As we post this, Israel has killed more than 34,388 Palestinians in Gaza since October 7. The death toll includes more than 13,000 children. Over that time, an average of two mothers have been killed every hour, leaving thousands of children orphaned. Uncounted bodies are buried in the rubble of buildings destroyed by Israeli bombs, missiles, tanks, and bulldozers.

And now we are beginning to see the horror of mass graves Israel left behind after months of death and destruction at what had been two of Gaza’s three largest hospitals. 

In early April, after a long, bloody siege of the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, and Al-Shifa Hospital (formerly Gaza’s largest) in Gaza City in the north, Israeli ground forces withdrew. They left a landscape of uninhabitable wreckage and ruin. The hospitals are destroyed beyond repair.

And Israel left behind mass graves filled with hundreds of bodies of hospital personnel in handcuffs, children, and people of all ages.

Let’s repeat that and read it slowly: Israel left behind mass graves filled with hundreds of bodies of hospital personnel in handcuffs, children, and people of all ages.

Exactly as all this was coming to light, the United States pumped $17 billion in NEW military “aid” to Israel.

Mass Graves Unearthed in a Land of Genocide

As of April 25, news accounts report 324 bodies have been recovered from a shallow mass grave at Nasser Hospital. And 381 bodies have been dug out at the Al-Shifa Hospital complex. 

Those bodies are the result of months-long sieges of Nasser and Al-Shifa hospitals by the Israeli military. Medical staff and evacuees who had managed to leave those hospitals before the Israeli army’s withdrawal had described scenes of “horror, mass killings and arrests to the point the entire hospital turned from a place of healing into a massive graveyard.” 

And evidence is emerging that some of the victims whose bodies are being dug out were victims of cold-blooded executions by Israel. Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman with the UN’s human rights office, said some of the bodies found at Nasser hospital were found with their hands tied, and stripped of their clothes.

Gaza medical authorities report that some of the bodies have bullet-wound injuries to their heads and injuries to their bodies. The Director of Civil Defense in Khan Younis told CNN that based on beginning attempts at forensics, it appears that some of the bodies were possibly people who were “buried alive or executed.”

CNN reported that their correspondent who visited the scene of mass graves at Nasser Hospital saw several decomposed bodies in surgical gowns, indicating these were murdered doctors and nurses in the process of preparing for or conducting surgeries. And that other victims’ bodies had hospital admission wristbands.

Photos and reports from the scenes at both hospitals depict horror-struck and heartbroken parents identifying children from the clothes they were wearing. And carrying the decomposed corpses of loved ones away from the scene to somewhere else in devastated Gaza for burial. CNN described a father, kneeling and holding his son’s head, inspecting it from the back and confirming once more that it’s his son. “Oh God, he’s dead. He’s dead,” he said, while wiping off his tears.

The U.S. Three-Step-Coverup for Monstrous Crimes Against Humanity

Under pressure from the press, the U.S. government responded by going into their three-step-coverup shuffle. This is their played-out hustle which they've repeated over and over as Israel commits war crime after war crime and the bodies of Palestinian people pile up.

How does it work?

First, attempt to preserve America’s torn and shredded “branding” as global “defenders of freedom and democracy.” This might seem hard when the U.S. just pumped $17 billion worth of planes, bombs, artillery shells and other weapons of mass destruction to an apartheid state committing genocide. Still, they tried. How? By demanding that Israel be investigated by an impartial body of some sort? By the International Court of Justice, perhaps, which had earlier ruled that it was “plausible” that Israel was committing genocide? No. Instead, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan sternly called for the mass graves that Israel was accused of filling with Palestinian men, women and children that they had murdered to be “transparently investigated”… by Israel!

Second, block any meaningful outside investigation or accountability. After the UN human rights office and other voices around the world called for an independent investigation, a reporter repeatedly pressed State Department spokesperson Vendant Patel to explain why the U.S. (which carries decisive weight at the UN) is blocking this. After noting that asking Israel to investigate the mass graves is relying on the accused to investigate itself, and further noting Israel’s lack of credibility, the reporter asked, “What’s wrong with an independent, scientific, forensic investigation?”

