Israeli forces bombed an ambulance in Rafah, killing two Palestinian paramedics on a rescue mission, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS).
The pair, identified as Haitham Tubasi and Suhail Hassouna, were “deliberately” targeted while in a PRCS ambulance in the Tel al-Sultan area in western Rafah, the medical group said.
The charity added that they were killed while “they were performing their humanitarian duty”.
Their bodies were retrieved on Thursday by their colleagues, who were moved to tears as they buried them in Rafah.
“The Israeli occupation forces deliberately bombed the ambulance vehicle despite it bearing the internationally protected Red Crescent emblem,” PRCS said on social media platform X.
Genocide is not a crime that goes by the numbers. It’s not about the number of children and civilians you killed. Those are just “regular” war crimes. Those are being committed by both of those countries, and arguably Israel is bigger on mass murder right now.
Genocide is where you kill or displace people to erase their cultural or national identity. In that, they are committing the exact same crime. Genocide is not when you kill Ukrainians or Palestinians, but when you declare that they do not have a right to exist, and effect that with force. Bombing a Palestinian hospital or a Ukrainian one is “just” a crime against humanity, mass murder, war crime, goes against the Geneva Conventions.
If you make one Palestinian leave Palestine, or take away one child from a Ukrainian family and raise them as Russian, so that there are less Palestinians / Ukrainians in the world, that’s genocide.
Both Russia and Israel are committing one single count of genocide each right now, with Israel committing a lot more murders, though Russia is trying their best too.
Russia is not committing a genocide. They re committing many war crimes, but they do not amount to a genocide.
And also in regards to numbers. Israel murdered more women and children in Gaza in 8 months than Russia did in over two years in Ukraine. Relative to the population Israel ethnically cleansed far more people. Israel destroyed the entirety of civillian Infrastructure in Gaza including almost every house.
Russia is committing terrible war crimes in Ukraine in an illegal war of aggression. But what Israel is doing is magnitudes worse.
This is genocide.
And the ICJ agrees.
It does not diminish the genocide Israel is committing, but Russia is definitely committing genocide in Ukraine, insofar as one of the aims of their war of aggression is the erasure of Ukrainian identity.