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genocide
‘Waiting to Die’: Gaza Cancer Patients Dying at More Than Double the Pre-War Rate as Israel Blocks Treatment
"I am dying. There isn't a feeling for me to even feel."
Aug 14, 2026
Israel is causing a wave of preventable cancer deaths in Gaza, leaving an estimated 17,000 people with no avenue for treatment.
As Reuters reported on Thursday, Israel has destroyed the only specialized cancer hospital in the strip and is preventing Palestinians from seeking treatment outside the exclave.
The result: Doctors say that cancer patients in Gaza are dying at between double and triple the rate they were before Israel began its genocidal war there. Israel's restrictions on aid entering Gaza have made chemotherapy and other forms of treatment inaccessible.
33-year-old Khuloud Abu Sahmoud, a mother of two with ovarian cancer who spoke with Reuters, has been waiting to exit Gaza for nearly a year to receive treatment.
According to Middle East Eye, she is one of at least 4,000 cancer patients in Gaza who have been issued medical referrals to leave the strip but who have been stuck waiting for final permission from Israeli authorities.
In the meantime, her cancer has metastasized to her lungs and bones.
"I am dying. There isn't a feeling for me to even feel," Sahmoud told Middle East Eye. "Every day my disease progresses."
She said that her fingernails have all fallen out and she has been left "just waiting to die."
"The border crossing for me is the only lifeline. The only vein for me to be saved, to receive treatment abroad," she said. "I haven't taken any treatment for three months. I'm living on painkillers."
She said she made her request to travel in October 2025 after a ceasefire was reached between Israel and Hamas, which was supposed to allow for aid to flow freely into Gaza and for people to leave.
"There has been no response to any appeal so far," Sahmoud said. "We haven't received any calls."
The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the Israeli military authority responsible for administering civilian matters in Gaza, has denied that it is blocking Palestinians from receiving treatment, with a spokesperson stating that permission to travel is "wholly dependent on the receiving country's request.”
But the agency's own medical evacuation procedure requires that every patient leaving Gaza undergoes Israeli security screening and “will not be approved if there are security reasons that prevent their passage.”
Israel has also imposed strict numerical restrictions on the number of people allowed to leave through the Rafah crossing, the main exit point from the strip.
Palestinian health officials said only about 11,000 people in total—not just cancer patients—have been allowed to exit since the crossing reopened in February, an average of about 55-60 people per calendar day. This is fewer than half the number who were expected to leave following the ceasefire.
According to Reuters, "a further 20,000 patients, including 5,000 with cancer, are registered for treatment abroad but not yet permitted to leave."
All of the 36 hospitals and most primary healthcare facilities in Gaza have sustained damage from Israeli attacks, with only around half even partially functioning, according to the World Health Organization. As of the ceasefire, WHO reported that more than 1,700 Palestinian healthcare workers, including doctors, nurses, and paramedics, have been killed.
"Since the genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, among the most severely affected groups by this extermination are oncology and cancer patients," said Mohammed Abu Selmia, the director of Al-Shifa Hospital, which has been repeatedly raided, besieged, and damaged, and has just recently restarted oncology services.
Selmia said this is because of the restrictions on the entry of chemotherapy treatments and Israel's destruction of diagnostic equipment, including MRI facilities.
"This group is suffering immensely," he said. "Recently, we have been recording a significant number of deaths ranging from three to five daily because patients are not receiving the chemotherapy needed to save their lives."
The official death toll from Israel's military campaign in Gaza since October 2023 sits at 73,389, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. But this only includes violent deaths from the war itself.
Independent analyses have suggested that the true death toll is much higher when factoring in those who have perished due to disease and starvation as a result of Israel's attacks on medical facilities, civilian infrastructure, and restrictions on aid.
Another cancer patient, Elham al-Skafi, said, "They stopped giving me chemotherapy because it is not available in Gaza."
"I come in to get nutritional fluids, just so I can stay on my feet, and blood transfusions," she said. "That is what is currently available. This is what I take."
She said she's had a transfer referral for over a year and a half now to leave the country for treatment.
"I am sitting and waiting," she said. "If the crossings were open, I would have left."
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Doctors Without Borders Accuses Israel of 'Deliberate Effort to Make Existence Itself Impossible' in Gaza
"What we are witnessing in Gaza is not a series of isolated shortages, it is a policy of attrition by design."
Aug 13, 2026
The renowned humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders said Wednesday that the Israeli government is still restricting the entry of engine oil and generator parts to the Gaza Strip, imperiling life-saving hospital functions and other essential services in the decimated territory.
Doctors Without Borders, known internationally as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), noted that Gaza's remaining healthcare system relies "almost entirely" on generators, "with most electricity cut by Israeli authorities and much of the electrical infrastructure destroyed." The group said that in some Gaza facilities, its teams barely have sufficient engine oil to last a month and have been forced to "buy engine oil at the local market at exorbitant prices."
Filipe Ribeiro, MSF's head of mission in Palestine, said that "what we are witnessing in Gaza is not a series of isolated shortages, it is a policy of attrition by design."
"For more than two years, we have observed Israel's policies restricting the entry of supplies," said Ribeiro. "These policies do not merely delay aid; they dismantle the very systems people rely on to survive."
