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By Andre Damon

Every man, woman and child who remains in northern Gaza “is at imminent risk of dying,” warned Catherine Russell, the director of the United Nations Children’s Fund, in a statement Saturday.

Nearly one month ago, Israel began an assault on Northern Gaza to implement the so-called “general’s plan” of ethnically cleansing the entirety of Northern Gaza. Virtually no food, water, or medical supplies have been allowed into the northern section of the Gaza Strip, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee.

Those who remain, estimated at approximately 100,000 people, are cut off from all necessities of life and are being systematically starved or killed by Israeli bombardment.

Israel’s “general’s plan” is being carried out with the endorsement and support of the United States, which continues to fund and arm the Israeli genocide in Gaza. The US is also sending troops to the Middle East to aid Israel’s escalating war against the populations of Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran.

As a result of this starvation and killing campaign, “the entire Palestinian population in North Gaza, especially children, is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine, and the ongoing bombardments,” Russell said.

“This has already been a deadly weekend of attacks in North Gaza.” Russell added, “In the past 48 hours alone, over 50 children have reportedly been killed in Jabalia, where strikes leveled two residential buildings sheltering hundreds of people.”

She continued, “Taken alongside the horrific level of child deaths in North Gaza from other attacks, these most recent events combine to write yet another dark chapter in one of the darkest periods of this terrible war.”

Russell said international law prohibits the targeting of civilians and humanitarian workers. “Yet these principles are being flouted over and over again, leaving tens of thousands of children killed, injured, and deprived of essential services needed for survival.”

These statements were echoed by Rachel Cummings, a spokesperson for Save the Children, who told Al Jazeera, “We are seeing the apocalypse now unfolding in the north of Gaza. People are being constantly bombarded with aerial attacks, and of course, we know that the food and water are not sufficient. The convoys of food and water are being denied into the north… It is absolutely catastrophic.”

She added that 20,000 children are either missing or unaccompanied, and another 14,000 children have been confirmed killed. “[Children are] having to take on roles within family settings that are not for children. They take on caregiver roles. They have to take on fetching water, trying to find food,” she said. “They have seen things that no child should ever see.”

The mass killing continued Sunday, with Israeli strikes killing 31 people in the Gaza Strip that day, Reuters reported. The killings took place in separate attacks on houses in Beit Lahiya town and Jabalia. Israeli forces attacked Kamal Adwan Hospital near Beit Lahiya, severely wounding a child and damaging the facility’s nursery.

Dr. Hussam Abu Safia, director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, described to Al Jazeera the horrifying conditions that medical staff are working under. “As Israeli forces stormed the hospital and detained the entire medical staff, I, together with my assistant physician, we were left alone between a rock and a hard place, either to give up or start doing what we can to save lives,” Abu Safiya told Al Jazeera. “We’ve been flooded with victims suffering all kinds of injuries.” He concluded, “We have been abandoned by the whole world and left to work under unimaginably harsh and horrifying conditions.”

In a statement, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor wrote, “Since the beginning of August 2024, the Israeli army has targeted schools, hospitals, clinics, and shelter halls 65 times, including 39 times in the current month of October, killing 672 Palestinians and injuring over 1,000 more, according to the Euro-Med Monitor field team.”

At least 43,341 people have been killed and 102,105 injured by the Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7, 2023, Gaza’s health ministry said over the weekend. The majority of Gaza has been leveled, with 87 percent of housing destroyed or damaged, and 87 percent of school buildings destroyed or damaged, according to UN figures.

Israeli airstrikes continued throughout Lebanon this weekend, wounding 10 people and damaging two hospitals. Israeli attacks between September 17 and October 31 have killed 85 health workers, Al Jazeera reported.

According to the Lebanese health ministry, the death toll from the ongoing Israeli bombardment of Lebanon has reached 2,986 people, including at least 772 women and children.

Against the backdrop of this unfolding disaster, the United States is only deepening its involvement in Israel’s rampage throughout the Middle East. Over the weekend, US Central Command (CENTCOM) head Michael Kurilla arrived in Israel to tour the deployment of US combat troops in the country, manning a US air defense battery. The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement that the visit focused on “threats in the Middle East, with a focus on Iran” and that the Israeli military will “deepen its relationship with the US armed forces.”

On Saturday, US Central Command announced that B-52 bombers, capable of both delivering nuclear weapons and carrying out massive saturation bombings, have arrived in the Middle East. “B-52 Stratofortress strategic bombers from Minot Air Force Base’s 5th Bomb Wing arrived in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility,” Central Command said.

In a statement cited by the Jerusalem Post, the US Air Force said the B-52 bombers are capable of delivering “nuclear or precision-guided conventional ordnance with worldwide precision navigation capability.” It added, “In a conventional conflict, the B-52 can perform strategic attack, close-air support, air interdiction, offensive counter-air, and maritime operations.” The strategic bombers are part of a deployment of US destroyers, fighter squadrons and tankers in support of Israel’s war throughout the region.

4 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Suresh Khairnar

Rabindranath Tagore himself named him because this child was born in Shantiniketan in the house of his maternal grandfather Kshitimohan on 3 November 1933. Today he is turning 92 years old. And if we take a look at his journey from birth till now, mother Amita was the first girl from a respectable Bengali family in Bengal who started performing modern dance on stage. And for self-defense, she received formal training in Judo-Karate from Japanese teachers. All this happened a hundred years’ ago.

