Zionism

Canada, Sweden Restore UNRWA Funds as Report Accuses Israel of Torturing Agency Staff

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

A picture taken on November 27, 2023 shows a heavily damaged UNWRA school after Israeli strikes in the village of Khuzaa, near Abasan east of Khan Yunis near the border fence between Israel and the southern Gaza Strip.  (Photo by Said Khatib/AFP via Getty Images)

“The work that UNWRA does cannot be overstated,” said Canadian lawmaker Salma Zahid. “It will save lives as we have seen the visuals of children dying of hunger in Gaza. The need for immediate aid is non-negotiable.”

The governments of Canada and Sweden have announced they will resume funding for the United Nation’s agency that provides humanitarian aide and protection to Palestinians living in Gaza and elsewhere—a move that other powerful nations, including Israel’s most powerful ally the United States, continue to refuse.

Calling the lack of humanitarian relief inside Gaza “catastrophic,” Canadian Minister of International Development Ahmed Hussen said Friday his nation would restore funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in order to help address the “dire” situation on the ground living.

Sweden made its announcement Saturday and said a $20 million disbursement would be made to help UNRWA regain its financial footing.

The restoration of funds follows weeks of global criticism and protest for the decision by many Western nations to withhold UNRWA funds after Israel claimed, without presenting evidence, that a few members of the agency—the largest employer in the Gaza Strip—had participated in the Hamas-led attacks of October 7.

As a result, UNRWA has said it’s ability to provide aide and services to Gaza—where over 100,000 people have been killed or wounded in five months of constant bombardment and blockade by the Israeli military—has been pushed to the “breaking point” as malnutrition and starvation has been documented among the displaced population of over 2 million people.

“Canada is resuming its funding to UNRWA so more can be done to respond to the urgent needs of Palestinian civilians,” Hussen said. “Canada will continue to take the allegations against some of UNRWA’s staff extremely seriously and we will remain closely engaged with UNRWA and the UN to pursue accountability and reforms.”

“I welcome Canada lifting the pause on funding for UNWRA,” said Canadian MP Salma Zahid, a member of the Liberal party representing Scarborough Centre in the House of Commons. “The work that UNWRA does cannot be overstated. It will save lives as we have seen the visuals of children dying of hunger in Gaza. The need for immediate aid is non-negotiable.”

Earlier this week, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini told a special meeting of the U.N. General Assembly the agency was “facing a deliberate and concerted campaign” by Israel “to undermine its operations, and ultimately end them.”

On Friday, Reuters reported on an internal UNRWA report that included testimony of employees who said they were tortured by Israeli officers while in detention to make false admissions about involvement in the October 7 attack.

According to the reporting:

UNRWA communications director Juliette Touma said the agency planned to hand the information in the 11-page, unpublished report to agencies inside and outside the U.N. specialised in documenting potential human rights abuses.

“When the war comes to an end there needs to be a series of inquiries to look into all violations of human rights,” she said.

The document said several UNRWA Palestinian staffers had been detained by the Israeli army, and added that the ill-treatment and abuse they said they had experienced included severe physical beatings, waterboarding, and threats of harm to family members.

Michael Bueckert vice president of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, said the new report was “more evidence that Canada’s political decision to suspend UNRWA funding was based on false allegations obtained through torture.”

“While the resumption of UNRWA aid is certainly welcome,” said Bueckert, “there needs to be accountability for the harm that Canada’s actions have caused.”

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

Continue ReadingCanada, Sweden Restore UNRWA Funds as Report Accuses Israel of Torturing Agency Staff

Media Malpractice: Blacking Out Genocide and Disenfranchising Palestinian Pain

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Original article by ZACK KALDVEER and FATINAH JUDEH republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Pro-Palestinians in New York City join “Shut down colonial feminism” rally in front of Senator Kristen Gillibrand’s office, U.N. Women office and New York Times building on Friday, January 12, 2024. (Photo: Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Now more than ever, Americans deserve objective, diverse, trustworthy, and contextualized coverage of Gaza.

America’s corporate media serves as a key cog in the machinery of genocide.

Rather than providing the kind of objective, fact-based reporting integral to an informed citizenry, our mainstream press bombards us with explicit and implicit biases, false narratives, dehumanization, and misdirection, serving to stifle public dissent and justify, rationalize, and conceal the systematic oppression and extermination of the people of Gaza.

As dependable propaganda tools for Israel’s aggression, our news censors truth not only by what they choose to cover and how they spin it—but what they deliberately omit. This orchestrated disinformation campaign helps ensure the ongoing and unconditional support of the U.S. government and its continued role as Israel’s dutiful genocidal benefactor.

