Original article republished from MEMO under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) holds a meeting with the Security Cabinet after Iran’s missile attacks on Israel in West Jerusalem on October 01, 2024. [Avi Ohayon (GPO) / Handout – Anadolu Agency]
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened Lebanon with “destruction and suffering” akin to that experienced by Palestinians in Gaza if the Lebanese people do not “free” themselves from Hezbollah. The ominous warning is interpreted widely as a threat to carry out a second genocide and stoke civil war in the already besieged nation.
Israel is currently under investigation by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for genocide in Gaza. More than 42,000 people, mostly women and children, have been killed by the occupation state, in what experts have called a “textbook case of genocide”.
Netanyahu threatened to visit the same fate on the people of Lebanon. In a video address directed at the Lebanese people, the Israeli Prime Minister stated, “You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza.” He added, “I say to you, the people of Lebanon: Free your country from Hezbollah so that this war can end.”
Netanyahu’s threat comes as Israel ramps up its ground offensive against Hezbollah along the southern section of the Lebanese coast, deploying more troops and urging civilians in coastal areas to evacuate. More than a million people have been forced to flee due to the Israeli offensive. The escalation suggests that Israel has opted for a regional war rather than pursuing ceasefire deals and the return of Israeli hostages.
The widening of the conflict has not gone unnoticed within Israel’s own military ranks. Reports indicate that 130 Israeli soldiers have declared their refusal to serve unless the government actively pursues a hostage deal and ceasefire in Gaza.
Critics argue that Israel’s actions demonstrate a clear intent to provoke a regional war. Israel has expanded its military aggression beyond Gaza, conducting bombing campaigns in the illegally-occupied West Bank, Yemen, Lebanon, Iran and Syria. In Lebanon alone, Israeli strikes have killed more than 1,640 people and displaced more than one million since 23 September.
Adding to the controversy, Israel has killed a number of its own citizens being held hostage in Gaza during its genocide in the enclave, fuelling criticism further about its aggressive stance. Hezbollah, in response to the ongoing Israeli attacks, has threatened increased rocket fire on Israeli towns and cities if the bombing of Lebanese population centres continues.
Mourners gather around bodies of Palestinians killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, outside the hospital morgue in Deir al-Balah on October 9, 2024
ISRAEL’S latest operations in northern Gaza have killed dozens and threaten to shut down hospitals, Palestinian officials and residents said today.
The Gaza Health Ministry revealed that the death toll from one year of attacks has risen over 42,000, with women and children making up over half the dead.
Israel has issued an evacuation order to people in northern Gaza, but Philippe Lazzarini from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said that 400,000 people are trapped there where there is “no end to hell.”
“Hunger is spreading,” he warned.
An air strike in Jabaliya refugee camp early today killed at least nine people, including two women and two children, according to Al-Ahly Hospital in Gaza City which received the bodies.
Strikes in central Gaza killed another nine people, including three children, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah.
Youth Demand cover Picasso’s ‘Motherhood’ at the National Gallery 9 September 2024. They are demanding an arms embargo of Israel by UK government.
Two supporters of Youth Demand have pasted a photo of a Gazan mother and child over a Picasso masterpiece at the National Gallery today to demand a two-way arms embargo on Israel.
At noon today the pair covered the protective glass cover of Pablo Picasso’s 1901 painting ‘Motherhood (La Maternité) with a photograph of a Gazan mother clutching her child. They then poured red paint on the gallery floor. Youth Demand is calling for a two-way arms embargo on Israel and for the new UK government to halt all new oil and gas licences granted since 2021.
The image used was taken by Palestinian journalist Ali Jadallah and shows a distressed and bloodied pair, coated in debris. His caption for it reads: “A mom holds [her] injured child after an Israeli attack, as Israeli airstrikes continue on twelfth day, at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City”. Israeli bombing raids in Palestine have killed at least 41,870 people, including 16,765 children, in the last year and since the photograph was taken in 2023, Al-Shifa hospital has been completely destroyed by the IDF.
One of those taking action today was Jai Halai, 23, an NHS worker from London who said
“I’m taking action with Youth Demand because at this point it’s been over one year of seeing my colleagues in the healthcare field decimated. Decimated by bombs, by bullets and by having to operate, with no medical equipment, on starved children.
“We need a two way arms embargo on Israel now; 87% of the British public want this and never before have they been more disillusioned with our Government and political class who do not represent us. We need a revolution in our democracy.
“Direct action is what gave us our rights and is the only way to move us towards proper justice. Civil resistance is our duty as young people: to defend those without a voice today and to defend our futures. It’s time to take to the streets; bring on the revolution!”
