Some Palestine advocates slammed the Biden administration—which has
approved tens of billions of dollars worth of military aid for Israel and provides diplomatic cover for its war—for unconditionally supporting the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"If the slaughter of babies in hospitals and children in their sleep does not shock the conscience of the Biden administration officials supporting the far-right Israeli government's genocide in Gaza, nothing will," Nihad Awad, the national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a
statement Friday.
Warning: The following video contains images of dead children.
"What crime would Israel have to commit that would end the Biden administration's complicity in genocide?" Awad added. "There is apparently no limit to the crimes against humanity that Biden administration officials will support or excuse."
Israel's 385-day assault on Gaza—which is the subject of an International Court of Justice
genocide case—has left tens of thousands of children dead, maimed, missing, or orphaned and hundreds of thousands more forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened. Experts also say the war has wrought the "complete psychological destruction" of Gaza's children.
According to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), Gaza is "the world's most dangerous place to be a child." For the first time, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres this year added Israel to his "list of shame" of countries that kill and harm children during wars and other conflicts.
Overall, nearly 43,000 Palestinians—mostly women and children—have been killed by Israeli bombs and bullets, with more than 100,000 others wounded and at least 10,000 more believed dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed-out homes and other buildings.
Israeli forces also attacked the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza, on Thursday after besieging the facility for days. Eyewitnesses said IDF tanks and bulldozers repeatedly entered the hospital compound and fired on the facility, damaging the intensive care unit with sick children inside and the storage tanks that provide its water and oxygen supplies. Hospital staff and wounded patients were reportedly kidnapped by IDF troops.
According toAl Jazeera, a number of children including babies died in the hospital due to a lack of oxygen.
"All departments of the hospital are under direct shelling," director Dr. Hussam Abu Safia
toldCNN. "Instead of receiving aid, we are receiving tanks."
Kamal Adwan is one of only three minimally functional hospitals in northern Gaza, where Israeli forces have been carrying out an offensive that has left thousands of Palestinians dead or wounded in recent weeks.
On Friday, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
said that WHO officials have "lost touch with the personnel there."
"This development is deeply disturbing given the number of patients being served and people sheltering there," Tedros added.
The IDF said in a statement Friday that its assault on Kamal Adwan Hospital is "based on intelligence information regarding the presence of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure" and claimed it has "facilitated the evacuation of patients from the area while maintaining emergency services."
However, Abu Safia
said Thursday that "we lose at least one person every hour because of the lack of medical supplies and medical staff."
"Our ambulances can't transfer wounded people," he added. "Those who can arrive by themselves to the hospital receive care, but those who don't just die in the streets."
UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said Friday that "children are being medically evacuated from Gaza at a rate of fewer than one child per day."
"If this lethally slow pace continues, it would take more than seven years to evacuate the 2,500 children needing urgent medical care," he continued. "As a result, children in Gaza are dying—not just from the bombs, bullets, and shells that strike them—but because, even when 'miracles happen,' even when the bombs go off and the homes collapse and the casualties mount, but the children survive, they are then prevented from leaving Gaza to receive the urgent care that would save their lives."
"This is not a logistical problem—we have the ability to safely transport these children out of Gaza," Elder added. "It is not a capacity problem—indeed, we were evacuating children at higher numbers just months ago. It is simply a problem that is being completely disregarded."
Fikr Shalltoot, Gaza director at the U.K.-based charity Medical Aid for Palestinians, said in a
statement Friday that "this assault on Kamal Adwan Hospital is yet another atrocity by Israel that is eradicating Palestinian life in Gaza."
"Patients in need of lifesaving care are now left helpless under siege," Shalltoot added. "Healthcare workers, who should be able to provide care with dignity, are now fearing for their lives."
The United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory recently
released a report concluding that "Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza's healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities."
Israel's intensified assault on Gaza comes as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken vowed during a meeting with Arab leaders in London to work with "real urgency" toward a cease-fire.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, who attended the meeting, admonished Blinken: "We look at northern Gaza and we do see ethnic cleansing taking place, and that has got to stop."
Many observers including IDF participants in the war believe that Israel has implemented the so-called "General's Plan," a blueprint for the starvation and forced expulsion of Palestinians from northern Gaza. Hundreds of Israelis including senior government officials recently attended a conference geared toward ethnically cleansing and recolonizing Gaza.
