lamb to the slaughter critical essay

A Summary and Analysis of Roald Dahl’s ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ is a 1953 short story by Roald Dahl (1916-90), which was initially rejected for publication but was later adapted for television on several occasions. Included in Dahl’s collections Someone Like You (1953) and Tales of the Unexpected (1979), the story is about a wife who murders her unfaithful husband with a frozen leg of lamb before hatching a plan to ensure she isn’t caught for her crime.

Before we offer an analysis of ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’, it might be worth recapping the plot of Dahl’s story.

Plot summary

Mary Maloney is waiting at home for her husband, Patrick, to get home from work. He is a detective. She is six months pregnant with their child. When he gets home, she pours them both a drink and notices that Patrick has drained his glass more swiftly than he usually does. He pours himself another whisky before revealing to his wife that he plans to leave her.

Mary is stunned by this revelation, and initially wants to act as though it hasn’t happened. She decides to go and get some food from the freezer that she can cook for their dinner. She finds a leg of lamb in the freezer, and when her husband announces he’s going out, she strikes him on the back of the head with the lamb leg, killing him.

Immediately she starts to think about how to cover her tracks so she won’t be caught. She puts the meat in the oven to cook. After rehearsing what she will say to the nearby grocer, she goes out to his shop and buys some potatoes and peas to go with the roast lamb. When talking to the grocer, Sam, she acts as though everything is all right and her husband is waiting for her back home.

When she returns home, she talks herself into believing her husband is still alive, so she is genuinely shocked when she sees his body lying on the floor. She phones the police to report that he has been murdered, and a group of detectives – who knew Patrick from work – show up to investigate his death.

The detectives make a thorough search of the house, believing that Patrick was murdered by a heavy metal implement. So they search for something that could have been used as the murder weapon. They remain in the house for so long that Mary offers them all a drink. They reluctantly accept and, when she is reminded of the lamb cooking in the oven, she suggests that they eat it since they must be hungry.

Again, they agree, and as they sit around the table eating the leg of lamb which killed their former colleague, they remain oblivious to the fact that they are, in fact, destroying the evidence themselves. In the next room, Mary giggles.

Dahl’s story was suggested by his friend Ian Fleming, who created James Bond. Dahl adapted Fleming’s Bond novel You Only Live Twice for the big screen; he also co-wrote the screenplay for the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang , which was also based on a Fleming novel. And it was Fleming who suggested the idea for ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’, telling his friend that he should write a story about a woman who murders her wife with a leg of mutton (not lamb) which she then serves to the investigating officers.

‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ can be categorised as a horror story (although given the lack of any supernatural element, ‘thriller’ is perhaps a more apposite label), although we should also pay attention to the darkly humorous elements of the tale: features in keeping with Dahl’s writing as a whole.

The story reflects – but then subverts – a common trope of the early 1950s: namely, the wife as the faithful homemaker while the husband goes out to work. At the beginning of ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’, Mary Maloney cannot do enough for her husband, waiting patiently and eagerly for him to arrive home, fetching his drink, asking him about his day.

But when the stability of her world crumbles in a few minutes, when Patrick tells her that he is leaving her (although it isn’t mentioned, we assume he has met someone else), she changes very quickly – and easily – from dutiful wife to cold-blooded murderer.

In other words, once the role she has settled into over the years, that of being ‘Mrs Patrick Maloney’, is taken away from her, she finds herself able to switch in and out of that role with ease. After a brief rehearsal at home, she is able to convince the grocer that she is still the dutiful wife once again: an act she performs again for the policemen.

Dahl makes it clear that she doesn’t murder her husband out of fear of being penniless without the money from him, the breadwinner of the family: he makes it clear he will continue to provide for her financially. Instead, her motive is more complex. Does she kill him out of jealousy or spite, or resentment at having conceived the child of a man who doesn’t even intend to hang around long enough to see it born?

Dahl leaves these questions open for us to discuss. Note how, in the moments preceding that decisive moment when she strikes her husband with the leg of lamb, her movements become automatic, as if she is being guided by some other force. Her unconscious? The concentrated righteous anger of ‘a woman scorned’? Dahl tells us that she ‘simply’ walked up to her husband and struck him with the lamb.

It is as if she is performing some perfunctory task, almost as though the mundane and automatic business of housework has been extrapolated to incorporate the business of murder. She doesn’t appear to lash out in a moment of fury, cold or otherwise. It is almost as if she feels she has no other choice.

There is obviously a grim irony in the method she uses to dispatch her husband. The roast joint cooking in the oven is the symbol par excellence of the good 1950s housewife, feeding her husband after a long day at work. There is also symbolism in the fact that this food, meant to be an offering from wife to husband, is used instead to kill the husband, with the deadly weapon being given instead to a host of other men (who, as policemen, are also stand-ins for the dead husband in some respects).

In the last analysis, then, ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ is a short story about how easily the meek and loving housewife can transform into a cold and calculating killer. It is Mary’s sudden change that makes the story so unsettling, and the lack of remorse she shows for her crime; but her choice of murder weapon and method of disposing of the evidence make this story as much black comedy as out-and-out horror tale.

