Daily Sabah – December 12, 2023

Gaza death toll crosses 18,200 amid incessant Israeli attack

Palestinian death toll in Gaza crossed the grim mark of 18,200, making it the deadliest-ever Gaza war, as incessant Israeli attacks on the besieged continued Tuesday.

Volcanic-like clouds of grey smoke rose over central Gaza while there were reports of night-time strikes and automatic weapons fire in Khan Yunis and bombings that shook several urban areas.

Israel had urged civilians to seek refuge in the far south, but the army has kept striking targets throughout the territory.

Umm Mohammed al-Jabri lost seven children in an air strike on Rafah, near Egypt, after fleeing there from Gaza City.

"I have four children left," said Jabri, 56. "Last night they bombed the house we were in and destroyed it. They said Rafah would be a safe place. There is no safe place."

The last death toll from the Hamas-run health ministry was 18,205, mostly women and children. It said 32 dead had arrived at Khan Yunis's Nasser hospital alone in 24 hours.

The conflict has devastated health services, with only 14 of Gaza's 36 hospitals functioning at any capacity, according to U.N. humanitarian agency OCHA.

The Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah was inundated with victims, including dozens of screaming children, after Israeli strikes on the nearby Al-Maghazi refugee camp.

Women and girls have meanwhile been forced to use scraps of cloth for menstrual periods as sanitary conditions deteriorate.

"I cut up my kid's clothes or any piece of cloth I find," said 25-year-old Hala Ataya in Rafah.

Agence France-Presse visited the Al-Shifa hospital complex in Gaza City and found at least 30,000 people taking refuge amid the rubble after Israeli forces raided the facility last month.

In the nearby Al-Rimal area, an AFP correspondent saw thousands of Palestinians had set up camp at a U.N. agency headquarters.

They had fled Israeli strikes that destroyed dozens of nearby residential buildings and shops. The correspondent said both the Islamic and adjacent Al-Azhar universities had been reduced to rubble, as had the police station.

"There is no water. There is no electricity, no bread, no milk for the children, and no diapers," said Rami al-Dahduh, 23, a tailor, who reported seeing tanks on his way to the facility on Saturday.

The UN estimates 1.9 million of Gaza's 2.4 million people have been displaced. Roughly half are children.

https://www.dailysabah.com/world/mid-east/gaza-death-toll-crosses-18200-amid-incessant-israeli-attack

World Socialist Web Site – December 12, 2023

9 in 10 Gazans report lack of food

by Andre Damon

As Israel continues its bombing, starvation and ethnic cleansing of the people of Gaza, hunger has reached epidemic proportions. Nine in 10 people in Gaza reported going to bed hungry, the United Nations’ World Food Program reported.

More than half of the population—over 63 percent—reported going for days without food. “Hunger stalks everyone,” UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine), the United Nations body responsible for Palestinian refugees, wrote in a statement on Twitter. “Too many people haven’t eaten now for two, three days in the Gaza Strip.”

UN Special Rapporteur on Food Michael Fakhri told Al Jazeera Arabic, “Every single Palestinian in Gaza is going hungry,” in an interview, in which he identified the mass murder of the population of Gaza as “genocide.”

These reports follow a veto Friday by the United States of a UN resolution calling for a ceasefire. This week, a non-binding ceasefire resolution is expected to pass the United Nations General Assembly. The United States, meanwhile, doubled down on calling for a “military” solution to the crisis, in an open endorsement of the genocide.

“We think there can be a military solution to taking out the leadership of Hamas that planned and carried out the attacks of October 7, in taking out the militants who crossed into Israel and carried out those attacks,” US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a briefing.

This followed the statement Sunday by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken: “When it comes to a ceasefire in this moment, with Hamas still alive, still intact, and again, with the stated intent of repeating October 7th again and again and again, that would simply perpetuate the problem.”