After repeated attempts to dodge the question, Patel replied, “We think this does need to be thoroughly investigated but in terms of the modality we continue to want to see some additional information from the government of Israel.” In other words, forget about an “independent, scientific, investigation.” Because the truth might come out.

Third, do nothing when Israel pisses on world outrage. When POLITICO asked Israel military spokesperson Nadav Shoshani whether Israel plans on investigating the mass graves, he at first waived off the question, calling the reports “fake news.” Asked if that means Israel won’t investigate the mass grave reports, Shoshani said: “Investigate what?” When asked again what Israel is doing to investigate itself, Shoshani replied, “We don’t bury people in mass graves. Not something we do.”

When POLITICO attempted to follow up, an “anonymous U.S. official,” responded, “The Israelis have told us privately what they’ve said publicly, that they totally reject the allegations.” You can just envision the cynical shrug of the “anonymous U.S. official” as he mouthed this.

And so, we see the U.S. scrambling to bury the truth, much as Israel scrambled to bury Palestinian victims of its genocidal rampage in Gaza in shallow graves.

It’s a SYSTEM That Needs To Be Overthrown at the Soonest Possible Time, Through an Actual Revolution....

Think about the grieving loved ones searching the mass graves of Al-Shifa and Nasser hospitals for a shred of clothing that might identify the body of a missing child, a parent, a friend. And how intolerable it is that this system is attempting to cover up the crimes that led up to the crime of filling mass graves with the bodies of people slaughtered in hospitals?

And then think about this, which we posed last week:

What is the connection between this and what this same system has done in Vietnam where U.S. troops were ordered to kill and destroy everything in a village? In Chile, where the U.S. orchestrated the overthrow of a popularly elected government and installed a fascist death squad regime? In Iraq, where U.S.-imposed sanctions were responsible for the deaths of 500,000 children? And countless other places (see American Crime at revcom.us). 

Will you fall for the three-step-hustle where Israel carries out the most abominable, ghastly, inhuman crimes and the U.S. covers them up? Or let anyone else delude themselves that this country can be a force for good anywhere? Or that anything short of an actual revolution will rip the claws of this capitalist-imperialist system off humanity, and the planet? 

Instead, do the right thing. Ask, and seek out serious answers to both why this is happening and what must be done to end this. You will find the truth, truth those who rule this system do not want you to hear, in the Compilation from The Bob Avakian Institute: Israel and Palestine, the Middle East and U.S. Imperialism, the Revolution Humanity Needs: A selection of writings from Bob Avakian. Including this:

Why is Biden, and basically the entire government and ruling class of the U.S., supporting Israel in carrying out genocide against the Palestinian people, before the whole world? Here is the answer to that crucial question:

This is not because of “the power of the Jewish lobby”—or because of some ignorant, ridiculous and outrageous notion that “Jews are controlling everything.” It is because Israel plays a “special role” as a heavily armed bastion of support for U.S. imperialism in a strategically important part of the world (the “Middle East”). And Israel has been a key force in the commission of atrocities which have helped to maintain the oppressive rule of U.S. imperialism in many other parts of the world.

(That is from my statement Some Basic Truths About the U.S.-Supported Israeli War Against Palestine, which is posted at revcom.us.)

It’s the system! The system of capitalism-imperialism that Biden serves. The system he has to serve—the system that anybody and everybody has to serve if they want to hold office, and especially “high office,” like president, within this system. That is why Biden is doing what he’s doing—what all these politicians are doing—above and beyond their more narrow personal interests.

It’s the system! This system of capitalism-imperialism that embodies and enforces white supremacy, patriarchal male supremacy and other brutal oppression—this system resting on ruthless life-stealing exploitation of masses of people in this country and literally billions of people worldwide, including more than 150 million children—all enforced with massive violence and destruction, of people and the environment, posing a very real threat to the future and the existence of humanity.

This system that needs to be overthrown at the soonest possible time, through an actual revolution....