Palestine today
Don’t say you didn't know
The body of a Palestinian recovered from one of the mass graves discovered in the courtyard of Al-Shifa Hospital, along with 10 other bodies all of whom had been executed and buried by the Israeli army during its two-week siege of the hospital at the end of last March. All of the bodies found were decomposed, some were body parts, and some were women.
A new mass grave has been discovered at al-Shifa Hospital where a two-week siege by the Israeli army has turned the facility into a graveyard and put what was once Gaza’s largest medical complex out of service.
Seven law enforcement officials tasked with protecting aid, and two bystanders, have been killed in an Israeli army attack on their vehicle in Gaza City, the Interior Ministry says.
As part of its ongoing genocide, which started on 7 October 2023, the Israeli army is using new disturbing techniques to intimidate, lure, and target Palestinian civilians in the central Gaza Strip’s Nuseirat refugee camp. Testimonies from camp residents, which were provided to the Euro-Med Monitor team, confirm that the sound of women screaming and babies crying was heard late at night on both Sunday and Monday. When some of the residents went out to investigate and tried to help, they were shot at by Israeli quadcopter drones. The sounds they had heard were in fact recordings playedby the Israeli drones, with the intent of forcing the camp’s residents out into the streets, where they could be easily targeted by snipers and other weaponry. According to the testimonies, this tactic also involved broadcasting gunshots, armed conflicts, explosions, military vehicle movements, and occasionally songs in Hebrew and Arabic in order to psychologically intimidate civilians who live amid total darkness at night and total disconnection from the external world.
The Israeli army has targeted thousands of Palestinians who it had forcibly displaced, preventing them from going back to their areas of residence in the northern Gaza Strip by using live ammunition and artillery shells. This has resulted in dozens of deaths and injuries, including women and children, and forced the remaining Palestinians to return to their places of displacement.
The Israeli army deliberately attacked thousands of Palestinian civilians on Sunday, killing and wounding dozens of them, and continuing its crime of forced displacement by preventing civilians it had previously forced to evacuate, including women and children, from crossing from the centre and south of the Gaza Strip intotheir areas of residence in the northern regions, despite the end of hostilities in most of these regions. These actions may be considered crimes against humanity and war crimes. Israel has been committing serious crimes for more than six months now, including forced displacement, which is intended to end Palestinian life in the Gaza Strip. These crimes are all part of Israel’s larger campaign of genocide.
Five United Nations experts condemned on Monday the Israeli army's reported use of artificial intelligence (AI) in Gaza. It came after reports emerged that Israeli forces were using AI for selecting and tracking targets in their military campaign in Gaza, where more than 33,800 people were killed - mostly women and children. "We are especially concerned about the alleged use of AI to target 'family homes' of suspected Hamas operatives, typically at night when they sleep, with unguided munitions known as 'dumb' bombs, with little regard for civilians who may be in or around that home," they said. Up to 70 percent of all homes in Gaza and as many as 84 percent of homes in the strip's north were either fully destroyed or partly damaged since Israel's onslaught began on 7 October.
Almost all Palestinian structures alongside the Gaza buffer zone with Israel have been destroyed, according to images published by the United Nations Satellite Center. The 11 April UN report assessed the destruction and damage to buildings located within a kilometre of the strip's border with Israel, where Israeli forces have been systematically demolishing structures since their relentless onslaught on Gaza began on 7 October. The report found that 90 percent of the structures within the buffer zone were destroyed or damaged since the images were last analysed on 29 February, resulting in the complete demolition of 3,033 buildings, severe damage of 327 buildings, and moderate damage of 266 buildings. The actual number in the buffer zone could be higher.
The UN has slammed the Israeli military for keeping quiet on continued settler attacks against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. The UN voiced grave concern Tuesday over escalating violence in the occupied West Bank, demanding that Israeli security forces "immediately" stop supporting settler attacks on Palestinians in the occupied territory. With Israel's war on Gaza, the United Nations rights office decried that Palestinians in the West Bank had been "subjected to waves of attacks by hundreds of Israeli settlers, often accompanied or supported by Israeli security forces (ISF)". "The Israeli security forces must immediately end their active participation in and support for settler attacks on Palestinians," rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told reporters in Geneva.
A driver in Paris plowed into a group of pro-Palestinian Jewish activists during a protest against military support for Israel’s attacks in the Gaza Strip. There were no reported casualties. Footage shared by Farida Amrani, an MP from the French opposition Unsubmissive France Party (LFI) on X, captured the moment of attack outside the headquarters of French weapons manufacturer, Thales Group. Protesters brandished banners that read: “Israel the Killer”, “Thales the Accomplice” and “Stop Arming Israel”, alongside Palestinian flags. Demonstrators denounced Thales Group’s alleged military support for Israel’s actions in Gaza. The incident was “a shocking attack on Jewish activists who are peacefully demonstrating against the ongoing genocide in Gaza,” said Amrani.
The number of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli Occupation prisons has reached more than 9,500 prisoners, according to recent data published by Palestinian Prisoner Rights institutions on Tuesday. The PLO’s Commission for Prisoners’ and Ex-Prisoners’ Affairs, the Prisoners’ Club and the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, released the data in a joint statement on Tuesday, on the eve of Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, which falls on 17 April. According to the statement, the prisoners include 80 women and more than 200 children who are held in Megiddo, Ofer and Damon prisons. However, the numbers do not include detainees from the Gaza Strip, who are subject to enforced disappearance. The statement said the number of administrative detainees who are held without charge had risen to more than 3,660, as of the beginning of this April, including 22 women and more than 40 children. The number of detained journalists also reached 56, including 45 who had been arrested after 7 October and are still in detention, including four female journalists, according to the same source. The Prisoners’ Club data indicate that 252 detainees have died inside prisons since 1967, including 16 after 7 October, not including prisoners from the Gaza Strip who were forcibly disappeared by Israel.
From blocking bridges to economic boycotts, direct action for Gaza is increasingly common. But can it succeed? Direct action – the use of economic or physical power to achieve specific goals – has come to define the tactics of a new generation of advocates for the Palestinian cause. As people become more frustrated with their government’s failure to confront Israel’s assault on Gaza, direct action is becoming increasingly common. This episode looks at the people behind direct action and why it is their preferred mode of protest.