Apartheid Israel Continues Its Genocide on Palestinians in Gaza Over the Holiday Period

The Christmas period saw the apartheid state of Israel continue its extralegal assault on multiple fronts, with the most obscene act committed since World War II, the Israeli-perpetrated Gaza genocide, now in its 15th month, which makes it rather difficult to deny that Tel Aviv is attempting to exterminate the entire population of Palestinians inside the walled-in region, as the globe looks on.

Not only has Israel been starving the civilians of Gaza and conducting the most high-tech mass human slaughter of all time, but in October, it turned this same genocidal force upon Lebanon, a nation it continues to assault post-ceasefire agreement, it’s too been widely bombing Syria since the fall of Assad and Tel Aviv has picked up its assault on Yemen as well.

This sort of “self-defence” costs a lot of money in terms of the machinery and weapons it expends, and the US has been more than willing to foot the bill in this regard along the way.

As for Australia, the evidence purporting to reveal political complicity in Israel’s atrocities lies lodged with the International Criminal Court, while on the ground, the authorities are fixated on crimes that are broadly being cast as antisemitic and further not paying heed to Islamophobic incidents.

And the West Bank town of Bethlehem cancelled its regular Christmas celebrations for a second year running, due to the genocide in Gaza, but also in response to the mass murder taking place right across the Palestinian territory, where in the West Bank, the rising violence and arming of Israeli setters further validates the claim that a settler colonial landgrab is fuelling Israel’s ethnic cleansing.

Hospitals remain prime targets

Three babies froze to death in Gaza over the Christmas period, reports Middle East Monitor. A three-week-old girl lost her life due to the temperature in a tent encampment in al-Mawasi in Khan Younis, whilst two more babies, aged three days and one month respectively, died due to the cold and lack of water, a local news agency reported.

After 15 months of the Gaza genocide, the globe is well aware that in terms of warfare, Israel has put hospitals on the register as potential targets, and this is regardless of the prohibition against targeting medical facilities in international humanitarian law, as the Netanyahu government has been destroying these facilities under the widely derided pretext that they’re harbouring Hamas fighters.

The first such attack on a hospital took place on 17 October last year and involved an explosion in the courtyard of al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, and Israel was able to suggest to the rest of the planet that the destruction was the result of a misfired Palestinian rocket. But after 15 months of attacks on hospitals, which continue to this day, no one is buying such claims anymore.

Indeed, in future war zones, when the suggestion that a military unit should reframe from targeting a hospital of the enemy is flagged, it will be much easier to dismiss such preventative barriers.

Israel assaulted al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital in Gaza in mid-November 2023, which had The Strip’s only paediatric cancer ward for children. Tel Aviv further launched a massive assault on Gaza’s largest facility the al-Shifa Hospital that same month, which saw Israeli forces storming it and attacking its staff and patients. And a second dramatic attack was perpetrated last on that facility last March.

Fifteen months on and the assaults on hospitals in northern Gaza continue. Of late, this has involved the last major facility operating in the north, Kamal Adwan Hospital, which was laid siege following Israeli forces having recommenced military operations in the vicinity of the town of Biet Lahiya in early December.

The Israeli army stormed Kamal Adwan on Friday, 27 December. Troops then expelled the remaining 350 staff and patients from the hospital and set fire to it.

The Israeli military has now been raiding and re-raiding the hospitals of Gaza since October 2023 and reports about soldiers attacking doctors and patients no longer result in the same shock they once did.

Exterminating civilians

Thirty eight Palestinians were killed over Christmas, and this included 5 journalists.

The Gaza Health Ministry confirmed on 26 December that the official death toll relating to the Gaza genocide was 45,399 Palestinians. However, many point to the uncounted dead likely to involve over one hundred thousand more civilians, as it’s difficult to calculate the number of deceased in an active genocide.

Under international humanitarian law, civilians are not permitted to be targeted in war. Yet, Israel has been openly murdering civilians since October 2023. And it’s been starving the entire population of the Gaza Strip over this same time.

Palestinian officials told Al Jazeera last month that over 17,400 Palestinian children had been killed in Gaza since October 2023, which translates to one child killed every 30 minutes, as a result of Israel’s extermination policy.

And it’s repeatedly been noted that large numbers of Palestinian children are being sniped in the Gaza Strip, and they’re most often being shot in the head or the chest.

In terms of the five journalists, who were murdered over Christmas, they were killed when an Israeli airstrike hit their Al-Quds Today broadcast vehicle, whilst they were sleeping inside of it.

These deaths are the last in a long line of Palestinian journalists, who’ve been actively targeted and killed since the Israeli state began its mass extermination program in Gaza, with the death toll now standing at 190 journalists and media workers slaughtered in The Strip by the Netanyahu regime since October 2023.

The obvious reason behind the killing of journalists is to silence their reporting on the depravities being perpetrated at the site of the genocide.

Journalists are protected under international humanitarian law via the general prohibition against the killing of civilians in war.

The killing continues unabated

The apocalyptic nature of the scenes coming out of northern Gaza over recent months shows Israel actively conjuring Hell on Earth, as its military has launched a fresh crackdown upon a region that was first hit 15 months ago and has been the most devastated over this timeframe.

The International Court of Justice ruled on 26 January 2024 that Israel is plausibly carrying out a genocide, which is the worst of all crimes. And the court ordered Tel Aviv to stop.

While the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against the names of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant in November, in respect of crimes against humanity and war crimes.

But as Israel continues to wage its settler colonial war throughout the greater region beyond its 1948 borders, which includes targeting the nations of Yemen, Syria and Lebanon, how this expansionist agenda is going to play out in 2025 is uncertain, as is the prospect of the international community stepping in and forcing the hand of Tel Aviv to bring the mass slaughter in the Gaza Strip to an end.