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The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain

Israeli war crimes that shock the world

by our Arab Affairs correspondent

Iran vows to avenge the death of one of its top generals amid growing outrage around the world following the news of the Israeli air strikes that killed seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen (WCK) charity and reports of the unspeakable crimes of the Zionist troops uncovered after they withdrew from the Al Shifa hospital after a two-week siege of the medical complex. And last weekend the largest protest demonstrations since the beginning of the brutal attack on the Gaza Strip were held in Israel, demanding early elections to seek a change of government.

The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, has vowed that Iran will “punish” Israel and make the evil regime “regret” its crime of assassinating the country’s military advisors in Syria. Two senior Iranian commanders who were on an advisory mission to Syria as well as five of their accompanying officers, were killed in an Israeli missile attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus on Monday.

The UN Security Council met the following day for an emergency meeting called by the Russians to condemn this flagrant and deadly breach of international diplomatic norms.

The Russians and Chinese, together with most of the representatives on the Security Council, condemned the Israeli attack that could only cause further unrest and chaos in the region. But the representatives of the United States, Britain and France refrained from condemning the Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate.

In Israel tens of thousands of protesters are demanding the resignation of Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government continues to refuse the offer to exchange the remaining hostages held by Hamas for the release of 7,000 Palestinian political prisoners. During the marches, relatives of people held by Hamas denounced Netanyahu for failing to negotiate their release.

In the march held in Jerusalem, the leader of the opposition, Yair Lapid of the Yesh Atid (There is a future) party, told the crowd that Netanyahu believes that the call for early elections would paralyse Israel, when the truth is that it already is. Some 100,000 Israelis took part in the protest, and the fact that the Business Forum, which brings together the 200 largest companies in Israel, granted permission to its workers to attend the marches attracted attention.

Meanwhile more evidence of Israeli army atrocities have been revealed following their retreat from Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital. Dozens of bodies, some of them decomposed, have been found at the complex after the Israeli pullout, which also left behind a vast swathe of destruction. More than 400 people have reportedly Israeli war crimes that shock the world been killed during Israel’s 13-day attack on the hospital. Many of the hospital blocks were torched. All are in ruins.

The Zionists claim that the Palestinian resistance was using the facility to “conduct and promote terrorist activity” but this has been repeatedly denied by Hamas and the other Palestinian militias. Now, the Netanyahu government. under American protection, continues to block UNRWA, the UN relief agency, from bringing food and other aid into northern Gaza, ignores a binding UN Security Council cease-fire resolution adopted on 25th March and continues to stall on cease-fire and prisoner exchange proposals.

But they won’t win. As the PFLP Palestinian resistance movement said in a recent communique: “Despite all forms of killing, destruction, massacres, starvation wars and siege, the Zionist enemy has failed to achieve any of the declared goals of its aggression against the Gaza Strip, and the resistance continues steadfastly to exhaust the Zionist enemy and is waging a battle of attrition against it. The large losses incurred by the Zionist enemy, and the ability of the resistance to direct its strikes even in areas that were invaded and destroyed, indicate that the Zionist enemy is drowning in the quagmire of the Gaza Strip, and that it is far from and unable to achieve any of its goals.”