This isn’t war. It’s mass murder. But this isn’t what most Americans are watching, reading, and hearing on the news.

How does a Palestinian-American with family in the region reconcile the disconnect between “reality” and the “story” our press is “telling”?

Consider a day in the life in Gaza: Palestinian schools, hospitals, universities, places of worship, and heritage sites are being systematically destroyed. Civilians, nearly half children, are being murdered on a mass scale (over 30,000 dead, nearly half children). The calculated deprivation of food and water is literally starving families to death. Babies are being born into a living hell, with screams of terror, the ear-piercing explosions of limb-searing U.S.-made bombs, and the painful moans of their parents among the first sounds they hear. The electricity powering the oxygen machines keeping sick patients alive cut off, leaving them to struggle to gulp each of their final breaths. Amputations of children’s limbs without anesthesia with barbed wire have become obscenely routine. Broken, but alive, Palestinian bodies riddled with shrapnel require each piece to be pulled from their flesh. Hungry children are found dead with single Israeli sniper shots to the head because they made the mistake of seeking out food from an aid truck. The deliberate decimation of Gaza’s telecommunications infrastructure has left families unable to communicate with one another, or with the world, allowing daily atrocities to become increasingly invisible and unreported.

For those fighting for survival in Gaza, there is nowhere left to run, nowhere to turn, and no one to turn to. This isn’t war. It’s mass murder. But this isn’t what most Americans are watching, reading, and hearing on the news.

American Media’s Israel Bias and Censoring Journalists

Quantitative analyses conducted by The Intercept, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, and an independent collective of U.S. journalists, writers, and media makers of coverage in The York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times lay bare our news media’s dramatic pro-Israel bias. The litany of press failings are disturbing in their sheer scope and intention. Findings included the systematic undermining of Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim perspectives and the invocation of inflammatory language that reinforces Islamophobic and racist tropes. Misinformation spread by Israeli officials is commonly printed along with consistent failures to scrutinize Israel’s indiscriminate killing of civilians in Gaza. Israeli deaths are disproportionately emphasized, and more humanizing language is used to describe them than Palestinians. This is to name just a few.

Case-in-point: In what’s now being called the Flour Massacre, at least 112 Palestinians in Gaza were killed and hundreds more injured after Israeli forces opened fire on civilians while waiting for food from desperately needed aid trucks. Leading news media descriptions referred to the slaughter as “food aid deaths,” “food aid-related deaths,” “chaotic incident,” and “reported killed in crowd near Gaza aid convoy.”

Do these headlines properly convey the massacre of starving civilians?

The New York Times: “As Hungry Gazans Crowd a Convoy, a Crush of Bodies, Israeli Gunshots and a Deadly Toll”

The Washington Post: “Chaotic Aid Delivery Turns Deadly as Israeli, Gazan Officials Trade Blame”

The Guardian: “Biden Says Gaza Food Aid-Related Deaths Complicate Cease-Fire Talks”

BBC: “More Than 100 Killed as Crowd Waits for Aid, Hamas-Run Health Ministry Says”

Sadly, censored journalists who speak out are paying the price. The Los Angeles Times recently banned 38 journalists from covering Gaza for at least three months after they signed an open letter criticizing Western newsrooms for their biased reporting on Israel and their role in dehumanizing rhetoric that has served to justify ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

But it’s not just print that is to blame. The Guardian reported the accounts of six CNN staffers from multiple newsrooms, including more than a dozen internal memos and emails, finding that daily news decisions are shaped by a flow of directives from the CNN headquarters in Atlanta that have set strict pro-Israel guidelines on coverage. Every story on the conflict must be cleared by the Jerusalem bureau—which has close ties with Israel’s military—before broadcast or publication.

In light of these exposes, it’s no wonder then, that after four months of some of the most indiscriminate and brutal attacks on civilians in human history, a global public outcry, and overwhelming support for a cease-fire in the United Nations, the U.S. continues to fund the slaughter and block international efforts to end it.

Holding Media Accountable, Supporting Journalists, and Promoting Independent News

There is no shortage of ways people can help bring this nightmare to an end. Among them should include pressure campaigns on the corporate media to commit to journalistic integrity and truth. Outlets like CNN and The New York Times have a unique opportunity to educate millions by providing rigorous, evidence-based reporting that could serve to end the ongoing genocide—rather than enable it.

Petitions to hold CNN and The New York Times accountable deserve support. But petitions aren’t enough.  (including protests, boycotts, and sit-ins) and strategies that target these institutions’ advertisers, revenues, and reputational interests are also required.

