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Israeli Bombings Kill More Palestinians as 250,000 Ordered to Evacuate Khan Younis

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

Displaced Palestinians from areas in east Khan Younis, Gaza flee after the Israel Defense Forces issued a new evacuation order for parts of the city on July 2, 2024.  (Photo: Eyad Baba/AFP via Getty Images)

“It means yet another day, week, chapter of misery for these hundreds of thousands of people,” said one United Nations worker.

Hearing once again from the Israel Defense Forces that they must evacuate to a so-called “humanitarian zone,” hundreds of thousands of Palestinian people in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis on Tuesday were forced to search for safety ahead of a likely ground offensive in the city.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said that roughly 250,000 people are living and seeking shelter in the evacuation zone—more than 10% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million.

The evacuation order, which was posted on social media on Monday, also includes nearby localities including al-Qarara and Bani Suhaila.

The IDF said after the order was announced that patients and healthcare providers at European Hospital, the largest operating medical facility in Gaza, were not required to evacuate, but the hospital director told the Associated Press that most had already been relocated.

“The hospital staff and the patients decided to already evacuate themselves,” said Rik Peeperkorn, World Health Organization representative for the occupied Palestinian territories, in a press briefing. “We plea the European Gaza hospital will be spared, will be non-damaged.”

Peeperkorn said three patients remained at the hospital.

Since Israel began its assault on Gaza and its near-total blockade on humanitarian aid in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack in October, the IDF has attacked hospitals across the enclave, even as they have served as shelters for forcibly displaced people.

The IDF has ordered evacuations from places including northern Gaza and the southern city of Rafah—only to bomb so-called “safe” zones after displacing people.

In late May, at least 46 people were killed when Israel bombed a tent encampment in a “humanitarian area” in Rafah after beginning a full-scale ground invasion of the city, where more than a million people had been displaced. At least 25 people were killed in another attack on an encampment in the area last month.

Sam Rose, a planning director for UNRWA, told Al Jazeera that the latest evacuation order put a quarter of a million people in a “harrowing, horrific, and incredibly difficult” situation.

“It means yet another day, week, chapter of misery for these hundreds of thousands of people,” said Rose. “Most of them have been displaced several times. Some had just returned from Rafah where they were displaced a few weeks ago… They go without knowing precisely where they will end up because this evacuation order told people to go urgently—they know that if they don’t go out within 24 hours the worst is to come.”

Soon after the evacuation order, at least nine people were killed in an Israeli strike on a home near European Hospital in Khan Younis.

Rose noted that the coastal area of al-Mawasi, where many people will likely go, is “already so overcrowded. There is no room to pitch a tent, there is no water, no infrastructure, no sanitary services. Many spend the night in vehicles or they sleep on their donkey carts.”

Louise Wateridge, a spokesperson for UNRWA, told The Washington Post that the forced displacement is taking place amid temperatures over 86°F “every day.”

“Even the healthiest people will struggle to make a move in this heat with lack of food, with lack of water,” she said. “And then where do they go? That’s the next question.”

Ahmed al-Najjar, a 26-year-old resident of the Bani Suhaila neighborhood, told Agence France Presse that with nowhere to flee, his family has been forced to stay in the area after first attempting to leave.

“We did not know where we would go and we do not have enough money to buy a new tent,” he said. “We had to spend the night on the street and that has increased our stress. This morning we decided to go home again. There is nowhere else… Whatever happens, happens. We have nothing to lose now.”

The IDF’s apparent plan to expand its assault on Khan Younis came as The New York Times reported that security leaders in Israel are pushing for a cease-fire in Gaza, objecting to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to continue the assault until Hamas is eliminated—an objective even some top Israeli military officials believe is impossible—and all Israeli hostages are released.

The Times reported that senior military officials believe a cease-fire is the “swiftest way” to free captives remaining in Gaza.