Influenced by Amita’s dance, Rabindranath Tagore started performing the songs written by him on stage along with Amita’s dances. Nowadays all the respectable Bengalis try to give special training to their girls from Rabindranath Tagore’s songs to the dances based on them. Now even in respectable Bengali families, Bengali girls know how to dance or sing at weddings. This is also considered an additional quality to accept her as a bride! This change has taken place as a result of Bengal’s renaissance in the last hundred years! And Amartya Sen’s mother Amita has also contributed to this change!

But the media of that time used to criticize her more than praise. Because before Amita, no girl from a respectable Bengali family had done all this on stage. For that, there were girls from special artistic families like Nati Vinodini. Just like there were Devdasis in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Goa.

A boy was born from this mother’s womb! Whom Rabindranath himself named Amartya! At times Rabindranath himself used to come to Amartya’s maternal grandfather Kshitimohan’s house every morning without giving any information! If Kshitimohan is still asleep, then immediately according to his talent of a quick poet, he would say Ravi means the Sun has come! And Kshiti means the Earth has not yet woken up? Amartya heard all this from his grandmother! And then Rabindranath and Kshitimohan set out for a morning walk! Rabindranath’s company for eight years after birth and the coming and going of world class guests in Pathabhavan since its establishment, in which before Mao Tse Tung, China’s supreme general Chang Kai Shek has come to Pathabhavan and given a speech!

Amartya Sen has written all these in his autobiography!

“Similarly, Mahatma Gandhi came in 1945, four years after the death of Rabindranath Tagore in 1941. And in his speech, he was worried about what would happen to Shantiniketan after the death of Rabindranath Tagore. And I have taken his autograph. But before that he asked for a donation of five rupees for the Harijan Fund. And I had saved some money from my pocket money. From that, I gave five rupees to the great personality of the world. But for great personalities like him, this donation is not a big deal. But I remember, Gandhiji told me with a very beautiful smile that “I have taken this donation to end the caste system in our country!” And he has given his signature in Devnagri script, M.K. Gandhi, in my notebook. Which I have preserved till date.

Similarly, while studying at Patha Bhavan, I had the benefit of very good friends. Tan Lee, son of Professor Tan Yun Shan, the founder of Cheena Bhavan, who was one year younger than me and has been my lifelong friend. And he passed away recently in 2017.

And during my early education in Patha Bhavan, I was friends with some girls too! Like among boys, Sadhan, Shib, Chitta, Chaluta, Bheltu, and Mrinal who were my closest friends! And among girls, Manjula, Jaya, Bithi, Tapati, Shanta, my opinion about my Shantiniketan friends is that a biography can be written on each one of them!”

Making friends seems to be one of Amartya Sen’s favorite habits! He has named many of his relatives too! Similarly, the intimate relationship he had built with students and teachers in Trinity College is a sign of that! The very meaning of him naming his autobiography HOME-IN-THE-WORLD-A-MEMOIR! It is his affectionate form!

Amartya Sen may have become world famous as an economist, but his commitment to human relations is extraordinary. After the partition of India, he went to meet his Pakistani friends living abroad, which also included women. And suddenly went to Lahore, Karachi and other cities just to meet friends. And to join the family of those friends, you need global level sensitivity. At the time of his studies, his friends in Cambridge also included Englishmen. And that too included women. All this is a story of 75 years ago.

Amartya Sen was very irritated by the traditional unequal treatment of women in a country like India. And that is why the same thing is a matter of concern for him even today in the relationship between men and women. And Amartya Sen has gone from Pathabhavan to Presidency and later to Cambridge, Oxford and MIT to study and teach at the global level. In his village’s Jeevan Shikshan Shala and later in Shindkheda’s New English School and then in Amravati’s Medical College and also in Rashtra Seva Dal, friendship with girls and boys has been very important for him. Many friends have asked him whether he had more female friends or male friends? He writes he had not made any list. But friendship is friendship. And there should be no distinction between men and women in it. This role has been there since childhood. And seeing Amartya Sen’s role almost the same, it seems that this man is born specifically to love in life.

Amartya joined Presidency College, Calcutta in 1952 at the age of 19 (now a university). In front of him, he used to sit in the historic coffee house to discuss the current situation of the country and the world along with his studies. He used to have deep discussions about the Second World War, India’s freedom movement and the historic Bengal famine of 1942-43 in which lakhs of people died just due to lack of food. Actually, there was no shortage of food. But for the soldiers of the Second World War, ships were being sent from India to send grain in large quantities. Therefore, a man-made famine situation had developed in Bengal. This was 100% a result of the then British rule, which forcibly collected food from the mouths of the people of India and then sent it to the battlefield abroad. And here in Calcutta, Dhaka, thousands of people came from their villages in the hope of getting food and died on the roads due to lack of food. It was a common sight.

New tactics are being adopted to humiliate Amartya Sen, who writes and speaks on such very important topics, because his writing and speaking against the wrong policies of the current government is not liked by the people who do ‘Mann Ki Baat’. This shows that the era of undeclared emergency and censorship has been continuing in our country for the last ten years.

Dialogue is the primary function of democracy! And in the present times, monologues mean ‘Mann Ki Baat’ and such nonsensical things! Amartya Sen, who tries to argue like ‘Argumentative India’! The first thing the current central government did as soon as it came to power was to remove him from the post of Chancellor of Nalanda University! And if that seemed insufficient, Amartya Sen’s father bought a piece of land in the west of Shantiniketan and built a house named ‘Pratichi’ in 1942 at a place called Sripalli! The then Vice Chancellor Prof. Vidyut Chakraborty threw him out of the same house on which he had bought the land to build a house for himself! With whose help was the then Vice Chancellor of Vishwabharati Vidyut Chakraborty doing the extremely humiliating act of evicting a 90-year-old internationally renowned economist from his house for the past few days? Which was rejected by the Shiudi court a few days ago!