Israel’s ongoing genocidal annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza will be reviled by history—rendering the once solemn rallying cry “Never again!” cruelly hollow.

Over 122 journalists, more than any war in history, have been killed in Gaza. Journalists seeking to put their own lives at risk to report the truth must be protected. And journalists who have stories to tell about the censorship they have endured must be encouraged to tell them, anonymously if necessary.

Finally, independent, non-corporate news serves as dependable sources of fact-based information and a powerful check on the official narratives of their corporate counterparts. Now more than ever, Americans deserve objective, diverse, trustworthy, and contextualized coverage of Gaza. Thankfully, these alternatives exist, and need our support, from Pacifica radio to a long list of independent news sites.

Israel’s ongoing genocidal annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza will be reviled by history—rendering the once solemn rallying cry “Never again!” cruelly hollow. “Never again” is not meant to be a phrase of remembrance, but a call to action. Let’s not let the corporate media forget it.

Original article by ZACK KALDVEER and FATINAH JUDEH republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingMedia Malpractice: Blacking Out Genocide and Disenfranchising Palestinian Pain

Biden delivers State of the Union speech while under fire for supporting genocide

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Original article by Natalia Marques republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Demonstrators outside of the Capitol blocked Biden’s motorcade, causing a delay in his State of the Union speech (Photo: NYC-DSA)

US President Joe Biden’s unwavering support for Israeli genocide in Gaza has earned him the nickname “Genocide Joe” and made it necessary to hide from constituents on the campaign trail, due to the frequency of pro-Palestine disruptions at his events.

Yesterday, on March 7, Biden gave the annual “State of the Union” address amid protests from lawmakers themselves on his Gaza policy. When Biden began to bring up Gaza in his speech, Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian in Congress, was joined by several other progressive representatives in holding up signs that said “lasting ceasefire now.” Biden did say in his speech that “we’ve been working non-stop to establish an immediate ceasefire that would last for at least six weeks,” however, he still does not support a permanent ceasefire. Israel seeks the ability to revisit any ceasefire after six weeks. 

Outside of the Capitol, where Biden gave his speech, hundreds of protesters gathered to hold a “People’s State of the Union” and blocked the major streets outside the building. The protest was large enough to cause Biden’s motorcade to take the “long way” to the House of Representatives chamber to give his address, delaying his speech. Protesters held banners that read “Biden’s legacy is genocide” and “The people demand: stop arming Israel”. Left-wing and Palestine solidarity organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America, Dissenters, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Adalah Justice Project participated in the demonstration.

During Biden’s speech, he claimed that he is directing the US military to build a temporary pier on the Gaza coast that would increase the amount of humanitarian aid entering the Strip. At least five people were killed on March 8 after being struck by aid dropped into Gaza via planes. The United States has been carrying out aid drops, despite posing danger, in lieu of pressuring Israel to open land routes to allow aid trucks to move into Gaza freely. 

Aid to the besieged Gaza Strip has fallen due in part to Israeli restrictions on two crossing points, according to the UN. In February, an average of just 98 trucks entered Gaza per day, in comparison to around 200 trucks per day in January. Before October 7, Israel would allow around 500 trucks a day into the besieged territory for a population of over 2.3 million.

“That’s not what Gaza needs,” said a protester outside of the Capitol. “Gaza needs liberation. They need an end to US military funding for Israel, and they need to be able to finally end… 75 plus years of ethnic cleansing.”

Biden caves to right-wing on immigration

In his speech, Biden also appeared to continue the process of caving entirely to the right-wing about tougher policies against migrants and refugees, and the further militarization of the US-Mexico border. Biden was heckled at one point during his speech by ultra-right-wing lawmaker Marjorie Taylor-Greene, who shouted about Laken Riley, a student in Georgia allegedly killed by an undocumented immigrant. 

The right-wing has been using the example of Riley to push a racist anti-migrant policy, despite many studies showing that undocumented immigrants are less likely to engage in violent crime than US residents.

Instead of challenging the right, Biden caved to Taylor-Greene’s remarks by holding a pin that allegedly she gave him, and going on an anti-migrant rant. Getting Riley’s name wrong and referring to undocumented migrants as “illegals”, Biden made a jumbled comment saying, “Lincoln Riley, an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal. That’s right. But how many of the thousands of people being killed by illegals—to her parents, I say my heart goes out to you.” 

Biden also promoted a bipartisan bill to restrict immigration at the border, which would expand the authority of the president to crack down on migrants. “It would also give me as President new emergency authority to temporarily shut down the border when the number of migrants at the border is overwhelming,” he said. 