On Monday, the Washington Post reported that Israel used US-supplied white phosphorus munitions to carry out attacks on Lebanon, in violation of international laws prohibiting the use of the incendiary weapon in densely populated areas. For weeks, videos have shown Israel raining down white phosphorus on populated areas. The report follows the announcement Friday by the White House that it would bypass congressional authorization to send Israel $100 million worth of tank ammunition.

On Monday, the death toll from the bombardment of the Gaza Strip surged to 18,205, with roughly another 7,000 still missing and likely buried under the rubble. The Palestinian Health Ministry warned that it is following 325,000 cases of infectious diseases, meaning that one in six people in Gaza are ill with such a disease, amid the dismantling of all infrastructure to support life.

Nicholas Papachrysostomou, the emergency coordinator in Gaza for Doctors Without Borders, told Al Jazeera, “every other patient in Rafah has a respiratory infection, amid rainy and cold conditions. In some shelters, 600 people share a single toilet. We are already seeing many cases of diarrhea. Often children are the worst affected,” he said.

The United Nations reported, “on 11 December, the maternity department at Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahiya, north of Gaza, was hit. As a result, two mothers were reportedly killed, and several people were injured.”

The World Health Organization Executive Board issued a statement warning of a total breakdown of Gaza’s healthcare system. “Gaza’s health system is on its knees and collapsing, with the risk expected to worsen with the deteriorating situation and approaching winter conditions,” said the WHO’s director-general.

“As more and more people move to a smaller and smaller area, overcrowding, combined with the lack of adequate food, water, shelter and sanitation, are creating the ideal conditions for disease to spread,” he added.

The UN reported: “in the north and Gaza City, Israeli forces reportedly detained hundreds of men and boys staying in public spaces, schools serving as shelters for internally displaced persons (IDPs) as well as private homes. Reportedly, detainees were stripped to their underwear, handcuffed, and were ordered to sit on their knees in open areas, subjected to beatings, harassment, harsh weather, and denial of basic necessities.”

In a statement, Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, condemned this flagrant war crime. “The Israeli army’s publication of shocking photos of detained Palestinian men in Gaza stripped & blindfolded constitutes ‘outrages upon personal dignity’—a form of inhumane treatment that amounts to a war crime,” Shakir wrote on Monday. “Perpetrators should be held to account.”

To date, 81 Palestinian journalists have been killed in Israeli airstrikes since October 7, and 296 medical workers have been killed. On Monday, Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif was targeted in a bombing of his home in northern Gaza’s Jabaliya refugee camp, which killed his father. Al Jazeera said the murder came “after a series of threats received by [al-Sharif] last November in an attempt to deter him from carrying out his duty.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists responded to the attack by declaring it was “deeply alarmed by the pattern of journalists in Gaza reporting receiving threats, and subsequently, their family members being killed.” It added, “The killing of the family members of journalists in Gaza is making it almost impossible for the journalists to continue reporting, as the risk now extends beyond them also to include their beloved ones.”

Israel’s mass murder is accompanied by mass displacement. After ordering the entire population to evacuate from northern Gaza, a further 30 percent of southern Gaza has been marked for compulsory evacuation by the Israeli military. Hundreds of thousands of people are being crammed further and further south, huddled in squalid refugee camps near the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, through which Israeli politicians have called for Gazans to be displaced.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/12/12/xyst-d12.html

Yeni Safak – December 12, 2023

What should Israel expect now?

Ersin Çelik

Today is December 12, 2023, marking the 66th day of the 'Gaza Genocide.' The number of civilians killed has reached 20,000, including over 8,000 children. The relentless airstrikes by Israel have left nearly 50,000 buildings completely destroyed. It is known that among the debris lie the bodies of thousands of civilians. Gaza reeks of death, and there is no space left to bury the dead.

Like everyone else, we watch Gaza with 8 billion eyes. The question 'What can we do?' is long outdated. We understand and confront our helplessness. However, this is exactly what Israel wants. It aims to kill us while we are alive, condemning us to helplessness. As mentioned in a previous article, 'Gaza has become our breaking point,' and Israel is exerting pressure on humanity with all its might.

