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‘A Clear-Cut War Crime’: Outrage Grows as Israel Again Bombs Gaza Refugee Camp

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

Palestinians examine the destruction in the aftermath of a deadly Israeli airstrike on Gaza’s largest refugee camp on November 1, 2023. (Photo: Bashar Taleb/AFP via Getty Images)

“The U.S. government cannot keep funding these atrocities,” said U.S. Rep. Cori Bush. “There must be a cease-fire now.”

The Israeli military bombed Gaza’s largest refugee camp for the second consecutive day on Wednesday as humanitarian groups and lawmakers called the series of attacks a blatant war crime and slammed the U.S. government for enabling such atrocities.

Wednesday’s attack reportedly killed and wounded “a number of” people at the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp, where hundreds were killed or injured roughly 24 hours earlier in bombings by the Israeli military.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) asserted that Tuesday’s strikes were aimed at a “tunnel complex” where a senior Hamas commander, Ibrahim Biari, was purportedly hiding. The IDF said the airstrikes killed Biari but denied intentionally bombing the camp’s buildings, more than a dozen of which were leveled in the attack.

“I was waiting in line to buy bread when suddenly and without any prior warning seven to eight missiles fell,” said one eyewitness. “There were seven to eight huge holes in the ground, full of killed people, body parts all over the place. It felt like the end of the world.”

A Doctors Without Borders nurse in Gaza said that after Tuesday’s strikes, “young children arrived at the hospital with deep wounds and severe burns.”

“They came without their families,” the nurse added. “Many were screaming and asking for their parents. I stayed with them until we could find a place, as the hospital was full with patients.”

Asked about the civilians who were killed in the Tuesday strikes, an IDF spokesperson told CNN that “this is the tragedy of war” and that the Israeli military instructed people in the area to “move south.”

Hamas denied the claim that one of its commanders was in the area targeted by the Israeli military.

Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of Refugees International, argued Tuesday that Israel’s assault on Gaza’s largest refugee camp “is a clear-cut war crime.”

“It shows wanton disregard for the legal obligation to minimize civilian harm in targeting military objectives. It is the latest of many such attacks by the IDF,” Konyndyk wrote. “This in turn underscores that Netanyahu is making a mockery of Biden’s repeated pleas to follow the laws of war—without any acknowledgment of that reality by the U.S. This leaves a cease-fire as the only viable path to civilian protection.”

U.S. Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), who is leading a congressional resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza, also denounced the refugee camp bombing as a war crime and said that “this unspeakable violence must end.”

“The U.S. government cannot keep funding these atrocities,” Bush added. “There must be a cease-fire now.”

U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) similarly criticized the Biden administration and Congress for backing Israel as it carries out massive crimes against humanity.

“Make no mistake: these human rights abuses are being carried out with U.S. weapons, U.S. funding, and with ‘no red lines,'” Omar wrote on social media. “And now we are set to vote on an additional $14 billion with no restrictions or conditions. The United States Congress should not fund violations of U.S. and international law.”

Israeli forces have killed at least 8,800 people in Gaza since October 7, when Hamas launched a deadly attack on Israel.

The nation’s relentless bombing campaign and siege have fueled a massive humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, displacing more than a million people, imperiling the enclave’s healthcare system, and decimating much of the territory’s civilian infrastructure—including communication and internet services.

The United Nations and human rights organizations have accused Israeli forces of committing grave war crimes in Gaza, including collective punishment, forcible transfer, and genocide.

The wave of airstrikes that hit Jabalia on Wednesday marked at least the sixth time Israel has bombed the camp since October 7, according toAl Jazeera.

“This is just the latest atrocity to befall the people of Gaza where the fighting has entered an even more terrifying phase, with increasingly dreadful humanitarian consequences,” United Nations emergency relief coordinator Martin Griffiths said of the Jabalia attack on Wednesday. “Meanwhile, the world seems unable, or unwilling, to act. This cannot go on.”

Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights, a United Kingdom-based legal charity, said in a statement Wednesday that the Jabalia strikes “should overwhelmingly signal to the U.K. Government and Labour Party that they must now call for an immediate cease-fire.”

