As each day passes I read with horror reports about the latest IDF attacks on the civilian population of Gaza. These attacks are justified by the Western media and political classes by reciting the mantra that Israel has the right to defend itself from the terrorist group Hamas.

This racist narrative completely ignores the history of Palestine since 1948 which has been one of ethnic cleansing accompanied by massacre after massacre.

Some two million people - most of the territory’s population - are stuck inside southern and central Gaza, where Israel’s ground offensive is now moving.

Israeli warplanes heavily bombarded an area around Khan Younis in southern Gaza on Monday as the military ordered mass evacuations from the city in the face of a widening ground offensive. 

Palestinians are being pushed into a progressively shrinking portion of the besieged territory, raising sharp questions about what will happen to them.

Gaza’s fragile ecosystem could be permanently damaged by a huge influx of salty seawater like that which Israel is considering pumping into the city, experts said. Some of the deepest tunnels dug by Hamas and other militant groups could be near groundwater depths, souring the area’s drinking water.

For the first time since the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched a ground attack on Gaza, dozens of tanks and infantry are now fighting in the heart of a major city in the southern half of the Strip.

Until now, the IDF was focusing its operations in the north but following last week's temporary truce it has clearly expanded the combat focus also to the main southern city of Khan Younis - where the IDF believes Hamas' top commanders are hiding.

Last month, a Gazan journalist ventured into the hospital to find an awful visual: decomposing bodies of four babies, eaten by worms, blackened by mold, mauled by stray dogs.

Al-Nasr Children’s Hospital director Bakr Qaoud told The Washington Post that at the height of Israel’s assault on northern Gaza in November, everybody was ordered to evacuate.

The whereabouts of the parents of the infants, born premature, were not known after a month of war.

There were a total of five infants Qaoud was taking care of. All of them were vulnerable.

At least 85 civilians were killed when an army drone attack erroneously targeted a religious gathering in northwest Nigeria, officials confirmed Tuesday, as the president ordered an investigation into the latest in a series of such deadly mistakes in Nigeria’s conflict zones.

A relative of newly-released Israeli captives has publicly accused the Israeli military of killing its own people and says Tel Aviv is blocking the victims’ families from speaking out. 

In testimony delivered to Israel’s finance committee on December 3, Noam Dan, whose cousin’s husband remains in Hamas custody and who suffered the loss of two other family members in the hostilities, told legislators the Israeli military has killed its own.