COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone

The Israeli military changed its story many times about why its forces killed 15 medical workers and then buried them and their vehicles to hide the evidence. After their initial claim that the medical vehicles were approaching “suspiciously” without their emergency lights on was disproven by video evidence, they then called the whole thing a big mistake.

Sure, who among us has not accidentally massacred 15 medical workers and buried them and their vehicles in a shallow grave from time to time? We’re only human, mistakes happen.

Asked by the press about Israel’s latest war crime scandal, White House National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes blamed the whole thing on Hamas, saying, “Hamas uses ambulances and more broadly human shields for terrorism.

A cellphone video has revealed that the IDF’s claim about ambulance lights being off was false after they shot and killed 15 Palestinian medics in Gaza.

Follow: @AFpost pic.twitter.com/shQRATG4kc

— AF Post (@AFpost) April 5, 2025

“President Trump understands the impossible situation this tactic creates for Israel and holds Hamas entirely responsible.”

Netanyahu could live stream himself eating a Palestinian baby and telling the camera “I am eating this baby because I love genocide,” and the next day Trump’s podium people would be responding to questions from the press by shrieking “HAMAS!” with their fingers in their ears.

Israeli’s ‘innocent mistake’    Video/Audio: Caitlin Johnstone

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To be helpful I have written some headlines the Western press can use to frame Israel executing 15 medical workers in the most positive light possible:

“Fifteen medical workers pause rescue duties following bullet-related incident”

“Rescue workers, vehicles found in shallow grave after perishing for mysterious and unknowable reasons”

“Israeli forces appear to be suspected of possibly accidentally firing on ambulance staff by mistake, perchance”

“Medical workers killed by IDF, says Hamas-affiliated United Nations”

“IDF assists medical workers in locating scene of latest massacre in Gaza”

“Jews in New York City feeling unsafe, unsupported in wake of latest Israel controversy”

“IDF to launch investigation into alleged IDF oopsie-poopsie in Gaza”

“The universe is an ineffable mystery; objectivity is a myth and our finite primate brains were not evolved to comprehend any ultimate truths about absolute reality in its naked form”

“Gunshots heard in the Middle East. A flashing siren. Innocence no more.”

“IDF hunted and slaughtered 15 healthcare workers and buried them and their vehicles to try to cover it up, please don’t fire me, that’s what happened, I’m just trying to do my job”

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Not taking a position on Gaza is taking a position on Gaza. One you’ll have to live with for the rest of your life.

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The mass media are giving so much more attention to this past weekend’s anti-Trump protests than they ever gave the anti-genocide protests because that is their job. It’s their job to amplify opposition between the two mainstream parties while marginalising those who oppose the crimes of both.

Movements which keep people plugged in to the two-party sock puppet show will always be amplified and encouraged, while movements which highlight the abusiveness of the US empire regardless of who happens to be in office will always be ignored at best and smeared at worst.

That’s why we’ve seen so much attention go into Trumpism and anti-Trumpism while genuine anti-war movements struggle to get off the ground, and while pro-Palestine demonstrators are slandered as anti-semitic terrorist supporters.

As long as people can be herded into supporting either of the two mainstream parties against the other, they are fully plugged in to the artificially manufactured worldview which protects the interests of oligarchy and empire. When people draw attention to the tyranny and abuse of the US empire itself without getting drawn in to the two-handed puppet show of party politics, they unplug their minds from this worldview the propagandists have worked so hard to plug them in to.

As long as enough people are either screaming “Trump!” or “Not Trump!”, the empire’s crimes can continue unimpeded. Only when people stop clapping along with the puppet show and start fighting against the empire itself will there be real change in a positive direction.

This means opposing the abuses that are advanced by both parties like war, genocide, militarism, imperialism, capitalism, Zionism, and authoritarianism. Until then their political energy will keep being steered in directions which pose no threat to the powerful, like we’re seeing with these anti-Trump protests.

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I’ve been seeing a lot of antiwar Trump supporters finally starting to admit that they were duped, and beginning to turn against him. I won’t join the voices slamming them for supporting Trump in the first place; I’ll only say welcome aboard, and congrats on being better people than everyone else who voted for Trump.

Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian independent journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article is republished with permission.

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

Israel is forcing two hospitals in northern Gaza to evacuate under threat of attack as its ethnic cleansing campaign continues.

