Western world complicit in Gaza Hellfire attacks
26 August 2024
Gaza City lies in ruins from Israeli bomb and missile strikes (Image via WAFA | Wikimedia Commons)
Gaza schools and hospitals continue to be bombarded by Israeli weaponry, much of which has been supplied by Western governments. Dr Alison Broinowski reports.
BY HALFWAY through August, the Israeli military had bombed at least five schools. Accused of using six-bladed American-made “Ninja” missiles, they have chopped to pieces the Palestinians inside, most of them women and children.
On 19 November 2023, head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Martin Griffiths wrote:
‘Shelters are a place for safety. Schools are a place for learning… Civilians cannot and should not have to bear this any longer. Humanity needs to prevail’.
This was the day after Israel’s military bombed the Al-Fakhoora school in northern Gaza, where displaced people were sheltering. On the same day, they bombed another nearby school with a combined total of more than 150 dead.
Humanity still has not prevailed in Gaza, where the surviving Palestinians are bearing even worse consequences. It’s alleged that the massacres are now being delivered by Ninja Hellfire AGM-114R9X missiles. These are nicknamed “assassination” missiles for having killed Al Qaeda’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in 2022.
Soon after the Hamas breakout on 7 October, Israel cut off supplies to Palestinians and pushed them into northern Gaza. It then forced displaced people to flee south to Rafah, where shelter and supplies were as limited as in the north. The fact that Hamas is the elected governing authority in Gaza didn’t stop Israel’s cynical, genocidal pursuit.
First were bombs on hospitals, which the Netanyahu Government claimed harboured Hamas, leaving them ruined or barely functioning.
Next, Israel’s military made schools their target, with the same excuse. On 6 and 7 June, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) attacked a UN-run school at Nuseirat refugee camp, killing 33 people, and another school in Deir al-Balah in northern Gaza killing more. Some of the victims (including an 8-year-old boy) were claimed to be Hamas militants.
At the same time, Israel expressed outrage in the UN at being listed as a nation violating its obligation under the Fourth Geneva Convention to protect children in armed conflict.
School bombings then multiplied. On 9 July, an attack on Abbasan, east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, hit the entrance of al-Awdah school, killing at least 30 people who were sheltering there and wounding 53. Palestinian medics said most of the victims, as always, were women and children. The Israeli military said its sole target was a ‘terrorist from Hamas’ military wing’ near the school.
In the first ten days of August, Israeli attacks on five schools in Gaza City killed more than 179 Palestinians. On 1 August, Israel’s military attacked the Dalal al-Mughrabi school, and on 10 August, at least 100 displaced people were killed at the Al-Tabin school in Daraj, part of Gaza City. In this deliberately-timed attack as the Palestinians were preparing for dawn prayers, or were already in the mosque area, many bodies were shredded into unrecognisable pieces.
Three Israeli rockets reportedly hit the school, setting fire to the building that housed hundreds of displaced people. Described as the deadliest massacre in the ten-month-old war, this attack confirmed a deliberate pattern of Israel killing and maiming defenceless civilians sheltering in schools. It was the latest of 174 UN-identified bombings of shelters, and Al Jazeera reports 500 school attacks over the last ten months.
Fragments of at least two shells used at al-Tabin school on 10 August were identified as being of the American GBU-39 SDB type, manufactured and exported to Israel by Boeing.
Columbia’s Professor Anthony Zenkus alleges that AGM-114 Hellfire missiles were also used, made of 45 kilograms of dense material with six blades flying at high speed, supposedly to crush and cut a targeted person. If they were, in fact, used in crowded spaces in Gaza, Israel cannot claim they “targeted” any Hamas individual.
Zenkus claims that by 2 July, 3,200 Ninja Hellfires had been sent to Israel by the Biden-Harris Administration, and thousands more will be included in the $23.5 billion worth of weapons they have approved.
As every day brings news of another school massacre, the choice facing Australians is between psychic numbing and motivated, active outrage. How can we make our government protest on our behalf against Israel’s atrocities? Ministers know that all the U.S. has to do is cut off the funds and stop the export of weapons of terror like the Ninja Hellfire to Israel. How many more schoolchildren will be shredded before Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Defence Minister Richard Marles and Foreign Minister Penny Wong come out and say it?
When will they adhere to Australia’s obligations to the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court? When will they stop exporting the multiple Australian-made components for the F-35 bombers made by American companies that Israel uses for its attacks on schools and hospitals?
We are already complicit in Israel’s genocide. How much worse can it get?
Dr Alison Broinowski is a former Australian diplomat, vice-president of Australians for War Powers Reform and vice-president of Honest History.
Western world complicit in Gaza Hellfire attacks (independentaustralia.net)