Israel's continued restriction of supplies comes as the country's military, which is armed by the United States, keeps up its deadly bombing of the strip despite a purported ceasefire deal that took effect in October 2025. Israeli attacks have killed more than 1,200 people in Gaza since the start of the ceasefire agreement. The Israeli government, headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has rejected a US-backed plan for Hamas disarmament in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
Earlier this week, a group of United Nations experts condemned Israel's recent "strikes on hospitals and shelters, the killing of police officers and UN-contracted staff, attacks on fishers, and abductions and abuses by armed groups reportedly collaborating with the Israeli military, as well as the killing of humanitarian workers, who through their work protecting and promoting fundamental human rights, are human rights defenders."
"These restrictions have become increasingly far-reaching, also preventing the entry of routine items ranging from ointments for skin diseases to rubber seals needed for medical sterilization equipment."
According to MSF, Israel's sustained attacks and obstruction of supplies "extend far beyond hospitals."
"Without engine oil, all transport services could stop, including much-needed water trucks during the peak of summer heat, ambulances, buses transporting medical staff to work, and trucks delivering humanitarian supplies," the group said. "Bakeries and flour mills also rely on generators, meaning food production could also be affected."
MSF characterized Israel's continued obstruction of engine oil and spare generator parts as "one piece of a larger pattern of structural violence imposed by Israeli authorities to intentionally restrict access to vital services and supplies as part of the ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza."
"These restrictions have become increasingly far-reaching, also preventing the entry of routine items ranging from ointments for skin diseases to rubber seals needed for medical sterilization equipment," the group said. "The shortages now impact virtually every aspect of life in Gaza, leaving hospitals and humanitarian organizations without basic supplies."
Ribeiro said in a statement that "the items change, but the logic remains the same: reducing people to conditions in which life becomes untenable, and dignity is systematically stripped away through the denial of the most ordinary, most essential goods."
"This is not bureaucracy," he added. "It is a deliberate effort to make existence itself impossible."
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Michigan Primary: How Standing Up to Israeli Genocide Could Win Democrats Congress in November
What we are observing today is not just a minor shift in national American politics. It is a tectonic realignment.
Aug 05, 2026
At 2 a.m. Michigan time early Wednesday morning, NBC projected that AIPAC's preferred candidate was on her way to look for a new job. US Rep. Haley Stevens' defeat in Michigan's Democratic Senate primary is the last nail in AIPAC's coffin. The once-feared Israel lobby is sinking, along with Israel, like a stone in American public opinion. Despite sixty-to-one spending against Abdul El-Sayed, Stevens couldn't keep her head above water. AIPAC and its Israel-first billionaire funders turned Michigan into the most expensive Democratic Senate primary in American history and lost anyway.
Just think about it for a second: a PAC that backs a conservative candidate who champions tax cuts for billionaires in one congressional district while simultaneously bankrolling a liberal, like Stevens, who wants to tax the wealthy in another is not advancing a coherent American political interest. If the only principle uniting those otherwise incongruent endorsements is unwavering support for Israel, then the PAC is driven not by a domestic ideology or constituency, but by a foreign policy agenda.
Now, after spending millions to elect a Democrat, Stevens, AIPAC is all but certain to pour millions more into backing Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate, in November—not for the sake of Michiganders or Americans, but for Israel. That is the essence of AIPAC: partisan differences are irrelevant so long as the candidate serves Tel Aviv's interests.
The Democratic establishment squandered its remaining credibility kowtowing to AIPAC, the most powerful foreign lobby, widening the chasm between the Democratic base and its leadership. AIPAC funding and endorsements from Democratic leaders like Chuck Schumer and Gretchen Whitmer carried little weight in Democratic primaries.
Ask Rep. Adriano Espaillat of New York. Ask Dan Goldman, also of New York. Ask Diana DeGette, a 15-term Colorado congresswoman who represented Denver since Bill Clinton's first term. All three lost their seats in the same six weeks, and all three— and despite AIPAC backing—lost for the same reason: they stood with Israel, or wouldn't say the word "genocide," while their own voters had moved on without them. In Michigan, the Democratic establishment's endorsements, and its push to have State Senator Mallory McMorrow drop from the race to consolidate the anti-El-Sayed "Democratic" vote, failed on its face. This is further evidence that the party's base and its leadership are living in two different universes when it comes to Israel.
For seven decades, unconditional support for Israel was table stakes in Democratic politics; the safe position that kept Israel-first billionaires and AIPAC's money flowing and primary challengers away. That math has broken. Staying quiet while Gaza starves and burns is now one of the fastest ways for a Democrat to lose an election.
Espaillat had AIPAC's backing when Darializa Avila Chevalier, a former organizer of Columbia University's Gaza encampment, beat him in New York's 13th District. Goldman, who refused throughout his campaign to call Israel's conduct in Gaza a genocide, lost to fellow New Yorker Brad Lander, a Jewish candidate and the city's well known comprtoller who ran explicitly against Goldman's Israel record. Then came DeGette, a Congressional Progressive Caucus stalwart, unseated by 29-year-old Democratic socialist Melat Kiros despite a late injection of AIPAC-linked outside spending trying to save her. Kiros' closing message to voters was blunt: reject “corporate PACs like AIPAC” and stop waiting to end what she called the genocide in Palestine. Voters agreed by nearly ten points.
Haley Stevens who once bragged that Israel comes to her in her dreams—turned nightmare in the primary—attempted to sharpen her language criticizing Benjamin Netanyahu, trying to close a gap against El-Sayed. Even Rahm Emanuel, who served in the Israeli army, a man who built his career as one of Israel's most reliable Democratic defenders and is openly eyeing a 2028 presidential run, stood in Tel Aviv last month and said Netanyahu's government had driven the country into a dead end, questioning America’s unconditional support for Israel.
