Gaza: A Checklist Exposing the Libel of the ‘Blood Libel’

By Jeremy Salt

More bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks arrive at a Gaza hospital as Israel's genocide continues despite the ceasefire. (Photo: WAFA)

While Gaza is different in scale, the same violations of international law and crimes against humanity were being committed in 1948 and have been committed ever since.

Israel is waiting for the delivery of 60,000 bombs so it can complete its destruction of what is left of Gaza and continue its destruction of south Lebanon, along with wherever else it might like to drop them.

40,000 of these bombs weigh a ton; the rest are slightly smaller, but together they represent more explosive power than the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In some combination, they were used to completely destroy Ali Taher ridge in southern Lebanon, while in the background Israeli soldiers and settlers hooted and whistled in jubilation at the destruction, as they have done over years during the mass destruction and massacres across Gaza.

The topographical war continues with the destruction of Lebanon’s forests and olive groves and the poisoning of the soil with a variety of toxic chemicals. The war on history continues with the destruction of towns and villages, most hundreds of years old, if not thousands, dating back to pre-Phoenician times.

Such is the scorched-earth devastation caused by these savages – or is there another word or phrase for them? When they are done, if they are allowed to reach that point, there will be no history but theirs, no topography but theirs, no farms, forests, cities, towns and villages but theirs.

The central lands of the Middle East will be reduced to a fading memory. History will be reduced to imagination, an illusion, a fiction, a self-delusion or a lie, projecting onto the victims the lies and delusions of the perpetrators.

The British government has now nailed its colors to the mast by naming the colonial-settler regime in Tel Aviv as the sponsors of terrorism and ethnic cleansing in the Palestinian territories. Will it follow through, and how would it follow through, given the seriousness of the accusation? These are the questions that hang in the air unanswered.

The genocidalists and their supporters, who of course deny that the genocide is a genocide, say the accusation is no more than an extension of the medieval blood libel. Unfair, vicious, and threatening to Britain’s Jewish communities were the accusations made after the British foreign secretary issued his statement.

The medieval blood libel was based on the accusation that Jews were killing Christians (especially children) to use their blood for religious rituals, especially in the cooking of matzos. These accusations frequently led to riots and pogroms in which scores of Jews might be massacred.

In the 14th century, Pope Innocent IV declared the blood libel a libel. In the 16th century, the Ottoman sultan Suleyman (the Magnificent) denounced it, while in 1840 the sultan Abdulmajid declared that it was a slander against the Jews.

It is written in the Bible that King Herod of Judea ordered the killing of all children under the age of two so he could eliminate Jesus. The numbers range from thousands down to ten or twenty, if it happened at all.

Most modern scholars believe that it didn’t, but the story has passed into Biblical lore as the ‘massacre of the innocents.’ Of course, the true, indisputable ‘massacre of the innocents’ is the mass murder of tens of thousands of Palestinian children by heavily armed men and women masquerading as ‘soldiers.’

The accusation of ‘blood libel’ made by the perpetrators of the genocide is lie, slander and denial rolled into one. The claim that children are not being deliberately killed, as if the genocidalists don’t know children are living in the houses, apartment blocks and tents they are bombing, is another lie.

‘Massacre of the innocents’ or ‘blood libel’?

Here is some of the evidence:

November 3, 2003: In August 1949, a ten- to 15-year-old girl was gang-raped by an entire Israeli platoon (17 men) over three days. She was first given a bath and haircut, and afterward she was murdered and placed in a shallow grave. The decision to rape her was taken ‘democratically’ at the kibbutz Nirim, established on the ethnically cleansed land of the Abu Sitta family (The Guardian and Israeli sources).

February 10, 2021: A 15-year-old boy was raped ‘with an object’ while being interrogated in Moscobiyya prison in west Jerusalem on January 13, 2021 (Defense of Children International).

July 10, 2023: Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system face physical and emotional abuse, with four out of five (86 percent) being beaten, 69 percent strip searched, and nearly half (42 percent) injured at the point of ‘arrest,’ including gunshot wounds and broken bones (Save the Children)

February 19, 2024: Palestinian women and children have reportedly been arbitrarily executed in Gaza, often with other family members (UNHRC).

February 19, 2024: Hundreds of Palestinian women and girls have been arbitrarily detained since October 7 and subjected to inhumane and degrading treatment, including sexual abuse, beatings, and the denial of food, medicine, and period products, the UN Human Rights Council reports (Middle East Eye).

