by Kevin Reed, published on World Socialist Website, November 12, 2024
Israeli air strikes across Gaza and Lebanon killed dozens of people on Sunday, including at least 20 children, as the Israeli regime intensified its genocide of Palestinians and expanded its wider war in the Middle East.
Health officials reported at least 30 people were killed in northern and central Gaza as tanks entered the refugee camp at Nuseirat in a new incursion. A report by Al Jazeera said, “Health officials at Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat, in the central Gaza Strip, said 20 people were killed in a series of air and ground attacks overnight and into Monday, including one that hit a tent encampment.”
In a message sent to Reuters via a chat app, 25-year-old resident Zaik Mohammad said tanks opened fire on the Nuseirat camp without warning and caught residents by surprise. The residents and displaced families were sent into a panic. “Some people couldn’t leave and remained trapped inside their homes, appealing to be allowed out, while others rushed out with whatever they could carry as they fled.”
Al Jazeera also reported four people were killed in an Israeli air attack in the northern town of Beit Lahiya, which Israeli forces have besieged from the air and with tanks since the beginning of October. Others were killed in an air attack in Gaza City.
An Israeli drone fired upon Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya—the only medical facility operating in northern Gaza—injuring three medical workers. Another 10 people were killed in an air strike late Monday in a café in Al-Mawasi—an area designated a “humanitarian safe zone” by Israel—near the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.
Health Ministry officials reported that at least 43,604 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military since October 2023, with 102,929 injured. [editor- this is the common statistic, but is a gross underestimation that does not include people buried under the rubble, people who died of untreated medical problems, hunger and diseases caused by lack of sanitation).
The strikes in Lebanon on Sunday killed nearly 40 people, with the Israeli air assault moving into the north of the country. At least 14 people were killed in a missile attack on the northern town of Ain Yaaqoub, which is approximately 6.2 miles from the border with Syria.
Al Jazeera reported that there may well have been Syrian casualties in this strike because there are so many refugees in the north of Lebanon who have been sheltering there for years. There were also Lebanese people in Ain Yaaqoub who had fled there for safety from the suburbs of Beirut and areas in the Bekaa Valley that have been hit by Israeli bombings.
At least 23 people were killed in another strike about nine miles from the capital Beirut. The Lebanese Ministry of Health said on Monday that at least 3,243 people had been killed in the recent escalation by Israel, including at least 200 children.
There have been numerous indications that the Israeli government—which has been provided with arms and funding by the Biden administration to carry out its ethnic cleansing of Gaza—has been further emboldened to intensify its criminal military operations by the victory of Donald Trump in the 2024 US presidential elections.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed in a recorded message on Sunday that he has spoken to the fascist president-elect three times in recent days. Throughout the 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly told Netanyahu to “do what you have to do” in Gaza and Lebanon, while simultaneously telling the electorate he would bring both conflicts to an end. [Editor – There are questions as to whether these calls actually occurred]
There can be no question that the election of Donald Trump has given the Israeli leaders encouragement to completely drop any pretense of ceasefire negotiations and move forward with the Zionist project to permanently remove Palestinians from Gaza and the so-called “Generals’ Plan.”
In his first meeting with Israeli military officials, new Defense Minister Israel Katz said that “there will be no ceasefire” and “no break in the strikes against Hezbollah” in Lebanon. Katz also posted a statement on X that said, “Iran is more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities. We have the opportunity to achieve our most important goal—to thwart and eliminate the existential threat to the State of Israel.”
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, speaking to the press on Monday before his Religious Zionism party’s weekly faction meeting in the Knesset, welcomed Trump’s victory and said it presents an “important opportunity” to “apply Israeli sovereignty to the settlements in Judea and Samaria,” referring to areas of the West Bank by their biblical names.
Smotrich, who is also a minister in the Israeli Defense Ministry, complained that the Biden administration had “unfortunately chosen to intervene in Israeli democracy and personally not to cooperate with me.”
He referred to actions taken by the Trump administration of 2017-2021, such as the transfer of the US Embassy to Jerusalem, the recognition of the Golan Heights as Israeli territory, and the decision to declare that Israel’s West Bank settlements are legal under international law, as being in line with his own fascist political agenda.
On Monday, Donald Trump selected Senator Elise Stefanik, a Republican from New York, to be US Ambassador to the United Nations. Stefanik has been a rapid supporter of Zionism and a defender of the Gaza genocide. She was a leading figure in Congress who labeled pro-Palestinian protesters at college campuses across the country as “antisemitic.”
Stefanik’s witch-hunting of protesters against the Gaza genocide aligns with her echoing of the Great Replacement Theory of actual antisemitism, which claims that wealthy Jewish people are engineering and financing a mass migration to the United States from Asia, Africa and Latin America to replace the white American population.
*Featured Image: Day 402 of Genocide in Gaza [Photo: @MuhammadSmiry]