The state of Maine offers maybe the starkest proof. After the anti-genocide Senate candidate Graham Platner campaign imploded, half a dozen Democrats jumped in to replace him—and every one of them has had to scramble to prove they'll carry his opposition to the Gaza war forward, not walk it back. Troy Jackson, the current nominee, attempted to placate the establishment avoiding Israel and Gaza out of his launch speech entirely; by the next day, under visible pressure, he was calling the war "unconscionable" and pledging he'd never vote for taxpayer-funded military aid to Israel. The hopeful Nirav Shah has had to publicly deny taking AIPAC money and commit to opposing all aid to Israel, offensive or defensive, just to hold onto the coalition Platner built. Even Shenna Bellows, was pressed by reporters and rivals alike to say where she stands on Gaza. None of them could afford to look like the old consensus anymore.
The behind-the-curve Republicans are watching and licking their chops, framing these wins as too far left to win in November. The party is even further behind the Democratic establishment in understanding the shift among American voters. Republicans have always been late to catch up with the reality of change in America—from voting rights to women's rights to LGBTQ+ rights, the GOP has always been a Johnny-come-lately. And the next midterm elections are poised to prove that.
What we are observing today is not just a minor shift in national American politics. It is a tectonic realignment in party politics. It used to be that not groveling to Israel—not making the obligatory photo op wearing yarmulke and tucking a note into the crevices of a wall built under the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, was the political risk. Now it's staying silent, hedging, or clinging to the old line that gets you ousted, and it's grassroots movements doing the ousting, defeating outside PACs or pressure groups.
This happened because two years of televised famine, bombed hospitals, murdered children, and a UN commission calling Israel's conduct genocide changed how American voters see Israel and what they now expect from the leaders who represent them. The politicians who read that shift early, Mamdani, Lander, Avila Chevalier, Kiros, won. The ones who didn't are now—or soon to be— former members of congress.
The lesson for every Democrat still weighing how much daylight to put between themselves, AIPAC, and Israeli apartheid: the voters have already decided. The only question left is whether the Democratic establishment will catch up with the anti-genocide American voters in time to win the majority in both houses this November.
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Gaza Holds Mass Funeral for 112 Palestinians Slaughtered by Israel in 2023
"O nation, why are children getting killed in Gaza? Why are women getting killed in Gaza?" asked a Civil Defense spokesperson at the service. "Why are massacres committed against innocents in Gaza?"
Aug 04, 2026
Palestinians on Tuesday held a mass funeral in the Gaza Strip for more than 100 people killed in a 2023 Israeli attack as the local Ministry of Health's confirmed death toll for Israel's genocidal assault climbed to at least 73,377.
Since Israel launched its war on Gaza after the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack, experts have warned the true toll could be much higher, with an unknown number of remains trapped beneath the ruins of the besieged territory.
Tuesday's funeral in Gaza City was for 112 people, including 40 children, who were among the over 300 killed in a November 22, 2023 Israeli attack on the Sabra neighborhood, in which "warplanes flattened a residential block," according to The Associated Press.
For the funeral, the bodies were wrapped in Palestinian flags, with photos of the dead attached.
As CBS News detailed:
One mourner showered flower petals over the covered bodies of the Hassayna and Abu Sharia clan as women and children watched from atop partly demolished buildings around the earthen square. A banner with the faces of dozens of children served as the backdrop of a speech from the spokesperson of Gaza's Civil Defense.
"O nation, why are children getting killed in Gaza? Why are women getting killed in Gaza?" asked Mahmoud Basal at the service. "Why are massacres committed against innocents in Gaza?"
The words "Stop the genocide in Gaza," in both Arabic and English, had been scrawled on the podium he spoke from.
Mourners also held signs with messages in both languages. One said in English, "Children of Gaza have the right to live."
Gaza's Civil Defense said that while these remains were found in wrecked buildings in the area, as part of a search operation launched nearly two weeks ago that involved 136 hours of "arduous" work, at least 157 others are still missing.
Given the limited equipment in Gaza, despite months of a supposed ceasefire, "the crews were digging with their hands through masses of reinforced concrete," said Mohammed Abu Dan, who supervised the operation, according to Reuters.
"Many bodies disintegrated and evaporated because of the intensity of the explosion," he explained.
After the funeral prayers, one relative, Taysir al-Hassayna, told the AP, "The only crime of these martyrs was that they remained steadfast and resilient in their homes, believing that these homes would protect them."
For those who haven't been found, al-Hassayna added, it's "as if their bodies had evaporated without a trace."
Al Jazeera reported that surviving relatives used the funeral "to renew accusations that Israel committed war crimes in Gaza and demanded international investigations into the attack and the hundreds of bodies still believed to be buried under rubble across the territory."
The International Criminal Court in November 2024 issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, citing alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes, and Israel faces a genocide case led by South Africa at the International Court of Justice.
The latter tribunal has directed Israel to "take effective measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence related to allegations" of violations of the Genocide Convention, but a report published Monday details how Israeli soldiers and civilian contractors are systematically removing potential proof from Gaza.
Specifically, the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said that at least 10 million tons of rubble "have been removed, crushed, or moved from their original sites within the areas under Israel's unlawful military control, which encompass about 66% of the Gaza Strip."
