At least 36,801 people have been killed and 83,680 wounded in Israel's ongoing massacre in Gaza since October 7. An estimated 10,000 more dead lie beneath the rubble of Israeli bombs. During these past eight months, people in Gaza have been driven from their homes, seeking but not finding shelter. A million people were driven into Rafah, on the very southern edge of Gaza. Now Rafah is being bombed and overrun by Israeli tanks and troops. And people have been driven back north, to Gaza City, to Nuseirat in central Gaza, and other places. But there is no safety anywhere.

At the same time, violence, terror, and ethnic cleansing are drastically escalating in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas seized by Israel in war and occupied ever since in violation of international law. 

(Jewish) Nazis Stage Another Pogrom in East Jerusalem

Pogroms. For hundreds of years, the term referred to bloody riots by European peasants kept backward and ignorant by ruling tyrants who channeled Dark Ages religious-fueled hatred into violence against the Jews. In a bitter irony, Zionists throughout what is now Israel and the occupied West Bank wage pogroms against the Palestinian people.

On June 5, tens of thousands of rabid Israeli Zionists marched through the Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem waving huge Israeli flags, chanting “death to Arabs” and “may your villages burn.” As did their predecessors, the ignorant anti-Semitic mobs in Europe, they violently assaulted shopkeepers and any Palestinian they could get their hands on. 

East Jerusalem is the area of Jerusalem illegally occupied after being seized by Israel in the 1967 war. The racist violence was fueled in part by Israel's fascist, rabidly genocidal National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. He declared, “I am telling Hamas, that Jerusalem, Damascus Gate [a historic landmark and central connecting point for Palestinians in the West Bank] and Al-Aqsa mosque [a historic mosque considered a particularly holy site by Muslims] belong to us." Israeli police collaborated with and enabled the terror by forcing all Palestinian shops along the march route to close.

Gaza: "We have seen hospitals... refugee camps... humanitarian warehouses being bombed. The situation is apocalyptic."

Al-Aqsa hospital is three miles from the town of Nuseirat in Gaza. This is where victims of Israel’s massacre at the UN school and the slaughter that accompanied Israel’s hostage raid in Nuseirat were taken (go here for a report on those attacks).

Al-Aqsa is the only functioning hospital in the region, and it is at three times capacity. Even before the hospital was inundated with victims from Nuseirat, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said it had taken in more than 70 people at the hospital who had been killed and more than 300 injured in the previous 48 hours.

On June 5, Karin Huster, a medical adviser for Doctors Without Borders in Gaza, wrote:

I just came back from Al-Aqsa Hospital, one of the only remaining functioning hospitals from the Ministry of Health in Gaza. It is situated in the Middle Area, in a town called Deir al-Balah. The past 48 hours—and especially the last 24—have seen an insane escalation of hostilities in the entire Gaza Strip, with bombings simultaneously in the north, in the Middle Area, Khan Younis, and Rafah. 

We have seen hospitals being bombed. We have seen refugee camps being bombed. We have seen humanitarian warehouses being bombed. The situation is apocalyptic. This morning, on my way to the hospital, I saw two donkeys carrying the bodies of at least eight people who had died in the hostilities of the last night. When we arrived, the emergency room was completely packed. There were hundreds of people who were inside the emergency department, but also outside. There were families screaming. 

There was a man screaming for his family that had died in the last 24 hours. This hospital, which is still functioning—I don't know how—received over 70 dead bodies and well over 300 wounded patients, many of them critically injured. The odor of blood when I entered the emergency room was just overwhelming. People are lying on the floor. People are lying outside. People are lying in extensions of the emergency department in tents, bodies being brought in white plastic bags, the families standing over them and praying. 

Gaza: Sewage and Waste Disposal Destroyed, Grave Danger of Disease

The arrival of summer is intensifying hellish conditions for survivors of Israel’s genocide in Gaza where Israel has systematically destroyed sewage and waste disposal infrastructure. People are living in tents, in close proximity to massive piles of rotting garbage, flooded sewers, and rubble. Fenia Diamanti from Action Against Hunger, an aid agency that attempts to distribute drinkable water in Gaza, told Reuters, “We fear diseases that never appeared in the [Gaza] strip before are going to appear and that will affect the entire population...”

On June 3, sewage water flooded the tents of displaced Palestinians in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza. Photo and video from this nightmarish crime shows children wading and playing in a river of human waste and other sewage.

Gaza: Israel Destroys Medical Supplies in Jabalia

The closure of the Rafah crossing has crippled Gaza’s remaining hospitals. Vital medical supplies can’t get to those who need them. After weeks of Israel’s military rampage in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, the Palestine Red Crescent Society reported that its medical distribution point was burned by Israeli forces, destroying medical supplies in the process.

Famine Escalates in Gaza

The World Food Program and the Food and Agriculture Organization, both UN agencies, issued a report identifying that if things stay as they are, one million people, more than half the population in Gaza, will be starving, or in a state of Phase 5 famine (the most severe and deadly stage) by mid-July.

West Bank: Israeli Collective Punishment in Jenin

Since October 7, the Israeli military and U.S. media have been reporting that the Israeli military is clashing with Hamas-aligned armed forces at the Jenin refugee camp. In fact, overwhelmingly what is going on is the Israelis carrying out mass murder of civilians and collective punishment of the civilian population.

On June 6, reports from Jenin, including photos, documented Israeli army vehicles storming the Jenin camp as Apache attack helicopters hovered overhead. Israeli army tanks belonging to special forces destroyed stands belonging to local vendors. This terror was followed by bulldozers that further demolished infrastructure. Israeli troops shot bullets towards the main electrical transformer in the camp knocking out electricity for the entire civilian population. Water supplies were shut off. Hospitals were surrounded by the Israeli military. Emergency services were prevented from reaching the injured.

West Bank: Systematic Destruction of Palestinian Towns and Agriculture:

As of June 5, the UN office for humanitarian affairs (OCHA) reported that more than 500 Palestinians have been killed by Israel in the West Bank since October 7. And just during the week leading up to June 5, nearly a thousand olive and fig trees and grape vines trees were destroyed by Israeli “settlers” hell bent on destroying Palestinian agriculture, society, and community. 

On June 3, for example, in the West Bank town of Jalbun, the Israeli army demolished two houses under pretext that they were constructed without a permit from the Israeli authorities. The Israeli army rolled up on the houses accompanied by bulldozers and didn't even allow the homeowners to take their belongings before destroying their houses. The owner of one of the houses told The New Arab, "My husband built the house in 1982 before the [Zionist] settlements existed and even before the Israeli segregation wall was built. At that time, there was no electricity, no water, and not even a road leading to our house." 

Another village resident said, "Our village has been under siege since October 7th. We are subjected to oppression, humiliation, and persecution. Where is the Palestinian Authority [supposedly representing the Palestinian people, but essentially Palestinian puppet enforcers of Israel’s apartheid] in all that is happening to us? The residents of our village are primarily agricultural, and they make their living from farming. Our homes and agricultural facilities are being demolished.”