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By Chris Hedges

The latest U.N. report chronicles Israel’s advances in its genocidal assault in Gaza. Israel is intent, the report warns, on expelling the Palestinians, recolonizing Gaza and turning on the West Bank.

A United Nations report, published on Monday, lays out in chilling detail the advances made by Israel in Gaza as it seeks to eradicate “the very existence of the Palestinian people in Palestine.” This genocidal project, the report ominously warns, “is now metastasizing to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”

The Nakba or “catastrophe,” which in 1948 saw Zionist militias drive 750,000 Palestinians from their homes, carry out more than 70 massacres and seize 78 percent of historic Palestine, has returned on steroids. It is the next and, perhaps, final chapter in “a long-term intentional, systematic, State-organized forced displacement and replacement of the Palestinians.”

Francesca Albanese, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, who issued the report, titled “Genocide as colonial erasure,” makes an urgent appeal to the international community to impose a full arms embargo and sanctions on Israel until the genocide of Palestinians is halted. She calls on Israel to accept a permanent ceasefire. She demands that Israel, as required by international law and U.N. resolutions, withdraw its military and colonists from Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

At the very least, Israel, unchecked, should be formally recognized as an apartheid state and persistent violator of international law, Albanese states. The U.N. should reactivate the Special Committee Against Apartheid to address the situation in Palestine, and Israel’s membership in the U.N. should be suspended. Short of these interventions, Israel’s goal, Albanese warns, will likely come into fruition.

You can see my interview with Albanese here.

“This ongoing genocide is doubtlessly the consequence of the exceptional status and protracted impunity that has been afforded to Israel.” she writes. “Israel has systematically and flagrantly violated international law, including Security Council resolutions and [International Criminal Court] ICJ orders. This has emboldened the hubris of Israel and its defiance of international law. As the ICC Prosecutor has warned, ‘if we do not demonstrate our willingness to apply the law equally, if it is seen as applied selectively, we will be creating the conditions of its complete collapse. This is the true risk we face at this perilous moment.’”

The U.N. report comes amid an Israeli blockade of northern Gaza where over 400,000 Palestinians are enduring a starvation siege and constant airstrikes in an attempt to depopulate the north. Israeli forces have killed 1,250 Palestinians in the assault, launched on October 5, a medical source told Al Jazeera. Reports from northern Gaza are difficult to obtain as internet and phone services have been cut and the few journalists on the ground continue to be killed. Israel’s ground and aerial assaults are centered on Jabaliya, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun. Civil defense units say they have been barred by Israeli forces from reaching the sites of recent strikes and their crews have been attacked.

Israel has ordered Palestinians to flee to designated “safe zones,” but once in these “safe zones” they have been attacked and ordered to move to new “safe zones.”

“Displaced people have been systematically chased down and targeted in shelters, including in United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) schools, 70 percent of which Israel has repeatedly attacked.”

In May, Israel’s Rafah invasion caused the displacement of nearly one million Palestinians, driven into southern Gaza because of Israeli evacuation orders, into “uninhabitable wastelands of rubble, sewage and decomposing bodies,” Albanese notes.

By August, 90 percent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million Palestinians were displaced “under dire conditions,” according to the U.N.

The months of “relentless shunting of weakened humans from one unsafe area to another — fleeing bombs and bullets, with minimal chances of escape, amid loss, fear and grief, and with little access to shelter, clean water, food and healthcare — have inflicted incalculable harm, especially on children,” the report reads. “The movement of displaced Palestinians resembles the death marches of past genocides, and the Nakba. Forced displacement severs connection with the land, undermining food sovereignty and cultural belonging, and triggering further displacement. Communal bonds are broken, the social fabric shredded and reserves of resilience depleted. Systematic forced displacement contributes to ‘the destruction of the spirit, of the will to live, and of life itself.’”

The constant displacement — many Palestinians have been displaced nine or 10 times — from one part of Gaza to another is accompanied by calls from Israeli officials to “renew settlements in Gaza” and encourage the “voluntary transfer of all Gazan citizens” to other countries.

Israel has killed at least 43,163 people in Gaza and wounded 101,510 in Israeli attacks since October 7, 2023. An estimated 1,139 people were killed – some by Israeli forces – in Israel during the incursion by armed Palestinian fighters into Israel and more than 200 were taken captive. In Lebanon, at least 2,787 people have been killed and 12,772 wounded since the Israeli assault on Gaza began, with 77 killed in strikes across the country on Tuesday alone.

The report found evidence that Israel has carried out “more than 93 massacres.”

U.N. investigators concede the numbers of dead in Gaza are probably a vast undercount given that at least 10,000 people, including 4,000 children, are missing, probably buried under the rubble, where “the voices of those trapped and dying are often audible.” Other Palestinians, an “uncertain number,” have been seized by Israel forces and “disappeared.”

Israel has repeatedly attacked aid distribution sites, tent encampments, hospitals, schools and markets “through the indiscriminate use of aerial and sniper fire.” The report notes that “at least 13,000 children, including more than 700 babies, have been killed, many shot in the head and chest” while approximately “22,500 Palestinians have sustained life-changing injuries.”

“The disturbing frequency and callousness of the killing of people known to be civilians are ‘emblematic of the systematic nature’ of a destructive intent,” the report reads. “Six-year-old Hind Rajab, killed with 355 bullets after pleading for help for hours; the fatal mauling by dogs of Muhammed Bhar, who had Down’s Syndrome; the execution of Atta Ibrahim Al-Muqaid, an older deaf man, in his home, later bragged about by his killer and other soldiers on social media; the premature babies deliberately left to die a slow death and decompose in the intensive care unit at Al-Nasr Hospital; the elderly man, Bashir Hajji, killed en route to southern Gaza after appearing in a propaganda photograph of a ‘safe corridor;’ Abu al-Ola, the handcuffed hostage shot by a sniper after being sent into Nasser Hospital with evacuation orders. When the dust settles on Gaza, the true extent of the horror experienced by Palestinians will become known.”

The genocide has turned the landscape into a toxic wasteland.

“Nearly 40 million tons of debris, including unexploded ordnance and human remains, contaminate the ecosystem,” the report goes on. “More than 140 temporary waste sites and 340,000 tons of waste, untreated wastewater and sewage overflow contribute to the spread of diseases such as hepatitis A, respiratory infections, diarrhea and skin diseases. As Israeli leaders promised, Gaza has been made unfit for human life.”

In a further blow, the Israeli parliament on Monday approved a bill to ban UNRWA, a lifeline for Palestinians in Gaza, from operating on Israeli territory and areas under Israel’s control. The ban almost certainly ensures the collapse of aid distribution, already crippled, in Gaza.

As of Oct. 20,  233 UNRWA workers have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, making it the deadliest conflict for U.N. workers.

Israel has expanded its “buffer zone” along the Gaza perimeter to 16 percent of the territory, in the process leveling homes, apartment blocks and farms. It has pushed over 84 percent of the 2.3 million people in Gaza into  “a shrinking, unsafe ‘humanitarian zone’ covering 12.6 percent of a territory now reconfigured in preparation for annexation.” Satellite imagery indicates that the Israeli military has built roads and military bases in over 26 percent of Gaza, “suggesting the aim of a permanent presence.”

The blockade of food is accompanied by the destruction of water treatment plants, sewage systems, reservoirs, aid convoys, healthcare facilities and food distribution points — crowds of desperate people waiting for food “have been massacred” by Israeli soldiers.

Israel has all but obliterated medical facilities and services in Gaza. It has damaged 32 of 36 hospitals, with 20 hospitals and 70 of 119 primary healthcare centers incapacitated. By this August it had attacked healthcare facilities 492 times. Israel besieged Al-Shifa Hospital for the second time in March and April, killing more than 400 people and detaining 300, including doctors, patients, displaced persons and civil servants. It carried out a forced evacuation of all but 100 of 650 patients in Al-Aqsa hospital.