And in the same context, what would you call the act of the world’s best intellectuals like Amartya Sen, of evicting people from their homes who were raising slogans of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam at airports and railway stations? Hypocrisy? ?

On the occasion of Amartya Sen’s birthday, I pray that “I want to see him cross the century of his life while keeping his health good!”

Dr Suresh Khairnar is Ex. President of Rashtra Sewa Dal

3 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Ronnie Kasrils

Here is an AI-generated podcast based on the article

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In Gaza, six children are murdered every hour.

More than 17,000 children have been butchered. None of us, not even the poets, can summon words adequate to the horror of the fascistic bloodlust of the Israeli regime and the society that backs it.

A year after the attack on Gaza began, over 42,000 people had been killed. This number does not include the missing. More than 10,000 people are assumed to be dead, their bodies buried under rubble. More than 100,000 people are wounded, many grievously.

A study published in the esteemed medical journal, The Lancet, in July this year estimated that the total number of dead, due to direct and indirect causes, could exceed 186,000 people as of June 19, 2024. More than 70 percent of the dead are women and children. Over 1,000 children are now amputees, the highest number for a comparable period in history.

A study by Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins of Brown University, published on October 7 this year, shows that 90 percent of people in Gaza are displaced, 96 percent do not have enough food and water, there is no electricity, and just under 90 percent of the hospitals have been destroyed, with more than 880 health care workers killed.

Four in every five children are consumed with depression, grief, and fear. Infectious diseases are running rampant.

The confirmed deaths of 42,000 people as a direct result of the attacks by the Israeli military amount to almost two Sharpeville massacres every single day for a year.

After Sharpeville, there was relative calm after the storm. The wounded were taken to hospital, and the dead were buried with dignity. The regime was momentarily shaken by global condemnation.

In Gaza, the killing is relentless.

The Zionists and their liberal allies justify this avalanche of killing as a legitimate response to Operation Al Aqsa Flood on October 7 last year.

There is an internationally recognized right to armed resistance against occupation. There is no internationally recognized right of defense by an occupying power.

It is true that the right to armed resistance against occupation does not extend to taking civilian hostages or to deliberate attacks on civilians. We need, though, to be clear on three things.

The first is that the Israelis, backed by their allies in the United States and elsewhere, ran a brazen propaganda campaign after Operation Al Aqsa Flood. The claims about forty beheaded babies and organized mass rape have been comprehensively debunked.

The second is that more than 300 of the people killed in Israel during the operation were soldiers on active duty and therefore legitimate military targets. Many of the civilians killed were part of the Israeli military reserve and therefore off-duty soldiers. Moreover, it is well documented that many of those civilians were killed by fire from the Israeli military.

The third point is that in these matters, it is always necessary to take context into account. The context is 75 years of colonial dispossession and murderous ethnic cleansing throughout Palestine. Around 80 percent of Gazans are refugees from the Israeli ‘ethnic cleansing’ in 1948 and 1967.

Gaza has suffered a bloody siege for 17 years. The civilians taken hostage were taken to exchange them for the thousands of hostages in Israeli prisons.

As anyone who knows the history of the revolts against slavery and colonialism will be aware, atrocities do occur when the downtrodden arise. Serious analysis understands this in context. It understands that oppression is the root of violence and that ending oppression is the route to peace.

Every innocent death is a tragedy. We are all grieved by the death of babies in a conflict, but decent people are grieved by the death of all babies. Two Israeli babies died on October 7, 2023.

Within weeks, 70 newborn babies in Gaza had perished. The Israelis and their liberal allies around the world wish us to grieve for the two Israeli babies and accept the death of the 70 babies in Gaza as the actions of ‘the most moral army in the world’.

We are supposed to accept that Israeli lives are sacred while the Palestinians are the Untermensch. This logic of dehumanization has always been the logic of fascism and colonialism, and all decent people are called to resist.

People around the world have stood up on principle.

Israel’s colonial occupation and genocidal response to resistance would not be possible without the support of the United States.

In the year following Operation Al Aqsa Flood, the US spent at least $22.76 billion on military aid to Israel and related US operations in the region. But on university campuses across the United States, young people, many of them Jewish, have courageously stood up for justice.

Surveys show that 40 percent of Jews in the United States under the age of 35 oppose Zionism and support the Palestinians. They understand that Judaism existed for thousands of years before the state of Israel was formed and that it will continue to exist long after Israel has ceased to exist in its present form.

The international movement to boycott, sanction, and disinvest from Israel is growing rapidly stronger, and there has been significant progress towards empowering the United Nations and its apex courts, the ICC and ICJ, to finally act with the necessary urgency.

The South African state acted bravely to take Israel to the International Court of Justice. There is, of course, a strong pushback from the Israeli and US states, which includes significant attempts to sway public opinion in South Africa.

The US government funds projects that make it seem that ‘fake news’ only comes from its rivals in BRICS and never from the US or Israel.

In late November, the ‘World Movement for Democracy’, a project of the National Endowment for Democracy and a US state organization associated with many US-backed coups against elected governments, will be hosting a massive ‘civil society’ conference in Johannesburg that will misrepresent the US and the West as the custodians of democracy around the world.

Pressure for South African NGOs to boycott the conference is rapidly mounting, and some have already pulled out.

Israel’s hubris, its messianic sense of its right to kill and dominate, masks its growing weakness. As it has begun to attack Lebanon and Iran, following its bombing of Syria and Yemen, there is a growing understanding that its fascism is a threat to the wider region and, ultimately, to world peace.

