A top Israeli official suggested on Monday that he believes it is “morally justified” for Israel to wipe out Gaza’s population through famine and starvation, in chilling statements that pro-Palestine advocates say openly indicate genocidal intent. Speaking at a conference hosted by the far right Israel Hayom newspaper, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich complained about having to allow…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
As humanitarian groups warn that multiple epidemics are likely ongoing in Gaza, one report has revealed that there has been a major uptick of cases of viral hepatitis B, which infects the liver, as sanitary conditions continue to deteriorate and Israel’s genocide rages on. Haaretz reports that over 100,000 cases of viral hepatitis B have been recorded in Gaza…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Ex-prisoners report sexual assault and starvation as rights groups say at least 60 have died in ‘torture camp’ jails
Ashraf al-Muhtaseb is a musician who described leaving Israel’s jails with no hearing in his left ear, four fractured ribs and a broken hand, so ill and weak from hunger he could no longer walk.
Dropped at an Israeli checkpoint on his own, he says he began crawling towards his home in the occupied West Bank town of Hebron, until a passerby picked him up.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Guardian interviews back up report by rights group B’Tselem, which says jails should now be labelled ‘torture camps’
Violence, extreme hunger, humiliation and other abuse of Palestinian prisoners has been normalised across Israel’s jail system, according to Guardian interviews with released prisoners, with mistreatment now so systemic that rights group B’Tselem says it must be considered a policy of “institutionalised abuse”.
Former detainees described abuse ranging from severe beatings and sexual violence to starvation rations, refusal of medical care, and deprivation of basic needs including water, daylight, electricity and sanitation, including soap and sanitary pads for women.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Palestine Action has targeted a branch of Barclays over the bank’s complicity in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza – showing when it is appropriate to smash corporate-owned stuff up.
Several activists from Palestine Action targeted a Barclays branch in Burnley on Monday 5 August, over the banks shareholdings in Israel’s biggest weapons producer, Elbit Systems:
The group had smashed windows and covered the premises in red paint, symbolising the bank’s complicity in the Gaza genocide:
It came after more action from the group last week.
As the Canary previously reported, on Wednesday 31 July, Palestine Action celebrated its birthday by forcing Elbit’s UAV Engines factory in Shenstone to close down. Not to be discouraged by cops arresting those actionists, another group from Palestine Action arrived at the site on Thursday 1 August to shut the factory down for a second day in a row. This time, a caravan was part of the blockade.
Elbit Systems provide 85% of Israel’s military drone fleet and land based equipment, as well as missiles, ammunition and digital warfare. In response to the ongoing Gaza genocide, Elbit’s CEO Bezhalel Machlis says the weapons maker has “ramped up production”.
Last week, Elbit was rewarded a contract to supply thousands of artillery shells to the Israeli military, who have killed or injured over 130,000 Palestinians since October 8th.
Palestine Action has repeatedly targeted Barclays over their complicity in genocide, demanding they divest from Elbit. This culminated in over 20 branches being hit by in a single night in June. This included the Bradford and Bolton branches on 3 June, where activists left windows smashed and sprayed the banks red.
Barclays Bank holds over £1bn in shares and provides over £3bn in loans and underwriting to nine companies whose weapons, components, and military technology are being used by Israel in its genocidal attacks on Palestinians.
Amongst Barclays £3bn investments and loans in companies facilitating the Gaza genocide, the bank holds shares in Elbit Systems
A Palestine Action spokesperson said:
Palestine Action will continue to make investing in Israel’s biggest weapons producer an unattractive investment. As Barclays reduce Palestinian lives to profits on their balance sheet, it’s important they understand the cost associated with funding genocide.
Featured image and additional images via Neil Terry
By The Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.
To: The State of Israel, AIPAC and the International Zionist Movement
I write as an American citizen. You have stolen my country, and I want it back.
I did not ask for my country to be complicit in the ongoing genocide and attempted eradication of the people of Gaza and Palestine. I do not want to be complicit in the genocide of anyone. I do not want this crime to stain the name of the United States of America whenever it is spoken for the next century and for all eternity, and to bring shame upon me and my descendants, and to all others who hold American citizenship.
The American people are as yet only partially aware of this crime. This is because you have been very successful in exerting a powerful influence on the media, the government, and other pillars of American society. I’m not saying you have done anything illegal. You may have, but you clearly prefer to use legal means as much as possible. And it is possible. US law allows anyone with the necessary means to own media, and – within very broad limits – to control who gets elected to government office and who gets appointed to other public offices.
For better or worse, this is the American way, and it can be made better or worse than it is. But you have abused and corrupted it. You have strangled the political process so that any candidate who criticizes Israel and opposes aid to Israel cannot be elected, because you control the funding as well as the funders in a system which depends entirely on private campaign funds, and where corporations and other wealthy associations are permitted to participate.
You have also strangled academic freedom to debate or protest Israel on American campuses through control of funding, resulting in harassment and removal of faculty and punishment of students. You have hijacked American film, news organizations, and other media so that only the information and views that you permit are widely available to the public.
You use such influence to pass laws at all levels, requiring allegiance to Israel in order to obtain licenses and permits. You apply censorship to social media to prevent free expression of views, information and opinion that might reflect negatively on Israel. You mobilize posting of libel and slander against persons and businesses that criticize Israel and defend Palestinians and their allies.
Your job, and that of the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy, and the global network of sayanim (collaborators) is to assure, by these and any other available means, that Israel dominates all narratives, all public policy and decision making, and that all actions in both the public and private sphere are to the benefit of Israel. You have been enormously successful in capturing almost unlimited military and financial support from the US government, in controlling U.S. government policy, and in shaping American minds to accept and support a massive civilian genocide, including starvation and infection of hundreds of thousands and ultimately probably millions of innocent people.
How can this happen? The American people have spoken and protested in many ways and in large numbers, and polls show that, in spite of your manipulations of US society, a majority of Americans do not support continued aid to Israel, and want an immediate ceasefire. Members of Congress have been deluged with letters, phone calls and email messages.
But part of the system of controlling our government includes your parallel organization of shadow “advisors” or “minders” whose job it is to remain in the face of our elected and appointed officials, and to “recommend” what to say and how to vote, and to provide draft legislation and public announcements that the official can introduce and promote on behalf of Israel. Otherwise, you will threaten to find someone to replace her/him in the next election cycle.
I feel helpless appealing to my members of Congress for anything that you oppose, no matter how many of my fellow citizens might join me. But I now realize that my members of Congress feel the same way. They really don’t have a choice any more than I do. In effect, therefore, they are mere avatars for you and your allies. You are our government.
What can I do about this? I’m not sure, but a start might be to require AIPAC and other actors on behalf of Israel to register as foreign agents under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, like all other representatives of foreign governments. Israel is a foreign government, isn’t it? As I recall, that was last tried by Sen. J. William Fulbright’s committee in 1963, but when Lyndon B. Johnson came to the presidency by assassination that year, the option faded. But, of course, it’s never too late.
Second, we can overturn Citizens United, by whatever legal means necessary, if possible. Even better, we can prohibit or severely curtail private financing of elections, overturning Citizens United in the process, but going beyond, to eliminate some of the most obvious sources of public corruption. We can also legislate greater protection for free speech and the press, punish use of private donations to deny free speech and other civil rights, and enact similar measures.
The problem with all such remedies, of course, is how to get them passed by institutions that are already under your corrupt control. I’m not sure I have an answer for that, but someone else might. Because even genocide will not save Israel, which is not defeating – and cannot defeat – Hamas. Perhaps Hamas and its allies will liberate both Palestine and the United States.
The post Open Letter to Israel: I Want My Country Back first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
In the space of mere hours, Israel killed the lead Hamas ceasefire negotiator, Ismail Haniyeh; assassinated one of the most senior figures in Hezbollah, Fuad Shukr; saw its citizens, including Knesset members and at least one government minister riot for their “right” to rape Palestinian prisoners; and announced that it had killed the head of Hamas’ Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Massacre after massacre is occurring in Palestine, with immense human suffering and destruction, all enabled by the U.S. government. Even with the International Court of Justice declaring Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories as unlawful, President Joe Biden has shown that there is, in fact, no “red line” for the United States military support for Israel. What more evidence do we…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The coalition government is telling New Zealanders in Iran and Lebanon to leave immediately as tensions rise in the Middle East.
