Critics Aghast at Israel’s Push for Gaza ‘Concentration Camp’
Original article by Brad Reed republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
A prominent Israeli human rights lawyer condemned the proposal outlined by Israel’s defense minister as “an operational plan for a crime against humanity.”
The Israeli government’s new plan to push all residents in Gaza to live in a camp built atop the ruins of the city of Rafah is drawing heavy criticism from experts who see it as a precursor for ethnic cleansing.
In an interview with The Guardian, Israeli human rights attorney Michael Sfard accused Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz of laying out “an operational plan for a crime against humanity” with his announcement this week of an initiative to build a massive refugee camp at Rafah from which Palestinians would not be allowed to leave. Katz characterized the proposed camp as a “humanitarian city.”
Sfard said that the entire camp was being built as a pretext for the mass deportation of Palestinians from Gaza.
“It is all about population transfer to the southern tip of the Gaza Strip in preparation for deportation outside the strip,” he told The Guardian. “While the government still calls the deportation ‘voluntary,’ people in Gaza are under so many coercive measures that no departure from the strip can be seen in legal terms as consensual. When you drive someone out of their homeland that would be a war crime, in the context of a war. If it’s done on a massive scale like he plans, it becomes a crime against humanity.”
Dr. Amos Goldberg, a historian of the Holocaust at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, picked apart the Israeli government’s claims that the camp in Rafah would be a “humanitarian city” where Palestinian civilians could live safely away from Israeli military operations being conducted against Hamas fighters.
“It is neither humanitarian nor a city,” Goldberg explained. “A city is a place where you have possibilities of work, of earning money, of making connections and freedom of movement. There are hospitals, schools, universities and offices. This is not what they have in mind. It will not be a livable place, just as the ‘safe areas’ are unlivable now.”
Ihab Hassan, a Palestinian human rights activist and director of the Agora Initiative, expressed a similar sentiment in an interview with The National.
“Israel’s Defense Minister Katz isn’t even hiding it any more—he’s openly calling for a concentration camp for Palestinians in Gaza,” he said.
Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of the Refugees International advocacy group, told Reuters that he wasn’t at all buying the Israeli government’s stated humanitarian intentions regarding the construction of the camp.
“There is no such thing as voluntary displacement amongst a population that has been under constant bombardment for nearly two years and has been cut off from essential aid,” he said.
Reuters reported Monday that a $2 billion plan for so-called “humanitarian transit areas” inside Gaza was recently discussed in the Trump White House.
President Donald Trump earlier this year called for the mass removal of Palestinians from Gaza so that the area could be rebuilt as an international beach resort that he described as the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Original article by Brad Reed republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
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With Sultana and Corbyn united, we finally have Britain’s new left party
The suspended Labour MP’s historic resignation to found a working-class party has lit up social media with excitement as thousands knock at the door wanting involvement in the desperately needed project, writes ANDREW BURGIN
LAST THURSDAY, the suspended Labour MP, Zarah Sultana, took a historic political step. She resigned from Labour, the party that she joined as a young teenager; in doing so, she declared her intention to work with others to found a new working-class party — a new party of the left.
Many Labour MPs have resigned before when moving to the right, yet who now remembers Change UK or even the SDP? But in Labour’s entire history, no MP has taken the decisive step that Sultana has — leaving to help found a party of the left. But surely it’s no surprise: Sultana has already established her reputation as a class fighter and a leader both in Parliament and beyond. This is a courageous initiative that is to be celebrated.
By taking this bold and necessary step, she has not only opened up left politics, by encouraging tens of thousands of people to engage and join her on this political journey. She has also created a live debate over the nature of the party of the left, that so many have demanded for so long — and with increasing urgency over the last five years.
It is no surprise that the committee brought together by Jeremy Corbyn, uniting all those who have been working to create a new socialist party, voted overwhelmingly to ask Sultana and Corbyn to lead the initiative together.
This project stands on the inspiring legacy of Corbyn’s leadership of Labour from 2015 to 2020. Since then, there has been indecision on the left about whether and how to bring about a new party. Certainly, the first discussions that I was involved with, in the last days of 2019, came to nothing. And plans to fight back within the Labour Party likewise have led to little.
…
When Sultana resigned, she was not acting as a lone individual. She had been in serious discussion in recent weeks with those planning for a new party of the left. She took the decision to resign after an agreement with those involved in this long-running process; hence the overwhelming support from its organising committee.
The meeting, which I attended, believed the party would work best with both Corbyn and Sultana at the helm. It did not take up a separate proposal for Corbyn to be sole leader.
Sultana’s resignation and her announcement of the new leadership were putting into practice that collective decision, which she had told the meeting she would do.
This is a very exciting — and urgently necessary — development, and we must welcome it. And we must also understand its political significance: that even the preparation for founding such a party creates a new political situation. Perhaps, of necessity, there has been a certain level of secrecy in the discussions up to this point.
Taking the decision to form such a party is not easy — there are many loyalties and political commitments, some over many decades. But the time for secrecy — and foot-dragging — is now past. Labour’s right-wing trajectory is now plain for all to see: in its support for the genocide in Gaza, its use of draconian legislation against the right to protest, its attack on disabled people, and much more.
We need to get organised now. We cannot afford to miss yet another boat.
