Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a member of the security cabinet, ought to be fired immediately over his latest remarks. That's how any properly run country would act, and all the more so a country against which the International Court of Justice in The Hague has issued provisional measures requiring it to refrain from genocide, including one requiring it to deal properly with incitement to genocide.
On Monday, Smotrich urged Israel to destroy its enemies. "There are no half-jobs," he said. "Rafah, Deir al-Balah, Nuseirat â total destruction. 'Thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.' There is no place for them under heaven." Plain and simple â total destruction. There is no room for interpretation. (...)
"The problem with UNRWA-Gaza isn't that of a few bad apples; it is a rotten and poisonous tree whose roots are Hamas. The Colonna report ignores the severity of the problem, and offers cosmetic solutions that do not deal with the enormous scope of Hamas' infiltration of UNRWA. This is not what a genuine and thorough review looks like. This is what an effort to avoid the problem and not address it head on looks like."
Testimonies from camp residents, which were provided to the Euro-Med Monitor team, confirm that the sound of women screaming and babies crying was heard late at night on both Sunday and Monday. When some of the residents went out to investigate and tried to help, they were shot at by Israeli quadcopter drones. The sounds they had heard were in fact recordings played by the Israeli drones, with the intent of forcing the campâs residents out into the streets, where they could be easily targeted by snipers and other weaponry.
According to the testimonies, this tactic also involved broadcasting gunshots, armed conflicts, explosions, military vehicle movements, and occasionally songs in Hebrew and Arabic in order to psychologically intimidate civilians who live amid total darkness at night and total disconnection from the external world.