Hussam Abu Safiyeh, director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, is treated by colleagues for his injuries following an Israeli strike that hit the medical compound in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip on November 23, 2024. (Photo: AFP via Getty Images)
“These people, they target everyone, but I swear, this will not stop us from continuing our humanitarian work,” said a Gaza hospital director injured in an Israeli strike.
More than 1,000 doctors and nurses are among at least 44,211 people killed in Israel’s 13-month assault on the Gaza Strip, officials in the Hamas-governed Palestinian enclave said Sunday.
“Over 310 other medical personnel were arrested, tortured, and executed in prisons,” Gaza’s Government Media Office also said in a statement, according to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency. “The Israeli army also prevented the entry of medical supplies, health delegations, and hundreds of surgeons into Gaza.”
“Hospitals have been a declared target for the Israeli army, which bombed, besieged, and stormed them, killing doctors and nurses, injuring others after directly targeting them,” the office said. The statement came after the director of the main partially functioning hospital in northern Gaza was injured in an Israeli strike.
Hussam Abu Safiyeh is the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital—which, according to Al Jazeera, Israeli forces have repeatedly attacked, damaging “the facility’s generators, fuel tanks, and main oxygen station.”
The wounded director said: “These people, they target everyone, but I swear, this will not stop us from continuing our humanitarian work. We will keep on providing this service no matter what it costs us.”
Since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, in addition to killing tens of thousands of Palestinians, Israeli forces have injured at least 104,567 others. Along with attacking hospitals, they have destroyed many homes, schools, and religious sites, and displaced most of the enclave’s 2.3 million people.
Israel—which has been armed by the Biden administration and bipartisan U.S. Congress—faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice over its conduct in Gaza. Additionally, the International Criminal Court earlier this week issued arrest warrants for Israel’s current prime minister and former defense minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, as well as Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri.
Last month, 99 U.S. healthcare providers who have volunteered in Gaza since last fall sent U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris a letter detailing “the massive human toll from Israel’s attack” and urging them to “end this madness now!”
“It is likely that the death toll from this conflict is already greater than 118,908, an astonishing 5.4% of Gaza’s population,” the Americans wrote. “With only marginal exceptions, everyone in Gaza is sick, injured, or both. This includes every national aid worker, every international volunteer, and probably every Israeli hostage: every man, woman, and child.”
“We quickly learned that our Palestinian healthcare colleagues were among the most traumatized people in Gaza, and perhaps in the entire world,” they continued. “All were acutely aware that their work as healthcare providers had marked them as targets for Israel. This makes a mockery of the protected status hospitals and healthcare providers are granted under the oldest and most widely accepted provisions of international humanitarian law.”
They added that “we wish to be absolutely clear: Not once did any of us see any type of Palestinian militant activity in any of Gaza’s hospitals or other healthcare facilities. We urge you to see that Israel has systematically and deliberately devastated Gaza’s entire healthcare system, and that Israel has targeted our colleagues in Gaza for torture, disappearance, and murder.”
Despite such appeals and accounts, the outgoing Biden-Harris administration has declined to cut off weapons to the Israeli government and earlier this week most U.S. senators from both major parties rejected a trio of resolutions from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) that would have blocked some American arms sales to Israel.
A bomb remnant retrieved following Israel’s October 25, 2024 attack on a compound housing journalists in southern Lebanon. (Photo: Anoir Ghaida via Human Rights Watch)
“Israel’s use of U.S. arms to unlawfully attack and kill journalists away from any military target is a terrible mark on the United States as well as Israel,” said a researcher from Human Rights Watch.
A leading international human rights organization said Monday that Israel’s deadly bombing of a Lebanese residential compound housing journalists last month was carried out using a munition guidance kit supplied by the United States.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said its investigation determined that the October 25 strike in southern Lebanon, launched in the early hours of the morning as most of the journalists staying in the compound slept, was “most likely a deliberate attack on civilians and an apparent war crime.”
The group’s investigators visited the Hasbaya Village Club Resort, the target of the strike, and found no evidence that the compound was being used for military activity, undercutting Israel’s initial claim that it hit a building from which “terrorists were operating.”
