And the reality... a mere 27,500 Jews remain in Muslim countries. Most Jews have been forced to leave or killed. "By 2019, the total number of Jews in Arab countries and Iran had declined to 12,700,[15] and in Turkey to 14,800." "In the 20th century, approximately 900000 Jews migrated, fled, or were expelled from Muslim-majority countries throughout Africa and Asia." Jewish exodus from the Muslim world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_world Facts Matter!
https://archive.ph/r6pXX By mid-December, Israel had dropped 29,000 bombs, munitions and shells on the strip. Nearly 70% of Gaza’s 439,000 homes and about half of its buildings have been damaged or destroyed. The bombing has damaged Byzantine churches and ancient mosques, factories and apartment buildings, shopping malls and luxury hotels, theaters and schools. Much of the water, electrical, communications and healthcare infrastructure that made Gaza function is beyond repair. Most of the strip’s 36 hospitals are shut down, and only eight are accepting patients. Citrus trees, olive groves and greenhouses have been obliterated. More than two-thirds of its schools are damaged. The destruction resembles that left by Allied bombing of German cities during World War II. “The word ‘Gaza’ is going to go down in history along with Dresden and other famous cities that have been bombed,” said Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago and the author of a history of aerial bombing. “What you’re seeing in Gaza is in the top 25% of the most intense punishment campaigns in history.” In the south, where more than a million displaced residents have fled, Gazans sleep in the street and burn garbage to cook. Some 85% of the strip’s 2.2 million people have fled their homes and are confined by Israeli evacuation orders to less than one-third of the strip, according to the United Nations.
As always Hamas is using hospitals as military bases to store weapons, cache documents and hold hostages. The New York Times covers it in detail. How Hamas covered its tracks in Gaza's Shifa Hospital before IDF's raid - NYT A New York Times report uncovered evidence that Hamas cleared out documents and transferred hostages away from the complex ahead of the IDF's raid of Shifa Hospital. https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-780545#google_vignette Hamas Used Gaza Hospital as a Command Center, U.S. Intelligence Says Israeli forces stormed the site in November, drawing intense international scrutiny and criticism. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/02/us/politics/gaza-hospital-hamas.html
The reality since Jpost is engaging in copium that GWB gladly regurgitates: A senior U.S. intelligence official said on Tuesday that the American government continued to believe that Hamas used the hospital complex and sites beneath it to exercise command and control activities, store weapons and hold “at least a few hostages.” American intelligence agencies obtained information that Hamas fighters had evacuated the complex days before the multiday operation, destroying documents and electronics as they left, the senior intelligence official said. White House officials at the time backed the Israeli assessment. “We have information that confirms that Hamas is using that particular hospital for a command and control node,” John F. Kirby, a National Security Council spokesman, said on Nov. 14. In the weeks since the operation, news organizations have continued to raise questions about Hamas’s presence at the hospital. And health and humanitarian organizations have criticized the Israeli operation. A humanitarian team lead by the World Health Organization, which visited Al-Shifa immediately after Israeli forces stormed the hospital, called it a “death zone.” While the spy agencies provided no visual evidence, a U.S. official said they were confident in their assessment because it was based on information collected by Israel and America’s own intelligence, gathered independently. https://archive.ph/3N5So#selection-845.0-852.0 But the evidence presented by the Israeli government falls short of showing that Hamas had been using the hospital as a command and control center, according to a Washington Post analysis of open-source visuals, satellite imagery and all of the publicly released IDF materials. That raises critical questions, legal and humanitarian experts say, about whether the civilian harm caused by Israel’s military operations against the hospital — encircling, besieging and ultimately raiding the facility and the tunnel beneath it — were proportionate to the assessed threat. The Post’s analysis shows: The rooms connected to the tunnel network discovered by IDF troops showed no immediate evidence of military use by Hamas. None of the five hospital buildings identified by Hagari appeared to be connected to the tunnel network. There is no evidence that the tunnels could be accessed from inside hospital wards. The U.S.government has not made any of the declassified material public and the official would not share the intelligence this assessment was based on. When asked if more evidence from al-Shifa would be forthcoming, the spokesperson said: “We cannot provide additional information.” On Nov. 24, Israel’s military announced in a statement that it had destroyed the tunnel on the hospital grounds; its forces withdrew soon after. “Before, I was convinced that [al-Shifa] was where these operations were taking place,” a senior U.S. member of Congress told The Post, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. But now, he said, “I think there has to be a new level of demonstration. They should have more proof at this point.”
inb4: Winning Genocide lawyers=Hamas On Israel: Lawyer Who Applied Genocide Convention for Bosnia Recommends it Now for Palestinians FRANCIS BOYLE, fboyle@illinois.edu Boyle is professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law. His books include The Bosnian People Charge Genocide (1996) Palestine, Palestinians and International Law (2009) and World Politics, Human Rights and International Law (2021). He said today: “The U.S. government is clearly preventing the UN Security Council from fulfilling its rightful function and declaring a ceasefire by use of the U.S. veto. The U.S. government has also corrupted the International Criminal Court, which the Palestinians signed on to, so the ICC is not helping the Palestinians as it is obliged to do. “There is another set of legal mechanisms, however. The Provisional Government for the State of Palestine or some other party to the Genocide Convention should apply that to Israel. That is what I did for Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Palestinians should immediately institute legal proceedings against Israel before the International Court of Justice in The Hague on the basis of the 1948 Genocide Convention, request an Emergency Hearing by the Court, and obtain an Order by the Court against Israel to cease and desist from committing all acts of genocide against the Palestinians. “Israel is not engaging in legitimate self defense under the UN Charter as it and the U.S. government continuously claim. It is a belligerent occupier under the Fourth Geneva Convention and other relevant legal statutes which Israel falsely claims don’t apply to it. “The U.S. government would seek to squash any Order by the ICJ [also called the World Court] at the Security Council. This will require use of the General Assembly’s Uniting for Peace Resolution of 1950 in order to have the World Court Order turned over to the United Nations General Assembly for enforcement against Israel. The UN General Assembly could also admit Palestine as a full-fledged U.N. Member State.” See Boyle’s lecture on this: “Stopping Zionist Genocide Against The Palestinians.” See pieces in the New York Times and Washington Post quoting Boyle in the course of his representation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1993. The late Michael Ratner, who was president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, also embraced involking the Genocide Convention regarding Palestine, see his piece: “UN’s Investigation of Israel Should Go Beyond War Crimes to Genocide” during Israel’s 2014 attack on Gaza. Also see video of his commentary. Ratner stated: “I’m a lawyer. I’ve looked at genocide. Genocide has two elements. One element is the mental element, the intent to destroy the whole or in part a national or ethnic or racial or religious group. Palestinians are clearly a national and ethnic group. And you don’t need to kill them all. You just need to have the mental intent to kill part of them. For example, it would be enough to have the mental intent to kill the leadership of the Palestinians or to kill people in one region. No doubt about that.”