Meanwhile, as Common Dreams reported earlier Tuesday, US President Donald Trump's Board of Peace for Gaza appears to be going back on the disarmament deal it reached last week with Hamas, potentially jeopardizing the entire process—a development that didn't surprise Tariq Kenney-Shawa, the associate director of editorial for the Institute for Middle East Understanding.
"The Board of Peace is just the administrative and fundraising arm of Israel's occupation of Gaza," he said. "It exists to facilitate Gaza's ethnic cleansing and concentration camps in a way that is palatable and profitable for the international community."
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Israel 'Destroying Crucial Evidence of Genocide' in Gaza: Monitor
"The systematic removal of rubble at this pace conceals the evidence of appalling crimes Israel committed in Gaza, especially those related to genocide, such as summary executions and killing unarmed civilians."
Aug 03, 2026
A new report published Monday details how Israeli soldiers and civilian contractors are systematically removing potential proof of genocide from the Gaza Strip, an apparent violation of an order issued by the World Court for Israel to preserve evidence of genocidal acts committed in the Palestinian exclave.
The Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said that Israeli forces and contractors "are conducting a wide and organized operation to process and clear the rubble from neighborhoods and facilities they have destroyed in the Gaza Strip and relocate it from areas under their military control to outside the strip."
"This is occurring without any official record of the quantities removed or independent oversight, and before international and local investigative committees have had the chance to survey, examine, and document the sites," the group noted. "This risks destroying crucial evidence of genocide and the remains of victims still unaccounted for under the rubble."
"The systematic removal of rubble at this pace conceals the evidence of appalling crimes Israel committed in Gaza, especially those related to genocide, such as summary executions and killing unarmed civilians," Euro-Med said. "These sites need careful examination and thorough criminal investigation before any intervention that might change or erase their features."
"The debris scattered throughout the Gaza Strip includes possible locations of unlawful killings and bombings that targeted entire families, as well as sites believed to contain mass graves or bodies buried within destroyed homes, hospitals, shelters, and civilian facilities," the group continued. "These sites hold evidence critical for identifying the weapon, attack sequence, victim and attacker positions, firing ranges, cause and manner of death, as well as fragments, projectiles, spent cartridges, biological traces, and personal belongings."
Euro-Med cited an April report published jointly by the World Bank, United Nations, and European Union, whose authors estimated that around 68 million tons of rubble are spread across Gaza's 141 square miles after nearly 34 months of ongoing, ceasefire-flouting bombing and other attacks that have left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and around 2 million others forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened.
With the carnage of the war on Iran, the world has forgotten what US-UK-EU-backed Israel did to Gaza.
Survivors of the genocide live in a hellscape of rubble and ash, which looks like the aftermath of a nuclear war…
And the world looks away. https://t.co/J8XsgtvFzE pic.twitter.com/NKechLozxR
— Afshin Rattansi (@afshinrattansi) July 18, 2026
"Crushing, mixing, and transporting rubble can erase evidence, location details, and connections within the crime scene," Euro-Med said. "This process also disrupts the chain of custody, potentially making it impossible to trace where evidence was collected or to link it to a particular incident or victim. This damage cannot be reversed by aerial photographs or subsequent testimony, as investigating international crimes also requires tangible evidence that can be examined, compared, and legally verified."
Thousands of Palestinians remain missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of the nearly 200,000 buildings, or over 80% of all structures, that were destroyed or damaged by Israeli attacks. Palestinian victims of Israeli aerial massacres are still being unearthed, with the remains of 112 Gazans—including 40 women, 38 children, and seven people with disabilities—largely exhumed by hand over 136 hours in the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City last week.
At least 10 million tons of rubble "have been removed, crushed, or moved from their original sites within the areas under Israel’s unlawful military control, which encompass about 66% of the Gaza Strip," Euro-Med said.
"Approximately 400 heavy pieces of excavation, demolition, crushing, and transport machinery, operated by Israeli civilian companies under military protection, are active across eastern and southern Gaza," the group added. "They demolish remaining structures, crush rubble from destroyed neighborhoods, and load the debris onto trucks for transportation away from the original sites."
Euro-Med continued:
The debris in the Gaza Strip comprises more than just rubble; it includes private and public property, essential building materials like steel, stone, and concrete that can be recycled and reused, as well as other valuable assets necessary for Palestinians to reconstruct their homes, roads, and infrastructure. It may also contain property documents, official records, and personal belongings that are part of individuals’ and families’ rights and memories.
Removing rubble from the Gaza Strip and commercially exploiting it without the owners’ consent or compensation may, depending on the circumstances and intent of the seizure, constitute unlawful confiscation or pillage. Such acts are prohibited under international humanitarian law, especially Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and the relevant provisions of the Rome Statute.
"These actions are part of a broader pattern that has involved bulldozing sites believed to contain mass graves, storming and damaging hospitals and medical facilities after they were suspected of being sites of grave crimes, ongoing demolition of buildings in military-controlled zones, and targeting Palestinian journalists," the group added.
The International Court of Justice's provisional orders of January and May 2024—which came as the ICJ began weighing a genocide case against Israel filed by South Africa and formally supported by nearly 20 nations—directed Israel to "take effective measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence related to allegations" of violations of the Genocide Convention.