“In August,” the report reads, “entry permits for humanitarian organizations nearly halved. Access to water has been restricted to a quarter of pre-7 October levels. Approximately 93 per cent of the agricultural, forestry and fishing economies has been destroyed; 95 per cent of Palestinians face high levels of acute food insecurity, and deprivation for decades to come.”

“In recent months, 83 percent of food aid was prevented from entering Gaza, and the civilian police in Rafah were repeatedly targeted, impairing distribution,” the report notes. “At least 34 deaths from malnutrition were recorded by 14 September 2024.”

These measures “indicate an intent to destroy its population through starvation.”

Palestinians detained by Israeli forces “have been systematically abused in a network of Israeli torture camps. Thousands have disappeared, many after being detained in appalling conditions, often bound to beds, blindfolded and in diapers, deprived of medical treatment, subjected to unsanitary conditions, starvation, torturous cuffing, severe beatings, electrocution and sexual assault by both humans and animals. At least 48 detainees have died in custody.”

The report cites the role of the Israeli media in “inciting” the genocide “by helping to foster an unchecked genocidal climate.”

The report criticizes the Israeli media for platforming “proponents of genocide” and withholding “facts from the Israeli public.” At the same time, the Israeli military has killed over 130 Palestinian journalists.

Palestinians are equated with the Amalek, the Biblical enemies of the Israelites, as well as Nazis, to justify their extermination.

Albanese’s report, in a section titled “Risk of genocide in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem,” notes that Israel has accelerated its lethal attacks, detentions and land seizures in the West Bank.

“Genocidal conduct in Gaza set an ominous precedent for the West Bank,” it notes.

In May 2024, the governance of the West Bank was “officially transferred from military to civilian authorities — further de jure annexation — and placed under [Bezalel] Smotrich, a committed Eretz Yisrael politician,” the report reads. “The largest single land appropriation in 30 years was then approved.”

Smotrich, the Minister of Finance, claims there are “two million Nazis” in the West Bank. He has threatened to turn parts of the West Bank into “ruined cities like in the Gaza strip” and stated that starving the entire Gaza population was “justified and moral,” even if two million people died. Minister of Foreign Affairs Israel Katz has also called for the West Bank to receive the same treatment as Gaza.

Thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank towns of Jenin, Nablus, Qalqilya, Tubas and Tulkarem live for days under curfew, making it difficult to access food and water. As in Gaza, the Israeli army, during its Operation Summer Camps, has “targeted ambulances, blocked entrances to hospitals and laid siege to Jenin Hospital. Bulldozers destroyed streets and electricity and public health infrastructure.”

Drones and war planes carry out airstrikes. Israeli roadblocks, checkpoints and blockades make travel difficult or impossible. Israel has suspended financial transfers to the Palestinian Authority, which nominally governs the West Bank in collaboration with Israel. It has revoked 148,000 work permits for those who had jobs in Israel.

“The gross domestic product (GDP) of the West Bank contracted by 22.7 percent, nearly 30 percent of businesses have closed, and 292,000 jobs have been lost,” the report reads. Over 692 Palestinians — “10 times the previous 14 years’ annual average of 69 fatalities,” have been killed and more than 5,000 have been injured. Of the 169 Palestinian children who have been killed, “nearly 80 percent were shot in the head or the torso.”

Since August, in the Jenin refugee camp “approximately 180 homes were levelled and 3,800 structures damaged, destroying or damaging power supplies, public services and amenities, displacing thousands of families and causing widespread disruption. More than 181,000 Palestinians have been affected, many multiple times.”

The report dismisses the claim that Israel is carrying out the assault in Gaza and the West Bank to “defend itself,” “eradicate Hamas” or “bring the hostages home,” charging that these claims are “camouflage,” a way of “invisibilizing the crime.” Genocidal intent, as Judge Dalveer Bhandari from the ICJ points out, “may exist simultaneously with other, ulterior motives.”

Rather, the incursion into Israel by Hamas and other resistance fighters on Oct. 7 “provided the impetus to advance towards the goal of a ‘Greater Israel.’”

“In the context of Israel ignoring the ICJ directive to end the unlawful occupation, the aim to eradicate resistance contradicts the rights to self-determination and to resist an oppressive regime, protected by Customary International Law,” the report reads. “It also portrays the entire population as engaged in resistance and therefore eliminable. By continuing to suppress the right to self-determination, Israel is replicating historical instances in which self-defence, counter-insurgency or counter-terrorism were used to justify destruction of the group, leading to genocide.”

It notes that Israel, rather than abiding by the 1993 Oslo Accords, which were supposed to lead to a two-state solution, increased its colonies in the West Bank from 128 to 358 and the numbers of Jewish settlers “have grown from 256,400 to 714,600.” Israel passed the 2018 Nation State Law that asserts exclusive Jewish sovereignty over “Eretz Yisrael” and names “Jewish settlement” on occupied Palestinian land a “national priority.” It cultivates “a political doctrine that frames Palestinian assertions of self-determination as a security threat to Israel” and uses it “to legitimize permanent occupation.”

“The current intent to destroy the people as such could not be more evident from Israeli conduct when viewed in its totality,” the report states.

A leaked Israeli Ministry of Intelligence “concept paper” from October 2023 outlines the plan to expel the entire Gaza population to Egypt and recolonize Gaza. It is a plan Israel appears to be following.

Albanese writes that Israel is replicating the patterns of past genocides. It creates through its rhetoric a “vengeful atmosphere” that conditions soldiers to be “willing executioners.” It claims it is acting in self-defense while targeting a civilian population. It is obliterating the infrastructure that sustains life, a process of “genocide by attrition.” It uses starvation as a weapon. It is attempting to hide its crimes by killing Palestinian journalists and U.N. workers and blocking international agencies and the international media from Gaza.

We have seen genocide before. We have also seen the complicity or silence of nations that have the power to intervene. History doesn’t repeat itself, but too often it rhymes.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He is the host of the Emmy Award-nominated RT America show On Contact.

31 October 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Andre Damon

Israel’s killing and wounding of children in Gaza is the “greatest of any conflict in recorded warfare,” UN human rights expert Chris Sidoti said in a press briefing Wednesday.

Sidoti, along with commission chair and International Court of Justice judge Navanethem Pillay, is a member of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which is the official United Nations body of inquest into the war in Gaza.

Sidoti and Pillay delivered a report on the Commission’s findings and recommendations to the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday, followed by a press conference. Their report accused Israel of the “extermination” of Palestinians, and reasserted that it is the obligation of all states to cease any cooperation with the Israeli occupation.

In July, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is unlawful, ordering all countries to cease enabling it.

The ruling by the ICJ and the reports of the commission of inquiry rip to shreds the justification of the imperialist powers for their support of the Gaza genocide on the grounds that Israel has the “right to defend itself.”

In reality, the ICJ and commission of inquiry found that Israel not only has no right to “defend itself” against a population it illegally occupies, but other countries also have no right to enable that occupation by funding and arming it.

In a blunt condemnation of the complete breakdown of international law embodied in the Gaza genocide, Sidoti declared, “Our reports, the decision of the International Court of Justice, resolutions passed by the Security Council in the last 13 months, and resolutions passed by the General Assembly—none of those have resulted in a single child not being killed.” He continued, “Not a single child has not died because of all of these actions. And that’s the reality that confronts the whole United Nations system today.”

Sidoti gave a succinct summation of the impact of the genocide on children, stating, “As of last week, 13,319 children have been killed in Gaza, of whom 786 were under the age of one. In addition, 165 children have been killed in the West Bank.”

“Kids aren’t terrorists,” Sidoti emphasized:

We have had thousands and thousands of kids killed, and that’s not even including those who are injured, those who are under the rubble, those who have lost limbs. It’s been said that the amputations of limbs of children are the greatest in any conflict in recorded modern warfare. Kids who have lost parents, siblings, aunties, uncles, grandparents, cousins, have experienced now 13 months of severe food deprivation, leading to a situation that is now described as acute malnutrition.

