Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor - October 7, 2024
De-Gaza: A Year of Israel’s Genocide and the Collapse of World Order
By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor
Palestinian Territory – Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has released a comprehensive report marking one year since Israel launched its genocidal campaign against civilians in the Gaza Strip on 7 October 2023. During this period, Israel has committed grave war crimes, with the explicit complicity of the international community.
Titled De-Gaza: A Year of Israel’s Genocide and the Collapse of World Order, the report details the most prominent crimes committed over the past 12 months, thoroughly documented by Euro-Med field teams. It traces the clear elements of genocide perpetrated by the Israeli army, explores the legal frameworks defining the crime of genocide, and scrutinises both the context and ongoing circumstances. The report also addresses the international judiciary’s response, and, significantly, the global community’s complicit role in allowing the genocide to continue. 
The report sheds light on the appalling conditions and systematic atrocities Israel has inflicted upon the occupied Palestinian territory, with a particular focus on the Gaza Strip. These long-standing crimes include the illegal blockade, the deliberate isolation of Gaza from the rest of the Palestinian territory and the world, the systematic deprivation of basic human rights to the Strip’s residents, and the deliberate destruction of essential services.
Since the start of the genocide in Gaza, more than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army, including around 42,000 recorded by the Gaza Ministry of Health, the majority being women and children. In addition, approximately 100,000 have been injured, with thousands of bodies still lying under the rubble and in the streets, unreachable by rescue and medical teams.
An estimated 10 per cent of Gaza’s population has been killed, injured, reported missing, or detained as a result of Israeli military assaults. Of the 50,292 Palestinians killed—including those still buried under the debris—33 per cent were women, and 21 per cent were children. Thousands more have been forcibly detained, with 3,600 still languishing in various Israeli prisons and detention centres.
Around 3,500 families have suffered multiple losses since October 2023. Of these, 365 families have lost more than ten members, while over 2,750 families have lost at least three.
The report details the systematic acts of genocide committed in Gaza, such as the targeted killing of civilians in homes, shelters, displacement camps, and humanitarian-declared zones. Civilians were also killed by military vehicles and tanks, in field executions, through drone strikes, in crowded markets, and even while waiting for aid at relief trucks.
The report notes the Israeli military’s starvation tactics, the deliberate killing of prisoners and detainees, and the assassination of humanitarian workers, qualified professionals, and Palestinian elites.
The Israeli army employs explicit methods designed to inflict severe physical and psychological trauma on the population. These include launching thousands of systematic military assaults on civilians, dramatically increasing deaths among people of reproductive age, separating families, targeting the healthcare system, and imposing brutal living conditions marked by starvation and malnutrition.
The obstruction of humanitarian aid further exacerbates these atrocities, creating life-threatening situations for thousands.
The root cause of this persecution—the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory since 1967—has created conditions for the ongoing genocide, as confirmed by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its advisory opinion of 19 July 2024, on the legal consequences arising from Israeli policies and practices in the occupied Palestinian territory.
Both the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip are internationally recognised as Palestinian territories that were occupied in 1967.
Up until 2005, the Israeli occupation army maintained internal and external control over Gaza by stationing military forces within and outside the Strip, establishing settlements on its land, a situation still seen in the West Bank today.
In 2005, Israel declared a unilateral “disengagement,” evacuating its settlers from Gaza and withdrawing its military forces. However, despite this declaration, Israel continued to exercise control over Gaza, maintaining real authority over critical aspects of governance. The ICJ upheld this position in a recent advisory opinion, reflecting the near-universal international consensus on Israel’s continued occupation.
Even after its military withdrawal, Israel retained control over the essential governing elements of Gaza, including its population registry, borders (land, sea, and air), and the regulation of movement for both people and goods. Israel also continued to collect taxes on imports and exports and maintained control over the buffer zone.
Following the 7 October 2023 attack, Israel declared a state of war, with its President, Prime Minister, and other political and military leaders at the forefront. The declared aim was to eliminate Hamas, secure the release of hostages, and restore security. Thus began Operation Iron Swords, a brutal military offensive that intensified the suffering of Gaza’s civilians.
Euro-Med Monitor concluded with a set of recommendations after a year of genocide in Gaza, emphasising that all states, both individually and collectively, are still obligated to work towards stopping the ongoing genocide by all available means. Preventing and punishing this crime is an international legal obligation incumbent upon all states without exception, and it is an obligation of absolute authority towards all.
Euro-Med Monitor calls for the imposition of a total arms embargo on Israel, the termination of all licences and agreements related to arms imports and exports (including dual-use materials and technology that could be used against Palestinians), and an end to all military and intelligence cooperation.
In addition to imposing travel restrictions and freezing Israeli government assets, Euro-Med Monitor calls for political and economic sanctions on Israel and its accomplice states. These measures are intended to pressure the responsible parties into upholding international law, ensuring non-recurrence of crimes against Palestinians, and compensating the victims of these atrocities.
The organisation further calls for the halting all forms of support to Israel in connection with its genocide and other crimes against Palestinians. This includes withholding investments, cancelling or suspending political, diplomatic, economic, commercial, and academic ties, and curtailing support from the media, legal, and other sectors that might contribute to the continuation of these crimes.
Key measures include ensuring the Israeli occupation army’s full withdrawal from Gaza, dismantling all military installations, barricades, and checkpoints, ending the imposed military and geographical divisions, restoring the Strip’s geographical unity, and guaranteeing the safe and swift return of forcibly displaced individuals to their homes. Furthermore, the recommendations call for the protection of freedom of movement, travel, and access for all citizens of Gaza.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor is a Geneva-based independent organization with regional offices across the MENA region and Europe
Countercurrent – October 7, 2024
Reflections on October 7
by Richard Falk
A commentary on October 7 stimulated by an interview with an independent Turkish journalist, Naman Bakac
Q: how do you briefly evaluate the last year regarding the October 7th operation in terms of HAMAS, Palestine and Israel?
Response: For the several months after October 7, Israel’s mastery of public discourse promoted an understanding that allowed Israel to carry out the early phases of its genocidal assault on Gaza with relatively little diplomatic friction in the West but growing discontent among progressive sectors of civil society. Throughout this early period the mainstream media relied on an Israeli optic to promote a one-dimensional misleading appreciation of October 7 as an unprovoked terrorist attack by Hamas terrorists on innocent Israeli civilians accompanied by barbaric atrocities. The atrocity dimension of the Hamas attack was gradually scaled back but without eroding governmental support for Israel in the West led by the US, but with the backing of UK, France, Germany, and most other Western states.
What was missing in this phase of basically unquestioning support for Israel was critical media treatment that did more than blandly report Israel’s version of the facts through endless TV time given over to Israeli government spokespersons, retired military and intelligence officials commenting on the progress of Israel’s supposed retaliatory campaign, and pro-Zionist opinion columnists writing for such established media platforms as the New York Times, Washington Post, The Economist. Except for rather obscure online platforms there was no space given to critics who pointed to the pre-October 7 extremism of the Netanyahu government focused on making the West Bank unlivable by unleashing settler violence and setting its sights expansively on a one-state Greater Israel solution.
The demonization of Hamas went completely unchallenged although it has been persuaded by the US Government to compete in the 2006 Gaza legislative elections in Gaza as a path if taken by Hamas would lead to political normalization, understood to include removal from the terrorist list. Yet neither Washington nor Tel Aviv expected Hamas to prevail in these internationally monitored elections, and when they did, and Hamas later displaced the corrupt Fatah presence in Gaza, Israel went to work reversing the reassurances given to Hamas prior to the elections, refusing to honor the results, imposing a comprehensive blockade on Gaza in 2007, which continues in effect and amounted to a cruel extended form of collective punishment of the entire Palestinian population of the Gaza strip, 75% of whom were refugees from the 1948 War denied their right of return under international law. Only very recently has there been some attempt to present Hamas in a balanced manner, most notably in a book co-edited by Helena Cobban, Rami Khouri, and David Wildman, entitled Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters (OR Books, 2024).
My own views on Hamas were influenced by meetings ten years ago with Hamas leaders in Doha, Cairo, and Gaza City while I was acting as the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories. I was impressed by the intelligence and moderation of these Hamas officials that I remain convinced that they were not putting on ‘a show’ to mislead a minor UN official. In these discussions two elements were stressed—first, the need for a political alternative to the resumption of armed struggle for the sake of both Palestine and Israel, and secondly, a long-term ceasefire coupled with an Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Palestinian Territories of Gaza, West Bank, and East Jerusalem as a formula for long-term stability. Turkey more than other countries at the time sought covertly to mediate between Hamas and Israel under the leadership of its star diplomat, Ahmet Davutoglu (later Turkey’s Foreign Minister and Prime Minister), with hopes that some accommodation could be agreed upon, bringing stability and hope to the region and a recovery of some limited sense of normalcy to the long oppressed Palestinian people, now to the people of Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and most of all, Iran. Yet, as events since 2006 have darkly demonstrated, this was not to be. Quite the contrary!
Undoubtedly, the worst distortion in these first months after October 7 was the insistence in the Western liberal democracies that the use of the word ‘genocide’ in connection with Israel’s military operation was defamatory, an instance of ‘hate speech’ that warranted punitive responses such as formal retractions, student dismissals, faculty suspensions, and forced administrative resignations. ‘Playing it safe’ in many corporate and governmental settings meant keeping silent about Israeli atrocities except in private conversations among trusted friends. Western governments accentuated this anti-democratic turn by exerting pressures on educational administrators and government employees.
Not mentioning genocide was to ignore the proverbial elephant in the room. Numerous statements by top Israeli political officials and military commanders made no secret of their genocidal intent. On October 9, Israel’s Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, announced ‘a total siege’ of Gaza applicable to food, fuel, and electricity. He explained that when ‘fighting human animals’ it is necessary to treat the adversary accordingly. Prime Minister Netanyahu invoked the bloodiest chapter in the Bible justifying revenge against the Amalekites: “Do not spare them, put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.” Modern Torah teaching generally interprets this troublesome passage metaphorically or as a message intended to address the evil within Jews, but for the far right, including cabinet members of the Netanyahu coalition, the Amalek passage is taken literally and has long served as justification for killing all and any Palestinians.
When reinforced by tactics exhibiting disregard for Palestinian vulnerabilities, the inference of genocide was unmistakable, so much so that even the juridically cautious ICJ gave a preliminary nod in the direction of acknowledging genocide in their rulings of January 26 in response to the South African initiative seeking resolution of its contention that Israel was violating the Genocide Convention of 1951. Of course, Israel rejected these genocidal allegations by its usual tactic of castigating the motives of critics, insisting as always, that it was confronting worldwide antisemitism as well as Hamas terrorism, which it characterized as ‘genocide’ in a willful effort to reverse perceptions.
After this early period of mind control and public confusion, Israel gradually lost control of the discourse except in the Western elite circles where opinion bent somewhat, but in a manner coupled with irresponsible continuation of support. Israel shifted the focus to the plight of the hostages seized on October 7, and admittedly subjected to a harrowing experience of captivity and Israeli bombardments often ending in their death. Such a humanitarian concern about the fate of the hostage is fully justified although typically diluted by Western silence about the unspeakably abusive detention of several thousand Palestinians on scant or no charges.
Even the European members of NATO were induced by popular protests in their own countries increasingly to abstain rather than openly side with Israel in UN ceasefire votes, leaving only the US and Israel firmly opposing any pronounced criticisms of Israel even if after the near unanimous Advisory Opinion of the ICJ on July 19 condemned Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories as unlawful for multiple reasons. This ICJ pronouncement was given a strong measure of approval in a resolution adopted by the General Assembly on September 17 by a vote of 124-14, with 43 abstentions. To be expected, the US and Israel were among the 14, while the European countries abstained.
Such a new objectivity was also evident in the gradual rise of civil society opposition to what Israel is doing in Gaza and throughout its region. It is not yet robust enough to penetrate the bipartisan support given to Israel by the US, although the media is slightly more willing to expose the daily cruelty of Israel’s tactics, but still habitually cushioned by Israel’s official accounts that whitewash Israel’s controversial tactics by raising their often unsupported claims of Hamas responsibility by way of their siting of tunnels and human shields. The media rarely invites spokespersons for the Palestinian side or strong civil society critics of Israel to its most prestigious platforms.
Perhaps, the most vivid demonstration of this Phase 2 of the Israeli genocide was the widespread protests on college campuses around the world, having the indirect effect of exposing the widening gap between what the governments of the West support and what a growing proportion of their citizenry believe and favor. Israel’s loss of control over the public discourse is unprecedented and coupled with the increasing weight of authoritative interpretations of international law within the UN framework that underscores both Israel’s unlawful behavior of the past year and its underlying unlawful occupation policies, and lingering presence since 1967, as the Occupying Power of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. The US has during the year over and over again given its endorsement to Israel’s strategic moves and occupation policies at the cost of disregarding international law. When coupled with its indignant insistence on international law compliance by Russia in the Ukraine context, the US made clear that it will not hesitate to use international law to attack adversaries while dismissing it when an international ally’s behavior is unlawful. This is clearly a glaring instance of double standards and moral hypocrisy, reducing international to a policy instrument rather than a regulative norm.
In conclusion, the more we learn about October 7, the more suspect becomes the official rationale for Israel’s ferocious response. An independent international investigation is long overdue. How can the ‘security lapse’ that let the attack happen acknowledged recently by Israel be reconciled with the warnings Israeli leaders received from Egypt and the US, undoubtedly confirmed by Israel’s surveillance and intelligence capabilities in Gaza. The inevitable skeptical views directed at the Israeli retaliation was given immediate credibility by the scale and intensity of the Israeli response that seemed to offer a pre-planned pretext to escalate pre-October 7 plans to establish Greater Israel from the river to the sea facilitated by the forced expulsion of as many Palestinians as possible.
At present, it seems almost foolish to anticipate that October 7, 2025 will be a time to look back on the despair of 2024 as a grotesque anomaly in human experience, but it is not foolish to pray that it might be so.
Richard Falk is an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years. Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.
https://countercurrents.org/2024/10/reflections-on-october-7/
Countercurrent – October 7, 2024
One year of Genocide in Gaza
by Dr Suresh Khairnar
More than sixteen thousand children were killed in one year and more than eighteen thousand children became orphans! Air strikes and military action by the Israeli army have been going on in Gaza Strip for the last one year! More than 41000 people have died so far in Gaza, which has a population of about 2.3 million ! 16,765 of them are children! People coming from different parts of Gaza are forced to live only in Al-Awasi humanitarian area which is only 10% of Gaza Strip! Children are bearing the brunt of Israel’s attacks! The United Nations estimates that more than 18000 children have become orphans in the last one year due to the war, there is no one left to raise them! Talin Al-Hinawi, who lost her father in the Israeli attack, has no one left in her family now, so she is living in Al Barka orphanage camp! She tells that her entire family has been destroyed in the war! Talin says that she wants to return to her home in Gaza City so that she can study like others! A similar story is of 10-year-old Nada al-Gharib who lives in Khan Younus refugee camp. She says that this war has taken away my father and my only brother from us! She says that our camp was attacked by the Israeli army and all the members of our family were killed! I had gone out to get food, so I survived!
The situation in Lebanon is almost the same! In Lebanon’s capital Beirut, refugees are seen everywhere from the roads to the parking lots! People affected by the war are sleeping on mattresses on the roadside, parking their vehicles in the parking lots and living in temporary tents! Some people are living in wooden or plastic camps in the beach area on the seashore!
The Lebanese government has arranged refugee camps in schools, colleges and other government buildings. These refugee camps are being run by social welfare organizations. In a refugee camp located in Beirut’s Omar Farooq School, Imad, an engineer by profession, used to work abroad but after the war he has returned to help the people. Ella is also helping with Imad. She studies in a college which is currently closed.
Noor Hassan, a Syrian, came to Lebanon as a refugee 25 years ago. Before the recent attacks, Noor’s husband used to work in a bakery, but now he himself is waiting in line at the refugee camp to be given bread. 52-year-old Saosan is sitting on a mattress near a church in Beirut. She is a resident of Der Jahain, 50 kilometers south of Beirut. She shows the picture of her house on her mobile phone and says that her entire house has been destroyed in the attack carried out by Israel.
Despite all this, the attitude of the world’s big countries America and England towards Israel in this war has been continuing for the last seventy-five years. The mistake of creating Israel on the land of Palestine of 10,000 square kilometers has been of these two countries. Where the total population of Palestine was 20 lakhs, in which the population of Jews was only six lakhs, 56% of the land was given to the Jews, 5,700 square kilometers of land was given to six lakh Jews. And 4,300 square kilometers of land was given to 14 lakh Arabs. And in that too, the most fertile land was given to the Jews and the Arabs were given the rugged hilly area. How unjust has this division been? And the matter did not stop here. Israel has taken over the land from the Arabs in the last seventy-five years after every fight and quarrel. In view of that, Israel has encroached upon 90% of the remaining land of Palestine instead of 56%! And has erected 25 to 30 feet high concrete walls at various places! And does America and England, who claim to be the champions of human rights, not see the need to maintain the world’s most densely populated areas, Gaza Strip and West Bank?
Mahatma Gandhi had said in 1938 itself, “Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home” saying that just as England belongs to the British and France belongs to the French, Palestine belongs to the Arabs. It is wrong and inhuman to impose Jews on Arabs. Mahatma Gandhi had warned about this ten years before Israel came into existence. And all of us who talk about Gandhiji’s legacy have a moral responsibility to stand with the people of Palestine in such a time of crisis.
Dr Suresh Khairnar is former president of Rashtra Sewa Dal (RSD)
https://countercurrents.org/2024/10/one-year-of-genocide-in-gaza/
One year of genocide in Gaza
October 7 marks one year since Israel and the United States launched the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza, as the first phase of a regional war throughout the Middle East that is now metastasizing into a US-Israeli war on Iran.
The toll of the war of extermination against the civilians of Gaza is staggering. Between 40,000 people, according to official figures, and 186,000 people, according to an estimate published in the authoritative medical journal The Lancet, have been killed by Israeli bullets, bombs, or through famine or preventable disease.
The entire remaining population of Gaza is being starved by Israel, with “the highest number of people facing catastrophic hunger ever recorded by the Integrated Food Security Classification system—anywhere, anytime,” in the words of UN Secretary General António Guterres.
Gaza, one of the most densely-populated urban areas in the world, has been turned into a wasteland, with the majority of its buildings damaged or destroyed. Every single university in Gaza has been leveled, along with hospitals, schools and cultural centers in a calculated and deliberate sociocide.
The official justification for the genocide and ethnic cleansing now underway is the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas. The US media seeks to present the events of October 7 as a bolt from the blue, an unexpected sneak attack by Hamas that could not have been predicted and which had no antecedent factors.
But this narrative fell apart within a matter of months. In December 2023, the New York Times published a report revealing that the Israeli government was in possession of theﾠexact document that laid out “point by point” the plan for the attack, which was “implemented with alarming accuracy.”
Moreover, Israeli military and intelligence forces operating on the Gaza border were ordered to carry out a deliberate stand-down, with border units withdrawn to other areas of Israel just days ahead of the attack. The official United Nations inquiry on the October 7 attacks asserted “that Israeli authorities failed to protect civilians in southern Israel on almost every front.”
It was likewise revealed that a significant portion of Israeli casualties were killed by Israeli forces themselves, who fired indiscriminately into settlements where Hamas was operating, and deliberately targeted Israelis being held hostage. According to an official United Nations inquiry into the attack, Israeli forces “applied the so-called ‘Hannibal Directive’ and killed... Israeli civilians.”
On October 18, 2023, US President Joe Biden visited Israel to declare that the events of October 7 were “Israel’s 9/11.” Indeed, there is a deep connection between the two events. The September 11, 2001 attacks were seized upon by the Bush administration to launch the long-planned invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, together with sweeping attacks on democratic rights at home. Likewise, the October 7 attacks were used as a pretext to implement plans long in the making.
On September 22, 2023, just two weeks before the October 7 attacks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu displayed a map at the United Nations General Assembly of the “new Middle East,” showing Israel encompassing all of the Palestinian territories, as part of a geopolitical framework with the US-aligned Middle Eastern states of Egypt, Sudan, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
One year later, it is clear that Israel and the United States seized upon the events of October 7 to implement this vision of what he called the “new Middle East.”
When Netanyahu spoke again at the United Nations on September 27, near the one-year anniversary of the October 7 attacks, he again referenced “the map I presented here last year,” declaring, “With American support and leadership, I believe this vision can materialize much sooner than people think.”
The war now unfolding in the Middle East is part of a decades-long effort by US imperialism to subjugate the whole of the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa, a continuation of the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the regime change operations in Libya and Syria.
If the ferocity and homicidal character of this effort have become more intense, it is because the US-Israeli genocidal war in the Middle East is part of the eruption of a global war against Russia and China—both nuclear-armed states—in which the Middle East is only one front.
The events since October 7, 2023 took place in the context of the debacle of Ukraine’s NATO-backed offensive in Spring 2023, which saw hundreds of advanced fighting vehicles donated by the NATO powers to Ukraine destroyed in a humiliating fiasco for the imperialist powers.
Now, one year later, the imperialist powers are making advanced preparations for a major strike on Iran. Last week, Biden confirmed that the US is in “discussions” with Israel over striking Iran’s oil facilities, while Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff on Sunday endorsed an Israeli strike against Iran’s missile forces. These war preparations take place against the backdrop of a steadily worsening series of military debacles for Ukraine in the Donbass region.
Facing major setbacks in their war with Russia, the imperialist powers are seeking to open a new Middle Eastern front.
The Gaza genocide triggered a wave of mass protests against war, with the largest anti-war protests since the 2003 invasion of Iraq occurring on virtually every continent. But the leaders of these demonstrations sought to treat the genocide in Gaza as an isolated event and were oriented toward pressuring the imperialist powers to adopt more humane policies.
This approach has proven bankrupt. One year on, it has become clear that the Gaza genocide is part of an escalating global war driven by an imperialist re-division of the world, inextricably arising out of the deepening crisis of the US-led imperialist world order.
A new strategy is required. The struggle against the Gaza genocide and war with Iran can only be developed as a fight against imperialism, which Lenin called “the highest stage of capitalism.” The essential cause of war lies in the capitalist nation-state system, the global financial interests of the giant corporations and the relentless drive of the American ruling class for world hegemony.
The fight against war requires the mobilization of the immense power of the international working class and its political independence from all the capitalist parties. And the movement against war must be animated by the perspective of international socialism, aimed at ending the obsolete nation-state system that is inseparably bound up with imperialist war and colonialism and replacing it with socialism.
Thousands attend funeral for Kamel Jawad, Dearborn resident killed by Israeli airstrike in Lebanon
Kathleen Martin, Andrea Lobo
Thousands gathered at the Islamic Center of America in Michigan on Sunday to attend the funeral of Hajj Kamel Ahmad Jawad, a Dearborn resident killed by an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon on October 1. The 56-year-old husband and father of four was a US citizen who often traveled back to Lebanon to visit family and engage in humanitarian work.
Jawad and his family are well known in the close-knit Dearborn community, home to the largest Lebanese population in the US. A fundraiser in tribute to his memory has raised over $57,000 for the Lebanese Diaspora Relief Organization.
At the commemoration service, Jawad’s children, nieces, nephews and siblings spoke about his generosity, humor and unflinching resolve in the face of danger and under attack from Israel. His daughter Nadine described how the last time they spoke, she heard a bomb hit near him. Her father was “the one who stood against oppression, who stood against Zionism, who was unequivocal in his stance for Palestine and Lebanon, who stood against Israel, and who Israel killed.”
His last voice message to the family, which she translated to English, was: “Happy, peace and blessings upon you. We are OK, but if something happens to me, your obligation is to the poor.”
His son Ali described how he would load up as many bags as he could fit when traveling back to Lebanon, even if it meant leaving his own clothes behind; memorizing the favorite candies of different children to pack among medicine and other supplies.
One of his nephews, Hassanein, told attendees how he was staying with him when Israel launched the attack on Lebanon. He described the horror faced by those on the ground and his uncle’s bravery, “I looked over my shoulder and he was there with the owner of the shops paying off people’s debts. He put so much food in front of my eyes on people’s tables. On Monday September 23, while I was in class, he called and said, ‘Pick up your bags, we don’t have enough time.’ Two minutes later, about 50 yards from the house, we started to come under fire. We were being carpet bombed.
“The whole country was being carpet bombed, and what you guys see on social media is nothing like what we see in person,” he continued. “I was waiting for him to pick me up and he was on the phone with my mom reassuring her of my safety, although we were not really safe. To everybody who called him while we were driving through the missiles, he would say, ‘It’s OK. Nothing is happening,’ although we were inches from dying multiple times… People were calling him left and right and asking the Hajj [Jawad] for help. During all of this, he was stopping in the middle of the street while people were running to safety and just emptying out his pockets. We were under fire of missiles, and he was stopping at the ATM… We picked up so many people and took them to safety.”
The family has at this point declined all media requests and deferred to a moving statement published by Nadine for the family. She wrote:
We are honored by my father’s sacrifice. In his last days, he chose to stay near the main hospital in Nabatieh to help the elderly, disabled, injured, and those who simply couldn’t financially afford to flee. He served as their guardian, provided them with food, mattresses, and other comforts, and anonymously paid off their debts.
However, my father never viewed himself as a savior. His response to political conflict was always simple: ‘I stand with the oppressed.’ Many others, just like him, risk their lives every day to alleviate the mass suffering caused by Israel’s genocide in Gaza that now spreads violence through Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Iran and Lebanon. My father’s actions are part of a much larger movement of people who refuse to stay silent in the face of oppression. His life is one of over 50,000 lost at the hands of Israeli aggression across the Middle East. The fact that he was an American citizen should not make his story more important than others. As Muslims, we believe that every life matters. If my dad’s story stands out to you, every other civilian murdered by the Israeli regime should as well.
The statement ends: “My father’s story is not just about him; it’s about a man who stood with the oppressed and dedicated his life to uplifting others… Our father’s message was clear: stop arming, aiding, and abetting our oppression and start caring for the people struggling for their freedom and dignity.”
In a separate post on social media Friday, Nadine shared a screen shot of her exchange with a media contact who reached out to her to write on her father’s death as a “unique” opportunity to “humanize” the bombing of Lebanon.
“I understand. But the media has had a year to humanize 50,000 people who were bombed. People are dying under rubble and their stories are all over social media. There’s no humanity in any of this... My story is only ‘unique’ because my dad was an American citizen. But the reality is the country and the media have been dehumanizing Arabs and American citizens like Shireen Abu Akleh far before my father died.”
Since launching a full-scale war on Lebanon on September 23, Israel has killed thousands and internally displaced more than one million people in the country of 5.5 million. While Jawad is currently the only American citizen whose death has been confirmed as a result of the bombing, the US State Department reports that more than 8,000 American citizens have contacted the embassy requesting assistance to leave.
Matthew Miller, spokesman for the State Department, told a press briefing on October 3, that Jawad’s death was “an unavoidable tragedy” and insisted that the Department has been urging people to leave for months
Rena Bitter, Assistant Secretary of Consular Services at the State Department, said during a press briefing Friday that the government was reserving seats on commercial flights for US citizens and offering loans for purchasing tickets. However, only a few hundred American citizens have reportedly left on these flights.
One Lebanese-American who spoke to Al Jazeera said she was told by the US embassy “to find a way out by herself.”
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer urged Secretary of State Antony Blinken to “do more” to get US citizens out of Lebanon. “From US Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib’s congressional district alone, 140 US citizens or permanent residents are struggling to find passage out of Lebanon,” the letter states.
Socialist Equality Party candidate for US President Joseph Kishore, who is on the ballot in Jawad’s state of Michigan, attended the funeral and released a campaign statement condemning the murder. It states:
The Socialist Equality Party and our election campaign condemn the killing of Kamel Ahmad Jawad, a US citizen and father of four from Dearborn, Michigan, who was murdered in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon last Tuesday. His death is not a ‘tragedy,’ as the Biden administration describes it, but a crime, part of the ongoing genocidal assault carried out by Israel with the full backing of the United States.
The statement continues, “Jawad’s murder is only one of the many crimes being committed by the Israeli government with the direct complicity of the US. The Biden administration has provided the military, financial and political support that enables Israel to carry out these atrocities. The weapons that killed Kamel Jawad were supplied by Washington. Biden’s government is financing the slaughter and giving Israel carte blanche to continue the massacre, just as it has done in Gaza for over a year.”
