00:00This is Apropos.
00:04Medics say nearly all of the dead are women and children, including an 11-month-old baby.
00:10One of the latest Israeli attacks in Gaza has left at least 17 people dead and more
00:16than 40 others wounded.
00:18The raid took place at a school-turned-shelter in Yisra'at camp.
00:22Without providing evidence, the Israeli military said it had been targeting Hamas militants
00:26who'd been hiding out among civilians inside the school.
00:30Emily Boyle has the details.
00:35One more school reduced to ruins.
00:38An all-too-familiar sight in Gaza.
00:41In this latest strike, most of the victims were children.
00:45According to staff at Orde Hospital, which took in most of the casualties, dozens of
00:49people were killed and many more were injured.
00:53The bombing hit a school in the vicinity of Noizeraat refugee camp.
00:58I was sitting in a classroom and all of a sudden found bricks and glass over our heads.
01:03I hugged my little girl and I didn't see anything because of the smoke.
01:07I started running and calling my sister.
01:10Thank God I found her alive but under the rubble.
01:13Smoke and fire were all over the place.
01:16The building was being used as a welcome centre for Palestinian refugees.
01:21The Israeli army recognised the strike, saying they were targeting Hamas militants.
01:25They did not, however, provide any evidence to support their claims.
01:30This is a shelter and we have been living here for almost a year.
01:36There are no militants here, only civilians displaced from Gaza.
01:41Two thirds of the martyrs were children, no older than 10 years.
01:47The situation in Gaza is ever worsening as Israel continues their violent operations,
01:52which they say are targeting Hamas militants.
01:56According to Gaza's civil defence agency, at least 770 people have been killed in the
02:02latest Israeli advance, which started on the 6th of October 2024.
02:07The civil defence agency said it had been forced to suspend rescue operations in northern
02:11Gaza.
02:12They said that emergency workers had been detained, wounded or shot, as was the case
02:17of a medic operating in the area on Thursday.
02:23Palestinian rights activist Johara Baker is among five women who are at the UN in New
02:28York this week to speak about gendered violence in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
02:33They claim Israeli forces are using sexual violence as a weapon of genocide.
02:38Johara joins us now.
02:41Johara, thank you so much for being with us on the programme this evening.
02:45Firstly, what is your message to the UN this week?
02:53Thank you for having me.
02:56We came here, I came as part of a delegation to the UN with my sister organisation and
03:02other women who work with Palestinian NGOs.
03:06And primarily we have come to the UN to amplify the voices of Palestinian women who we feel
03:11have been sidelined and who have not been heard at the UN and in the world throughout.
03:23So our message here is to speak in this forum and to tell the world about what our stories
03:33are as Palestinian women living under Israeli occupation and the daily indignities that
03:39we do experience over and above what is actually happening in Gaza today, which is a full-blown
03:45genocide.
03:47And so for us, we think that it's very important.
03:49I think that it's not about seeing what's happening in Gaza because that is something
03:54that is very visible to the world.
03:57But the little stories that are happening, I don't think that people have heard it enough.
04:01And this is something that we all experience, not just the women in Gaza, but also women
04:06in the West Bank where I live and women in East Jerusalem.
04:13And so for us, it's very important for the world and we are here to speak to people and
04:19to show them that we have stories as well and that it is a very difficult experience
04:25living under occupation.
04:26And this hasn't been just for this year where the world has all of a sudden looked and seen
04:33what is happening in Gaza.
04:34This has been ongoing for the past 76 years.
04:38And tell us about some of those smaller stories that you mentioned, because very often we
04:42do tend to focus on the big numbers, the latest Israeli attack in Gaza today, for example,
04:47most of the victims, again, women and children, according to medics there.
04:51So what kind of abuse are women reporting to you?
04:57Well, you said it.
05:02The fact that there are numbers that are being reported.
05:06We are not just numbers.
05:07Yes, the numbers are horrific and they're horrendous, but behind every number there's
05:12a story.
05:14And we have documented cases of sexual violence against women in prisons, in Israeli prisons,
05:22from Gaza and from the West Bank.
05:25And when I tell you what the stories are horrific, we are talking about strip searching in front
05:31of men, in front of male and female soldiers, inappropriate touching, use of batons and
05:41sticks that are used on the genitalia, very, very inappropriate language that is used,
05:50intimidation.
05:52There's one woman who we have, we actually documented cases of rape, but because how
05:58sensitive that is in Palestinian culture, we are not able to speak about it.
06:05In the West Bank as well, women are used as human shields by the Israeli army.
06:12I can tell you one story about a woman, we have documented a story about a woman who
06:17was in the Jenin refugee camp, which is in the West Bank.
06:21The Israeli army raided it and they used her as a human shield.
06:25They tied her to a chair while they were carrying out their military raids and shooting
06:29at people, literally shooting from behind her for hours.
06:33Her son had been killed and she didn't even know it at the time.