In over a year, Israel has failed to achieve its declared aims of rescuing the hostages and crushing Hamas. Despite significant losses, the heroic resistance in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Yemen is undefeated. The Israeli military conceals the number of its dead and injured, but there is a growing awareness in Israel that casualties are mounting. Thousands of Israeli soldiers are suffering from psychological trauma that has rendered them incapable of combat duty.

The Israeli military basks in tactical wins but suffers strategic defeats. By expanding the battlefront, they overstretch themselves, and as the war escalates, they will grind to a halt.

Israel is not a stable state. The divisions within Israeli society are at breaking point, and Netanyahu’s effective abandonment of the hostages has weakened his support.

Moreover, Israel cannot indefinitely carry on a protracted war of attrition. The economy is in crisis, with capital flight, foreign investment drying up, and GDP rapidly dropping. There was a $64 billion loss last year. This year will be worse. Half a million citizens have fled the country.

The settlements and towns near the Lebanon border and in the south near Gaza are deserted. Hotels are overflowing with displaced settlers at government expense. The harbor of Aqaba is empty of ships and has declared bankruptcy.

Hezbollah rockets are striking military targets in Haifa and elsewhere, including key military and Mossad bases, and Netanyahu’s home has been struck by a drone. Operation Al-Aqsa Flood proved that Israel was not invincible, and Israel’s Iron Dome and air defenses are proving inadequate against the combined assaults from the region, from as far away as Iran and Yemen.

Israel has been severely punished by Hezbollah in Lebanon and will fail in its invasion of that country as it has in the past.

Iran is another factor entirely. It is a vast country, rich in resources and a formidable foe. And unlike Israel, Iran aims at military targets. It does not launch indiscriminate attacks on civilians. People and countries around the world are taking note of this.

The times are unimaginably grim in Gaza and in the ghettoes of the West Bank, where 11,500 people have been imprisoned. But the resistance lives on, their courage and stoicism manifest in the defiance of Yahya Sinwar in his last breath, manifest in the sheer grit of the little girl carrying her injured baby sister on her back through the piles of rubble and death.

People care and comfort one another in the most nightmarish conditions. They dig in the rubble for those buried alive. They rush to the bombed hospitals with the dying and injured in their hands, the remains of shredded victims in plastic bags. They bury their shrouded dead with the utmost tenderness in mass graves. They love their land, amaze the world with their dignity, and will not forsake the land of their ancestors.

Zionism is not dead, but it is certainly dying. The cost will be devastatingly high, high beyond measure, but those for whom we weep will win the war.

Ronnie Kasrils, veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle, and South Africa’s former Minister for Intelligence Services, activist and author. He contributed this piece to The Palestine Chronicle

3 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Phil Pasquini

Only days before one of the most pivotal presidential elections in US history takes place, CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) released its national poll, “Final CAIR 2024 Election Poll of American Muslim Voters,” which was conducted on October 30-31. The results illustrate how this important block of voters will be pivotal in deciding the winner in Tuesday’s election.

According to CAIR, the ongoing genocide in Gaza is the top issue affecting American-Muslim voters’ choices in the presidential race with most voters having already decided who they support.

CAIR, for its part during a morning news conference in introducing the results, urged all voters regardless of their choices to get out and vote in the election to make their voices heard.

In introducing the results of the one-question national poll, CAIR Director of Government Affairs Robert S. McCaw indicated that according to Molitico, the independent third-party research group whom they engaged in conducting the poll, there are 376,667 registered American-Muslim voters in the six key battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

The poll included 1,449 verified registered voters from across the country, with 42.3% for Dr. Jill Stein, 41% for Kamala Harris, and 9.8% for Donald Trump while 5.4% of voters polled said they would not be voting and 0.9% remain undecided. The results allow for a margin of error of +/- 2.5 percentage points with a confidence interval of 95%.

The same one-question poll conducted in September resulted with Harris at 29.40%, Stein 29.10% and Trump 11.20% while 16.50% of voters were undecided and 8.80% said they would not be voting at all.

While the results of the October poll show that Harris has lost some support, there are others who are urging all American-Muslim voters to support her to keep Trump from regaining the White House.

During a morning national television interview today, Palestinian refugee, Maher Nawaf Arekat, founder and President of the Palestinian Community Center of Arizona along with other Democrats and leaders in the Palestinian, Arab, Muslim and Progressive communities in Arizona, spoke of their joint statement issued on October 24 calling on all voters to take “The first step — and our best choice in this horrible situation — is defeating Trump by electing Harris. We urge you to join us.”

The statement concludes with “In our view, it is crystal clear that allowing the fascist Donald Trump to become president again would be the worst possible outcome for the Palestinian people. A Trump win would be an extreme danger to Muslims in our country, all immigrants, and the American pro-Palestine movement. It would be an existential threat to our democracy and our whole planet… Trump must be defeated. The only way to defeat him is to elect Kamala Harris… Voting for Harris is not a personal endorsement of her or of the policy decisions of the administration in which she served. It’s an assessment of the best possible option to continue fighting for an end to the genocide, a free Palestine, and all else that we hold dear.”

While expressing their collective frustration with Harris’ stance, saying that while she has not yet “…met our movement’s demand that she break with Biden on the issue” they are hoping that in the end “she will come around,” in part due to recent comments and statements wherein she expressed empathy for the suffering of the Palestinian people pledging to do “everything in her power” as president in ending the war in Gaza, and to achieve “a future of security and dignity for all people in the region.”

In addressing those inclined to vote for a third-party candidate in protest to the status quo, they warned that “In our electoral system, no third-party candidate can win this election. But voting for them could make Trump president.”

