Israeli forces opened fire on Palestinians waiting for desperately needed food aid in northern Gaza on Thursday, killing over 100 Palestinians and wounding hundreds of others in what Palestinian officials have called a “massacre.”
According to the Gaza health ministry, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) killed at least 104 people and injured at least 750 others as they were congregating in Nabulsi Square near Gaza City, hoping to access flour that was expected to come through in aid trucks. Troops shot at the crowd with tanks and drones, and ran tanks over injured and dead people as they fired, according to Al Jazeera.
“We went to get flour. The Israeli army shot at us. There are many martyrs on the ground and until this moment we are withdrawing them. There is no first aid,” one witness told Al Jazeera. People have reportedly had to carry the injured in wagons in order to bring them to medical facilities, with ambulances being blocked from accessing the area.
“I have been waiting since yesterday. At about 4:30 this morning, trucks started to come through. Once we approached the aid trucks, the Israeli tanks and warplanes started firing at us, as if it was a trap,” one Palestinian told Quds News Network. “To the Arab states I say, if you want to have us killed, why are you sending relief aid? If this continues, we do not want any aid delivered at all. Every convoy coming means another massacre.”
Israeli officials have said that the massacre was necessary because the troops felt threatened by the crowd of hungry people hoping for flour; officials have also tried to blame Palestinians for the violence, saying that they were overcrowding the food trucks amid one of the worst famines ever seen by hunger experts.
Humanitarian aid groups have said that the incident is yet another example of a war crime by Israeli forces. “Israel deliberately targeting civilians after starving them is a gross violation of international humanitarian laws and our humanity,” said Oxfam International.
The direct assault on people trying to access food comes as northern Gaza has seen a major decrease in aid distribution in recent weeks in particular, with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) saying this week that no aid has reached the north for over a month due to Israel’s blockade. The amount of aid entering Gaza in general has decreased by 50 percent this month, UNRWA’s commissioner-general said on Thursday, after the International Court of Justice specifically directed Israel to increase aid shipments last month.
Israel’s starvation of Gaza is having horrific consequences. The Gaza Health Ministry reported Wednesday that six children had died of malnutrition and dehydration at hospitals in northern Gaza, with three more children being reported dead from malnutrition early Thursday morning by the director of a hospital in northern Gaza. This means that at least nine children died from malnutrition in one day just at medical facilities in the north.
Adults have reported going hungry in order to ensure that children are fed — and yet Israeli officials have created a hunger crisis so dire that children as young as two months are now dying of malnutrition in Gaza.
The official death toll has surpassed 30,000, including at least 12,300 children, with over 8,000 people missing under the rubble. Humanitarian aid groups have warned that Israel’s starvation campaign is slated to begin killing Palestinians at an extremely rapid rate, with famine spreading across the region and threatening to take hold of every Palestinian in Gaza.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.