According to the feature-length documentary Gaza, published online by Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit on Thursday, Israeli forces routinely shared abuses they committed on platforms including TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook after invading the enclave.

The crimes ranged from wanton destruction and looting, to the demolition of entire neighbourhoods and possible unlawful killings.

Al Jazeera said it was able to track down the names, ranks and military units of many of the soldiers after compiling a database of "over two and a half thousand social media accounts, containing photos and videos placed online by Israeli soldiers".

Investigating War Crimes in Gaza | Al Jazeera Investigations

Overnight on Wednesday, Israeli forces dropped bombs across the strip and undertook a ground incursion in Khan Yunis, killing at least 90 Palestinians and injuring dozens of others.

Israeli forces bombed two schools, in Gaza City and central Gaza. They also bombed an orphanage in western Gaza City, the Al-Amal Orphanage. The orphanage posted on Facebook that the bombing killed eight people, including children, and caused a “large number” of injuries.

In southern Gaza, Israeli forces sent tanks into Khan Yunis on Wednesday, where troops killed at least 51 people, according to Gaza officials. At least 12 children, including a 22-month-old baby, were killed by the combination of the ground and air attack. Israel has repeatedly sent troops into Khan Yunis, and this time launched an overnight operation into three neighborhoods of the city.

After nearly a year of unrelenting attacks in Gaza, Israel further escalated and expanded its war by invading Lebanon late Monday. Iran responded the following evening by launching ballistic missiles into Tel Aviv, stoking fears that the region is on the precipice of an even broader war.

The Israeli military has tried repeatedly to minimize the perceived scope of its attacks, describing its ongoing invasion of Lebanon as “limited, localized, and targeted ground raids” against Hezbollah. Such semantics are also in play in the U.S., where President Joe Biden publicly called for a ceasefire, while reporting suggests the White House privately condoned Israel’s expansion of its war into Lebanon.

For the past two weeks, Israel’s bombing campaign across Lebanon, including strikes into the densely populated capital Beirut, has killed more than 1,000 people, including at least 243 children and women, the country’s health minister said. One million people in Lebanon — nearly a fifth of the country — have been displaced from their homes. Over the weekend, Israel bombed Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank, Yemen, and Syria within a 24-hour span, damaging civilian infrastructure and killing dozens. In Lebanon on Sunday alone, Israeli strikes killed at least 105 people, a single-day death toll from Israeli strikes previously seen only in Gaza.

While the IDF has said it doesn’t seek any long-term occupation of Lebanon, El-Sadany pointed to the war in Gaza where Israel continually moved its goal posts.

Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip has been the deadliest year of conflict for women and children anywhere in the world over the past two decades, according to an analysis released Tuesday as Israeli forces continued to bombard the Palestinian enclave and launched a ground invasion of Lebanon.

The global humanitarian group Oxfam noted in its new report that Israel’s U.S.-backed assault on Gaza has killed more than 6,000 women and 11,000 children, estimates that the organization deemed “conservative” given that the figures don’t include the tens of thousands of kids who are missing.

Many children who have survived Israel’s year-long assault thus far have been left with debilitating psychological and physical trauma. Umaiyeh Khammash, a physician who directs the West Bank-based group Juzoor, said Tuesday that more than 25,000 children in Gaza “have either lost a parent or become orphans, leaving them in deep emotional distress.”

Oxfam also outlined in broad strokes how Israel has obliterated Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, pointing to estimates showing that, on average over the past year, Israeli forces have bombed homes every four hours, shelters for displaced people every 17 hours, schools and hospitals every four days, and aid distribution points and facilities roughly every two weeks.

The call from Veterans for Peace (VFP) comes days after the investigative outlet ProPublica published a detailed account of how the U.S. State Department submitted a report to Congress that contradicted the findings of the department’s own experts and those of other agencies.

The Blinken-led State Department’s May report concluded that Israel was not “prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance,” despite internal assessments from State Department experts and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) arguing that Israel had deliberately impeded American aid shipments to Gaza and that weapons transfers to the country should be cut off in line with Section 620I of the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act.

