Amputations, Lies And Deceptions

-by Dr. Stephen Frantz

Unlimited Amputations

How many arms and legs of the children of Gaza must be blown off to

satisfy the Israeli-American hegemony? Through lying and deceit to the

people of the US, and ignoring both US and International Laws, the Biden/

Harris administration has created the perfect storm for the decimation of

Palestinian children. UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) reports that every day in Gaza 10 children are losing one or both of their legs! UN Secretary-General António Guterres reported that Gaza has the highest per-capita rate of child amputees anywhere in the world. These cases are due to exploding munitions, often in highly populated areas, that shred flesh and shatter bone that make it impossible to be surgically repaired. Many of these

amputations must force children to endure surgery without anesthetics because of IDF blockades of necessary goods and services for hospitals. Can you imagine the consequences of these life-altering injuries? Clearly understand that these are children, their bodies are programmed to grow. They will require new prosthetics about every six months, says Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah (renowned surgeon working with Doctors Without Borders in Gaza). Will these children (their parents if any are surviving) have the resources to meet these needed prosthetics, medications and hospitalizations?

All That Remains is a new film that follows 13-year-old Leyan Abu al-

Atta as she recovers from a leg amputation due to an Israeli artillery strike

on a mosque that happened to explode beside the school where she was

sheltering (on 12 Dec 2024). It changed the trajectory of her life forever…

but it didn’t even register on international media’s reporting. She is a lovely, active teenager (loves fashion, poetry, etc.) who had great aspirations for her life. Her parents had to make the difficult choice between losing her or losing her leg that was too severely damaged to be saved… the choice was obvious. Leyan was very fortunate to be granted a medical evacuation (from Israeli authorities); she is now being treated at Shriners Hospital in Philadelphia. Remember, there are hundreds, if not thousands more children, who are not able to leave Gaza. This film should be seen by everyone.

Laws, Laws And More Laws

A recent report by the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, Francesca Albanese, reported that Israel has violated: the principles and bases of International Law; International Humanitarian Law; and The Geneva Convention relative to the 12 Aug 1949 Protection of Civilian Persons in time of war in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967. She found that “arbitrary and deliberate illtreatment is inflicted upon the Palestinians not only through unlawful practices in detention but also as a carceral continuum comprised of techniques of large-scale confinement— physical, bureaucratic, digital beyond detention. These violations may amount to international crimes.” Can a healthy conscience simply ignore the mutilated bodies of tens of thousands of dead Palestinian children?

President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and future Republican president Donald J.Trump— all continue to back this war and continue the deception. They are all complicit in breaking U.S. laws [and International Laws]. In particular, the Leahy Laws prohibiting US assistance to foreign security force units [including military and police units] where there is credible information that the unit has committed a ‘gross violation of human rights’ [GVHR]. The US primarily defines GVHRs as: torture; extrajudicial killing; enforced disappearance; and rape under the cover of law (in which a perpetrator abuses their official position to commit rape). Additional acts may be involved. These abuses and more are being committed against Palestinians as reported below by the US State Dept. in 2022— presently it is far worse.

“Significant human rights abuses included credible reports of unlawful or arbitrary killings; arbitrary or unjust detention, including of Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories; restrictions on Palestinians residing in Jerusalem including arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy, family and home; substantial interference with peaceful assembly and association; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; punishment of family members for alleged offenses by a relative; restriction on freedom of expression and media including censorship; harassment of non-governmental organizations; violence against asylum seekers and migrants; violence or threats of violence against Palestinians and members of national, racial, or ethnic minority groups; and labor rights abuses against foreign workers and Palestinian workers.”

At this point, one must ask, does this sound like the oft touted “Israel is the only ‘democracy’ in the Middle East?” Clearly, Israel is at best, a rogue, apartheid, Zionist state.

