May

May 18, 2021: Yigal Yehoshua, 56, died of wounds sustained six days earlier, when he drove his vehicle into a group of Palestinians protesting and was pelted with stones.

One of the stones hit him on the head, and he was taken to the hospital with critical injuries. Six days later, he died from the critical head wound he had sustained. Seven Palestinians, 2 from the West Bank and 5 from Lod, were taken into custody later that month and charged with his murder.

The Palestinians had been protesting in Lod after a night of Israeli bombings of Gaza, and the shooting of Palestinian resident of Lod, Mousa Hassouna.

Hassouna had been shot to death by right-wing Israeli settlers in Lod. But just days after the murder, the Israeli police released the four suspects they had been holding in suspicion of involvement in his killing.

The wife of Yigal Yehoshua, Irena, told Israeli reporters with Channel 12 that he was “a ‘paragon of coexistence’ who worked as an electrician and repaired homes for all, Arabs and Jews”.

Lod is a city inside what is now Israel that had been known as Lydda before Israel was created and Lydda and hundreds of Palestinian villages were partly or fully depopulated by Israeli troops. The city remains about 30% Palestinian – and is touted by the Israeli government as an example of coexistence.

However, the Palestinian residents of Lod cite discrimination against them in all areas: housing, education, access to resources, and infrastructure.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted after Yigal’s death that he “shares the family’s grief” and that the Israeli authorities “will find and hold accountable those who participated in this murder. No one will escape punishment.” Netanyahu has made no statement about the grief of the over 200 families in Gaza who lost loved ones due to the bombings that he authorized over the previous seven days.

Yigal was from Lod, in western Israel. Source: IMEMC

May 15, 2021: Gershon Franko, 50, was killed in Ramat Gan by a Palestinian rocket.

His death came in the midst of a deadly night in Gaza in which Israeli bombardment killed at least 34 Palestinians in a single night of bombing. Palestinian resistance fighters retaliated in the early morning hours with the launch of rockets toward Israel, killing Gershon.

Medic Lior Marmelstein told reporters with the Israeli outlet Yedioth Ahranoth, “We went from door to door in large numbers and in one apartment we located an unconscious man in his 50s. After trying to revive him, he was pronounced dead.”

The rocket apparently hit a residential apartment building in Ramat Gan.

According to Israeli media, the rockets fired in the early morning hours of Saturday hit points in Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Rishon Lezion, Yavne, Ramat Gan, Bat Yam, Holon, Petah Tikva and Ramat HaSharon as well as in the West Bank settlement of Eli, north of Jerusalem, causing no casualties. A rocket also hit the Palestinian city of Taybeh, causing damage to property.

Despite calls by Palestinian leadership for a ceasefire, Israeli military forces have continued their escalation in Gaza, the West Bank and inside Israel, with the Palestinian resistance responding with indiscriminate rocket fire that has resulted in the deaths of six Israeli civilians.

In the same time period, over a hundred Palestinians have been killed, nearly a third of them children, and millions of dollars in damage has been done by Israeli airstrikes and bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli civilians killed by Palestinian rocket fire have been identified as:

• Soumya Santosh, 31, from Kerala, India, killed May 12th in Ashkelon when a rocket hit the apartment where she worked as a homecare worker for an 80-year old Israeli woman. The woman she worked for was injured.
• Nela Gurevitch was killed by a rocket that hit her apartment building in Ashkelon. Her husband was lightly wounded by the rocket.
• Leah Yom-Tov was killed by a rocket that struck her home in Rishon Lezion.

One of the rockets fired by the Palestinian resistance on Wednesday hit an Israeli oil pipeline near Ashkelon, causing a large fire.

After Israeli forces pounded the Gaza Strip with missiles for two straight days, killing at least 35 Palestinians including 12 children, and refusing to respond to Palestinian demands for a withdrawal and a ceasefire, Palestinian resistance fighters in the Gaza Strip launched a barrage of rockets across the border into Israel, killing five Israelis, including a teenage girl and her father.

One of those killed has been identified as Soumya Santosh, 31, from Kerala, India, who worked as a housemaid for an Israeli household in Ashkelon for the past seven years.

In addition, a 50-year old Israeli woman was killed in Rishon Lezion, just south of Tel Aviv.

Rocket sirens sounded throughout the night in Israel’s southern towns and cities, and the Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv was briefly shut down. 26 Israelis were reportedly injured – most with minor injuries.

The rockets were fired in the early morning hours on Wednesday, as Gaza’s hospitals were besieged with hundreds of wounded Palestinians, many of them children, who suffered traumatic and severe injuries from the numerous Israeli missile strikes into crowded Palestinian neighborhoods throughout Gaza on Monday and Tuesday.