Protest votes threaten Biden’s run

Biden has been hemorrhaging support in the statewide Democratic primaries, with large percentages of Democratic voters casting protest votes against the incumbent President. This movement began with the Michigan primary, where over 100,000 voters voted “uncommitted”, with Arab-majority city Dearborn voting 56.22% uncommitted. The recent Democratic primary in US-occupied Hawaii generated 29.1% uncommitted votes, the highest percentage of any statewide primary in this election cycle.

The growing deluge of protest votes against Biden poses a looming threat for him in the election. Anger at Biden’s support for Israel’s genocide is growing in states like Georgia, which, like Michigan, became critical for Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential election. In 2020, Biden won Georgia by only 11,779 votes.

Peoples Dispatch spoke to Edward Ahmed Mitchell, a board member with CAIR Action, the newly formed political arm of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. CAIR Action is a part of the Listen to Georgia coalition, which is encouraging Georgia voters to cast a protest vote against Biden in the March 12 Georgia Democratic primary. 

“The people of Georgia, like many people across America, do not want our tax dollars funding a genocide overseas,” Mitchell said. “That’s why Georgia voters are trying to send a message to President Biden in the Democratic primary. The message is: you risk losing the state of Georgia and the 2024 election if you continue to enable the genocide in Gaza.”

Original article by Natalia Marques republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Continue ReadingBiden delivers State of the Union speech while under fire for supporting genocide

Starving Children in Gaza ‘Cannot Wait’ Weeks for US Port, Aid Groups Say

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

Palestinian children are pictured near makeshift tents in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on March 7, 2024.  (Photo: Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

“They are already dying from malnutrition and saving their lives is a matter of hours or days,” said Jason Lee of Save the Children.

Leading humanitarian groups said Friday that starving people in Gaza, including more than a million children, are in need of immediate aid and can’t afford to wait for the U.S. military to construct a port on the enclave’s coast, a project that’s expected to take weeks.

“Children in Gaza cannot wait to eat,” said Jason Lee, country director for Save the Children in the occupied Palestinian territory. “They are already dying from malnutrition and saving their lives is a matter of hours or days—not weeks.”

At least 17 children have starved to death in Gaza, according to Defense for Children International – Palestine, and many more are currently struggling to survive.

Condemning Israel’s obstruction of ground-based aid deliveries as “a grave violation against children” and international law, Lee stressed Friday that “there is already a tried and tested system in place to effectively coordinate aid.”

“But trucks of food and medicines that could save lives are waiting at crossings, while children are starving just miles away,” Lee continued. “Airdrops, with no on-the-ground coordination of who it reaches, and maritime corridors like the one announced yesterday, are no solutions to keep children alive. Neither are substitutes for unimpeded humanitarian assistance via the established land routes.”

U.S. President Joe Biden announced during his State of the Union address Thursday night that he has directed the nation’s military to “lead an emergency mission to establish a temporary pier in the Mediterranean on the coast of Gaza that can receive large shipments carrying food, water, medicine, and temporary shelters.”

The president also said Israel, whose military is armed to the teeth with U.S. weaponry, “must do its part” by allowing “more aid into Gaza”—but did not threaten any consequences if the Netanyahu government refuses.

“Israel needs to facilitate rather than block the flow of supplies. This is not a logistics problem; it is a political problem.”

Ground deliveries into Gaza have plummeted in recent weeks as Israeli forces have attacked aid convoys and prevented trucks from entering and moving through the territory. A World Food Program (WFP) official said earlier this week there’s enough food to feed Gaza’s “entire population” sitting just outside of the strip.

“We need land crossings, we need access to get it into Gaza, whether in the southern parts of Gaza or the northern part of Gaza because the situation is catastrophic. So having access is really our number one priority,” said Samer AbdelJaber, WFP’s director of emergency.

The WFP has said aid airdrops—which Biden authorized last week—are a “last resort” and “will not avert famine.” On Friday, aid packages dropped into Gaza by U.S. military planes killed five people and injured at least 10 others.

Avril Benoît, executive director for Doctors Without Borders, argued Friday that Biden’s plan for a temporary port “is a glaring distraction from the real problem: Israel’s indiscriminate and disproportionate military campaign and punishing siege.”

“The food, water, and medical supplies so desperately needed by people in Gaza are sitting just across the border,” said Benoît. “Israel needs to facilitate rather than block the flow of supplies. This is not a logistics problem; it is a political problem. Rather than look to the U.S. military to build a workaround, the U.S. should insist on immediate humanitarian access using the roads and entry points that already exist.”

Refugees International said in a report released Thursday that its research teams found Israel is engaged in “routine and arbitrary denial of legitimate humanitarian goods from entering Gaza,” forcing aid convoys to undergo “a highly complicated” inspection process “without clear or consistent instructions.”