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

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UK Labour Party Shadow Foreign Secretary repeatedly heckled at a speech to the Fabian Society over his and the Labour Party's support for and complicity in Israel's genocide of Gaza.
UK Labour Party Shadow Foreign Secretary repeatedly heckled at a speech to the Fabian Society over his and the Labour Party’s support for and complicity in Israel’s genocide of Gaza.
Continue ReadingIsraeli Bombings Kill More Palestinians as 250,000 Ordered to Evacuate Khan Younis

‘A Full-Fledged War Crime’: Israel Condemned Over New Human Shield Footage

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

Footage shows a Palestinian man being used by the Israel Defense Forces as a human shield. (Photo: Al Jazeera)

“These crimes, and dozens of similar cases, require urgent intervention from the international justice system,” said one human rights group.

The latest video evidence of Israel’s use of Palestinians as “human shields” during combat was condemned by one human rights advocate on Monday as “horrifying but not surprising,” as campaigners emphasized that the Israel Defense Forces has long used civilians in Palestine to shield their own soldiers from harm while bombarding Gaza and the West Bank.

Footage released by Al Jazeera on Sunday night showed Israeli forces attaching body cameras to handcuffed Palestinians who they had detained, dressing them in IDF uniforms, and sending them into buildings and tunnels to ensure the locations weren’t rigged with explosives.

The footage presented “evidence of a systematic tactic of the army,” said the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.

“The leaked horrific scenes that were obtained and published by Al Jazeera reveal how the Israeli army uses civilians, including injured detainees, as human shields and forces them into hazardous combat zones after installing cameras on their bodies and binding them with rope,” said Euro-Med. “Each of the aforementioned acts of criminal, brutal, and inhumane behavior constitutes a grave violation of the rules of international humanitarian law, and is a full-fledged war crime. These crimes, and dozens of similar cases, require urgent intervention from the international justice system to ensure the protection of civilians, prevent their use as human shields, and hold the Israeli political and military perpetrators.”

The Israeli government has long blamed Hamas’ use of “human shields” for deaths in Gaza, which now number at least 37,900, saying the group operates out of civilian infrastructure and places Palestinians in harm’s way.

Journalist Dan Cohen pointed out that the IDF has used what it calls “the neighbor procedure” for decades, forcing Palestinian “messengers” to approach the homes of suspected fugitives alone and unarmed while Israeli soldiers announce over a loudspeaker that they are surrounding the building.

The procedure “is so commonplace that the military tried to justify it as a lifesaving measure in use since the 1980s,” said Cohen. “The images… show the reality of this criminal practice.”

In its statement on the new footage, Euro-Med detailed numerous instances in which Israel has appeared to use human shields as defined by the Geneva Conventions: “cases where persons were actually taken to military objectives in order to shield those objectives from attacks.”

As Euro-Med reported:

During the Shifa Medical Complex raid in March 2024, Israeli forces used civilians, including patients and displaced individuals sheltering inside the complex, as human shields. To protect their military operations within the hospital and its vicinity, Israeli forces exploited Palestinian civilians by making them form human barriers to surround Israeli soldiers and military vehicles, or sending them under threat to residential homes and buildings to either help arrest or forcibly evacuate other civilians before army raids and the subsequent destruction of many of these buildings.

[…]

Furthermore, several families residing near the Shifa Medical Complex reported that Israeli forces arrested young men from inside the medical facility, then used them to enter the families’ homes and demand that they immediately evacuate to the central and southern Strip.

The group also cited a recent example from June 22 in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, where Israeli forces placed a wounded Palestinian man on the hood of a military vehicle and drove through the Jabariya neighborhood, and “a compound and comprehensive crime” against a civilian family in Gaza City on June 27.

“A family comprising an elderly woman and her four children, including three young women and a one-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter, was attacked with gunfire and bombs by Israeli forces who stormed their house in the Gaza City neighborhood of Al-Shujaiya,” said the group. “They were later taken outside and detained for over three hours near Israeli tanks in a dangerous combat zone, despite the injuries they sustained in the initial attack on their home, and were used as human shields. The 65-year-old mother, identified as Safiya Hassan Musa Al-Jamal, was run over by an Israeli tank and killed in front of her son.”

On Monday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) condemned the footage released Sunday from the incident in Gaza while noting that Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir was recorded over the weekend calling for Palestinian prisoners to be executed and fed reduced food rations as a “deterrence” tactic.

Almost 10,000 Palestinians have been arrested by Israeli forces, including women and children, CAIR said, demanding that the U.S. end its military support for Israel.

“Israeli war crimes, and calls for more war crimes, are occurring daily in Gaza and the West Bank, while the Biden administration rushes more American bombs to Israel to complete the genocide,” said CAIR communications director Ibrahim Hooper. “The U.S.-Israeli partnership in genocide, ethnic cleansing, and forced starvation will shape the international community’s image of America for generations to come. The Biden administration must change course to uphold universal human rights and recognize Palestinian humanity.”

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

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Continue Reading‘A Full-Fledged War Crime’: Israel Condemned Over New Human Shield Footage

Newly Released Gaza Hospital Director Alleges ‘Almost Daily Torture’ in Israeli Detention

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

Al-Shifa hospital director Muhammad Abu Salmiya is welcomed by relatives as he arrives in the Gaza Strip on July 1, 2024, after being detained by Israel for more than seven months. Abu Salmiya said that he and his fellow detainees were subjected to torture and terrible conditions.  (Photo: Bashar Taleb/AFP via Getty Images)

The hospital director, who’d been held without trial since Israeli forces detained him in November, said that he and others were subjected to torture, psychological humiliation, and severe undernourishment.

The director of Gaza’s main hospital said at a press conference on Monday that he was tortured while being held without charges for the last seven months at an Israeli detention center.

Muhammad Abu Salmiya, director of the Al-Shifa hospital, once Gaza’s main medical center, made the claims after he and 54 other Palestinian detainees were released and arrived back to the Gaza Strip.

Israeli forces had raided the hospital in November and alleged that Abu Salmiya was involved in making it a Hamas command center. They later destroyed the hospital.

Abu Salmiya said detention guards broke his finger and beat him to the point that his head bled—and that he wasn’t the only one.

“Our detainees have been subjected to all kinds of torture behind bars,” Abu Salmiya said. “There was almost daily torture.”

There was “daily physical and psychological humiliation,” he added.

He also said that they were severely underfed, surviving on nothing more than a loaf of bread per day. He said that all of the detainees had lost at least 30 kilograms (66 pounds).

“Our detainees have been subjected to all kinds of torture behind bars. There was almost daily torture.”

Israeli forces seized Abu Salmiya from a United Nations convoy on November 22. They took him to court three times while in detainment but brought no charges and allowed him no lawyer, Abu Salmiya said.

His detention in November followed an Israeli siege of Al-Shifa hospital, which Israeli officials said had become a Hamas control center. Though weapons were found at the hospital, an investigation by The Washington Post in December showed that the evidence fell short of revealing a command center, and that key claims the Israelis had made to justify the siege turned out to be incorrect.

Israeli forces attacked the hospital again in late March, killing hundreds and leaving the facility mostly destroyed. Several mass graves were discovered near the hospital site in the weeks that followed.

Israel has detained thousands of Palestinians since the war started, leading to “intolerable overcrowding” of its facilities, as Haaretz reported in February. Many detainees are held without charges in what is called “administrative detention.”

At least 40 Palestinians have died in Israeli detention during the war, according to Addameer, a Palestinian watchdog group. Salmiya said Monday that some had been killed in interrogation cells, Al Jazeera reported.

At least one other doctor was among those released on Monday: Bassam Miqdad, head of the orthopedic unit at Gaza European hospital in Khan Younis.

In April, Adnan Ahmad Albursh, a 50-year-old Palestinian surgeon, died in Israeli detention, according to Palestinian officials and rights groups. He had been the head of orthopedics at Al-Shifa hospital. Overall, hundreds of healthcare workers have been killed during the war.

Israeli officials and political figures from various parties denounced the release of the 55 detainees, which was reportedly done to make space in the overcrowded detention centers.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right minister in charge of Israel’s police and prison service, called the release of the detainees a case of “security negligence” and blamed another ministry. Benny Gantz, an opposition figure who recently resigned from the war cabinet, said whoever released the detainees should be fired and that government offices should be made available to “free up space and budget for prisoners,” according to Al Jazeera.

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

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Continue ReadingNewly Released Gaza Hospital Director Alleges ‘Almost Daily Torture’ in Israeli Detention

Interview: It’s the Masses against the Machine in Islington North

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/its-masses-against-machine-islington-north

ALL TO PLAY FOR: Jeremy Corbyn poses outside Islington Town Hall, north London, after handing in his nomination papers for the general election

WILL Jeremy Corbyn win? It is the anxious question asked thousands of times a day by men and women on the left across Britain.

Across the world, come to that. The Islington North MP is recognised globally as one of the foremost champions for peace and social justice.

…

Five years ago he was leading Labour’s charge for office. His period as party leader did one thing the Establishment can never forgive — it gave them a fright. Keir Starmer is the instrument of their vengeance.

Interviewed by the Star in a cafe in the shadow of Finsbury Park station, near his campaign headquarters, he is invited to reflect on what has become of his party of nearly 60 years.

“It’s very sad. When I stepped down as leader it had 600,000 members, it was developing community organising, delayed for two years by officialdom.

“That was the direction we were going in — a broad, community-based grassroots campaigning party. Now it is a very centralised party. Local parties like Islington North have been treated with absolute disdain by the national party.”

His campaign has focused heavily on the local and has not really attacked his former party.

Prompted, Corbyn acknowledges that “if Labour loses that social milieu of people fighting for social justice and peace it just becomes a vehicle with no soul.”

That is the price of the consensus which Corbynism briefly shattered and is now in advanced restoration. Nationally, it is an arid campaign.

“The duopoly of the economic offer, both parties promise the same spending plans, same taxation regime, means the inequalities of the past 15 years are hard-wired into economic plans for the future.”

…

As ever, Jeremy Corbyn is most fluent, most at ease when discussing either the social problems on the ground, in his own constituency above all, or the dangers facing the world as a whole. I put to him George Galloway’s recent warning that Britain could be at war within six months.

“George is not wrong about that. We are moving towards a very very dangerous situation. Defence spending is by consensus to rise to 2.5 per cent and there are pretty loud voices saying it should go even more, to 3 per cent.”

He slates the bipartisan obsession “with Britain’s global military role — for what? We are building up to a cold war with China,” incurring vast spending on the Aukus nuclear submarine pact ”and not doing anything to bring about peace, not in the Ukraine war, not in Palestine.”

Re-elected, “I will be that voice for peace,” he pledges, a rare politician’s commitment that you can be absolutely sure will be honoured.

…

“The Gaza crisis has sorted a lot of people out. I think that the opportunity for politics coming back offered by the peace movement is going to be the future. People who come together for social justice.

“If you want to know what the future looks like, look at the demonstrations, people from all walks of life, communities, religions, races; all of this is a way forward.

“It includes a lot of people in the Labour Party who have radical political demands” but also the wave of independent candidates challenging Labour in this election.

“People are working in the same direction like Andrew [Feinstein] and Leanne [Mohamad],” he says.

“I would expect after the election to see a political grassroots movement, a community of activity from the grassroots.” In Islington, he pledges to establish a people’s assembly to render account to.

…

Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/its-masses-against-machine-islington-north

Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted "I support Zionism without qualification." He's asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.

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Continue ReadingInterview: It’s the Masses against the Machine in Islington North

‘The World Must Not Stay Silent!’: Fresh Israeli Bombings Amid Humanitarian Hellscape in Gaza

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Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

Gazans, including children, walk past rubble and leaked sewage at Bureij camp after Israeli attacks in Deir al Balah, Gaza on June 20, 2024.
 (Photo by Hassan Jedi/Anadolu via Getty Images)

As the IDF stepped up attacks in Gaza City, one resident said, “We are being starved… with no hope that this war is ever ending.”

Residents of Gaza City’s Shujayea neighborhood found themselves on Thursday among the main targets of new Israeli military operations, with thousands of people fleeing as they were “hunted by tanks and planes,” as one Palestinian man told Reuters—even as Israel claimed the “intense” phase of the war was over.

