by IAK Staff, from If Americans Knew, May 19, 2025
NOTE: The Gaza Health Ministry’s daily casualty figures are based on the number of dead and wounded Palestinians brought to hospitals, and does not include victims that are under the rubble or elsewhere, where ambulance and civil defense crews can not reach them.
Medical sources say Israeli forces killed 151 Palestinians in Gaza on Sunday, at least 4 of whom were infants.
Among the dead were at least five Palestinian media workers: within hours of each other, journalists Abdul Rahman al-Abadilah, Aziz al-Hajjar, Ahmed al-Zainati, Khaled Abu Seif, and Nour Qandeel were killed in various parts of the Gaza Strip, along with members of their families.
The chief of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said a “gruesome milestone” has been reached as the death toll of UNRWA workers killed in Gaza passed 300.
The Israeli army forcibly displaced 300,000 from the northern Gaza Strip to Gaza City over the weekend, the Gaza Media Office said.
Israeli military launches major ground assault across Gaza Strip
Israel has announced a large-scale ground invasion across Gaza, deepening fears of further mass civilian casualties in the battered territory.
According to the military, troops from its Southern Command are now conducting operations on the ground in both northern and southern areas of the enclave, backed by intense aerial bombardment.
The escalation marks one of the most extensive phases of the war to date, as Israeli forces push deeper into densely populated zones where hundreds of thousands remain trapped under siege.
With its air force providing cover, Israel has intensified its campaign despite growing international outrage over the civilian toll and the destruction of vital infrastructure, including hospitals and schools.
The Israeli military recently called up 60,000 troops for the new operation.
Under the plan, Netanyahu has also said Gaza’s population “will be moved, for its own protection.”*
The Israeli plan has been widely condemned, with UN chief Guterres saying it will “inevitably lead to countless more civilians killed and the further destruction of Gaza”.
*NOTE: Forced transfer of a people group is a crime against humanity.
Israeli military launches major ground assault across Gaza Strip
Israel has announced a large-scale ground invasion across Gaza, deepening fears of further mass civilian casualties in the battered territory.
According to the military, troops from its Southern Command are now conducting operations on the ground in both northern and southern areas of the enclave, backed by intense aerial bombardment.
The escalation marks one of the most extensive phases of the war to date, as Israeli forces push deeper into densely populated zones where hundreds of thousands remain trapped under siege.
With its air force providing cover, Israel has intensified its campaign despite growing international outrage over the civilian toll and the destruction of vital infrastructure, including hospitals and schools.
The Israeli military recently called up 60,000 troops for the new operation.
Under the plan, Netanyahu has also said Gaza’s population “will be moved, for its own protection.”*
The Israeli plan has been widely condemned, with UN chief Guterres saying it will “inevitably lead to countless more civilians killed and the further destruction of Gaza”
Israel claims it will allow a small quantity of food into Gaza – but the reason why is puzzling
Israel announced Sunday that it will allow a very limited quantity of food supplies into the Gaza Strip, claiming the move is meant to prevent a famine in the enclave.
Israel “will permit the entry of a basic quantity of food for the population to prevent the emergence of a hunger crisis* in the Gaza Strip,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.
It added that a famine “could jeopardize the continuation of Operation Gideon’s Chariot,**” referring to a new phase of Israel’s ground offensive in northern and southern Gaza.
The decision was based on “a recommendation from the Israeli military and due to operational needs to enable expanded intensive fighting to defeat Hamas.”
Israel’s public broadcaster KAN, citing an unnamed Israeli official, said the measure is temporary and expected to last roughly one week, pending the full establishment of aid distribution centers — mostly in southern Gaza and reportedly supervised by the Israeli military and run by American contractors (continue reading here).
*NOTE: Multiple humanitarian organizations and agencies have expressed grave concerns about the food security situation in Gaza, with many asserting that Israel’s actions are contributing to a dire humanitarian crisis and putting the population at risk of starvation – including Human Rights Watch, the World Food Program, Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, UNRWA, Oxfam, UNICEF, the World Health Organization, and the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification. Netanyahu’s statement that a week’s worth of aid will “prevent” a hunger crisis flies in the face all these groups and mountains of evidence.
**NOTE: It is not clear how a famine could “jeopardize” a military operation, but this statement implies that the food is not being provided for the sake of the Palestinian people or due to international pressure, but only for self-serving reasons.
