CROSSFIREARABIA – With confirmed reports of hundreds of mosques destroyed by the Israeli occupation army in Gaza, a female Israeli soldier poses for a picture inside a severally damaged mosque in the war-torn region.
Israeli soldiers destroying a mosque in Gaza! These individuals, claiming to be the indigenous people of the land, are far from it. Someone should look into where they truly come from—or which country issued their second passport. pic.twitter.com/tt6FUIYOu4
The Israeli army is called the “most moral army” in the world, yet the social media images of soldiers desecrating mosque after mosque, shows that Jewish soldiers as the most uncouth and disrespectful.
But you can’t destroy faith. Gazans are considered as the most religious among the Palestinians. Online images abound websites of people praying and listening to the Imam in ramshackle and half-destroyed mosques.
Israeli occupation warplanes completely destroyed Al-Amin Muhammad Mosque in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza Strip. pic.twitter.com/4tPcWg5y7r
Israel began to target and destroy mosques soon after 7 October 2023 when it waged war on the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli army has flattened 814 of Gaza’s 1,245 mosques and severely damaged another 148 during its intensified bombardment, the Ministry of Religious Affairs in Gaza revealed. It further stated that these represent 79% of mosques in the Gaza Strip.
This is what the interior of the Great Omari Mosque in Gaza City once looked like. Israel bombed the mosque months ago, leaving it in ruins. The rubble of the Great Mosque will forever stand as a witness to Israel's barbarism. pic.twitter.com/h5cC3mHeDB
— Jehad Abusalim جهاد أبو سليم (@JehadAbusalim) August 4, 2024
Some of these mosques go back to centuries and are ancient, like the Great Omari Mosque that go back to the seventh century and named after Omar Ibn Al Khatab, Islam’s second caliph, and destroyed on 8 December, 2023. It represented a true symbol of Islamic architecture, culture and religion. But no more.
The destruction of these mosques are heartbreaking stories; it’s as if Israeli warplanes and missiles aim at eradicating Islam from the heart of the people but this will never be so.
No matter how many mosques you destroy, prayers won't stop.
“What Israeli forces are doing in besieged North Gaza cannot be allowed to continue,” the human rights official said. Read on!
Israel could kill everyone left in Northern Gaza if its assault on the enclave continues, a United Nations relief official warned on Saturday.
U.N. Acting Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Joyce Msuya also called for an end to the Israeli attack.
“What Israeli forces are doing in besieged North Gaza cannot be allowed to continue,” Msuya said.
The Israeli army’s massacre in Beit Lahia, in the northern Gaza Strip, has already claimed a horrifying number of lives. Along with the occupying state, those nations who provide the Israeli army with weapons or keep quiet about its crime of genocide must also be held accountable.
The Euro-Med Monitor field team documented the bombing by Israeli aircraft of a five-storey residential building in Beit Lahia this morning (Tuesday 29 October). Owned by the Nasr family, the building housed approximately 200 displaced civilians, and was totally destroyed over the heads of its residents.
According to one of the survivors of the massacre, the building was completely destroyed by Israeli aircraft at five in the morning. The 200 people living there had been displaced from the Jabalia refugee camp and other neighbourhoods in northern Gaza after their homes and shelters were targeted by Israeli forces, and all of them were civilians with no ties to any militant groups.
Germany's Holocaust guilt cannot be a perpetual green light for the Zionist entity to commit genocide. It is complicit in Gaza Genocide. When will it end?https://t.co/08B4cnb6Qhpic.twitter.com/NXcSGpD8LY
While the man who spoke with Euro-Med Monitor survived after being pushed into a neighbour’s home dozens of metres away by the force of the explosion, his wife and four children were killed. He also suffered injuries all over his body. Dozens of victims remain trapped beneath the debris, he said, but some of the other residents managed to move him to Kamal Adwan Hospital, where he has been waiting for hours to be moved to Al-Awda Hospital for surgery, without success.
According to preliminary reports, the occupation army used a 908-kilogram American MK-84 bomb to target the residential building, crushing it on top of the occupants. The approximately 200 people in the building had sought shelter there following Israel’s illegal evacuation orders and destruction and burning of shelters in the Beit Lahia project, Jabalia, and Jabalia’s camp, and he noted that many victims of today’s attack were crudely recovered by the local population due to the suspension of ambulance and civil defence services in northern Gaza because of repeated Israeli attacks. The bodies of about 93 victims were recovered by the area’s residents, and dozens more are still missing and stuck under the rubble.
Israeli aircraft also conducted a raid on the area around Beit Lahia’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, where the occupation forces arrested the majority of the medical staff during last Friday’s hospital storming, leaving only the director working with the assistance of a single doctor.
In addition to using German mines in the northern Gaza Strip, the Israeli army has regularly used the German “Matador” weapon to bomb and burn homes and kill Palestinians.
According to international law, particularly the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Israel has been committing genocide in the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023, and the United States and Germany have been complicit in this crime by repeatedly sending Israel their weapons to massacre Palestinian civilians in large numbers and demolish their homes.
One of the most repulsive examples of racism and moral and political corruption on a worldwide scale is the disregard displaced by the international community and international justice systems over the course of the past year. The death toll has climbed from dozens to hundreds and then thousands without a single serious position being issued, and with many governments—particularly powerful Western allies of Israel—normalising the daily killings and massacres.
