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‘Crime Against Humanity’: UN Inquiry Details Israeli ‘Extermination’ of Gaza Healthcare

Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Palestinian paramedic Maha Wafi, 43, walks past destroyed ambulances destroyed by Israeli attacks in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on September 15, 2024. (Photo: Bashar Taleb/AFP via Getty Images)

“Israel must immediately stop its unprecedented wanton destruction of healthcare facilities in Gaza,” the head of the inquiry stressed.

For the second time this year, a United Nations commission tasked with investigating Israel’s conduct during its yearlong invasion and blockade of Gaza has found that the U.S.-armed Israeli military is committing crimes against humanity against Palestinians.

The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory released a report Thursday detailing how “Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.”

“The commission also investigated the treatment of Palestinian detainees in Israel and of Israeli and foreign hostages in Gaza since October 7, 2023 and concluded that Israel and Palestinian armed groups are responsible for torture and sexual and gender-based violence,” the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said in a summary of the report.

The report cites the U.N. World Health Organization’s findings that Israel carried out 498 attacks on healthcare facilities in the Gaza Strip between October 7, 2023—when Hamas launched the deadliest-ever attack on Israel—and July 30, 2024.

“A total of 747 persons were killed directly in those attacks, and 969 others were injured, and 110 facilities were affected,” the publication states. The report calls the attacks “widespread and systematic.”

The commission continued:

Israeli security forces carried out air strikes against hospitals, causing considerable damage to buildings and surroundings, as well as multiple casualties; surrounded and besieged hospital premises; prevented the entry of goods and medical equipment and exit/entry of civilians; issued evacuation orders but prevented safe evacuations; and raided hospitals, arresting hospital staff and patients. Israeli security forces also obstructed access by humanitarian agencies.

“Israel must immediately stop its unprecedented wanton destruction of healthcare facilities in Gaza,” said commission chair Navi Pillay. “By targeting healthcare facilities, Israel is targeting the right to health itself with significant long-term detrimental effects on the civilian population. Children in particular have borne the brunt of these attacks, suffering both directly and indirectly from the collapse of the health system.”

OHCHR said that “attacks on medical facilities in Gaza, particularly those devoted to pediatric and neonatal care, have led to incalculable suffering of child patients, including newborns.”

“In continuing these attacks, Israel has violated children’s right to life, denied children access to basic healthcare, and deliberately inflicted conditions of life resulting in the destruction of generations of Palestinian children and, potentially, the Palestinian people as a group,” the agency added.

The commission’s inquiry found that as of July 15, “113 ambulances had been attacked and at least 61 had been damaged,” including vehicles used by the U.N., International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), and other organizations.

“Access was also reduced owing to closure of areas by Israeli security forces, [and] delays in coordination of safe routes, checkpoints, searches, or destruction of roads,” the report notes.

The commission investigated the January 29 attack that killed 6-year-old Hind Rajab and six of her relatives, as well as two paramedics who had Israeli permission to attempt to rescue them.

“They were attacked while trying to evacuate in their car,” the report said of the family. “The ambulance, carrying two paramedics, Yousef Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoun, was dispatched after its route had been coordinated with Israeli security forces. It was hit by a tank shell at a distance of some 50 meters from the family’s car.”

“Hind was still alive at the time that the ambulance was dispatched,” the publication noted. “The presence of Israeli security forces in the area prevented access. As a result, the family members’ bodies could not be retrieved from their bullet-ridden car until 12 days after the incident.”

Israel Defense Forces officials have repeatedly claimed that no IDF troops were in the area at the time of the attack. Multiple journalistic investigations, including one published Tuesday by Sky News, showed that Israeli tank and machine gun fire killed the family and paramedics.

The new report’s authors also noted that “hundreds of medical personnel, including three hospital directors and the head of an orthopedic department, as well as patients and journalists were arrested by Israeli security forces” during raids on Gaza medical facilities.

“Reportedly, 128 health workers remain detained by Israeli authorities as of July 15, including four PRCS staff members,” the publication states.

“The institutionalized mistreatment of Palestinian detainees, a longstanding characteristic of the occupation, took place under direct orders from the Israeli minister in charge of the prison system, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and was fueled by Israeli government statements inciting violence and retribution,” said OHCHR.

