Date: 16 January: Check

Year: 2025: Check

Place: Gaza- Truce announcement/ceasefire agreed: check

Fatalities night of 16 January:

• 21 children killed by Israel in Gaza overnight: check
• 25 women killed by Israel in Gaza overnight: check
• among the 82 people killed in Gaza, by the IDF’s missiles or bombs overnight after ceasefire declared: check

Israel: a murder machine

Israel goes on killing. I would say it’s a murder machine, but that’s letting Israel off too easily.  After 14 months – after killing at least 47,000 — does anyone in the wider world have a good word to say about Israel – its culture, its history or its people? I doubt it; I doubt that will ever happen. 

Some Palestinians tried to rejoice in the ceasefire announcement. 

But little has changed on the ground.  Puddles, polluted water for babies’ formula, one toilet for 4,000 people, lack of heat, barely enough electricity for some to recharge their phones, virtually no safe buildings standing to shelter in, and Israel is allowing entry to only a  trickle of aid trucks with food and some necessities. 

I was just watching Abubaker Abed, a 22-year-old man in Gaza whose dreams of being a sports journalist were cut short after 7 Oct 2023.  He spent time in the UK; his English is excellent.  Today speaking from Deir Al-Balah, Abed said that Palestinians in Gaza are still afraid.  This ceasefire could be  seen as a win and a miracle – to boost the Trump 2.0 regime.  After the dog and pony show (inauguration) next week, it could be Israel returns to killing as many Gazans as possible.  The hospitals are still overfilled with seriously injured and sick patients.  Gaza’s 17 hospitals that are still partially open (and 19 totally closed), have few medications, little clean water, whose medical staff must perform surgery in operating rooms in hallways.  

Israel has also murdered more than 1,000 hospital workers in Gaza since Oct. 2023, abducting and imprisoning thousands more. including doctors and nurses.  Only a week ago the world was fighting to free pediatrician Dr Hussan Abu Safiya, the medical director of the  Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of the few still open. This doctor was so committed to his patients that he refused to leave when the Israelis demanded the hospital be emptied, as it was (with no proof) called a stronghold for Hamas.  Safiya denied any “involvement in terrorist activities, and holding a rank” in Hamas.  Still he’s been taken prisoner by Israel and we can only hope he survives the ordeal.  This on top of the fact that barely three months ago Dr Abu Safiya lost his 15-year-old son Ibrahim to an Israeli drone attack and his mother succumbed recently to a heart attack.

And what about Canada’s ‘official’ Jews? 

CIJA claims to be cautious about a ceasefire but spends most of its website ensuring anything critical of Israel is shut down. 

Simon Wiesenthal Centre? Also shutting down anything against Israel. Not one word about the ceasefire supposed to take place in 4 days. 

B’nai Brith? Nothing about a ceasefire or about what’s going on in Gaza.

Ceasefire starts Sunday

The ceasefire is meant to start on Sunday.  The Israelis will continue their cruel punishment & torture of Palestinians until at least then – if yesterday was any indication.  

What  will happen after Trump’s coronation? If the ceasefire  doesn’t hold, whose fault is that—the US and Israel. 

Noticed:

 A Jewish woman in the swimming pool the other day, wearing a metal dog tag, the type worn by soldiers in the IDF, which says bring the hostages home. 

Photograph at the top: A Palestinian man sits in an armchair outside a destroyed building in Gaza City on November 29, 2023. [credit: Mohammed Hajjar/AP Photo]