He added:

Kids cannot go through what they have gone through in the last 12 months without it having an enormous impact on them for their entire lives. But that is certainly the case physically for kids who have lost arms or legs or both, and we’ve met them. We’ve met them in hospitals, we’ve interviewed them. This is a lifelong result…

In her remarks, Pillay declared “that it’s the responsibility of every state, it’s their obligation under international law, to take positive steps to end the occupation” of Gaza by Israel.

A position paper published by the commission declared that “states have positive obligations, under both the Geneva Conventions and the Genocide Convention. States must ensure that Israel is not committing or preparing to commit violations of international humanitarian law. States must also prevent or punish genocide.”

It declared that “any state engaged in such transfer or trade to Israel shall cease its transfer or trade until the state is satisfied that the goods and technology subject to the transfer or trade are not contributing to maintaining the unlawful occupation or to the commission of war crimes or genocide.”

When asked about the legal obligations of states, Pillay said, “You have to change your attitude in the way you treat these two states, Palestine and Israel. You have to distinguish between them, so one is an occupier and the other occupied. And the onus then lies on every state under international law to take steps not to cooperate with the occupation itself.”

Dismissing claims by the imperialist powers that the war began with the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel, Pillay declared, “History didn’t start on the seventh of October, and we have recorded again and again the huge violations that occurred historically. It’s the occupation.”

When asked to clarify the commission’s position that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is illegal, Sidoti gave a definitive answer: “We have defined it as an occupation. So has the International Court of Justice. This is now a decision taken by the most authoritative judicial body in the international system. There is no higher authority than the ICJ, and there is nowhere else to go to get a higher opinion or even an alternative opinion.”

He added, “So our opinion has been superseded by that of the most authoritative body in the international system, and it was the Court that said that states, individually and collectively, have a responsibility not to aid or assist the continuation of the occupation, the maintenance of the settlements, the establishment of new settlements.”

Despite categorical assertions of their concern, the United States and other imperialist powers are only deepening their collaboration with Israel in the Gaza genocide. This month, the United States sent 100 combat troops to Israel to directly participate in the war launched by Israel throughout the Middle East.

The genocide is continuing and accelerating. In a report Tuesday, the UN’s human rights office reported that Israel killed 343 people in seven separate recent “mass casualty incidents.” The report noted that “on 24 October, between 150 to 200 people were reportedly killed or injured when a residential block of eleven houses was hit in Jabalya refugee camp.” It added, “On 29 October, 93 Palestinians were killed or went missing under the rubble following an Israeli strike on a residential building in Beit Lahia.”

31 October 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Philip Giraldi

The sucking up to Israel and its backers by the political class in America never seems go away. Indeed, it if anything increases during the lead up to national elections. In the latest manifestation of Judeophilia, Rudy Giuliani, self-described as “America’s Mayor,” has now informed us that

“They [the Israelis] are our best friends. I worked for Ronald Reagan for eight years and Ronald Reagan said that we have to always be there for Israel always because Israel is always there for us! Hamas is not there for us, the Iranians are not there for us, they want to kill us and the Palestinians are taught to kill us at two years old! They won’t let a Palestinian in Jordan. They won’t let a Palestinian in Egypt. And [Kamala] Harris wants to bring them to you! They may have good people, I don’t care, but I won’t take a risk with people that are taught to kill Americans at two! I’m on the side of Israel! You’re on the side of Israel! Donald Trump is on the side of Israel! And they [the Democrats] are on the side of the terrorists.”

Giuliani said all that and more at a Donald Trump election rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden, where he was breathing fire in a speech [at minute 17:27] that one media outlet described as “unhinged” to rouse the overflow crowd to hate Israel’s enemies, which apparently includes the Democratic Party if they should regain the presidency. I would not want to disagree with a man of Giuliani’s psycho-phantasmagoric stature about facts, but I do not recall when the United States was actually threatened by Israel’s enemies to include Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran or a place we once called Palestine, but then again, I am getting older and my memory might be failing. Nor can I recall anything at all that Israel has done for what was once my country apart from take huge bundles of our tax money equivalent to one quarter of a trillion dollars while also corrupting our politicians and undermining both our rule of law and our Bill of Rights, but, then again, blame it on my memory since I cannot imagine a warm and friendly chap like Benjamin Netanyahu doing anything nasty or naughty.

AMB Chas Freeman : Will Israel Self-Destruct ?

In trying to score political points, Giuliani does not seem to get that the adoration of the Jewish state is a bipartisan thing, that the US government, no matter who wins elections, will continue to supply the Israelis with money and weapons to expel or kill as many of its neighbors as possible. The carnage will create a new metaphoric “land without people” empty space between the Euphrates and Nile Rivers that will become a great nursery for establishing and populating the Eretz or “Greater Israel” Chosen by Yahweh to rule the Middle East.

One good thing about Giuliani and his master Donald Trump is that they do not even pretend to want to help Palestinians and other “lesser breeds without the law” to resist the occupation and eradication by their Jewish masters. Trump would like to have the job of extermination finished so Israel’s public relations image would not be further damaged. Kamala, on the other hand, would keep handing out weapons and money while piously calling for a cease fire, an objective that is routinely rejected by a stern Netanyahu. How the Biden-Harris rule of foreign relations vis-à-vis the Middle East operates is to pretend one thing while doing something else. It has been reported that Biden’s peace negotiators Amos Hochstein, an Israeli who served in the IDF, and Brett McGurk, who were ostensibly working to help avoid expansion of the Gaza crisis into Lebanon, were doing quite the opposite. They have been working “behind the scenes” to encourage Israel, and they are now describing Israel’s Lebanon operations that have included a major land invasion as a “history-defining moment” — one that will “reshape the Middle East for the better for years to come.”

And there’s more. The US Ambassador to Lebanon one Lisa Johnson has been meeting with the various parties and groups that make up the Lebanese government and its social and religious mix with a proposal that it organize to prepare the country for a “post-Hezbollah era” by mobilizing “internal” forces to eliminate the Islamic resistance movement while it is engaged in fighting the Israeli Army. Johnson, a Joe Biden appointee to her post, certainly reflects White House and State Department thinking on the Middle East. She reportedly told Lebanese politicians,

“Israel cannot achieve everything through war; it’s time for you to do your part and launch an internal uprising under the banner of ‘Enough.’ The Lebanese people must show their desire to rise-up and get rid of Hezbollah.”

Johnson challenged the politicians,

“Why do you seem afraid? Hezbollah has been defeated, its leadership is destroyed, and we are with you, and the entire free world stands by your side… We do not only want to limit Hezbollah’s influence, but we will strike its support lines, and we are working non-stop to bring down the regime in Iran as well.”

Someone should remind Ms. Johnson as well as McGurk and Hochstein that we are not legally at war with Lebanon, nor with Iran, and nor even with the Palestinians whose genocide we are enabling.

The reality is that Gaza and Lebanon are America’s war in the sense that Israel’s onslaught against its neighbors would not be either possible or sustainable without Washington picking up the costs and supplying the weapons. A recently released report by the Israeli news outlet Calcalist reviewed Israeli military spending on wars since fighting began on October 7^th. It determined that Washington has over the past year funding directly 70% of Tel Aviv’s total military costs. That has amounted to more than $20 billion in military aid, a figure close to the $22.57 billion billion estimated by several US sources including Brown University’s highly respected Cost of War Project which has likewise looked at the numbers. And, one assumes there are also substantial hidden expenses consisting of armaments shipped directly from US arsenals without any accounting procedure as well as money concealed in other projects.

