Nizam Mamode, a retired British National Health Service transplant surgeon who worked in Gaza with the British charity, Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), shocked UK MPs when he testified on 12 November about children he operated on describing to him that Israel deliberately targeted them.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor also has documented Israel’s military using small drones (quadcopters) to fire directly at Palestinians.
Mamode told members of the UK Parliament’s International Development Committee that, while working in Nasser Hospital—formerly one of Gaza’s largest hospitals that Israel’s attacks turned non-functional—children recounted that after an Israeli bombardment injured them, quadcopters flew in, hovered above and fired at them.
In an 8 November press release, the UN Human Rights Office reported that close to 70 per cent of casualties in Gaza are children and women, ‘indicating a systematic violation of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law, including distinction and proportionality.’
Israel’s military onslaught on the Palestinian people in Gaza, including their children, is one of the reasons that prompted South Africa to file a g*nocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. In its provisional ruling on 26 January, the ICJ found it ‘plausible’ that Israel has committed acts violating the UN G*nocide Convention and ordered it to do everything in its power to prevent acts of g*nocide in Gaza.
As of 13 November, the Gaza Health Ministry reports Israeli military operations have killed more than 43,000 Palestinians (primarily women and children). However, the British medical journal The Lancet estimated a death toll of at least 186,000 by early July.
To paraphrase South African liberation hero, the late Nelson Mandela (1918-2013), ‘There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way it treats children.’
Video credit: @ukparliament (X)
Sources:
https://www.axios.com/2024/11/08/un-report-70-gaza-dead
https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/10/1156016
https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20240126-ord-01-00-en.pdf
https://www.npr.org/2024/01/26/1227078791/icj-israel-genocide-gaza-palestinians-south-africa
https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/how-israeli-army-besieged-nasser-hospital
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01169-3/fulltext