Friday, July 11, 2025

Polaris of Enlightenment

Israel continues bombing “humanitarian zone” – hundreds killed

The situation in Gaza

Published 16 January 2025
– By Editorial Staff
The "humanitarian zones" in Gaza are also frequently targeted by Israeli bombings.
2 minute read

Despite calls for Gaza’s civilian population to seek shelter in so-called humanitarian zones, these continue to be attacked by Israeli warplanes.

Since May last year, at least 97 airstrikes have been carried out against areas set up to protect Palestinian civilians, killing at least 550 people.

– We have said it so so many times. There is no safe zone in Gaza. No place is safe. No-one is safe. No place is spared, explains Juliette Touma, from the UN refugee agency UNRWA.

The BBC analyzed the Israeli attacks and found that the humanitarian zone, which includes the towns of Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah, has been heavily shelled. More than a million people live here many in makeshift tent camps with limited access to food, water and medical care.

The IDF established the zone in October 2023 with the promise to keep civilians out of danger. But according to the UN and humanitarian organizations, the reality is different.

According to the BBC, more than 550 people have been killed in the 97 attacks documented in the zone although Israel itself has only admitted responsibility for a minority of these. The analysis also shows that attacks have taken place near hospitals and residential complexes.

– We were displaced to Khan Younis because it was designated as a safe zone, but in fact we find nothing here but insecurity. We have been denied the true sense of security, with fear dominating our lives, says Khaled, who was urged by the IDF to move to the area.

Journalists are killed

The Israeli army itself routinely claims that it is only attacking Hamas and that the terrorist group is using the civilian population as human shields and using the humanitarian zone to attack Israeli targets with rockets.

Assessors, however, dismiss these explanations, saying that Israel uses the zone’s “humanitarian” status as a front, and that it is subject to frequent bombardments in the same way as the rest of Gaza.

The UN and human rights groups working in the area note that no “safe zones” exist in Gaza today. Gavin Kelleher of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) stresses that even the areas where refugees have been ordered to seek refuge can be attacked by warships or drones at any time.

More journalists have been killed in Gaza than in any other war and the Israeli military has also been accused of deliberately killing journalists and photographers to prevent any war crimes from being documented.

At the same time, very few journalists are granted Israeli permission to enter Gaza at all, and because reporting on the ground is so limited, it is often very difficult to get a picture of the scale of Israeli attacks.

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US issues sanctions against UN investigator who criticized Israel

The situation in Gaza

Published today 13:41
– By Editorial Staff
Francesca Albanese is the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories since 2022.
4 minute read

The Trump administration has decided to sanction Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, as part of the American campaign to silence critics of Israel’s actions in the ongoing war. This is reported by The Guardian.

In a text message to Al Jazeera, Albanese accuses the US of “mafia style intimidation techniques”.

The US State Department announced on Wednesday that the country is issuing sanctions against the independent official who is tasked with investigating human rights violations in the Palestinian territories. The decision comes after American pressure on the UN to remove Albanese from her position previously failed.

Francesca Albanese, who is a human rights lawyer, has been open with her criticism of what she describes as the “genocide” that Israel is carrying out against Palestinians in Gaza. Both Israel and the US, which provides Israel with military support, have firmly denied these allegations.

International legal scrutiny

Israel faces allegations of genocide at the International Court of Justice and war crimes at the International Criminal Court following the country’s devastating military assault on Gaza. Albanese’s position has also received support from leading genocide scholars and human rights organizations.

In a post on X late Wednesday evening, Albanese wrote that she stands “firmly and convincingly on the side of justice, as I have always done,” without directly mentioning the American sanctions. In a text message to Al Jazeera, she was quoted dismissing the US actions as “mafia style intimidation techniques“.

In recent weeks, Albanese has sent out a series of letters urging other countries to pressure Israel, including through sanctions, to end its deadly bombing of the Gaza Strip. The Italian citizen has also been a strong supporter of the International Criminal Court’s prosecution of Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for war crimes.

Harsh American criticism

Most recently, she issued a report that named several American corporations among the companies helping with what she described as Israel’s occupation and war against Gaza.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio commented on the sanctions on social media:

– Albanese’s campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated. We will always stand by our partners in their right to self-defense.

Albanese has been targeted for criticism by pro-Israeli officials and groups in the US and Middle East. Last week, the US UN mission issued a sharp statement demanding her removal for “years-long pattern of virulent antisemitism and unrelenting anti-Israel bias”.

The statement claimed that Albanese’s allegations that Israel is committing genocide or apartheid are “false and offensive”.

Part of broader campaign

The sanctions represent the culmination of an extensive campaign over nearly six months by the Trump administration to silence criticism of Israel’s handling of the deadly war in Gaza, which is approaching two years. Earlier this year, the Trump administration began arresting and deporting faculty members and students at American universities who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations and other political activities.

Human rights experts have sharply criticized the US sanctions against Albanese. Dylan Williams, vice president for government affairs at the think tank Center for International Policy, described them as “rogue state behavior”, while Amnesty International said that UN Special Rapporteurs must be supported and not sanctioned.

