Israel Attacks Rafah Refugee Camp, Killing Dozens
An Israeli strike on a refugee camp in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, has killed at least 45 people and injured more than 200. Palestinians displaced by more than six months of genocidal assault had fled to the area in Rafah—following Israel Defense Force (IDF) instructions that designated the neighborhood a “safe area”—and were taking shelter before they were bombarded. Eyewitness accounts say there was fire everywhere and that people, mostly women and children, were burned alive. Graphic videos of the carnage—including footage of a man holding up the beheaded body of a child killed in the strike—have been circulating on social media since the IDF strike on Sunday, which itself came on the heels of a Friday ruling from the International Court of Justice ordering Israel to “immediately halt its military offensive in Rafah.” IDF officials claimed the strike was a targeted attack that “killed two senior Hamas terrorists,” adding that it was “investigating the circumstances of the deaths of civilians in the area.”
Meanwhile, the White House refused to let the incident sway the United States’ policy of arming Israel, despite President Joe Biden’s March statement that an invasion of Rafah was a “red line” that could alter U.S. support of Israeli military operations. Rather than debate whether the U.S. should keep sending weapons being used to commit genocide, members of the House of Representatives have continued to hold hearings on antisemitism and campus protests for Gaza, grilling university officials for allowing pro-Palestinian student activism.
Zahra Billoo, a prominent civil rights lawyer and executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, San Francisco Bay Area (CAIR-SF), spoke with YES! Senior Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on YES! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali about the Rafah strike and House hearings.
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Sonali Kolhatkar
joined YES! in summer 2021, building on a long and decorated career in broadcast and print journalism. She is an award-winning multimedia journalist, and host and creator of YES! Presents: Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. She is also Senior Correspondent with the Independent Media Institute’s Economy for All project where she writes a weekly column. She is the author of Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (2023) and Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence (2005). Her forthcoming book is called Talking About Abolition (Seven Stories Press, 2025). Sonali is co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Women’s Mission which she helped to co-found in 2000. She has a Master’s in Astronomy from the University of Hawai’i, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. Sonali reflects on “My Journey From Astrophysicist to Radio Host” in her 2014 TEDx talk of the same name.
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