In addition to bombing Palestinian neighborhoods for two straight days, the Israeli military called up 5,000 reservists and had them stationed at the border with Gaza to threaten the Gaza Strip with a possible ground invasion.

The Palestinian resistance responded to this violent aggression with rocket fire directed toward Tel Aviv. This marks the longest-range rockets that have been fired by the Palestinian resistance to date. Other rockets fired in the past have reached as far as the coastal Israeli city of Ashkelon (formerly the Palestinian town of Azkalan), but had not had the range or capacity to reach the Israeli capital Tel Aviv (built on the former Palestinian town of Yaffa) before.

Israelis in the cities of Sderot, Holon and Ashkelon rushed to shelters and many stayed there overnight to try to avoid the impact of Palestinian resistance rocket fire.

Israeli media reported that at 8:45 A.M. on Wednesday, Israeli forces intercepted a drone crossing from Gaza into Israel.

The teen girl and her father who were killed by a Palestinian resistance rocket, Nadine and Khalil Awaad, were themselves Palestinian – with Israeli citizenship. But their town, Dhamas near Lod, being a mainly Palestinian village, was never provided bomb shelters like the Jewish Israeli towns were provided by the government. In fact, their village, Dhamas, was not recognized by Israeli authorities, and so lacks basic services and is under threat of demolition by the Israeli government. One of their relatives, Ismail Arafat, lives there as well and has been part of leading the struggle for recognition of the village.

The Israeli news agency Ha’aretz quoted Ismail Arafat as saying, “We have nowhere to go. We don’t have a bomb shelter here for everyone. For the Thai [migrant] workers they built shelters, but we were not allowed because we are not humans. Nadine and Khalil were in the middle of breakfast before fasting [for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan]. It seems that he opened the door and that’s how he was hit.”

Gershon was from Ramat Gan, in central Israel. Source: IMEMC

May 12, 2021: Khalil Awad, 52, was killed along with his daughter Nadine, 16, in front of their home in the Palestinian village of Dahmash in central Israel, about 20 kilometers from Tel Aviv, in the early morning of May 12.

A teen girl and her father who were killed by a Palestinian resistance rocket, Nadine and Khalil Awaad, were themselves Palestinian – with Israeli citizenship. But their town, Dahmash near Lod, being a mainly Palestinian village, was never provided bomb shelters like the Jewish Israeli towns were provided by the government. In fact, their village, Dhamas, was not recognized by Israeli authorities, and so lacks basic services and is under threat of demolition by the Israeli government. One of their relatives, Ismail Arafat, lives there as well and has been part of leading the struggle for recognition of the village.

The rocket attack that killed them occurred after the al-Qassam Brigades, the Hamas armed wing, said in a statement on the evening of May 11 that they had “directed the largest rocket barrage toward Tel Aviv and its surrounding areas, with 130 rockets, in response to the enemy’s targeting of civilian buildings.”

In the midst of a deadly night in Gaza in which Israeli bombardment killed at least 34 Palestinians in a single night of bombing, Palestinian resistance fighters retaliated in the early morning hours with the launch of rockets toward Israel, killing six Israelis.

The rockets were fired in the early morning hours on Wednesday, as Gaza’s hospitals were besieged with hundreds of wounded Palestinians, many of them children, who suffered traumatic and severe injuries from the numerous Israeli missile strikes into crowded Palestinian neighborhoods throughout Gaza on Monday and Tuesday.

In addition to bombing Palestinian neighborhoods for two straight days, the Israeli military called up 5,000 reservists and had them stationed at the border with Gaza to threaten the Gaza Strip with a possible ground invasion.

The Palestinian resistance responded to this violent aggression with rocket fire directed toward Tel Aviv. This marks the longest-range rockets that have been fired by the Palestinian resistance to date. Other rockets fired in the past have reached as far as the coastal Israeli city of Ashkelon (formerly the Palestinian town of Azkalan), but had not had the range or capacity to reach the Israeli capital Tel Aviv (built on the former Palestinian town of Yaffa) before.

Israelis in the cities of Sderot, Holon and Ashkelon rushed to shelters and many stayed there overnight to try to avoid the impact of Palestinian resistance rocket fire.

Israeli media reported that at 8:45 A.M. on Wednesday, Israeli forces intercepted a drone crossing from Gaza into Israel.

The Israeli news agency Ha’aretz quoted Ismail Arafat as saying, “We have nowhere to go. We don’t have a bomb shelter here for everyone. For the Thai [migrant] workers they built shelters, but we were not allowed because we are not humans. Nadine and Khalil were in the middle of breakfast before fasting [for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan]. It seems that he opened the door and that’s how he was hit.”

Khalil was from the Palestinian village of Dahmash in central Israel. IMEMC