Also taking action today was Monday-Malachi Rosenfeld, 21, a Politics and International Relations student at Greenwich, London who said:
“I’m taking action because as a jew, I feel like it’s my duty to call out the genocide being committed in Gaza. I want the world to know this isn’t in the jewish name and I want to see a free Palestine. When Keir Starmer says Britain stands with Israel he’s wrong. We know very well that this is a genocide, not “self defense” and we as the people of Britain say enough is enough.”
Around 2,000 people in Lebanon of all ages have also been killed by Israeli airstrikes in the last year, on top of the death toll in Gaza and the West Bank. Missiles have also been launched at Iran on numerous occasions.
A Youth Demand spokesperson today said
“Our government is arming Israel to carry out a genocide against Palestinians and killing without restrain in Lebanon. It can’t be all carrots and no sticks: a two-way arms embargo is the least Britain can do to stop displacement, destruction and death! Young people will continue to resist genocide-as-usual“
Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
People mourn over the body of a victim of an Israeli attack on northern Gaza on October 7, 2024. (Photo by Abdul Rahman Salama/Xinhua via Getty Images)
One Palestinian journalist said that “the situation in the north is horrific and very dangerous” and implored people to “please share what’s happening.”
Israel’s latest dayslong assault on besieged northern Gaza intensified Tuesday as the nation’s tanks advanced deeper into the Jabalia refugee camp, where terrified residents reported being fired on by the Israeli military as they tried to flee.
Citing eyewitness accounts, CNN, Al Jazeera, and other news outlets reported that Israeli forces opened fire indiscriminately at people in Jabalia, who are under Israeli evacuation orders. Residents are being told to move to Al-Mawasi, a badly overcrowded so-called “humanitarian zone” in southern Gaza that Israel’s military has attacked repeatedly.
“Drones were firing at everyone passing by on the road,” 28-year-old Mohammad Sultan, whose family fled their home in Jabalia, toldCNN on Tuesday. Sultan said he and other civilians came under Israeli fire when he returned to grab food, water, and blankets.
“Three people were shot right in front of me,” he said. “My brother and I tried to help the injured get to the hospitals, but a little girl was shot in the neck, and her father was also injured.”
Reuters reported that the warning “Jabalia is being wiped out” was “repeated in many messages posted on social media by residents of Gaza” as Israeli forces assailed the refugee camp and nearby areas, killing dozens of people over the past several days.
“Jabalia is being bombed as if the war has just begun and the world is blind about it,” a 60-year-old father of five told Reuters.
Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, said Tuesday that “the threat of yet another massacre in northern Gaza is very real.”
” Israel must be ordered to stop assaulting the Palestinians trapped there and withdraw immediately from the occupied Palestinian territory, as already decided by the [International Court of Justice],” she added.
Hossam Shabat, a Palestinian journalist reporting from northern Gaza, wrote on social media Tuesday that “the situation in the north is horrific and very dangerous; there are currently hundreds of thousands trapped, and the shelling is nonstop.”
“Please share what’s happening in the north,” he added.
Israeli occupation forces have asked all residents of northern Gaza (300k+) to evacuate as a means of ethnically cleansing North Gaza . However, they then besieged Jabalia refugee camp, and when people tried to leave, they were shot at by snipers. Many residents are on the…
The northern part of Gaza has been utterly devastated by the Israeli military’s yearlong assault, carried out with the support of the United States and other world powers. The United Kingdom-based humanitarian group Christian Aid said Monday that mothers in northern Gaza have reported “losing up to 30kg of weight” as the region faces famine conditions fueled by Israel’s suffocating blockade and relentless airstrikes.
“We often survive on one meal a day if we can find one,” one mother told Christian Aid’s partners in Gaza. “My children cry and fall asleep hungry, and I spend nights crying because I am helpless and heartwrenched as their tears of hunger feel like a knife cutting through me, even though I always prioritized them over myself.”
Al Jazeera reported Tuesday that at least 56 Palestinians in Gaza were killed by Israeli airstrikes over the past 24 hours, while noting that “the number of deaths reported by sources vary” given the difficulties of counting casualties under Israeli bombardment.
Al Jazeera‘s Abu Azzoum said the Israeli army is “systematically working to empty northern Gaza.”
Such an effort would be consistent with reported Israeli proposals to “liquidate northern Gaza.” As +972 Magazinereported last month, prominent Israeli officials including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir have “called on the military to carry out mass extermination in northern Gaza.”
“For some, it might be easy to write off Israeli proposals to ‘finish the job’ in northern Gaza as genocidal bombast, unlikely to be carried out,” the magazine added. “Regardless of what happens over the coming months, the very fact that open proposals to starve and exterminate hundreds of thousands of people are up for debate demonstrates precisely where Israeli society stands today.”
