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Israeli airstrikes kill more than 100 as assault on Gaza widens ​

‘Safe’ evacuation zone of Deir al-Balah is hit amid some of the deadliest fighting in the war


Bethan McKernan in Jerusalem
Tue 26 Dec 2023 00.00 AEDTLast modified on Tue 26 Dec 2023 08.09 AEDT


The Gaza Strip is facing some of the deadliest fighting to date in the present war as Israel expands its offensive just days after the UN security council passed a resolution calling for more aid and urgent steps for a sustainable ceasefire.

More than 100 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes late on Sunday in the centre of the besieged Palestinian territory, including at least 70 in bombings that hit a residential block in the Maghazi refugee camp near Deir al-Balah, health officials in Gaza said.

Deir al-Balah was also hit overnight despite previously being identified by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as an “evacuation zone” for Palestinians fleeing the fighting.
The Palestinian Red Crescent published footage from al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, in Deir al-Balah, showing dazed and bloodied children covered in rubble dust. There were also dozens of white body bags.
At the scene of the attack on Maghazi, people screamed and shouted in the dark as they tried to dig for survivors from the collapsed buildings.
“We were all targeted,” Ahmad Turkomani, who lost several family members, including his daughter and grandson, told the Associated Press. “There is no safe place in Gaza anyway.”
The Israeli military said it was reviewing the Maghazi incident.
www.theguardian.com

Israeli airstrikes kill more than 100 as assault on Gaza widens

‘Safe’ evacuation zone of Deir al-Balah is hit amid some of the deadliest fighting in the war
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
​
Israel does its best to minimise civilian casualties by dropping leaflets, sending text messages and using other means to warn Gazans to get out of harm’s way. Hamas by contrast does its utmost to keep Palestinians in harm’s way — often at gunpoint.​
​
Once Hamas is destroyed, Gaza is demilitarised and Palestinian society begins a deradicalisation process, Gaza can be rebuilt and the prospects of a broader peace in the Middle East will become a reality.​

My three prerequisites for peace with Palestinians​

We must destroy Hamas, demilitarise Gaza and deradicalise the whole of Palestinian society if there is to be peace between Israel and its neighbours in Gaza.

Hamas must be destroyed, Gaza must be demilitarised, and Palestinian society must be deradicalised. These are the three prerequisites for peace between Israel and its Palestinian neighbours in Gaza.

First, Hamas, a key Iranian proxy, must be destroyed. The U.S., U.K., France, Germany and many other countries support Israel’s intention to demolish the terror group. To achieve that goal, its military capabilities must be dismantled and its political rule over Gaza must end. Hamas’s leaders have vowed to repeat the Oct. 7 massacre “again and again.” That is why their destruction is the only proportional response to prevent the repeat of such horrific atrocities. Anything less guarantees more war and more bloodshed.

In destroying Hamas, Israel will continue to act in full compliance with international law. This is especially challenging because an integral part of Hamas’s strategy is to use Palestinian civilians as human shields. Hamas places its terrorist infrastructure inside and underneath homes, hospitals, mosques, schools and other civilian sites, deliberately putting the Palestinian population at risk.

Israel does its best to minimise civilian casualties by dropping leaflets, sending text messages and using other means to warn Gazans to get out of harm’s way. Hamas by contrast does its utmost to keep Palestinians in harm’s way — often at gunpoint.

Unjustly blaming Israel for these casualties will only encourage Hamas and other terror organisations around the world to use human shields. To render this cruel and cynical strategy ineffective, the international community must place the blame for these casualties squarely on Hamas. It must recognise that Israel is fighting the bigger battle of the civilised war against barbarism.

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Smoke billows over Khan Yunis during Israeli bombardment from Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on December 25, 2023. Picture: AFP

Second, Gaza must be demilitarised. Israel must ensure that the territory is never again used as a base to attack it. Among other things, this will require establishing a temporary security zone on the perimeter of Gaza and an inspection mechanism on the border between Gaza and Egypt that meets Israel’s security needs and prevents smuggling of weapons into the territory.

