel 12. The outlet reported that Palestinian students were afraid to attend school because of the incident.

*Editor’s Note: I notice that all the photos below are of the strikes on Palestinian and Lebanese people and sites.  I just want to remind you that images of Hezbollah strikes on Israel  are all over the internet (they are not shy about their accomplishments) and the suffering of Israeli people is all over the mainstream news.  One more point of interest.  Israel (like the US) intentionally targets civilians while Hezbollah meticulously sticks to military targets’ and Hamas is busy with basic self defense at close quarters.  

 

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