As a bottom line, one has to conclude without direct US support, Netanyahu’s war would simply be unaffordable for the Jewish state. Calcalist concludes that “Therefore, it is doubtful whether this war would have been conducted as it is – neither in intensity nor in scope – without the American assistance.” So in a very real sense it is and has been America’s war while the secret objective by the US government to destroy Hezbollah as well as Hamas and even overthrow the regime in Iran indicates clearly that Netanyahu’s hegemonical and genocidal plan to make Israel the supreme power in the Middle East is shared by many in Washington.

3 November  2024

Source: globalresearch.ca

By Iman Abid

For nine months this past year, I carried my Palestinian son, a baby born to grow the olive trees of tomorrow, born in the midst of unbearable pain for his people. I waited for his first breath as I witnessed death around me—the suffering of my people enduring a genocide that my child will inherit the resilience to resist.

I thought often of our Palestinian mothers who give birth to life while facing death, whose babies lie buried beside them under rubble, whose children never have the chance to simply live.

The juxtaposition of carrying life amid so much loss hasn’t left me; it drives me to fight for a world my son and all Palestinian children deserve.

I want him to know that even as he grew in my womb, we carried on. Through the exhaustion, the nausea, and the heartbreak, we pushed forward because our privilege of relative safety demands that we do. The guilt remains heavy—knowing I am here, able to hold my son, while so many mothers are grieving their own children. But I will continue to use this privilege to push forward every single day. I have no other choice.

Now, as I’m returning to work at USCPR, I’m met with both opportunity and stark political reality.

While we organize around Sen. Bernie Sanders’ historic Joint Resolutions of Disapproval to block Biden’s $20 billion in weapons that fuel genocide, we must acknowledge that these measures are unlikely to pass. That anti-Palestinian racism and AIPAC bribes run deep in Congress. That for the United States to use its power to end this genocide, we must first completely upend its political reality.

That is the work I am driven toward, and the work I am asking you to join me in today. If you’re able, please chip in to fuel our movement building efforts.

If you want to organize alongside us at the local, state, or federal levels, please check out USCPR’s newly updated Stop Gaza Genocide Toolkit.

It pains me more than you can know, but the fight for Palestinian liberation will not end this year. This genocide is unlikely to end this year. This election won’t change this. What happens on November 5 won’t end the suffering of our people.

This is the worst stage of the genocide yet, and now Israel is working to “finish the job.” Just yesterday, Israel banned the UNRWA aid agency to cut off Gaza from any little aid that remains and starve Palestinians to death.

While President Biden and Vice President Harris have repeatedly shifted their language as Israel’s genocide has become brazen, they have not shifted U.S. policy one inch. They are still sending the bombs that murder our children and our people.

Met with that reality, we have no choice but to do everything in our power to resist. To change the circumstances. To fight for our peoples’ right to live.

That includes both 1.) political advocacy to fight for an immediate arms embargo to halt weapons to Israel in Congress, and 2.) grassroots organizing for a People’s Arms Embargo to disrupt the weapons pipeline, targeting complicit corporations like Maersk and Chevron.

With enough grassroots power, with enough action for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS), and with enough people organizing and fighting for human rights year after year, we can and we will end the oppression of our people.

That’s why two weeks ago, I took my son to his first protest.

Whether it takes 1 year or 10, I am committed to fighting alongside you. For my son, for all of our children, and for everyone back home who doesn’t have the privilege of relative safety we in the U.S. do.

No matter who wins on November 5, we have a lot of work to do to build undeniable movement power, elect leaders who genuinely support Palestinian rights, and end U.S. military funding to Israel once and for all.

If you’re able, please chip in to sustain our work, or visit this toolkit to find ways to take action—whether through BDS tactics, mobilizing your community, or pressuring elected officials in your city council, your state legislature, or Congress.

Our people have a right to liberation, and with your support, we will make it happen.

Onward to liberation,

30 October 2024

Iman Abid
Organizing & Advocacy Director

Source: uscpraction.org

By Radha Surya

For the millionth time, Palestinians have won the moral victory.  Defiant to the very end the Hamas leader died fighting the genocidal occupier.  For an entire year the occupier insisted he was skulking in the tunnels and using the hostages of October 7, 2023 as human shields.  He had left the fighting and the dying to Hamas militants and abandoned civilians to the trauma and devastation of unrelenting aerial bombardment and ground invasion.  On October 16, 2024 unremitting Zionist propaganda was countered by the leader himself in a manner that exposed the baseness of the enemy in the most decisive way possible.  With the release of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) video  of the Hamas leader’s last moments, Israeli Zionists dealt the death blow to their own propaganda.

The sequence is well known to whoever is watching the genocide in the occupied Palestinian territories.  In an encounter that took place off camera, the Hamas leader and his comrades engaged Israeli soldiers equipped with state of the art armaments.  On the Palestinian side the combatants were limited by their primitive weaponry.  Following the firefight they separated and took refuge in bombed out buildings.  Somehow the Hamas leader managed to stagger and stumble into a building from which the owners had fled and collapse into an armchair.  Hunted for months with a bounty on his head and cornered by his enemies, he was crippled in his vastly unequal confrontation with the armed to the teeth occupier and his right hand had been severed.  With his single remaining arm he hurled a primitive missile at the automated emissary of the hated and despised occupier.  In a final—and culminating—act of resistance he brought down the drone that his cowardly antagonists had flown into the building to film him.  At the very moment of defeat and imminent death, the Hamas warrior seized victory and an honored place in the annals of armed resistance to colonial rule and oppression.

As images of the sorely wounded and dying Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s fierce defiance of the Israeli occupation spread across the world like wildfire and took the internet by storm, spin masters and genocide apologists in the mainstream Western media were filled with consternation.  At this moment surely chaos and uncertainty reigned in the newsrooms.  This was not the hoped for craven death that was to be gloated over, televised, live streamed and shared on social media around the world in the modern era’s equivalent of the triumphal processions of Roman conquerors.  The Western news media knew—who better than they–that the IDF video of the dying leader’s last moments would have a galvanizing effect on global viewers who had been taking to the streets since October 7 2023 in their thousands or tens even hundreds of thousands and calling for an end to Israel’s genocidal warfare in the occupied Palestinian territories.  They quailed when the possible termination of the Israeli campaign of extermination loomed before them.  No matter that the genocidal assault on a trapped and defenseless population, cut off from the world,  devoid of an air force and modern weaponry had been orchestrated with great enthusiasm by the US and other NATO powers.  No matter that the inexorable flow of arms could be expected to continue.  Somehow the sheen had to be stripped from the fallen leader’s dying moments.  Somehow it was incumbent on the media cheerleaders of genocide to swiftly put forth commentaries that imparted a negative spin to the heroic last stand of the leader of the Palestinian liberation movement.  Accordingly they swung into damage control mode.

And as they started pouring out their columns, one is reminded for the umpteenth time of the observation that has been made since the launch of the Israeli genocide in the occupied Palestinian territories—that without the willing dissemination of Zionist propaganda by the mainstream Western media, the genocide could never have continued into its second year.  “It is impossible to overstate the role that the incendiary media coverage played in the events that would unfold after Hamas and its allies broke down the fence that surrounds Gaza,” declared Jeremy Scahill of Drop Site News.  The New York Times occupies pride of place in this regard.  In mid April 2024, The Intercept published an exposé of a memo that showed the New York Times had instructed its journalists to limit the use of words like genocide and ethnic cleansing and to avoid using the phrase occupied territory when writing about Palestine.  Reporters were also asked to not to use the term refugee camps to refer to enclaves in Gaza where Palestinian refugees had settled when they fled the ethnic cleansing that went hand in hand with the founding of the state of Israel.  If the hundred years war on Palestine by colonial and post colonial powers was to be airbrushed out of history well the New York Times was more than happy to do that.  The right kind of lexicon was all that was needed.

