ON Friday, Israeli forces launched a murderous attack on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza with bombs directed at its market place, which was crammed with civilians desperate to find food, along with two adjacent buildings.
Friday’s attack came after days of Israel intensifying attacks on Nuseirat and other neighbouring refugee camps in central Gaza.
Gaza’s government media office said that the Zionist regime’s forces had directly targeted civilians, including children, during ‘a barbaric and brutal aggression’ against Nuseirat camp that killed at least 210 people and left over 400 injured.’
This air attack was followed by a ground assault by Israeli occupation troops who entered the camp hiding inside vehicles disguised as ‘aid trucks’ or, according to one eye witness, in a vehicle piled up with furniture to make it appear they were Palestinian refugees fleeing to safety.
The entire murderous campaign was launched to ‘free’ Israeli hostages, something that the Israeli regime has come under increasing pressure at home, over its complete failure in eight months of genocidal war in Gaza, to accomplish.
According to Hamas, the massacre succeeded in freeing only four Israeli captives while another unspecified number were killed by Israel’s own troops and bombs.
The four Israelis ‘rescued’ by Israeli troops were duly paraded across the media and presented as justification for 274 Palestinian men, women and children being murdered in just one day in Gaza.
According to an Israeli military statement, the four were taken to hospital where they were found to be in ‘good medical condition’, well fed and healthy. There was no mention by the occupation forces of the Palestinians massacred in the camp.
The humane treatment of captives by Hamas stands in stark contrast to the inhumane treatment of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners arbitrarily locked up and subjected to what the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has reported amounts to torture.
The complicity of the US in helping organise and carry out this latest atrocity is clear. The Israeli military used the US-built pier to facilitate the massacre according to the Cradle online news magazine which said: ‘They (the troops) were then flown out of Gaza via the US-built pier.’
US troops are believed to have helped in preparations at the pier for the Israeli attack while the US news website Axios, citing a Biden administration official, reported that a team of American ‘hostage recovery officials’ stationed in the occupied territories were involved at every stage.
This pier was built on the orders of president Biden under the pretext that it would be used to transfer aid to the Gaza Strip. Prior to the massacre in Nuseirat, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas had warned that this pier would be used not to deliver aid but to deliver arms and troops for the occupation forces – and this is exactly the role it played.
In a statement, Hamas said US reports about Washington’s complicity in the massacre of Palestinians in Nuseirat once again proves that the Biden administration is ‘involved in the war crimes being perpetrated’ in Gaza
The Zionist regime is only able to carry out its genocidal war to drive Palestinians out of Gaza and into Egypt or the sea because of the arms, support and encouragement of US imperialism and its allies in the Western governments.
All Biden’s calls for ‘humanitarian’ pauses, temporary ceasefires and ‘red lines’ that Israel must not cross are just lies to cover up this unswerving support for the genocidal Zionist regime.
Millions of workers and youth are rising up in support of Palestine with tens of thousands demonstrating in London and outside the White House on Saturday demanding an end to arming Israel, and the establishment of the State of Palestine.
This powerful mass movement must demand that the trade union leaders come off the sidelines and take action by calling general strikes to support the Palestinian struggle by bringing down their governments and end the complicity with genocide by replacing them with workers’ governments that will end all support for Israel.
Workers’ governments will support and arm the Palestinian people in going forward to establishing the independent state of Palestine.
This is the way to end the Zionist genocide.