HRW also said it reviewed information indicating that Israel’s military “knew or should have known” that journalists were staying in the compound. Journalists who were at the compound when Israel’s strike hit said the Israeli military did not issue a warning ahead of the attack.
“All the indications show that this would have been a deliberate targeting of journalists: a war crime.”
The airstrike killed at least three journalists and injured several others. Remnants from the scene of the strike collected by the targeted resort’s owner were “consistent” with Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs) that the U.S. has provided to the Israeli military.
One fragment, according to HRW “bore a numerical code identifying it as having been manufactured by Woodard, a U.S. company that makes components for guidance systems on munitions.” Boeing, a major U.S. military contractor, assembles and sells JDAMs, which are attached to bombs with the stated goal of making airstrikes more precise.
Other remnants HRW reviewed were consistent with materials from a 500-pound bomb equipped with a JDAM.
A bomb remnant retrieved following Israel’s October 25, 2024 attack. (Photo: Anoir Ghaida via Human Rights Watch)
Richard Weir, a senior researcher at HRW, said in a statement Monday that “Israel’s use of U.S. arms to unlawfully attack and kill journalists away from any military target is a terrible mark on the United States as well as Israel.”
“The Israeli military’s previous deadly attacks on journalists without any consequences give little hope for accountability in this or future violations against the media,” said Weir. “As evidence mounts of Israel’s unlawful use of U.S. weapons, including in apparent war crimes, U.S. officials need to decide whether they will uphold U.S. and international law by halting arms sales to Israel or risk being found legally complicit in serious violations.”
The Guardian conducted a separate investigation of the Israeli strike and reached conclusions mirroring HRW’s, reporting Monday that “Israel used a U.S. munition to target and kill three journalists and wound three.”
“On 25 October at 3:19 am, an Israeli jet shot two bombs at a chalet hosting three journalists—cameraman Ghassan Najjar and technician Mohammad Reda from pro-Hezbollah outlet al-Mayadeen, as well as cameraman Wissam Qassem from the Hezbollah-affiliated outlet al-Manar,” the newspaper observed. “All three were killed in their sleep in the attack which also wounded three other journalists from different outlets staying nearby. There was no fighting in the area before or at the time of the strike.”
Nadim Houry, a human rights lawyer and executive director of the Arab Reform Initiative, told The Guardian that “all the indications show that this would have been a deliberate targeting of journalists: a war crime.”
“This was clearly delineated as a place where journalists were staying,” Houry said.
The findings were published just days after the U.S. Senate voted down an effort led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to block new sales of American weaponry to Israel. One of the resolutions put forth by Sanders would have blocked the imminent transfer of over $260 million worth of JDAMs to Israel’s military.
In a fact sheet, Sanders’ office pointed to six examples in which Israel’s military used JDAMs in deadly attacks on civilians in Gaza and Lebanon, including children.
“The United States is complicit in these atrocities,” Sanders said in a floor speech ahead of last week’s vote. “That complicity must end.”
Greenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London. (Photo: Handout/Chris J. Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)
Storm Bert caused serious flooding in UK, particularly in the South Wales town of Pontypridd. Gross Capitalists scum and governments scum refuse to accept responsibility for their actions in destroying the climate at COP29. Yet more false solutions pushed by the fossil fuel industry pursued by governments …
It seems like nothing changes. Our climate is fekked. The fossil fuel industry and politicians are responsible for it since they have known since the 1960s. Governments and politicians are supposed to protect their populations. Instead they are controlled and quite willingly work for the rich and powerful. Despite the UK government committing to radical action to address climate, they still pursue false solutions i.e. carbon capture and nuclear power.
Four Greenpeace activists are pictured on a Shell vessel in the Atlantic Ocean on January 31, 2023.
ed: We are at 1.5C increase now, the limit proposed by the Paris Agreement. We’re flying past it because gross Capitalists and Capitalist politicians are refusing to address the climate crisis. We are on course to far more and far more severe extreme weather events because of these cnuts.
Activists demanding that rich countries pay up for climate finance protest at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan on November 22, 2024. (Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Critics of the “COP of false solutions” said that instead of much-needed funding, developing nations got “a global Ponzi scheme that the private equity vultures and public relations people will now exploit.”
