A HARROWING Sky News clip has shown people believed to be Israeli soldiers laughing and singing as Gaza is bombed.
In the video verified by the broadcaster, the clip shows an Israeli drone strike near the coast.
Shortly after the explosions, one person watching can be heard singing The Final Countdown before several others break out into laughter.
Earlier this week, thirty humanitarian organisations in Gaza said that vital aid entering the region has reached a historic low amid Israel’s intensified siege.
In a video verified by Sky News, people believed to be soldiers laugh and one of them sings The Final Countdown as they watch an airstrike on Gaza. Read more here: https://t.co/gMzlfCB0XT pic.twitter.com/A8lpxB7nM1
— Sky News (@SkyNews) November 15, 2024
In the latest Humanitarian Access Snapshot, data highlights severe shortages of essential supplies and the deaths of 20 aid workers within a month, which the international group Mercy Corps said emphasises the extreme risks to humanitarian operations.
The clip also comes after a UN special committee said policies and practices carried out by Israel in Gaza are “consistent with the characteristics of genocide”.
The committee, set up in 1968 to monitor Israel’s occupation, said in its annual report that there were serious concerns that Israel was “using starvation as a weapon of war” and was running an “apartheid system” in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is currently investigating claims by South Africa that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza is genocidal. In the meantime, the ICJ has ordered Israel to take interim measures to prevent genocide from taking place.
The Israeli government is yet to respond to the report by the special committee but has previously suggested that the UN is as obsessed with, and is biased against, the country.
Last week, Israel appeared to officially acknowledge the systematic removal of Palestinians from northern Gaza.
Human Rights Watch also accused Israel of “crimes against humanity” in Gaza in a separate report.
The 154-page report, “‘Hopeless, Starving, and Besieged’: Israel’s Forced Displacement of Palestinians in Gaza,” examines how Israeli authorities’ conduct has led to the displacement of over 90 percent of the population of Gaza—1.9 million Palestinians—and the widespread destruction of much of Gaza over the last 13 months.
Israel’s war in Gaza has killed more than 43,000 people, Palestinian health officials have said.
The officials do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but say more than half of those killed were women and children.
Earlier this week, despite reports to the contrary, Prime Minister Keir Starmer dismissed the notion a genocide was being committed in Gaza in the House of Commons.
MP Ayoub Khan raised comments from Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who in late October claimed that the term genocide referred to “when millions of people lost their lives in crises like Rwanda, the Second World War in the Holocaust” and that using it to describe Gaza “now undermines [its] seriousness”.
He asked the Prime Minister to share his definition of genocide with the House and Starmer responded: “It would be wise to start a question like that by reference to what happened in October of last year.
“I'm well aware of the definition of genocide, and that is why I've never described this as and referred to it as genocide.”
Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories who has been on a tour of the UK this week, has repeatedly affirmed her belief that what is happening qualifies as genocide.