Ha’aretz on Israel’s “plan” to “partially serve” half of Gaza’s hungry
The renewed Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip that began on Friday night has already resulted in hundreds of deaths, thousands of injuries, tens of thousands of new refugees, a worsening risk of hunger, spreading disease and the closure of the enclave’s biggest hospitals.
In the past three weeks, the number of meals prepared in the UN World Food Program’s community kitchens has dropped from more than a million meals a day to just 290,000 [for a population of over 2 million with near zero access to food].
“I have passed several kitchens in the past few days where crowds of people were standing with empty pots and despair on their faces, and these people were being told to go home because all the food had run out for that day,” said OCHA Spokesperson Olga Cherevko last week.
Israeli and international media have reported that in parallel with the attack, Israel and the United States plan to bring food and aid into the Gaza Strip. Satellite images show several sites that have been prepared for food distribution.
This program is expected to be funded by a dedicated foundation established in Switzerland called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. The foundation is headed by Jake Wood, a U.S. Army veteran who founded and ran Team Rubicon, which has provided humanitarian relief during natural disasters.
The UN and humanitarian organizations strongly oppose the plan, claiming that it violates humanitarian principles and, at best, will serve only half of Gaza’s population.
“The plan is designed to partially serve 1.2 million residents, and it is unclear what the solution is for the remaining 900,000,” the Israeli NGO Gisha said. “This plan, and the Israeli policy in the Gaza Strip in general, expressed a terrible disregard for Palestinian lives, as well as the lives of the hostages.”
FACT: UNRWA, the United Nations body with a mandate to help Palestinian refugees, has been feeding the people of Gaza for decades as they wait for their internationally recognized right of return to be activated. Israel has forbidden UNRWA from continuing its work based on an unsubstantiated accusation that 12 employees (out of a staff of 13,000) participated in the October 2023 attack. The 6-page dossier Israel issued, allegedly proving the guilt of twelve UNRWA employees out of a staff of 13,000, offers no compelling evidence.
UNRWA serves around 5.6 million Palestinian refugees.
Israel has long tried to dismantle UNWRA’s humanitarian support of Palestinian refugees.
“They Were Shot in the Groin”: American ICU Nurse Exposes Gaza War Crimes
“It’s like nothing I have ever seen in my life,” said American ICU nurse Wally Massay of his time in Gaza. Massay recently returned from a spell in the densely populated strip, where he was on the front lines of Israel’s campaign against a civilian population. He worked at numerous health centers, including the Al-Aqsa, Nasser, and Indonesia hospitals.
Massay sat down with MintPress News Director, Mnar Adley, to describe life in a Gaza hospital.
During this exclusive interview, Massay told MintPress that Israel was carrying out a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing. The sorts of injuries he mainly dealt with were, in his own words, “A lot of gunshot wounds, a lot of straight shots to the head, to the chest, or to the groin, especially for boys.” “Their reproductive organs were completely dismantled and destroyed. So these boys, in 20 years, may never have children. It’s ethnic cleansing at its worst,” he added.
The gunshot wounds were surprisingly uniform and extremely accurate, leaving no doubt in his mind that they were deliberate. “You can tell that this person meant exactly what they have done,” he told Adley.
Israel’s onslaught has left at least 17,400 Gazan children dead – around 4% of the prewar child population. Another 3% are wounded, 5% require treatment for acute malnutrition, and one in twenty kids have been orphaned or separated from their parents (find the interview here).
Leaked map shows Israeli proposal to force Gazans into strips of land
The Israeli military is proposing to force civilians in Gaza into three tightly controlled strips of land separated by four occupied zones if a ceasefire deal with Hamas does not materialize in the coming days.
A map leaked by diplomats who were briefed on the details, which has been seen by The Sunday Times, shows the military zones cordoned off exclusively for troops in the north, center and south of the shattered territory, with the civilian areas in between.
Civilians would be forbidden to travel between the sections without permission. Security screening, including photo identification or bar codes, would be used for goods.
The restrictions would prevent Palestinians from moving freely throughout the strip, and could separate people from their land and homes, according to foreign companies assigned to distribute and manage humanitarian support, which were also briefed on the plan.
The ground work is already being laid for the plan, with roads and infrastructure being built over what used to be people’s homes (continue reading here).