The expectation that the Palestinian Authority will demilitarise Gaza is a pipe dream. It currently funds and glorifies terrorism in Judea and Samaria and educates Palestinian children to seek the destruction of Israel. Not surprisingly it has shown neither the capability nor the will to demilitarise Gaza. It failed to do so before Hamas booted it out of the territory in 2007, and it has failed to do so in the territories under its control today. For the foreseeable future Israel will have to retain overriding security responsibility over Gaza.

Third, Gaza will have to be deradicalised. Schools must teach children to cherish life rather than death, and imams must cease to preach for the murder of Jews. Palestinian civil society needs to be transformed so that its people support fighting terrorism rather than funding it.

That will likely require courageous and moral leadership. Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas can’t even bring himself to condemn the Oct. 7 atrocities. Several of his ministers deny that the murders and rapes happened or accuse Israel of perpetrating these horrific crimes against its own people. Another threatened that a similar attack would be carried out in Judea and Samaria.

Successful deradicalisation took place in Germany and Japan after the Allied victory in World War II. Today, both nations are great allies of the U.S. and promote peace, stability and prosperity in Europe and Asia.

More recently, since the 9/11 attacks, visionary Arab leaders in The Gulf have led efforts to deradicalise their societies and transform their countries. Israel has since forged the historic Abraham Accords and today enjoys peace agreements with six Arab states. Such a cultural transformation will be possible in Gaza only among Palestinians who don’t seek the destruction of Israel.

Once Hamas is destroyed, Gaza is demilitarised and Palestinian society begins a deradicalisation process, Gaza can be rebuilt and the prospects of a broader peace in the Middle East will become a reality.

Mr. Netanyahu is Israel’s prime minister.

The Wall St Journal
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JohnDe said:
​
Israel does its best to minimise civilian casualties by dropping leaflets, sending text messages and using other means to warn Gazans to get out of harm’s way. Hamas by contrast does its utmost to keep Palestinians in harm’s way — often at gunpoint.​
​
Once Hamas is destroyed, Gaza is demilitarised and Palestinian society begins a deradicalisation process, Gaza can be rebuilt and the prospects of a broader peace in the Middle East will become a reality.​
Click to expand...
There will never be peace in this area until Israel is allowed to be a country that will not be attacked by its neighbours because of generatinal
in-bred hatred.
Attack me and I will retaliate somewhat swifter and harder.
 
Anyone who condones collective punishment will look foolish when they are on the receiving end of the same, Palestinian or Israeli.
 
Macquack said:
Anyone who condones collective punishment will look foolish when they are on the receiving end of the same, Palestinian or Israeli.
Click to expand...

I don't know whether you are serious, a fool, brain washed, or poorly educated. Let me explain my confusion I have of you and your two mates; The three of you show support for multiple middle eastern countries that are ruled by a religion that dictates death to anyone that questions the ancient writings of Islam, a religion that puts men as leaders and woman as their slave. You stand up for Hamas, a group that puts its beliefs before the people of Palestine, Hamas that teaches children that killing a Jew or non-believer will send them to heaven, Hamas a group that hides its fighters and weapons amongst civilian infrastructures that include hospitals and schools.


Israel is doing the world’s heavy lifting. To deny that is to deny the truth and by extension to say that countries such as Australia, Britain, New Zealand, the US, liberal Western democracies, would willingly invite Hamas to our shores, into our schools, homes and parliaments.​
If that is your view, then you are not my countryman. You have a different hope for Australia’s future than I do.​

Mealy-mouthed slacktivists fail Israelis and Palestinians

On the night of April 14, 2014, Islamic terrorists stormed a government girls’ secondary school in Chibok, Nigeria, kidnapping 276 mostly Christian young girls aged between 16 and 18. This horrendous act gave rise to a global movement identified primarily by the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls. Oh, it was a thing all right. All of Hollywood and its hangers-on lent their names to the cause.
In a shocking plot twist, the terrorist group Boko Haram did not capitulate when confronted with the full force of highly stylised Instagram posts. #BringBackOur girls was a campaign stellar in visibility, negligent in terms of impact. It was also a powerful example of slacktivism at its finest. As of 2021, 112 of the Chibok schoolgirls were still missing.

