Israel has bombed the front of a hospital / 2

[Readingallnight]

Discussion re Israel’s bombing of hospitals, infrastructure and residential buildings

@Readingallnight how can you say Israel should 'stand on its borders' when Hamas bulldozed through to rape, murder pull hostages back into Gaza?

I say it because that is what defending yourself is.
There have been many discussions by politicians, the UN, academics etc defining what the term means.
This was discussed years ago when Israel attacked the Palestinians.
It has been agreed that Israel’s methods are not defence.

@Readingallnight Aha! Yes, indeed/

Here’s just a few headliners to source for reading on the subject of Israel using self defence as an excuse in Palestine.
As can be seen these articles , this excuse and this discussion is not new

If you don’t know what defence means then you don’t know English language. It’s a simple concept.

The moment an attacker turns to retreat if you continue to go after them it’s no longer defence.

Does that count when you have dragged the people you are attacking back with you? The hostages don't have that luxury?

Of course it does.
Read the articles.
There are many more
As @Artwhatttt says, it’s a simple concept.

WHO have visited Al Shifa to assess possible evacuation and called it a 'death zone' - more severely ill patients than previously reported and more babies have died - it all sounds unbelievably awful

''Here is some further detail from the World Health Organisation on the “very high risk” mission it led to Al-Shifa Hospital on Saturday, which aimed to assess the situation on the ground.

As reported earlier, the WHO has said it is urgently developing plans for the immediate evacuation of the patients, staff and families who remain at Al-Shifa Hospital within the next 24–72 hours “pending guarantees of safe passage by parties to the conflict”. Patients will be moved from Al-Shifa to Nasser Medical Complex and European Gaza Hospital in the south of Gaza - though the WHO has warned these hospitals are already working beyond capacity.

The WHO earlier described desperate conditions at Al-Shifa:

Lack of clean water, fuel, medicines, food and other essential aid over the last six weeks have caused Al-Shifa Hospital - once the largest, most advanced, and best equipped referral hospital in Gaza - to essentially stop functioning as a medical facility. The team observed that due to the security situation, it has been impossible for the staff to carry out effective waste management in the hospital. Corridors and the hospital grounds were filled with medical and solid waste, increasing the risk of infection. Patients and health staff with whom they spoke were terrified for their safety and health, and pleaded for evacuation. Al-Shifa Hospital can no longer admit patients, with the injured and sick now being directed to the seriously overwhelmed and barely functioning Indonesian Hospital.

There are 25 health workers and 291 patients remaining in Al-Shifa, with several patient deaths having occurred over the previous 2 to 3 days due to the shutting down of medical services. Patients include 32 babies in extremely critical condition, two people in intensive care without ventilation, and 22 dialysis patients whose access to life-saving treatment has been severely compromised.

The vast majority of patients are victims of war trauma, including many with complex fractures and amputations, head injuries, burns, chest and abdominal trauma, and 29 patients with serious spinal injuries who are unable to move without medical assistance. Many trauma patients have severely infected wounds due to lack of infection control measures in the hospital and unavailability of antibiotics. The WHO has expressed deep concern about the situation for patients and health workers and has called for an immediate ceasefire and the flow of humanitarian assistance.

Updated at 01.39 GMT

Israel’s goal is not defence, but re-establishment of its ‘deterrence capacity’ is. It’s quite simple: it inflicts deliberately disproportionate military violence, death and destruction on a civilian population in order to hammer home - to Hamas, Middle East countries, the world - the consequences of attacking Israel.

We know this because in past operations in Gaza, e.g. Operation Cast Lead in 2009, Israel’s leadership spoke explicitly of how the goal was for Israel to appear as a ‘mad dog’ on the world stage, reckless and crazy, in order to deter future assaults against it.

For this reason, anyone speaking of Israel behaving emotionally or irrationally is misguided. The chaos and the wanton violence, the arbitrariness of it, the targeting of homes, mosques, hospitals, schools, factories, killings of civilians in non-combat areas, killing of civilians carrying white flags, killing of civilians fleeing on supposed safe routes (all things previously recorded by Amnesty and Human Rights Watch) - all designed to create fear and reinstate submission.

