{"id":263263,"date":"2024-06-03T12:00:52","date_gmt":"2024-06-03T11:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=263263"},"modified":"2024-07-02T08:49:17","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T07:49:17","slug":"israels-tents-massacre-in-rafah-is-a-heinous-war-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/06\/israels-tents-massacre-in-rafah-is-a-heinous-war-crime\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel\u2019s Tents Massacre in Rafah Is a Heinous War Crime"},"content":{"rendered":"
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United Arab Emirates (UAE) Hospital after Israeli aircrafts bombed tents of displaced Palestinians near the UNRWA warehouses in Rafah, Gaza, on 26 May 2024. (Photo: Hani Alshaer\/Anadolu via Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

In a flagrant violation of international norms and humanitarian laws, Israel continues to act with total impunity in Gaza, enjoying Western complicity and emboldened by U.S. unconditional military and diplomatic support.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

27 May 2024 <\/em>– Last night, Israeli forces pounded a tent camp housing displaced people in a designated safe zone in north Rafah, killing at least 45 Palestinians, most of them women and children, and injuring hundreds others.<\/p>\n

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It was one of the most heinous assaults on Palestinian civilians in recent memory. Media reports show that Israel<\/a> blitzed the tent camp with seven massive U.S. bombs, weighting 2,000 pounds each. According to eyewitnesses, the intensive bombing, which targeted Rafah\u2019s Tal al-Sultan area, was a deliberate attack on Palestinian refugees sheltering in tents. The bombarded refugee tents, marked as Block 2371, had been designated by Israel as a \u201csafe area\u201d for civilians.<\/p>\n

Widely circulated footage shows a night of unspeakable horror: bodies burned to ashes, charred and blackened beyond recognition; beheaded children, decapitated and ripped apart by U.S. bombs; parents clutching their dead and burned children, screaming in horror; rescuers pulling people\u2019s charred remains from the burning tents; wounded victims transformed to the hospital with horrific and gruesome injuries.<\/p>\n

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In its barbaric retaliation against the ICJ ruling, Israel has bombarded Rafah with massive intensity and unprecedented brutality.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Rafah\u2019s tents massacre is a horrific war crime carried out by Israel with unprecedented barbarity. Palestinians call it the \u201cTents Holocaust.\u201d<\/p>\n

Citing the Palestine<\/a> Red Crescent Society (PRCS), the Palestinian news agency Wafa<\/em> said the victims included women and children, many of whom were \u201cburned alive<\/u><\/a>\u201d inside their tents. An eyewitness resident who arrived at the Kuwaiti Hospital in Rafah related, \u201cTents were melting and the people\u2019s bodies were also melting.\u201d<\/p>\n

A horrified doctor who witnessed the carnage said: \u201cIn all my years of humanitarian work, I have never witnessed something so barbaric, so atrocious, so inhumane. These images will haunt me forever. And will stain our conscience for eternity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Rafah\u2019s tents massacre comes days after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered<\/a> Israel to halt its military offensive there, and shortly after the International Criminal Court said<\/a> it was applying for arrest warrants for Israeli leaders. In its barbaric retaliation against the ICJ ruling, Israel has bombarded Rafah with massive intensity and unprecedented brutality. Observers estimate that Israel has bombed the refugee town over 100 times since the ruling\u2014a travesty of international justice and a slap in the face to the international court. Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of the United Kingdom\u2019s Labour Party, described<\/a> Israel\u2019s bombing of the Rafah camp as a \u201cmonstrous failure of humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The massacre has sparked a global outcry. International rights groups scrambled to find the words to describe the unfolding horrors in Rafah. The United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) described the images from Rafah as yet another testament that Gaza<\/a> is \u201chell on earth.\u201d Former UNRWA spokesperson Chris Gunness called<\/u><\/a> the massacre \u201cthe crime of crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Doctors Without Borders said it was \u201chorrified\u201d by the assault, which \u201cshows once again that nowhere is safe.\u201d ActionAid humanitarian group says it was \u201coutraged and heartbroken\u201d by the \u201cinhumane, barbaric\u201d assault on the Rafah camp: \u201cThe images coming from our partners of burned bodies are a scar on the face of humanity and the global community, which so far has failed to protect the people of Gaza.\u201d Calling for action against Israel, the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to housing wrote: \u201cAttacking women and children while they cower in their shelters in Rafah is a monstrous atrocity. We need concerted global action to stop Israel\u2019s actions now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Western leaders, meanwhile, have offered their usual bromides. Josef Borrell, the E.U. foreign policy chief, said he was \u201chorrified by news coming out of Rafah on Israeli strikes killing dozens of displaced persons, including small children,\u201d while French President Emanuel Macron said he was \u201coutraged by the Israeli strikes that have killed many displaced persons in Rafah.\u201d Yet it\u2019s not immediately clear whether that \u201coutrage\u201d would lead to European sanctions on Israel.<\/p>\n

Rafah is home to 1.4 million displaced Palestinians, most of whom are women and children sheltering in makeshift tents. The attack on the tent camp in Tal al-Sultan came shortly after Israeli forces bombed shelters housing displaced Palestinians in Gaza, including Jabalia, Nuseirat, and Gaza City, killing at least 160 Palestinians. So far Israel\u2019s genocidal war on Gaza has reaped over 35,000 victims, including over 15,000 children. It has displaced nearly 2 million Palestinians, mostly to Rafah, which has been mercilessly bombarded by Israel.<\/p>\n

In a flagrant violation of international norms and humanitarian laws, Israel continues to act with total impunity in Gaza, enjoying Western complicity, and emboldened by U.S. unconditional military and diplomatic support. Amid global outrage and condemnation, Israeli leaders continue to call for the total annihilation of Gaza, with thousands of Israelis are now taking to Telegram groups to celebrate IDF atrocities with images of burned Palestinian children.<\/p>\n

For over eight months, Palestinians in Gaza have been sharing live videos of their daily executions, pleading with the world to stop the carnage. But the Western political class has remained silent, piping up only to offer platitudes about human rights and international law, while refusing to rein in Israel\u2019s unhinged barbarity, let alone impose sanctions on a genocidal state that is brazenly retaliating against the ICJ ruling by massacring even more Palestinians.<\/p>\n

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Seraj Assi is a Palestinian writer living in Washington D.C. – Full Bio ><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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Go to Original – commondreams.org<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

27 May 2024 – In a flagrant violation of international norms and humanitarian laws, Israel continues to act with total impunity in Gaza, enjoying Western complicity and emboldened by U.S. unconditional military and diplomatic support.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":263269,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[867,532,1854,2898,1199,2242,87,865,1643,1029,1966,1644,2395,88,2414,2416,715,427,1378,3237,3294,124,70,965,1025,886],"class_list":["post-263263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide","tag-anglo-america","tag-colonialism","tag-crimes-against-humanity","tag-ecocide","tag-ethnic-cleansing","tag-famine","tag-gaza","tag-genocide","tag-genocide-convention","tag-hamas","tag-hunger","tag-international-court-of-justice-icj","tag-international-criminal-court-icc","tag-israel","tag-israeli-apartheid","tag-israeli-occupation","tag-massacre","tag-palestine","tag-protests","tag-rafah","tag-students-anti-genocide-gaza","tag-united-nations","tag-usa","tag-war-crimes","tag-west-bank","tag-zionism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263263"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":263270,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263263\/revisions\/263270"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}