The journalist Jason Burke’s Guardian article of October 17 follows the lexical recommendations of the New York Times.  In the entire article there is not a single mention of the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.  The article quotes the testimony of an Israeli former interrogator who said:  “He’s 1,000% committed and 1,000% violent, a very, very hard man.”  Well, if the inescapable and overpowering context of the Israeli occupation is excluded from the article, obviously Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s commitment to militant resistance will appear to result from an inherently violent personality.  Some of the points made by the journalist are truly risible.  For instance:  “Sinwar threw up a smokescreen, lulling Israel into false security…”   What exactly does that mean?  Is the leader of a resistance movement supposed to disclose military plans to the occupier by making a public announcement?  The article ends with:  “…he died as he had lived: with an unremitting commitment to Hamas and its ideology, and to violence.”  The implication seems to be Israeli warfare has an unremitting commitment to non-violence.  A merciful genocide perhaps?  The international security correspondent of the liberal Guardian newspaper seems unaware that UNGA resolution 37/43 affirms the right of occupied peoples to armed struggle.  Because his article emphasizes the Islamist ideology of Hamas, one would never find out that the Hamas movement seeks national liberation and an end to Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.  Readers are to be kept in the dark at all costs.

In the BBC article Yahya Sinwar: Who was the Hamas leader? the security correspondent Frank Gardner writes:  ‘An Israeli government assessment of Sinwar during his time in prison described his character as “cruel, authoritative, influential and with unusual abilities of endurance, cunning and manipulative, content with little… Keeps secrets even inside prison amongst other prisoners… Has the ability to carry crowds”.’  The assessment of Ehud Yaari, fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is also quoted in some detail.  Why for heaven’s sake is the expert opinion cited in the article limited to the input of an Israeli interrogator and the researcher at a pro-Israeli think tank?  Observers of the genocidal campaign in Gaza might be interested for instance in the views of the Palestinian analyst Tareq Baconi, author of a book on the Hamas movement.  But not the BBC or the BBC security correspondent.  Fo them, an informed Palestinian perspective on the crisis in the leadership of the Hamas movement holds zero interest.  Predictably the article gives a positive representation of Israel:  “Israelis feel they were lulled into a false sense of security in the mistaken belief that by offering Hamas economic incentives and more work permits, the movement would have lost its appetite for war.”  So the Israelis sought to maintain a nice, benign occupation and were foiled by the Hamas movement’s addiction to armed struggle against occupation.

Then there is the contribution of David Remnick, author and editor of the prestigious New Yorker magazine.  In The Killing of Yahya Sinwar, along with obligatory reminders of the Hamas leader’s ruthlessness and capacity for violence, we are told that the IDF’s photographs of the slain Yahya Sinwar showed “closeups of a gaunt Palestinian man with sharp cheekbones.”  A gaunt Palestinian man with sharp cheekbones?  The use of the word gaunt is surely ill-advised in the context of the savage genocide taking place in the occupied Palestinian territories.  That single word goes like a knife through the heart and the mind.  It’s merely a truism to say people become gaunt when they are subjected to starvation diet for more than a year.  Is David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker magazine, Pulitzer prize winner, author of several books, not aware of this elementary fact?   Northern Gaza is now the scene of a genocide within a genocide.  Among the hundreds of thousands who have been squeezed into a small space where food and aid supplies have been cut off since the beginning of October, there will be numerous gaunt men and women.  Let’s not even go into the issues of irreversible physiological and psychological damage to the survivors—if any–of a genocide that has entered its second year and shows no sign of being brought to a halt.

The parsing of mainstream commentaries that swiftly followed the release of the damaging IDF video of the dying Hamas leader could be continued ad infinitum.  Or ad nauseum.  The point has been made.  There’s nothing to be gained by a deep dive into what CNN said and the New York Times.  Or who regurgitated the fully debunked stories about the beheading of babies and the systematic weaponizing of sexual assault in the Hamas led attacks of October 7, 2023.  Like the altogether fictitious weapons of mass destruction used to create public support and justify the illegal and unconscionable invasion of Iraq in 2003, the stories of beheaded babies and women who were raped en masse will be laid to rest some day.  But the time for that has not come.  For now the atrocity propaganda is serving the essential purpose of justifying and sustaining the genocide in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Little wonder that presidential candidate Kamala Harris chose to revive the sexual assault propaganda in September in the presidential debate with Donald Trump:  “Women were horribly raped,” she claimed during the debate. “And so absolutely, I said then I say now Israel has a right to defend itself. We would.”  It would be surprising if there were no incidents of rape during the Hamas led attacks of October 7, 2023.  The allegation of weaponization and cold-blooded use of sexual assault by Hamas fighters is an altogether different matter.  It is on par with the deadly lies about Saddam Hussain’s weapons of mass destruction.  In the build up to the Bush administration’s illegal invasion of Iraq, the mainstream media led by the New York Times was fully on board with the administration’s push to war.  Speaking of the New York Times it is relevant to recall that the leading newspaper has yet to retract its sensational—and discredited–story of December 2023,  ‘Screams Without Words’:  Sexual Violence on Oct. 7.  The article begins by declaring “Hamas Subjected Israeli Women to Horrors Before Killing Them, Evidence Shows” and despite rambling on at great length fails to provide evidence that stands up to rigorous scrutiny.  The lurid allegations in the article were swiftly punctured in an item by item examination by the journalist Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada.  He brought out the unreliability of the NYT’s so called key witnesses–given that their stories have changed over time–and the complete absence of forensic evidence that substantiates their stories.  In its exposé of February 28 The Intercept concluded that the “Times’s mission was to bolster a predetermined narrative.”

For now some of the stories of the US-Israeli genocide linger in the public memory—eighteen year old Shaban al-Dalou, software engineering student who was burned alive still connected to an IV drip when Israeli bombing set fire to a tent camp of displaced Palestinians outside Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, five year old Hind Rajab, trapped for hours in a car from which she made desperate calls for assistance and killed by artillery from Israeli tanks, leading Gaza surgeon Adnan Al-Bursh,  head of orthopedics at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, captured by Israeli soldiers in December and declared dead in April after undergoing months of torture in an Israeli prison.  Soon these will be supplanted by the harrowing stories of more recent victims of the ongoing genocide.  And Yahya Sinwar?  The man who told the Italian journalist in 2018:  “I want the end of the siege. You walk to the beach at sunset and you see all these teenagers on the shore chatting and wondering what the world looks like across the sea. What life looks like…I want them to be free.”  What form will remembrance take?

Who dares to take the name of that foul monster Yahya Sinwar without condemning him with the strongest adjectives at their command?  Was he not a twenty-first century Genghis Khan whose terrorist, barbarian hordes breached the security fence behind which they had been safely entrapped and imprisoned in a siege that began in the 90’s as a result of the Oslo process and intensified as the decades went on?  Are we not speaking of a brutal and ruthless operator who masterminded the unprecedented surprise attacks in which thousands of baby killers and rapists broke out of their prison and poured into the territory wherein gentle, civilized Israelis resided?  Never mind the forefathers of present day Palestinian fighters had for centuries inhabited that very territory.  No matter parents and grandparents of Hamas militants had fled those villages in the ethnic cleansing that accompanied the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 or in subsequent expulsions of the native population.  The things that count for the ruling class of the Western world are the artfully invented stories of decapitation of forty Israeli babies and weaponization of sexual assault on Israeli women by Hamas fighters.  One can only hope those diabolical fictions will not be revived by some candidate in US elections four years from now.

The deaths of over 1100 Israelis still remains to be discussed here.  About 800 of those who died were civilians,  What goes unmentioned in the leading news media is the uncertainty about responsibility for civilian killings on October 7 and subsequent days.  The question of whether the Israeli army’s notorious Hannibal directive was implemented in thrusting back Hamas militants was raised as far back as October 2023 in the alternative news sources Electronic Intifada and Mondoweiss and revived by Israel’s Haaretz newspaper in July 2024.  Since then a meticulous year long investigation by the journalist Asa Winstanley of the Electonic intifada has shown that the number of Israelis who became collateral damage as Israeli forces struggled to repel Hamas fighters is far higher than previously thought.  The journalist’s conclusions are based on information found in unimpeachable sources such as Israeli news reports and a UN Human Rights Council report.  What remains once the atrocity propaganda has been refuted and the Israeli hand in the killing of Israeli citizens exposed?  The answer is—a spectacularly successful hostage taking operation intended to obtain the freedom of thousands of Palestinians held for years in Israeli prisons, many of them without being charged.  Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was held in Israeli prisons for 22 years.  After his release in a prisoner exchange in 2011, he regarded it as his moral duty to secure the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody.

