Weekly Israel-Hamas war megathread - week of April 1

NPR -- World Central Kitchen workers killed by Israeli strike in Gaza, José Andrés says

José Andrés, the founder of the World Central Kitchen that feeds people in war and disaster zones, said Monday that his organization has lost "several" of its international volunteers in an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip.

...

Footage that The Associated Press said was from the Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza showed at least four bodies, some wearing protective body armor and one wearing a T-shirt with the WCK logo on it. Hospital staff said the passports of the dead indicated one of them was British, another Australian and one Polish. The nationality of the fourth was not immediately clear. Other reports indicated a Palestinian driver from the Gaza Strip was also killed.

Inside the ruins of Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital (Washington Post)

Spokesmen for the Israel Defense Forces brought a handful of foreign journalists into the compound Sunday afternoon, just hours before the last special forces troops withdrew. A reporter and photographer from The Washington Post were there.

The IDF offered a narrow view — a pinhole, really — but what we saw was destruction on a massive scale. Military censors did not review our words or photos.

...

Before this second offensive against al-Shifa, the hospital was still functioning, if just barely, after a first raid by Israel soldiers in November. When the March assault began two weeks ago, there were 6,000 people sheltering on the grounds, according to the IDF — patients, medical staff and displaced families.

On Sunday, we didn’t see a single Palestinian.

...

We were told that Palestinian snipers remained in the area and that a handful of Hamas operatives might still be moving around the hospital buildings, based on night-vision sweeps of the compound.

We saw only Israeli soldiers. In one darkened room, a platoon of commandos slept on the floor beside hallways strewn with trash.

...

The Israeli special forces described close-quarter combat with desperate fighters from Hamas who had been taken by surprise and barricaded themselves in emptied hospital wards, including elevator shafts and operating rooms.

The Israelis said two Palestinian militants, in confrontations, used grenades to kill themselves, in what would be the first reported suicide bombings of this latest Gaza war. This could not be confirmed.

...

We were not given access to the last 140 Palestinians — staff and patients — who the IDF said were sheltering in a nearby building, waiting to be evacuated. The rest of the civilians had already been sent to other medical facilities, the military said, or were told to head south.

“There was no medical care or drinking water or food” for the first three days of the raid, according to Mohamed al-Sikafi, 18, who texted with The Post last Tuesday after making it out of al-Shifa to a nearby hospital, one of the few still functioning in the north. “There are many patients whose health conditions declined.”

...

Earlier in the war, the IDF made much of the tunnels it found on the hospital grounds. The IDF described a vast underground command and control center, a virtual city. But definitive evidence was lacking. There were clearly tunnels. But where was Hamas?

As it turns out, the Israeli commando colonel stressed that the tunnel system may not have been as important as the IDF once thought. Instead, the colonel said, the Hamas operatives in recent months were working above ground, inside offices and wards. The IDF showed pictures of what it said were cash, rifles, RPGs, grenades, mortars and some Hamas documents found on-site.

In order to achieve accurate targeting, platforms which take part in this kind of targeting, such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles or fast jets, are equipped with advanced optics and sensor pods. These are capable of extremely high optical magnification.

This is notable because at least one of the vehicles clearly bears the logo of World Central Kitchen on the roof. It is likely these markings would have been visible from above when the strike was carried out, although this depends on the capability of the optic used to track the vehicle.

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2024/04/02/strike-that-killed-world-central-kitchen-workers-bears-hallmarks-of-israeli-precision-strike/

Israeli cabinet approves reopening northern Gaza border crossing for first time since October 7, official says (CNN)

Israel’s security cabinet has approved reopening of the Erez crossing between Israel and northern Gaza for the first time since the October 7 Hamas attacks, an Israeli official told CNN Thursday.

The Israeli official said the crossing would be opened to allow more humanitarian aid to enter blockaded Gaza. The cabinet also approved using the Israeli Port of Ashdod to help transfer more aid to Gaza.

It comes after US President Joe Biden said Thursday that the overall humanitarian situation in Gaza had become unacceptable in a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and warned Israel to take steps to address the crisis or face consequences.

The Erez crossing, a pedestrian passageway, was one of the border points breached by Hamas fighters on October 7 when they launched their bloody attack on Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking 250 others hostage.

It remains unclear how the reopening will be implemented; the volumes of aid deliveries that have been allowed through crossings in Gaza’s southern border so far have been insufficient compared to the scale of human suffering in the territory.

I’m wondering what happened at Erez Crossing on October 7th? The news articles I’ve seen describe it very briefly, in conflicting ways. Wikipedia was no help.

Here’s the Guardian:

Israel to reopen Erez crossing into Gaza after Biden sounds warning over protecting civilians

Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has said his security cabinet has approved a series of steps to increase the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, including the temporary reopening of a key crossing that was destroyed in the 7 October Hamas attack.

What does “was destroyed” mean here?

On Thursday Biden called for an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza following a phone call between the US president and Netanyahu, their first since Israeli airstrikes killed seven WCK employees.

In Thursday’s call, which lasted less than 30 minutes, the US president issued the strongest US rebuke toward Israel since the start of the conflict. He “made clear the need for Israel to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering and the safety of aid workers”, the White House said in a statement.

“He made clear that US policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps.”

Biden said that an “immediate ceasefire is essential” and urged Israel to reach a deal with Hamas “without delay”, the White House said.

…

Biden’s comments were echoed by his secretary of state, Antony Blinken, who said US support would be curtailed if Israel failed to adjust its conduct. “If we don’t see the changes that we need to see, there will be changes in our policy,” he told reporters in Brussels.

Top Israeli spy chief exposes his true identity in online security lapse (The Guardian)

The Guardian has confirmed with multiple sources that Sariel is the secret author of The Human Machine Team, a book in which he offers a radical vision for how artificial intelligence can transform the relationship between military personnel and machines.

Published in 2021 using a pen name composed of his initials, Brigadier General YS, it provides a blueprint for the advanced AI-powered systems that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have been pioneering during the six-month war in Gaza.

An electronic version of the book included an anonymous email address that can easily be traced to Sariel’s name and Google account. Contacted by the Guardian, an IDF spokesperson said the email address was not Sariel’s personal one, but “dedicated specifically for issues to do with the book itself”.

Later on Friday, in a statement to the Israeli media, the IDF described the book’s exposure of Sariel’s personal details as “a mistake”, adding: “The issue will be examined to prevent the recurrence of similar cases in the future.”

Could we reconsider titling this as the "Israel-Hamas War"? We don't need to call it a genocide, since there's a whole legal debate over what that term should mean, but it would be much more accurate to call it something like the "Israeli operation in Gaza" or, as Wikipedia has, the "Israeli Invasion of the Gaza Strip".