06:37And it was so traumatic for her that after hours of this, when they did release her,
06:42this woman, by the way, is over 70 years old.
06:47And so by the time that they released her, she was so traumatized that she forgot, she
06:52didn't even realize what happened to her son.
06:55She blocked out the entire incident.
06:57Right now that she started to forget things and every time, and now every time she hears
07:02an army jeep, she starts to scream.
07:05So these are stories that happen across Palestine and it's not just since October 7th.
07:11This has been happening.
07:12I live in the West Bank.
07:14I have had stories with my own children when they were little, where I could cross an Israeli
07:20or they could cross an Israeli checkpoint where I couldn't because I have a different
07:24ID and I would have to call their father to come to the other side.
07:28And my daughter, I remember she was like five years old and she couldn't understand why
07:33I couldn't go home with her because they had declared the area where I was in a military
07:38zone, a closed military zone, and she lives in Jerusalem.
07:42So my husband had to come to pick her up from the other side and I had to hand her over
07:47and I couldn't go home and she was just screaming and wailing because she doesn't understand
07:53why her mother couldn't go home.
07:55And it's just these little injustices, these injustices that happen to women every day
08:00that we want to get, we want people to understand and to hear.
08:05And you say that the conditions have deteriorated over the course of the past year since this
08:09latest Israeli offensive in Gaza.
08:12You describe it as a clear and systematic policy and say that these are tactics that
08:17Israel has long used in Gaza and in the West Bank.
08:24Yes, absolutely.
08:25I mean, as you know, of course, after October 7th, everything has been worsened by exponentially.
08:35However, Israel has used sexual violence as a weapon of war.
08:40It's been systematic ever since its inception in 1948.
08:45And especially against women in prisons, and not just during their arrest, but also when
08:52they are in prison, after they are incarcerated.
08:56They strip search them, they beat them, they intimidate them.
08:59They also accuse that either there are actual documented cases of rape or they're threatened
09:07with rape.
09:09And how they also, they take their husbands and they threaten the husbands with raping
09:15their wives or their daughters or their sisters in order to try to coerce them to confess.
09:22So this has been a systematic weapon of war used by Israel.
09:29And we have documentation of it.
09:30There are documented cases of these, of these cases.
09:34And of course, after October 7th, it's become worse because I don't know how much people
09:39know the condition, the conditions in Israeli prisons now.
09:45They're horrific.
09:46They are actually starving male prisoners, female prisoners as well.
09:51They get very little food, no medical attention, no medical and no family visits.
09:59The lawyers visits are, are very few and far between.
10:03And this is not even talking about the people who have been abducted from Gaza.
10:08And I say abducted because no one knows where they are.
10:11No one knows how many people there are.
10:13There are whole families who have been taken, including women, including children.
10:18And the only way that anyone knows about what's happening to the women in Gaza are if, if
10:23a prisoner is released and they have heard about them or they heard their name.
10:28And when I say heard, I mean, they also tell about the screams that they hear from the
10:34other, from the cells, that they know that the Gazans are being held and they are being
10:38tortured and they hear the cries.
10:41And so we are living through very, very difficult times, whether we are in Gaza, whether the
10:47Palestinians are in Gaza, in the West Bank, in the diaspora.
10:51This is our people who are being systematically annihilated and ethnically cleansed.
10:57And so if I can just go back to your first question, this is why we are here.
11:04We need the world to hear us and to see that we are, we are also, we are not just numbers.
11:11Behind every number is a story.
11:13And Johara, given the difficulty or the impossibility of getting access to people who need help
11:19and providing care, what can be done to help these people, these women and children in
11:24these very difficult circumstances?
11:28Well, in order to help them, the only way to help them is to stop Israel.
11:37This is to be very honest.
11:39These women, Palestine is not a humanitarian problem in its essence.
11:46The humanitarian crisis is a result of what Israel has done.
11:50It's a result of the years-long occupation, and right now it's a result of the genocide.
11:55And it's a result of the fact that Israel has closed off Gaza to the entire world.
11:59So the only way to help them is to force, to make Israel comply with international law
12:09and with its obligations as an occupying force, to open the crossings, to allow humanitarian
12:16assistance, and to stop bombing civilian populations, to stop abducting civilians,
12:25to stop killing women and children, and they are targeting women because this is one aspect
12:30of genocide.
12:31They want to stop women from having children and from the generations continuing.
12:39And so this is the only way to help them.
12:42Any humanitarian assistance that gets in is very, very, very minuscule.
12:49It's not enough.
12:51People are actually starving.
12:52And so again, the only way is to force Israel's hand.
12:56Johara, I'm so sorry for cutting across you there, but we'll have to leave it there for
13:00now.
13:01We do really appreciate your time on the programme and for talking us through all of that.
13:05Johara Baker, women's rights activist, thank you so much for joining us on the programme.
13:11That is it from us for now.
13:12Do stay with us.
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