Israel has been accused of violating those ICJ orders and another issued by the Hague-based tribunal in March 2024 ordering Israel to allow desperately needed humanitarian aid into Gaza, whose people were being deliberately starved by the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, according to arrest warrants issued in November 2024 by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Haaretz, Israel's oldest daily newspaper, last year published an investigation detailing how a loosely supervised Israel Defense Forces unit has been operating in Gaza outside normal chains of command and oversight. IDF soldiers and civilians, including settler colonists from the illegally occupied West Bank, used Palestinian civilians as human shields while they demolished homes and other buildings in Gaza.
Israeli soldiers and settlers use bulldozers and other heavy equipment made by Caterpillar, Hyundai, and other manufacturers to demolish buildings and remove rubble, desecrate graves, and "level" or "flatten" Gaza, as numerous Israeli and US officials, including President Donald Trump, have advocated. Caterpillar D-9 bulldozer variants are part of the billions of dollars in annual armed aid the US provides for Israel despite the ally's increasing international isolation over not only what a UN commission of inquiry last year called a genocide in Gaza but also occupation, colonization, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
"States where the implicated companies or machinery manufacturers are based should mandate a halt to any actions that could lead to property demolition, evidence removal, or rubble seizure," Euro-Med said. "They must also preserve all relevant contracts, correspondence, and operational data, and carry out independent investigations into the accountability of their directors and staff."
"Any efforts to remove rubble or rebuild in the Gaza Strip must be led by Palestinians, involving local residents, property owners, and families of the missing," the group added. "These initiatives should ensure the protection of evidence, recovery of remains, clearance of unexploded ordnance, sorting of hazardous materials, local reuse of rubble, preservation of property maps and urban fabric, and prevent reconstruction from being used to cement control or alter [Gaza's] geographic or demographic makeup."
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Amnesty Warns India Risks Complicity in Gaza Genocide by Selling Arms to Israel
“The Indian government must immediately stop authorizing exports of weapons, ammunition, and parts to Israel."
Jul 30, 2026
Continued weapons exports to Israel could make India, members of its far-right government, and the country's arms firms complicit in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, an investigation published Thursday by Amnesty International warned.
Amnesty's report, Made in India: The Supply of Weapons and Ammunition to Israel, documents sustained exports of military components and materials to Israel by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, despite mounting international legal warnings that states must halt arms transfers where there is a substantial risk they could facilitate genocide or other grave violations of international law.
“Our research reveals India’s continuing support to the Israeli military and defense sector despite the genocide in Gaza, which has been broadcast worldwide on an almost daily basis for years,” Amnesty International secretary general Agnès Callamard said in a statement introducing the report.
The investigation analyzed shipment-level trade data between India and Israel to reveal how Indian arms, ammunition, and other military components have been exported to large Israeli companies that supply the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as it wages a US-backed war that Amnesty and many other rights groups, national governments, and experts—including a United Nations commission of inquiry—contend is a genocide.
Amnesty researchers found that the 2,596 shipments of weapons, ammunition, parts, and components sent from India to Israel since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023 include 390,516 small arms parts for military-grade weapons, 564,970 parts of explosive ordnance like drone warheads and artillery shell casings, and 298 components for military vehicles.
"While the Israeli military was inflicting widespread death, destruction and suffering on Palestinians in Gaza, Indian companies continued to profit by supplying components and munitions destined for Israel’s defense sector," Callamard said.
While nowhere near the scale and scope of the tens of billions of dollars in armed aid the US has sent Israel since October 2023 under the Biden and Trump administrations—or even what other countries like Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and France export—India's military shipments to Israel have still exposed New Delhi to charges of complicity in the death or injury of more than 250,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians; the physical annihilation of Gaza; and the forced displacement and engineered starvation of millions of its people by Israel.
"India manufactures and supplies arms transferred to Israel through its ownership and control over key supplier companies," Callamard said. "Not only has India failed to regulate arms exports to Israel by private companies in line with international law and standards; it has also deepened its defense partnership with Israel."
“In light of the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures orders recognizing a plausible risk of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, the Indian authorities cannot credibly argue that they did not know that continuing to authorize and facilitate arms transfers to Israel carries a substantial risk of contributing to serious violations of international law," she added.
The ICJ is currently weighing a genocide case filed by South Africa against Israel, and has issued a series of provisional orders to prevent genocidal acts that Israel is accused of ignoring.
While India formally recognized Israel in 1950, for decades New Delhi maintained limited relations, partly due to its support for the Palestinian cause, leadership in the Non-Aligned Movement, and domestic political considerations. Full diplomatic relations weren't established until 1992.
Since then—and especially since the rise of Modi and the Hindu nationalist BJP—bilateral ties have expanded rapidly. Israel has become one of India's largest arms suppliers, selling radar systems, drones, missiles, surveillance equipment, and air defense technology. Joint military research and production have increased, as have public security, intelligence sharing, and other efforts against what both countries call terrorism committed by people resisting Israel's illegal occupation in Palestine and Indian repression in the parts of Jammu and Kashmir that New Delhi controls.
Modi and Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza—have also forged close personal relations. Both leaders are right-wing nationalists who utilize religious supremacism to exclude or marginalize Muslims, and both have been accused of increasing authoritarianism, just like their common ally, US President Donald Trump. Protests against Israel's Gaza onslaught have been violently suppressed in both countries.
Prominent left-wing Indians have long condemned their government's ties with Israel.