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Lamb to the Slaughter

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Gender and Marriage

Throughout the short story, Mary Maloney is firmly situated in a patriarchal society—that is, a system in which men hold more power than women politically, socially, and economically. Historically, women have been often consigned to the private sphere of domestic life, as they were deemed by men to be intellectually and emotionally unfit for the public sphere outside of family and home life. Men, on the other hand, were able to move through both spheres…

Role Reversals

Dahl subjects his characters to various reversals in their traditional roles. Most prominent of these role reversals is that of Mary Maloney , whose act of murder defies the policemen’s assumptions about her and about the culprit. By physically attacking her husband, with a club-like weapon no less, Mary subverts gender stereotypes and takes on the traditionally male role of violent attacker and murderer. Her quick thinking and ability to deceive others causes the policemen…

Food/Consumption

Much of “Lamb to the Slaughter” is occupied with eating and food. At the beginning of the story, food is closely linked to domesticity and marriage. Mary ’s repeated attempts to feed Patrick demonstrate not only her affection for her husband but also the role she plays as homemaker and housewife. Similarly, Patrick’s refusal to eat Mary’s food is a rejection of that affection and foreshadows his rejection of the domestic life Mary has built…

Patrick ’s betrayal of his marriage drives the rest of the story’s plot, leading to both his wife’s betrayal and that of his colleagues. When he leaves his wife, Patrick betrays not only the love Mary has for him but also the unborn child she is carrying and their private domestic life together. At the sudden breakdown of her marriage and the world she built around Patrick, Mary commits her own betrayal by killing her…

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Lamb to the Slaughter Essay

Piedmont-Marton is the coordinator of the undergraduate writing center at the University of Texas at Austin. In the following essay, she analyzes the irony behind the title of Dahl's "Lamb to the Slaughter."

"Lamb to the Slaughter" is representative of Dahl's economical style and dry, dark sense of humor. Like all of his short fiction, the narrative in this story is driven by plot, not by character or mood. Readers find themselves dropped into the middle of the action with no knowledge of the background or history of the characters to establish tone or motive. Starting with the double meaning of its title, however, "Lamb to the Slaughter" offers readers a number of opportunities to explore the complexities and possibilities beneath the taut and matter-of-fact surface of the story. Alert and curious readers will find themselves opening narrative trap doors and rummaging through Mary's psyche in search...

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'Lamb To The Slaughter' Roald Dahl (Critical Essay plan, example, notes) National 5, KS3

Subject: English

Age range: 11-14

Resource type: Worksheet/Activity

Last updated

15 November 2018

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Lamb of The Slaughter': Mary Maloney Character Analysis

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Middle East Crisis Gaza Offensive Will Last at Least Through End of Year, Israeli Official Says

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• Mothers of Israeli soldiers serving in Gaza blocking a street in Tel Aviv to call for an end to the war. Oded Balilty/Associated Press
• Smoke rising from an Israeli airstrike on the southern Lebanese village of Khiam, near the Israeli border. Rabih Daher/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
• Awaiting a United Nations Security Council meeting on the war in Gaza. Justin Lane/EPA, via Shutterstock
• A Palestinian boy who was wounded in an Israeli strike receiving treatment at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza. Mohammed Salem/Reuters
• An Israeli army tank is deployed along Israel’s southern border with Gaza. Menahem Kahana/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
• A power outage in Khan Younis. Mohammed Salem/Reuters

Follow news updates on the crisis in the Middle East .

A senior Israeli official said that the war would last at least through the end of the year.

Israel’s national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, said Wednesday that he expected Israel’s military operations in Gaza to continue through at least the end of the year, appearing to dismiss the idea that the war could come to an end after the military offensive against Hamas in Rafah.

“We expect another seven months of combat in order to shore up our achievement and realize what we define as the destruction of Hamas and Islamic Jihad’s military and governing capabilities,” Mr. Hanegbi said in a radio interview with Kan, the Israeli public broadcaster.

Israeli officials have told the public to expect a protracted campaign that would progress in phases toward lower-intensity fighting. Mr. Hanegbi’s assessment, however, appeared to be at odds with earlier projections by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said in April that the country was “on the brink of victory” in its war against Hamas. In recent weeks, Israeli troops have repeatedly returned to areas of northern Gaza in an attempt to tamp down a renewed insurgency there by Hamas militants.

Israel faces rising pressure to wind down its campaign and reach a cease-fire deal with Hamas that would include the release of hostages held in Gaza. The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has requested arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister and defense minister; the World Court has ordered Israel to rein in its offensive in Rafah; and the Biden administration has expressed frustration with the lack of a clear Israeli endgame for postwar Gaza.

The outcry has only sharpened in recent days, after an Israeli bombardment — which sparked a conflagration in an area where displaced Palestinians were sheltering — killed at least 45 people in western Rafah, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The Israeli military said the airstrike had targeted two Hamas commanders and that it was looking into what could have caused the blaze.

Antony J. Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, said the incident demonstrated the dangers and challenges of waging war in a crowded area where Hamas is embedded with the civilian population. And he reiterated the Biden administration’s criticism that Israel has not laid the groundwork for Gaza’s governance and security after the war, and that Israel occupying and controlling the territory would not be viable.

“I think this underscores the imperative of having a plan for the day after because in the absence of a plan for the day after there won’t be a day after,” Mr. Blinken told reporters on Wednesday on a trip to Moldova. “If not, Hamas will be left in charge, which is unacceptable. Or if not, we’ll have chaos, lawlessness, and a vacuum.”