Armchair analysts have no conception of the treacherous terrain in which revolutionaries operate beset as they are by prowling enemies who are constantly seeking internal collaborators who will undermine the movement from within.  We want our revolutionaries and leaders of movements for national liberation to be saintly and pure as driven snow.  Robespierre fails that test.  So do Lenin and Che Guevara.  Yahya Sinwar was far from being merely a sweet and gentle theorist of revolutionary and anti-colonial, anti-imperialist politics.  The words of the Irish poet WB Yeats come to mind as one reflects on the life of Yahya Sinwar and the complexities of his personality and his politics:

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone…
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart…
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died.  (Easter 1916)

Theirs was an anti-colonial struggle in a different era.  Thankfully (or so one thinks in the time of genocide) their colonizer was not genocidal.

Yahya Sinwar’s parents were refugees who had been violently uprooted from their native village of al-Majdal Asqalan in historic Palestine in Israel’s ethnic cleansings of 1948.  Historic Palestine’s village of Al-Majdal Asqalan has since been appropriated into the present day Israeli city of Ashkalon.  Yahya Sinwar was born in 1962 in a refugee camp in Khan Younis, Gaza.  In his boyhood as well as throughout his adult life, he was placed on a collision course with a brutal and violent occupation that inexorably tightened its stranglehold over the Palestinian territories.  In his last recorded interview in 2021 with Vice news journalist Hind Hassan the so-called terrorist reasoned as follows:  The battle between us and the occupation…is an open ended battle. We know that we don’t want war or fighting because it costs lives, and our people deserve peace. For long periods of time we’ve tried peaceful resistance…Unfortunately the world stood by and watched as the occupation war machine killed our young people…What are we supposed to do? Should we raise the white flag? That is not going to happen.”  He was far from being an apostle of non-violence. Throughout his life and with his dying breath he fought the occupation of his homeland with all the strength at his command. He dedicated his remarkable abilities to the cause of the liberation of his homeland. His untimely death in the second year of the US-Israeli genocide denied him the joy or the relief of witnessing the event and the process that he had envisioned.

Radha Surya is a freelance writer. Her articles have appeared on Znet and Countercurrents.

30 October 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Palestinian Territory – Euro-Med Monitor strongly condemns the Israeli parliament’s two new laws banning UNRWA from operating in Israel and barring Israeli authorities from interacting with the organisation. These laws represent a direct attack on the United Nations, international law, and humanity, and put millions of Palestinian refugees at risk of deprivation of what remains of their basic human rights.

The Israeli parliament, the Knesset, overwhelmingly approved two draft laws that would effectively and completely remove the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) from the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The first law forbids the organisation from operating in East Jerusalem, while the second law effectively paralyses the organisation’s operations in the rest of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip by forbidding communication between the agency and Israeli authorities. Given Israel’s complete control over the Occupied Palestinian Territory, evidenced by its military checkpoints and barriers throughout the West Bank; Palestinians’ need for permits to enter or work in East Jerusalem; and the arbitrary siege of the Gaza Strip; the agency will not be able to function and carry out its activities without coordination with Israel.

In the Gaza Strip, over two million Palestinians—the majority of whom are refugees—face imminent death due to Israeli crimes of starvation as well as deprivation of medical care and basic life-saving materials amid ongoing killings, attacks, and suffering due to widespread physical injuries. UNRWA will likely become unable to provide humanitarian aid, education, health care, and other basic services that serve as the main lifeline for millions of Palestinian refugees, half of whom are children. As a result, Israel is denying these individuals of their basic rights.

Israel’s insistence on legalising its years-long series of actions against UNRWA is tantamount to declaring war on the Palestinian refugee community, one of the most vulnerable groups in Palestinian society. At a time when they are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance, Israel continues to prevent them from returning to the homes and lands from which they were forcibly displaced. The majority of these refugees are experiencing a serious decline in all aspects of their lives as a result of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, ongoing for more than a year now, as well as its military actions and all-encompassing siege.

Israel is determined to demonstrate to the world that it sets itself above the United Nations, UN agencies, and international law in general, and has consistently maintained a hostile posture toward UNRWA, accusing the UN agency of sustaining the Palestinian refugee crisis by granting refugee status to generations.

Following a string of earlier crimes by Israel, such as the killing of 233 UNRWA staff members in the Gaza Strip and the destruction of roughly two-thirds of its facilities in the enclave, UNRWA’s work will be further undermined by Israel’s new ban. This is a dark chapter in the history of the global system, which is headed by the UN. The intergovernmental organisation has failed to defend even its own agencies, workspaces, and decisions.

In an attempt to end the Palestinian refugee crisis, evade its legal obligations, and avoid any future legal ramifications, Israel is taking advantage of the shameful international silence surrounding all of its crimes. Its elimination of UNRWA is intended to prolong famine and deny the Gaza Strip’s population access to essential services in the context of the ongoing genocide, forcing the Strip’s inhabitants to relocate and thereby paving the way for Israel’s proposed “solutions”—all of which infringe upon the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and to sovereignty over their territory. Israel’s most recent efforts have involved separating the populace into distinct, fenced-in, and besieged communities, and then contracting with private American businesses to distribute humanitarian supplies.

In its recent advisory opinion on the illegality of Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, the International Court of Justice stated that closing UNRWA’s headquarters in East Jerusalem—illegally occupied Palestinian territory—is a blatant violation of both the UN Charter and international law. Additionally, the application of Israeli laws in this area is a violation of both the rules of international law and Israel’s obligations as an occupying power.

Furthermore, Israeli legal experts violate the International Court of Justice’s ruling, which includes precautionary measures related to facilitating the entry of humanitarian aid to the Palestinians through the United Nations. Israel’s actions will further hinder the UN agency’s work and put the entire international humanitarian response in the Gaza Strip, which is experiencing alarming levels of food insecurity and famine, at risk.

Despite the fact that the two laws against UNRWA will go into effect 90 days after they are passed, the Israeli Knesset has claimed that the organisation is a vital lifeline for the Palestinian people, because it offers social, health, and educational services to approximately 5.7 million Palestinian refugees spread across camps in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, and Syria.

An estimated 1.7 million people, or more than 70% of the Palestinian refugee population, are refugees in the Gaza Strip who rely on UNRWA’s services to help them manage their lives in the wake of the Israeli blockade that has been in place since 2006.

Since its founding in 1949 to aid Palestinian refugees in the Middle East, UNRWA has played a significant role on the global stage. It has both provided services and served as a symbol to remind the international community of its obligation to address the Palestinian refugee problem in a just and lasting way while also meeting the population’s humanitarian needs and ensuring its safety.

The legal status that international law guarantees Palestinian refugees has not been, and will not be, impacted by Israel’s repeated attempts to abolish UNRWA or its total and categorical denial of its legal obligations to these refugees after causing them suffering for more than 70 years.

By prohibiting UNRWA’s operations, Israel is disregarding all international calls to guarantee the entry of humanitarian supplies into the Gaza Strip and stop the famine there from worsening.