“At a time when the ceasefire is being used as an excuse to bomb and vaporize Palestinians and occupy Gaza, the Indian government is choosing to stand with genocidal Israel and its imperialist masters like America and is working overtime to benefit the corporations from the occupation of Palestine," Indian People in Solidarity With Palestine and the India chapter of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement said earlier this year in a joint statement coinciding with a Modi's visit to Israel.
Famed Indian author Arundhati Roy warned two years ago that if India did not stop arming Israel, “it will forever be complicit in aiding and abetting a genocide that is being telecast live for the world to watch.”
In her statement Tuesday, Callamard said that “the Indian government must immediately stop authorizing exports of weapons, ammunition, and parts to Israel."
"It must also ensure that companies operating under its jurisdiction do not contribute to crimes under international law," she added. "All companies have a responsibility to respect human rights throughout their global operations, which includes taking proactive and robust measures early on to ensure that their products are not involved in serious violations of international law."
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'This Is Not a Ceasefire,' Doctors Without Borders Says of Gaza, 'It Is a Continuation of the Genocide'
"A ceasefire should ensure that hostilities are paused, weapons are silenced, and that people are safe from strikes across the strip."
Jul 28, 2026
Nearly 10 months into a "ceasefire" in the Gaza Strip, as Israel on Tuesday killed at least one Palestinian man with an airstrike on the Nuseirat refugee camp, Doctors Without Borders declared that "the wounds of war are not only unhealed—they are still being inflicted."
"This is not a ceasefire," said the medical charity, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), in a statement. "It is a continuation of the genocide, calibrated to be violent enough to keep Palestinians suffering every day, yet silent enough to avoid stirring international outrage."
Israeli forces have killed more than 73,300 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded over 174,009 since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel—with global experts warning the true toll is likely far higher. Local authorities have documented at least 1,200 deaths and 3,900 injuries since the ceasefire was agreed to over nine months ago.
Experts with the United Nations and others around the world have denounced the Israeli assault and blockade as a genocide, and South Africa is leading a related case at the International Court of Justice. The International Criminal Court has also issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, over the mass slaughter.
Nearly all of Gaza's roughly 2 million survivors have been forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened. MSF said that "the destruction of homes has not stopped with the announcement of the ceasefire. Sudden and arbitrary orders for people to flee their homes and shelters continue to be used as a tool of psychological warfare by Israeli forces."
Rajaa Jendiya, who was widowed in the "flour massacres," is living in a tent at a school-turned-displacement camp with her children. She told Middle East Eye that she often takes them to the hospital because of illnesses.
"Inside and around the school, you often see sewage water overflowing, while rubbish accumulates, attracting flies and insects," Jendiya said. "These conditions become even worse with the heat, and many times my children have developed skin diseases."
In such makeshift shelters across Gaza, "scabies, respiratory infections, rat bites, and other diseases are rife," according to MSF.
Accessing healthcare has also become difficult in the coastal strip, as Israel has killed and detained Palestinian medical providers, and bombed civilian infrastructure such as hospitals, including in the months since the ceasefire deal was reached.
As MSF detailed Tuesday:
On July 16, an Israeli strike near an MSF clinic in Al-Mawasi sent four injured people to our teams. The following day, two apartment buildings housing our staff in Gaza City were struck without warning, trapping families inside as explosions shattered windows. In one building, rubble and bodies crashed into the lower-floor apartment of an MSF staff member.
The same day, MSF teams in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, treated 12 people—seven of whom were children—who were injured after Israeli forces struck a funeral in Al-Nuseirat. In total, this strike killed eight people and injured 20. Among those killed was the 21-year-old son of an MSF staff member. Our colleague got the news while working in another emergency room.
"These were not isolated incidents," the organization stressed, "but merely a snapshot of 48 hours in Gaza."
Israel has also limited the flow of food and medicine into the war-torn territory. Calling out the country for using humanitarian assistance "as an instrument of oppression," MSF emphasized that "the Israeli state has an obligation under international law to ensure Palestinians in Gaza have access to aid, regardless of political negotiations, military agreements, or conduct of hostilities."
Since October, when the Israel Defense Forces controlled about half of Gaza, the "yellow line" indicating IDF occupation has kept shifting, to push Palestinians into "an ever-shrinking area," MSF explained. "Today, almost 2 million Palestinians are confined to approximately 30% of the strip."
After speaking with residents in Deir al-Balah, Khan Younis, Rafah, and Gaza City's Zeitoun, Tuffah, and Shejaia neighborhoods, Reuters reported Tuesday that "Israeli forces have advanced the yellow block markers during the past 10 days, triggering new waves of displacement in areas already devastated by months of conflict."
While loading bags and mattresses onto a truck in Zeitoun, Assem Dawla told the news agency: "The whole war is displacement, displacement. You can't stay anywhere without [Israel] telling you, 'Get out of here, we want to come in.'"
Staying near the yellow line comes with risks. MSF said that "just this week, one mother told our teams that her 14-year-old son, who has Down syndrome, was shot five times by Israeli snipers near the yellow line while he was playing near his home."
"A ceasefire should ensure that hostilities are paused, weapons are silenced, and that people are safe from strikes across the strip," the group asserted. "Using it as a weapon of war and reinforcing the confinement to a fraction of Gaza cannot be justified."
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'Stop All Military Aid': Sanders Condemns US Complicity in Israel's Decimation of Gaza
"We have funneled tens of billions of dollars in military aid to an Israeli government that has consistently violated international law and whose leader is a war criminal."