Since civilians do not endanger the lives of occupying forces, they are protected by international humanitarian law if they choose to stay in their homes or neighbourhoods during armed conflicts. According to Euro-Med Monitor’s investigations, the purpose of Israel’s killings and destruction is to eradicate the Palestinian people through massacre and forced relocation, not for any military purpose.
Euro-Med Monitor reiterates that, according to international humanitarian law, civilians who are unable or unwilling to leave a particular area are still entitled to the special protection that the law provides for them as civilians; their presence in any area does not absolve Israel of its obligation to provide and uphold this protection.
The international community and the United Nations must act right away to save hundreds of thousands of people living in the northern Gaza Strip; put an end to Israel’s second consecutive year of genocide across the entire Strip; impose a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel; hold it responsible and punish it for all of its crimes; and take all necessary steps to protect Palestinian civilians in the region.
In a dangerous increase in crimes targeting civilian gathering places, particularly in the northern Gaza Strip, the Israeli occupation army has targeted shelter centres 39 times since the beginning of October. These attacks aim to forcefully displace the Palestinian population from the area, and have killed 188 people and injured hundreds more.
Since the beginning of August 2024, the Israeli army has targeted schools, hospitals, clinics, and shelter halls 65 times, including 39 times in the current month of October, killing 672 Palestinians and injuring over 1,000 more, according to the Euro-Med Monitor field team. Fifty-seven of the targeted locations were located in Gaza City or the northern Gaza Strip, while the remaining eight were in the central part of the Strip.
The Israeli targeting has included shelling, direct shootings, killing forcibly displaced people and their families, or making them leave schools-turned-shelters under fire and/or with orders to relocate. These schools are then burned or otherwise destroyed by Israeli forces in order to render them uninhabitable and stop displaced people from returning to them.
.@EuroMedHR: In less than a month, Israeli army attacks shelter centres 39 times to displace Palestinians and empty Gaza pic.twitter.com/lCSc0YXf71
Israel’s systematic policy of destroying shelters further restricts the options available to residents in terms of places to seek refuge, which helps the country achieve its objectives of destroying and forcibly displacing Palestinians and altering the demographic makeup of the Strip. This is particularly apparent in northern Gaza, where Israeli officials with varying degrees of authority have made it clear they intend to annex and settle.
The most recent Israeli targeting of shelters and ensuing waves of forced displacement in the north have caused dozens of Palestinian families to be dispersed and their members to be separated from one another, which has doubled their psychological suffering, and especially that of the children.
Targeting shelters is a crucial component of Israel’s strategy to continue to weaken the social structures of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip; erode their physical and psychological well-being; and eradicate any communal areas that might, even in small ways, provide social and emotional support.
Additionally, targeting shelters has a negative impact on the likelihood that families and individuals will receive humanitarian aid, because many of these spaces serve as distribution points for charitable organisations. If they are forced to relocate, they might end up in places where there is no access to the already limited amount of humanitarian assistance available in the Strip. In this way, the Israeli targeting of shelters worsens the already-dire humanitarian situation and the suffering of the Palestinian populace in the Gaza Strip.
The Euro-Med Monitor field team reported, on the afternoon of Sunday 27 October, that the Israeli air force bombed the Asmaa School in the Al-Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City. The school-turned-shelter was home to thousands of displaced people, and the bombing killed 11 Palestinians—including four journalists, two of whom were women—and injured dozens more. The Israeli air force had bombed the same school eight days prior, killing eight Palestinians and injuring others.
The Israeli air force had bombed the Shuhada Al-Nuseirat Secondary School for Boys earlier, on Tuesday 24 October. This school was home to thousands of displaced people in the central Gaza Strip’s Nuseirat refugee camp, and the bombing killed 18 Palestinians, including 12 children and three women, and injured 52 more, according to the Euro-Med Monitor field team.
According to a review by the Euro-Med Monitor field team, none of the victims—which include 54-year-old professor Ashraf Yaqoub Al-Jadi, Dean of the Islamic University of Gaza’s Faculty of Nursing—were militants.
At least 10 schools in northern Gaza are currently being evacuated by the Israeli occupation army, which is also setting the majority of them on fire. The evacuation of these schools occurred after the Israeli occupation army sent quadcopters or Palestinian detainees and told those inside to leave and head to checkpoints. Some of these schools were bombed without any prior notice, such as the Jabalia Preparatory School, in which 10 displaced people were killed on 21 October, and the Zaid Bin Haritha School, in which seven displaced people were killed on 22 October.
All nations should fulfill their international obligations by preventing Israel from completing the crime of genocide and other serious crimes in the Gaza Strip; protecting civilians there; making sure Israel abides by international law and the rulings of the International Court of Justice; enforcing effective sanctions against it; and halting all forms of military, financial, and political support and cooperation, including by immediately suspending military aid, export licenses, and arms sales to Israel.
Additionally, all nations who engage in criminal activity alongside Israel, particularly those that offer Israel support or assistance in any way, should be held responsible. This includes aiding Israel and entering into contractual agreements in the areas of military, intelligence, politics, law, finance, and the media, among other areas that could help Israel continue to commit its crimes.
At the international, regional, and local levels, the path of universal jurisdiction must be seriously and cooperatively activated in order to hold the perpetrators of crimes against Palestinian civilians accountable before the national courts of nations that adopt such jurisdiction.
A summary of these attacks, based on Euro-Med Monitor documentation, is provided below:
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