“The New Zealand government urges New Zealanders in Lebanon and Iran to leave now while options remain available,” Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters said in a social media post today.
“We also recommend New Zealanders in Israel consider whether they need to remain in the country.”
The New Zealand Government urges New Zealanders in Lebanon and Iran to leave now while options remain available.
We also recommend New Zealanders in Israel consider whether they need to remain in the country.
-WP
— Winston Peters (@NewZealandMFA) August 4, 2024
It comes after the government updated its Safetravel advisory, warning people not to travel to Lebanon due to what it called the volatile security situation.
The advisory elevated Lebanon to the highest level, meaning “extreme risk”.
The United States has urged citizens to leave Lebanon on “any available ticket”, while the British Foreign Secretary warned British citizens in Lebanon to leave immediately or risk “becoming trapped in a warzone”.
Iran vowed retaliation
Iran has vowed to retaliate against Israel, which it blames for the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the Hamas political bureau, earlier this week.
Just hours before his assassination, Israel killed Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in an air strike.
There are fears that Hezbollah — which is based in Lebanon and backed by Iran — could play a big part in any retaliation.
That, in turn, could result in a huge Israeli response.
Israel has been at war with Hamas since the resistance group’s attack on 7 October 2023 which saw nearly 1200 people killed.
Israel’s ground and air campaigns have killed more than 40,000 people in Gaza in the months since, according to Palestinian health authorities.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
It is increasingly becoming clear–even to some Western observers—that the Zionist project has run its course. It had an extraordinary run, but it has now reached the end of its settler-colonial track.
The creation of this exclusionary settler-colonial Jewish state was a historical anomaly, among the greatest blunders of Western civilization in the twentieth century. Despite the deep alliance—between Western Jews and their Western tormentors—that established Israel in the mid-20th century, this Jewish state could not in the long run resist the deep logic of history. A few sober Israelis, too, can read the writing on the wall.
At the same time, no one doubts that Israel is capable of inflicting devastating harm on the Western Islamicate. Some members of Israel’s extremist right-wing government, steeled by messianic delusions, are threatening to invoke the Samson option—b’rerat Shimshon. For sure, Israel could kill several million Iranians and Arabs with its arsenal of neutron bombs. But where would that leave the Jewish state?
Would Netanyahu, Biden, and MBS be flying to a new Iranian capital—since they will have obliterated Tehran—to celebrate their victory over Iran, and then fly to Riyadh to seal an enduring Saudi-Israeli alliance, guaranteed for a thousand years by the USA, after Trump’s victory in this great democracy’s last election. It is likely that the inimitable Thomas Friedman will be rooting for this scenario in his next New York Times op-ed.
In order to prevent Israel from launching its neutron bombs, the Western powers that birthed and nurtured the Zionist project must now take responsibility for their historic blunder, and manage the transition of this abnormal Jewish state to a normal one that accords equal rights to all its inhabitants—Jews and Arabs alike. Western powers have shielded this rogue state for more than 76 years. It is now time to make amends.
Acting resolutely and quickly, the UN Security Council needs to sanction Israel until it ends its long-standing violations of multiple international laws. Simultaneously, the USA, Britain, and Germany will need to shut off their arms pipeline to Israel. If Israel refuses to agree to a permanent ceasefire, then the UNSC may also need to impose an oil embargo on Israel.
If someone—Jew or Penguin—who has read this essay and understands my test of antisemitism, and still insists on accusing me of antisemitism, be aware that this accusations fails this test.1
I oppose Zionism not because it is led by Jews, but because of what Zionism proposed to do, what it has done, and continues to do to the Palestinians. I have made it clear that I would have opposed exclusionary settler-colonial project even if it were by Penguins, Pelicans or Pakistanis.
Future historians of Zionism will acknowledge that Zionism was a trap set up by British antisemites—in addition to securing control over their oil in the Middle East—to be rid of Europe’s Jewish population. Zionist leaders, overambitious and myopic, sold their Zionist vision with ease to Western Jews once they had ‘recruited’ Britain, the leading imperialist power, to their cause.
It is quite astonishing how a brilliant people who produced perhaps a fourth of the world’s most extraordinary minds—from the mid-19th to mid-20th century—espoused two flawed utopian visions, Communism and Zionism, that might dazzle with their surface brilliance, but were not aligned with the heavenly forces.
The first utopian vision, because of its extreme demands on human nature, collapsed in 1990. This totalitarian socialism also blocked the transition—when the historic window was still open—from the destructive capitalism of the 19th century to humane, democratic socialist alternatives.
The second utopian vision may have run its course, but while the vast Soviet Union—a superpower with the second largest military and a vast nuclear arsenal—collapsed peaceably, without causing any wars, Israel, the embodiment of the Zionist utopia, threatens its neighbors with nuclear apocalypse.
Israeli Jews cannot save Israel from itself, but the Jewish diaspora has a chance—because of its distance from the war psychosis generated by the Jewish Spartan state—to use its influence and organizing powers to try to re-orient the ruling elites in the USA, Canada and Britain towards rescuing Jews in Palestine from the Zionist quagmire. Is this even possible since Zionism has dominated the discourse in the Jewish diaspora too?
Nevertheless, there are signs that important sections of Jewish diaspora are beginning to see past their own propaganda. Over the last ten months, many Jews, especially young Jews, have been taking a moral stand against Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians that began in 1947, not October 7, 2024. Also, for the first time, the International Court of Justice has spoken if not clearly and loudly. The International Criminal Court too has filed applications for warrants for the arrest of two Israeli leaders, Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant.
The Jewish diaspora can and should mobilize to save Israel’s Jews from the worst instincts of its right-wing Messianic government. For more than 76 years, the Jewish diaspora has mobilized in support of Israeli governments, no matter their crimes against Palestinians. It is time now to mobilize to restrain Israel’s extremist leadership. It may not be too late. There may still be time to to do the right thing.
ENDNOTE:
1 I will explain this test in another essay that I will publish soon.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Israel’s relentless bombing campaign in Gaza has, over the course of 300 days, created a staggering amount of debris — not only burying Palestinians alive and destroying life-supporting infrastructure, but also putting Palestinians at risk to a number of pollutants that could cause diseases like cancer long after the genocide has ended. According to an assessment of satellite imagery by UN…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Israel has been trading strikes with Hezbollah, the Lebanese political party and armed group, ever since October. So far, the strikes have killed at least 542 people in Lebanon, including 114 civilians and at least 22 soldiers and 25 civilians in northern Israel and Israeli-occupied territory. But one recent back-and-forth has heightened the tension at the border between the two countries…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
In just the last 10 months of its genocide, Israel has damaged or destroyed nearly 9 out of 10 schools in Gaza, the UN has reported. According to assessments by the UN-backed Global Education Cluster, almost 85 percent of school buildings in Gaza have been directly hit or damaged, as the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) highlighted on Friday.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is reportedly at the top of the list of potential running mates for Vice President Kamala Harris in her bid for the White House. But many progressives have raised alarm about Shapiro’s record, including his support for corporate tax breaks and school vouchers, his relationship with oil and gas companies, and his demonization of pro-Palestinian protesters.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators will take to the streets of London on Saturday 3 August to demand the UK government cease arming Israel and take all possible steps to avert a wider Middle East war.
We are now 10 months into what the International Court of Justice ruled to be a plausible case of genocide in Gaza. Over 40,000 Palestinians have been killed, more than 16,000 of them children. Last month, UN experts noted that Israel’s starvation campaign has “resulted in famine across all of Gaza”.
Israel also continues its military invasions, assassinations, and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians across the illegally occupied West Bank, where over 554 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023.
In the past few days, Israel has conducted attacks on Lebanon and Iran. These strikes on sovereign territory are in violation of international law, and led to civilian deaths and casualties, including children. Israel’s contemptuous disregard for international law, and the acquiescence of its Western allies, including the UK, means we stand at the brink of a wider regional war.
Instead of taking meaningful steps to hold Israel to account, the UK government has chosen to delay a decision on whether to suspend arms sales to Israel.
As a signatory to the Arms Trade Treaty and under domestic law, the UK has a legal obligation to ensure that UK arms are not sold if there is a clear risk that they might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of International Humanitarian Law.
