More than 25K Palestinians killed, now so hungry they're eating grass
More than 25K Palestinians killed, now so hungry they're eating grass
International Court of Justice failed to help innocent victims in Gaza
Writer’s note: On February 1, 2023, CNN released a report that the U.S. and at least 13 other countries have pulled funding for the main United Nations aid agency in Gaza following allegations by Israel that 13 of the agency's total 3,000 Gaza staffers were involved in Hamas' October 7 attack. They pulled funding regardless of 2 million Gazans relying on the agency for aid, with 1 million people using the group's shelters for food and health care amid the fighting.
Edit made on February 6: The number of hostages Hamas released, including foreign nationals, was incorrectly written as 240. That has been updated to 105 total with 24 foreign nationals.
I’ve been quietly following the Israel versus Palestine story since October 7, 2023. There’s not too much that I can say that hasn’t already been said — even when people were silenced from saying anything at all that wasn’t anti-Palestine and blaming Hamas. I understand that Hamas “started” this war — even after extreme poverty, hunger, and the complex goods delivery on the Gaza Strip by Israel and Egypt.
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But anyone who has paid even slight attention to the history of these groups knows this fight didn’t come out of nowhere. And this isn’t the first time Hamas has gone at it with Israel. (Israel has repeatedly attacked Hamas with air strikes and sent troops into Gaza in 2008 and 2014, reports BBC.)
Regardless of their tragic pass, at what point will Israel think they won this war? Since it started, more than 25,105 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza while another 62,681 have been wounded. On the opposite side, Palestinian militants killed approximately 1,200 people, mostly civilians.
Between November 24-30, Hamas released 105 hostages, including 24 prisoners that were foreign nationals. In turn, 240 Palestinian prisoners were released by Israel.
Hamas is not innocent here. It still has six Americans as hostages. I understand why it’s considered a terrorist group, but more than 25K Palestinians deaths versus 1.2K Israeli is not even close to the same.
Recommended Watch: PBS Frontline’s “Crisis On Campus”
Innocent citizens are now preferring to be bombed because of the extreme level of starvation.
“We are dying slowly,” Hanadi Gamal Saed El Jamara, a mother of seven, told CNN.
After being displaced from northern Gaza, she said, “I think it’s even better to die from the bombs. At least we will be martyrs. But now we are dying out of hunger and thirst.”
Do you know how desperate you have to be to get to this point? This war is no longer about October 7. The goal is obviously to wipe out an entire population. I stand with South Africa’s genocide case and support them reaching out to the International Court of Justice — even though it didn’t work as they would have liked.
The primary request from South Africa was for the court to order Israel to immediately halt attacks in Gaza. The court did not uphold this. It did, however, instruct Israel to prevent its military from committing acts that might be “considered genocidal, to prevent and punish incitement to genocide, and to enable humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza.”
Recommended Read: “Nelson Mandela’s support for Palestinians endures with South Africa’s genocide case against Israel”
So basically stop doing EVERYTHING they’ve been doing since October 7?
Enough is enough. There’s no way to justify what they’re doing now. This is no longer self-defense, and it’s not antisemitic to point this out. The goal is to get rid of all Palestinians as cruelly as possible, and this is a horrible moment in history for Israel. I just want to hear about the two groups ceasing the violence and focus on negotiating to improve and change the state of how Gaza was treated before October 2023.
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