Report and photo by Phil Pasquini

2 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Kevin Reed

Hundreds of journalists from all over the world have signed an online petition condemning the Israeli government for deliberately killed Palestinian journalists in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon over the past year.

As of this writing 790 individuals—writers, reporters, editors, producers, photographers and photojournalists, artists, videographers, educators and students—have signed the online petition with the headline, “Israel Must Stop Killing Journalists.”

The petition states in part,

Despite repeated condemnation by internationally-recognized human rights and media organizations, Israel has continued to kill and maim Palestinian journalists in Gaza. It has also escalated attacks against journalists in Lebanon.

The targeting of journalists is an attack on press freedom and a violation of international law.

This must stop.

Among the journalists endorsing the letter are Sakhr Al-Makhadhi, Executive Producer at AJ+, Al Jazeera; Anne Barnard, Freelancer and former New York Times Beirut Bureau Chief; Samaa Khullar, Investigative Journalist at the Nation; and Khalil AlHajal, Deputy Opinion Editor at the Detroit Free Press.

Palestinian journalists in Gaza have served as the world’s eyes and ears, documenting Israeli attacks such as the deliberate killing of civilians carrying white flags and torture of Palestinians in detention. These journalists have received death threats, been maimed or killed by Israeli forces—even while not on assignment. Their families have also been killed by Israeli forces.

The petition circulators point out that the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported that “Israeli attacks have killed at least 123 Palestinian journalists and media workers,” which makes it the deadliest period for journalists since the organization began collecting data in 1992. The Government Media Office in Gaza puts the death toll of Palestinian journalists at 182 since October 2023.

Most recently, an airstrike in Lebanon on October 25 killed three journalists as they slept in a guest house in an area that has been used by media as a base for covering the war. A report by Associated Press said,

The 3 a.m. airstrike turned the site—a series of chalets nestled among trees that had been rented by various media outlets covering the war—into rubble. Cars marked “PRESS” were overturned and covered in dust and debris, and at least one satellite dish for live broadcasting was totally destroyed.

The Israeli army did not issue a warning prior to the strike, which it said targeted Hezbollah militant infrastructure. The military later said the strike was being reviewed.

Mohammad Farhat, a reporter for Lebanon’s Al Jadeed TV in the south, said everyone rushed out in their sleeping clothes. “The first question we asked each other: ‘Are you alive?’”

The three journalists killed in the air strike were camera operator Ghassan Najjar and broadcast technician Mohammed Rida of the Beirut-based pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV, and camera operator Wissam Qassim, who worked for Al-Manar TV of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group.

While the Israeli military maintained that the buildings were targeted because they were a base of Hezbollah operations, human rights groups reported that the journalists were deliberately targeted.

The CPJ’s organizational director Carlos Martinez de la Serna said the organization was, “deeply outraged by yet another deadly Israeli airstrike on journalists, this time hitting a compound hosting 18 members of the press in south Lebanon.”

In another case, 19-year-old journalist Hassan Hamad was killed by an Israeli artillery shell at his home in Jabaliya on October 6 after he received death threats. Hamad received threatening phone calls and text messages via WhatsApp from an Israeli officer ordering him to stop filming evidence of the genocide. Hamad, 19, had been sharing video reports on the Israeli incursion into the Jabalia refugee camp when he was killed.

In one threatening text message received by Hassan, shared on X by human rights activist and journalist Maha Hussaini, said, “Listen, if you continue spreading lies about Israel, we’ll come for you next and turn your family into […] This is your last warning.”

One of the demands on the petition is that Israel allow injured journalists in Gaza to be immediately evacuated so they can receive urgently needed medical attention.

The petition states,

As the Israeli military escalated its attacks on central and northern Gaza in October 2024, they killed two Palestinian journalists and seriously injured three others. On Oct. 7, Al Jazeera cameraman Ali Al-Attar was severely injured due to shrapnel from an airstrike while he was covering the conditions of displaced Palestinians. Al-Attar is now in critical condition, with medical scans showing severe bleeding and shrapnel lodged in his brain. Two days later, Israeli forces shot Al Jazeera cameraman Fadi Al-Wahidi in the neck while he was reporting. Doctors say his injury has left him paralyzed for life and he is now in a coma.

A report in Al Jazeera said al-Wahidi was shot by an Israeli sniper in the Gaza Strip and has not been allowed by Israel to leave the enclave for urgent medical treatment. The Palestinian journalist was shot as he reported on the Israeli ground invasion of the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, and he was wearing gear that clearly identified him as a member of the press.

Despite appeals from three media freedom organizations as well as medical officials, the Israeli government has not allowed al-Wahidi and Ali al-Attar to leave Gaza for “lifesaving medical treatment.”

Al Jazeera issued a statement calling on the international community “to take immediate action to ensure the safety of journalists and civilians in Gaza and hold the Israeli Occupation Forces accountable for their repeated crimes against journalists.”

The CPJ issued an appeal to the governments of the US, France and Germany as well as the United Nations seeking assistance to have al-Wahidi and al-Attar transferred out of Gaza. However, a CPJ statement says, “Despite these endeavors, the possibility of evacuating these journalists is currently blocked due to a lack of Israeli authorization for their safe passage.”

The petition campaign states that the targeting of journalists “is an attack on press freedom and a violation of international law.” A United Nations Security Council resolution adopted in May 2015 states that the council “[c]ondemns all violations and abuses committed against journalists, media professionals and associated personnel in situations of armed conflict and calls upon all parties to armed conflict to bring an end to such practices.”

2 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

New York (Quds News Network)- The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, urged the UN General Assembly on Wednesday to consider suspending Israel’s membership due to its repeated violations of international law and its ongoing occupation of Palestinian territories.

