Drop Site News just published “Hossam Shabat’s Last Article“: “Filed hours before his killing in an Israeli airstrike, journalist Hossam Shabat describes the resumption of Israel’s scorched earth campaign in his hometown of Beit Hanoun.”
Sharif Abdel Kouddous of Drop Site News notes in a prefix to the piece: “Hossam was one of a handful of reporters who remained in northern Gaza through Israel’s genocidal war. … In October, the Israeli military placed Hossam and five other Palestinian journalists on a hit list. … When Israel resumed its scorched earth bombing last week, I messaged again to check in on him. He responded with one word: ‘Death.’” Kouddous’s collegue Jeremy Scahill notes Israel openly admits it assassinated him.
Kouddous now notes: “Israel has now issued forced displacement orders for Jabaliya. The attack is unhinged and relentless.” Israel has been widely condemned as pursuing a goal driving out the Palestinians to take more of their land, including by UN specialists.
Palestine Chronicle reports that less than an hour before his own killing, Shabat “had posted on Facebook about the death” of Mohammed Mansour of Palestine Today, “who was killed in a similar Israeli strike that targeted his apartment in Khan Yunis, in southern Gaza.” This reportedly brought the total number of journalists killed by Israel in Gaza since October 2023 to 208.
Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, an American trauma surgeon volunteering in Gaza, told Antiwar.com that he came close to being hit by an Israeli airstrike that targeted the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis on Sunday night and killed a 16-year-old boy he was treating.
Drop Site News also reports: “Only six days of flour left to distribute in Gaza: UN Israel has blocked all humanitarian and commercial aid to Gaza for about 20 days — longer than the initial siege from October 7–21, 2023.”
Middle East Eye reports: “Save the Children says over 270 children have been killed in a week since Israel resumed its war on Gaza, marking some of ‘the deadliest days for children since the war began.’
“’Bombs falling, hospitals destroyed, children killed [and] the world is silent,’ Rachael Cummings, Save the Children’s humanitarian director in Gaza, said. ‘No aid, no safety, no future.’”
Hamdan Ballal — the Academy Award-winning Palestinian filmmaker who co-directed the documentary No Other Land about the ongoing Israeli ethnic cleansing of Masafer Yatta in the illegally occupied West Bank — was brutally attacked Monday by far-right settlers and then taken away by Israel Defense Forces troops, according to one of the film’s Israeli co-directors.
Available for a limited number of interviews:
JAFAR JAFARI, jijafari@yahoo.com, @MayadeenEnglish
Based in the Washington, D.C. area, Jafari is with Al-Mayadeen, a Beirut-based pan-Arab news channel.