The world’s nations, including the United States—which has not yet resumed funding the international organisation—must publicly support UNRWA, fully fund it, and demand that Israel repeal the new laws intended to stop the agency’s work. Israel must also be compelled by the international community to permit UNRWA and other international humanitarian agencies to continue operating in the Gaza Strip and across the entire Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor is a Geneva-based independent organization with regional offices across the MENA region and Europe

30 October 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Jake Johnson

Humanitarian groups and United Nations officials issued dire warnings Tuesday about the potentially catastrophic consequences of Israeli lawmakers’ vote to ban the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, the body primarily responsible for delivering lifesaving aid to the people of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

James Elder, a spokesperson for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said Tuesday that if the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is unable to operate due to the measures passed overwhelmingly by the Israeli Knesset on Monday, “it’ll likely see the collapse of the humanitarian system in Gaza.”

“So a decision such as this suddenly means that a new way has been found to kill children,” said Elder.

The legislation that Israeli lawmakers passed in a 92-10 vote bars UNRWA—a frequent target of Israeli smear campaigns and military attacks—from operating or providing “any service” within “in the sovereign territory of the state of Israel.”

Israeli lawmakers also passed a measure declaring UNRWA a “terror” group, barring Israeli officials from engaging in any contact with the agency.

The Guardiannoted that the newly passed measures—which are set to be implemented within 90 days—are “expected to lead to the closure of UNRWA’s East Jerusalem headquarters and would effectively block the delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza via Rafah.”

“The severing of diplomatic relations would preclude Israel from issuing entry and work permits to foreign UNRWA staff and prevent coordination with the Israeli military to permit aid shipments,” the newspaper added.

Agnès Callamard, the secretary-general of Amnesty International, warned in a statement Tuesday that the measures represent “an outright attack on the rights of Palestinian refugees.”

“It is clearly designed to make it impossible for the agency to operate in the occupied Palestinian territory by forcing the closure of the UNRWA headquarters in East Jerusalem and ending visas for its staff,” said Callamard. “It amounts to the criminalization of humanitarian aid and will worsen an already catastrophic humanitarian crisis.”

“This appalling, inhumane law will only exacerbate the suffering of Palestinians, who have endured unimaginable hardship since the horrific attacks by Hamas and other armed groups in southern Israel one year ago, and whose need for global support is greater than ever. The international community must be quick to condemn it in the strongest possible terms and exert any influence they have on the Israeli government to repeal it.”

The U.N. General Assembly established UNRWA in the aftermath of the 1948 Nakba, and the agency is central to humanitarian operations in the famine-stricken Gaza Strip—a role that aid groups described as necessary and irreplaceable. According to a World Health Organization official, roughly a third of the healthcare workers assisting the polio vaccination campaign in Gaza work with UNRWA.

“UNRWA plays a critical role in serving civilians in desperate need in Gaza,” the International Rescue Committee (IRC) said Tuesday. “Humanitarian actors rely on coordination with UNRWA to deliver aid and alleviate suffering. UNRWA cannot be replaced by NGOs like IRC.”

“The bill passed in the Israeli parliament is an unprecedented attack on a U.N. agency and, if implemented, would only worsen the humanitarian catastrophe,” IRC added. “We strongly urge that this legislation is not applied. We continue to advocate for an immediate ceasefire to get aid in, to release the hostages, and to meet the growing and dire needs of the civilian population.”

Sam Rose, deputy director of UNRWA affairs in Gaza, said in a CNN interview that “the entire humanitarian system” in the Palestinian enclave “relies every minute of every day on UNRWA to deliver services to 2 million people living in the worst possible conditions.”

Implementation of the ban, Rose warned, “would be devastating for us, devastating for other aid agencies—but more importantly, for the population here that’s suffering so much.”

Jake Johnson is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.

30 October 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Andre Damon

In the worst single massacre since Israel launched its campaign to ethnically cleanse Northern Gaza this month, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bombed a five-story residential building in the town of Beit Lahia Tuesday, killing 93 people, including 25 children.

That day, at least 143 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes throughout Gaza, with the vast majority—132—killed in Northern Gaza, Al Jazeera reported.

With the Palestinian civil defense almost entirely out of commission due to targeting by Israeli troops, dozens of people remained buried under the rubble, where they will most likely die awaiting rescue.

“A number of victims are still under the rubble and on the roads, and ambulance and civil defense crews cannot reach them,” Gaza’s health ministry said in a statement.

Footage from the scene of the horrific Israeli massacre in Beit Lahiya, North Gaza where at least 93 civilians, including 25 children

Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for the Palestinian civil defense agency, said “There are appeals and stress calls for Civil Defense teams to save the wounded,” but civil defense forces have been either arrested by Israeli troops or “forcibly displaced due to the Israeli aggression in North Gaza.”

Witness Ismail Ouaida said in a video verified by Reuters, “There are tens of martyrs (dead)—tens of displaced people who were living in this house. The house was bombed without prior warning. As you can see, martyrs are here and there, with body parts hanging on the walls.”

Another survivor, a Palestinian mother, told Al Jazeera, “Both my sons with their entire families were killed. My unmarried daughter was also killed. And my other daughter with her five children. All killed. What wrong did they do? What did those innocent people do to be slaughtered like this?”

The health ministry said in a statement Tuesday that the wounded will not receive medical care as nearby doctors had been forced by Israeli troops to evacuate at gunpoint. “Critical cases without intervention will succumb to their destiny and die,” the ministry said in a statement.

With consummate hypocrisy, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller called the bombing a “horrifying incident with a horrifying result.” In reality, the massacre is completely in keeping with US policy. The Biden administration has provided Israel with more than 14,000 2,000-pound bombs, which have been used to systematically target populated areas with the deliberate aim of killing as many people as possible.

Last week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss the so-called “General’s Plan” to ethnically cleanse Northern Gaza. Despite Netanyahu’s refusal to publicly disavow the plan, Blinken emerged from the meeting to give a blanket statement of support for Israel’s “right to defend itself.”

The official death toll in the Gaza genocide now stands at over 43,000 with tens of thousands more still missing and likely buried under the rubble. An article published in The Lancet earlier this year estimated the actual death toll—including from the effects of starvation and disease—as exceeding 186,000.

The massacre in Beit Lahia is part of a systematic effort by Israel to ethnically cleanse Northern Gaza through bombing and starvation and to kill everyone that remains. Over the past three weeks, at least 700 people have been killed in Northern Gaza as part of this campaign. At the start of this month, there were 400,000 people remaining in Northern Gaza. Now, that figure is estimated at around 100,000 people, with those that remain completely without food, fuel or medical supplies.

Tuesday’s massacre followed the passage by Israel’s parliament of a law banning the UN relief agency UNRWA from operating inside Gaza, further dismantling any remaining humanitarian operations in the region. UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini described the move as “nothing less than collective punishment,” declaring that the move violates the UN Charter and violates the State of Israel’s obligations under international law.

In a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, UN chief Antonio Guterres said that the move would have “devastating consequences” for Palestinians. “Israel, as the occupying power, continues to be required to ensure that the needs of the population are met.”

Stephane Dujarric, a spokesperson for Guterres, said that “UNRWA is the principal means by which essential assistance is supplied to Palestine refugees in the occupied Palestinian territory, and there is no alternative to UNRWA,” adding that “UNRWA is indispensable.”

James Elder, a spokesman for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), warned, “If UNRWA is unable to operate, you would likely see the collapse of the humanitarian system in Gaza. … So a decision such as this suddenly means that a new way has been found to kill children.”

The amount of aid entering the Gaza Strip has fallen to the lowest level since the start of the genocide, the UN said. Only 704 trucks of humanitarian aid entered Gaza between October 1 and October 22, compared to the already extremely low level of 3,000 truckloads in September. “The areas that are being depopulated right now have received nothing,” Scott Paul, Oxfam America’s director for peace and security, said.

According to the IPC (Integrated Food Security Phase Classification), a global initiative for measuring food security, nearly 800,000 people in Gaza are facing “emergency” or “catastrophe” levels of hunger. The UN’s World Food Program warned that “by November more than 90% of Gaza’s population will face severe food insecurity.” In a statement, the UN’s World Food Program said that only 5,000 tons of food has entered Gaza this month.

The hospitals are facing total breakdown. Hussam Abu Safia, director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Northern Gaza, told Al Jazeera that “The hospital is left with no resources. No medical supplies and no medical staff.” He continued, “This is because many of our specialized doctors and surgeons have been detained. It is only me together with a single pediatrician—who cannot perform any surgery on the wounded—that are left inside the hospital. Above all, patients and the injured are strewn all over the hospital floor.”

Meanwhile, Israeli forces continued to push further north into Lebanon, with 77 people killed in strikes throughout the country. In a first-hand report, Al Jazeera wrote, “On Monday, the Israeli army set about maniacally bombarding the southern Lebanese coastal city of Tyre, striking residential buildings and converting the scene into a typical Israeli-induced horrorscape. Israel does its best to bomb the life out of Tyre.” The city is one of humanity’s oldest continuously-inhabited urban areas and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

On Tuesday, Israeli officials threatened further strikes on Iran following a bombardment of military facilities over the weekend. “We will once again know how to reach Iran, with capabilities that we did not even use this time,” said Herzi Halevi, chief of the Israeli military’s general staff.

30 October 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- As Israel continues to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza under a plan labeled ‘the Generals’ Plan,’ witnesses describe horrifying scenes of suffering, deprivation, and death unfolding daily. Blocked from receiving life-saving aid, civilians are left to fend for themselves under conditions that officials and human rights advocates decry as a systematic strategy of starvation and extermination.

Dr. Ezzedine Shaheen, a local physician, shared a heartbreaking account from Jabalia, where Yusuf, a young boy, is wounded and bleeding. “He’s bleeding from his neck and eye,” he said. “One of the neighbors tried to bandage him, but the bleeding hasn’t stopped since morning. He’s leaning against a red car on Al-Ajarama Street.”

With no ambulances, doctors, or emergency resources available, Shaheen pleads for awareness: “This is what’s happening in northern Gaza… and anyone who reads this and remains silent is complicit in this crime.”

In Beit Lahia, survivors of Al-Louh massacre echo these sentiments. According to Dr. Munir al-Bursh, Director General of the Ministry of Health in Gaza, survivors are calling urgently for medical aid amidst complete devastation of civil and medical services. “Israel’s ongoing blockade has crippled humanitarian agencies,” Al-Bursh said. “There’s no support left here.”

[https://twitter.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1851329715933438137]

People on the ground are left as both victims and responders in the crisis. Al Jazeera reporter Hossam Shabat poignantly captured the harrowing reality: “My brother is my medic, my mother pulls me from the rubble, my neighbor is my healer. The wounded are also the rescuers and the martyrs.”

Journalist Abdul Qader Sabah highlighted how futile appeals to the Civil Defense have become. “Appeals are met with silence; #CivilDefense is completely paralyzed by the unrelenting Israeli assault, with personnel either detained or displaced.”

One of the most devastating massacres in recent days took place in Beit Lahia’s Abu Nasr neighborhood. Dr. Ezzedine Shaheen, who lives nearby, reported that “over 150 people were killed or went missing in a single morning… The bodies of children lay mingled with the rubble and steel. Those faces, many of whom I knew, are no longer here.” Shaheen added that no ambulances came to retrieve the dead, who were eventually loaded onto carts pulled by donkeys. “A large extended family that always filled the neighborhood with noise and commotion; they were all killed by Israel, and the world kept turning without anyone stopping to read their names. They couldn’t find an ambulance to transport them, nor anyone to pray over them or mourn their bodies. O God, this is the end of times; we believe in You and Your noble Prophet. In this way, everyone in Gaza awaits their turn in the massacre, waiting to see how Israel will slaughter us, who will remain, and who will die. There is no escape from human fate, but how can our deaths be so transient and easy? And no one can stop the monster? There is no power and no strength except through God.”

“They were a family of poor, destitute people; no one paid attention to the quality of their lives or their deaths. No one mourned for them, no protests were organized, and their deaths did not create any uproar. They quietly slipped from life to death, buried in the market. They couldn’t find ambulances to transport them, and their bodies were simply piled onto carts pulled by donkeys.”

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Elsewhere, Mohammed Haniyeh from SAND News Agency described one mother’s agonizing search for her daughter Haneen. “Haneen, just 26, was frail and her mother searched for her remains through the ruins.”

Gaza’s Civil Defense released statements pleading for international intervention as they face their seventh consecutive day of incapacitation due to Israel’s blockade. “We are unable to respond to countless pleas for help from homes bombarded in Jabalia,” said Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson for the Civil Defense. “To the international community: northern Gaza is being slaughtered from vein to vein.”

Quds News Network (QNN) is the largest independent and comprehensive Palestinian youth electronic news network.

30 October 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak

The simmering border conflict between India and China in the Himalayan region has come to an end, with both nations committing to cooperate in resolving their border disputes. Both countries recognise that such conflicts hinder the progress of peace and prosperity in the region, posing obstacles to establishing a multipolar world and the democratisation of global geopolitics. This diplomatic achievement has disrupted the agenda of imperialist blocs that sought to escalate the conflict into a full-blown war between India and China, threatening peace, stability, and prosperity in both countries and around the world.

The border conflict between India and China acted as a key catalyst for reviving NATO’s waning influence by promoting the establishment of an “Asian NATO” through the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD), comprising Australia, Japan, India, and the United States. The QUAD considers itself as ‘a force of good’ for regional peace and security. In reality, the QUAD is neither designed to promote peace in Asia nor to promote mechanisms for resolving colonial-era border conflicts within the region. India was drawn into this desperate attempt to establish the QUAD, which aims to contain both India and China, facilitating continued imperialist and neo-colonial exploitation of Asia’s natural resources and people while expanding hegemonic imperialist control over world. So, the India-China cooperation and the decline of QUAD are positive developments for peace in Asia and the world.

Trilateral military and security alliances such as AUKUS and JAUKUS, involving Japan, Australia, the UK, and the US, are designed not only to contain China but also to contain India in the future. The containment of China is not a policy specific to China, but rather a strategy employed by imperialist Western countries led by the US to undermine all post-colonial nations and their efforts to free themselves from various forms of colonialism. The imperialist and colonial bloc led by these countries is intolerant of peace and prosperity in Asia, Africa, Middle East and Latin America. The strategies of wars, conflicts and containments are central to their imperialist and colonial hegemony, as well as the exploitation of natural and human resources. The military-industrial complex continues to serve as the foundation of all imperialist ventures aimed at upholding the interests of corporate capitalism in its various forms. It undermines cooperation and human solidarity, transforming these values into conflicts in the name of democracy, religion, culture, territory, and the sovereignty of the nation-states.

The Westphalian ideology and its narratives surrounding territorial national interests serve the corporate interests promoted by imperialist countries led by the US. India-China cooperation must move away from narrow territorial national interests and instead prioritise the interests of the people beyond borders. This approach can offer alternatives to the militarised capitalism perpetuated by European and American ruling and non-ruling hegemons. There is no alternative to be found within European and American exceptionalism. It only perpetuates wars and conflicts in the name of democracy and human rights while keeping people marginalised and deprived of a dignified life.

In the context of the broader interests of working people, cooperation between India and China must embrace an internationalist outlook that extends beyond merely resolving border disputes. It should aim to establish long-term mechanisms that promote anti-imperialist and anti-colonial global institutions, to ensure the democratisation of international politics and the consolidation of global peace and stability. As imperialist powers fuel wars and conflicts to conceal their failures and sustain their dominance, people worldwide continue to suffer. Working people in Europe and the United States are increasingly experiencing the impacts of corporate-driven imperialist hegemony and exploitation. Therefore, major countries like India and China have a shared responsibility to collaborate in pursuit of global peace and the prosperity of all working people.

Bhabani Shankar Nayak is a political commentator

29 October 2024

Source: countercurrents.org