“We urge the U.K. Government and Labour Party to urgently revise their position in light of the Jabalia mass killing, and clearly place the future preservation of civilian life as its highest objective,” the group added.

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

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Continue Reading‘A Clear-Cut War Crime’: Outrage Grows as Israel Again Bombs Gaza Refugee Camp

The Dirty Secret Behind the Hydrogen Hype

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

An aerial view is shown of the hydrogen infrastructure and grid integration research pads at National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL’s) Flatirons campus. (Photo: Josh Bauer / Bryan Bechtold / NREL)

Despite promises of economic opportunity and jobs, communities slated for hydrogen projects see them for what they are: A handout for the fossil fuel industry.

As our planet’s temperature rises, so does the hype around hydrogen. But hydrogen isn’t the climate savior it’s made out to be. Hydrogen is a dangerous distraction, and we should not fall for it.

Technological fixes to climate change are tempting, and the Biden administration has not resisted the lure of hydrogen: The Department of Energy recently announced a massive $7 billion buildout of seven hydrogen hubs nationwide, the first of several such investments.

Hydrogen is dangerous, partly because it distracts from the real climate solutions we so desperately need. The world’s best climate scientists have been clear that to maintain a livable planet, we must phase out fossil fuels and transition to truly renewable energy now. Hydrogen hubs take us in the opposite direction by further embedding us in the fossil fuel economy.

Communities like mine understand all too well that these projects take a toll on our drinkable water, breathable air, bodies, and livelihoods.

A staggering 99% of hydrogen production relies on fossil fuels, primarily methane, or “natural,” gas. Notably, oil, gas, and petrochemical companies produce the lion’s share of the U.S. hydrogen supply: approximately 10 million metric tons. Once produced, more than two-thirds of hydrogen is used for petroleum refining.

A cursory examination of the partners across all seven proposed hydrogen hubs reveals who actually stands to benefit from them. Key recipients of this first $7 billion of public money are oil, gas, and chemical corporations, including Exxon, Chevron, Dupont, and Air Products. Air Liquide, a French gas company, is a named partner in at least six of the seven hubs chosen for the next phase of public funding. Fossil fuel and petrochemical companies are pushing for this hydrogen buildout because it is their ticket to greenwash their products as ‘climate solutions’ on the public’s dime.

Making hydrogen is highly energy intensive, whether using large quantities of renewable power to make ‘green hydrogen’ through electrolysis or pulling in large quantities of methane gas coupled with energy-intensive and unreliable carbon capture systems to produce “blue hydrogen.” At least two of the seven hydrogen hubs are associated with blue hydrogen production, which scientists say “may be worse than gas or coal.“

Hydrogen production is not only very energy intensive, it also requires considerable amounts of water, a resource that is becoming increasingly more precarious due to the climate crisis. Louisiana this year faced never-before-seen wildfire threats, predicted to continue, largely due to drought. California has had some of the worst wildfire seasons on record. Both states are targeted for the proposed hydrogen buildout.

Calls for “hydrogen-ready” infrastructure are code for doubling down on building new gas production and pipelines, with the vague hope that this infrastructure might one day carry hydrogen. This is the opposite of what we should do, which is to take urgent action to phase out fossil fuels and transition to renewable energy to avoid climate catastrophe.

Hydrogen projects, especially blue hydrogen, put communities in harm’s way. To produce blue hydrogen, CO2 must be scrubbed and captured, a process whose effectiveness is questionable at best. This process requires the buildout of additional infrastructure, thousands of miles of new pipelines, and injection wells to store the CO2 underground. This means more hazardous air and water pollution in our communities. People living near this new infrastructure for hydrogen and CO2 stand to face additional risks like pipeline leaks and injection well failures, which can be catastrophic.

Confusingly, funding for these hydrogen hubs is partially allocated under the “Justice40” initiative, which aims to address decades of underinvestment in disadvantaged communities. Yet many communities targeted for the hydrogen buildout—the same low-income and/or Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities supposed to benefit from the administration’s environmental justice promises—are organizing against proposed hydrogen projects, because of the dangers they present.

