Bulldozed, crushed and buried — fate of missing aid-seekers

What Skwawkbox-Canary and other independent news outlets, together with local journalists and international activists have been reporting for months, has finally made it into the ‘mainstream’ media. A CNN ‘investigation‘ ‘revealed’ that the Israeli military bulldozed some of the bodies of aid-seekers slaughtered at so-called ‘aid’ stations into unmarked Gaza mass graves. Others were simply left out in the open air to rot and add to the stench of death pervading the Strip.

But the US news outlet still whitewashes occupation’s mass murder, claiming that the victims were killed by “indiscriminate Israeli fire near the [Zikim] crossing.” It was in fact an entirely deliberate killing of huge numbers of desperate civilians that has long been known to be Israel’s ‘standard operating procedure.’ It also has been exposed by a US mercenary-turned-whistleblower:

CNN’s review, which also found that aid seekers were killed by indiscriminate Israeli fire near the crossing, drew upon hundreds of videos and photos from around Zikim, along with interviews of eyewitnesses and local aid truck drivers.

Israeli military whistleblowers also told the broadcaster that the use of mass, unmarked graves was widespread throughout Gaza. We have already seen this in the attempts of occupation troops to hide both paramedics and their vehicles after the night-time Rafah massacre.

In a chilling reminder of that massacre, CNN also reported a message left by one aid-seeker victim to his family as he risked his life to find food. Ammar Wadi wrote on his phone screen, found months later with his body:

Forgive me mom if anything happens to me. Whoever finds my phone, please tell my family that I love them so much.

In the Rafah massacre, the paramedic — whose footage of the ambush and slaughter exposed Israeli lies denying the slaughter — can be heard reciting the Shahada, then asking his mother to forgive him:

Forgive me, Mom, forgive me. I swear I only chose this path to help others.

The occupation denied using bulldozers on the bodies of its victims, just as it denied bombing hospitals, denied starving the people of Gaza, denied, denied, denied — every denial a lie.

Given Israel’s record of atrocities, the confirmation of the mass burials raises the horrific possibility that some of the victims were not dead when they were buried. US-Jewish volunteer Surgeon Dr. Mark Perlmutter recounted his experience of hearing multiple eyewitnesses. They described Israeli troops burying two bound children alive during the occupation’s attack on the hospital. Perlmutter later saw their bodies after the mass grave was uncovered:

 

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Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict, Janina Dill, told CNN that:

The purpose is to prevent the dead from becoming the missing and to allow for memorialization, chiefly by their families. Moreover, if bodies are deliberately mutilated or mishandled in a way that violates their dignity, this can amount to ‘outrages upon personal dignity’ which is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.

Wadi’s mother is still haunted by her son’s disappearance and final message. She told CNN:

When he comes to my mind, my eyes just cannot stop crying. We accept whatever God has written for us, but we just want to know what happened to our son.

The BBC and others have been forced to verify and acknowledge footage showing other massacres in which starving Palestinians were gunned down from the air while trying to retrieve food from aid trucks. In its article, CNN published a short clip, one of many circulating, showing aid-seekers fleeing under fire from ground forces:

US mercenary whistleblower Anthony Aguilar has described the way in which aid-seekers were allowed only minutes, at set times, to collect food. Any arriving outside those times or not escaping fast enough were gunned down by laughing soldiers and ‘military contractors’.

Israel has murdered at least three thousand aid-seekers this year and wounded almost twice as many, just a part of its slaughter and starvation of people in Gaza, more than two thirds of them children.

Featured image via the Canary