The commission report also detailed crimes committed by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups against Israelis on and after October 7, 2023, when more than 1,100 Israelis and others were killed—at least some by so-called “friendly fire” and under the fratricidal Hannibal Directive—and over 240 people abducted.

Hostages “were mistreated to inflict physical pain and severe mental suffering, including physical violence, abuse, sexual violence, forced isolation, limited access to hygiene facilities, water and food, threats and humiliation,” OHCHR said. “Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups committed the war crimes of torture, inhuman or cruel treatment, and the crimes against humanity of enforced disappearance and other inhumane acts causing great suffering or serious injury.”

In June, the same U.N. commission found Israel’s far-right government responsible for a range of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip, including “extermination, torture, forcible transfer, and the use of starvation as a weapon of warfare.”

Over the course of its 370-day assault on Gaza, Israeli forces have killed at least 42,010 Palestinians in the coastal enclave—most of them women and children—and wounded more than 97,700 others, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health and international agencies.

At least 10,000 Palestinians are missing and believed to be dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed buildings. Israel’s “complete siege” of Gaza has forcibly displaced more than 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, and has contributed to the starvation and sickening of hundreds of thousands of Gazans.

Israel is on trial for genocide at the U.N. International Court of Justice. Meanwhile, International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders—at least one of whom, political chief Ismail Haniyeh, has been assassinated—for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including extermination.

Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue Reading‘Crime Against Humanity’: UN Inquiry Details Israeli ‘Extermination’ of Gaza Healthcare

Green Groups Blast ‘Reckless, Unscientific’ EU Carbon Capture Plans

Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Greenpeace activists light up a mock bomb labeled “CO2” during a campaign in front of the German Chancellery in Berlin on March 25, 2009.
 (Photo: Michael Gottschalk/DDP/AFP via Getty Images.

As attendees gathered in the south of France Thursday for the start of a European Union-hosted summit on carbon capture and storage, an international coalition of green groups warned against funding “reckless, unscientific, and lobbyist-driven” false climate solutions and instead urged investment in “a just transition that prioritizes renewable energy, energy demand reduction, and energy efficiency.”

“Today the Industrial Carbon Management Forum (ICMF) kicks off in Pau, France,” 43 organizations wrote in a letter to the European Commission. “This forum has been revealed to be dominated by fossil fuel interests to the exclusion of civil society stakeholders and other expert voices with critical views.”

The letter points to a report published Thursday by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), which concluded that “most of Europe’s planned carbon capture and storage (CCS) applications are too expensive to work on a commercial basis and are nowhere near ready to be rolled out.”

According to the report, Europe’s planned CCS projects will cost an estimated €520 billion ($569 billion), which IEEFA energy finance analyst and report author Andrew Reid said “will force European governments to introduce eye-wateringly high subsidies to prop up a technology that has a history of failure.”

The green groups’ letter also notes widespread criticism of CCS, which has been panned by Food & Water Watch—whose European branch signed the letter—as a “false climate solution” and a “lifeline for the fossil fuel industry.”

The signers wrote that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “has labeled CCS as one of the most costly and least effective emissions reduction methods, and an Oxford study found high-CCS pathways could cost $30 trillion more globally than renewable alternatives,” the signers wrote, referring to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The letter continues:

As well as being prohibitively expensive, plans for carbon capture and storage (CCS) at scale face overwhelming technical challenges and the records show 50 years of failure. Even with $83 billion in investment since the ’90s, research found that nearly 80% of large-scale projects fail. The industry itself has acknowledged that for all these efforts, only 52 metric tons of carbon dioxide have ever been stored long-term, highlighting the unlikeliness of achieving the E.U.’s stated goal of storing 280 metric tons of CO2 by 2040…

The union has already spent over €3 billion ($3.3 billion) on CCS and hydrogen projects—hydrogen is often paired with CCS to attempt to capture the carbon dioxide emissions released during hydrogen production from fossil fuels in order to label hydrogen a low-carbon fuel. However, this ignores the ineffectiveness of CCS to reduce emissions and the continued use of fossil fuels in the process.

“We cannot afford to give further investments to the fossil fuel industry to gamble with our future and our tax money,” the green groups stressed. “Money allotted to CCS would be better spent on the communities and countries that need it most and on ensuring a full and fair phaseout of fossil fuels.”