I have had to become an expert on climate solutions out of sheer necessity. I am the fifth generation of my family to call South Louisiana home, and the climate crisis is coming for us in Louisiana faster than anywhere else in the country. At the same time, we’re a target for the nationwide buildout of hydrogen, carbon capture, and other technological false solutions to the climate crisis.

Communities like mine understand all too well that these projects take a toll on our drinkable water, breathable air, bodies, and livelihoods. The projects come with often elusive promises of jobs, but those poised to truly benefit from these projects are fossil fuel and chemical companies.

Impacted communities deserve better. They deserve to be at the table when it comes to finding solutions that work for people and the climate. Just as importantly, they deserve justice for the harms wrought upon them by the fossil fuel industry. We all deserve a livable, breathable, drinkable future. And that future is not found in a hydrogen hub.

Beyond the fossil fuel industry’s expensive hydrogen distraction, there are community-centered solutions that provide jobs and improve lives without jeopardizing communities. There are safe, scalable, proven, and affordable solutions like solar and wind energy, energy efficiency, local and regenerative agriculture, and zero waste programs that empower communities and make the most of limited and dwindling resources.

We need to stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry, stop harming communities with false hype for hydrogen, and direct funding to real solutions to the climate crisis.

We have no time to waste.

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

Continue ReadingThe Dirty Secret Behind the Hydrogen Hype

‘Real Solutions, No Bullshit’: Action Targets Biden DOE Over Climate Scams, Greenwashing

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

Climate Justice Alliance campaigners protest outside the Department of Energy in Washington, D.C. on October 31, 2023. (Photo: Climate Justice Alliance/Twitter)
Climate Justice Alliance campaigners protest outside the Department of Energy in Washington, D.C. on October 31, 2023. (Photo: Climate Justice Alliance/Twitter)

“Now more than ever, we need real leadership from the Department of Energy to end fossil fuels,” said one organizer.

Climate advocates on Tuesday donned Halloween costumes to greet attendees of the U.S. Department of Energy’s “Justice Week,” but the organizers assembled outside the agency will be urging guests to demand far more from Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and the Biden administration, who they say are “greenwashing” efforts to further equity and environmental justice.

The department’s Office of Economic Impact and Diversity is holding the five-day event, where officials plan to highlight efforts to move “toward a more equitable, clean, and just energy future.”

The week will include discussions of the Low-Income Communities Bonus Credit Program, which pushes for more access to renewable energy facilities in underserved communities, and executive actions President Joe Biden has taken to promote environmental justice.

All those actions, however, have happened alongside the administration’s push in favor of so-called climate “solutions” that scientists say are unproven and serve only to perpetuate fossil fuel extraction under the false assumption that it can do so while still addressing greenhouse gas emissions and planetary heating.

The DOE, noted Basav Sen, a climate justice project director at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) who took part in the action, is “the biggest funder of false solutions such as carbon capture and storage, hydrogen, and direct air capture.”

“These are scams. We know that the real solution to the climate crisis is to keep fossil fuels in the ground and make a rapid, just transition to real renewable energy controlled by communities,” said Sen, wearing zombie face paint at the direct action. “Instead what were seeing from the Department of Energy is a continuation of the fossil fuel economy.”

https://twitter.com/CJAOurPower/status/1719337073138659593?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1719337073138659593%7Ctwgr%5E687ef4ed8031dc7555611958ea60e404e2abfa20%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fcarbon-capture

As Common Dreams reported in May, analysts say that just running the machinery to operate a carbon capture and storage project—like the ones the Biden DOE announced a $1.2 billion investment in earlier this year—would increase energy consumption by 20%, adding to carbon dioxide emissions.

Smog, benzene, and formaldehyde emissions also increase with carbon capture technology, biologist Sandra Steingraber said—three types of pollution that disproportionately affect people in low-income neighborhoods, the very communities the DOE says it’s targeting with environmental justice programs and events like “Justice Week.”