Speaking at a press conference, Albanese stressed that Israel’s impunity has enabled it to “become a serial violator of international law.”

Albanese’s recommendations include suspending Israel’s credentials at the UN until it halts these violations and withdraws its occupation, which clearly unlawful. She emphasized that Israel’s formation came at a huge price for the Palestinians, a cost that remains unaddressed.

Since the 1967 occupation, Palestinians have faced systematic segregation and repression, Albanese added, noting that Israel’s ‘Greater Israel’ policies aim to diminish Palestinian identity in the region. She highlighted that 75% of Gaza’s population consists of refugees originally from what is now called ‘Israel’, symbolizing what she termed Israel’s “original sin” since its creation.

In a recent report to the UN General Assembly, Albanese described a pattern of forced displacement, destruction, and actions amounting to genocide in Gaza and the West Bank. Her report points to “long-term, intentional, state-organized forced displacement and replacement” of Palestinians, especially in light of the Israeli attacks’ escalation since October 7, 2023.

Albanese’s findings address the genocidal intent behind Israel’s expansion, framing it as part of a sustained process of ethnic cleansing aimed at removing Palestinian presence from Palestine.

Albanese’s statements and report have faced significant outrage, especially from the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) in Canada, which has labeled her criticisms as antisemitic. Ahead of her upcoming talk at the University of Toronto on November 7, CIJA called on Canadian authorities to take measures against her. They are urging Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly and Ambassador Bob Rae to publicly condemn Albanese and bar Canadian officials from meeting with her.

CIJA has also requested that Albanese be stripped of diplomatic immunity during her visit and removed from her UN position.

“No government official should be meeting with Albanese while she’s in Canada nor should Albanese enjoy diplomatic immunity while she’s here in Canada,” CIJA said, accusing her of spreading harmful rhetoric by equating Israel’s crimes to those of Nazi Germany.

2 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Brett Wilkins

The heads of 15 humanitarian organizations operating under the United Nations umbrella on Friday accused Israel of creating “apocalyptic” conditions in northern Gaza and called on Israeli forces to stop attacking the Palestinian enclave and the aid workers trying to help its people.

“The situation unfolding in North Gaza is apocalyptic. The area has been under siege for almost a month, denied basic aid and lifesaving supplies while bombardment and other attacks continue,” the 15 group heads wrote in an open letter. “Just in the past few days, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed, most of them women and children, and thousands have once again been forcibly displaced.”

The letter’s 15 signers include directors of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee, a forum of United Nations and non-U.N. humanitarian partners, including the International Council of Volunteer Agencies.

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“Hospitals have been almost entirely cut off from supplies and have come under attack, killing patients, destroying vital equipment, and disrupting lifesaving services,” the group leaders wrote. “Health workers and patients have been taken into custody. Fighting has also reportedly taken place inside hospitals.”

“Dozens of schools serving as shelters have been bombed or forcibly evacuated. Tents sheltering displaced families have been shelled, and people have been burned alive,” the letter continues. “Rescue teams have been deliberately attacked and thwarted in their attempts to pull people buried under the rubble of their homes.”

The signers wrote that “we have received reports of civilians being targeted while trying to seek safety,” and that “the entire Palestinian population in north Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine, and violence.”

The letter warns: “Humanitarian aid cannot keep up with the scale of the needs due to the access constraints. Basic lifesaving goods are not available. Humanitarians are not safe to do their work and are blocked by Israeli forces and by insecurity from reaching people in need.”

“In a further blow to the humanitarian response, the polio vaccination campaign has been delayed due to the fighting, putting the lives of children in the region at risk,” the signers added.

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The humanitarian leaders lamented this week’s approval by Israeli lawmakers of a pair of bills targeting the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

“If implemented, such measures would be a catastrophe for the humanitarian response in Gaza, diametrically opposed to the United Nations Charter, with potential dire impacts on the human rights of the millions of Palestinians depending on UNRWA’s assistance, and in violation of Israel’s obligations under international law,” the letter states. “Let us be very clear: There is no alternative to UNRWA.”

The humanitarian leaders then turned their attention to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) genocide case against Israel led by South Africa and backed by around 30 nations and regional blocs. Israeli forces have been accused of flouting ICJ orders that the country prevent genocidal acts in Gaza, allow humanitarian aid into the strip, and stop the assault on Rafah.

“Israel must comply with the provisional orders and determinations of the International Court of Justice,” they asserted.

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Since October 2023, Israel’s assault on Gaza has left more than 155,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing, and millions more displaced, starving, or sick. The Israel Defense Forces’ renewed offensive in northern Gaza has killed or injured thousands of Palestinians since last month amid fears Israel is implementing the so-called “General’s Plan” to starve and then ethnically cleanse northern Gaza to make way for Israeli recolonization, a policy promoted by senior members of Israel’s far-right government.

The humanitarian leaders’ letter also states that “Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups must release the hostages immediately and unconditionally and must abide by international humanitarian law.”

“The entire region is on the edge of a precipice,” the signers concluded. “An immediate cessation of hostilities and a sustained, unconditional cease-fire are long overdue.”

Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

2 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza has followed a “concerted policy” to destroy the enclave’s healthcare system, an independent U.N. commission report revealed Wednesday.

“Our report to the General Assembly, which we presented this morning, examines attacks on medical facilities and personnel and the treatment of detainees and hostages from 7th of October, 2023 to August 2024,” Navi Pillay, chair of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, told a news conference at the U.N. headquarters in New York.

