Monday, July 28, 2025

Polaris of Enlightenment

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.

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Expert condemns Israeli air aid to Gaza: “A sham maneuver”

The genocide in Gaza

Published today 19:04
– By Editorial Staff
Johan von Schreeb, a Swedish professor of disaster medicine, believes that the Israeli proposal to allow aid deliveries by air is likely a strategy to ensure that less food gets through.
2 minute read

Israel’s aid shipments by air to Gaza are an ineffective sham maneuver that prevents real aid from reaching those in need. This is the view of Johan von Schreeb, professor of disaster medicine, after the Israeli military, IDF, initiated daily “humanitarian pauses” in the fighting.

The Israeli military has been conducting daily ceasefires since Sunday between 10 a.m. and 8 p.m. in densely populated parts of Gaza, including Al-Mawasi, Deir al-Balah and Gaza City. In connection with the pauses, the IDF has dropped aid supplies from the air, containing flour, sugar and canned goods.

But von Schreeb is critical of the method.

— We know that it is extremely ineffective, it is ten times more expensive than bringing in food by road. In this case, in Gaza where there is infrastructure even though much is destroyed, it is simply poor and likely a strategy to ensure that less food gets in, he says.

Risky distribution

The professor also warns that the airborne aid could end up in the wrong hands or cause additional dangers for the civilian population.

They could end up with those who have Kalashnikovs who can drive away the rest of the civilian population and instead sell the food, says von Schreeb.

According to the expert, the UN system has 6,000 trucks ready in Jordan and Egypt, but the borders to Gaza remain closed. Since the UN agency UNRWA was effectively banned from operating in Israel, the Israeli-American organization Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has taken over food distributions – with deadly consequences. Over 1,000 people are reported to have been killed or died during the organization’s distributions.

Israeli minister: “All of Gaza will be Jewish”

The genocide in Gaza

Published 25 July 2025
– By Editorial Staff
"Thank God, we are erasing this evil. All of Gaza will be Jewish," said Jewish Power representative Amichai Eliyahu recently on an Israeli radio program regarding the starving population in Gaza and the ongoing genocide. Right: The starving children in Gaza where the situation is becoming increasingly desperate.
2 minute read

Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu has drawn strong criticism after statements about Israel not needing to worry about starvation in Gaza. The statement is one in a series from officials within Israel’s far-right government in line with the genocidal ambitions expressed already at the beginning of the Gaza war.

The far-right politician Amichai Eliyahu from the Jewish Power party (Otzma Yehudit) dismissed renewed UN warnings about artificial famine in the besieged enclave on Thursday. In an interview with Radio Kol Barama, he claimed that the Israeli government is “rushing to erase Gaza”.

Thank God, we are erasing this evil. All of Gaza will be Jewish, Eliyahu said according to Israeli news site Ynet.

— We shouldn’t be dealing with hunger in Gaza – let the world take care of them. No nation feeds its enemies. Have we completely lost our minds? Should we care about their evening meal?, he added.

Strong criticism from government leadership

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quickly distanced himself from the statements and pointed out that Eliyahu is not a member of the security cabinet, which decides on warfare.

“This government’s policy is clear and unified. His statements do not represent it”, Netanyahu said.

Israel’s ambassador to the US, Yechiel Leiter, also condemned Eliyahu’s comments and called them “wrong, foolish and completely unrepresentative of Israel’s government and people”. In a post on X, he emphasized that Israel is committed to creating a mechanism to deliver humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza “but not through Hamas”.

UN warns of mass starvation

According to local health authorities, more than 59,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, including at least 113 who died of starvation. World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday that Israel’s “blockade” has brought Gaza to the brink of “mass starvation”.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, has urged Israel to allow access for the 6,000 aid transports currently stalled in Egypt and Jordan.

Israeli officials have in turn accused Hamas and other armed groups of hoarding supplies and attacking civilians at distribution sites.

21 children dead from starvation in Gaza in 72 hours

The genocide in Gaza

Published 22 July 2025
– By Editorial Staff
1 minute read

21 children have died from malnutrition and starvation in Gaza in just the past 72 hours. This was reported by Dr. Mohammed Abu Salmiya, director of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, to the British public broadcaster BBC.

According to Gaza’s health ministry, an additional 15 adults have died from starvation and malnutrition in the past day. This brings the total number of such deaths to 101, of which 80 are children, according to the ministry.

Dr. Abu Salmiya warns that the situation is critical. Around 900,000 children in Gaza are suffering from hunger, and 70,000 of them are in a state of malnutrition. Diabetics and kidney patients are at particularly high risk, according to the doctor.

Acute humanitarian crisis

The organization Save the Children confirms the devastating situation on the ground.

Everyone in Gaza is hungry now, says Rachel Cummings, humanitarian director at Save the Children, to Al Jazeera.

Gaza’s health ministry is under Hamas control, but has in previous conflicts proven to provide death tolls that correspond well with independent assessors’ figures.

Facts about starvation and genocide

Starvation as a method involves deliberately causing or exacerbating famine to destabilize, oppress, or eliminate a group of people. This can occur by blocking access to food, stopping humanitarian aid, or attacking food infrastructure, which directly threatens the survival of civilian populations.

International law, particularly humanitarian law and international law, prohibits the use of starvation as a weapon in armed conflicts. UN Security Council Resolution 2417 recognizes starvation as a war crime when deliberately used as a method of warfare and calls on states and parties to conflict to guarantee the civilian population's right to food. Additionally, the use of starvation is classified as a war crime or crime against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court when the starvation is intentional and directed against a specific group.

Starvation can also be part of genocide when used with the intent to wholly or partially destroy a national, ethnic, religious, or other particular group. By depriving groups of their basic needs and thereby causing death and suffering, this tactic fulfills the criteria for genocide according to international conventions such as the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Over 100 killed in Gaza over the weekend

The situation in Gaza

Published 14 July 2025
– By Editorial Staff
Ruins after bombings in Gaza, archive image.
1 minute read

On Saturday alone, at least 70 people were killed in Gaza and 208 were injured, reports the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

At least 40 more people were killed in new attacks on Sunday, including six children who were killed at a drinking water distribution point, according to a spokesperson for Gaza’s civil defense authority to AFP. Representatives from Al-Awda Hospital confirm that they received ten bodies following an Israeli attack on a water collection point in nearby Nuseirat. Hospital staff estimate that the actual death toll is 129 and that 33 of those killed were queuing for humanitarian aid.

The Israeli military, which has recently intensified its operations in Gaza, has according to Defense Minister Israel Katz received orders to establish a concentration camp that they refer to as a “humanitarian city” in the southern part of Gaza, where they aim to eventually house Gaza’s entire population.

According to health authorities in Hamas-controlled Gaza, the death toll now exceeds 58,000 people.

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