Additionally, noted Sen, the DOE is continuing to license exports of fossil gas.

“We are here today to tell attendees of the Department of Energy’s Justice Week that the version of environmental and energy justice that they’re going to hear from the Department of Energy in the event is greenwashing, pure and simple,” said Sen. “The Department of Energy cannot pretend to be on the side of environmental justice while they are actively licensing more fossil gas exports, which means more fracking, more air and water pollution, more pipelines, more export terminals, more sacrifice zones in frontline communities.”

Some of the campaigners displayed the organizers’ message succinctly on a banner reading, “Real Solutions. No Bullshit.”

“Now more than ever, we need real leadership from the Department of Energy to end fossil fuels, quit peddling climate scams and advance energy justice,” said Climate Justice Alliance (CJA), one of the groups behind the action.

https://twitter.com/CJAOurPower/status/1719358386016337965?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1719358386016337965%7Ctwgr%5E687ef4ed8031dc7555611958ea60e404e2abfa20%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fcarbon-capture

Addressing Granholm, the group added that the secretary “can’t cover up [her] record with greenwashing events like Justice Week 2023 while undermining real climate and environmental justice with [her] actions.”

“We demand an end to fracked gas exports, carbon capture, and hydrogen energy,” CJA said.

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

Continue Reading‘Real Solutions, No Bullshit’: Action Targets Biden DOE Over Climate Scams, Greenwashing

In What Is Called A War

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

Gazan father Muhammed Gouda and his baby daughter Misk lay dead at Aqsa Hospital after an Israeli airstrike hit Deir al-Balah  Photo by Mustafa Hassona/Anadolu via Getty Images

We apologize. The unprecedented human tragedy in Gaza hurtles on; we can record only pitiless catastrophe afflicting the innocent, its numbers and names. Over 3,400 Palestinian children have been killed and 6,300 wounded; Israel is hitting ravaged hospitals without fuel or light with de-facto bombings; their mad “leader” is quoting Biblical bloodbaths, declaring a “holy mission” of annihilation, and refusing to stop in the name of vengeance: “This is a time for war.” Once again: Murdering children is not “war.”

Writer Ahmed Nehad bitterly documents a grim former “normal” Gaza: Scarce food, water, electricity, hospital beds, jobs, hope. That “normal” was long met with “deafening global silence” until the Oct. 7 killings of Israeli civilians: Then, “the world sat upright and saw the horror of blood spilled in historic Palestine, when the blood took on a different hue.” In just over three weeks, Israel has dropped over 12,000 tons of bombs on Gaza; they have killed over 8,300, but their “true cost, says UNICEF’s Catherine Russell, “will be measured in children’s lives.” Over 420 children a day are killed or injured, roughly one every 10 minutes; over 2,000 children are missing under the rubble, and likely dead; 70% of the dead are children and women; frantic rescue crews must decide between retrieving dead bodies or trying to dig out wounded ones; entire families have been wiped out, leaving young survivors as orphans asking where their parents are; over 16,000 people have been wounded, with little medical help available; over 1.4 million people, more than half the population, have been displaced; and there is “no safe place in Gaza.”

Including, grotesquely, hospitals, where many have sought shelter. Over 50,000 people have taken refuge at al-Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital; perhaps 12,000 have fled to al-Quds hospital, the next biggest. But under a siege that has blocked all fuel and medicine, and with over a third of the city’s hospitals shut down, the rest are struggling. Doctors dependent on one generator are operating by flashlight, rationing anesthetics, sterilizing with vinegar or laundry detergent, cutting back on dialysis and chemo treatments, having to choose, “like God,” which of two intensive care babies to save. Meanwhile, “If the electricity goes, it just becomes a mass grave.” Israel has ordered hospitals to “evacuate,” knowing well that’s impossible; says Nebal Farsakh of the Palestinian Red Crescent, “Evacuating them means killing them.” Israel has also issued cruelly pointless “warnings” to “evacuate” before bombardments, face-saving mockeries of humanity that “do not make targeting hospitals less of a war crime,” says Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah: “A crime is a crime, even if you make it by appointment.”