People will march on Saturday to demand the government adheres to its responsibilities under international law and cease aiding and abetting Israel’s grave war crimes by immediately imposing a two-way arms embargo on Israel.
The march leaves Park Lane at 12pm, before rally at Whitehall from 2:30pm.
Ben Jamal, Palestine Solidarity Campaign director, said:
Before Labour came to power David Lammy demanded the Conservative Foreign Secretary immediately publish the legal advice on the sale of arms to Israel. Now in Government, he has delayed a decision as to whether arms sales need to be halted despite the clear evidence of Israel breaching International Humanitarian Law with its genocide in Gaza. How many more Palestinians must be killed before David Lammy decides to stop arming their oppressors?
Israel’s contemptuous disregard for international law comes from decades of impunity, which is only possible due to the support of its allies, including the UK. We now stand on the brink of a wider regional war. We march to reassert the fundamental truth that there will be no peace in the Middle East without an end to Israel’s genocide, the dismantlement of its regime of settler-colonialism, military occupation and apartheid, and freedom and return for the Palestinian people.
Featured image via
By The Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.
COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone
President Biden — if you feel like pretending Biden is still serving as President and still making the decisions in the White House — has pledged to support Israel against any retaliations for its recent assassination spree in Iran and Lebanon which killed high-profile officials from Hamas and Hezbollah.
A White House statement asserts that Biden spoke with Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday and “reaffirmed his commitment to Israel’s security against all threats from Iran, including its proxy terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis,” and “discussed efforts to support Israel’s defence against threats, including against ballistic missiles and drones, to include new defensive US military deployments.”
Hilariously, the statement also claims that “the President stressed the importance of ongoing efforts to de-escalate broader tensions in the region.”
Yep, nothing emphasises the importance of de-escalating broader tensions in the region like pledging unconditional military support for the region’s single most belligerent actor no matter how reckless and insane its aggressions become.
This statement from the White House echoes comments from Secretary of “Defence” Lloyd Austin a day earlier, who said “We certainly will help defend Israel” should a wider war break out as a result of Israel’s assassination strikes.
Biden promises Netanyahu the U.S. will defend Israel from any reprisal attacks pic.twitter.com/9meq2hTBmq
— Dave DeCamp (@DecampDave) August 1, 2024
All this babbling about “defending” the state of Israel is intended to convey the false impression that Israel has just been sitting there minding its own business, and is about to suffer unprovoked attacks from hostile aggressors for some unfathomable reason.
As though detonating military explosives in the capital cities of two nations to conduct political assassinations would not be seen as an extreme act of war in need of a violent response by literally all governments on this planet.
Helping Israeli attacks
In reality, the US isn’t vowing to defend the state of Israel, the US is vowing to help Israel attack other countries.
If you’re pledging unconditional support to an extremely belligerent aggressor while it commits the most demented acts of aggression imaginable, all you’re doing is condoning those acts of aggression and making sure it will suffer no consequences when it conducts more of them.
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has reiterated its calls for Israeli forces “to minimize the impact of military operations on civilians in Gaza and to end the killing of journalists.”
LIVE updates: https://t.co/zy5TRLrI15 pic.twitter.com/U3wHa464IQ
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) August 1, 2024
Washington’s position is made even more absurd after all the hysterical shrieking and garment-rending from the Washington establishment following the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
Israel murdered the leader of the Hamas political bureau, not a military commander, and he was the primary negotiator in the mediated ceasefire talks with Israel.
This was a political assassination just like a successful attempt on Trump’s life would have been, but probably a lot more consequential. And yet the only response from Washington has been to announce that it will help Israel continue its incendiary brinkmanship throughout the Middle East.
Washington swamp monsters talk all the time about their desire to promote “peace and stability in the Middle East”, while simultaneously pledging loyalty and support for a Middle Eastern nation whose actions pose a greater obstacle to peace and stability in the region than any other.
These contradictions are becoming more and more glaring and apparent before the entire world.
Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian independent journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article is republished with permission.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
Palestinian journalists in Gaza have discarded their press jackets after an Israel drone struck the car of Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Rifi west of Gaza City, killing both of them, along with a Palestinian boy on his bicycle.
Al Jazeera Media Network condemned the killing as a “targeted assassination”. It vowed to “pursue all legal actions to prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes”.
The UN Human Rights office stated “journalists are civilians and thus protected from attack under international humanitarian law unless they are directly participating in hostilities… the intentional killing of journalists is a war crime.”
Ghoul and Rifi were both wearing press jackets and had identification signs on their car when Israel struck them. But that didn’t protect them. Nor did such identification stop Israel targeting the 155 other journalists it has killed since October 2023.
So, other Palestinian journalists have removed their jackets in protest:
Palestinian journalists in Gaza threw their press vests to the ground in protest against Israel’s killing of Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Rifi. pic.twitter.com/Dmi4D1MoQ3
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) August 1, 2024
On social media, a number of Western journalists called on corporate media reporters to treat Israel’s mass killing of their Gazan counterparts with the same respect as they would if the Palestinians were white.
Drop Site News journalist Jeremy Scahill called for them to reflect:
If you’re an American journalist who posts regularly demanding freedom for US journalists detained or imprisoned or you have condemned the killing of journalists for US media, but have been silent in the face of Israel’s mass murder of our colleagues in Gaza, ask yourself, “Why?”
— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) July 31, 2024
And editor-in-chief of Zeteo Mehdi Hasan put shame on them:
Shame on every journalist in the West who has sat silently by and not said a word as over a hundred of their colleagues in Gaza have been killed by Israel, again and again and again. What happened to ‘journalism is not a crime’? To standing for press freedom? Shame on them. https://t.co/7bL5zOFiKK
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) July 31, 2024
The day before Israel killed him, Ghoul documented first hand Israel striking the Orthodox Church of St. Porphyrius in Gaza City. The church was sheltering many displaced Palestinian people. It is said to be the third oldest church in the world.
And on 28 July, Ghoul reported on the decapitation of another Palestinian child after an Israeli airstrike hit a crowded house in Khan Younis, southern Gaza. The corporate media launched wall-to-wall front pages for the fake claim that Hamas beheaded ’40 babies’ on 7 October. Yet it’s again silent when there is an actual beheaded Palestinian child.
Ghoul said the strike was in a zone that Israel designated as safe. There have been many occasions where Israel has instructed Palestinian people to move to a safe zone, only to then kill them.
Since 7 October, Israel has killed over 40,000 Palestinian people. That includes more than 15,000 children.
And it is trying to stop journalists reporting the genocide. As well as killing journalists in Gaza, including a number of other Al Jazeera journalists and their families, Israel banned Al Jazeera from Israel in May. As part of the ban, Israel raided Al Jazeera offices in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem and took away their equipment.
Featured image via Al Jazeera English – X
By James Wright
This post was originally published on Canary.
A group of UN human rights experts is calling UN member states to pressure Israel to comply with a recent court order to end its illegal occupation of Palestine using everything in their power, potentially including an arms embargo and cutting of diplomatic and financial ties. In a statement released Tuesday, the group of 38 independent experts reiterated the findings of the International…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Unrest continues to brew in Israel after a right-wing mob including members of the Knesset broke into two Israeli military bases in an effort to prevent Israeli military police from detaining nine soldiers who were under investigation for gang raping a Palestinian prisoner at the notorious Sde Teiman facility. +972 Magazine’s Oren Ziv, who was at one of the bases reporting on the events…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Al Jazeera condemned Israel’s killing of two of its journalists in Gaza. In a statement the news outlet called the deaths a:
cold-blooded assassination.
Their Arabic channel correspondent Ismail Al Ghoul and cameraman Rami Al Rifi were “targeted by Israeli occupation forces” during their coverage of Gaza’s Al-Shati refugee camp. The statement also read:
This latest attack on Al Jazeera journalists is part of a systematic targeting campaign against the network’s journalists and their families since October 2023.
Its bureau chief in Gaza, Wael al-Dahdouh, was wounded in an Israeli strike in December that killed the network’s cameraman. His wife, two of their children and a grandson were killed in the October bombardment of central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp. His eldest son, Hamza al-Dahdouh, also an Al Jazeera staff journalist, was killed in January when a strike targeted a car in Rafah.
