Slower Genocide, Rape Victim Fears for Life, Israel’s Potemkin Village Plans for “East Gaza”

I put this out today via accuracy.org — thanks to Kathy Kelly….

An NPR video report from the part of desolated Gaza under full Israeli control reports it is still “not allowing journalists into Gaza independently.” Aid agencies report not nearly enough food is getting in as Israel continues to violate the “ceasefire.” Israel declares Egypt border area a closed military zone. The Intercept reports: “YouTube Quietly Erased More Than 700 Videos Documenting Israeli Human Rights Violations,” and “A Journalist Asked Why Israel Isn’t Paying to Rebuild Gaza. It Cost Him His Job.“

MUHAMMAD SHEHADA, muhammadushehada@gmail.com, @muhammadshehad2

Available for a limited number of interviews, Shehada is with Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor and the European Council on Foreign Relations. He just wrote the piece “What’s behind Israel’s new plan to divide Gaza in two“ for +972 Magazine.

He stresses that Israel is controlling 58 percent of Gaza’s land, (East Gaza), which now houses the Israeli military and about 300 of Israel’s proxy Palestinian gang members. This military buffer zone has become a “no-go” area for ordinary Palestinians who risk being shot on sight if they enter it. The Israeli government has convinced the Trump administration that reconstruction should ONLY happen in this militarized buffer zone area. The plan is to create a Potemkin village, a façade of benefits created by reconstruction in an area that will only be available to the Israeli military and the Palestinian mercenaries who will carry out IDF orders.

Meanwhile, Shehada highlights that Israel continues airstrikes and attacks in the remaining area of Gaza, (West Gaza), and still prevents delivery of crucial humanitarian relief, including food, medicine and the desperately needed tents, prefab homes and construction materials which will be even more necessary during the winter months. The genocide continues at a slower pace.

He also reports: “The victim of Israel’s gang rape on camera has been identified (I’ll withhold his name until he speaks on the record). IDF soldiers raped him so violently until they exploded his intestines and raptured his rectum. He underwent 20 surgical operations, including a colostomy and urostomy. ...

“Israel released him three weeks ago without him ever being charged or tried. They likely released him so he wouldn’t be able to testify at court against his rapists who are still at large.

“The victim is now fearful for his life; he could be killed in any Israeli strike to cover up this atrocity.”

The IDF top lawyer who opened an investigation into this incident a year ago was recently jailed. Shehada states the “only reason for launching a probe into this rape incident (out of hundreds of others that are never investigated) is because this one was caught on camera and the victim was hospitalized with a detailed medical record, so she started her ‘investigation’ to prevent the ICC from intervening.”

He also reported recently: “Israeli soldiers who gang raped Palestinian hostages are holding a press conference to brag that they’re still at large. ‘We will win,’ they boasted!”

The UN Commission of Inquiry recently found that “forced public stripping and nudity, sexual harassment including threats of rape, as well as sexual assault” are “standard operating procedure” of Israeli forces toward Palestinians, and that “other forms of sexual and gender-based violence, including rape and violence to the genitals, were committed either under explicit orders or with implicit encouragement by Israel’s top civilian and military leadership.”

It concluded that “the frequency, prevalence, and severity of sexual and gender-based crimes perpetrated across the Occupied Palestinian Territory lead the Commission to conclude that sexual and gender-based violence is increasingly used as a method of war by Israel to destabilize, dominate, oppress, and destroy the Palestinian people.”