As IDF soldier testimonies reveal, war in Gaza is like playing a PlayStation game: there are no boundaries: you can do what you want.

The scale of these attacks suggest new goals too (mass displacement being the obvious one, rendering Gaza virtually uninhabitable another connected goal).

‘Giving up is not an option’: Volunteer doctors at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/19/giving-up-is-not-an-option-volunteer-doctors-at-al-aqsa-martyrs-hospital

Utmost respect.

100%. Agreed.

32 babies remain
that means since yesterday another 3 died.
A few days ago there was 39 babies in total then 36, then 35 and now 32
How many more have to die before something is done.
If the WHO manage to evacuate them at this point it will be a miracle. I suppose we should not lose hope even if everything does feel pretty hopeless right now

From the WHO'S latest update it seems that as suspected the situation at Al Shifa hospital was and is alot worse than reported. I have no idea how the doctors managed to carry on working under such conditions
Corridors and the hospital grounds were filled with medical and solid waste, increasing the risk of infection.
can you imagine trying to treat patients in such conditions. Not normal patients but those in a war zone that often come in with horrific injuries.

@Parkingt111 and no antibiotics for all the wound infections

@Efacsen it's enough now. They have suffered enough
There needs to be an intervention for the sake of everyone involved

This is from sky news
The WHO's findings pose some very difficult questions for Israel and its military campaign in Gaza.
Under the rules of war, hospitals are protected from military activity - unless it can be proven the enemy is using them to pose a threat.
Israel claims it has found a Hamas command and control centre in the hospital and that beneath it is a complex of Hamas-built tunnels.
But it has not produced the evidence to back that up, just footage claiming to show a tunnel entrance nearby, some assault rifles, some grenades and laptops described as "technological assets".
As the normally pro-government Jerusalem Post put it, Israel has "presented a much weaker case to the world about Hamas' presence at the hospital than expected".
The World Health Organisation's report is profoundly worrying.
It says Gaza’s biggest hospital is now a "death zone".

This in particular. Netanyahu is a war criminal.

As the normally pro-government Jerusalem Post put it, Israel has "presented a much weaker case to the world about Hamas' presence at the hospital than expected".

I remember reading accounts of the Napoleonic Wars where the field hospital included what were in effect dying rooms. A space were wounded soldiers with infected wounds, untreatable before antibiotics, were placed to rot. Filled with the sounds and stench of men suffering their way to death.

I rember the idea horrifying me as I read about it. But the more I read about Al Shifa and the other Gaza hospitals, the more it reminds me of the conditions then.

This link describes a field hospital in the American Civil War. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/everyday-life-civil-war-hospital Change a few details, and we could be in Gaza.

It is absolutely shameful that we are seeing the same scenes played out in real time, in a world with antibiotics and an understanding of antisepsis, where these patients could so easily be saved, but won't be.

From instagram. Former Israeli intelligence chief states that the "noncombatant population in the Gaza Strip is really a non-existent term".
WTF. Such blatant racism and war-mongering lies exposing their genocidal intent.

TRIGGER.

Yes, you are right.

Last night on Al Jazeera it was reported that some of the wounds have ‘worms’ in them which I presume means maggots.

Gaza’s health ministry says 30 premature babies have been evacuated from al-Shifa hospital and will be transferred to hospitals in Egypt.

Medhat Abbas, a spokesman for the ministry, said they were evacuated from the hospital on Sunday, the Associated Press reports.

A World Health Organisation team that visited al-Shifa hospital on Saturday said 32 babies were among scores of critically ill patients stranded at the hospital, where Israeli forces have been operating since last week.

Good news if true - tho' sounds like 2 babies were either too sick to travel or have died since yesterday

These babies have needed to be out of Gaza for too long already

These babies have needed to be out of Gaza for too long already
Absolutely agree, and so many others too.

@ScrollingLeaves of course and all the other poor patients who deserve proper healthcare

I hope this is true. I hope the lack of oxygen and unstable conditions their little bodies have been subjected to hasn’t caused so much damage that they live a life of more suffering. I hope they can receive the care they need 😞