She said that the findings revealed “a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system,” while adding that “Palestinian detainees were subjected to persistent mistreatment by Israeli authorities, amounting to torture as a war crime and crime against humanity.”

“We intend to continue pursuing the fulfillment of our mandate, including in relation to making recommendations, in particular on accountability measures,” she said, pledging efforts to end impunity and ensure legal accountability.

The report submitted to the General Assembly found “thousands of Palestinians, mostly men and boys from Gaza, have been arbitrarily detained and held incommunicado.”

“Israeli forces used detainees as human shields in both the West Bank and Gaza, constituting a war crime,” it said.

The commission reported that Palestinian detainees, including the elderly and children, “were subjected to persistent mistreatment by Israeli authorities, including beatings, continuous blindfolding and handcuffing, severe overcrowding, death threats, humiliation, deprivation of food, restricting appropriate hygiene and withholding medical care.”

Asked about the legal consequences and the “slow-moving processes” in the International Criminal Court (ICC), Pillay said: “It’s a slow process, but we are getting there. We’re getting there mainly because of activism on the part of civil society and victims and commissions such as us.”

Regarding “positive steps” that countries should take to end the Israeli occupation, Pillay said the “onus lies on every state under international law to take steps not to cooperate with the occupation itself.”

She reminded all countries of their responsibility “not to continue to support this (Israeli) occupation. That would be any support – militarily, politically or recognition – even about moving the embassies to Jerusalem.”

“You have to change your traditional way of treating the situation,” she said.

Pillay noted “double standards” against Palestine, especially by some member states, and stressed that “huge violations” historically occurred before Oct. 7 and blamed the occupation.

Asked about the report’s finding “war crimes” against Palestinians and accountability, Pillay said there are more than “10,000 pieces of evidence” that relate to the “existence of proof of genocide.”

“We dedicated to gathering evidence with the goal of ensuring accountability,” she said, noting that “there is no other organ of the U.N. with an investigative mandate and that the commission is “handicapped. We’re not allowed inside the country.”

Saying that there are ways and measures that the Security Council and the General Assembly can adopt when a member state does not comply, Pillay noted the case of South Africa and its membership being suspended until apartheid ended.

Chris Sidoti, a member of the commission, criticized Israel’s decision to ban the activities of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) and noted that only nine staff members were dismissed after Israel accused them of taking part in the Oct. 7 operation.

“That’s more than the number of staff that the Israeli Defense Forces have dismissed for violations of international humanitarian laws such as war crimes and crimes against humanity,” he said, adding that the Israeli army is far behind in “dealing with allegations and investigations of misconduct by employees.”

Sidoti noted that UNRWA “has saved Israeli taxpayers billions of dollars over the last 57 years … because Israel, as the occupying power under the Fourth Geneva Convention, is responsible for the care, protection and the provision of services to persons under occupation.”

“If UNRWA is kicked out, the cost for the Israeli taxpayer is going to be enormous. So, this is a decision that is bad for the Palestinians and ridiculous for Israeli taxpayers,” he added.

1 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Ranjan Solomon

This weekend has been one of trauma for the Palestinians. Over 100,000 Palestinians are besieged under Israeli siege and bombardment in the areas of Jabalia, Beit Hanoun, and Beit Lahia. As part of its ethnic cleansing policy, the Israeli occupation is killing anyone who tries to help the people of the northern Gaza Strip. The fate of many people remains  unknown.

Imagine this. Not a single drop of bread or water has entered the northern Gaza Strip. Israel simply will not countenance this. Israel’s holocaust is  brutal, callous, cold-blooded. That itself is an understatement. Words cannot describe the horrifying conditions of people  ejected from their homes and shelters on multiple occasions, each time leaving behind food supplies and personal belongings. They have no idea when the next bomb will strike them. It is insane that Netanyahu and his generals found it in them to attack Gaza Strip’s shelters 39 times in October alone.

They have closed down the UNRWA. This is savagery and inhumanity and the only way to describe it as brutish. Antonio Guterres, the UN secretary general, voiced his profound concern last week about the suffering of civilians in northern Gaza as a result of Israel’s siege. “People suffering under the ongoing Israeli siege in North Gaza are rapidly exhausting all available means for their survival.” Israeli forces have prohibited ambulances from passing through the majority of Jabalia and its camp, leaving many victims and injured people stranded and unable to be taken to hospitals. Medical teams were detained and the only hospitals that could care for victims and injured individuals were destroyed. The only parallel to such cruelty was the Nazi holocaust, the lessons of which have not been learned by Zionist thugs, despite their own people having experienced the horror of that savage experience. By the time this genocide concludes, it may turn out to be the worst form of collective human torture ever inflicted on any people.
The settlers are proving to be the most despicable wild things going around with license to kill. They’re now rummaging for land and homes that they can settle in once they have cleansed Gaza. If only, the ICC and ICJ would speed up their case and land notices on a few of the main culprits beginning with Netanyahu, Smotrich, and their wild racist.

Only a while ago, they referred to Palestinians as ‘human animals’. It is clear that it was a mere mirror image. And this expression is not just for the time being. From the Nakba onwards in 1948, terror has been their key strategy. It has left the Palestinians trapped in lives they never imagined. Netanyahu cannot extinguish this war against Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis – each of which are not traditional armies will be forced to find an escape route. It will be near-impossible for him to find a safe haven along with his closest co-villains.Or, will we witness an end that resembles that of Hitler’s?