It was early Sunday by the time the United Nations climate summit wrapped up in Baku, Azerbaijan after running into overtime to finalize deals on carbon markets and funding for developing countries that were sharply condemned by campaigners worldwide.
“COP29 was a dumpster fire. Except it’s not trash that’s burning—it’s our planet,” declared Nikki Reisch of the Center for International Environmental Law. “And developed countries are holding both the matches and the firehose.”
Recalling last year’s conference in the United Arab Emirates, Oil Change International global policy senior strategist Shady Khalil highlighted that “the world made a deal at COP28 to end the fossil fuel era. Now, at COP29, countries seem to have been struck with collective amnesia.”
“With each new iteration of the texts, oil and gas producers managed to dilute the urgent commitment to phase out fossil fuels,” Khalil said. “But let’s be clear: Rich countries’ failure to lead on fossil fuel phaseout and to put the trillions they have hoarded on the table has done more to imperil the energy transition than any obstructionist tactics from oil and gas producers.”
This year’s conference began November 11 and was due to conclude on Friday, but parties to the Paris agreement were still negotiating the carbon market rules, which were finalized late Saturday, and the new collective quantified goal (NCQG) on climate finance.
“The carbon markets in Article 6 of the Paris agreement were pushed through COP29 in a take-it-or leave-it outcome,” said Tamra Gilbertson of Indigenous Environmental Network, decrying “a new dangerous era in climate change negotiations.”
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As Climate Home Newsreported, they establish two types of markets: “The first—known as Article 6.2—regulates bilateral carbon trading between countries, while Article 6.4 creates a global crediting mechanism for countries to sell emissions reductions.”
The outlet pointed to expert warnings that “the rules for bilateral trades under 6.2 could open the door for the sale of junk carbon credits—one of the weaknesses of the previous crediting mechanism set up by the U.N. known as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).”
Jonathan Crook of Carbon Market Watch said in a statement that “the package does not shine enough light on an already opaque system where countries won’t be required to provide information about their deals well ahead of actual trades.”
“Even worse, the last opportunity to strengthen the critically weak review process was largely missed,” he continued. “Countries remain free to trade carbon credits that are of low quality, or even fail to comply with Article 6.2 rules, without any real oversight.”
As for Article 6.4, “much lies in the hands of the supervisory body” that’s set to resume work in early 2025, said Crook’s colleague, Federica Dossi. “To show that it is ready to learn from past mistakes, it will have to take tough decisions next year and ensure that Article 6.4 credits will be markedly better than the units that old CDM projects will generate.”
“If they are not, they will have to compete in a low-trust, low-integrity market where prices are likely to be at rock bottom and interest will be low,” Dossi added. “Such a system would be a distraction, and a waste of 10 years worth of carbon market negotiations.”
Some campaigners suggested that no matter what lies ahead, the embrace of carbon markets represents a failure. Kirtana Chandrasekaran at Friends of the Earth International said that “the supposed ‘COP of climate finance’ has turned into the ‘COP of false solutions.’ The U.N. has given its stamp of approval to fraudulent and failed carbon markets.”
“We have seen the impacts of these schemes: land grabs, Indigenous peoples’ and human rights violations,” Chandrasekaran noted. “The now-operationalized U.N. global carbon market may well be worse than existing voluntary ones and will continue to provide a get out of jail free card to Big Polluters whilst devastating communities and ecosystems.”
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Chandrasekaran’s colleague Seán McLoughlin at Friends of the Earth Ireland was similarly critical of the conference’s finance deal, asserting that “Baku is a big F U to climate justice, to the poorest communities who are on the frontlines of climate breakdown.”
“COP29 has failed those who have done least to cause climate change and who are most vulnerable to climate breakdown because the process is still in thrall to fossil fuel bullies and rich countries more committed to shirking their historical responsibility than safeguarding our common future,” he said. “Now it’s back to citizens to demand our governments do the right thing. We must keep demanding the trillions, not billions owed in climate debt and a comprehensive, swift, and equitable fossil fuel phaseout. The struggle for climate justice is not over.”
Campaigners and developing nations fought for $1.3 trillion in annual climate finance from those most responsible for the planetary crisis. Instead, the NCQG document only directs developed countries to provide the Global South with $300 billion per year by 2035, with a goal of reaching the higher figure by also seeking funds from private sources.
