© File PhotoDamage in Gaza Strip following Israeli airstrike on the al-Remal area in Gaza City
to The Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS), its medical center was destroyed after Israel ordered its evacuation. PMRS is a Christian Aid organization.
A PMRS staffer at the clinic said:
"It all happened so suddenly. We just heard a commotion in the street, and then someone came and told us they were planning to strike the building and the entire block. They gave us thirty minutes to evacuate. Everyone rushed out, and about half an hour later, they hit the building. The whole tower came down, and even the entire block suffered massive destruction."
Before the building was destroyed, 1,000 people were treated each day at the medical center. It was one of the main blood donation centers in the Strip.
The IDF
did not comment on the strike. Israel has damaged or destroyed nearly all hospitals and medical facilities in Gaza.
Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis is the only fully functioning hospital in the Strip.The PMRS said the attacks were part of a systematic campaign against the healthcare system in Gaza.
"This latest destruction is part of a wider pattern. In the last three weeks alone, three of our clinics have been targeted: Al-Shatae Primary Health Care clinic - destroyed; Tal al-Hawa clinic - partially damaged; Omar al-Mukhtar clinic - now destroyed. These deliberate attacks are systematically dismantling what little remains of Gaza's healthcare infrastructure and shows Israel's total disregard for the international community and the humanitarian principles our international partners stand for."
UN experts previously said Israel was committing "medicide," the deliberate destruction of the medical infrastructure, in Gaza.
A Christian Aid official said Israeli attacks are preventing medical care in Gaza. Katie Roxburgh, Christian Aid's Programme Manager for Gaza, said.
"Our partners' lifesaving work in Gaza is being constantly degraded by the Israeli military. Two weeks ago, it was our partner PCHR's HQ office building in Gaza City. Now this. It's hard to find the words when almost every day for nearly two years there's a new horror. This was a clinic - it should be a safe place where people can come for help. Instead, they came and were bombed."
The IDF is ravaging Gaza City with an intense bombing campaign and ground invasion.
Israel has ordered the evacuation of the one million Palestinians living in the area. At least half a million people remain in the city.
Comment: Israel's open mandate: Kill anyone, destroy anything, obliterate anytime by any means. And Huckabee? Here's
a brief summary:
Huckabee first visited Israel 50 years ago. "I felt an overwhelming spiritual reality of understanding this is the land that God has given to the Jews." Huckabee said he began hosting his own tours of Israel in the 1980s and has visited the country more than 100 times.
Huckabee has also long articulated staunchly pro-Israel political views. As a candidate for president in 2008, Huckabee said he believed there is "no such thing as a Palestinian." He argued that the very concept of Palestinian identity is "a political tool to try and force land away from Israel."
When he ran for president again in 2015, he held a fundraiser in one of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which are considered illegal under international law. Huckabee compared the origin of Israel to the founding of the United States, saying both were started by people who moved to a new land to find peace and security.
Huckabee may be the first political appointee — as opposed to interim career foreign service officers — to come to the U.S. Embassy in Israel from a group known as Christian Zionists. Over the past 30 years, evangelicals, including Southern Baptists like Huckabee, but also growing groups of charismatic nondenominational Christians, have duly formed strong alliances with Israeli leaders and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in particular. They give more to Israeli causes than Jewish Americans do and have formed strong support groups. Huckabee belongs to the network of supporters of Netanyahu and his government among evangelicals and is considered to be a strong supporter of Israel.
Huckabee was pressed by Israeli radio on whether he believed the Trump administration would support annexation by Israel of the occupied territories, principally the West Bank, but also Gaza. He demurred but made it clear that he sees his job as following the decisions made by the president.
"There's never been an American president that has been more helpful in securing an understanding of the sovereignty of Israel — from the moving of the embassy, recognition of the Golan Heights, and Jerusalem as the capital, no one has done more than president Trump and I fully expect that will continue."
Mordechai Inbari, a professor of religion at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, didn't think the new Trump administration would rush to see Israel annex the territories. Trump has shown a desire to expand the Mideast peace deal known as the Abraham Accords, inked in his first administration, to include Saudi Arabia.
It would seem Huckabee is in this political position to maintain the calm and appease Netanyahu as Trump's clueless foil, thus deflect bumps in the road for Trump's US agenda.
Comment: Israel's open mandate: Kill anyone, destroy anything, obliterate anytime by any means. And Huckabee? Here's a brief summary: It would seem Huckabee is in this political position to maintain the calm and appease Netanyahu as Trump's clueless foil, thus deflect bumps in the road for Trump's US agenda.