Netanyahu and his minions in most parts of the West will not desert him. Colonialist-cousins, by nature and instinct, were all born and baptised in the same blood.As the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food recently denounced, in the space of a few months, Israel has deliberately starved more than two million people — and it continues to do so. It has destroyed one-third of Gaza’s agricultural lands, 80% of the fishing fleet and wrecked its irrigation systems. Israeli forces have prevented countless food convoys from entering the territory by land or by sea, directly shelling aid workers in the process. The consequences are unbearable and irreversible. As of April 2024, international authorities have determined that famine has all but taken complete hold in Gaza.

What the situation demands is  to “Globalize the Intifada” – to promote worldwide activity in solidarity with the Palestinian resistance.  Intifada is a peaceful term, calling for a nonviolent uprising against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and blockade on Gaza.The chant and its associated chants have caused controversy, particularly concerning their impact and connotations. Critics claimed it encourages widespread violence or terrorism. This is a false flag. Pro-Palestinian activists believe in peaceful resistance and dialogue. Yet, Israel’s cronies will not easily do enough.  India, for example, is a chum of Israel and practices similar political strategies to suppress its minorities.

“Free Palestine” is not hate speech nor a terrorist slogan. Rather, it’s a call to liberate Palestine from colonialist oppression – Israel.

Ranjan Solomon is a political commentator

31 October 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud

Under the slogan ‘Gaza is Ours, Forever’, a large number of Israeli extremists and right-wing politicians met in the settlement of Be’eri, near the Gaza border region, on October 20-21.

The group represented the who’s who in the Israeli right, far right and ultranationalists. They included Israeli Ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir, May Golan and Bezalel Smotrich, as well as ten MKs of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party.

The event, entitled “Preparing to Resettle Gaza”, was organized by one of Israel’s most extreme settler movements, Nachala, led by the notorious Daniella Weiss.

To appreciate how extremist this 79-year-old settler is, consider this: on June 27, the Canadian government, though one of the most stalwart supporters of Netanyahu and his wars, imposed sanctions on her, due to her “role in facilitating (…) acts of violence by Israeli extremist settlers against Palestinian civilians.”

The hate-filled conference, however, was but a culmination of a year-long effort to build a case of why Israel should ethnically cleanse Palestinians in the Strip and re-establish illegal settlements.

The story, however, does not start on October 7. In 2005, Israel decided to redeploy its forces out of the tiny coastal region. That was the start of the hermetic Israeli siege on the Strip, which led to multiple wars and, ultimately, the October 7 events and the ongoing genocide.

Although the number of Jewish settlers who were evacuated from the dismantled 15 illegal settlements was fairly small – 8,500 – the sense of betrayal felt by the settlers created deep divisions throughout Israeli society.

Chaotic scenes of settlers being forcefully removed from the Gush Katif settlements bloc in Gaza created a national crisis in Israel, and was compared to the forceful evacuation of the illegal Sinai settlement of Yamit, which Israel dismantled in April 1982 as part of a previous agreement with Egypt. But, why the crisis?

Israel is a settler-colonial society, which has linked its colonial expansion to religious diktats and prophecies. So the forced departure from Gaza, to most of these settlers, must have appeared to represent both national treason and a sacrilegious act.

This is why resettling Gaza became the immediate rallying cry for Israeli settlers. Compared to their limited political share of power during the redeployment of 2005, current extremists are now effectively the decision-makers.

While the army remains unclear regarding its strategic objectives in Gaza, the settlers have always been aware of the nature of their mission: the ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians from Gaza and the rebuilding of the settlements.

Thus, quickly, the likes of Weiss and many of her supporters began calling on Israelis to join the recolonization campaign. “Register, register, you’ll be in Gaza,” Weiss told an audience of supporters last March, joyfully declaring that 500 families had already signed up, according to a CNN report.

Weiss and Nachala are not acting independently from the overall objective of the country’s leading politicians. For example, on the first day of the war, October 7, 2023, Netanyahu made his intentions clear: “I say to the residents of Gaza: Leave now, because we will operate forcefully everywhere.”

On October 17, a position paper introduced by the Israeli Misgav Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategy called for the “relocation and final settlement of the entire Gaza population.”

The report saw in the war “a unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the whole Gaza Strip” into the Sinai desert. Later that same month, the Israeli intelligence ministry itself became involved, with the Israeli news outlet Calcalist publishing a document “recommend(ing) the transfer of Gaza residents to Sinai.”

On November 14, far-right Minister Smotrich spoke of ‘voluntary migration’. In December, media reports said that Netanyahu himself had told Likud party members that Israel’s real challenge is finding “countries that are willing to absorb them”, meaning the people of Gaza.

Conferences began to be organized to gather support around the idea of ethnically cleansing Palestinians. The first major conference was held by a coalition of settler movements last December. “A house on the beach is not a dream”, an advertisement for the gathering proclaimed. The ‘beach’ here is a reference to the Gaza beach.

Even Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, jumped on the opportunity. In March, he spoke of Gaza’s “very valuable … waterfront property”, which required Israel to remove the civilians and “clean up the Strip”.

The ongoing so-called General’s Plan, aimed at the extermination and ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza, is but the military component of the settlers’ vision, that of ‘Gaza is ours, forever’.

But if Israel has failed to sustain its settlements in the rebellious Strip under more manageable circumstances in the past, will it succeed now?

The settlers are already aware of the challenge at hand. This is why they constantly link their colonization of Gaza with the ethnic cleansing of the Strip’s Palestinian inhabitants.

Israel’s success and failure, however, will ultimately be determined by this maxim: as long as the Palestinian people are fighting back, Weiss and her fellow extremists will not find safety in Gaza.

Indeed, the native population of Gaza has subsisted in that historical land for thousands of years. If genocide has not forced them off their land, nothing else will.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle.

31 October 2024

Source: countercurrents.org