‘Glimmer of Hope’ as UN Security Council Approves Gaza Cease-Fire Resolution
Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
“We voted for this text to give diplomacy a chance,” said Algeria’s U.N. ambassador. “It is time to halt the killing.”
In a move that boosts the three-phase plan announced by President Joe Biden late last month, the United Nations Security Council on Monday voted 14-0—with permanent member Russia abstaining—in favor of a U.S.-sponsored resolution for a cease-fire in Gaza.
Russia chose not to exercise its power to veto the resolution, which urges Israel and Hamas to “fully implement its terms without delay and without condition.”
Responding to the vote, Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement that “although the Biden administration should have allowed the U.N. Security Council to pass a permanent cease-fire resolution many months and many slaughtered Palestinians ago, we welcome today’s development as a positive and long overdue step toward ending the genocide.”
“The Biden administration must now use American leverage to force [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu to agree to a permanent cease-fire so that the massacres of Palestinian civilians can end, all hostages and political prisoners can safely go free, international tribunals can begin holding those responsible for war crimes accountable, and the world can finally begin pursuing a credible end to the illegal occupation of Palestine that has fomented decades of injustice and oppression.”
As U.N. Newsexplained:
Phase one includes an “immediate, full, and complete cease-fire with the release of hostages including women, the elderly and the wounded, the return of the remains of some hostages who have been killed, and the exchange of Palestinian prisoners.”
It calls for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from “populated areas” of Gaza, the return of Palestinians to their homes and neighborhoods throughout the enclave, including in the north, as well as the safe and effective distribution of humanitarian assistance at scale.
Phase two would see a permanent end to hostilities “in exchange for the release of all other hostages still in Gaza, and a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.”
In phase three, “a major multi-year reconstruction plan for Gaza” would begin and the remains of any deceased hostages still in the strip would be returned to Israel.”
The council also underlined the proposal’s provision that if negotiations take longer than six weeks for phase one, the cease-fire will continue as long as negotiations continue.
“The only way to end this cycle of violence and build a durable peace is through a political settlement,” U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield—who vetoed several previous Security Council cease-fire resolutions— said following Monday’s vote.
The Biden administration has provided Israel with billions of dollars in military aid, arms and ammunition sales, and diplomatic cover.
In a statement, Hamas—which led the October 7 attack on Israel that left more than 1,100 people dead and over 240 others taken hostage—welcomed the resolution’s passage and affirmed its willingness “to enter into indirect negotiations on the implementation of these principles.”
However, Reut Shapir Ben-Naftaly, Israel’s representative at the U.N., said her country’s objectives in the war have not changed and vowed to keep fighting “until all of the hostages are returned and Hamas’ military capabilities are dismantled.”
“Israel will not engage in meaningless and endless negotiations which can be exploited by Hamas as a means to stall for time,” she added.
According to Palestinian and international agencies, at least 37,124 Palestinians—mostly women and children—have been killed by Israeli forces during the 248-day Gaza onslaught, which is the subject of an International Criminal Court genocide case brought by South Africa and supported by more than 30 nations and regional blocs. Nearly 85,000 Palestinians have also been injured. At least 11,000 other Palestinians are missing and believed buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed-out buildings.
International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan is seeking arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders for alleged crimes including extermination.
Algerian Ambassador Amar Bendjama said after Monday’s vote that “as a free and dignified people, the Palestinians will never accept living under occupation. They will never abdicate their fight for liberation.”
“This text is not perfect, but it offers a glimmer of hope to the Palestinians as the alternative is continued killing and suffering,” he added. “We voted for this text to give diplomacy a chance. It is time to halt the killing.”
The Security Council resolution’s passage follows last month’s vote by the U.N. General Assembly to recognize Palestinian statehood—a move supported by 143 members of the World Body but vehemently opposed by Israel and the U.S. Only nine nations voted against recognizing Palestine as an independent state.
Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Federal Court Hears Appeal in Case Accusing Biden of Complicity in Gaza Genocide
Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
“Genocide can never be a legitimate foreign policy choice,” argued one plaintiffs’ attorney.
Following the dismissal earlier this year of a federal lawsuit accusing senior Biden administration officials of failing to prevent Israel’s U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Monday began hearing an expedited appeal by Palestinian plaintiffs in the case.
Arguing that U.S. leaders “have a legal duty to prevent, and not further,” genocide, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) first filed a lawsuit last November in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in Oakland on behalf of the rights groups Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P) and al-Haq, as well as a group of individual Palestinians in Gaza and the United States.
“Genocide can never be a legitimate foreign policy choice,” CCR senior staff attorney Katie Gallagher argued during Monday’s proceedings.
The suit—which names President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin as defendants—seeks to force the U.S. administration to stop “providing further arms, money, and diplomatic support to Israel” as it wages a war of annihilation in which more than 132,000 Palestinians have been killed, maimed, or left missing; nearly 90% of Gaza’s population has been forcibly displaced; and at least hundreds of thousands of people are starving.
Palestinian American writer Laila al-Haddad, a plaintiff in the case, lost her aunt and three of her cousins to a November Israeli airstrike on a United Nations school in the Jabalia refugee camp that killed more than 30 people.
“I promised my surviving family members in Gaza that I would do everything in my power to advocate on their behalf,” al-Haddad wrote in an article published Monday by The Nation.
“Although I knew the case would be an uphill battle, I testified to make a record of Israel’s horrific slaughter of my family, the displacement and dispossession and starvation of the surviving members, the deliberate destruction of my hometown and everything that sustains life there, and ethnic cleansing of my people,” she continued.
“As a Palestinian, I struggle to balance the disgust and impotence I feel knowing that my tax dollars are being used to kill my family members in Gaza with an urgency to do everything in my power to demand an end to this administration’s complicity in genocide,” al-Haddad added.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White ruled on January 31 that the case fell “outside the court’s limited jurisdiction” and rejected the suit on technical grounds—even as he wrote that “the current treatment of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military may plausibly constitute a genocide in violation of international law.”
On February 27, the 9th Circuit Court granted a motion by CCR and co-counsel at Van Der Hout LLP to expedite plaintiffs’ appeal amid soaring Palestinian civilian casualties and destruction wrought by Israel’s assault on Gaza.
Last week, 9th Circuit Judge Ryan Nelson recused himself from the new case following pressure from plaintiffs who questioned his impartiality after he visited Israel in March with 13 other federal judges on a trip sponsored by the World Jewish Congress meant to convince U.S. jurists of the legality of Israel’s Gaza onslaught.
Genocide is defined under the 1948 Genocide Convention as killing or causing serious physical or psychological harm to members of a group, “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group,” or “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
At least hundreds of jurists and genocide experts around the world concur that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The International Court of Justice is currently weighing a genocide case against Israel brought by South Africa and backed by more than 30 nations and regional blocs. Last month, International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan said he is seeking to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders for alleged crimes including extermination.
As CCR noted:
Numerous Israeli government leaders have expressed clear genocidal intentions and deployed dehumanizing characterizations of Palestinians, including “human animals.” At the same time, the Israeli military has bombed civilian areas and infrastructure, including by using chemical weapons, and deprived Palestinians of everything necessary for human life, including water, food, electricity, fuel, and medicine. Those statements of intent—when combined with mass killing, causing serious bodily and mental harm, and the total siege and closure creating conditions of life to bring about the physical destruction of the group—reveal evidence of an unfolding crime of genocide.
The Biden administration has provided Israel with billions of dollars in military aid and arms and ammunition sales, as well as diplomatic cover in the form of United Nations Security Council vetoes and genocide denial, as its forces continue to obliterate Gaza 248 days after the Hamas-led attacks on October 7 that left more than 1,100 Israelis and foreign nationals dead—at least some of whom were killed by so-called “friendly fire“—and over 240 others taken hostage.