At least 290 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza and over 3,600 wounded since the ground invasion began in late October, according to military statistics. The military said another three soldiers were killed and three more seriously wounded on Tuesday in Rafah, where Israeli forces have been advancing in a long-anticipated assault.

Over one million Gazans have fled the city in the face of the onslaught, according to the United Nations. Israel has called the operation essential to take out Hamas forces arrayed in the city, while the Biden administration and human rights groups have voiced concern over the plight of the civilians who had sought shelter there.

Over 36,000 Palestinians have been killed since the Hamas-led surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, according to Gazan health officials. Roughly 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed in Israel during the attack, according to the Israeli authorities, and Palestinian militants took around 250 people back to Gaza as hostages.

Since the Israeli operation in the Rafah area began in early May, ground forces have slowly advanced toward the coast, with firefights generally confined to neighborhoods in eastern Rafah. But deadly strikes over the past few days appear to have targeted western Rafah and nearby areas where Israel has not formally ordered an evacuation. Dozens of Palestinians have been killed over the past few days in Rafah alone.

Two days after the strike in western Rafah that killed dozens, Gazan health officials said another bombardment had taken place, killing at least 21 . The Israeli military denied striking within the borders of the Israeli-designated humanitarian zone for evacuees in al-Mawasi, which is northwest of the city of Rafah.

Edward Wong contributed reporting.

— Aaron Boxerman and Gabby Sobelman

Israel declares it has ‘tactical control’ over a strategic Gaza corridor on the border with Egypt.

The Israeli military said on Wednesday night that it had taken “tactical control” over the Philadelphi Corridor — a sensitive strip of Gaza along its border with Egypt — in a move that could further tax Israel’s already strained ties with Cairo.

Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman, said the zone was “Hamas’s oxygen tube” and had been used by the Palestinian armed group for “smuggling munitions into Gazan territory on a regular basis.” He said that Hamas had also built tunnels near the Egyptian border, calculating that Israel would not dare strike so close to Egyptian territory.

Israeli officials have said seizing the narrow, roughly nine-mile-long area holds crucial importance for preventing Hamas from rearming itself through cross-border smuggling. “It must be in our hands; it must be closed,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel told reporters in December, after being asked whether Israel still intended to capture the zone.

An Israeli military official, who briefed reporters Wednesday on condition of anonymity to comply with military protocol, said that troops had identified at least 20 tunnels running from Gaza into Egypt, some of them only recently discovered.

But in briefing reporters later on Wednesday night, Admiral Hagari stopped short of claiming that the tunnels crossed the border.

“I can’t say now that all of these tunnels cross into Egypt,” he said. “We’ll inspect that, pass along the intelligence” to Egypt. The tunnel shafts in Gaza “are located in proximity to the border with Egypt, including in buildings and homes,” he added. “We’ll investigate and take care of each of those shafts.”

After the Israeli announcement, Egypt’s state-run Al-Qahera News channel quoted an unnamed senior official saying “there is no truth” to claims of tunnels under the border.

“These lies reflect the magnitude of the crisis facing the Israeli government,” the official said, adding, “Israel continues its attempts to export lies about on-the-ground conditions for its forces in Rafah in order to obscure its military failure and to find an escape for its political crisis.”

Israel’s 1979 peace treaty with Egypt tightly regulated how many troops either country could place in a series of zones — including the Philadelphi Corridor — in an attempt to create a buffer between the two sides.

Egypt has previously warned that an Israeli occupation of the border corridor would pose a “serious threat to Egyptian-Israeli relations.” On Monday, at least one Egyptian soldier was killed in a shooting incident with Israeli forces near the Rafah crossing; both sides have said they are investigating the matter.

Israeli troops are not present everywhere in the Philadelphi Corridor, the Israeli military official said, but they now had the ability to effectively cut off Hamas’s ability to move through tunnels under and near the border. During the operation, Israeli troops destroyed a tunnel network that ran for nearly a mile underground in eastern Rafah, Admiral Hagari said.

Egypt’s government has disputed that cross-border tunnels are a problem, saying that its own forces had eliminated them in recent years.

A limited number of Israeli forces had also deployed in the area of Tel al-Sultan, in western Rafah, the official said. That is the deepest advance into the city of Rafah confirmed by Israel since its ground offensive there began in early May.

Egypt and Israel have traded blame over who is responsible for the continued closure of the Rafah crossing, a key conduit for bringing aid into Gaza and allowing the sick and wounded to leave. Israeli troops captured the crossing in early May and Israeli, Egyptian and Palestinian officials have been unable to strike a deal to resume operations there.

Emad Mekay and Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting.

— Aaron Boxerman

A new cease-fire proposal circulates at the U.N., driven by outrage over Israel’s strike on a tent camp.

Seeking to harness the outrage over an Israeli strike on Sunday that set fire to an encampment and killed at least 45 displaced Palestinians, including children, many diplomats at the United Nations Security Council are backing a new resolution this week that would demand an immediate cease-fire and a halt to Israel’s military operations in the city of Rafah.

But they will have to overcome the objections of the United States, which has veto power on the Council and has signaled it will not support the resolution in its current form.

Algeria, the only Arab representative in the current makeup of the Security Council, drafted and circulated the one-page resolution, which says that “Israel, the occupying Power, shall immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in Rafah.” It calls for “an immediate cease-fire respected by all parties, and also demands the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.”