VFP’s letter came days after the U.S. and Israel reached a deal for an additional $8.7 billion in American military support, even as the Israeli military continues to obstruct aid deliveries in Gaza, bombard the enclave’s starving population, and expand the assault on Lebanon.

Susan Schnall, VFP’s president, said Monday that U.S. military aid to Israel amounts to “a theft from millions of Americans who have none of the health insurance every Israeli enjoys; from millions of Americans living in horrific housing while Israel builds thousands of upscale homes on land stolen from Palestinians; from millions of young Americans who can’t afford college because America’s top priorities are weapons and death, not human needs.”

Netanyahu told attendees that Israel will “continue degrading Hezbollah” until its military objectives are met and vowed to keep bombing Gaza until “total victory” is achieved. He also threatened Iran, who he claimed was behind many of the problems in the region.

Netanyahu also lashed out at the very body he was addressing, accusing the United Nations of being a “house of darkness” and a “swamp of antisemitic bile.”

Netanyahu was greeted by protest as soon as he arrived in New York City on Thursday. Thousands rallied and then marched to the United Nations headquarters, in an action organized by the Shut It Down For Palestine Coalition, which includes which includes the Palestinian Youth Movement, PAL-Awda NY, the People’s Forum, Nodutdol, the ANSWER Coalition and other groups.

Shortly after Netanyahu’s speech Israel bombed south Beirut, leveling six residential buildings. Israeli media has reported that it was an attempted assassination of Hezbollah’s Secretary General, Hasan Nasrallah. Lebanese sources told the Iranian news agency, Tasnim that Nasrallah is in a safe place. Reuters and AFP also quoted sources close to Hezbollah who say Nasrallah is still alive.

The Times of Israel reports approved of the strikes from his New York City hotel, right before he gave his U.N.

The Biden administration was reportedly informed of the attack shortly before it happened. It just comes just one day after Israel announced that it had secured an $8.7 billion military aid package from the United States.

Israel conducted an unprecedented airstrike on Beirut’s southern Dahiya district on Friday evening in what Israeli media described as an attempt to assassinate Hezbollah’s Secretary General, Hasan Nasrallah.

The strike targeted and leveled six residential buildings. The Israeli army’s spokesperson, Daniel Hagari, released a video statement shortly after the strike claiming that the buildings contained Hezbollah’s “Central Headquarters.” Lebanese media reported that over 10 Israeli missiles were dropped in less than three minutes on the complex, situated in the Haret Hreik area in Dahiya. The Israeli army’s radio said that Israeli F-35 fighter jets dropped 2000-pound bunker-buster bombs on the residential buildings.

Lebanese first responders continue rescue efforts to pull out survivors from under the rubble. As of the time of writing, the number of civilians killed has not been specified.

The Israeli army’s radio quoted a military source saying that any person who was present in the targeted buildings “will not come out alive.” The Lebanese Health Minister, Firas al-Abyad, said that some of the buildings targeted were “full of civilian residents.”

“I saw a mirror,” Odah said, recalling moments spent with Williams’s family. “A reflection of these two systems that are both upheld by the U.S. that condemn Black and Palestinian men, our fathers, our grandfathers, and the rest of our families, at the mercy of those who continue to find ways to dehumanize us.”

Missouri killed Williams, who was 55 years old, for a murder he said he did not commit and even though prosecutors fought to throw his conviction out due to the paucity of the evidence. Gov. Mike Parsons declined to grant Williams clemency, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to step in. His execution coincided with nationwide protests on Tuesday against Israel’s ongoing bombing campaign in Lebanon that has killed at least 615 people, including more than 50 children. News of the execution reverberated among protesters, who drew connections between Israel’s relentless U.S.-backed war on Gaza and state-sanctioned killing in the United States. In some places, demonstrators recited a poem Williams had written about Palestinian children

“We’re clearly seeing that some people’s lives, some people’s futures — their security, their liberty, their humanity — are far more valuable than others. I mean, there is a dehumanization of Black and brown Americans in this country, and it’s been allowed to persist, and often it’s actually been perpetrated by the same institutions of our nation who are supposed to be fighting for justice, for our rights. They’re erasing us, they’re making excuses, and they’re harming people,” said Ramirez. “And I think it’s because if they don’t see us as humans, then you’re really not hurting us, right? If you don’t see the right to protect ourselves, if you don’t see us as humans, there’s no remorse.”

Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., echoed her colleague’s point, noting that President Joe Biden did not deliver on his 2020 campaign pledge to abolish the death penalty and that Democrats recently dropped opposition to capital punishment from their party platform. And in the case of Gaza, Bush said, the administration has escalated the conflict.

On Wednesday, Sanders introduced six resolutions blocking six sales of different weapons contained within the $20 billion weapons deal announced by the Biden administration in August. The sales include many of the types of weapons that Israel has used in its relentless campaign of extermination in Gaza over the past year.

“Sending more weapons is not only immoral, it is also illegal. The Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and the Arms Export Control Act lay out clear requirements for the use of American weaponry – Israel has egregiously violated those rules,” said Sanders. “There is a mountain of documentary evidence demonstrating that these weapons are being used in violation of U.S. and international law.”

This will be the first time in history that Congress has ever voted on legislation to block a weapons sale to Israel, as the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project pointed out. This is despite the U.S. having sent Israel over $250 billion in military assistance in recent decades, according to analyst Stephen Semler, as Israel has carried out ethnic cleansings and massacres across Palestine and in Lebanon.

The resolutions are not likely to pass; even if they did pass the heavily pro-Israel Congress, they would likely be vetoed by President Joe Biden, who has been insistent on sending weapons to Israel with no strings attached.

However, Sanders’s move is in line with public opinion. Polls have consistently found that the majority of the public supports an end to Israel’s genocide; a poll by the Institute for Global Affairs released this week found, for instance, that a majority of Americans think the U.S. should stop supporting Israel or make support contingent on Israeli officials’ agreement to a ceasefire deal. This includes nearly 80 percent of Democrats.

While the majority of fentanyl is seized at the U.S.-Mexico border, 93 percent of those seizures happened at legal crossing points last year. More than 86 percent of people sentenced for trafficking fentanyl in 2023 were U.S. citizens, and almost all fentanyl is smuggled for U.S. consumers.

Democrats’ and Republicans’ shared focus on fentanyl trafficking at the U.S.-Mexico border as the sole root of the overdose crisis is dangerously myopic. It fails to address the myriad causes or advance any much-needed solutions. Indeed, the U.S. is grappling with a serious public health crisis, as the country faces more than 100,000 deaths per year from drug overdoses, two-thirds of which are due to synthetic opioids like fentanyl. Twenty-seven thousand pounds of fentanyl were seized at the border last year, up from just 4,600 pounds in 2020. But militarizing the border — and promoting rhetoric that demonizes immigrants — will not save any lives.

Experts caution that it is difficult to attribute such data to any singular source; we need more studies over a longer period of time to determine what’s driving the plunge. Still, we can look to several recent developments as possible culprits: In December 2022, Biden signed the bipartisan Mainstreaming Addiction Treatment (MAT) Act, which removed the bureaucratic hurdles facing doctors who need to prescribe buprenorphine for opioid addiction treatment. Prior to the MAT Act in 2020, less than 6 percent of doctors were allowed to prescribe buprenorphine. Meanwhile, a naloxone nasal spray that can reverse opioid overdoses and save lives was approved to be sold as an over-the-counter medicine in March 2023. It has since become much more readily available.

This is a good start, but doctors are still calling for increased funding for addiction treatment and harm reduction services. Rural areas, as well as Black and Native American communities, especially face substantial barriers to accessing quality health care. Currently, Congress is considering a bipartisan bill, the Modernizing Opioid Treatment Access Act, which would expand access to methadone, a prescription drug used to treat opioid addictions. Unlike in several European countries, methadone is only obtainable in the United States at designated opioid treatment clinics and must be taken on-site — creating an unnecessary hurdle for those who live miles away from the closest clinic. Addiction recovery advocates also point toward the need for expanded telemedicine options, mobile methadone clinics and robust drug education campaigns as necessary tools to fight the overdose crisis.