Israeli forces have surrounded the Indonesian Hospital, where many staff and patients sought shelter after nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital was destroyed in an Israeli raid last week, reports Al Jazeera.

Late on Friday, a forced order to evacuate was also issued for the al-Awda Hospital, where 100 people are believed to be sheltering.

The evacuation order came today as New Zealand Palestine solidarity protesters followed a silent vigil outside Auckland Hospital yesterday with a rally in downtown Auckland’s Te Komititanga Square today, where doctors and other professional health staff called for support for Gaza’s besieged health facilities and protection for medical workers.

When one New Zealand medical professional recalled the first time that the Israel military bombed a hospital in in Gaza November 2023, the world was “ready to accept the the lies that Israel told then”.

“Of course, they wouldn’t bomb a hospital, who would bomb a hospital? That’s a horrible war crime, if must have been Hamas that bombed themselves.

“And the world let Israel get away with it. That’s the time that we knew if the world let Israel get away with it once, they would repeat it again and again and we would allow a dangerous precedent to be set where health care workers and health care centres would become targets over and over again.

“In the past year it is exactly what we have seen,” he said to cries of shame.

“We have seen not only the targeting of health care infrastructure, but the targeting of healthcare workers.

“The murdering of healthcare workers, of aid workers all across Gaza at the hands of Israel — openly without any word of opposition from our government, without a word of opposition from any global government about these war crimes and genocidal actions until today.”

In an impassioned speech about the devastating price that Gazans were paying for the Israeli war, New Zealand Palestinian doctor and Gaza survivor Dr Abdallah Gouda vowed that his people would keep their dream for an independent state of Palestine and “we will never leave Gaza”.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has called for an investigation into the Israeli attacks on Gaza hospitals and medical workers.

Volker Türk told the UN Security Council meeting on the Middle East that Israeli claims of Hamas launching attacks from hospitals in Gaza were often “vague” and sometimes “contradicted by publicly available information”.

Palestine urges UN to end Gaza genocide, ‘Israeli impunity’
Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian envoy to the UN, said: “It is our collective responsibility to bring this hell to an end. It is our collective responsibility to bring this genocide to an end.”

Norway is the latest country to condemn the attacks on Gaza’s hospitals and medical workers.

On X, the country’s Foreign Ministry said that “urgent action” was needed to restore north Gaza’s hospitals, which were continuously subjected to Israeli attack.

Without naming Israel, the ministry said that “health workers, patients and hospitals are not lawful targets”.

Urgent action is needed to restore North Gaza’s hospitals and uphold international humanitarian law.

Protecting healthcare saves lives.
We share WHOs concern at #UNSC

Health workers, patients, and hospitals are not lawful targets. https://t.co/VWswcGhCex

— Norway MFA (@NorwayMFA) January 3, 2025

Israel ‘deprives 40,000’ of healthcare in northern Gaza
The Israeli military is systematically destroying hospitals in northern Gaza, the Gaza Government Media Office said.

In a statement, it said: “The Israeli occupation continues its heinous crimes and arbitrary aggression against hospitals and medical teams in northern Gaza, reflecting a dangerous and deliberate escalation.”

These acts, it added, were being carried out amid “unjustified silence of the international community and the UN Security Council”, violating international humanitarian law and human rights conventions.

The statement highlighted the destruction of Kamal Adwan Hospital, where its director, Dr Hussam Abu Safia, was arrested and reportedly subjected to physical and psychological abuse.

The GMO described these acts as “full-fledged war crimes”.

According to a recent report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Israeli military had conducted more than 136 air raids on at least 27 hospitals and 12 medical facilities across Gaza in the past eight months.

The GMO report demanded an independent international investigation into these violations and accountability for Israel in international courts.

Amnesty International criticises detention of Kamal Adwan doctor
Agnes Callamard, secretary-general of the human rights watchdog Amnesty International, said Israel’s detention of Dr Hussam Abu Safia underscored a pattern of “genocidal intent and genocidal acts” by Israel in Gaza.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The UN’s Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, Francesca Albanese, has called on “medical professionals worldwide” to suspend ties with Israel in an act of solidarity with the more than “1000 colleagues of yours” killed in Gaza over the past 14 months.

Countless more Palestinian medical workers “were arrested, tortured, disappeared”, Albanese said in a post on social media.