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At least 14 of the schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram in Chibok in 2014. Picture: AFP

Slacktivism: The appearance of standing for something but with absolutely nothing of substance at play and zero cost to the individual or organisation. It usually comes with a healthy dose of signalling virtue.

This is what we’re seeing play out in Australia and across the world as the war against Hamas continues. From a range of social media and reality TV stars who fancy themselves as geopolitically savvy, whose ignorance is matched only by hubris, to governments who talk a big game but can’t back it up.

Free Palestine. From the river to the Sea. All lives matter (more on that one in a moment).

Israel paid the greatest price on October 7 and continues to do so. What nobody seems to have the courage to say is that Israel is doing what the West has been to weak, possibly too lazy and too cowardly to do for decades – confront and eliminate Hamas. The same Hamas that hasn’t held an election in Gaza since 2006. The same Hamas that this government declared to be a terror organisation last year.

Free Palestine? Yes! From the tyranny of a terrorist government and if you think that will happen via diplomacy or without conflict, you are no student of history.

519ff17ee0ba11a7cdf39098b2d494fa-jpg-jpg.jpg

Harry Greenwood, right, along with co-stars Megan Wilding, second right, and Mabel Li, left, wear keffiyeh scarves during the encore at the opening night of the STC production of The Seagull at Sydney’s Roslyn Packer Theatre. Picture: Instagram

Israel is doing the world’s heavy lifting. To deny that is to deny the truth and by extension to say that countries such as Australia, Britain, New Zealand, the US, liberal Western democracies, would willingly invite Hamas to our shores, into our schools, homes and parliaments.

If that is your view, then you are not my countryman. You have a different hope for Australia’s future than I do.

Imagine if in the days following October 7 the global community had immediately demanded Hamas return all hostages, surrender those responsible and have them tried in The Hague for war crimes. This war would be long over and so many civilian lives in Gaza saved.

But slacktivism. The world said: we condemn this brutality. It also said: Israel, go easy on them because all lives matter. Sure, they do. Until of course they don’t. Do the lives of the 138 hostages still hidden in Gaza matter more than those of the Hamas animals keeping them captive? Did the lives of the slain Nova concertgoers matter more than those of the savages who gleefully filmed themselves committing wholesale rape and slaughter?

Does the life of a Palestinian child matter more than terrorists who use his school as a cover? I could go on.

Boko Haram has killed more than 20,000 people, displaced more than two million in the past decade. In Syria, the Assad regime systematically murders its citizens without so much as a hashtag to contend with.

According to the Syrian network for Human Rights, 501 civilians, including 71 children and 42 women were murdered by documented events of torture in the first half of this year. That’s before you go back over the past decade and count the thousands of victims, many being Palestinians.

Their lives mattered, but not enough to spark a global movement against Syria. No boycott, divestment and sanctions movement; no protests. Nobody saying that Syria shouldn’t exist.

Obviously, Palestinian lives matter. But Palestinian lives in Gaza matter more than the ones in Syria, and more than the Christian girls taken hostage in Nigeria – am I doing it right? The only lives that have been devalued are Israeli dead and the still languishing hostages.

It is unquestionably clear that there is a singular reason the professional activist class has galvanised behind Palestinian Gaza, post-October 7.

I want to propose it’s not for the love of a people, it’s because of an incomprehensible hatred of Israel. A free Palestinian people cannot happen without the end of Hamas and the only nation committed to that outcome is Israel.

Oh, but the fear and (self) loathing in Australia and elsewhere (Ie, writ large in word, deed and indefensible actions of hatred and anti-Semitism. The absolute nonsense, historically illiterate silliness coming out of the mouths of so many. It’s easy, I suppose, when there’s no price to pay.

