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The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain

Stop the carnage in Gaza!

by our Arab Affairs correspondent

Horrifying reports of the latest Israeli atrocities have sent shock waves around the globe, prompting world leaders to call for the immediate implementation of a World Court ruling to halt the Zionist onslaught on the last refuge of the Palestinians in Gaza.

People’s China has expressed its “deep concern” over Sunday’s air-strike on a refugee camp in Rafah and has called on Israel to “effectively” implement the International Court of Justice (ICJ) order and cease its military operations. But the Americans confined themselves to mealy-mouthed talk about the “devastating” and “heartbreaking” images of the carnage while condoning the actual Israeli war-crime.

“Israel has a right to go after Hamas, and we understand this strike killed two senior Hamas terrorists who are responsible for attacks against Israeli civilians, but, as we’ve been clear, Israel must take every precaution possible to protect civilians,” said a National Security Council spokesperson in Washington.

The Israelis carried out yet another heinous attack on the Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip on Sunday. In a night-time air-strike on a tent camp in a designated “safe zone” in Rafah at least 70 people were killed Stop the carnage in Gaza! and many more wounded. The Palestine Red Crescent said the dead included women and children, with many burned alive inside their tents. Gaza’s civil defence said the air-strike set off a fire that tore through the displacement centre in north-western Rafah. “We saw charred bodies and dismembered limbs … we also saw cases of amputations, wounded children, women and the elderly,” said a local civil defence officer, Mohammad al-Mughayyir.

Netanyahu says his forces were targeting the two Hamas leaders who died in the bombing. He said the strike on the tents that led to the deaths of scores of Palestinian civilians was a “tragic mistake” that will be investigated by the Israeli authorities. But others say the raid was a reprisal for a Palestinian resistance rocket attack on Tel Aviv and the capture of some Israeli soldiers in the fighting last weekend.

Arab leaders from the Atlantic to the Gulf have called on the international community to intervene immediately while Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said his country would do “everything possible” to hold the “barbaric” head of the regime, Benjamin Netanyahu, to account over the deadly strikes. “We will do everything possible to hold these barbarians and murderers accountable who have nothing to do with humanity.”

And in Israel Aida ToumaSliman, a member of the communist-led Hadash bloc in the Israeli parliament, denounced the Netanyahu government for its “madness and vindictiveness” in the wake of the latest attack on Rafah.

“Dozens killed and wounded in the last hours in Rafah. This time the bombings fell in a dense area of displaced residents that Israel declared a safe area. We were warned that entering Rafah would lead to another heavy humanitarian disaster,” she said. “The clear demands of the International Criminal Court of Justice that Israel stop any attacks that would harm an innocent civilian population is being trampled on,” she added. “This bloody government refuses to obey all orders of the tribunal, and is taking the madness and vindictiveness to a new criminal level.”

In Britain the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has yet to comment but Labour’s leader, Sir Keir Starmer, says he would tell Netanyahu to stop fighting if he were prime minister now, while Labour outcast, Jeremy Corbyn, says the bombing of the Rafah camp was a “monstrous failure of humanity”. The former Labour leader said: “Palestinian children should wake up feeling excited to go to school and play with their friends. Instead, for those murdered in Rafah, their last moments on this earth were filled with unimaginable fear as bombs rained down on their tents.