If we succumb to the psychological pressure upon us and continue this way, we will turn into depleted, reflex-weakened societies that cannot yield results from their attempts.

While bombing Gaza, Israel is slowly killing its viewers as well. Since the genocide, we, the survivors, are also under attack. So, what will we do? I have been questioning for days. I think about journalism with a curse. The phrase attributed to the late Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, 'Israel does not understand words. Israel only understands strength,' stands true today. We must be clear; Israel does not understand words. As a cruel state that shuts its ears to the whole world, Israel, with all its might, is destroying Gaza. And we are sure that Israel only understands strength. Israel can only be stopped by a force. But what we have seen is that such a force truly does not exist. Or the rest of the world does not see that power in itself.

With Israel possessing nuclear weapons, it has been suggested through figures like Noah Harari that it could engage in such a horrific massacre. Erdogan seems to be the only leader who, by saying, 'Hey Israel, you have atomic bombs, nuclear bombs, and you're threatening with them,' draws attention to Israel's true intentions.

Humanity is hitting a wall of fear. We need to overcome this wall. We must face Israel with a determination that condemns the killer, barbaric Israel, and its supporters every second, every moment in the near and distant future. Everyone who chooses the shamelessness of 'remaining neutral' while babies are being killed in Gaza should know they will get their share in such an atmosphere.

Israel and America find themselves in a period where they perceive themselves as the most powerful, but, in fact, they are poisoning themselves. They will make mistakes and commit greater crimes against humanity. They will lose supporters and gain new enemies, civil, honorable enemies.

Killing babies in Gaza cannot be justified or defended. With the awareness that there is no excuse for genocide, and the determination that apologies for killing babies will never be accepted, we must make life a prison for anyone who embraces and supports Israel and Zionist thought.

There will be those who ask 'How will this be done?' The answer is within us. First and foremost, we must be braver now. We should start by breaking down existing Israel-supportive, loyal, dependent structures and building better ones in their place in the fields of ideas, arts, and literature. We must build awareness by producing films, books, documentaries. As people, we must go beyond just talking and arguing, producing solid arguments and daring to confront Israel. Gaza has been enduring genocide for 63 days, but these days should never be left behind.

In conclusion, I will present an idea that has been on my mind for days: Establishing a 'Gaza Genocide Museum' in Istanbul to narrate and portray the experiences in Gaza in all dimensions. It should be brought to the agenda, and the work should be announced. As civilians, only by doing so can we stand up to Israel's power of shaping public opinion and influencing with information. There are undoubtedly mistakes and shortcomings; please help complete them.

https://www.yenisafak.com/en/columns/ersin-celik/what-should-israel-expect-now-3674661

World Socialist Web Site – December 12, 2023

Mass protests continue in Pakistan’s Balochistan province
over extra-judicial killings and other state crimes

By Dr. Zayar

Mass protests have continued for almost three weeks in Pakistan’s poorest province, Balochistan, against the Pakistani state’s use of forced disappearances, extra-judicial killings and other illegal means to suppress widespread opposition, including an ethno-nationalist separatist insurgency.

The immediate trigger for the protests was last month’s extra-judicial killing of 24 year-old Balaach Mola Bakhsh by state security forces.

For some 12 days, thousands took to the streets of Turbat—a city in south-western Balochistan that is the province’s second largest—to support a sit-in, initiated by Mola Bakhsh’s relatives to demand that the authorities come clean about his death and criminally prosecute those responsible. At the end of last week, the sit-in was converted into a “long march” from Turbat to the provincial capital, Quetta, a distance of almost 800 kilometres or 500 miles. The “march” is in fact a protest caravan, with participants travelling in motorized vehicles and stopping in cities en route to stage rallies and mobilize support. Despite the obvious hostility of the authorities, the protesters have been well-received with local residents helping to provide accommodation.

The Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) has provided an entirely implausible and self-contradictory account of Mola Bakhsh’s death, which it claims occurred in a gunfight, even though on Nov. 21, little more than 24 hours before, the victim had been brought before an Anti-Terrorism Court.