On Democracy Now, Dr. Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian physician who’s helped provide emergency care in Gaza for 16 years during “very hectic periods” – Israeli assaults in 2006, 2009, 2012, 2014 – cites an “urgent fear” among colleagues Israel will move to bomb hospitals directly, as opposed to its “de facto” bombardments of nearby sites. He particularly condemns Israel’s threat to bomb the (clearly civilian) al-Shifa based on their claim Hamas’ command center is under it – a claim he’s heard since 2009, with no proof forthcoming despite having walked freely there, slept there, filmed there for years. As he anxiously waits in Cairo for entry to Gaza, he praises health workers who remain, “moral compasses” and “cornerstones of a social fabric” that’s been largely ripped away. “It’s completely absurd that (we) have a state army threatening to bomb hospitals and killing children” – 5,300 to date – “in what is called a war,” he says, blasting Biden’s refusal to demand a ceasefire. “This has to stop. I don’t need to use the word ‘genocide.’ It’s enough to say ‘mass murder of civilians.’ We need to stand up and say we don’t accept this.”

As to Netanyahu, his blood lust is far from sated. On Monday, in a chilling speech experts deemed “an explicit call to genocide,” he termed Israel’s slaughter of innocents “a holy mission” and invoked their ancient foe from the Old Testament: “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible: ‘Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.'” Calls for a ceasefire, he declared with stunning cognitive dissonance, are “a call for Israel (to) surrender to barbarism…The Bible says there is a time for peace and a time for war. This is a time for war.” Still, mournfully, Ahmed Nehad nonetheless pleads for the trifling mercy of a ceasefire, that “a mere handful might endure.” “Grant us the luxury of one last hug,” he writes. “Our end is nigh, rest assured.” Those already dead and documented – name, age, ID number – total 6,747; the number excludes thousands still under rubble or not yet identified. To read the list, you must keep scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. May their memories be for a blessing.

Injured child at Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital after Israeli airstrikes. Photo by Saeed Jaras/APA Images

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

Continue ReadingIn What Is Called A War

Rights Group Warns US Congress Not to Bankroll Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza

On the night of October 27, Israel cut all communication services in Gaza and intensified the aerial bombing campaign.
On the night of October 27, Israel cut all communication services in Gaza and intensified the aerial bombing campaign.

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

“Gaslighting Americans into facilitating long-held Israeli plans to depopulate Gaza under the cover of ‘humanitarian aid’ is a cruel and grotesque hoax.”

Human rights advocates are warning that U.S. President Joe Biden’s new supplemental funding request could—under the guise of humanitarian aid—bolster, or even help finance, the far-right Israeli government’s plans for ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip.

Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) raised alarm on Monday over language in Biden’s request that says resources from the supplemental package “would support displaced and conflict-affected civilians, including Palestinian refugees in Gaza and the West Bank, and to address potential needs of Gazans fleeing to neighboring countries.”

The White House request adds that “this crisis could well result in displacement across [the] border and higher regional humanitarian needs, and funding may be used to meet evolving programming requirements outside of Gaza.”

DAWN said that “any authorization for funding activities, infrastructure, or aid outside of Israel and Palestine” should be opposed “because they effectively facilitate, fund, and reward the forced transfer of Palestinians.”

Days after the Biden White House sent its request to Congress, an Israeli newspaper reported on a leaked document from Israel’s Intelligence Ministry that proposes the forcible and permanent transfer of all of Gaza’s 2.2 million Palestinian residents to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. A full English translation of the document was published Monday by +972 Magazine.

The Israeli government has already ordered the entire population of northern Gaza to evacuate to the southern half of the strip as Israel’s military decimates the north with airstrikes and expands its ground operations there.

The internal document states that the “evacuation of the civilian population from Gaza to Sinai” would “yield positive, long-term strategic outcomes for Israel” and “is an executable option” that is preferable to alternatives, such as “the population remaining in Gaza along with the emergence of a local Arab authority” following Israel’s devastating assault on the territory.