The deal almost didn’t happen at all. As The Guardiandetailed Saturday: “Developed countries including the U.K., the U.S., and E.U. members were pushed into raising their offer from an original $250 billion a year tabled on Friday, to $300 billion. Poor countries argued for more, and in the early evening two groups representing some of the world’s poorest countries walked out of one key meeting, threatening to collapse the negotiations.”
While Simon Stiell, executive secretary of U.N. Climate Change, celebrated the NCQG as “an insurance policy for humanity, amid worsening climate impacts hitting every country,” Chiara Martinelli, director at Climate Action Network Europe, put it in the context of the $100 billion target set in 2009, which wealthy governments didn’t meet.
“Rich countries own the responsibility for the failed outcome at COP29,” Martinelli said. “The talk of tripling from the $100 billion goal might sound impressive, but in reality, it falls far short, barely increasing from the previous commitment when adjusted for inflation and considering the bulk of this money will come in the form of unsustainable loans. This is not solidarity. It’s smoke and mirrors that betray the needs of those on the frontlines of the climate crisis.”
Also stressing that “it’s not even real ‘money,’ by and large,” but rather “a motley mix of loans and privatized investment,” Oxfam International’s climate change policy lead, Nafkote Dabi, called the agreement “a global Ponzi scheme that the private equity vultures and public relations people will now exploit.”
“The terrible verdict from the Baku climate talks shows that rich countries view the Global South as ultimately expendable, like pawns on a chessboard,” Dabi charged. “The $300 billion so-called ‘deal’ that poorer countries have been bullied into accepting is unserious and dangerous—a soulless triumph for the rich, but a genuine disaster for our planet and communities who are being flooded, starved, and displaced today by climate breakdown.”
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Rachel Cleetus from the Union of Concerned Scientists, who is in Baku, took aim at not only rich governments, but also the host, saying that “the Azerbaijani COP29 Presidency’s ineptitude in brokering an agreement at this consequential climate finance COP will go down in ignominy.”
Cleetus’ group is based in the United States, which is preparing for a January transfer of power from Democratic President Joe Biden to Republican President-elect Donald Trump, who notably ditched the Paris agreement during his first term.
“The United States—the world’s largest historical contributor of heat-trapping emissions—is going to see a monumental shift in its global diplomacy posture as the incoming anti-science Trump administration will likely exit the Paris agreement and take a wrecking ball to domestic climate and clean energy policies,” Cleetus warned. “While some politically and economically popular clean energy policies may prove durable and action from forward-looking states and businesses will be significant, there’s no doubt that a lack of robust federal leadership will leave U.S. climate action hobbled for a time.”
“Other nations—including E.U. countries and China—will need to do what they can to fill the void,” she stressed. “Between now and COP30 in Brazil next year, nations have a lot of ground to make up to have any hope of limiting runaway climate change.”
Ben Goloff of the U.S.-based Center for Biological Diversity called out the departing Biden administration, arguing that it “should be going out with at least a signal of its moral climate commitment, not copping out ahead of the Trump 2.0 disaster.”
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark RichardsOrcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer during a bilateral meeting with Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, at the Cop29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, November 12, 2024
IF KEIR STARMER were serious about treating people who receive social security payments with “dignity and respect,” he would not have announced his crackdown in the Mail on Sunday, or used it to rail against “criminals” who “game the system.”
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The presumption of guilt is built into the successive wars on “benefit cheats.” It grossly exaggerates the scale of benefit fraud, feeding hostility to the social security system itself. It encourages suspicion of anyone claiming, and was certainly linked to the steady rise in hate crimes against disabled people recorded over 14 years of Tory government.
The assault on disabled and chronically ill people was among the cruellest policies of those governments.
The DWP admitted in 2015 that thousands of people passed as “fit for work” died within months; there were even cases where people starved to death after their benefits were cut, like Errol Graham, whose body was only discovered by the bailiffs sent to evict him.
Labour should be rejecting a Tory inheritance that persecutes some of Britain’s most vulnerable.
But it shows little sign of doing so, with Rachel Reeves pledging to continue Tory amendments to the work capability assessment that narrow eligibility criteria and are likely to cost disabled people hundreds of pounds a month.
