The Never-Ending Storm

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21.32 EDT The near-total telecommunications blackout in Gaza amid Israel’s ongoing bombardment risks providing cover for mass atrocities, Human Rights Watch says. The group said in a statement on Friday: Widespread phone and internet outages occurred in Gaza on October 27, 2023, amid a concerted Israeli bombardment, almost entirely cutting off the 2.2 million residents from the outside world Agence France-Presse also reported the NGO’s senior technology and human rights researcher, Deborah Brown, as saying: This information blackout risks providing cover for mass atrocities and contributing to impunity for human rights violations. A number of international agencies and NGOs said they had lost touch with their staff in Gaza on Friday, including the UN’s humanitarian agency, OCHA, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Its humanitarian coordinator, Lynn Hastings, said in a statement that UN hospitals and humanitarian operations “can’t continue without communications”, alongside energy, food, water and medications. The NGO Amnesty International said it had also lost contact with colleagues in Gaza, adding: This communications blackout means that it will be even more difficult to obtain critical information and evidence about human rights violations and war crimes being committed against Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Internet access and the phone network were completely cut across the Gaza Strip on Friday as Israel said it was expanding its military operation.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/oct/27/israel-hamas-war-live-us-strikes-iran-linked-targets-in-syria-eu-calls-for-humanitarian-pauses-in-gaza?page=with:block-653c62ed8f08b48bad7c35f3#block-653c62ed8f08b48bad7c35f3

Yep. Israel has been sending up trial balloons all week, talking about how ‘terrorists are using the hospitals’ and the like, waiting for social permission to do even more than what they’ve already done. That didn’t go over well, so they just shut out the world. Now they can do whatever they wish. And the world is just letting it happen.