According to the initial CTD statement, Mola Bakhsh “had confessed in custody to being a militant and carrying out a number of attacks. He was arrested on Nov. 20, in possession of five kilograms of explosive materials.” The statement, without ever explaining how Mola Bakhsh supposedly escaped captivity, went on to claim that he was killed along with three others in a CTD-led raid on a militant hideout in the city of Turbat.

Subsequently, the CTD changed its story. In a second statement, it claimed Mola Bakhsh had himself led security forces to the hideout and was killed by the insurgents in the ensuing gun battle.

From the beginning, Balaach Mola Bakhsh’s family, has categorically rejected the CTD’s claims as to how his dead body ended up at the Turbat Teaching Hospital on the night of Nov. 22. They insist he was not involved in any unlawful activities, was “disappeared” by security forces beginning on October 29, and was later killed in an “absolutely fake” encounter.

As part of their campaign to press the authorities to bring those responsible for Balaach’s death to account, his family initially refused to bury him. His corpse was displayed during the first six days of the sit-in, held at Turbat’s main square, until it risked becoming a health hazard due to decomposition.

On Nov. 25, a lower court judge ordered that First Information Reports (the first step in opening a criminal case) be filed against the CTD Regional Officer and two other CTD officials. But the authorities refused, and the provincial government filed suit in the Balochistan High Court to have the order overturned.

Only on Saturday, Dec. 9, with the protest movement in its 17th day, were FIRs filed against any of those involved. On Monday, the Balochistan High Court ordered the immediate suspension of the four CTD officials against whom FIRs have now been issued.

The protesters, however, are far from satisfied and are demanding, among other things, a full judicial inquiry into Balaach Mola Bakhsh’s disappearance and killing.

 A resource-rich but impoverished region, Balochistan is politically dominated by a tiny kleptocracy of big capitalists, landlords and state officials; and under virtual army occupation, with tens of thousands security forces deployed against Balochi nationalist insurgents and Islamist militias.

The venal Pakistan bourgeoisie, which has ruled the country for almost half of its existence through open military dictatorship and is currently imposing yet another savage round of IMF austerity, is notorious for resorting to mass violence and criminality in the face of social opposition. This is certainly the case in Balochistan.

In 2006, as it played a leading role in facilitating Washington’s neo-colonial Afghan war, the US-backed Musharraf dictatorship feared the growth of regionalist and separatist sentiment in Balochistan, and consequently organized a military operation to kill Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti in his mountain redoubt. The tribal chief of the Bugti clan and a long-time player in the cut-throat politics of the Pakistani elite, Bugti had been agitating for increased autonomy for Balochistan.

When his murder backfired, fueling Balochi nationalist sentiment and the growth of what is considered to be the fifth Baloch nationalist insurgency, Musharraf and subsequent “civilian” governments pursued a policy of militarization. This involved the massive deployment of security forces, forced disappearances, extra-judicial killings, torture and other gross human rights violations.

The contempt with which Islamabad deals with the legitimate grievances of the impoverished population has fueled the growth of numerous Balochi militant groups,  although these groups have themselves no progressive program, based as they are on ethno-nationalist separatism, communalism and appeals to India and the imperialist powers for support.

The bloody regime of repression overseen by the Pakistani military—which remains at the very apex of capitalist rule in the world’s fifth most populous country and the linchpin of the traditional but badly frayed US-Pakistan security partnership—has increasingly become the focus of popular opposition in Balochistan, as in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and elsewhere.

There have been a growing number of demonstrations and sit-ins led by families of the disappeared and murdered.

Both Pakistan’s current interim Prime Minister  Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar and his Interior Minister, Sarfaraz Ahmed Bugti, have  well-deserved reputations as staunch allies and toadies of the military. They have been strident supporters of its brutal crackdown against the separatist insurgency in their home province of Balochistan.