Jul 27, 2026
US Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday decried the ceaseless and horrific suffering that the Israeli military has inflicted on the population of the Gaza Strip with the assistance of American weapons, complicity that the Vermont senator called "shameful" and illegal under international law.
"We have funneled tens of billions of dollars in military aid to an Israeli government that has consistently violated international law and whose leader is a war criminal," wrote Sanders (I-Vt.), referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a fugitive from the International Criminal Court who is expected to travel to the US this week. "Enough is enough! Congress must listen to the American people. NO MORE US MILITARY AID TO ISRAEL."
Sanders, who has repeatedly tried to block Trump administration arms sales to Israel, noted that the Israeli military's genocidal assault on Gaza has continued during the so-called ceasefire agreement enacted last year, with Israeli forces aggressively extending their reach into the occupied Palestinian territory.
The Associated Press reported last week that "the Israeli military is quietly but quickly building a giant earthen barrier separating the over 50% of the Gaza Strip it controls from the rest of the territory, according to satellite imagery, further entrenching the division of the tiny Palestinian enclave."
"More than 23 kilometers (14 miles) have been constructed in recent months, running through Palestinian communities demolished by the military," AP observed. "That is equivalent to more than half the length of the coastal strip, which is some 40 kilometers (25 miles) long and 11 kilometers (7 miles) wide, and home to over 2 million Palestinians."
Sanders noted in his statement on Sunday that Israel "now controls an estimated 70% of Gaza, well beyond what they agreed to, and has built dozens of military outposts inside Gaza since the 'ceasefire' began."
"In the nine months since the 'ceasefire' was announced, Israel has killed at least 1,150 Palestinians, including a family of six last week," the senator wrote. "Now, as if to remove any doubt about their intentions, senior leaders of the Netanyahu government are moving to make the occupation permanent."
"The good news is that the American people are catching on," Sanders added. "More and more Americans—Democrats, Republicans and independents—are demanding that we stop all military aid to Israel and use our considerable leverage to end the suffering of the Palestinian people."
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Official Reports 'Unprecedented' Rise in Gaza Miscarriages Amid Israeli Genocide
One US author called the staggering surge a "reproductive genocide that Western feminists can't be allowed to ignore."
Jul 21, 2026
A senior medical official in the Gaza Strip sounded the alarm on Tuesday over a dramatic rise in miscarriages in the Palestinian exclave, with nearly 4,000 cases reported during the first half of 2026 amid Israel's ongoing genocide.
Gaza Medical Relief Director Bassam Zaqout said that 3,958 miscarriages were recorded in Gaza during the first half of this year—an increase the doctor called "unprecedented," and a serious risk to the health of pregnant women and their unborn fetuses.
Zaqout cited the soaring miscarriage rate to factors in Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza, including the destruction of the strip's infrastructure, unsanitary living conditions in camps for forcibly displaced Palestinians—where numerous babies have died of hypothermia—lack of hot water and hygiene supplies, and relentless terror caused by Israel Defense Forces bombing.
The Gaza Health Ministry documented 921 miscarriages and 2,004 live births in April. This staggering ratio—460 miscarriages for every 1,000 live births—is more than double that in neighboring nations Israel and Egypt.
Live births have also dropped dramatically in Gaza this year, from 5,210 in January, to 3,433 in February, 3,233 in March, 2,004 in April, and just 1,701 in May 2026, according to the ministry.
Last month, the Gaza Center for Human Rights said that the alarming rise in miscarriages is due to the systematic destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system, repeated attacks on hospitals, and widespread deprivation of food, medicine, and essential medical services amid 33 months of what United Nations experts and others have described as a genocide.
The Gaza Center for Human Rights said the following factors are the most significant drivers of the miscarriage crisis:
- The widespread destruction of hospitals, primary healthcare centers, maternity wards, and fertility clinics;
- Repeated attacks on medical personnel, including the killing, detention, and targeting of healthcare workers;
- Mass malnutrition caused by Israel's siege;
- The collapse of maternal and child healthcare services; and
- Restrictions on the entry of essential medicines and medical supplies needed by pregnant women and newborns.
The center also noted that Article II of the Genocide Convention—the legal basis for the South Africa-led genocide case against Israel currently before the International Court of Justice—includes “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group” in its definition of the crime.
United Nations officials and other experts have accused Israel of “systematically” using reproductive, sexual, and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinians in Gaza and committing “genocidal acts” by deliberately destroying reproductive and healthcare facilities in the strip.
There has also been a documented surge in birth defects among Gaza newborns. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, congenital anomalies doubled in 2025 compared with 2022.
Successive medical warnings of a long-term health catastrophe in the Gaza Strip, with a notable increase in fetal deformities and miscarriages resulting from the harsh conditions of war. pic.twitter.com/T2rN6XQec6
— Eye on Palestine (@EyeonPalestine) June 25, 2026
Experts attribute the increase to many of the same factors driving miscarriages, pointing to contaminated water and widespread malnutrition, including the former famine that killed at least hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza, many of them children and infants.
Zaqout warned that Gaza’s health crisis is worsening as severe shortages of medicines, equipment, diagnostic tools, and laboratory supplies persist amid the strip's heavily damaged healthcare infrastructure and ongoing siege. He also noted the epidemics of diseases such as chickenpox, waterborne illnesses, and respiratory infections.
Numerous Palestinian women have lost their pregnancies due to direct acute trauma inflicted by Israeli bombs and bullets, which have often also killed would-be mothers. Israeli invaders have also ordered the evacuation of Gaza's hospitals, forcing staff to leave prematurely born babies to die and decompose in incubators.
A United Nations commission of inquiry reported last month that approximately 30% of the more than 73,000 Palestinians killed during Israel's 33-month war on Gaza were children—many of whom were deliberately targeted. Israeli forces have killed more than 21,500 Gazan children, including 1,022 babies, since the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack, according to the Gaza Government Media Office.
The United Nations Children's Fund has called Gaza "the most dangerous place in the world to be a child."
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'Nowhere Is Safe': Israel Kills Gaza Families and Bombs Hospital Despite Ceasefire
"I don't feel like there is a ceasefire at all," said a man who witnessed an Israeli missile attack on a hospital.
Jul 21, 2026
Palestinian officials said an Israel Defense Forces drone strike burned a family of six alive in their Gaza City home on Tuesday, a bombing that followed the massacre of another Palestinian family over the weekend and other attacks—including one on a hospital—as the Israeli genocide continues amid a nominal ceasefire.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said that rescue workers initially recovered the charred bodies of a mother, later identified as Salsabeel el-Masri, and her four children from their home in the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City. Husband and father Firas el-Masri was later confirmed killed in the same strike.
The couple's three daughters and son—Faryal, Salma, Amira, and Naeem—ranged in age from 6 to 13.
(Photo by el-Masri family/X)
At least some members of the family—who were sleeping when their home was bombed—were apparently not killed by the blast.
"They were all burned so much that our crews couldn't reach them," said Palestinian Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Basal. "They were screaming and begging us to get them before they were martyred, but all attempts failed."
Video recordings of the airstrike's aftermath show first responders desperately trying to extinguish the blaze caused by the attack and retrieving the burnt victims' bodies.
Ahmed el-Masri told the Emirati newspaper The National that his brother's "entire family was wiped out from the civil registry."
"Martyred child Ameera Al-Masri, a charred corpse"
Today, from Gaza City, Israel has wiped out the Al-Masri family in a targeted airstrike on their flat. pic.twitter.com/XmLL3Rde0M
— Abubaker Abed (@AbubakerAbedW) July 21, 2026
The el-Masri family is one of approximately 2,700 erased from the registry since Israel launched its war on Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, according to an Al Jazeera analysis published in January.
The Israel Defense Forces confirmed the bombing, claiming the strike was targeting a Hamas member. The IDF dramatically loosened its rules of engagement following the October 7 attack, effectively allowing an unlimited number of civilians to be killed when targeting a single Hamas member, no matter how low-ranking.
Reuters reported at least six more Palestinians were killed by Israeli strikes later on Tuesday, including one targeting a vehicle in the central Gaza Strip.
On Monday, an IDF missile attack on the al-Yemen al-Saeed Hospital in northern Gaza's Jabalia refugee camp killed at least two people and wounded 16 others, including women and children.
“The children were having fun and playing football, and suddenly they started screaming,” eyewitness Youssef Akasha told Drop Site News contributor Mohamed Ahmed. “We found many children lying on the ground, women screaming, and young men running to rescue the wounded."
Graphic video footage shows children, including infants, being treated for shrapnel embedded in their bodies.
Israel's attack on the el-Masri family followed a Saturday IDF airstrike on the home of the Nasman family in the al-Nasser neighborhood of Gaza City that killed five people. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Adham Nasman, 42; his wife, Marwa, 40; and three of their children—Arwa, 8, Ibrahim, 16, and Yahya, 18—were killed, and that Adham was apparently the intended target.
The couple's 13-year-old son, also named Adham, was not home at the time of the strike. Video footage published by photojournalist Nahed Hajjaj shows the grieving boy beside the bodies of his slain family.
Ayham Nasman, the sole survivor of his immediate family, returned to find his father, mother, and three siblings killed after an Israeli strike hit their residential apartment in Gaza's Al-Nasr neighborhood.
Ayham survived because he was not inside the apartment when it was… pic.twitter.com/86Co3JlI4r
— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) July 19, 2026
In another massacre on Saturday, an Israeli drone bombed a funeral in the Nuseirat refugee camp for a man who was allegedly a member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, who had been killed earlier the same day in another IDF strike. Eight people were killed and 20 others wounded in the second attack, according to Palestinian, Israeli, and international media reports.
Israel's US-backed assault on Gaza has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing since October 2023 and around 2 million people forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened. Over 21,500 children—1,022 of them babies—are among the more than 73,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces during the war that scholars, jurists, human rights groups, a panel of United Nations experts, and others say is a genocide.
Israel is facing a genocide case filed by South Africa at the International Court of Justice and supported by nearly 20 nations, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant—his former defense minister who ordered the "complete siege" on Gaza that fueled famine and disease—are wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder and forced starvation.
The IDF's continued attacks come despite a US-backed ceasefire that went into effect last October. Since then, more than 1,160 Palestinians—most of them civilians—have been killed and over 3,750 others wounded by Israeli forces, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
“Nine months after the announcement of a ceasefire, still nowhere is safe for Palestinians in Gaza,” UN human rights spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday. "The killing of civilians in these attacks raises concerns of continuing violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and other possible atrocity crimes in Gaza. Under international law, deliberately attacking civilians is a war crime."
Akasha, who witnessed the Jabalia hospital bombing, told Drop Site News, “I don’t feel like there is a ceasefire at all."
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