September 30, 2024: Every day more than ten children in the Gaza Strip ‘lose’ a limb (Human Rights Watch).

October 3, 2024: “Some children think that their legs might grow again. Sometimes it’s difficult to explain that that’s not going to happen” (Humanity and Inclusion).

January 14, 2025: “From the day the war broke out, they destroyed everything inside us. They destroyed my home and my room, which held all my memories. They took everything that helped me to live, like my devices, my boot and my wheelchair. How can I go back to where I was without all this?” (Ghazal, a 14-year-old girl with cerebral palsy.) The use of explosive weapons condemns 475 children a month to lifelong disability, including severely injured limbs and hearing impairment (Save the Children).

January 22, 2025: The Gaza Strip has the highest number of child amputees per capita in the world (UNICEF).

March 4, 2025: Muin Fahd Salahat, 14, was taken from his home in Beit Fajjar, near Bethlehem, and on March 2 was placed under a four-month administrative detention order. He was the youngest child held since 2008 (Defense of Children International Palestine).

May 2025: Child amputees live in severe physical and psychological distress because of their fear at being unable to flee from bombing (World Health Organization).

June 5, 2025: About 6000 prosthetic devices are needed across the Gaza Strip (Humanity and Inclusion UK).

August 10, 2025: There are currently no wheelchairs or prosthetic limbs available across the Gaza Strip (Gaza Health Ministry).

August 15, 2025: 4800 amputations of limbs documented since October 7, 2023, 76 percent affecting upper limbs, 24 percent lower. (The figures include children). Ten children are losing one or more limbs every day. Gaza has the largest group of child amputees in history. 92 percent of people with disabilities cannot reach food or medication sources; 83 percent have lost ‘assistive’ devices. At least 70 deaf Palestinians have been killed because of no sign language alerts or visual warnings of attacks (UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities).

August 24, 2025: “We are children. What have we done?” says one of a group of boys abducted from Gaza, taken to a military prison, stripped naked and subjected to sexual abuse, including by female soldiers (Common Dreams)

August 26, 2025: Since the onset of the genocide, more than 18,489 students have been killed in Gaza and the West Bank. 970 educators and administrative staff have been killed and 4533 wounded (Arab Organization for Human Rights).

August 28, 2025: 193 university professors and 800 schoolteachers have been killed by Israeli bombardment and gunfire since October 7, 2023 (Palestinian Information Center Mut’a)

September 13, 2025: 1160 educational facilities including 927 schools, universities, education centres and kindergartens have been destroyed since October 7 2023 (Truthout).

August/September, 2025: More than 22,000 children are permanently disabled and have been left without medical care, safe shelter, or mobility devices. 20 percent of people with disabilities are children under 18 and 16 percent aged 0-14 (Global Disability Fund).

November 4, 2025: More than 97 percent of schools have been damaged or destroyed. More than 685,000 school-age children have had limited access to face-to-face learning for two years (UNICEF).

November 20, 2025: More than 90 percent of children in Palestine are now showing signs of severe stress and aggressive behavior driven by the loss of safety and stability (UN in Palestine).

November 26, 2025: “This pipe doesn’t make up for my life,” says Rateb Abu Qleiq, 10. From an article headed ‘Child amputees in Gaza use makeshift prosthetics as Israel restricts medical supplies’ (Israel-Palestine News. A length of lead or plastic sewage or drainage pipe has been commonly fashioned as a substitute for a leg).

December 28, 2025: ‘Absolutely unimaginable: Children in Gaza face amputations without anesthetic’ (Democracy Now. Operations without anesthetic – including cesarean births – have been general across Gaza).
February 21, 2026: Nearly 40,000 children in Gaza have lost one or both parents, in what UNICEF describes as the largest orphan crisis in modern history (Gaza Herald).

April 22, 2026: Estimates from WHO indicate that 5000-6000 Gazans have undergone amputations. At the height of the conflict, up to 10 children per day were undergoing one or both leg amputations. Only nine prosthetists were available across the Gaza Strip (Humanity and Inclusion).

May 3, 2026: Estimates ranged from 1000 to as many as 4000 child amputees, depending on source, date and methodology. Injuries also include spinal cord and brain trauma (Gaza Health Ministry).

June 22, 2026: According to UNICEF data, supported by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics in April, 2026, more than 58,000 children in Gaza have lost one or both parents (Life-Ong US). The figures have been continually revised upwards as the figures come in.

June 29, 2026: The UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on Occupied Palestinian territory says “the scale and rate of children killed and injured in Gaza have been unparalleled across modern conflicts globally.” UNICEF describes Gaza as “the most dangerous place in the world to be a child” (The Conversation).

June 2026: “Nearly 1.2 million children require urgent mental health and psychological support while tens of thousands have lost one or more parents. This multidimensional emergency has produced an ecology of trauma in which every protective system essential for health development has deteriorated.” 58,000 children have lost one or both parents.

The mental health of an entire generation is at risk of permanent impairment. “In addition to trauma from violence, children face a severe threat to their nutrition and physical survival… (creating) an environment where every protective system for children has collapsed simultaneously (‘Mental health of children in Gaza: A call for global action,’ Science Direct Geopsychiatry).

August 6, 2026: More than 64,000 children have been killed or wounded in Gaza. The ceasefire was announced on October 10, 2025, but at least 300 children were killed in the next 300 days (UNICEF’s US branch).

August 13, 2026: A wide range of goods, including toys, have been subject to restrictions on entering the strip. Some in the newest generation of Palestinians in Gaza may not even know what toys or games are (Truthout).

August 27, 2026: About 370 Palestinian children are being held in Israeli prisons and ‘detention centers’ without charge or trial (Palestine Center for Prisoner Advocacy).

September 18, 2026: Muhammad Abdul Zinati, 15, was killed in a double-tap glide bomb attack in Gaza City as he rushed to help paramedic Muhammad Rajah Zinati, 26, who was also killed instantly. “He was a kind, helpful and respectful boy,” his cousin said. “He would help the elderly to collect water from the water truck (general news sources).

September 16, 2026: By the end of June 2026, the Israeli prison service was holding 376 Palestinian minors (most 16 to 18) in detention prison, along with 94 Palestinian minors held for being in Israel illegally (B’tselem).

September 17 2026: 73,986 Palestinians have been killed since October 7 2023, including 20,179 children and 12,500 women. (Gaza Death Toll Live Tracker. As 70 percent of the dead have repeatedly been listed as women and children, and as many of the dead still lie under the rubble, these figures seem an undercount].

September 18, 2026: The Palestinian Ministry of Health says Israeli attacks have killed 1386 Palestinians and wounded 4784 since the ceasefire ‘took effect’ on October 14, 2025. In the period since, 831 bodies have been recovered from under the rubble. The source does not say, but many would be children (Palestine Chronicle).

These accounts are taken from the apocalyptic scenes of destruction in Gaza, of everything standing above ground, with thousands of victims still buried below it, accompanied by the depravity, sadism, brutality, and sexual abuse and rape of men, women, and children by heavily armed men and women who shame the word ‘soldiers.’

The earlier references point to the unchanging nature of Israeli crimes. While Gaza is different in scale, the same violations of international law and crimes against humanity were being committed in 1948 and have been committed ever since, not just in Palestine but in all surrounding countries.

– Jeremy Salt taught at the University of Melbourne, at Bosporus University in Istanbul and Bilkent University in Ankara for many years, specializing in the modern history of the Middle East. Among his recent publications is his 2008 book, The Unmaking of the Middle East. A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands (University of California Press) and The Last Ottoman Wars. The Human Cost 1877-1923 (University of Utah Press, 2019). He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.

Don’t Stop the Music: On Macklemore, Palestine and America’s Cultural War

By Ramzy Baroud

British singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran (L) and American rapper and justice activist Macklemore. (Design: PC)

Global solidarity with Macklemore spread so rapidly that the people responsible for his removal were forced to issue a succession of defensive explanations.

‘Page Six Hollywood’ recently declared: “War of Open Letters Erupts Between Pro-Israel and Pro-Palestine Factions in Hollywood.” Only a few years ago, a headline like this would have seemed unthinkable.

The article described an increasingly open struggle between pro-Palestine and pro-Israel forces within the entertainment industry.  On one side are artists and other industry figures taking a clear stand against Israel’s genocide in Gaza; on the other are defenders of Israel attempting to deny that genocide in the face of irrefutable evidence.

Yet even this framing failed to tell the whole story. What is unfolding is far more consequential than a quarrel among celebrities or a “war of open letters.” It is part of a brewing cultural revolution in American society – one that has now reached the highest echelons of the country’s cultural establishment. And in that struggle, Israel is losing – and losing badly.

Though the article acknowledged that support for Palestine has become powerful enough to divide Hollywood openly, it concealed the scale of the transformation underway by presenting the moment as a ‘war’ between two factions.

Long before Israeli filmmakers, production companies, and actors established a significant presence in Hollywood, the industry’s cultural infrastructure routinely elevated Israel at every opportunity. Film and television constructed a glossy image of a heroic nation whose establishment and continued survival were portrayed as miraculous, while the dispossession and violence underpinning that narrative were largely erased from view.

Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims, meanwhile, were almost invariably cast in a negative light: the uncultured and menacing ‘other,’ supposedly possessing no legitimate claim to civilization, no recognizable morality, and no history or identity worthy of serious consideration.

Indeed, Hollywood played a central role in the systematic dehumanization of Palestinians in Western popular culture. When thousands of actors, filmmakers, producers and artists begin taking principled public stands for Palestine – often at considerable professional risk – we can therefore speak confidently of a cultural shift of historic proportions.

Susan Sarandon, Mark Ruffalo, Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Joaquin Phoenix, Tilda Swinton, Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, Cynthia Nixon and Riz Ahmed are only some of the most visible names on an ever-expanding list of morally driven and courageous artists confronting an archaic industry establishment.

The story, however, extends far beyond Hollywood. Consider the major controversy that recently erupted in the US following Macklemore’s removal from the remaining dates of Ed Sheeran’s Loop Tour.

Macklemore is far more than a pro-Palestine singer. The Grammy-winning rapper and songwriter is a gifted political storyteller whose career has combined mainstream artistic success with an enduring commitment to social causes. Since the beginning of the genocide, he has emerged as one of the most powerful voices of Palestinian solidarity in the US and beyond.

During Sheeran’s recent concerts at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, Macklemore expressed solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, called for a ‘free Palestine’ and performed ‘Hind’s Hall’, his protest anthem honoring Hind Rajab, the Palestinian child killed by Israeli forces in Gaza.

The response to Macklemore’s courageous stand was immediate, but also predictable. The billionaires who controlled the venues reached for the weapon still at their disposal: financial power. Robert Kraft, the owner of Gillette Stadium, refused to allow Macklemore to perform there.

Sheeran, who appeared to underestimate the gravity of the moment, went on the defensive. “I am not complicit,” he declared, insisting that Macklemore’s removal had been the promoter’s decision rather than his own. But such a weak response by one of the world’s most influential musicians, particularly while an artist on his own tour was being punished for speaking out, could hardly be presented as a politically ‘neutral’ position.

In the past, the story might have ended there. Macklemore would have been isolated and his career placed in jeopardy, while Sheeran, the promoters and the stadium owners continued largely untouched.

Those days are gone. Global solidarity with Macklemore – and, by extension, with Palestine – spread so rapidly that the people responsible for his removal were forced to issue a succession of defensive and sometimes contradictory explanations.

By then, however, the damage had been done. Sheeran faced mounting boycott calls, protests and even the suspension of his music by an Irish radio station. Finneas, Lukas Graham and Aaron Rowe withdrew from the tour, while Beoga, Sheeran’s backing band, also pulled out. Artists and public figures began speaking openly about the genocide, freedom of expression and the power of billionaires to dictate the political boundaries of art.

Podcasters and social-media commentators also mobilized, reaching audiences of millions and digging deeper into the controversy. They began asking who Kraft was, examining his longstanding relationship with Israel, his campaign against BDS and the enormous financial machinery behind his political advocacy.

The attempt to punish Macklemore ultimately placed Kraft, Sheeran and the entertainment establishment itself under unprecedented scrutiny. Far from silencing the message of Palestinian freedom, their actions amplified it.

Ultimately, this is not a story about two feuding artists, just as Hollywood’s transformation cannot be reduced to two camps trading open letters. Both are manifestations of a much larger cultural upheaval rooted in grassroots American society, where people from diverse backgrounds are finally opening their eyes to Israeli crimes and to the extraordinary influence Tel Aviv has long exercised over their country.

Beyond the occasional opinion poll, that story rarely makes headlines. But when the pendulum swings this far, neither Kraft’s money nor the stadiums he controls can stop the movement.

Nor can they silence Macklemore’s cry of ‘Free Palestine’ – a cry now echoed by millions of people throughout the world.

– Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of eight books. His latest book, ‘Before the Flood,’ was published by Seven Stories Press. His other books include ‘Our Vision for Liberation’, ‘My Father was a Freedom Fighter’ and ‘The Last Earth’. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net