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“The Israeli military has provided new details that changed its initial account of the killing of 15 emergency workers near the southern Gaza city of Rafah last month but said investigators were still examining the evidence. The 15 paramedics and emergency responders were shot dead on March 23 and buried in a shallow grave…
“The military initially said soldiers had opened fire on vehicles that approached their position ‘suspiciously’ in the dark without lights or markings. It said they killed nine militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad who were travelling in Palestinian Red Crescent vehicles. But video recovered from the mobile phone of one of the dead men and published by the Palestinian Red Crescent showed emergency workers in their uniforms and clearly marked ambulances and fire trucks, with their lights on, being fired on by soldiers.” Reuters
“The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza [GHM] has removed thousands of names from its death toll in its March casualty update without any notice, a new research by two separate reports claims. Some 3,400 previously identified deaths from its August and October 2024 reports can no longer be found in the PDFs released by the ministry… At least 1,000 children are among those no longer on the list.” Euronews
“Hundreds of Palestinians have protested in northern Gaza [late last month] to demand an end to war, chanting ‘Hamas out,’ social media posts showed, in a rare public show of opposition to the militant group.” Reuters
The left criticizes Israel for the deaths of the paramedics and the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
“Post-ceasefire Gaza is dangerous, of course. But these men were not cavalier. They believed their Red Crescent-marked vehicles would make it clear who was inside and their purpose. They believed international humanitarian law meant something; that healthcare workers would be protected. They assumed that meant they would not be a target. But they were wrong. Tragically, horrifically wrong…
“We cannot allow these deaths – any of these attacks – to become normalised. We must reject any narrative that they are inevitable, or part of the risk of the job. I’m grateful for the political, media and online outrage over the deaths of our workers last month. I share it. But we must all go further… There must be tangible consequences for those who commit the atrocity of killing – through malice or recklessness – humanitarians trying to help.”
Jagan Chapagain, The Guardian
“The United States doesn’t have influence over Hamas, but we provide the 2,000-pound bombs that Netanyahu employs to turn buildings and people into dust — and that gives us leverage to press for an end to this war. We’re not using it. So American bombs will create more W.C.N.S.F.s. That’s a common abbreviation in Gaza hospitals for ‘wounded child, no surviving family.’…
“What has all this bombing achieved? Hamas’s fighting capacity is badly degraded, and Israel has re-established deterrence. But Israel has achieved neither of its two fundamental aims of the war: recovering all hostages and destroying Hamas. Indeed, the United States has assessed that Hamas has recruited almost as many militants as it has lost… Netanyahu and Hamas both seem prepared to fight to the last Palestinian and to the last Israeli hostage.”
Nicholas Kristof, New York Times
“Hamas wasted no time in going after the leaders of the protests, threatening, torturing and even killing them. The family of Oday Nasser Al Rabay, 22, says the protester was tortured to death by Hamas simply for demanding a free Gaza ‒ free from Hamas and free from war…
“Since Oct. 7, 2023, pundits, news outlets and social media accounts have been asking why Gazans have not protested Hamas during the ongoing war… What critics fail to understand is the brutal reality of life under Hamas’ iron grip ‒ where dissent is met with imprisonment, torture or execution.”
Hamza Howidy, USA Today
“For one month now, Israel has withheld entry of all aid and medical personnel from the north of Gaza, implementing what was once termed ‘the General’s plan’ of starving the Palestinians in that area…
“There are no good guys to this story, only Palestinian victims. As tens of thousands of Israelis are demonstrating in opposition to Netanyahu because he is risking the lives of Israeli hostages still held in Gaza, it is time for Arabs to unite in defense of the Palestinian people and their own peace plan.”
James J. Zogby, Common Dreams
The right is cautiously optimistic that Gazans will turn against Hamas.
The right is cautiously optimistic that Gazans will turn against Hamas.
“In recent polling from January 2025… only 20 percent of Gazans supported the idea of Hamas continuing to rule Gaza. This is compared to 75 percent who expressed support for the Palestinian Authority, 60 percent for some kind of special Palestinian government supported by Arab nations and the international community, 29 percent for direct control by the United Nations, 12 percent for Egypt, and 15 percent for a coalition of Arab countries…
“[Two weeks ago, Gaza] witnessed unprecedented protests against Hamas… To unlock the possibility of peace and coexistence with Israel, there needs to be a proactive effort to rid Palestinian society of this jihadist leadership, which is exploiting the plight of the Palestinian people and making it impossible to have any kind of coexistence with their neighbours. This is why the anti-Hamas protesters must succeed.”
John Aziz, The Dispatch
“What matters even more than overthrowing Hamas is overcoming the mentality of the so-called resistance on which movements such as Hamas (but not only Hamas) were built. If the core Palestinian demand is not the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel but rather of one in place of Israel, then the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is bound to continue…
“For Palestinians, that will mean not only abandoning terrorism and guerrilla warfare but also the more insidious forms of seeking Israel’s destruction, such as the spurious call for a right of return for the descendants of Palestinian refugees — a right whose main purpose is to swamp Israel demographically so that it will no longer be able to maintain a Jewish majority…
“As for Israelis, [these] protests represent both a hope and a challenge. Hope: Ultimately, the protests suggest the possibility that, eventually, an overwhelming majority of Palestinians will never again allow themselves to be ruled by revanchist tyrants of any shade. Challenge: If and when that happens, there will be no plausible argument against a Palestinian state. The sooner Hamas is defeated, the sooner the day might come.”
Bret Stephens, New York Times
Regarding casualty figures, “The world has come to accept casualty figures from Hamas-controlled institutions as near-instant truth. But it is neither reasonable nor practical to believe that any organization — let alone one operating under the duress and agenda of a terrorist group — can produce accurate, disaggregated casualty data within minutes or hours of an incident…
“Credible media reports and US government officials, including the National Security Council, have acknowledged that the GHM’s numbers frequently conflate combatants and civilians and lack crucial context about how, where, and under what circumstances individuals died. This lack of transparency contrasts sharply with the moral and legal weight often assigned to such statistics by international organizations and advocacy groups.”
John Spencer, New York Post
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