This is a level of blindness that has nothing to do with the biological function of sight. This is what it looks like. It’s what causes people to say that Israel has no right to defend itself. What great price, their freedom.

There is always a cost, for everything. It’s like the person who wants to run a marathon but instead of training, lies on the couch eating chips, or the person who wants a loving healthy relationship but won’t face their own heart and do the work.

Life is full of these complex situations but rarely has one been so clear in the line between right and wrong. An email I received this week, one of many, broke my heart and I share it with permission.

“My kids have grown up thinking it’s normal to have armed guards and policemen manning the doors of our synagogue. How shocking is that in Australia? … Now I lie awake at night wondering how to keep my children safe. Racists will always be around. But when our government, academic, artistic and education institutes start apologising and enabling intolerance … it’s terrifying.”

Each day this war continues, there is more collateral damage like this family. Half a world away, innocent Palestinians are failed by an international community that has chosen words over action at every step.
Click to expand...
 
Time to get rid of dual citizenship.
​
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus is unable to say whether Australia was aware one of two Australian brothers killed by an Israeli air strike in Lebanon may have had links to Hezbollah before the proscribed terrorist organisation claimed him as one of their own.​
​
“We are aware of the announcement made by Hezbollah claiming links to one of the Australians killed. We are seeking to establish the facts. However, Hezbollah is a listed terrorist organisation under Australian law.”​

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus is unable to say whether Australia was aware one of two Australian brothers killed by an Israeli air strike in Lebanon may have had links to Hezbollah before the proscribed terrorist organisation claimed him as one of their own.

Ali Bazzi, 30 and his 27-year-old brother Ibrahim were killed alongside the younger brother’s wife, Shourouk Hammoud, in the Southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil.

Late on Wednesday, Hezbollah claimed Ali Bazzi as one of their fighters, celebrating him as a “martyr”.

Addressing journalists in Melbourne on Thursday morning, Mr Dreyfus said Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade had overnight confirmed the deaths of two Australian citizens in an air strike in southern Lebanon.

“The Australian Embassy in Beirut stands ready to provide consular assistance to the family as required,” Mr Dreyfus said.

“We are aware of the announcement made by Hezbollah claiming links to one of the Australians killed. We are seeking to establish the facts. However, Hezbollah is a listed terrorist organisation under Australian law.”

Asked whether Australia had been aware of any link between Ali Bazzi and Hezbollah before now, Mr Dreyfus said the government was investigating the issue.

“We are continuing to make inquiries, but Hezbollah is a listed terrorist organisation under Australian law.”

Asked whether Australia had been aware of any link between Ali Bazzi and Hezbollah before now, Mr Dreyfus deflected, saying: “We are continuing to make inquiries, but Hezbollah is a listed terrorist organisation under Australian law.”

Mr Dreyfus said there was daily military activity in southern Lebanon, including rocket and missile fire, as well as airstrikes, and a warning against travelling to the area had been in place since mid October.

“For Australians in Lebanon, we urge you to leave while commercial options remain available,” he said.

“In the context of the current conflict, Australia has consistently called for civilian lives to be protected, and we have consistently raised our concerns about the risk of this conflict spreading.

“It is why we have been working with countries who have influence in the region to prevent further escalation, and it is why we have been advising Australians not to travel to Lebanon.”

ed8dec1b57d928457622c4ad51cc3ca8.jpg
Ibrahim and Ali Bazzi, killed in Lebanon airstrike. Picture: ABC News

Mr Dreyfus said there had been examples in the past of Australians having had links to Hezbollah.

“One of the reasons why the Australian government has listed Hezbollah, in both its arms, as a terrorist organisation, is because of the potential links to Australia and Australians.”

Asked whether the brothers were dual citizens, the Attorney-General said authorities were “continuing to make inquiries”.

Asked to elaborate on the nature of the inquiries and what information was being sought, Mr Dreyfus said it was important that the Australian government be “as informed as possible when this sort of event happens”.

Mr Dreyfus said Australia had communicated with Israel following the airstrike, “but I’m not going to disclose those communications.”

He said any Australian fighting with Hezbollah was committing a very serious terrorist offence under the criminal code.

“There are very heavy penalties attached to committing that kind of offence, and I’d repeat because Hezbollah is a listed terrorist organisation,” Mr Dreyfus said.

“It’s an offence for any Australian to provide financial assistance to that terrorist organization, to fight with that terrorist organization or to be associated with them.”

a1b3466a4ce44fac948ab55841b7ac1f.jpg
Ibrahim Bazzi pictured with his wife, Shuruk Hamoud. Picture: Instagram/Wael Kassir Photographyhttps://content.api.news/v3/images/bin/a1b3466a4ce44fac948ab55841b7ac1f

The Attorney-General said he was “not personally aware” of any Australians travelling to Lebanon to fight with Hezbollah in recent weeks.

“It’s very important that Australians not travel to Lebanon,” he said.

“The reason why the Australian government has listed all of this organisation, Hezbollah, and a number of other terrorist organisations as terrorist organisations is to provide a deterrent to Australians from giving their assistance, to joining with, let alone the fighting with terrorist organisations.”

Asked whether he would offer condolences to the family of the brothers, Mr Dreyfus said: “Of course I express my condolences to the family of the man who’s travelled to Lebanon. I say again, as I said in my opening statement, that full assistance of Australian consular officials in Beirut are available to them.”

RACHEL BAXENDALE VICTORIAN POLITICAL REPORTER
Click to expand...
 
JohnDe said:
I don't know whether you are serious, a fool, brain washed, or poorly educated. Let me explain my confusion I have of you and your two mates; The three of you show support for multiple middle eastern countries that are ruled by a religion that dictates death to anyone that questions the ancient writings of Islam, a religion that puts men as leaders and woman as their slave. You stand up for Hamas, a group that puts its beliefs before the people of Palestine, Hamas that teaches children that killing a Jew or non-believer will send them to heaven, Hamas a group that hides its fighters and weapons amongst civilian infrastructures that include hospitals and schools.


Israel is doing the world’s heavy lifting. To deny that is to deny the truth and by extension to say that countries such as Australia, Britain, New Zealand, the US, liberal Western democracies, would willingly invite Hamas to our shores, into our schools, homes and parliaments.​
If that is your view, then you are not my countryman. You have a different hope for Australia’s future than I do.​
Click to expand...
Ease up
JohnDe said:
I don't know whether you are serious, a fool, brain washed, or poorly educated. Let me explain my confusion I have of you and your two mates; The three of you show support for multiple middle eastern countries that are ruled by a religion that dictates death to anyone that questions the ancient writings of Islam, a religion that puts men as leaders and woman as their slave. You stand up for Hamas, a group that puts its beliefs before the people of Palestine, Hamas that teaches children that killing a Jew or non-believer will send them to heaven, Hamas a group that hides its fighters and weapons amongst civilian infrastructures that include hospitals and schools.


Israel is doing the world’s heavy lifting. To deny that is to deny the truth and by extension to say that countries such as Australia, Britain, New Zealand, the US, liberal Western democracies, would willingly invite Hamas to our shores, into our schools, homes and parliaments.​
If that is your view, then you are not my countryman. You have a different hope for Australia’s future than I do.​
Click to expand...
Go easy on the insults, I thought you were a decent bloke.

Sorry to offend you for being just a little bit humane about the ongoing slaughter of civilians, but as you have pointed out they are Muslims so who gives a f***.
 
Macquack said:
Ease up

Go easy on the insults, I thought you were a decent bloke.

Sorry to offend you for being just a little bit humane about the ongoing slaughter of civilians, but as you have pointed out they are Muslims so who gives a f***.
Click to expand...

Please forgive me for unleashing my hatred of extremism.

I care, I have quite a few friends that are of the Islamic faith, one is an Imam and he is like a father figure to me. None are members of the Hamas or sanction Hamas beliefs and doctrines.
 
An open air prison?

Or what Hamas has managed to FUBAR through gross stupidity?
 

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