Since the start of Israel’s genocide in Gaza on 7 October, Al Jazeera has aired continuous on-the-ground reporting on the effects of Israel’s campaign. The network’s office in Gaza has already been bombed in the conflict and two other correspondents killed.
Al Jazeera said Ghoul and Rifi’s killings showed: “the urgent need for immediate legal action against the occupation forces”.
In fact, the channel went on to say it would:
pursue all legal actions to prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes and stands in unwavering solidarity with all journalists in Gaza.
In a statement, Hamas condemned the killings as a “heinous crime” which it said was “aimed at terrorising and silencing” Palestinian journalists as they reported “the ongoing genocide against our people in the Gaza Strip for nearly ten months”.
The Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ) CEO Jodie Ginsberg said:
CPJ is dismayed by the news that Al Jazeera TV reporter Ismail Al Ghoul and cameraman Rami Al Refee were killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza. Journalists are civilians and should never be targeted. Israel must explain why two more Al Jazeera journalists have been killed in what appears to be a direct strike.
The CPJ also found that:
As of Aug 1, 2024, CPJ’s preliminary investigations showed at least 113 journalists and media workers were among the more than 39,000 killed since the war began, making it the deadliest period for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992.
Clearly, Al Jazeera has been a thorn in the side of genocidal Israel for quite some time now. The media outlet has often come in for criticism from Israeli prime minister and butcher Benjamin Netanyahu. So much so that the network has been banned in Israel since early May.
The general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative shared his thoughts on social media:
The Israeli air strike decapitated AlJazeera journalist Ismail Al ghoul and killed the journalist Rami Alrifi as well . The total number of journalists killed in Gaza since October 7th is 165. Atrache md is the video of their bombarded vehicle. pic.twitter.com/0pIhegrrfq
— Mustafa Barghouti @Mustafa_Barghouti (@MustafaBarghou1) July 31, 2024
It has become sickeningly customary to hear and see of Palestinians being decapitated by the sheer force of airstrikes. Ismail had remained steadfast in his reporting of the genocide. However, this is not to paint a sanitised picture of him. The Instagram of the Palestinian Youth Movement shared the following words from Ismail before his murder:
Let me tell you, my friend, that I no longer know the taste of sleep. The bodies of children and the screams of the injured and their blood-soaked images never leave my sight. The cries of mothers and the wailing of men who are missing their loved ones never fade from my hearing.
I can no longer bear the sound of children’s voices from beneath the rubble, nor can I forget the energy and power that reverberates at every moment, turning into a nightmare. It is no longer easy for me to stand before the rows of coffins, which are locked and extended, or to see the dead people more than the living who are fighting death beneath their homes, not finding a way out to safety and survival.
I am tired, my friend.
Now, Ismail’s colleagues and fellow Palestinians are stood at his funeral, bearing witness to his coffin.
On social media, images of Ismail’s decapitated body are being shared. He died wearing his press vest, sitting in a car. At his funeral, his fellow colleagues, also wearing their press vest, viewed his body missing his head.
Whilst Ismail had a more public persona due to his work as a journalist, his cameraperson Rami Al Rifi has less information available about him publicly. But, let’s be clear: Rami was killed in a targeted strike for being a journalist, and died doing his job. The Al Jazeera behind the scenes Twitter account shared the following memorialisation:
Al Jazeera colleagues gathered to condemn the cold-blooded assassination of Ismail Al Ghoul and Rami Al Rifi in Gaza by Israeli occupation forces and to call for holding the perpetrators accountable.#Justice4Journalists https://t.co/Tl16rDKK0S pic.twitter.com/pwFikYhzYD
— Al Jazeera PR (@AlJazeera) August 1, 2024
The Quds News Network also shared images of the two martyrs:
Al-Jazeera correspondent Anas Al-Sharif mourns his friends and colleagues Ismail Al-Ghoul and Rami Al-Reefi, who were assassinated by Israel today while reporting from Al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/UT110FKjZq
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) July 31, 2024
Journalist Maram Humaid shared an emotional essay to Ismail, writing:
We didn’t want to believe it, but then, the confirmation came from colleagues out in the field. And I collapsed on my knees…It’s the same shock that sweeps over us every time we lose a journalist colleague despite our knowledge that everyone is under the guillotine of war and everyone is a target.
And it’s the same shock that reminds us of the bitter truth that no one hears us, no one cares about us.
A woman told me on Wednesday that the world is tired of us and our news. Bored of the war on Gaza, indifferent to our suffering. She was right!
Humaid continued:
The world is tired of us, oh, my colleague Ismail.
Tired of seeing you on screen for 300 days, broadcasting live news around the clock from northern Gaza.
Tired of you reporting, hungry and unable to find food. You wrote about your hunger, lost your brother and father in the war, were arrested and tortured at al-Shifa Hospital, separated from your displaced wife and children in the south of Gaza.
The world was tired of you until the screen reported on your killing, your head severed from your body in a brutal reflection of the war that you covered.
Palestinian journalists have risked their lives, their family, their sanity, their safety to report on the Israeli genocide being enacted on their people. They have risked more than everything, whilst knowing that the world at large does not care. It has become chillingly common to see journalists whose reporting we diligently followed, to go dark because they have been murdered.
Even now, Ismail and Rami’s colleagues are continuing their work. That tens of journalists that Israel has killed whilst reporting on their genocide should be a global outrage. There should be swellings of pain and grief at yet more decapitated Palestinians.
But, there won’t be.
Palestinian deaths at the hands of Israel are business as usual for the West. For a region that harps on and on about press freedom, you won’t see many established journalists in the West grieving Ismail and Rami.
By The Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.
On the same day that Israeli forces bombed a girls’ school in central Gaza, killing at least 30 people and injuring over 100, Israel’s soccer team was allowed to compete without sanctions at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Even though Paraguay defeated Israel 4-2, TRNN’s Dave Zirin reports that “Israel actually won this, because they were allowed to play at all.” In this on-the-ground report from Paris, Zirin covers the protests and politics surrounding Saturday’s soccer match.
Studio Production: Jules Boykoff
Post-Production: David Hebden, Cameron Granadino
Dave Zirin:
Hey, this is Dave Zirin from Edge of Sports TV, only on the Real News Network. I’m here standing outside, Parc des Princes Stadium here in Paris, where the Israeli soccer team is about to take on Paraguay. Now, why am I here? Because the question about Israeli athletes and them having the permission to play in these games is one of the hot-button issues in Paris right now, and frankly around the world, particularly on this day of all days where an Israeli airstrike killed 30 people sheltering in a school in Gaza. So we’re wondering, are there going to be protests here? You hear some noise in the background. What are those protests going to look like? We’re going to find out right here at the stadium. Maybe there’ll be nothing. Maybe there’ll be something. But I’m excited to find out, because the resistance at these Olympics are the politics they do not want to talk about.
Just a few things about the mood outside the stadium. You do see some folks in Israeli flags. I’m not seeing yet Palestinian flags, but Paraguay has shown up in a big way. So that’s something, and we’re going to keep recording and keep finding out what’s happening as Israel meets Paraguay at a contest where a lot of people think Israel has no place on the field.
The security outside the Israel-Paraguay game, it was like nothing you can imagine and nothing I’ve ever experienced before a sporting event. Incredible amount of police, your body was checked twice, machine guns everywhere, and yet despite all of that, look at this man, in a wheelchair, with a Palestinian flag, somehow got it into the arena. I got to tell you, if he was able to do all that, it’s actually humbling to think about what he went through. Humbling to think about how important it was for him to make a statement of dissent against Israel’s presence.
Okay, the match is over. Paraguay won four to two over Israel, but that’s not the story here. Because Israel in a way, actually won this because they were able to play at all, and that’s a problem. Here’s the problem at play. Look, Israel should not be in these games at all because of what’s called sportswashing. Right now, Israel is acting like a pariah nation. It is bombing Gaza. It is bombing Rafah, and yet they are allowed to come to these games and be sports washed and accepted as a legitimate part of the international sports community and the international community. And that’s the problem.