The Council held back-to-back meetings on the war in Gaza on Tuesday and Wednesday, first an emergency session behind closed doors about the strike on the encampment in Rafah and then a scheduled monthly open meeting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Algeria’s resolution was expected to go to a vote in the coming days.

“The human cost is self-evident and appalling,” Algeria’s ambassador, Amar Bendjama, told the Council on Wednesday. “These crimes speak for themselves.”

One U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said the United States would block the current version of the resolution, which it views as unbalanced and problematic. He said that the United States had proposed a number of revisions.

In particular, the official said, the United States does not want to endorse a resolution that calls on Israel to completely halt its military offensive in Rafah, which Israeli commanders maintain is still a stronghold for the armed group Hamas. The Biden administration supports limited Israeli operations there.

As one of the five permanent members of the Council, the United States holds veto power and has wielded it against three previous cease-fire resolutions since the war started in October. In March, the United States allowed a resolution to pass that called for a humanitarian cease-fire for the month of Ramadan by abstaining from the vote.

In recent weeks, as the civilian toll in Gaza has mounted, U.S. officials have become more openly critical of Israel’s conduct of the war. At least 36,000 people have been killed in the Israeli bombardment and ground operations, according to the Gazan Ministry of Health, which does not differentiate between fighters and civilians in its count. Health officials have said a majority of the people killed are women, children and other noncombatants.

Gazan authorities say at least 45 people were killed in Sunday’s strike and its fiery aftermath as a fire tore through the Kuwait al-Salaam camp, where displaced people were living in tents. Among the casualties was a toddler whose burned and headless body was shown in a video verified by The New York Times.

“The continued pattern of significant civilian harm resulting from incidents like Sunday’s airstrikes undermines Israel’s strategic goals in Gaza,” Robert A. Wood, the U.S. deputy ambassador to the United Nations, told the Council on Wednesday. Mr. Wood added Israel had the right to defend itself but also had “obligations to protect civilians.”

On Tuesday, senior Biden administration officials expressed horror over Sunday’s strike but said that it was not a part of a major ground operation and so did not cross President Biden’s red line for withholding weapons shipments to Israel.

The Algerian resolution also cites an emergency ruling last Friday by the United Nation’s top court, the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The ruling ordered Israel to immediately halt its military operation in Rafah, though Israeli officials have argued its wording left some room for interpretation. The ruling came after arguments by South Africa, which late last year brought a case accusing Israel of genocide to the court.

Several Security Council diplomats said that they hoped to vote on the resolution soon to capture the momentum and outrage generated by the Sunday night strike and to prevent, if possible, harm to more civilians in Gaza. Drawn-out negotiations to appease the United States, the diplomats said, would send the wrong signal about the Council’s resolve to take action.

“This Council must express itself urgently on the situation in Rafah and demand an end to this offensive,” France’s ambassador, Nicolas de Rivière, said.

— Farnaz Fassihi

Israel used U.S.-made bombs in the strike that killed dozens in Rafah.

The bombs used in the Israeli strike that killed dozens of Palestinians in a camp for displaced people in Rafah on Sunday were made in the United States, according to weapons experts and visual evidence reviewed by The New York Times.

Munition debris filmed at the strike location the next day was remnants from a GBU-39, a bomb designed and manufactured in the United States, The Times found. U.S. officials have been pushing Israel to use more of this type of bomb, which they say can reduce civilian casualties.

The key detail in the weapon debris was the tail actuation system, which controls the fins that guide the GBU-39 to a target, according to Trevor Ball, a former U.S. Army explosive ordnance disposal technician, who earlier identified the weapon on X . The weapon’s unique bolt pattern and slot where the folding fins are stowed were clearly visible in the debris, Mr. Ball said.

The munition fragments, filmed by Alam Sadeq, a Palestinian journalist, are also marked by a series of numbers beginning with “81873.” This is the unique identifier code assigned by the U.S. government to Woodward, an aerospace manufacturer based in Colorado that supplies parts for bombs including the GBU-39.

At least 45 people in Kuwaiti Al-Salam Camp 1, which was built in early January, were killed by the blast and subsequent fires, according to the Gazan Health Ministry. More than 240 were wounded.

U.S. officials have been encouraging the Israeli military for months to increase the use of GBU-39 bombs in Gaza because they are generally more precise and better suited to urban environments than larger bombs, including U.S.-made 2,000-pound bombs that Israel routinely uses . President Biden said earlier this month that the United States was pausing a delivery of the larger bombs.

“The strike was conducted using two munitions with small warheads suited for this targeted strike,” Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman, said during a news conference on Tuesday. The bombs contained 17 kilograms of explosive material, he said. “This is the smallest munition that our jets can use.”

In response to questions from The Times, the Israeli military declined to specify the munition used. The GBU-39 has a net explosive weight of about 17 kilograms, or 37 pounds.

Admiral Hagari said the military had taken steps to narrowly target two Hamas leaders, who he said were killed in the strike, and did not expect the munitions to harm nearby civilians. The bombs were dropped on sheds inside a camp for internally displaced people, and many tents were visible close by. Footage shows that the bombing set off deadly fires.

Admiral Hagari said the Israeli military’s investigation was continuing. He suggested the fire might have been sparked by a secondary explosion, which he said indicated there may have been weapons stored in the area.

