Post Av8C2mEIf1vOkycKp6 by stephie_hamburg@norden.social
 (DIR) More posts by stephie_hamburg@norden.social
 (DIR) Post #Av8C2mEIf1vOkycKp6 by stephie_hamburg@norden.social
       2025-06-14T18:08:19Z
       
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       »#Rafah Is Gone. Razed to the Ground. And It's Not the Only City Wiped Out by the Israeli Army.On the eve of the war, the Rafah metropolitan area in #Gaza had a population of 275,000. #Jabalya had 65,000 residents. #BeitLahia had 108,000. Today, these cities are little more than ruins. The scale of destruction wrought by #Israel stands out even among the most extreme wartime cases in modern history. « #Genocide #WarCrimeshttps://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-06-12/ty-article-magazine/.premium/rafah-is-gone-razed-to-the-ground-its-not-the-only-city-decimated-by-the-israeli-army/00000197-6506-db73-aff7-7d4ee6bb0000 (Paywall)http://archive.today/Kmd68
       
 (DIR) Post #Av8C2uAL9dVjN0pHlI by stephie_hamburg@norden.social
       2025-06-14T18:09:22Z
       
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       »"In Jabalya, there is no longer a house, a tree, or a single human being," a physician from the northern Gaza Strip who calls himself Dr. Ezzideen wrote on X last December. "It has become a vast wasteland, its residents forcibly displaced, its homes obliterated, its animals killed, and even its trees cut down and left to wither. This image will stand as a testament to one of the darkest and most harrowing periods in history."«
       
 (DIR) Post #Av8C31uKN3SJNfObui by stephie_hamburg@norden.social
       2025-06-14T18:11:16Z
       
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       »In 10/23, a satellite passed over Rafah and photographed the city. The image showed a large city, a dense mosaic of buildings, solar panels, domes of mosques, roads, public squares, farmland and orchards. [Today:] Hardly anything remains. The current image shows a two-dimensional gray surface strewn with rubble. The overwhelming majority of the buildings have been destroyed and leveled. The roads are plowed up. The many greenhouses and orchards have disappeared as though they never existed.«
       
 (DIR) Post #Av8C3A1iBU7EYsucXA by stephie_hamburg@norden.social
       2025-06-14T18:12:00Z
       
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       »At the war's start, Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu didn't rule out Israel using an atomic bomb. Effectively, the proportion of structures that have been eradicated in Rafah and in Jabalya refugee camp is higher than what was destroyed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.«
       
 (DIR) Post #Av8C3I823rvPgnvmUq by stephie_hamburg@norden.social
       2025-06-14T18:12:28Z
       
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       »Indeed, the destruction in Rafah also stands out in comparison with other extreme cases in modern history. It is more widespread and methodical than the damage imposed on Aleppo, Mosul, Sarajevo and Kabul. The extent of devastation recalls the heavy damage sustained by the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut in 2022-2023, though the population of that city was one-quarter that of Rafah.«
       
 (DIR) Post #Av8C3PxgwCPHz39dUO by stephie_hamburg@norden.social
       2025-06-14T18:13:31Z
       
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       »On the eve of the war, the Rafah metropolitan area had a population of 275,000, like that of Haifa. There were 56,000 people living in Jabalya camp, similar to Yavneh. Beit Lahia had 108,000 residents, like Herzliya, and Beit Hanoun had 62,000, like Givatayim.Almost 30,000 people, equivalent to Arad, lived in Abasan al-Kabira, a suburb of Khan Yunis that no longer exists. An adjacent suburb, Bani Suheila, had a population of 46,000, like Carmiel.All are now erased.«
       
 (DIR) Post #Av8C3XFfpjwyaqcazQ by stephie_hamburg@norden.social
       2025-06-14T18:14:40Z
       
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       »In addition to residential structures, the IDF has destroyed hospitals, infrastructure facilities, factories, mosques, churches, markets and commercial centers. The IDF has also devastated 2,300 educational structures of all kinds, and today 501 of the 564 schools in the Strip require rebuilding or extensive repair.«
       
 (DIR) Post #Av8C3eMJPSQ4dSmUoC by stephie_hamburg@norden.social
       2025-06-14T18:15:00Z
       
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       »Of the roads, 81 percent have been wrecked or damaged. A large part of the electrical infrastructure has been demolished, along with water and sewage lines, agricultural structures, and animal pens, chicken coops and fishing areas. According to the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization, the number of egg-laying hens has decreased by 99 percent since 2023, the number of cattle by 94 percent, and the quantity of fish being caught has fallen by 93 percent.«
       
 (DIR) Post #Av8C3mKTm9htM5z93w by stephie_hamburg@norden.social
       2025-06-14T18:16:16Z
       
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       »In the meantime, more than a million people are huddling in the immense tent cities that have sprung up in the Muwasi area on the coast, and in the western section of Gaza City.«»Gazans streamed into the already densely crowded area, to the point where tents are now being erected on the Gaza City's piers, in garbage dumps and on the rubble.«
       