“The U.S. courts have an opportunity in front of them: Judges can choose to take a minimal step towards allowing DCI-P and the other plaintiffs to have a chance at holding the Biden administration accountable for its role in the genocide of Palestinians, or they can sit back and refuse to carry out checks on the executive branch,” DCI-P advocacy officer Miranda Cleland wrote in an opinion piece published Friday by Middle East Eye. “It is a choice, quite literally, between life and death.”
“Israeli forces, emboldened by the so-called ironclad support of the Biden administration, have killed on average more than 60 Palestinian children every day since October 7,” she continued. “That’s more than 15,000 children who won’t go back to school, or play with their friends, or hug their parents ever again. Those 15,000 children will not grow up and live in a free Palestine.”
“If the U.S. courts continue to green-light Biden’s impunity, more Palestinian children and their families will pay the price,” Cleland added. “It is a price that I, alongside many other voters in the U.S., are not willing to accept.”
Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
‘We will not vote for those who normalise massacres’
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/we-will-not-vote-those-who-normalise-massacres
Hundreds of thousands protest across Britain demanding end to Gaza bloodshed
OVER the weekend, hundreds of thousands of people flooded Britain’s streets, calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and warning political parties to stop arming Israel if they expect support in the upcoming election.
On Saturday, over 150,000 gathered in London for the 15th national march for Palestine.
The march took place as Israel carried out a murderous assault on Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza.
Israeli forces killed at least 274 Palestinians and injured 698 more, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Four Israeli captives were freed during the raid.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak ignored the horrific death toll, instead describing the release of the captives as a “huge relief.”
Two days before, an Israeli air strike hit a UN school, murdering 33 people, including nine children.
Speaking at the rally, Palestine Solidarity Campaign director Ben Jamal accused political leaders of having “normalised massacres.”
He said: “Now our political leaders are coming before you asking for your vote. Your answer needs to be clear.
“We will not vote for those who normalise massacres.
“We will not vote for those who greenlight genocide.
“We will not vote for those who collaborate with systems of apartheid.”
He emphasised that justice for Palestinians needs to be forced onto the election agenda like never before.
Lindsey German from Stop the War said the massive demonstration, which stretched along Whitehall, sent “the loudest possible message to our politicians that the public support an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in Gaza.”
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Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/we-will-not-vote-those-who-normalise-massacres
Labour Party Deputy Leader Angela Rayner calls for police to kill and harass innocent people
Angela Rayner calls on police to ‘Shoot your terrorists and ask questions second’
Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, has been criticised after saying she wants police to “shoot your terrorists and ask questions second.”
Speaking to Matt Forde’s Political Party podcast, Rayner said she was “quite hardline” on law and order and suggested police should “antagonise” criminals.
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Among those criticising Rayner was the former shadow home secretary Diane Abbott, who said: “Is Angela suggesting a mandatory death sentence for suspected (but not convicted) “terrorists” ?” she tweeted.
Rayner was also criticised by the leftwing grassroots group Momentum. Sonali Bhattacharyya, of Momentum’s national coordinating group, said: “These remarks are deeply concerning. It was this approach that led to the assassination of Jean Charles de Menezes.
“You can’t kneel for racial justice one day, then praise shoot-to-kill powers for the police the next.
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Zionist Labour Friends of Israel supporter Rayner is calling on police to kill and harass innocent people. She’ll be pleased with Israel’s continuing genocide – Gazans are called terrorists after being murdered just like Jean Charles de Menezes. Fascists who disregard basic human rights should not be elected to political office.
11/06/24 I found this article useful to research this further ;)
Twitter Is Pointing Out All The Major Flaws With Angela Rayner’s New Policing Stance
FUTURE PUBLISHING VIA GETTY IMAGES
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14/6/24 Are search engines censoring this post? It’s legitimate comment in a supposedly democratic society.