Flood damage is shown at a bridge across Mill Creek in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene on September 30, 2024 in Old Fort, North Carolina. (Photo: Sean Rayford/Getty Images)
“We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt.”
As Hurricane Milton barreled toward Florida’s Gulf Coast, demonstrating the dangers of global warming, international scientists on Tuesday published a terrifying annual analysis that highlights the need to swiftly phase out planet-heating fossil fuels.
“Our aim in the present article is to communicate directly to researchers, policymakers, and the public,” the coalition wrote in BioScience. “As scientists and academics, we feel it is our moral duty and that of our institutions to alert humanity to the growing threats that we face as clearly as possible and to show leadership in addressing them.”
“We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled. We are stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis,” warned the 14 experts from Australia, Brazil, China, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Their latest edition, “The 2024 State of the Climate Report: Perilous Times on Planet Earth,” shows that 25 of the 35 “planetary vital signs” the team uses to track the climate emergency are at record extremes. They include U.S.-heat related mortality, fossil fuel subsidies, coal and oil consumption, carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, per capita meat consumption, global tree cover loss due to fires, ocean acidity and heat content change, glacier thickness change, and ice mass change in Antarctica and Greenland.
“Ecological overshoot, taking more than the Earth can safely give, has pushed the planet into climatic conditions more threatening than anything witnessed even by our prehistoric relatives.”
The report emphasizes that “human-caused carbon dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gases are the primary drivers of climate change. As of 2022, global fossil fuel combustion and industrial processes account for approximately 90% of these emissions, whereas land-use change, primarily deforestation, accounts for approximately 10%.”
“For many years, scientists, including a group of more than 15,000, have sounded the alarm about the impending dangers of climate change driven by increasing greenhouse gas emissions and ecosystem change,” the publication notes. “For half a century, global warming has been correctly predicted even before it was observed—and not only by independent academic scientists but also by fossil fuel companies.”
“Despite these warnings, we are still moving in the wrong direction; fossil fuel emissions have increased to an all-time high, the three hottest days ever occurred in July of 2024, and current policies have us on track for approximately 2.7°C peak warming by 2100,” the article adds. “Tragically, we are failing to avoid serious impacts, and we can now only hope to limit the extent of the damage. We are witnessing the grim reality of the forecasts as climate impacts escalate, bringing forth scenes of unprecedented disasters around the world and human and nonhuman suffering.”
Oregon State University professor William Ripple, who led the team with Christopher Wolf of Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Associates, said in a Tuesday statement that “ecological overshoot, taking more than the Earth can safely give, has pushed the planet into climatic conditions more threatening than anything witnessed even by our prehistoric relatives.”
“We’re already in the midst of abrupt climate upheaval,” Ripple stressed. “For example, Hurricane Helene caused more than 200 deaths in the southeastern United States and massive flooding in a North Carolina mountain area thought to be a safe haven from climate change.”
“Since the publication of our 2023 report, multiple climate-related disasters have taken place, including a series of heatwaves across Asia that killed more than a thousand people and led to temperatures reaching 122°F in parts of India,” he continued. “Climate change has already displaced millions of people, with the potential to displace hundreds of millions or even billions. That would likely lead to greater geopolitical instability, possibly even partial societal collapse.”
To avoid that dark future, the article argues, “we need bold, transformative change: drastically reducing overconsumption and waste, especially by the affluent, stabilizing and gradually reducing the human population through empowering education and rights for girls and women, reforming food production systems to support more plant-based eating, and adopting an ecological and post-growth economics framework that ensures social justice.”
Devastating hurricanes, heatwaves, floods, and wildfires – we are entering uncharted waters, and cannot exclude environmental chaos as the 2024 State of the Climate Report shows. Important new report out now. https://t.co/tyE7ZUekq4
The assessment—whose authors include Michael Mann of the University of Pennsylvania, Naomi Oreskes of Harvard University, and Stefan Rahmstorf and Johan Rockström of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research—comes just over a month away from the next United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP29, which is scheduled for November 11-22 in Azerbaijan.
Pointing to previous summits, Wolf said Tuesday that “despite six reports from the International Panel on Climate Change, hundreds of other reports, tens of thousands of scientific papers, and 28 annual meetings of the U.N.’s Conference of the Parties, the world has made very little headway on climate change.”
“Humanity’s future depends on creativity, moral fiber, and perseverance,” he warned. “If future generations are to inherit the world they deserve, decisive action is needed, and fast.”
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 Richards