Agnes Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International and former UN Special Rapporteur, stated:

– Governments around the world and all actors who believe in the rule-based order and international law must do everything in their power to mitigate and block the effect of the sanctions against Francesca Albanese and more generally to protect the work and independence of special rapporteurs.

Background to the conflict

Israel’s retaliation campaign after the events of October 7, 2023, has killed more than 57,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which says women and children make up most of the dead but does not specify how many were combatants or civilians. The figure is generally considered to be a significant underestimate.

Nearly 21 months into the conflict that has displaced the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, it is almost impossible for the critically injured to receive the care they need, say doctors and aid workers.

Albanese said in a recent post on X:

We must stop this genocide, whose short-term goal is completing the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, while also profiteering from the killing machine devised to perform it.

No one is safe until everyone is safe.

Francesca Albanese is an Italian jurist and human rights expert who has served as the UN Special Rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories since 2022. She has a background in international law and has worked on issues concerning human rights, humanitarian law and conflict resolution. Albanese is known for her critical reports and analyses of the situation in Gaza and the West Bank, where she highlights the consequences of the Israeli occupation for the civilian population. Her work aims to promote justice, accountability and respect for international law in the region.

Israel wants to relocate entire Gaza population

The situation in Gaza

Published 8 July 2025
– By Editorial Staff
Israel Katz orders the Israeli military to establish a concentrated zone for the population in Gaza.
2 minute read

The Netanyahu government in Israel has announced through Defense Minister Israel Katz that the Israeli military will establish a controlled area at the border with Egypt. The stated goal is to concentrate Gaza’s entire population in the area, which they are calling a “humanitarian city”.

The Israeli military IDF will guard the new area in the city to be built on the ruins of the bombed city of Rafah in southern Gaza, according to the Israeli government’s plans as reported by Israeli newspapers including Haaretz and Jerusalem Post. According to Katz, planning for the construction could begin during the 60-day ceasefire currently being negotiated.

The stated goal is to gather Gaza’s entire population in the limited zone at the border with Egypt. Katz states that the plan is for people entering the area to be thoroughly screened to ensure they are not connected to Hamas, and that once they enter the area, they will not be allowed to leave again. The advantage for them of entering there, officials explain, is that the area will not be attacked by the Israeli military, and basic necessities will be available.

The project is justified by Katz, like Israel’s Gaza policy in general, as aimed at reducing the influence of the Islamist resistance movement Hamas.

International warnings of ethnic cleansing

A large number of countries have long accused Israel of pursuing an ethnic cleansing project in Gaza, and UN Secretary-General António Guterres has also warned that the intention from the Israeli side appears to be to drive out the Palestinian population.

The intention might be for the Palestinians to leave Gaza, for others to occupy it, Guterres stated during the COP16 conference in Colombia in October last year.

– We will do everything possible to help them remain there and to avoid ethnic cleansing that might occur if there is not strong determination from the international community, he continued.

Swedish doctor in Gaza: “A haze of blood”

The situation in Gaza

Published 7 July 2025
– By Editorial Staff
2 minute read

Foreign journalists are not allowed to enter Gaza, but continued reports are coming from healthcare workers about a catastrophic humanitarian situation. Swedish doctor Märit Halmin is one of 300 reportedly working at a field hospital and entered with a UN convoy.

It becomes like a haze of blood, gunshot wounds, explosion injuries, amputations, she says.

I don’t really have words to describe it, I had followed the news reporting before I came here and thought I would be prepared but it’s so terrible, she tells Swedish public radio P1.

When I entered Gaza and was driven here it was almost like a moonscape, there are no buildings. There are just piles of rubble and debris, dust and sand from destroyed concrete. Everything is destroyed, she recounts.

“Bizarre and brutal injuries”

Halmin has previously been deployed in Yemen and Syria, but says the proportions in Gaza are completely different with masses of injured civilians streaming in with very severe injuries.

I can’t even distinguish the individual patients because there are so many coming in with such bizarre and brutal injuries. It becomes like a haze of blood, gunshot wounds, explosion injuries, amputations, she says.

Help exists – but doesn’t get in

The doctor reports that there is a shortage of all types of resources, where the field hospitals have to improvise extensively and assist each other with the equipment they have, and she states that even her healthcare colleagues are severely malnourished.

I think the main problem right now is perhaps not that too little help is being sent but that somehow there’s a silent acceptance that the help doesn’t get in because of the blockade that exists against Gaza.

US approves $510 million weapons sale to Israel

The situation in Gaza

Published 1 July 2025
– By Editorial Staff
Crew aboard USS John C. Stennis prepares to move MK-82/BLU 111 bombs.
1 minute read

The United States has approved a $510 million weapons sale to Israel, including thousands of bomb guidance systems, the Pentagon announces. The deliveries come as Israel faces repeated accusations of committing genocide in Gaza, partially carried out using American bombs.

In a statement, the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) said the sale includes 3,845 Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) guidance systems and additional guidance systems for the MK 82 bomb.

“The United States is committed to the security of Israel”, the DSCA stated, adding that the sale “is vital to US national interests”.

The prime contractor is Boeing, based in St. Charles, Missouri.

The deal comes at a time of increased international scrutiny of US military support for Israel, as civilian casualties in Gaza continue to rise due to Israeli bombing campaigns.

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