By Robert Inlakesh

After having relentlessly bombarded Gaza for over two years, the Israelis insidiously use the remains of their own dead in order to threaten restarting the genocide.

Western corporations continue to display their collective belief that Israeli life is more precious than Palestinian life, ignoring all the hostages Israel holds. Meanwhile, the bodies held in Gaza, although treated as superior victims of Hamas, are all of Israeli citizens who remained trapped under the rubble of their own military’s airstrikes and are now used as political chips.

At least 19 bodies continue to remain in Gaza, buried underneath mounds of rubble due to Israel’s two-year-long indiscriminate bombing of the besieged coastal territory. Recently, the Associated Press released an article naming all of them and eulogizing them. 

Many were soldiers or active combatants, upholding an illegal occupation and siege, yet they are still portrayed as if they were innocent civilians. Under the laws of war, active combatants of an occupation force are considered valid targets and prisoners of war if they are seized during battle, yet those Israelis who fit this description are still incorrectly labeled “hostages”; therefore, it is a politically charged and biased term.

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Take, for example, the Associated Press’ description of Itay Chen, an Israeli soldier serving along the Gaza separation barrier on October 7, 2023. He is described as a hostage “who was abducted along with two other members of his tank battalion”, noting that ”Chen loved basketball and studying human biology” and “is survived by his parents, two brothers, and a dog named Gucci.” 

This is the equivalent of speaking about a Hamas fighter whose body was seized by Israeli forces that day by claiming he is a hostage who was abducted from his hang glider, loved playing table tennis, and is survived by his dog Fufu. In order for the Associated Press to be “balanced”, this is literally what kind of description of Hamas fighters they would have to publish.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that due to the delay in handing over the remaining bodies in Gaza, “time is running out” and accuses Hamas of delaying the handover of their remains purposefully.

In reality, Israel knows full well that exhuming many of these bodies, even if Hamas has an idea of precisely where they all may be, takes heavy excavation equipment and the work of professionals to retrieve them. Note that a minimum of 10,000 Palestinian bodies are also believed to be buried underneath the rubble of Gaza, and the process of finding them all could take years.

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Again, there is no mention in the corporate media of these Palestinians, including countless women and children, and no push to see the return of their remains. There are no articles talking about who they were, naming them explicitly, and discussing their hobbies. 

Meanwhile, the some 120 bodies of Palestinians from Gaza who were released in three batches back to the besieged territory bore the signs of horrific torture. According to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, there is “clear evidence of brutal torture”. The human rights group report noted the following:

“Medical examinations, forensic reports, and observations by the field team revealed conclusive evidence that many victims were killed after being detained. Their bodies bore clear marks of hanging, rope imprints around their necks, injuries from close-range gunfire, bound hands and feet with plastic restraints, and blindfolds. Some bodies were crushed under tank tracks, while others showed severe signs of physical torture, fractures, burns, and deep wounds.”

Dr. Ismail Al-Thawabta, the Director General of the Government Media Office in Gaza, also recently revealed to Al-Jazeera that “We also have serious suspicions that Israel has stolen organs from some of these martyrs—corneas, livers, and other internal organs—which were clearly missing when the bodies were examined.”

There are still over 11,000 Palestinian hostages languishing in Israeli military occupation prisons and torture detention facilities run by the army.

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On the question of the remaining Israeli bodies in Gaza, Israel has long understood that extracting their remains requires the use of heavy machinery and equipment that is not currently available in Gaza. International teams, such as one from Turkiye, have offered to help in the efforts to recover the remaining Israeli bodies, yet Israel decided to continue keeping the Rafah Crossing closed and would not immediately let the needed equipment and teams enter.

The Israeli media has long acknowledged that the issue of retrieving the remains of their captives will be complicated due to the mass destruction in the territory. Yet, the Israeli political leadership and a fully complicit Western media are now selling the idea that Hamas is the problem in this regard.

As a result of the delay in returning the Israeli bodies, the regime in Tel Aviv has repeatedly threatened to cut down the amount of humanitarian aid entering Gaza. Not only is this a blatant violation of the ceasefire agreement, but also a violation of international law. Aid reaching a civilian population is prohibited from being used as a political negotiating tool.

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In fact, with aid being part of the Gaza deal in itself, it renders the very agreement technically illegal under international law, as humanitarian aid is explicitly used as a negotiating chip. This now creates a dangerous precedent for future conflicts, where other governments may use the threat of imposing famine on a civilian population in order to negotiate favorable political outcomes.

Of the Israeli bodies buried under the rubble, many were killed as a result of Israeli airstrikes, yet there are no calls for accountability over the fact that the Israeli air force murdered its own people or that they have dropped so many explosives over Gaza as to cause the crisis of the day.

Instead, after having relentlessly bombarded Gaza for over two years, the Israelis insidiously use the remains of their own dead in order to threaten restarting the genocide.

(The Palestine Chronicle)