In stark contrast, E.U. Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson said during the opening session of the CCS summit that the 27-nation bloc’s climate target plan “underlines that industrial carbon management is not just an alternative, it is a vital complement to renewable energy and energy efficiency.”

The letter’s signers are calling on E.U. policymakers to:

  • Stop wasting money on CCS projects and commit to a full phaseout of fossil fuels;
  • Reject the influence of the fossil fuel industry;
  • Commit to a full consideration of the scientific and real-world evidence of CCS’ failures, limitations, and challenges; and
  • Invest instead in real climate, health, and nature solutions that deliver a transition to a clean, healthy, and safe economy.

“The current fossil fuel industry influence on the E.U.’s carbon capture policy undermines the E.U.’s ability to meet its climate goals and responsibilities, and is damaging its reputation and leadership,” the groups asserted. “Rejecting the influence of the fossil fuel industry and investing in climate action that can actually deliver emissions cuts and steer a just transition from the fossil fuel economy is crucial if the E.U. is to deliver real solutions for climate, nature, and people.”

Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue ReadingGreen Groups Blast ‘Reckless, Unscientific’ EU Carbon Capture Plans

Nobel peace prize awarded to Japanese atomic bomb survivors’ group for its efforts to free the world of nuclear weapons

Toshiki Fujimori (left) and Terumi Tanaka, hibakusha and members of Nihon Hidankyo. Aflo Co. Ltd. / Alamy Stock Photo

Eirini Karamouzi, University of Sheffield and Luc-André Brunet, The Open University

The 2024 Nobel peace prize has been awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese grassroots organisation created by survivors of the two US atomic bombs that were dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

The Norwegian Nobel committee recognised the organisation “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again”.

Discussion of the bombings, which killed more than 100,000 Japanese people, was largely a taboo in the immediate post-war period. This was, in part, thanks to American press censorship in occupied Japan.

But, in 1954, an American nuclear weapons test at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean produced such extensive radioactive fallout that it affected a Japanese fishing boat, the Lucky Dragon, causing one death from radiation poisoning.

The Lucky Dragon incident prompted many of the atomic bomb survivors, who are known as the hibakusha, to speak out about their experiences. And it was within this context that Nihon Hidankyo was created in 1956.

Since then, the hibakusha have played an immeasurable role in activism against nuclear weapons worldwide. Their testimony, the Nobel committee said, has “helped to generate and consolidate widespread opposition to nuclear weapons around the world”.

The destroyed city of Hiroshima after it was bombed in 1945.
The US detonated an atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6 1945. Shutterstock

In 1975, for example, a group of hibakusha that included Setsuko Thurlow, a member of Nihon Hidankyo and a globally renowned campaigner against nuclear weapons, organised an exhibition on the atomic bombings at the Toronto public library.

This helped trigger the development of a significant anti-nuclear movement in Canada. By the early 1980s, tens of thousands of Canadians regularly demonstrated against their government’s support for US nuclear weapons.

Then, in 1984, another survivor of the Hiroshima bombing called Takashi Morita co-founded a hibakusha organisation based in São Paulo to share their stories and raise awareness in Brazil of the devastating consequences of nuclear weapons.

Growing awareness of the experiences of the hibakusha throughout the 1980s inspired Europeans to protest against the deployment of new nuclear missiles in their countries. The phrase “no Euroshima!” became a popular slogan for the European peace movement.

Nihon Hidankyo’s efforts have focused not only on sharing the experiences of hibakusha, but also using them to gain support for the abolition of nuclear weapons worldwide.

The organisation has been a key supporter of the UN treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. This treaty, which entered in force in 2017 and has been signed by 94 countries, prohibits states from participating in any nuclear weapon activities.

The International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons – in which Setsuko Thurlow is a leading figure – was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 2017 for its efforts to achieve this legally binding prohibition of such weapons.

Still work to do

Within Japan, Nihon Hidankyo has worked to challenge the government’s position on nuclear weapons. The Japanese government is supportive of American nuclear weapons, despite the horrors witnessed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and depends on them as a deterrent against its several nuclear-armed neighbours.

Successive Japanese governments have insisted on the importance of nuclear weapons for the country’s national security. But it remains a controversial stance for many in Japan. Every Japanese school child typically visits Hiroshima or Nagasaki to learn about the nightmarish consequences of nuclear weapons.

The decision to award the Nobel peace prize to Nihon Hidankyo is particularly timely. In 2023, the world’s nine nuclear powers spent over US$91 billion (£69.5 billion) on nuclear weapons. And since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russian president Vladimir Putin has repeatedly threatened to use his nuclear arsenal.

These concerning developments were acknowledged by the Nobel committee. When awarding Nihon Hidankyo with the prize, the committee said it was “alarming that today this taboo against the use of nuclear weapons is under pressure.”

The world’s nuclear powers – especially China and the US – are expanding and modernising their arsenals. North Korea is continuing to develop its nuclear weapons programme. And tensions are fast escalating between nuclear-armed Israel and near-nuclear Iran.

The threats posed by nuclear weapons are more apparent now than they have been at any time since the cold war. With barely 100,000 hibakusha alive today, it is imperative that we listen to their voices and their warnings.

Eirini Karamouzi, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary History, University of Sheffield and Luc-André Brunet, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary International History, The Open University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Continue ReadingNobel peace prize awarded to Japanese atomic bomb survivors’ group for its efforts to free the world of nuclear weapons

UK Faces Second-Worst Harvest on Record Amid Climate Change

https://www.ecowatch.com/uk-harvest-climate-change-agriculture-2024.html

Wheat before harvest in Hampshire, England on Aug. 3, 2013. Neil Howard / Flickr

In England, wet weather brought on by climate change has led to the second-worst harvest on record, affecting everything from wine grapes to wheat.

As The Guardian reported, a longer stretch of cold, wet weather from fall to early summer has led to wine grape harvests that are down by 33% to 75%, depending on the region. According to World Weather Attribution, rain in the UK from late 2023 into early 2024 was 20% more intense because of climate change.

For 2024, the UK Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) found that the wheat harvest in England was around 10 million metric tons, which was down 22% compared to the 2023 harvest. The decline reflects both a decrease in the wheat yield and the area that was used for wheat farming.

Other major crops also saw declines, with a decrease of 26% in barley harvested in the winter (although the spring harvest of barley saw a 41% increase). Oilseed rape production declined significantly, yielding 687,000 metric tons in 2024, a 33% decline compared to 2023. 

…

https://www.ecowatch.com/uk-harvest-climate-change-agriculture-2024.html

Continue ReadingUK Faces Second-Worst Harvest on Record Amid Climate Change

100 days of increasing solitude for Starmer

Image of the Green Party's Carla Denyer on BBC Question Time.
Image of the Green Party’s Carla Denyer on BBC Question Time.

Commenting on Labour’s first 100 days in office, Green Party Co-Leader Carla Denyer MP said: 

“The collapse in Starmer’s popularity since taking office has been remarkable. It was clear to me during the election campaign that voters across the country wanted change. After 14 years of Tory failure, they expected Labour to deliver it. The public’s sense of disappointment is palpable. 

“Instead, we have a government aligned with Tory austerity. The two-child benefit cap and the scrapping of the Winter Fuel Payment for millions of pensioners are both examples of how this government’s default has been to make the most vulnerable in our society pay. The ‘black hole in our finances’ should, and could, be solved by asking the wealthiest to pay just a fraction more. Instead, Labour seems content with letting the poorest bear the brunt. 

“It doesn’t have to be this way. We are one of the richest countries in the world, yet deeply unequal. The Chancellor has hinted that she is willing to borrow more to invest in much-needed infrastructure, which is welcome. But we also need to address the source of everyday revenue spending. 

“The last fourteen years have seen the rich get richer, with the top fifth now owning a third of the country’s wealth. It’s only fair that those with the broadest shoulders should now pay a bit more to help our NHS, rebalance society, and improve living standards for everyone. A wealth tax, alongside other changes to the tax system, could deliver this. 

“We as a country, and particularly the Labour government, face a political choice. Will they tax more fairly to properly invest in our crumbling frontline services, or will they continue to oversee managed decline and austerity economics? The Greens will, every day, keep pushing for them to properly invest in Britain.” 

Keir Starmer commits to play the caretaker role for Capitalism through the "hard times".
Keir Starmer commits to play the caretaker role for Capitalism through the “hard times”.
Continue Reading100 days of increasing solitude for Starmer