“Out of dismay [and] solidarity you should revolt, and urge suspension of ties with Israel until it stops the genocide [and] accounts for it. What are you waiting for,” she said.

Her appeal came as about 100 New Zealand protesters held a “silent vigil” outside the country’s largest medical institution, Auckland Hospital, declaring health workers were “not a target”.

Earlier on Friday, Albanese and the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Physical and Mental Health, Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng, issued a joint statement denouncing the “blatant disregard” for the right to health in the Gaza Strip following Israel’s attack on the Kamal Adwan Hospital and the detention of its director, Dr Hussam Abu Safia.

“For well over a year into the genocide, Israel’s blatant assault on the right to health in Gaza and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory is plumbing new depths of impunity,” the UN experts said.

Medical professionals worldwide: my colleague @drtlaleng and I have a message you should read.
Israel has killed over 1000 colleagues of yours in Gaza in 14 months. Countless were arrested, tortured, disappeared. Their “heroic actions … teach us what it means to have taken… https://t.co/aubGgZ7jsQ

— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) January 3, 2025

The Auckland protesters spread in a long line outside Auckland hospital with banners declaring “healthcare workers in Aotearoa call for a ceasefire” and “stop the genocide”, and placards with slogans such as “healthcare workers and hospitals are not a target”, “Free Dr Hussam Abu Saffiya” and “hands off Kamal Adwan [a northern Gaza hospital destroyed by Israeli forces last week].

Palestinian Prisoners Society warn over ‘danger’ to Dr Hussam
The Palestinian Prisoners Society has warned of “a danger” to Dr Hussam Abu Safiyya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, following the Israeli military’s denial of any records proving his arrest, reports Anadolu Ajensi.

Munir al-Bursh, the Director-General of Gaza’s Health Ministry, said the ministry submitted a request through the Physicians for Human Rights organisation to inquire about Abu Safiyya’s fate, but the Israeli occupation responded by saying that it had no detainee by that name.

Al-Bursh told the Al Jazeera news channel that there was concern that the Israeli occupation may execute Dr Abu Safia after his arrest about a week ago.

In a statement, the Palestinian Prisoners Society said that Dr Abu Safiyya “is one of thousands of detainees from Gaza facing the crime of enforced disappearance”.

The group said that “despite clear evidence of Dr Abu Safia’s arrest on December 27, 2024, the occupation is denying what it had previously stated and is also dismissing the evidence, including photos and videos it published as well as testimonies from some detainees who were released.”

It held the Israeli authorities fully responsible for his fate.

It also reiterated its call for the “international human rights system to save what remains of its role amid the ongoing genocide, after its function has eroded due to a frightening state of impotence.”

Last Saturday, Gaza’s Health Ministry announced the arrest of Dr Abu Safiyya by the Israeli military in northern Gaza.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHRI) have been informed that the Israeli military has no record of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiyyah, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, who was reportedly arrested by the occupation forces on December 27, 2024.

Despite video evidence showing his arrest, the… pic.twitter.com/S2ofhRaEQE

— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) January 2, 2025

‘Proud’ of 15 months of NZ protest
Meanwhile, the national chair of New Zealand’s Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) issued a statement today critical of the government’s inaction in the face of the ongoing genocide and the destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system as protests continued across the country.

“While the stench of decaying morality hangs over [New Zealand’s] coalition government and its MPs after 15 months of complicity with genocide, nationwide protests against Israel’s genocide continue in 2025,” said national chair John Minto.

“Over 15 months of weekly nationwide protests is unprecedented in New Zealand history on any issue at any time.

“We are enormously proud of New Zealanders who stand with the vast mass of humanity against Israel’s systematic, indiscriminate killing of Palestinians in Gaza.

“This week’s protests are the first of New Year and they will continue while our government cowers under the bedclothes and refuses to sanction Israel for genocide.”

The Gaza death toll stands at more than 45,000 — the majority killed being women and children.

“Today’s death toll of innocents killed is a repeating nightmare” for Palestine, he said while Western media highlighted “Israeli propaganda to justify the endless massacres while ignoring Palestinian voices”.

The United Nations has denounced the targeting of hospitals in the Gaza Strip, saying that medical facilities need “to be off limits”.

UN deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq said that there were more than 12,000 people in Gaza who need medical evacuation.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz