Blood can be seen in the aftermath of the Israeli strike on a U.N.-run school that killed dozens of Palestinians in the Nusseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, June 6, 2024
More than 30 killed by Israeli strike on UN school sheltering displaced Palestinians
MORE than 30 people — mostly children — were killed by an Israeli strike on a UN school sheltering displaced Palestinians today.
Israel defended the latest bloodshed among Palestinians seeking refuge by claiming that Hamas was operating from within the UN refugee agency (UNRWA) school in Nuseirat refugee camp, central Gaza.
It did not provide evidence for its claims, as is usually the case with such attacks.
A CNN analysis indicated that the weapons used in the pre-dawn attack were US-made.
It is not the first time that air-strikes have targeted the school.
The attack followed Israel’s announcement on Wednesday of a new military campaign in central Gaza, saying that there would be no pause in fights amid ceasefire talks.
…
Peace and Justice Project founder Jeremy Corbyn, who is defending his Islington North seat as an independent MP, said he is “appalled by the ongoing loss of life,” telling the Star: “Another day, another war crime.
“What kind of world are we living in when this kind of horror becomes part of our weekly or even daily routine?
“How have we allowed these atrocities to become so normalised?
“A school is a place of learning, growth and joy. In Gaza, they have been turned into a place of death, trauma and grief.”
Mr Corbyn vowed to continue to speak up for a ceasefire, the end to arms sales to Israel and “the only path to a just and lasting peace: the end to the occupation of Palestine.”
VOTING for Labour MPs who have failed to back a ceasefire in Gaza is supporting complicity in genocide, a British-Palestinian independent candidate says.
Tanushka Marah, who is standing in Hove and Portslade, told the Morning Star that Labour MPs who abstained in last year’s ceasefire vote in the Commons have blood on their hands.
She was selected by pro-Palestine and socialist groups to challenge Peter Kyle, a member of Sir Keir Starmer’s shadow cabinet who has held the constituency for nine years.
The shadow science, innovation and technology secretary is a vice-chairman of Labour Friends for Israel and has consistently defended the pariah state.
He was named in a Declassified UK investigation this week as among the quarter of MPs who have accepted funds from pro-Israel lobbyists.
A shell that appears to be white phosphorus from Israeli artillery explodes over a house in al-Bustan, a Lebanese village along the border with Israel, on October 15, 2023
ISRAEL has broken international law by using white phosphorus incendiary shells on residential buildings in southern Lebanon, Human Rights Watch alleged today.
This coincided with United Nations agencies warning that over one million Palestinians in Gaza could face starvation by the middle of next month if there is no end to the current Israeli military offensive.
In a damning new report, the global human rights group says there is no evidence of burns injuries caused by white phosphorus in Lebanon, but that researchers have “heard accounts indicating possible respiratory damage.”
Human rights campaigners point out that it is a crime under international law to fire white phosphorus munitions into populated areas.
Israel maintains that it is used only as a smokescreen and not to target civilians.
Palestinians wait in line to receive food distributed by charitable organizations amid Israeli attacks in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza on May 28, 2024. (Photo: Hassan Jedi/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“The fact that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza is not in contention,” said a Human Rights Watch researcher.
U.S. President Joe Biden said in an interview published Tuesday that he does not believe the Israeli government is using starvation as a weapon of warfare in Gaza, contradicting the findings of leading human rights organizations that have documented Israel’s deliberate obstruction of food aid as Palestinians die of malnutrition.
“No, I don’t think that,” Biden said in response to TIME magazine’s Washington bureau chief Massimo Calabresi and editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs, who noted some have “alleged that Israel is intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.”
The president, who has approved more than 100 arms sales to Israel during its eight-month assault on the Gaza Strip, acknowledged that Israel’s military has “engaged in activity that is inappropriate” and that “Palestinians have suffered greatly.”
But he stopped well short of the conclusions reached by Oxfam International, Human Rights Watch (HRW), and the International Criminal Court, which recently applied for arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for their role in the “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare” and other war crimes.
The U.S. Agency for International Development has also determined that Israel has unlawfully impeded the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Gaza, leading to a “deterioration of food security and nutrition in Gaza [that] is unprecedented in modern history.”
“The fact that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza is not in contention. It is clear as day,” Hiba Zayadin, a researcher at HRW, wrote in response to Biden’s TIME interview, pointing to her group’s December report that found the Israeli military was “deliberately blocking the delivery of water, food, and fuel, while willfully impeding humanitarian assistance, apparently razing agricultural areas, and depriving the civilian population of objects indispensable to their survival.”
“The evidence is even stronger today,” Zayadin added, citing HRW’s April report that focused specifically on the Israeli military’s starvation of Gaza children. Dozens of Palestinian kids, some just months old, have died of malnutrition since October, a figure that is almost certain to grow as Israel’s bombing campaign and ground offensive in Rafah continue.
The World Food Program said Wednesday that unless Israel’s assault on Gaza ends and desperately needed humanitarian aid is allowed to flow, more than a million people in the occupied enclave “are expected to face death and starvation… by mid-July.”
Humanitarian groups and experts—including an outspoken former U.S. State Department official—have argued that by continuing to arm Israel and provide it with diplomatic cover on the world stage, the Biden administration is complicit in Gaza’s increasingly dire hunger crisis.
“This is not just turning a blind eye to the man-made starvation of an entire population, it is direct complicity,” Josh Paul, who resigned from the State Department in October over the administration’s support for Israel’s assault on Gaza, told The Independent last month.
In a speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate earlier this week, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) displayed photos of emaciated children as he explained his decision to boycott Netanyahu’s upcoming speech to Congress.
“Blocking humanitarian aid and creating the conditions for famine is not only an act of extreme cruelty—using starvation as an act of war—but it is a violation of both American and international law,” Sanders added. “It is a war crime.”