“Our munition alone could not have ignited a fire of this size,” Admiral Hagari said.

Frederic Gras, a French consultant on munitions, questioned the Israeli military’s reasoning. “Any explosion or detonation starts a fire as soon as flammable products are in the vicinity,” he said, noting that there are often many gas cylinders and lamps in such camps.

Video shot by witnesses after the attack shows the scale of suffering. People scream as they pull charred bodies from rubble while flames rage behind them. One man holds up the body of a headless child.

“The Israelis have said they used 37-pound bombs,” John F. Kirby, a White House spokesman, said at a briefing on Tuesday. “If it is in fact what they used, it is certainly indicative of an effort to be discreet and targeted and precise.”

Larry Lewis, a former Pentagon and State Department adviser who has written several federal reports on civilian harm , said it seemed as though the Israeli military had in this case taken steps to mitigate danger to civilians.

“Secondary explosions can be hard to anticipate,” Dr. Lewis said.

But he said he was troubled that in surveillance footage released by the military, four people appeared to be outside the targeted buildings before the strike. Dr. Lewis, currently an adviser with the Center for Naval Analyses, said the decision to strike at that time raises questions about whether the Israeli military “knew and accepted a possible civilian toll” or failed to notice the people, suggesting potential problems in its precautionary measures.

Wes J. Bryant, a retired American Air Force master sergeant who served on a task force critical of Israel’s use of weapons in Gaza, told The Times that he had dropped many GBU-39 bombs during his military service and that this strike was problematic.

“It indicates continued targeting negligence — either an unwillingness or inability to effectively safeguard civilians,” Mr. Bryant said. “When you use a weapon that’s intended as precision and low collateral damage in an area where civilians are saturated, it really negates that intended use.”

Neil Collier , Eric Schmitt and Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting. Video production assistance by Ainara Tiefenthäler and Shawn Paik .

— Robin Stein ,  Christiaan Triebert and Haley Willis

Aid groups in Rafah say Israel’s advance is pushing them out.

Israel’s offensive in the southern city of Rafah has strained medical and humanitarian services to the breaking point, aid workers say, with only one hospital still functioning and several aid operations forced to decamp to other parts of the Gaza Strip.

The health care crisis in the city has been compounded by the closure of emergency clinics and other services amid continued clashes and strikes that have killed dozens of civilians.

On Sunday, a strike that Israel said was aimed at a Hamas compound set ablaze a camp for the displaced in Rafah, killing 45 people, according to the Gazan health ministry. Another strike on Tuesday in Al-Mawasi, on the outskirts of Rafah, killed 21 people and injured dozens, the ministry said.

Among the aid operations that have shuttered this week are a field hospital run by the Palestinian Red Crescent, a clinic supported by Doctors Without Borders and kitchens run by World Central Kitchen.

“As Israeli attacks intensify on Rafah, the unpredictable trickle of aid into Gaza has created a mirage of improved access, while the humanitarian response is in reality on the verge of collapse,” 19 aid groups said in a joint statement on Tuesday.

Some of the operations that were forced to move were in Al-Mawasi, where many civilians and aid workers went because Israel designated part of the area as a humanitarian safe zone. Israel’s military said after the strike on Tuesday that it had not fired on that zone. Videos verified by The New York Times indicate that the strike hit near, but not inside, the zone.

Aid workers have noted how difficult it is for people in Gaza to determine whether they are in a designated safe area, as many have limited access to mobile phones or the internet.

“Civilians are being massacred. They are being pushed into areas they were told would be safe only to be subjected to relentless airstrikes and heavy fighting,” Chris Lockyear, the secretary general of Doctors Without Borders, said in a statement .

Ashraf al-Qudra, a spokesman for Gaza’s health ministry, called for safe routes for evacuees, more border crossings for aid and more field hospitals in Rafah.

“There is no medical capacity to deal with the successive massacres in Rafah and in northern Gaza,” he said.

Instead, emergency operations are closing. The Palestinian Red Crescent last night evacuated its Al Quds field hospital, according to a spokeswoman, Nibal Farsakh, because it was too close to recent strikes and artillery fire in Al-Mawasi.

Medical workers are now packing up the equipment there and trying to relocate to an area outside of Khan Younis, farther north, she said.

Seven of the Red Crescent’s ambulances are still operating in Rafah, she said. “But the problem is, where do they go?” she added. “There is no hospital that can handle this many casualties.”

Aid workers estimate that around five field hospitals — movable medical facilities that often use tents — are still operating in Rafah, but they described them as completely overwhelmed. The only regular hospital that remains is a maternity hospital in the Tal as-Sultan district, the same area where heavy fighting forced Doctors Without Borders to close a clinic.

Even getting the wounded to a place where they can be cared for is a challenge.

“The streets are full of debris from the destruction, and even more full of displaced people on the move,” Ms. Farsakh said. “This may be the hardest experience we have had.”

For much of the nearly eight-month conflict, Israeli authorities urged civilians to flee south toward Rafah, swelling its population to roughly 1.3 million before the offensive began. In the last three weeks, around one million have been forced to flee again, the U.N. says.

Patients who need urgent medical care outside of the Gaza Strip have been trapped for three weeks, since Israel seized the Rafah crossing with Egypt, according to recent statements by World Health Organization officials.