Al Jazeera reported that the Israel Defense Forces targeted five residential homes in the Shujayea and Sabra neighborhoods in the early morning hours of Thursday, killing at least five people in the former area and three in the latter.

Evacuation orders from the IDF came about 30 minutes after the shelling began in Shujayea, according to Al Jazeera, with families rushing to move west after receiving text messages and leaflets from the military. The IDF published a map showing that certain blocks of the residential neighborhood were now part of a combat zone where tanks were moving in.

“We were suddenly and intensively bombarded by Israel,” one man fleeing the area on foot told Al Jazeera. “We came out and we don’t know where to go.”

Artillery attacks were also reported in the Zeitoun, Hawa, and Sheikh Ijlin neighborhoods of Gaza City. Shujayea was a key target of the IDF in the first weeks of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza last October.

As Israel claims to be drawing down its attacks while rejecting a permanent cease-fire agreement, “the world must not stay silent” about the ongoing assault on Gaza, said researcher and academic Nour Naim.

The Gaza Health Ministry reported Thursday that the people who were killed in Gaza City overnight were among 47 Palestinians killed across the enclave in the past 24 hours. Fifty-two people were reported wounded in the same time period—the latest of dozens each day who are taken to hospitals where doctors struggle to treat people with severely limited supplies due to continued humanitarian aid delays and blockades.

“There are moments when anesthesia is not available, but in order to save the lives of citizens, we resort to amputation, and this causes severe pain for the wounded,” a surgeon at al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, told AFP. “Every day, there are attacks that result in amputations of legs or arms for children, adults, and women.”

Six people were killed overnight in an Israeli attack in Jabalia, northern Gaza, and an attack on a family home killed one person in the northern town of Beit Lahiya.

In southern Gaza, women and children were among those killed in an attack on a school where displaced people have been staying, and Israeli ground forces “systematically demolished residential buildings in the west of the city” of Rafah, Al Jazeera reported.

As the IDF has stepped up attacks in Gaza City and continued its bombardment of other areas across the enclave, doctors, humanitarian workers, and civilians described the realities of daily life in Gaza, where aid blockades and the disruption of sanitation services and water treatment have all contributed to “grim living conditions” and heightened health risks.

Joanne Perry, a doctor working with Doctors Without Borders (MSF), described to the Associated Press living conditions that have caused concern that a cholera outbreak could soon take hold.

“The crowded conditions, the lack of water, the heat, the poor sanitation—these are the preconditions of cholera,” Perry told the AP.

Israeli attacks since October have destroyed Gaza’s wastewater treatment plants, water desalination plants, sewage pumping facilities, and wells, and have killed government workers who have tried to repair the infrastructure, leading Palestinians to rely on contaminated and “salty” water.

“We found worms in the water. I had been drinking from it,” 21-year-old Adel Dalloul told the AP. “It was salty, polluted, and full of germs… I had gastrointestinal problems and diarrhea, and my stomach hurts until this moment.”

The World Health Organization has reported 485,000 cases of diarrhea—the third-leading cause of death in young children worldwide—since October, and has warned of at least one outbreak of Hepatitis A, which is spread through the consumption of water and food contaminated with fecal matter.

A mother of six in Khan Younis told Reuters that her family is relying on a charity kitchen’s daily visits to their U.N.-run shelter, as 12 million pounds of food aid and other supplies have been held up since June 9, according to U.S. officials.

“If the charity kitchen did not come here for one day, we would wonder about what we will eat that day,” Umm Feisal Abu Nqera told Reuters. “We are living the worst days of our lives in terms of famine and deprivation… Today, your son looks at you and you bleed from within, because you cannot provide him with his most basic rights and the simplest needs for his life.”

A girl died of malnutrition on Thursday at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, bringing the official death toll from malnutrition and dehydration among children to 31.
“We are being starved in Gaza City,” 25-year-old Mohammad Jamal toldReuters as the renewed Israeli offensive took hold, “with no hope that this war is ever ending.”

Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted "I support Zionism without qualification." He's asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.

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Continue Reading‘The World Must Not Stay Silent!’: Fresh Israeli Bombings Amid Humanitarian Hellscape in Gaza