Press Release: Veritas Press C.I.C. Author: Kamran Faqir Article Date Published: 02 Sept 2025 at 12:37 GMT Category: Middle East | Palestine-Gaza | US-Israel At War Source(s): Veritas Press C.I.C. | Multi News Agencies
Al-Daraj Massacre: Six Lives In Rubble.
In Gaza City’s Al-Daraj neighbourhood, the stench of dust and blood clings to the air. On Monday morning, rescue workers clawed through the shattered concrete of a family home struck without warning near Al-Zahraa School.
When the dust settled, six bodies were pulled from the rubble; four others lay wounded, clinging to life.
“Gaza City is now under very heavy bombardment,” wrote Civil Defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal in a terse Telegram message as crews raced from one collapse to another.
An eyewitness, Yahya Sharif, standing amid bodies in a school-turned-shelter, voiced a despair that has become Gaza’s refrain:
“We found people torn apart. This place wasn’t affiliated with anyone, no politics, no fighters. It was packed with families.”
The Israeli military claims strikes in Al-Daraj targeted an “intelligence compound.” Residents and rescuers reject that as fiction: “There were no militants here,” one neighbour told us. “Only children.”
A City Under Fire, A Population Starving:
The Al-Daraj strike is one chapter in a 24-hour bloodbath. Gaza’s Health Ministry reports at least 76 Palestinians killed and 281 wounded across the strip, including 12 aid seekers. Another 13 people, three of them children, died of starvation in the same period.
Since Israel introduced a new aid distribution system in late May, 2,306 aid seekers have been killed queuing for food. Rights groups call it a war crime.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) paints an equally grim picture inside Gaza’s clinics:
“We are witnessing the highest number of malnutrition cases ever recorded,” said an MSF spokesperson. “Our staff and patients are wasting away as supplies run out.”
Gaza’s Famine: A Man-Made Catastrophe.
In August alone, 185 Palestinians, including 12 children, died of hunger, the highest monthly toll since the war began. The UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) formally declared famine in Gaza last month, warning:
- 500,000 people face catastrophic hunger now
- The toll could swell to 640,000 by end of September
- Over 43,000 children under five are already malnourished
- 67% of pregnant women are anaemic, the worst rate in years
“This is the fastest acceleration toward famine we’ve ever recorded,” said a senior UN food security analyst. “Without a ceasefire and full access for aid, thousands more will die within weeks.”
“Kill Zones” At Aid Sites:
The famine is no accident, rights groups argue. Human Rights Watch accuses Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war, citing a pattern of killings at aid points and systematic obstruction of food deliveries.
“Israeli authorities have turned bread lines into kill zones,” said HRW’s Middle East director, calling the shootings and strikes on distribution sites “serious violations of international law and potential war crimes.”
Amnesty International concurs, pointing to documented cases where civilians were killed while waiting for food under coordinated military watch. Their conclusion:
“This is not collateral damage. It is a policy of deprivation, deliberate, sustained and lethal.”
Forensic Questions: Who Ordered Al-Daraj?
Military spokespeople insist the Al-Daraj strike eliminated Hamas infrastructure. But where is the evidence?
- Independent reporters found no sign of fighters in the rubble, only women and children.
- Rescue crews confirm the home struck was residential, not military.
- Satellite images and geolocation analysis by +972 Magazine show Israel often labels densely inhabited zones as “evacuated” before levelling them, even when thousands remain trapped inside.
This investigative gap is not academic: if targeting decisions ignored clear civilian presence, command responsibility for war crimes could follow.
Human Voices Behind The Headlines:
- Tom Fletcher, UN OCHA: “This famine is entirely man-made. It flows from systematic obstruction.”
- Cindy McCain, WFP chief: “We warned Israel weeks ago. Without safe passage for aid, thousands of children will die.”
- A displaced mother in Rafah: “My baby hasn’t had milk in two weeks. She cries and there is nothing to give her. I would die for a loaf of bread.”
- MSF doctor in Khan Younis: “Children come in skeletal, with organ failure. These are famine deaths, not war injuries.”
The Law Catches Up: ICC, ICJ And The Genocide Question.
Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and ex-Defence Minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes, including starvation as a weapon. The International Court of Justice is simultaneously hearing a genocide case against Israel.
“The evidence of intent lies in the pattern, not in a single strike,” said Amal Clooney, part of the ICC advisory panel. “You cannot bomb homes, block aid, and deny famine, and claim compliance with humanitarian law.”
Israel rejects the allegations as “baseless,” calling its operations “targeted strikes against terrorists.”
The Bottom Line: This Is Systemic.
What happened in Daraj is not a tragic outlier. It is part of a pattern:
- Homes and schools hit without warning
- Aid seekers slaughtered at food lines
- A declared famine under a siege that Israel controls
Every day the blockade tightens and bombs fall, Gaza inches closer to what UN officials now openly call “total societal collapse.”
And the world? It debates, it condemns, it issues statements, while Gaza buries its dead under concrete and hunger.
Key Questions For The Next Phase Of This Investigation:
- Who approved the AL-Daraj strike and on what intelligence?
- Why has the GHF aid mechanism coincided with mass killings at distribution points?
- Why are ICC arrest warrants ignored by states supplying arms to Israel?
- How long before famine kills more Gazans than bombs?
Notable Key Points:
- 100,000+ Palestinians killed since October 2023
- 377,000 Palestinians injured, severely wounded and disabled
- 361 famine deaths so far, 130 are children
- 185 hunger deaths in August alone
- 2,306 aid seekers killed since May
- At least 94% of all hospitals in the Gaza Strip are damaged or destroyed
- Four major hospitals in Gaza (Kamal Adwan Hospital, Indonesia Hospital, Hamad Hospital for Rehabilitation and Prosthetics, and European Gaza Hospital) have had to suspend medical services
Conclusion: A Crime Scene In Plain Sight, And The World Is Complicit.
The strike on Al-Daraj is not an isolated tragedy. It is part of a systematic pattern: deliberate bombing of civilian homes, sniper fire on aid seekers, starvation as siege policy, and the slow death of an entire population through deprivation. These are not accidents of war, they are the architecture of annihilation.
International law is unambiguous. The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits collective punishment, targeting civilians, and using starvation as a weapon. The Rome Statute classifies these acts as war crimes and crimes against humanity. The ICC has already issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant. The ICJ has formally acknowledged the plausibility of genocide. The evidence is no longer in dispute.
What is in dispute is political will. The question is no longer if the law applies, but whether the world intends to enforce it.
A Call To Action: Mechanisms For Justice:
- Immediate Arms Embargo: UN member states must halt all arms transfers to Israel, as mandated under international law when weapons are used to commit war crimes. Continuing military trade makes donor governments complicit.
- ICC Enforcement: The International Criminal Court must move from warrants to prosecutions, using universal jurisdiction if necessary. Member states must execute arrest warrants without exception.
- UN Emergency Intervention: The Security Council, despite paralysis, must be bypassed through the Uniting for Peace mechanism at the General Assembly to authorize emergency humanitarian corridors and airlifts.
- Targeted Sanctions: Senior Israeli officials responsible for operational policy must face asset freezes and travel bans under Magnitsky-style frameworks.
- Corporate Accountability: Multinational companies aiding or profiting from this war, from arms suppliers to logistics firms, must be investigated for complicity under international business and human rights guidelines.
Every hour without action writes another obituary. Children are dying of hunger in hospital corridors while donor governments debate language in resolutions. Breadlines have become kill zones. And the famine consuming Gaza is man-made, and reversible.
If this siege were anywhere else, there would be sanctions, tribunals, airlifts. Instead, the response is silence and vetoes, a global system blinking in the face of genocide.
History will not ask whether the world knew. It will ask why the world watched, why it armed the perpetrator, why it funded the siege, and why it failed to act.
This is not charity. It is not diplomacy. It is law. And the law is clear: Stop the bombs. Break the blockade. Demand accountability for the perpetrators, permit Palestinian return, allow self-determination, end the occupation and end all complicity; otherwise, concede the system failed Gaza’s people.
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