Daily Archives: 19 February 2024

Israeli Assault Leaves Gaza’s Nasser Hospital ‘Not Functional’

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

Injured Palestinians are brought to Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, Gaza on January 22, 2024.  (Photo: Belal Khaled/Anadolu via Getty Images)

The WHO “was not permitted to enter” the facility in recent days, said the agency chief, warning that “the cost of delays will be paid by patients’ lives.”

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced Sunday that the largest hospital in the southern Gaza Strip “is not functional anymore, after a weeklong siege followed by the ongoing raid” by Israeli forces.

After claiming that Hamas was using Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis for “military activity” and some hostages’ bodies may be there, the Israel Defense Forces on Thursday began raiding the facility, where around 10,000 people had sought shelter. Sources there said the IDF bombed “a ward full of patients” and multiple people who were dependent on oxygen have died due to power outages.

Tedros highlighted on Sunday that the WHO team “was not permitted to enter” the facility in recent days “to assess the conditions of the patients and critical medical needs, despite reaching the hospital compound to deliver fuel alongside partners.”

“There are still about 200 patients in the hospital. At least 20 need to be urgently referred to other hospitals to receive healthcare; medical referral is every patient’s right,” he added. “The cost of delays will be paid by patients’ lives. Access to the patients and hospital should be facilitated.”

Later Sunday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza said that “150 patients who cannot move are piled inside the rooms and corridors of the old building at Nasser Medical Complex without medical care after the arrest of 70 of the complex’s management and medical staff.”

“The occupation refuses to evacuate patients for treatment in other hospitals, which endangers their lives, including seven intensive care patients, five dialysis patients, [and] three newborns in the nursery, in addition to cases of burns, amputations, quadriplegia, childbirth, and others,” the ministry added.

The IDF said on Telegram that in its operations around the facility, Israeli troops apprehended “hundreds of terrorists and other terror suspects who were hiding in the hospital, some of whom had posed as medical staff,” including alleged participants in the October 7 Hamas-led attack that led to the war.

Noting IDF claims that soldiers aimed to recover the remains of hostages believed to be in the facility, The Washington Postreported that “Israeli forces have not yet found the bodies of any hostages but said on Sunday that they discovered medicine at the hospital bearing the names of Israelis who were abducted by Hamas.”

The Israeli assault on the Hamas-governed enclave has killed nearly 29,000 Palestinians, injured over 68,800 others, devastated civilian infrastructure—including hospitals—and left most of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents displaced, hungry, and at risk of disease. Global experts and critics have accused Israel of genocide, including in a South Africa-led case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

In response to IDF orders to leave northern Gaza, most residents are now crammed into the southern part of the strip. According toAl-Jazeera:

Al-Amal Hospital, the only other major medical facility still operational in Khan Younis, continues to be a target of Israeli attacks. The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) on Sunday said Israeli forces targeted the third floor of the hospital with artillery fire.

The Israeli military has expanded its siege on Khan Younis and its medical facilities as it pushed further south into Rafah on the border with Egypt.

Throughout the week, people around the world including humanitarian and United Nations leaders have pressured Israel to refrain from a full-scale attack on Rafah. The ICJ on Friday echoed U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres’ warning that it “would exponentially increase what is already a humanitarian nightmare with untold regional consequences.”

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

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‘Enough Is Enough’: Australia Says Free Assange

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Original article by AMY GOODMAN DENIS MOYNIHAN republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

People participate in a rally demanding freedom for imprisoned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in Sydney, Australia, on May 24, 2023.  (Photo: Steven Saphore/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

U.S. and U.K. persecution of Assange has been continuous and severe.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said during Prime Minister’s Questions on February 15, “This thing cannot just go on and on and on, indefinitely.”

The Prime Minister was addressing an action he took a day earlier, on Valentine’s Day. No, not his marriage proposal to his partner, Jodie Haydon (she said yes). He was explaining his support for a parliamentary motion that passed overwhelmingly, calling for the release of an Australian citizen, imprisoned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Albanese’s support builds on a growing demand from Australians across the political spectrum that the United Kingdom not extradite Assange to the United States, and for the U.S. to drop its espionage and hacking charges against him. Assange, who has been imprisoned in London’s notorious maximum-security Belmarsh Prison since 2019, has a court hearing in the UK.

Assange’s counsel, Jennifer Robinson, texted us on Thursday:

“The appeal next week could be Julian’s final appeal against U.S. extradition. If permission to appeal is denied, there are no further appeals available to us in the U.K.” If extradited, Assange faces up to 175 years in prison in the United States. Said Prime Minister Albanese, “Enough is enough.”

Prior to his imprisonment in Belmarsh, Julian Assange spent seven years cramped inside Ecuador’s small London embassy, where he’d been granted political asylum.

Assange founded WikiLeaks, a website that publishes leaked material while protecting the identity of the whistleblowers. While it launched in 2006, it wasn’t until 2010 that the U.S. government forcefully and publicly targeted Wikileaks and Assange, after Wikileaks made several massive disclosures of leaked documents related to the U.S. invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

On Monday, April 5, 2010, Julian Assange released a shocking video at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The video, which WikiLeaks titled “Collateral Murder,” was shot in 2007 from a U.S. military Apache helicopter flying over Baghdad, Iraq. The video shows in grainy black and white detail the gunship’s attack on a group of people on the ground. Twelve civilians, including two Reuters news employees, were mowed down by automatic fire from the helicopter. The voices of the crew were recorded, as they sought permission to “engage” with their targets, and as they laughed and cursed through the slaughter. It was a chilling video, documenting a war crime.

The video’s release was followed by the publication on Wikileaks.org of hundreds of thousands of digital records from the U.S. military, dubbed the Iraq War Logs and the Afghan War Diary. These documents provided further proof that the U.S. was committing war crimes. Some elected officials in the U.S. called for Assange to be assassinated. Then-Vice President Joe Biden called him a “high-tech terrorist.”

Not long after, the U.S. Justice Department convened a secret grand jury which issued a sealed indictment against Assange. Existence of that indictment itself was revealed on WikiLeaks, in a subsequent leak, in 2012. U.S. and U.K. persecution of Assange since then has been continuous and severe. In 2017, as revealed in 2021 by journalist Michael Isikoff and colleagues, the CIA hatched plans to either kidnap Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy or even to assassinate him.

Andrew Wilkie, an independent member of the Australian Parliament from Tasmania, introduced the resolution in support of Assange this week, saying, “This House notes that on 20 and 21 February 2024, the High Court of Justice in the United Kingdom will hold a hearing into whether Walkley Award-winning journalist Julian Assange can appeal against his extradition to the United States of America… both the Australian Government and Opposition have publicly stated that this matter has gone on for too long; and underlines the importance of the U.K. and USA bringing the matter to a close so that Mr Assange can return home to his family in Australia.”

The Australian government is not alone in calling for Assange’s release. In November, 2022, five major newspapers that collaborated with WikiLeaks—The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, El Pais, and Der Spiegel—released a joint letter calling for an end to the prosecution. “Obtaining and disclosing sensitive information when necessary in the public interest is a core part of the daily work of journalists. If that work is criminalized, our public discourse and our democracies are made significantly weaker,” the letter read.

Assange’s attorney Jennifer Robinson will be in the London court for the hearing. She told us, “We have been saying for years: This is a political case which requires a political solution. The unprecedented showing of political support in the Australian Parliament overnight shows that Julian’s case is a priority for the Australian government, our parliament, and the people. The U.S. should listen to the concerns of its ally—and drop the case.”

Original article by AMY GOODMAN DENIS MOYNIHAN republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

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