Latest massacres in Gaza illustrate the complete dehumanisation of Palestinians | MSF

“How can the killing of more than 800 people in a single week, including small children, plus the maiming of hundreds more, be considered a military operation adhering to international humanitarian law?,” asks Brice de le Vingne, Head of MSF Emergency Unit. “We can no longer accept the statement that Israel is taking ‘all precautions’ – this is just propaganda.”

Earlier in the same week, Israel repeatedly bombed so-called safe zones, refugee camps, a school and multiple humanitarian warehouses, which were formally registered as ‘deconflicted’ by Israeli forces. Heavy strikes on 4 June in the Middle Area resulted in at least 70 deaths and over 300 wounded Palestinians, mostly women and children, who were brought to the MSF-supported Al-Aqsa hospital with severe burns, shrapnel wounds, and fractures.

“Since October (and certainly before), the dehumanisation of Palestinians has been a hallmark of this war,” says de le Vingne. “Catch-all phrases like ‘war is ugly’ act as blinders to the fact that children too young to walk are being dismembered, eviscerated, and killed.”

These attacks are the latest in a broad litany of atrocities and illustrate the type of war that Israel is fighting. Israel and its allies have repeatedly shown that there is no watershed moment, or red line in this violence. The attacks now known as the flour massacre, the tent massacre; or the killing of aid workers and their families, the annihilation of hospitals and the health system more generally, have led to no more than weak diplomatic posturing, empty words, and staggering inaction.