A huge number of Israeli players are members of the Israeli Armed Forces, and yet here they are playing. Meanwhile, Russia was sanctioned because many of their players were on the Russian Armed Forces. The hypocrisy is blaring, and yet their Israel was. Their national anthem played, a whole stadium of people stood up and paid respect. There were Israeli flags everywhere. And this is the problem, and that is exactly why we need to be vigilant about saying that Israel has no place in international sports competition as long as it is acting like a settler colonial estate. For Edge of Sports TV, I’m Dave Zirin.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
Rula Halawani (Palestine), Untitled XII from the Negative Incursion series, 2002.
On 26 July, senior United Nations (UN) officials briefed the UN Security Council about the terrible situation in Gaza. ‘More than two million people in Gaza remain trapped in an endless nightmare of death and destruction on a staggering scale’, said Deputy Commissioner-General Antonia De Meo of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). Within Gaza, the UN officials wrote, 625,000 children are trapped, ‘their futures at risk’. The World Health Organisation has recorded ‘outbreaks of hepatitis A and myriad other preventable diseases’ and warns that it is ‘just a matter of time’ before a polio outbreak spreads amongst children. In early July, a letter in The Lancet from three scientists working in Canada, Palestine, and the United Kingdom suggested that if they applied a ‘conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the 37,396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza’.
Two days before the UN Security Council meeting, on 24 July, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed both chambers of the US Congress. Two months before this appearance, the International Criminal Court (ICC) said it had ‘reasonable grounds to believe’ that Netanyahu bears ‘criminal responsibility for… war crimes and crimes against humanity’. This judgment was utterly set aside by elected US representatives, who welcomed Netanyahu as if he were a conquering hero. Netanyahu’s language was chilling: ‘give us the tools faster, and we’ll finish the job faster’. What is the ‘job’ that Netanyahu wants the Israeli military to finish? In January, the International Court of Justice reported a ‘plausible claim of genocidal acts’ by the Israeli army. So, is the ‘job’ that Israel wants to complete its genocide of the Palestinian people, accelerated by the increased provision of arms and funding by the US?
Shurooq Amin (Kuwait), The Moving Dollhouse, 2016.
Despite Netanyahu’s complaint that the US has not been sending sufficient weapons, in April the US government approved the sale of fifty F-15 bombers to Israel, worth $18 billion, and in early July said it would send nearly two thousand 500-pound bombs to be used in Gaza. Netanyahu wanted more then, and he wants more now. He wants to ‘finish the job’. This genocidal language is sanctified by the US government, whose representatives accompanied the call for mass murder with a standing ovation.
Outside the halls of government, tens of thousands of people protested Netanyahu’s visit to Congress. They are part of the phalanx of young people who have been involved in a cycle of protests against the Israeli genocide of Palestinians and against the US government’s total support of the violence. Netanyahu called the protestors ‘Iran’s useful idiots’, a strange statement made by a foreign guest of the citizens who were exercising their democratic rights in their own country. The police used pepper spray and other forms of violence to contain the protests, which were peaceful and righteous.
While Washington welcomed the accused war criminal, Beijing hosted representatives of fourteen Palestinian factions who came to discuss their differences and find a way to build political unity against the Israeli genocide and colonisation. Just before Netanyahu entered the Congressional chamber, the fourteen representatives posed for a photograph at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing. Their agreement, the Beijing Declaration, advanced their commitment to work together against the genocide and the occupation and recognised that their disunity has only helped Israel.
Charles Khoury (Lebanon), Untitled, 2020.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, a range of national liberation movements, such as those in South Africa and Palestine, were enfeebled and forced to make significant concessions in order to end conflicts with their colonisers. After several false starts, the apartheid regime in South Africa joined the Multi-Party Negotiating Forum in April 1993, which was the site of concessions made by the liberation forces (undermined by the assassination of communist leader Chris Hani that same month and by attacks from the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging). The negotiated transfer of power through the interim constitution of November 1993 did not dismantle structures of white power in South Africa. Meanwhile, in 1993 and 1995, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) agreed to the Oslo Accords, in which the PLO recognised the state of Israel and agreed to build a state of Palestine in East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank. Edward Said called the Oslo Accords a ‘Palestinian Versailles’, a judgment that seemed harsh at the time but which, in retrospect, is accurate.
Zaina El Said (Jordan), Ersin, 2017.
Israel used the Oslo Accords to press its advantage, mainly by building illegal settlements across Palestinian land and by denying Palestinians the right to free passage through the three non-contiguous territories. In 1994, leading groups in the PLO created the Palestinian National Authority to bring the factions together in the new state project, but the groups that had rejected the Oslo Accords did not want to manage the occupation on Israel’s behalf. In January 2006, Hamas won the largest bloc in the Palestinian legislative elections, with 74 out of the 132 seats, and by June 2007 Fatah and Hamas broke relations and ended the attempt to build a new, post-Oslo Palestinian national project.
In May 2006, from within Israel’s harsh prisons, five Palestinians who represented the five main factions drafted the Prisoners’ Document: Abdel Khaleq al-Natsh (Hamas), Abdel Raheem Malluh (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), Bassam al-Saadi (Islamic Jihad), Marwan Barghouti (Fatah), and Mustafa Badarneh (Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine). These five factions include two left formations, two Islamist formations, and the main national liberation platform. The eighteen-point document called upon various groups (including Hamas and Islamic Jihad) to reactivate the PLO as their joint platform, accept the Palestinian Authority as the ‘nucleus of the future state’, and retain the right to resist the occupation. In June, all parties signed a second draft of the document. Despite attempts to create unity, including during the Israeli assault on Gaza known as Operation Summer Rains (June to November 2006), no such convergence was possible. The animosity between the Palestinian factions remained.
Zhang Xiaogang (China), Blindfolded Dancer, 2016.
This disunity has provided ample space for the Israeli occupation to deepen and for Palestinians to flounder without a central political project. Several attempts to bring Palestinian political groups into a serious dialogue have failed to provide any forward motion, including in Cairo in May 2011 and October 2017 and in Algiers in October 2022. Since last year, the Chinese government has worked with various regional states to invite the fourteen main Palestinian factions to Beijing for reconciliation talks. These factions are:
1. Arab Liberation Front
2. As-Sa’iqa
3. Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine
4. Fatah
5. Hamas
6. Islamic Jihad Movement
7. Palestinian Arab Front
8. Palestinian Democratic Union
9. Palestinian Liberation Front
10. Palestinian National Initiative
11. Palestinian People’s Party
12. Palestinian Popular Struggle Front
13. Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
14. Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (General Command)
The Beijing Declaration, repeating the formulations in the Prisoners’ Document, called for a Palestinian state to be established, for Palestinians’ right to resist the occupation to be respected, for Palestinian political groups to form an ‘interim national consensus government’, and for the PLO and its institutions to be strengthened in order to advance their role in the struggle against Israel. Though the declaration, of course, called for an immediate ceasefire and an end to settlement construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, its main focus was on political unity.
Whether this Chinese-brokered process will yield results when Palestinians sit down with Israelis is to be seen. Yet it nonetheless marks an advance in this direction and a possible turning point in the collapse of a unified Palestinian project that began in the wake of the 1995 Oslo II agreement. The Beijing Declaration is diametrically opposed to the vehemence of Netanyahu’s speech in the US Congress: the latter genocidal and dangerous, the former seeks peace in a complex world.
Halima Aziz (Palestine), Praying Palestinian Women, 2023.Fadwa Tuqan (1917–2003), one of Palestine’s most wondrous poets, wrote ‘The Deluge and the Tree’. The fall of the tree, beaten down by the deluge, was not its end but a new beginning.
When the Tree rises up, the branches
shall flourish green and fresh in the sun,
the laughter of the Tree shall blossom
beneath the sun
and birds shall return.
Undoubtedly, the birds shall return.
The birds shall return.
The assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh (1962–2024) in Tehran (Iran) has made the situation deeply difficult, and will make it difficult for the birds to sing.