The W.H.O. said on Wednesday that it had managed to bring in fuel and medical supplies to meet the needs of some 1,500 patients at Al Ahli hospital in Gaza City in the north. But the overall trend is dire, the 19 aid agencies said: “Gaza’s health system has been effectively dismantled.”

Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting.

— Erika Solomon

Thousands around the world protest after the deadly Israeli strike in Rafah.

Thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators rallied in cities around the world on Tuesday days after an Israeli strike that killed dozens of Palestinians in a tent camp in Rafah, southern Gaza.

In Britain , a large protest gathered in central London chanting, “Blood on your hands” and, “Stop arming Israel” not far from Downing Street and the prime minister’s residence. Most of the demonstrators left peacefully but officers arrested 40 people at a breakaway protest that obstructed a highway, according to the Metropolitan Police on Wednesday, and three officers were injured.

In France , thousands of demonstrators converged on the Place de la République, in the heart of Paris, where they waved Palestinian flags and shouted, “We are all children of Gaza,” before spreading out through the city. Some of the protesters briefly blocked the ring road around the French capital. Others scuffled with riot police officers who fired tear gas to prevent demonstrators from approaching the Israeli Embassy.

In Mexico , clashes broke out between small groups of protesters hurling rocks and other objects at police officers outside the Israeli Embassy in Mexico City. Six police officers were injured, according to local news reports citing the capital’s authorities.

In Italy , protesters briefly blocked a train station in Bologna by descending on the tracks. Demonstrators also gathered in Karachi, Pakistan , to protest the Israeli strikes and to express solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

Mark A. Walsh contributed reporting.

— Aurelien Breeden

‘All eyes on Rafah’ surges on social media after a deadly Israeli strike.

The slogan “All Eyes on Rafah” has ricocheted across social media this week following an Israeli strike in the Gazan city that killed dozens of civilians and provoked international outrage.

For months, the phrase has been a touchstone in the social and cultural dialogue around Israel’s war against Hamas in the region. It has periodically trended on social media, particularly as Israeli military attacks in the city — located in the southern Gaza Strip, along the Egyptian border — have escalated.

On Wednesday, the saying was once again trending, this time through what appears to be an A.I.-generated image showing a field of refugee tents spelling out “All Eyes on Rafah.” One version of the graphic has been shared more than 38 million times on Instagram.

The phrase may have originated in comments made in February by Rik Peeperkorn, who heads the World Health Organization’s office for Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Mr. Peeperkorn was speaking at a news conference as the Israeli military intensified its campaign in the southern Gaza strip.

“All eyes are on Rafah,” Mr. Peeperkorn said at the time .

The comment was almost immediately repurposed by pro-Palestinian and humanitarian groups to draw attention to Gaza and Rafah, which was one of the last remaining destinations for displaced Palestinians from other parts of the territory. Among them were Save the Children International, Oxfam and, later, pro-Palestinian lobbying groups like Jewish Voice for Peace.

The saying was also heard at pro-Palestinian protests that swept across Western universities earlier this month.

The deadly strike in Rafah on Sunday was quickly denounced by world leaders. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said the attack had killed two Hamas officials, and he called the civilian deaths a “tragic accident.”

— Ali Watkins

‘I’ll be strong for you.’ A former hostage awaits her husband’s release.

When Hamas released video last month of Keith Siegel , an American-Israeli hostage held in Gaza, it was the first sign in months that he was still alive. His wife, Aviva Siegel, couldn’t bring herself to watch it.

“It would be too difficult for me to see the sadness in Keith’s eyes,” Ms. Siegel said in an interview in New York last week, where she was meeting with António Guterres, the secretary general of the United Nations.

Ms. Siegel, 63, was held captive with her husband until late November, when she was one of 105 hostages released as part of a cease-fire deal. They were taken from their home at Kibbutz Kfar Azza on Oct. 7 during the Hamas-led attacks on Israel.

Nearly eight months into the war, the families of hostages have grown increasingly alarmed. Mr. Siegel, who is 65, has a medical condition, and Israeli soldiers have recently recovered the remains of several hostages in Gaza. For months, Qatar, Egypt and the United States have been trying to get Israel and Hamas to accept a deal for another cease-fire and exchange of captives.

Ms. Siegel understands the hostages’ experience like few others. “Knowing what they’re going through,” she said, “is too much for me to handle.”

She said that she and her husband of over four decades were moved more than a dozen times and were kept in apartments and tunnels, which felt particularly stifling.

Ms. Siegel said that they were denied food and water, while their captors ate, and that she lost over 20 pounds.

She said her captors would hit and push her, blindfold her and pull her by the hair. They shaved Mr. Siegel’s body to humiliate him, she said. The hostages were not allowed to talk.

The captors would play mind games with them, telling them that Israel had ceased to exist, Ms. Siegel said.

Ms. Siegel expressed empathy for Gazans and said she wished Israelis and Palestinians could eventually live alongside each other in peace. She has been alarmed by what she said was a global lack of focus on the hostages.

“Something really bad happened, and we need the world’s help,” she said.

Ms. Siegel often remembers her last conversation with Keith. When the time came for her release from Gaza, she initially refused to leave without him, she said, but soon realized she had to.

“I asked Keith to be strong for me, and I said, ‘I’ll be strong for you’ — and that’s what’s keeping me alive,” she said.