 (DIR) Post #Av8C3uLTyJGMDWW3jk by stephie_hamburg@norden.social
       2025-06-14T18:16:38Z
       
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       »The refugees are living without sewage facilities, without running water, without electricity, and have no way to cook the little aid they receive. And as summer begins, they are now also under assault by mosquitoes. And hunger looms in every corner.«
       
 (DIR) Post #Av8C42X7WvKFbw1SzI by stephie_hamburg@norden.social
       2025-06-14T18:17:32Z
       
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       »Fantasies of eliminating the Strip are omnipresent in Israel. During 20 months of war, there have been tens of thousands of calls in social media to flatten, annihilate and eradicate the Gaza Strip. Members of the security cabinet, MKs and influential journalists repeatedly demand obliteration.«
       
 (DIR) Post #Av8C4Ajp1aEt3e1itc by stephie_hamburg@norden.social
       2025-06-14T18:21:17Z
       
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       »The IDFs obliteration of the Strip can be divided into 5 waves. The first wave took place immediately after Oct7 & was the work of the air force. During the war's first week, the airforce dropped 6,000 bombs in a campaign compared to which the US militarys assault on ISIS in 2017 pales.«»"I can't get to sleep at night if I haven't seen houses collapsing in Gaza," Ch14's Shimon Riklin said Dec23. "What can I do – more, more, more, more houses, more towers, so they have no place to return to."«
       
 (DIR) Post #Av8C4IZ7vERBKn5IKu by stephie_hamburg@norden.social
       2025-06-14T18:22:49Z
       
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       »The second wave of destruction was unleashed at the beginning of 2024, when the IDF carried out an operation to create a one-kilometer-wide buffer zone along the Strip's borders with Israel. Thousands of structures were destroyed then, concurrent with the establishment of the Netzarim Corridor  (the areas that were leveled alone constitute more than 10 percent of the Strip's area). At this stage, bulldozers and explosives replaced the air force as the primary instruments of destruction.«
       
 (DIR) Post #Av8C4QofFLcSvIPofI by stephie_hamburg@norden.social
       2025-06-14T18:23:20Z
       
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       »"The truly surprising thing is the speed with which it all became natural and logical," reservist Yuval Katef wrote of his service in the Netzarim Corridor. "After a few hours, you find that you're trying to force yourself to be impressed by the dimensions of the destruction, and to come out with lines like, 'This is really crazy!,' but the truth is that you get used to it quite quickly. It becomes banal."«
       
 (DIR) Post #Av8C4YXwVOzstkeZiC by stephie_hamburg@norden.social
       2025-06-14T18:24:15Z
       
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       »The third stage in the flattening of the Strip started about a year ago, with the assault on Rafah, at the far south. At that time, the IDF started to broaden and entrench the Philadelphi Corridor, which runs along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. At this stage the army developed a new and efficient method of destruction: unmanned armored personnel carriers dispatched on "kamikaze" missions.«
       
 (DIR) Post #Av8C4gdCRjxJyNAt16 by stephie_hamburg@norden.social
       2025-06-14T18:26:13Z
       
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       »The fourth stage, toward the end of last year, was the devastation the IDF inflicted on the cities of the northern Strip: Beit Lahia, Beit Hanoun & Jabalya refugee camp. This chapter concluded at the end of Dec. when Dr. Abu Safiya, director of KamalAdwanHospital in Beit Lahia, turned himself in to the IDF. The images of Abu Safiya walking toward the soldiers against an apocalyptic backdrop made a deep impression internationally, & made it clear that the IDF was leaving behind heaps of rubble.«
       
 (DIR) Post #Av8C4oMpgTcJxvZvcG by stephie_hamburg@norden.social
       2025-06-14T18:26:50Z
       
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       »On March 18, Israel violated the cease-fire with a night attack that took the lives of about 300 women and children, and two months later the IDF launched Operation Gideon's Chariots. Under a new chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, the sowing of destruction became explicit policy, and was carried out more exhaustively. At this stage, which is still ongoing, private contractors are being used, and paid according to the number of structures they raze.«
       
 (DIR) Post #Av8C4vqrrCnlB6gVu4 by stephie_hamburg@norden.social
       2025-06-14T18:28:46Z
       
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       »We will operate in additional areas and we will destroy all the infrastructure, above & below the ground" Zamir declared.Amit Segal: "for the first time, they are talking about destroying all the infrastructure above the ground." Half a year earlier, following a visit to Jabalya, Segal: "Photographs cannot describe the dimensions of the destruction, from horizon to horizon. In the north of the Strip what remain are mainly slabs of concrete, sand, vast piles of garbage & packs of hungry dogs."«
       
 (DIR) Post #Av8C53279mxPS105uC by stephie_hamburg@norden.social
       2025-06-14T18:30:03Z
       