Warmly,
Vijay
The post Even in Palestine, the Birds Shall Return first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
“This is one of the most perilous moments in the [Middle East] region in years,” says Ali Vaez, director of the International Crisis Group Iran Project, after Israel’s assassination of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh on Wednesday in Tehran. Iranian retaliation against Israel appears imminent. “All bets are off,” warns Vaez, adding that Israel’s latest maneuver will put Americans “in harm’s way,” as Iran will no longer hold back fellow Axis of Resistance members, especially Islamic militias in Iraq and Syria, from launching attacks on U.S. military bases in the region. “It is disastrous for a superpower who cannot control, basically, a client state that is destabilizing the region,” Vaez explains. We also hear from Palestinian human rights attorney Diana Buttu, who responds to Israel’s announcement that its July strike on al-Mawasi, an alleged safe zone in Gaza, killed Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif along with nearly a hundred civilians. Buttu argues it is Israel’s international impunity over the course of its campaign against Palestine that has led to this dangerous moment of escalation. “This is a monster that’s been unleashed,” she says. “This is going to spread, and this is exactly what Netanyahu wants.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
On Wednesday 31 July, Palestine Action celebrated its birthday by forcing Elbit’s UAV Engines factory in Shenstone to close down. Not to be discouraged by cops arresting those actionists, another group from Palestine Action arrived at the site on Thursday 1 August to shut the factory down for a second day in a row. This time, a caravan was part of the blockade.
Approximately 100 protestors also rallied outside the factory on Tuesday, making today the third day of opposition to the Israeli weapons maker.
Six Palestine Action activists used three vehicles, a car, a van, and a caravan (yes, a CARAVAN), to blockade both gates into UAV Engines Ltd:
From the top of the vehicles, activists chanted “Shut Elbit Down” whilst throwing bottles of red paint towards the building, drenching the premises in blood red paint:
BREAKING: Palestine Action park in front of both entrances into Elbit’s arms factory in Staffordshire, to shut down the Israeli weapons maker for the second day in a row! pic.twitter.com/PSv8Y0YYKu
— Palestine Action (@Pal_action) August 1, 2024
One activist has unfurled a banner which reads “Jews say Free Palestine”:
Meanwhile, the five Palestine Action actionists who shut the factory down on 31 July were released:
Five released last night after they shut down the Israeli-owned Elbit weapons factory in Staffordshire! pic.twitter.com/J6P08TqtsC
— Palestine Action (@Pal_action) August 1, 2024
UAV Engines Ltd is owned by Israel’s biggest weapons producer, Elbit Systems – who manufacture 85% of Israel’s military drone fleet. The drone engine manufacturer has applied for two separate licenses to export weaponry to Israel which has killed or injured over 130,000 Palestinians in the past 10 months.
Despite two rulings from the International Court of Justice which say Israel is committing a plausible genocide and confirm Gaza is illegally occupied, the UK government has delayed making a decision on stopping arms sales to Israel.
Palestine Action says that:
By the UK government selling arms to Israel, purchasing weapons which are “battle-tested” on Palestinians and hosting Elbit’s arms factories, they are knowingly facilitating the Gaza genocide. It’s now a legal and moral obligation for ordinary people to take direct action and shut Elbit down.
Today’s action has caused sustained disruption to the UAV Engines Ltd factory, a crucial part of Palestine Action’s strategy to force Elbit’s weapons factory to permanently close down.
Featured image and additional videos via Martin Pope
By The Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.
Ismail Haniyeh during a video statement marking the 34th anniversary of the founding of the Hamas movement, December 2021. (Hamas Chief Office)
Hamas announced early Wednesday that Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the Palestinian faction’s political wing, was assassinated in Tehran, where he was present for the inauguration of the new Iranian president.
The assassination, in Iran no less, marks a major escalation that will likely have regional ramifications and came hours after Israel bombed Lebanon on Tuesday evening, killing three civilians, according to Lebanese state media. Israel claimed that it killed a senior Hizballah figure in the strike, but the Lebanese resistance group had not issued a statement on the matter at the time of publication.
Israel killed multiple members representing multiple generations of Haniyeh’s family in Gaza since October. Several leaders of Hamas have been assassinated by Israel before Haniyeh, only to be replaced and for the organization’s capabilities to grow.
In January, Saleh al-Arouri, the deputy head of Hamas’ politburo, was killed in a strike in Beirut along with several other cadres and commanders with the group.
Two weeks ago, Israel claimed to have killed Muhammad Deif, the secretive head of Hamas’ armed wing, in a strike in Gaza that killed at least 90 Palestinians in an area it had unilaterally declared as a humanitarian zone.
Israel continued to wage attacks across Gaza by air, land and sea amid heavy fighting and ground incursions on Tuesday.
The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza said on Tuesday that 37 people had been killed in Israeli attacks over the past 24 hours, bringing the death toll to 39,400 since early October.
The actual number of fatalities is likely much higher, with thousands of people missing under the rubble or their bodies not yet recovered from Gaza’s streets.
The Israeli military withdrew from eastern Khan Younis, the largest city in southern Gaza, on Tuesday following an incursion lasting eight days and forcing another wave of mass displacement from the area.
Palestinians returned to Khan Younis to find evidence of what the government media office in Gaza described as “horrific massacres” for which it demanded international accountability.
“Palestinian rescue workers and civilians collected dead bodies from the streets of the abandoned battle zone, bringing corpses wrapped in rugs to morgues in cars and donkey carts,” Reuters reported.
The government media office said that the bodies of 255 people had been recovered and more than 30 others were missing.
During the incursion, the Israeli military fired on 31 homes with their residents inside, as well as more than 300 other homes and residential buildings.
The military also razed the cemetery in Bani Suheila and its surroundings on the eastern outskirts of Khan Younis:
#????? | ??? ?????? ??? ????? ????? ?? ????? ??? ????? ??? ??? ???? ???? ????? ?????? ??????*????.
?????? ??????*???? ???? ???????? ?? ??? ???????? ??? ????? ?????? ?????? ?????.
??? ??? ????? ???? ????? ??? ??? ??????? ???????? ?????? ????? ?????? ??? ??? ?? ??????? ???? ????… pic.twitter.com/8uqmdsbu1V
— EekadFacts | ????? (@EekadFacts) July 30, 2024
Nearly all of Gaza under evacuation orders
Israel meanwhile issued new forced displacement orders in al-Bureij, central Gaza, “launching strikes there in apparent preparation for a new raid,” according to Reuters.
“Medics said an Israeli air strike in nearby al-Nuseirat killed 10 Palestinians as they fled from Bureij on Tuesday, and another strike killed four other Palestinians inside Bureij,” the news agency added.
More than 85 percent of the territory of Gaza is under an Israeli so-called evacuation order, the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) said on Monday.
But there is no safe place for people to go, and no assurance of protection for civilians who choose to stay or are unable to evacuate from designated areas.
Repeated displacement is also making it increasingly difficult for organizations, already contending with Israel’s near-total blockade, to provide aid and services to those who were forced to leave their homes with next to nothing.
Palestinians return to eastern Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, after Israeli forces pulled out on 30 July ( APA images)
The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza said that it was no longer able to restore the functionality of the Gaza European Hospital in Khan Younis after an Israeli evacuation order was issued on 27 July.
The Palestinian Civil Defense warned that overcrowding among displaced people in Gaza, who have insufficient access to water and sanitation, was leading to the proliferation of diseases, including conditions affecting children’s skin.
By early July, the World Health Organization had recorded nearly a million cases of acute respiratory infection, while other illnesses such as diarrhea, acute jaundice and cases of suspected mumps and meningitis, as well as scabies and lice, skin rashes and chicken pox are spreading among the population.
The UN health agency said on Tuesday that it was very likely that polio has infected Palestinians in Gaza after the health ministry in the territory declared a polio epidemic across the coastal enclave on Monday.
Detection of the virus in sewage samples collected in Gaza represents “a setback” against efforts to completely eradicate the disease worldwide, Christian Lindmeier, a World Health Organization official, said on Tuesday.
Al Mezan, a Palestinian human rights group based in Gaza, warned that more than one million children in the territory “are at risk of dying if not vaccinated” for the highly infectious virus.
“To prevent thousands of deaths, the international community must ensure Israel immediately ends its genocide, including the weaponization of water and sanitation facilities,” the rights group added.
According to WHO, the disease mainly affects children under the age of 5 and one in 200 infections “leads to irreversible paralysis.” Five to 10 percent of those paralyzed die “when their breathing muscles become immobilized.”
Collapse of essential systems
With the collapse of Gaza’s solid waste management system, conditions are ripe for the disastrous spread of diseases transmitted through contamination such as polio and hepatitis A – there have been 40,000 diagnosed cases of the latter since October.
Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has seen a drop in polio vaccination rates in Gaza from 99 percent to 89 percent, according to a UNICEF spokesperson. The director of the World Health Organization announced that it was sending more than a million polio vaccines to Gaza to be administered to children “in the coming weeks,” UN News reported.
The virus, “transmitted by person-to-person spread mainly through the fecal-oral route,” according to WHO, is less frequently transmitted through contaminated water or food.
The “can emerge in areas where poor vaccination coverage allows the weakened form of the orally taken vaccine virus strain to mutate into a stronger version,” UN News added.
The vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 “had been identified at six locations in sewage samples collected last month from Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah – two Gaza cities left in ruins by nearly 10 months of intense Israeli bombardment.”
The spread of disease and epidemics is a predictable result of Israel’s genocidal military campaign, if not the intention.
In yet another case of Israeli soldiers destroying civilian infrastructure for no military purpose, soldiers recently recorded themselves detonating Canada well, the main water facility in Rafah, southern Gaza.
The Tel Aviv daily Haaretz reported on Monday that the facility “was destroyed last week with the approval of the commander of the soldiers … but without the approval of senior officers.”
But blaming lower-ranking soldiers may be an attempt to deter international courts scrutiny of more senior military personnel, while the pattern of behavior on the ground indicates that troops are ordered to destroy essential civilian infrastructure for no military purpose – a war crime.
Destroying water treatment plants is a war crime in its own right. Doing so in full knowledge that it will contribute to the spread of polio is evidence of genocidal intent. https://t.co/38PkBD4043
— Heidi Matthews (@Heidi__Matthews) July 27, 2024
Younis Tirawi, writing for Dropsite News, recounted that Giora Eiland, an adviser to Israel’s defense minister Yoav Gallant, described in October a strategy to destroy the ability of Palestinians in Gaza to pump and purify water within Gaza.
Monther Shoblak, the head of the water utility in Gaza, told Tirawi that the Canada well facility had remained functional until Israel’s ground invasion of Rafah in early May, as solar panels allowed it to operate despite Israel cutting off the supply of electricity to the territory in October.
Israel destroyed 30 water wells in the south this month alone, and displaced people have been forced to shelter in overcrowded conditions without suitable hygiene infrastructure or access to sufficient clean water, fuel, food and medicine.
The international charity Oxfam said earlier this month that “Israel damaged or destroyed five water and sanitation sites every three days since the start of this war,” reducing the amount of water available in Gaza by 94 percent to a mere 4.74 liters per person – “less than a single toilet flush.”
Israel attacks Beirut
Israel bombed southern Beirut on Tuesday, with its military claiming that it targeted Fuad Shukr, a senior Hizballah commander. Israel said that Shukr was killed but Arabic-language media said his fate remained unknown late Tuesday.
The area around Hizballah’s Shura Council in the Haret Hreik neighborhood of the Lebanese capital was also hit, that country’s state news agency reported.
Lebanon’s health ministry said that a woman and two children were killed, though “the search for more missing persons under the rubble continues.”
The apartment building in south Beirut has been decimated by what is said to be 3 missiles from an IDF drone. The strike that killed Hamas' deputy chairman Saleh al-Arouri in January left the building standing. This was meant to destroy it and take everybody with it. pic.twitter.com/OzSSD2ER3n
— Séamus Malekafzali (@Seamus_Malek) July 30, 2024
The Beirut strike took down a whole residential building, and the scale of destruction may have been intended to reinforce the threats made by Israeli leaders to inflict the same genocidal violence in Lebanon that it has in Gaza.
+The strike in Beirut on Tuesday was an anticipated “retaliation” from Tel Aviv after a projectile killed 12 children at a sports field in Majdal Shams, a city in the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights on Saturday. Israel blamed Hizballah but the Lebanese resistance group denied having any connection to the deadly blast.
Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, accused Hizballah of crossing a red line, though it is highly unlikely that the Lebanese resistance group would have deliberately targeted Majdal Shams.
A building targeted in an Israeli strike in the southern suburb of Beirut, 30 July ( Xinhua News Agency)
Amal Saad, an expert on Hizballah, said that since 8 October, the group “has refrained from targeting Israeli civilians, much less Syrian Druze.”
“The strong support for the resistance movement among this community, which lives under Israeli occupation, makes it illogical for Hizballah to risk striking in this vicinity,” she added.
Targeting civilians, whether Syrian or Israeli, “wouldn’t be strategically beneficial for Hizballah when it would inevitably lead to all out war – a war which Hizballah has been very keen to avoid as demonstrated by its sub-threshold responses to Israeli strikes on Beirut and on civilians” in Lebanon, according to Saad.
She added the group has been careful to “avoid giving Israel any pretext for waging war” but “it’s entirely expected” that Israel would exploit the tragedy “in order to deflect attention away from its daily massacres of Palestinian children” in Gaza.
Not “a single drop of blood”
Majdal Shams residents chanted “murderer, murderer” at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he attempted to visit the site of the deadly strike on Monday.
After Netanyahu left Majdal Shams, local residents verbally attacked the head of the municipality, who invited Netanyahu to the town. People yelled at him "traitor, dog" and more. https://t.co/RIbUrWnZ7A
— B.M. (@ireallyhateyou) July 29, 2024
Syrians reeling from the unprecedented mass casualty event in Majdal Shams issued a statement rejecting “that a single drop of blood be shed under the name of revenge for our children.”
After the deaths in Majdal Shams, Israeli media reported that Netanyahu canceled the exit of around 150 children from Gaza for medical treatment in the United Arab Emirates “for fear of public backlash,” the human rights group Gisha said.
In response to a petition from human rights groups, Israel’s high court on Sunday ordered the government “to inform it of its progress toward implementing a permanent mechanism for the medical evacuation of sick and injured Gazans,” The Times of Israel [reported]((https://www.timesofisrael.com/high-court-gives-government-7-days-to-come…).
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization, announced that “85 sick and severely injured people,” including 35 children, were evacuated from Gaza to Abu Dhabi for specialized care on Tuesday.
“It is the largest medical evacuation since October 2023,” he said, adding that “63 family members and caregivers accompanied the patients.”
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights said on Sunday that the ongoing closure of Gaza’s crossings, preventing “the travel of urgent and lifesaving cases,” makes clear “Israel’s commission of genocide against the people of the Gaza Strip.”
“Those who have not been killed by Israel’s war machine are not spared by the complete Israeli siege and closure on Gaza,” the rights group added, “leaving thousands of wounded and sick doomed to certain death.”
Death is all but guaranteed due to Israel’s “deliberate destruction and collapse of the healthcare system and the weakening of its remaining lifesaving resources,” according to PCHR.
Around 14,000 sick and injured patients, most of them children and older people, require care that is not available in Gaza.
PCHR estimates that hundreds of ill people have already died due to lack of access to medical treatment but there are “no statistics available in this regard due to disruptions in official medical monitoring and documentation systems.”
• Article first published in The Electronic Intifada
The post Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Tehran after Israel bombs Beirut first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Israel killed Palestinian Al Jazeera journalists Ismail al-Ghoul and Rami al-Rifi in Gaza on Wednesday, in what Al Jazeera Media Network called a “targeted assassination” of the two journalists known for their prolific coverage of the genocide as they, themselves, faced relentless persecution from Israeli forces. Correspondent al-Ghoul and cameraman al-Rifi were killed by an Israeli strike as…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Earlier this month, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) finally concluded that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is illegal and must end immediately. This was a massive ruling from the world’s top court that affirmed what Palestinians, UN experts, and human rights groups have been saying for decades. But what does it mean for Canada?
Last week, CJPME sent a letter to Prime Minister Trudeau, urging him to take 7 concrete steps to align Canadian policy with international law as outlined in the ICJ advisory opinion. Below, we will outline these steps and answer several other key questions.
For the full analysis, read CJPME’s letter here, or listen here to our Palestine Debrief podcast episode with former UN Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk. Stay tuned for further actions as we continue to pressure Canada to uphold international law.
Is this related to the ICJ’s genocide case against Israel?
