Palestinian officials are accusing Israeli forces of carrying out “execution-style” killings in Gaza after the discovery of a mass grave containing at least 30 decomposing bodies. Some of the victims were blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs with zip ties. The bodies were found on the grounds of a school in Beit Lahia. Al Jazeera spoke to one man who helped discover the bodies. Palestinian man: “Inside the schoolyard, we were shocked to find the dead bodies. Those are Palestinian civilians, blindfolded and handcuffed at the back. The dead bodies were kept inside black plastic bags.” The discovery of the mass grave comes as the death toll in Gaza has topped 27,000. At least another 66,000 have been injured. The group Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor is now estimating that more than 25,000 Palestinian children have lost one or both parents in Gaza over the past four months.

More video and eyewitness info on Al Jazeera so far

Also reported on Common Dreams and Middle East Eye.

I haven’t found any reports of any independent investigations yet, hopefully they are underway

  • WaxedWookie@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    8 months ago

    TL:DR: Israel isn’t defending itself by committing a genocide against a population they’ve subjugated.

    There are a series of issues with this…

    • Genocide isn’t an act of defence - it’s an attempt to completely exterminate a group of people, and is the greatest act of aggression a group could possibly commit.

    • The response we’re seeing is in no way proportionate, and causing a completely unacceptable level of civilian casualties (10k+ children alone in response to 1,200 total killed according to Israeli counts).

    • Israel have killed more Palestinians than the total number of Hamas members in existence with zero indication of progress, and no sign of stopping.

    • Israel have maintained Palestine in conditions described by the UN as an open air concentration camp, and have placed severe apartheid restrictions on Palestinians for years.

    • Israel have killed orders of magnitude more Palestinians than Hamas have killed Israelis.

    • Israel funded the rise of Hamas (who were no less violent then) over the secular moderates - as confirmed by both IDF leadership at the time she Arafat. I see no reason for them to do this other than to manufacture pretext for the genocide while maintaining US support.

    • Palestinians seem to have a lot more to “defend themselves” against - between the numbers killed and displaced and the very restrictive living conditions they’re subjected to.

    • Israeli leadership have said pretty plainly and repeatedly that they intend to exterminate Palestinians - if all Palestinians were to lay down arms and submit to the apartheid conditions, movement restrictions, and conditions we’ve seen over the past decade, the well funded nuclear power with modern military simply won’t stop.

    What makes Israel’s actions self-defence while Hamas’s lesser actions are not?