There is no evidence that the foreign government (Israel) is taking any

effective steps to bring the responsible members of the security force

units (IDF & police) to justice. Upon inquiry, the official military response is that the incident is being investigated, or they will fail to respond to the circumstances of a particular killing. For example, 23 year-old US nonviolent activist Rachel Corrie was bulldozed to death 21 years ago in Gaza and there is still no responsible answer from the Israeli government or military. On average (excluding Gaza), Israeli forces have killed a Palestinian child in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem every two days since 07 Oct 2023.

Pursuant to Leahy Laws, Department of Defense funds are prohibited

from being used for “any training, equipment, or other assistance” to

a foreign security force unit (IDF & police) if the Sec. of Defense has

credible information that the unit has committed GVHRs. In pure

contradiction of the Law, the US Congress has recently voted to provide Israel with $165 million, then $20 billion, and more recently with another $680 million, in bombs, ammunition, surveillance and other equipment and munitions. This occurred despite being challenged by a few progressive members of Congress. Accompanying this already terrible record, the US Agency for International Development has determined that Israel has deliberately blocked delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza. However, in contrast to the truth, Sec. of State Antony Blinken has told Congress that the US had no credible evidence that the Israelis were prohibiting or otherwise restricting deliveries.

Killings Galore

The terrorist IDF has killed many individuals or groups of individuals

providing humanitarian aid to Gazans (more than 333 by 12 Dec 2024), including members of: the Gaza Soup Kitchen; Save the Children; UNRWA; World Central Kitchen; and the Director of a Hospital/Intensive Care Unit. There is no forgiving of the IDF atrocities being committed every day in Gaza. A former Israeli reserve soldier who served in Gaza has revealed that army commanders instruct troops to open fire on any Palestinian regardless of whether or not they pose a threat.

The Israeli government alleges their racist, apartheid practices are permitted based on the country’s emergency defense regulations, which have been in place continuously since 1967. The list of atrocities in Gaza include: wanton targeting of babies and children. Are we expected to believe that children found with bullet holes to the head are accidental?; targeting medical staff (more than 800 to date); more than 250 journalists and media workers have been targeted (more killed than in any other conflict in recent history), injured, gone missing, or arrested; and students, teachers and professors—approximately 11,000 murdered to date. This is all in addition to the aforementioned US State Dept. internationally recognized crimes of: starvation, arbitrary/indefinite detention and torture/rape. Early on, and to no avail, the War Child Alliance called on all UN member states to stop sending arms to Israel. What does it take for aid agencies, government bodies and the US Congress to recognize genocide? Amnesty International has finally joined the chorus, concluding there’s enough evidence of intent to declare that Israel is committing a genocide. Their findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide, and it must stop now. Yet, even today, many international aid organizations, and the majority of governments and other major institutions, are carefully couching their words, failing to mention war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Amnesty’s full, detailed, 296-page report is titled: Israel/Occupied Palestinian Territory:’You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza. Neither Israel nor the US State Dept. recognize the damning indictment of Israel’s conduct carefully described in the report.

Unrelentingly, the IDF’s egregious assault on Gaza also includes: settler violence against Palestinians; razing of hospitals and institutions of learning; prevention of humanitarian aid and access thereof; demolition of roads; destruction of water supply and its infrastructure; termination of electricity, gasoline and sanitation services; and razing of agricultural fields and farming equipment/

structures. These acts are also prohibited by International Law; basically, the IDF is deliberately killing any Palestinian who is helping Palestinians. According to new data, at least 57 Palestinian rural communities have been forced to flee their homes since 07 Oct 2023 as a result of Israeli settler attacks; 50 villages have been wiped off the map entirely.

In a rare criticism of Israeli government policy, former Israeli defense minister Moshe Yaalon accused Israel of committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing in Gaza. He noted such policies are exposing government officials and the IDF to lawsuits at the International Criminal Court. There are other Israelis with a conscience and are outraged by Israel’s oppressive practices that are omnicidal (the killing of all life). There are various groups against the war: anti-regime dissidents; refuseniks; Global Axis of Solidarity; Mesarvot (a refuser solidarity movement) and Banki (youth movement of the Israeli Communist Party). At least eight teenage refuseniks are now being held in an Israeli prison for refusing to join the military. Prior to being imprisoned, one refusenik, Elam wrote: “As long as we continue to enlist, follow orders, and enact our government’s rotten goals, we will live in a reality of war, annexation, and hate, I want no child, no matter which side of the wall they were born, to be afraid of rockets or being kidnapped from their beds … We have to do everything in our

power to make sure that the children of the future live in security.”

Religious Perspective

Pro-Palestanian protests by Jewish and non-Jewish students and professors continue in the US in spite of arrests and detentions. On 03 Dec 2024, more than 100 Jewish activists in Canada blocked access to Parliament demanding that all military support of Israel be terminated. They stipulated that arms must not be shipped to the US for shipment to Israel; they also want Canada to stop importing military goods and technology from Israel.

This behavior is consistent with historic Jewish and Muslim belief systems. Note that in the Sasanian Empire of Iran and Mesopotamia, Rabbis in Babylon commented on the Talmud for more than two or three centuries, producing the Babylonian Talmud in the seventh century, the same century in which the Qur’an appeared. Both Jewish/Mishnah and Muslim/Qur’an spiritual teachings forbid the killing of innocents who are guilty of no crime, and equate this deed to killing all humankind. The killing of even one individual is equated to killing all humankind. Before the twentieth century, Muslim rulers sometimes had Jewish ministers in their government, as with the Sassoon family that ruled over Ottoman Iraq in the eighteenth to early nineteenth century. Jewish and Muslim thinkers debated ideas and learned from one another. What has happened to such integrations of ideas and concepts today?

In a way, these religious laws were prescient because the killing of all humankind became plausible on 16 Jul 1943 when the first atomic device was detonated. In Israel’s orgy of devastation in Gaza with highly sophisticated “conventional” weapons, it is committing the crime of genocide (i.e., omnicide) while hiding behind spurious laws, regulations and the protectorship of the United States. Israel's extremely loose interpretation of what constitutes "terrorist material" includes Palestinian literature and the Palestinian flag. In fact, Israel has designated several Palestinian human rights groups and others as

terrorist organizations and has raided some of their offices, including:

•Addameer (the prisoner support organization)

•Al-Haq (human rights organization)

•Bisan Center for Research and Development (campaigns for the socioeconomic

rights of the poor and marginalized)

•Defense for Children International-Palestine (children's rights organization)

•Union of Agricultural Work Committees (represents Palestinian farmers)

•Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign

Hopeful Push-Back

The US is directly militarily involved in Israel's genocide in Gaza and is shielding it from censure in international fora such as the UN, the International Court of Justice, and the International Criminal Court. This continues even after the ICC issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Gallant. In accord with Israel’s cruel propaganda machine, on 10 Dec 2024, ICC international criminal Gallant met with White House Mideast czar Brett McGurk in Washington. This reflects Israeli society’s isolated sense of reality; a parallel universe in which they are the real victims. The world cannot, and must not, accept Israel’s blatant disregard of international law, including binding decisions of the UN Security Council as well as orders and arrest warrants of the international Court of Justice. The court per se does not have its own police force to carry out arrests and relies on its 124 member states for that, with only limited diplomatic means to force them if they are not cooperative. The ICC has called on signatories of the court's founding treaty to live up to their commitments. Unfortunately, such warrants and other decisions are ignored by Israel, the US (= ‘jurisdictional disputes’) and many US allies.

Gaza today is the most dangerous place to be a child, a journalist, and an

aid worker. For review, see the videos associated with “Hopeless,

starving, and besieged”— Israel’s forced displacement of Palestinians in

Gaza. With regard to these collective facts, it would appear that US and

world citizens: know and agree, don’t know, don’t care or are totally

ignorant of the fact that we are putting children and Gazan adults through

an unimaginable living “hell.” Else why would they not be protesting their

governments’ total complicity in this horror show? "The catastrophe in

Gaza is nothing short of a complete breakdown of our common humanity,"

said UN Secretary-General António Guterres. "THE NIGHTMARE MUST

STOP. WE CANNOT CONTINUE TO LOOK AWAY."