“Our research makes clear that conditions inside of Gaza are apocalyptic,” the group said. “After five months of war, Palestinians are struggling to find adequate food, water, shelter, and basic medicine. Famine-level hunger is already widespread and worsening.”

Matt Duss, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy and a former foreign policy adviser to U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), wrote Friday that while “more aid for Palestinians on the brink of starvation is obviously good,” the Biden administration’s airdrops and plan for a temporary port underscore “the incoherence of U.S. policy right now, in which we’re trying to ease Palestinian suffering while continuing to unconditionally arm and support the government that is intentionally inflicting that suffering.”

“The president seems to recognize that ultimately this conflict will require a political solution, but is still unwilling to bring the full weight of America’s considerable leverage to that goal,” wrote Duss.

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

Continue ReadingStarving Children in Gaza ‘Cannot Wait’ Weeks for US Port, Aid Groups Say

UN Human Rights Chief Decries ‘War Crime’ of Rapidly Expanding Israeli Settlements

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

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk speaks during a press conference in Cairo, Egypt on November 8, 2023. (Photo: Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images)

“The West Bank is already in crisis. Yet, settler violence and settlement-related violations have reached shocking new levels, and risk eliminating any practical possibility of establishing a viable Palestinian state.”

The United Nations human rights chief on Friday condemned the record expansion of illegal Israeli apartheid settlements in the occupied West Bank including East Jerusalem and the “dramatic increase” in violence against Palestinians by Israeli occupation forces and settlers, developments that are occurring while the world’s attention is focused on the Gaza genocide.

“Reports this week that Israel plans to build a further 3,476 settler homes in Maale Adumim, Efrat, and Kedar fly in the face of international law,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said in a statement responding to the far-right Israeli government’s latest settlement expansion scheme.

Türk submitted a report to the U.N. Human Rights Council affirming that Israel is violating the Fourth Geneva Convention by “effectively transferring the civilian population of Israel to the occupied territory while displacing the Palestinian population from their land.”

“Such transfers amount to a war crime that may engage the individual criminal responsibility of those involved,” the report states.

Both the occupation and settlements are illegal under international law. Israel conquered the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights in Syria in 1967 and has occupied the territories ever since. Although Israeli troops withdrew from Gaza and dismantled Jewish settlements there in 2005, Israel maintains a crippling physical and economic stranglehold that has become a total siege since October 7, when the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched a genocidal war in response to Hamas-led attacks.

The U.N. report notes that approximately 24,300 new homes in existing Israeli settlements in the West Bank were advanced between November 2022 to the end of October 2023, “the highest on record since monitoring began in 2017.”

According to the publication:

The policies of the current government of Israel appear aligned, to an unprecedented extent, with the goals of the Israeli settler movement to expand long-term control over the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and to steadily integrate this occupied territory into the state of Israel…

During the reporting period, there was a dramatic increase in the intensity, severity, and regularity of Israeli settler violence against Palestinians, which is accelerating the displacement of Palestinians from their land, in circumstances that may amount to forcible transfer. This violence further spiked following the attacks on October 7, 2023.

“The West Bank is already in crisis. Yet, settler violence and settlement-related violations have reached shocking new levels, and risk eliminating any practical possibility of establishing a viable Palestinian state,” said Türk.

According to the report, Israeli occupation forces and settlers have killed at least 413 Palestinians—including 107 children—while wounding more than 4,600 others in the West Bank since October 7. Palestinians killed 15 Israelis including four soldiers in the occupied territories during the same period.

In one of the most recent incidents, Israeli troops fatally shot 10-year-old Amr Mohammad Ghaleb Najar in the head while he sat in the front seat of his father’s car with his younger brother as they drove through the village of Burin on Monday. Soldiers then opened fire on Palestinians trying to rescue the child, wounding two other people.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also heads the Civil Administration—the governing body in the occupied territories—said this week that 18,515 new housing units have been approved in the settlements over the past year.

“The enemies try to harm and weaken us, but we will continue to build and be built up in this land,” the far-right minister said on social media.

The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, which has sanctioned a handful of extremist settlers, last month reversed a Trump-era policy shift under which the United States no longer officially viewed Israeli settlements as illegal. The U.S. State Department first declared the settlements unlawful in 1978.

“Our administration maintains a firm opposition to settlement expansion,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last month. “And in our judgment, this only weakens—it doesn’t strengthen—Israel’s security.”

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

Continue ReadingUN Human Rights Chief Decries ‘War Crime’ of Rapidly Expanding Israeli Settlements