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       »Netanyahu speaks openly about this: We will push the Gazans south, we will find countries that are willing to take them in, and in the end the majority will agree to leave "of their own volition." "We are destroying more and more houses," the prime minister told the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee last month, according to a report in Maariv. "They will have nowhere to return to."«
       
 (DIR) Post #Av8C5B4XGfeCNqC8n2 by stephie_hamburg@norden.social
       2025-06-14T18:30:58Z
       
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       »The starting gun was fired on February 4, when U.S. President Donald Trump stated in a press conference that, "The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip… We'll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons." From that moment the fantasy became a working plan. «
       
 (DIR) Post #Av8C5J6bOs3PIZDu7c by stephie_hamburg@norden.social
       2025-06-14T18:31:24Z
       
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       »This is how Finance Minister and security cabinet member Bezalel Smotrich put it: "No more raids. We conquer and stay, until the annihilation of Hamas. On the way, we destroy what still remains of the Strip. The IDF is moving population from the areas of combat and is not leaving a single stone unturned. The population will come to the south of the Strip, and from there, with God's help, to third countries. This is a change in the course of history, no less. That's the main thing."«
       
 (DIR) Post #Av8C5R57kFco2Iapvc by stephie_hamburg@norden.social
       2025-06-14T18:32:46Z
       
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       »One reason that some legal experts and historians believe that Israel's actions in Gaza amount to genocide, is the vast scale of destruction. They include the Israeli-American historian Omer Bartov, the Dean's Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University. Bartov maintains that, "this is not a war, that is a false representation."All the signs, he says, show that Israel is acting "to destroy completely Palestinian existence in Gaza and to render the Strip uninhabitable."«
       
 (DIR) Post #Av8C5ZJb8JxLZVQVbE by stephie_hamburg@norden.social
       2025-06-14T18:33:33Z
       
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       »According to Bartov, "If there is deliberate and systematic destruction of hospitals, educational institutions, cultural institutions, religious centers and infrastructure, one can infer from this that these structures are not being targeted because Hamas personnel were hiding in them, but because they want to prevent a group from existing as a group."«
       
 (DIR) Post #Av8C5hNn8c42apRyFM by stephie_hamburg@norden.social
       2025-06-14T18:33:56Z
       
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       »Bartov adds, "It's difficult to find points of comparison for the massive destruction the IDF is wreaking. You have to go back to the destroyed cities of World War II. The dimensions here are inconceivable. Whether the IDF generals understand it or not, the goal is to 'disappear' Palestinian society and its culture and to establish something else in Gaza, with no memory of what was there before."«
       
 (DIR) Post #Av8C5prrags8uPa6EK by stephie_hamburg@norden.social
       2025-06-14T18:34:35Z
       
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       »The historian Dotan Halevy, who has written extensively about the history of Gaza, views the destruction as a continuation of the 1948 Nakba. "The Gaza Strip," he notes, "is the only region along the coastal plain that has preserved a continuous history. Its obliteration now is destroying historical remnants from a period of hundreds of years."The situation of Gaza is singular, Halevy points out, because Israel is leveling it without its residents «
       
 (DIR) Post #Av8C5xUlET96Z4plKa by stephie_hamburg@norden.social
       2025-06-14T18:35:21Z
       
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       »"For three decades, Gaza has been a closed enclave, in which its people are imprisoned. In contrast to German cities in World War II, or to Aleppo in Syria, it's not possible to simply pick up and look for a haven. The consequence is a compressed annihilation experience from which there is no way to escape. The inhabitants of Gaza are locked into the noise of the bombing and are breathing the dust of the rubble."«
       
 (DIR) Post #Av8C65NxtcSn2JiRqi by stephie_hamburg@norden.social
       2025-06-14T18:36:26Z
       
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       »Limor Yehuda thinks it's premature to despair completely of the international system. According to Dr. Yehuda, who heads the Shemesh Center for the Study of a Partnership-Based Peace, under establishment at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, "We are undoubtedly in a situation in which that order is crumbling. All the norms of international law are held in contempt, and the world is doing nothing. On the other hand, we should remember that in Bosnia, too, it took three and a half years.«
       
 (DIR) Post #Av8C6DBqsXWlF46t4y by stephie_hamburg@norden.social
       2025-06-14T18:36:53Z
       
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       »In the end, this accursed war will end, the false illusions will be shattered and we will come back to the starting point: Between the Jordan and the sea there are two peoples, no one is going anywhere, and the choice is to live together or die together. In the meantime,everyone has to ask themselves how they can cease to collaborate with the mechanism of destruction."«
       
 (DIR) Post #Av8C6LQgFI8snN6qIq by stephie_hamburg@norden.social
       2025-06-14T18:37:22Z
       
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       »"We hold an unshakable faith that, one day, justice will rise," wrote Dr. Ezzideen from Gaza. "The world will stand in solemn silence, mourning this genocide, and spend even longer lamenting the demise of justice and the collapse of humanity in our time. On that day, the world will weep, not only for us but for the shattered remnants of its own soul."«