The policy paper adds that the Israeli government’s efforts to “bring about a significant change in the civilian reality in the Gaza Strip” would require “intensive action to harness the United States and other countries to support this goal.”

“Both by word and by deed, Israeli officials are pursuing a broader strategy to permanently remove Palestinians from their native lands, and counting on the U.S. to pay for it.”

DAWN expressed grave concern Monday that, if approved by Congress, Biden’s supplemental funding proposal would provide critical support for the Israeli government’s plans for forcible transfer, which is a violation of international law.

“The Biden administration isn’t just giving a green light for ethnic cleansing—it’s bankrolling it,” said DAWN executive director Sarah Leah Whitson. “Gaslighting Americans into facilitating long-held Israeli plans to depopulate Gaza under the cover of ‘humanitarian aid’ is a cruel and grotesque hoax.”

DAWN urged Congress to vote against any supplemental funding legislation that includes humanitarian aid language mirroring the White House’s request, which also includes $14 billion in military aid for Israel on top of weaponry that the U.S. has already sent to Israel in recent weeks.

“Supporting Israeli efforts to forcibly transfer Palestinians to Egypt would make U.S. officials liable for complicity in war crimes,” the group said.

Former Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth echoed DAWN:

House Republicans introduced legislation on Monday that includes mostly military assistance for Israel—omitting Ukraine funding, disaster relief, and humanitarian aid that the Biden administration requested. The GOP bill is likely a non-starter in the U.S. Senate, where Democratic lawmakers objected to the inclusion of Internal Revenue Service cuts.

“Both by word and by deed, Israeli officials are pursuing a broader strategy to permanently remove Palestinians from their native lands, and counting on the U.S. to pay for it,” said Whitson. “Congress should vote against any aid package that could support these acts, which amount to violations of human rights and grave breaches of the laws of war.”

+972 Magazine reported Monday that the Israeli Intelligence Ministry document “proposes promoting a campaign targeting Palestinian civilians in Gaza that will ‘motivate them to accept this plan’ and lead them to give up their land.”

“The messages should revolve around the loss of land, making it clear that there is no hope of returning to the territories Israel will soon occupy, whether or not that is true,” the document states. “The image needs to be, ‘Allah made sure you lose this land because of Hamas’ leadership—there is no choice but to move to another place with the assistance of your Muslim brothers.”

A similar plan has been outlined by an Israeli think tank with ties to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

As his government continues its bombardment of Gaza and ramps up its ground attack, Netanyahu has reportedly lobbied European leaders to pressure Egypt to accept refugees from Gaza. More than a million Gazans have been internally displaced since October 7, when Israel launched its latest assault on the Palestinian territory in the wake of a deadly Hamas attack.

An unnamed Western diplomat told the Financial Times that Netanyahu “pushed quite hard that the solution was for Egyptians to take Gazans at least during the conflict.”

“But we didn’t take it very seriously,” the diplomat added, “because the Egyptian position is and has always been very clear and they just won’t do it.”

The Israeli government’s actions and rhetoric since October 7 have sparked international warnings that Palestinians are “in grave danger of mass ethnic cleansing,” as United Nations expert Francesca Albanese put it earlier this month.

“What we are witnessing may be a repeat of the 1948 Nakba, and the 1967 Naksa, yet on a larger scale,” Albanese said. “The international community must do everything to stop this from happening again.”

Israel’s attack on Gaza has killed more than 8,000 people—including more than 3,400 children—in just over three weeks. The Israeli military’s bombing campaign has destroyed or damaged at least 45% of Gaza’s housing units.

Around 40% of Gaza’s schools have also been damaged by Israeli bombs, according to the United Nations.

“The best way to protect Palestinian civilians from the wrath of war is to announce and enforce a cease-fire,” Raed Jarrar, DAWN’s advocacy director, said Monday. “Rather than pushing Palestinians to Egypt, Israel should allow Palestinian civilians to cross the apartheid fence into Israel. Maybe Palestinians can set up tent cities in the same towns and villages they were displaced from during the first Nakba 75 years ago.”

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

Continue ReadingRights Group Warns US Congress Not to Bankroll Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza