[Freefromwar] Fwd: Fwd: "Come out, you animals." The words and deeds of chosen evil.

Mon Apr 15 09:03:05 PDT 2024

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: 	Fwd: "Come out, you animals." The words and deeds of chosen evil.
Date: 	Sun, 14 Apr 2024 13:37:00 -0400

Hello all,

I was so taken (horrified) by this account that I felt I had to share it 
- and I hope it doesn't ruin your day, but it doesn't make the front 
pages and the Canadian and US governments keep supplying weapons and 
ammunition.
Let us continue to hope, pray and work for miracles
Peace, Dwyer

---------- Forwarded message ---------
Date: Sun, Apr 14, 2024 at 1:02 PM
Subject: "Come out, you animals." The words and deeds of chosen evil.
To:

“/Come out, you animals”/:

The Massacre at al-Shifa Hospital

During the massacre at al-Shifa Hospital, the Israeli army shot patients 
in their beds and doctors who refused to abandon the sick, separated 
people into groups with differently-colored bracelets, and executed 
hundreds of civil government employees.

Screenshot 2024-04-13 at 7.48.15 PM.png

Human heads eaten by crows, unidentified and decomposing body parts, and 
hundreds of corpses piled up and buried in mass graves are all that 
remained of the victims of the massacre at al-Shifa Hospital. The grim 
scene was something out of a dystopian movie, the product of the 
two-week siege of Gaza’s largest hospital 
<https://mondoweiss.net/2024/04/israel-destroyed-al-shifa-hospital-to-accelerate-social-collapse-in-gaza/> that 
ended in its total destruction.

Following the completion of al-Shifa’s decimation, the Israeli army 
announced that it had been one of the most successful operations since 
the start of the war, claiming that it had arrested hundreds of Hamas 
and Palestinian Islamic Jihad members in the medical compound. But the 
question that no one seemed to ask is how such a massive number of 
so-called “operatives” from Hamas and PIJ had gathered at al-Shifa with 
the full knowledge that the place had already been combed by the army 
once before and that Gaza City had been occupied by the army ever since.

/Mondoweiss /contacted many survivors of the events at al-Shifa. Most of 
them refused to speak and feared exposing their identities. A few 
accepted under the condition of anonymity, fearing that their 
testimonies would make them targets by the Israeli army and that they 
would be subsequently killed. In light of the testimonies gathered by 
/Mondoweiss/, a different picture emerges of what happened.

*
*

*The intelligence leak*

One young man who managed to escape the hospital mere moments before the 
army invasion began said that there had indeed been hundreds of Hamas 
and Palestinian Islamic Jihad-affiliated employees in the hospital, but 
none of them were military operatives. They were workers in the Gaza 
government’s civil branch, including Civil Defense crews, the police 
force, the internal security services, interior ministry employees, and 
employees of other branches of the local government. All of them had 
gathered to receive their governmental salaries at al-Shifa, given that 
it was one of the few remaining places that was supposed to be 
relatively safe from the fighting.

“There was a room in the specialized surgeries building that served as 
an office for the government branches that operated aboveground,” said 
the young man, (hereafter named “Z”), referencing the Hamas government’s 
civilian branches.

Z also confirmed that a number of PIJ members who worked non-military 
jobs were there as well to receive salaries. “There was another building 
that was an office for the [PIJ] movement, and the men employed by the 
movement would go there to collect their salaries.”

“It had been a long time since any of these employees had seen one 
another,” Z explained. “That’s why they were all chatting in the medical 
compound and catching up with one another.”

The way the Israeli army described the gathering was that it had 
obtained confirmed intelligence reports of a large number of “terror 
operatives 
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-ends-shifa-hospital-raid-after-arresting-or-killing-hundreds-of-terror-operatives/>” 
from both groups inside al-Shifa, and after the raid, it announced that 
it had arrested 900 “suspects” and confirmed that 500 of them were 
“terror operatives,” while announcing that it had killed 200 more 
“gunmen,” among them “top commanders in Hamas and Palestinian Islamic 
Jihad.”

*The siege begins*

Z told /Mondoweiss/ that he heard the sound of army vehicles and tanks 
approaching the hospital minutes before the attack. He and his colleague 
had also arrived at al-Shifa to receive their salaries.

“When we heard the vehicles, I told my colleague we had to leave 
immediately, thinking they might be headed toward the hospital itself,” 
Z said, explaining that anyone employed by the Hamas government is 
regarded as wanted by Israel. His colleague didn’t listen, believing 
that the army might be invading a nearby area instead. “He told me they 
were probably headed to the industrial zone.”

At first, Z’s colleague refused to leave, but as the sound of the tanks 
drew nearer, both decided to leave immediately. While they were both 
civilians with no military background, they were both members of the 
Hamas movement.

A few moments later, the invasion started. They witnessed the tanks 
surrounding the compound and the arrival of quadcopter drones hovering 
overhead. In an instant, all of al-Shifa was besieged from land and from 
air.

Another survivor who had managed to escape the compound said that the 
majority of intelligence regarding who had gathered at the compound was 
relayed to Israel by informants, collaborators, and undercover Israeli 
spies.

“On the night of the invasion, there were two street vendors who always 
sat at the entrance of al-Shifa,” the survivor told /Mondoweiss/. “One 
of them sold water, and the other sold canned foods. When the invasion 
happened, the two merchants revealed themselves to be soldiers. They 
took out handguns and entered the hospital with other soldiers, and they 
directed them where to go. They had been there for a long time and knew 
where everything was.”

The medical compound housed several buildings, including maternity 
wards, specialized surgery buildings, and cardiac wings. When the 
soldiers entered the compound, everyone was ordered to evacuate the 
buildings. Drones carrying speakers broadcast the army’s orders, telling 
people that they must exit and gather in the courtyard.

“The drones kept saying, ‘*/Come out, you animals,/*’” Z told /Mondoweiss/.

Screenshot 2024-04-13 at 7.51.46 PM.png

*Executions of doctors and suspected government employees*

When everyone left the buildings, the army began to separate the crowds 
of people into groups, making each group wear differently-colored 
plastic bracelets. The soldiers told them that these bracelets were 
connected to a system that alerts snipers to their movements. They were 
divided into two colors: yellow, which was attached to hospital staff 
and whoever the army considered civilians, and red, which was given to 
people who could not move on their own, such as patients, the injured, 
amputees, or people with broken limbs.

The army also gathered people who were suspected of belonging to Hamas 
or the PIJ. They were not given bracelets but were separated from the 
injured and hospital staff, who were sent to a different building.

A third much larger group was ordered to leave the hospital entirely — 
thousands of displaced persons who had been sheltering in the compound, 
in addition to some members of the hospital staff. Some of the staff 
members, including doctors, refused to leave. When they refused the 
army’s orders, they were executed immediately and without argument.

The army then brought out a huge number of men from the group of 
suspected Hamas and PIJ members and employees, gathering them in the 
center of the courtyard. It then proceeded to execute them, one after 
the other. When the slaughter was done, army bulldozers piled up their 
corpses in the dozens, dragging them through the sand and burying them.

As this was ongoing, other soldiers stormed various buildings in the 
compound in search of people who had refused to evacuate when the 
initial order was given. They killed anyone they found, regarding them 
as suspects.

There were some in the hospital who resisted and attempted to open fire, 
including police officers carrying handguns. That number of people was 
minor, and their resistance did not save them — they were killed along 
with those who did not put up any resistance.

A video published on social media filmed by a journalist at the hospital 
shows a female doctor, who identified herself as Amira al-Safadi, 
describing what happened.

“After the first day of the attack, which we were surprised by at 2 
a.m., the army ordered us not to leave when it entered,” Dr. Safadi 
says. “Then, on the second day, it gave us the bracelets and emphasized 
that we had to wear them and that anyone who left the building without 
wearing one would be immediately killed.”

“We were sent to four different buildings,” she continues, describing 
that she joined a number of other doctors and nurses with their 
patients. “Around 16 injured patients died because we were unable to 
treat them.”

By the time the army withdrew from al-Shifa, the entire compound had 
been all but decimated, reduced to rubble and burnt buildings.

Screenshot 2024-04-13 at 7.59.31 PM.png

*The ‘largest massacres in Palestinian history’*

The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said that the massacre at al-Shifa was 
one of the largest in Palestinian history 
<https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6254/Gaza:-Shifa-Medical-Complex-witnesses-one-of-the-largest-massacres-in-Palestinian-history>, 
estimating that at least 1,500 people had been killed, injured, or 
reported missing, “with women and children making up half of the 
casualties.”* The organization also confirms that at least 22 patients 
were shot while in their hospital beds, while the number of displaced 
persons sheltering at the hospital who were forced to evacuate southward 
was estimated to include 25,000 people. Moreover, 1,200 housing units in 
the vicinity of al-Shifa were destroyed.

Despite the army’s claims about the al-Shifa operation’s strategic and 
military importance and the number of alleged Hamas and PIJ members it 
had arrested and killed, it obfuscated the real intended purpose of the 
operation, which was to destroy the health system in northern Gaza and 
worsen the already disastrous humanitarian conditions. The entire 
compound is now unfit for use. Even the morgue, containing countless 
bodies of the slain, was burned down. Israel’s “operation” at al-Shifa 
was, indeed, a success.

-- 
Act Justly, Love Tenderly, Walk Humbly With Your God
     - Micah 6:8
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.integralshift.ca/pipermail/freefromwar-integralshift.ca/attachments/20240415/c2952f3d/attachment-0001.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Screenshot 2024-04-13 at 7.48.15 PM.png
Type: image/png
Size: 601389 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.integralshift.ca/pipermail/freefromwar-integralshift.ca/attachments/20240415/c2952f3d/attachment-0003.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Screenshot 2024-04-13 at 7.51.46 PM.png
Type: image/png
Size: 581012 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.integralshift.ca/pipermail/freefromwar-integralshift.ca/attachments/20240415/c2952f3d/attachment-0004.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Screenshot 2024-04-13 at 7.59.31 PM.png
Type: image/png
Size: 599539 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.integralshift.ca/pipermail/freefromwar-integralshift.ca/attachments/20240415/c2952f3d/attachment-0005.png>