— Nadav Gavrielov

Nikki Haley writes ‘Finish them’ on an artillery shell in Israel.

Nikki Haley, the former Republican presidential candidate and U.N. ambassador during the Trump administration, wrote “Finish them” on an artillery shell in Israel this week.

Danny Danon, Israel’s former ambassador to the United Nations and a member of the Israeli Parliament, shared a photo on social media on Tuesday showing Ms. Haley signing the shell. Her visit came just days after Israel drew international condemnation for a strike that killed dozens of Gazan civilians in a camp for displaced Palestinians.

“This is what my friend, the former ambassador Nikki Haley, wrote today on a shell during a visit to an artillery post on the northern border,” Mr. Danon wrote, declaring of the Israeli military, “The I.D.F. will win!”

Ms. Haley finished her inscription with a note that “America loves Israel always,” using a heart emoji for “loves.”

She signed the artillery shell not along the Gaza frontier, in the south, but near Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, with which Israel also has a longstanding conflict. She also visited a kibbutz where Israelis were killed on Oct. 7, and her public remarks focused on Gaza.

Her trip included meetings with Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, as well as with Yoav Gallant, the country’s defense minister, and Benny Gantz, a member of the war cabinet.

Ms. Haley’s message on the artillery shell drew denunciations from some commentators, including the author and columnist Wajahat Ali, who said in a video on TikTok : “If you think that Biden and Democrats are terrible on Gaza — I think they’ve been terrible — just know Republicans will be far, far worse, and I give you Nikki Haley.”

In an interview published Tuesday by the Israel Hayom newspaper, which is owned by the Republican donor Miriam Adelson, Ms. Haley said Israel had done nothing wrong in its invasion and bombardment of Gaza since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people. And she said the United States should continue to support it unconditionally.

“Israel, they’re the good guys,” she said. “And you know what I want Israelis to know? You’re doing the right thing. Don’t let anybody make you feel wrong.”

Israel’s military operations have killed more than 36,000 Gazans, including thousands of women and children , according to the Gazan health ministry. Many of the casualties, including those in the tent camp on Sunday , have been caused by bombs provided by the United States. President Biden recently withheld an arms shipment out of concern that it would be used in an offensive on the city of Rafah, where displaced Palestinians are sheltering.

When asked in the Israel Hayom interview about civilians who crossed into Israel during the Oct. 7 attacks, she said: “The rest of the world can’t say, ‘Oh, be nice to the Palestinians,’ when these are some of the people who murdered their brothers and sisters.” She added: “They don’t know who to trust. That’s not Israel’s fault. That’s the Palestinians’ fault now.”

Ms. Haley’s comments are in line with her history of support for Israel and rejection of international criticism of its actions. As U.N. ambassador, she accused the United Nations of “bullying” Israel and led the U.S. withdrawal of funding for an agency that helps Palestinian refugees.

She recently fell back in line behind Mr. Trump after previously refusing to endorse him, and Mr. Trump suggested he might bring her onto his team “in some form.”

Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.

— Maggie Astor

Top U.S. officials say the deadly airstrike in Rafah, while tragic, did not cross Biden’s red line.

U.s. will not withdraw military aid after rafah strike, kirby says, john f. kirby, a white house spokesman, condemned the deadly israeli airstrike in rafah, but said that the attack was not enough to change u.s. policy..

So I just want to just right off the top, talk about these devastating images and reports coming out of Rafah over the weekend following an I.D.F. strike that killed dozens of innocent Palestinians, including children. We still don’t believe that a major ground operation in Rafah is warranted. We still don’t want to see the Israelis, as we say, smash into Rafah with large units over large pieces of territory. And we still believe that. And we haven’t seen that at this point. But we’re going to be watching this, of course, very, very closely. Maybe some people have forgotten what happened on the 7th of October, but we haven’t: 1,200 Israelis, innocent Israelis, slaughtered, mutilated, raped, tortured. And they’re living right next to that kind of threat — still a viable threat in Rafah, by the way. If you think Hamas is just gone, they’re not gone from Rafah or from Gaza. And if you think they’ve abandoned their genocidal intent towards the nation of Israel, think again. They haven’t. So Israel has every right to not want to live next to that kind of threat. And yes, we’re going to continue to provide them the capabilities to go after it.

U.S. officials said on Tuesday that the Israeli strike that killed dozens of Palestinians in southern Gaza was a tragedy but that it did not violate President Biden’s red line for withholding weapons shipments to Israel.

The bloodshed came after Mr. Biden warned earlier this month that the United States would block certain arms transfers if Israel targeted heavily populated areas in Rafah — a warning that has been tested regularly as the war has ground on.

John F. Kirby, a White House spokesman, said the deaths were “devastating” but that the scale of the attack was not enough to change U.S. policy. “We don’t want to see a major ground operation,” Mr. Kirby told reporters. “We haven’t seen that.”

Israeli tanks were on the outskirts of the city “to try to put pressure on Hamas,” Mr. Kirby said. He also offered a measure of specificity about Mr. Biden’s warning to Israel, which critics have said was too vague.

“We have not seen them go in with large units and large numbers of troops in columns and formations in some sort of coordinated maneuver against multiple targets on the ground,” Mr. Kirby said. “Everything that we can see tells us that they are not moving in in a major ground operation in population centers in the city of Rafah.”