…
Contrary to some extremely disappointing and unprincipled briefing of the capitalist media by some involved, Sultana neither launched the new party nor sought to usurp the process. She did not “overplay her hand” nor “jump the gun to get the data and the donations.” Such statements are unworthy of anyone in our movement, and I, for one, do not believe that the anonymous briefers acted in Corbyn’s name.
What Sultana did was to give expression to a decision democratically arrived at by the organising committee, that she and Corbyn would together guide the process to its founding conference.
My hope is that now this has been agreed, and is out in the open, the organising committee will make its membership publicly known, open itself up and include others, to broaden and strengthen its work and increase the chances of initiating the party that is so desperately needed.
…
Original article at https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/article/sultana-and-corbyn-united-we-finally-have-britains-new-left-party
dizzy: Despite the corporate media all seem to be supporting climate-denying Neo-Fascist Farage there is plenty of time before the next election for that and other things related to him to change.
PM faces protests in his own constituency
https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/article/pm-faces-protests-his-own-constituency
Protesters in Camden… KEIR STARMER is facing mass rejection within his own constituency as a large demonstration of Palestine supporters took to the streets to demand he quits.
Two thousand joined a noisy and vibrant protest through the PM’s Holborn and St Pancras seat on Saturday, marking the first anniversary of his re-election as local MP by telling him that the community had turned against him.
In a message to the concluding rally, local campaigner Andrew Feinstein, who secured 7,000 votes standing against Sir Keir as a pro-Palestine independent last year warned: “If he dares stand again we as a community will decide the best candidate to stand against him and we as a community will end his political career.”
…
Article continues at https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/article/pm-faces-protests-his-own-constituency
Latest Israeli ‘Massacre’ in Gaza Used 500-lb US-Made Bombs: Report
Original article by Stephen Prager republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
The attack on a crowded café has been described by international law experts as wildly disproportionate, following new reporting about the munitions used.
International law experts are describing Israel’s Monday attack on a Gaza café as a potential war crime after an investigation in The Guardian revealed that the attack was carried out using a 500-lb bomb supplied by the U.S. government.
Reporters photographed fragments of the bomb left behind in the wreckage of the al-Baqa Café. Weapons experts identified them as parts of an MK-82 general purpose bomb, which it called “a US-made staple of many bombing campaigns in recent decades.”
The attack killed anywhere from 24 to 36 Palestinians and injured dozens more. Casualties included women, children, and the elderly. A prominent photojournalist and artist were also killed.
Experts have called the use of such a weapon on an area full of civilians wildly disproportionate and a likely violation of the Geneva Convention, which outlaws military operations that cause “incidental loss of civilian life” that is “excessive or disproportionate” to the military advantage to be gained.
“It is almost impossible to see how this use of that kind of munition can be justified,” said Marc Schack, an associate professor of international law at the University of Copenhagen in comments to The Guardian. “If you are talking about 20, 30, 40 or more civilian casualties, usually that would have to be a target of very great importance.”
After the attack drew heavy criticism, an army spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the strike had killed “several Hamas terrorists” and that “prior to the strike, steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians using aerial surveillance.”
Gerry Simpson of Human Rights Watch criticized that defense.
“The Israeli military hasn’t said exactly whom it was targeting, but it said it used aerial surveillance to minimize civilian casualties, which means it knew the café was teeming with customers at the time,” Simpson told The Guardian. “The military would also have known that using a large guided air-dropped bomb would kill and maim many of the civilians there. The use of such a large weapon in an obviously crowded café risks that this was an unlawful disproportionate or indiscriminate attack and should be investigated as a war crime.”
Since Monday’s bombing, the attacks against civilians in Gaza have only intensified. According to a Thursday report from the Gaza Government Media Office, more than 300 Palestinians have been killed within the last 48 hours in “26 bloody massacres.”
According to reporting Thursday from Al Jazeera, these have included attacks on “shelters and displacement centers overcrowded with tens of thousands of displaced people, public rest areas, Palestinian families inside their homes, popular markets and vital civilian facilities, and starving civilians searching for food.”
At least 33 people were killed Thursday at a Gaza Humanitarian Fund (GHF) aid distribution site, adding to the hundreds of aid seekers who have been killed in recent weeks. In a Haaretz investigation last week, soldiers described these aid sites, administered by the U.S. and Israel, as a “killing field,” where they have routinely been ordered to fire on unarmed civilians who posed no threat.
Two American contractors at a GHF site told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity that their colleagues fired their guns wildly, including in the direction of Palestinians. They provided a video which shows hundreds of aid-seekers crowded between metal gates, being assaulted with stun grenades and pepper spray, while gunshots echo in the background.
On Tuesday, Amnesty International and hundreds of other humanitarian NGOs called for an end to the Israeli government’s blockade of food and other necessities entering the Gaza Strip. They also called for an end to the “deadly Israeli distribution scheme” and for a return of aid distribution to the United Nations and other international organizations.
“This devastating daily loss of life as desperate Palestinians try to collect aid is the consequence of their deliberate targeting by Israeli forces and the foreseeable consequence of irresponsible and lethal methods of distribution,” said Agnès Callamard, the secretary general of Amnesty International, on Thursday.
Original article by Stephen Prager republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
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