No, the ICJ’s Advisory Opinion is unrelated to the ongoing genocide case probing Israel’s actions in Gaza, which was initiated by South Africa in December 2023. Instead, the origins of the ICJ’s Advisory Opinion date back to Fall 2022, when the United Nations asked the ICJ to give its opinion on the legal implications of Israel’s prolonged occupation, settlement activities, and annexation of Palestinian territory. In other words, the ICJ was asked to provide an answer to the question: Given Israel’s illegal actions, is the occupation itself illegal?
What did the ICJ conclude?
The ICJ determined that Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) is unlawful, and that Israel is obliged to end its illegal presence “as rapidly as possible.” This includes the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza.
The ICJ also determined that:
How has Canada responded so far?
To date, Canada has only said that Israel should “respond substantively to the ICJ’s advisory opinion,” and called for a reversal of settlement expansion. This is small progress, as Canada had voted against the original UN motion and tried to discourage the ICJ from taking this case in the first place. Nonetheless, it does not go nearly far enough.
How can Canada support the ICJ ruling?
1. Canada must support efforts by the UN to end Israel’s illegal presence in the OPT
The ICJ urged the United Nations to “consider what further action is required to put an end to the illegal presence of Israel” in the OPT. It further said that all states (including Canada) must cooperate with these efforts.
Canada is therefore obliged to assist the UN in bringing an end to Israel’s illegal occupation. As such, Canada should support all initiatives that affirm the ICJ opinion and seek Israel’s compliance, including co-sponsoring and voting in support of UN resolutions. Canada must also urge the United States not to veto any resolutions that may come before the Security Council on this matter.
2. Canada must impose sanctions on Israel in response to its breach of the UN Charter
The ICJ concluded that Israel’s actions amount to the annexation of large parts of the OPT, and noted that this violates the Charter of the United Nations (which prohibits states from acquiring territory through force). This represents a major breach of a fundamental principle of international law.
When Russia attempted to annex parts of Ukraine, Canada loudly and forcefully condemned these actions as a violation of the UN Charter, and then backed up its words with a comprehensive set of sanctions targeting Russian politicians and businesses. Following this standard, Canada should impose sanctions on Israel under the Special Economic Measures Act, targeting government and military officials as well as individuals and entities tied to Israel’s illegal presence in the OPT.
3. Canada must cancel the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement and ban trade with Israeli settlements
The ICJ concluded that all states, including Canada, have an obligation to structure their economic relations with Israel so that they do not contribute to its illegal presence in the OPT. For example, the ICJ found that states are obliged to:
Unfortunately, Canada is already violating these obligations through the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement (CIFTA), which extends free trade benefits to the entire territory under Israeli control, thus providing a direct material benefit to help Israel maintain its settlements and occupation. To comply with its obligations, Canada must cancel CIFTA and prohibit all trade in goods and services with Israel’s settlements.
4. Canada must comprehensively address the issue of Israeli settlements
The ICJ Advisory Opinion “reaffirms that the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the régime associated with them, have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law.” This includes the illegal transfer of settlers into occupied territory, the exploitation of natural resources, the forcible transfer of Palestinians from their homes, and “Israel’s systematic failure to prevent or to punish attacks by settlers.”
The ICJ concluded that Israel is obliged to provide restitution for the damage caused, including the immediate “evacuation of all settlers from existing settlements” in the OPT.
CJPME has previously asked Prime Minister Trudeau to adopt a “Whole-of-Government Approach” to address Canadian complicity in the settlements, which are a war crime under Canadian law. We put forward a series of 19 recommendations across 7 ministerial portfolios, including imposing economic sanctions on the Israeli settlement economy under the Special Economic Measures Act, revoking the charitable status of organizations that transfer money to settlements, and prosecuting the promotion and sale of settlement properties. By enacting these recommendations, Canada could move significantly towards compliance with its obligations as outlined by the ICJ.
5. Canada must suspend all military trade and cooperation with Israel
The ICJ said that all states, including Canada, are obliged “not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel’s illegal presence in the [OPT],” and must “take steps to prevent trade or investment relations that assist in the maintenance of the illegal situation created by Israel in the [OPT].”
There is no question that Canada’s military trade with Israel assists in the maintenance of Israel’s unlawful occupation. The export of weapons and military technology to Israel directly supports its military control over the OPT, while the import of Israeli weapons indirectly supports the occupation by sustaining the country’s defence industry and legitimizing its testing of new weaponry on Palestinians. To ensure that it is not rendering aid or assistance to Israel’s illegal military occupation of the OPT, Canada must impose a comprehensive two-way arms embargo under the Special Economic Measures Act.
6. Canada must terminate the Canada-Israel Strategic Partnership
The ICJ asserted that all states, including Canada, are obliged “not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel’s illegal presence in the [OPT].”
Canada violates this obligation through the Canada-Israel Strategic Partnership, which commits Canada to collaborate with many different branches of the Israeli state that are actively involved in maintaining its illegal occupation, including the Israeli Ministry of Defence and the Israeli Ministry of National Security. Given that Israel’s role as an illegal occupying power is premised on its military control over the OPT, there is no question that Canadian collaboration with these ministries renders aid and assistance in maintaining Israel’s illegal presence. To comply with its obligations as outlined by the ICJ, Canada must immediately terminate the Canada-Israel Strategic Partnership by sending written notice to the Israeli government.
7. Canada must recognize the State of Palestine
Unsurprisingly, the ICJ found that Israel’s actions violated the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. Most importantly, the ICJ expressed that “the existence of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination cannot be subject to conditions on the part of the occupying Power, in view of its character as an inalienable right.”
No more excuses: Canada must recognize the State of Palestine immediately. The Advisory Opinion is clear that self-determination cannot be left indefinitely in a state of “suspension and uncertainty” or be conditioned on the demands of the illegal occupier. The rights of the Palestinian people as outlined by the ICJ cannot be bargained or negotiated away. Canada must recognize Palestine now, and work to realize the right of self-determination by ending Israel’s illegal presence in the OPT.
The post 7 Ways that Canada Must Support the ICJ Decision on Israel first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Days after Israel was plunged into chaos over allegations of horrific sexual assault against a Palestinian detainee by Israeli soldiers, the UN has released a report detailing the many instances of systemic torture and abuse that Israeli soldiers and police have performed on Palestinians they are imprisoning arbitrarily just in the last 10 months of Israel’s genocide. The 23-page report by…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Far-right Israelis have protested the arrest of IDF soldiers for the alleged gang rape and abuse of a Palestinian detainee. Protestors stormed Israel’s Sde Teiman detention facility, where Israeli police had arrested nine soldiers.
Israeli police took the soldiers to the Beit Lid military base, which also saw demonstrations. The protestors included reservist soldiers. But also far-right government minister Amichai Eliyahu and parliamentarian Zvi Sukkot of the Religious Zionist movement took part.
The Palestinian detainee was taken to hospital, where “his injuries included a ruptured intestine, severe injury to the anus and lungs, and broken ribs”, according to Israeli outelt Haaretz.
Israeli minister of economy Nir Barkat called the arrests a “despicable show trial” and the soldiers “brave warriors”.
Finance minister Bezalel Smotrich also called for the “heroic warriors” to be free.
The Israeli organisation Breaking the Silence had a different approach. It said the protests were “essentially issuing a full-throated endorsement of unimaginably brutal abuse of Palestinians”.
The organisation continued, stating Palestinian detainees face “indefinite restraints resulting in amputations; medical procedures with no anesthesia; sleep deprivation; brutal beatings; sexual torture”.
A UN report, published on 31 July, found Israel arbitrarily held 3,377 Palestinian people by the end of June, without charge or trial. They are among 9,440 Israel categorised as “security detainees”. Of them, Israel called 1,415 “unlawful combatants”.
The UN reported Israel subjected detainees to torture, violence, sexual abuse, and ill-treatment, much of which was “systematic”.
Palestinian detainees told the UN of constant blindfolding and deprivation of food, sleep, water, and medical attention. They also spoke of “prolonged exposure to the cold, being forced to kneel on gravel, deliberate humiliation, blackmailing”. They further said Israeli guards burnt them with cigarettes.
The sexual abuse they faced included guards forcing “nudity of both men and women”. And guards then beating them while they’re naked, including on the genitals, as well as electrocuting them on the genitals and anus.
Featured image via The Telegraph – YouTube
By James Wright
This post was originally published on Canary.