Mr. Biden has faced pressure from advocates and members of his own party to use his power to curtail arms to Israel as a way to influence its conduct in the war. The United States is by far the biggest supplier of weapons to Israel, which raises questions about American responsibility as the death toll mounts.

The strike in Rafah on Sunday ignited a deadly fire and killed at least 45 people, including children, and wounded 249, according to the Gazan health ministry. It has prompted international outrage, including from leaders in the European Union, the United Nations, Egypt and China.

Vice President Kamala Harris, asked about Rafah on Tuesday, said “the word tragic doesn’t even begin to describe” the deaths. She did not answer a follow-up question about whether the strike crossed a red line for Mr. Biden.

Still, the Israeli military’s conduct was similar to what Mr. Biden said he would not tolerate when he warned, in an interview on CNN earlier this month, that the United States would not supply Israel with weapons to attack Rafah.

“I have made it clear to Bibi and the war cabinet they’re not going to get our support if, in fact, they’re going into these population centers,” Mr. Biden said in the interview.

In that interview, Mr. Biden emphasized that the United States would still ensure Israel’s security, citing the Iron Dome missile defense system and his support for Israel’s “ability to respond to attacks.” But he said he would block the delivery of weapons that could be fired into densely populated areas of Rafah.

The area that was hit on Sunday was not included in evacuation orders that Israel issued in early May, and some Palestinians sheltering in the camp said they had believed it was a safe zone .

The Israeli military said that the target of Sunday’s strike was a Hamas compound, and that “precise munitions” had been used to target a commander and another senior official there. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was a “tragic accident” that civilians were killed.

Around one million people have fled Rafah during Israel’s assault on the city, according to the United Nations , including many in the western part of the city and in the area around the camp that was struck on Sunday.

A State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, said the United States was watching Israel’s investigation of the incident closely.

“Israel has said that it might have been that there was a Hamas ammo dump near the area where they took the strike,” Mr. Miller said. “It’s a very important factual question that needs to be answered.”

The Israeli military’s spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, told a news conference that Israeli jets had fired the “smallest munitions” that they could use and added that “our munitions alone could not have ignited a fire of this size.”

Israel invaded Gaza after the Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7 killed some 1,200 people in Israel. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 36,000 people, many of them women and children, according to health officials in Gaza.

World leaders, including Mr. Biden, have warned of the dangers of a major military operation in Rafah without a proper plan for evacuating the displaced Gazans taking refuge there.

Mr. Miller was able to provide little detail on hundreds of thousands of people who have fled Rafah in recent weeks.

“Some of them have gone back to Khan Younis,” he said. “Some of them have pushed into western Rafah. Some of them have gone to Mawasi. I don’t think there’s any one answer.” Mr. Miller said he did not know if Israel was assisting those people.

Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and an adviser to Palestinian leaders during past peace negotiations, said the White House was benefiting from its ambiguous descriptions on Mr. Biden’s “red line” for Israel’s military operation in Rafah.

“It’s definitely blurry and by design,” Mr. Elgindy said. “They don’t want to be pinned down. They don’t want to pin themselves down by identifying an exact point or line that gets across because Israel will absolutely cross that line. We’ve seen that over and over again.”

Erica L. Green contributed reporting from Washington, and Michael Crowley from New York.

— Zolan Kanno-Youngs reporting from Washington

U.S.-built pier for delivering aid to Gaza breaks apart in rough seas.

The temporary pier that the U.S. military constructed and put in place to provide much-needed humanitarian aid for Gaza has broken apart in rough seas, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.

The latest calamity to befall the pier endeavor punctuated a particularly grim several days in Gaza, where Israeli forces have ramped up attacks on the city of Rafah just two days after carrying out a deadly strike that killed dozens of people.

“Unfortunately, we had a perfect storm of high sea states, and then, as I mentioned, this North African weather system also came in at the same time, creating not an optimal environment to operate,” Sabrina Singh, the Pentagon deputy press secretary, said at a news conference.

Army engineers are working to put the pier back together and Defense Department officials hope that it “will be fully operational in just a little over a week,” she said.

In early March, President Biden surprised the Pentagon by announcing that the U.S. military would build a pier for Gaza. Defense officials immediately predicted that there would be logistical and security issues .

In the days after the pier became operational on May 17, trucks were looted as they made their way to a warehouse, forcing the U.N. World Food Program to suspend operations . After officials beefed up security, the weather turned bad. American officials had been hoping that the sea surges would not start until later in the summer.

On Saturday, heavy seas forced two small American military vessels that were part of the pier operation to beach in Israel. On Sunday, part of the pier broke off completely, including a wider parking area for dropping off supplies transported by ship, officials said. That part will have to be reconnected.

The pier is now being removed from the coast of Gaza to be repaired after getting damaged in the rough seas, Ms. Singh said. Over the next two days, it will be pulled out and taken to Ashdod, in southern Israel, for repairs.

She said that the fact that the pier, which cost $320 million, was able to get 1,000 metric tons of aid into Gaza before it broke apart demonstrates that it can work.

White House policy does not allow U.S. troops on the ground in Gaza, so the Pentagon was able to start but not finish the mission.

And as the pier project struggles, the situation in Gaza remains dire. Even before Sunday’s deadly Israeli strikes, more than 34,000 people had died and more than 77,000 people had been wounded, according to health officials in the territory.

— Helene Cooper Reporting from Washington

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