Nevertheless, this latest extra-judicial killing has triggered widespread popular outrage, triggering the mobilisation of young people and women across the entire south-western region of Makran, of which Tubrat is part. In addition to the sit-in and other demonstrations, there was a complete shutter down strike of all shops and business in Turbat and other towns in Makran Region on Nov. 29. Roads that are part of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) leading from the area to Pakistan’s main business hub, Karachi and Quetta were also blocked by protesters.

The growing outrage over state violence interacts with and is inextricably tied to the mass disaffection over mass poverty and the lack of public services and basic infrastructure, including ready access to drinking water.

Although Balochistan, with a population of almost 10 million, is Pakistan’s least populous and poorest province, it is highly important from an economic and geopolitical standpoint. It is rich in minerals, including copper and gold, and in natural gas, and borders both Afghanistan and Iran. It is the site of the Chinese-built Gwadar port facility, which could provide Beijing with an Arabian Sea naval base and serve as the starting point for a land route for shipping oil and natural gas from the Middle East to China, thereby largely bypassing the US-dominated Indian Ocean.

The Balochi national-separatists represent and are led by a faction of the Balochi regional bourgeoisie, including traditional sardars (tribal leaders), and petty bourgeoisie that hopes to supplant the Pakistani capitalists and military top brass in exploiting the region’s resource wealth and geo-strategic position to make their own deals with imperialism.

The Balochi ethno-nationalist movement developed within the context of the colonial bourgeoisie’s suppression of the mass anti-imperialist struggle and the communal division—under the auspices of British imperialism, the Gandhi-Nehru led Congress Party and Jinnah’s Muslim League—of the Indian subcontinent into a expressly Muslim Pakistan and a predominantly Hindu India. Like many other such movements, the Baluchi nationalist movement in the 1970s and 1980s assumed socialist garb and appealed for support from the Soviet Union.

But since the Stalinist bureaucracy restored capitalism and dissolved the USSR, it has orientated ever more explicitly and nakedly toward imperialism.

Under conditions of a US-led imperialist drive to world war and re-division of the world, a section of the Baloch ruling elites has developed the perspective of carving out a separate state, “Greater Balochistan,” including part of Baloch Iran Sistan, so as to make their own deals with imperialism at the expense of the working class and toiling masses.

Thus the Balochi nationalists supported the two-decade long US-NATO invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Since the launching of the CPEC, in 2014, they have further aligned towards US imperialism and their international and regional allies like India. 

The most prominent of the separatist militant groups, like the Baloch liberation Army (BLA), have repeatedly carried out terrorist attacks on Chinese engineers and labourers working on the CPEC, which both Washington and New Delhi vehemently oppose.

When the BLA attacked the Chinese consulate in Karachi in Nov. 2018 it rushed to proclaim its responsibility. It stated that “The objective of this attack is clear: we will not tolerate any Chinese military expansionist endeavours on Baloch soil.”

Courting the favor of the Indian bourgeoisie, Pakistan’s traditional strategic rival, and the imperialist powers goes hand in hand with a reactionary exclusivist agenda. Balochi insurgents routinely murder ordinary Punjabis, Hazaras, and Pashtuns who they contemptuously deride as “settlers.”

In opposition to imperialism, the Pakistan bourgeoisie and the entire reactionary communalist state system of South Asia, Balochi workers and youth must base their struggle on the strategy of Permanent Revolution. The most basic democratic rights and social aspirations of working people, including genuine independence from imperialism and real equality among the various ethnic-linguistic and religious groups of South Asia, can only be realized through the struggle to unite the masses of the region in the fight for workers’ power. The working class must rally the rural toilers and oppressed behind it in opposition to all factions of the bourgeoisie and forge unity with workers around the entire region, on the basis of a socialist program aimed at reorganizing socioeconomic life and creating a framework for the amicable and equitable development of all peoples—the Socialist United States of South Asia.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/12/12/gqml-d12.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws
 

 

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 The Journal of America Team:

 Editor in chief:
Abdus Sattar Ghazali

Senior Editor:
Prof. Arthur Scott

Special Correspondent
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