Owen Jones on Starmer’s Labour party stopping Winter fuel payments
UNRWA Says 6 Workers Among at Least 18 Killed in Israeli Strikes on Gaza School
Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
“This school has been hit five times since the war began. It is home to around 12,000 displaced people, mainly women and children. No one is safe in Gaza. No one is spared.”
The United Nations relief agency for Palestine said Wednesday that six of its workers are among the at least 18 people killed in a pair of Israeli airstrikes targeting a U.N. school in the Gaza Strip where thousands of forcibly displaced Palestinians were sheltering.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said the Israeli strikes on one of its schools, located in Nuseirat in central Gaza, resulted in “the highest death toll among our staff in a single incident” since Israeli forces began bombarding the strip following last October’s Hamas-led attack on Israel.
“Among those killed was the manager of the UNRWA shelter and other team members providing assistance to displaced people,” the agency said. “Sincere condolences to their families and loved ones. This school has been hit five times since the war began. It is home to around 12,000 displaced people, mainly women and children.”
Victims of the strikes included women and children.
Earlier on Wednesday the United Nations said the school had been “previously deconflicted with the Israeli forces.”
“No one is safe in Gaza. No one is spared,” UNRWA stressed. “Schools and other civilian infrastructure must be protected at all times, they are not a target.”
Responding to the attacks, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said on social media that “these dramatic violations of international humanitarian law need to stop now.”
Israel is currently on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice, a U.N. body. International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan is also seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders—at least one of whom, Ismail Haniyeh, has been assassinated.
Over the past 341 days, Israel’s assault on Gaza has left more than 145,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, according to Palestinian and international officials. Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been forcibly displaced, while Israel’s “complete siege” of Gaza has starved and sickened millions of Palestinians, dozens of whom have died of malnutrition, dehydration, and lack of medical care.
UNRWA says around 200 of its staff members have been killed in more than 450 Israeli attacks on agency facilities since October. More than 500 Palestinians have been killed while seeking shelter under the U.N. flag.
Responding to Israeli claims—reportedly extracted from Palestinian prisoners in an interrogation regime rife with torture and abuse—that a dozen of the more than 13,000 UNRWA workers in Gaza were involved in the October 7 attack, numerous nations including the United States cut off funding to the agency. Almost all of them have restored funding as Israeli lies have been debunked.
Bucking this trend, U.S. President Joe Biden in March signed a bill prohibiting American funding for UNRWA.
Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
- Children Among Dozens Killed in ‘Appalling’ Israeli Attack on UNRWA School
- ‘Historic, But So, So Late’: Israel Added to UN’s Child-Killing ‘List of Shame’ | Common Dreams
- Opinion | The Nuseirat Massacre Shows How Israel and the West Devalue Palestinian Lives | Common Dreams
- Israel Bombs Another UN School as Gaza Assault Enters 10th Month | Common Dreams
Labour votes to plunge pensioners into poverty
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/labour-votes-plunge-pensioners-poverty
SUPINE Labour MPs have voted to plunge pensioners into poverty, after approving winter fuel benefit cuts for millions of older people.
The Commons backed Sir Keir Starmer’s austerity move by 348 votes to 228, with many Labour MPs abstaining.
A larger-than-expected 53 Labour MPs seem to have not backed the government in the vote, although some may have had permission from the whips to skip the debate.
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John McDonnell, speaking in the brief debate which preceded the vote, said that the cut “flies against everything I believe in as a Labour MP about tackling inequality and poverty within our society.”
He slammed the government’s claim that those with the “broadest shoulders” should bear the burden of the crisis, saying that it was the poorest who have been hit hardest.
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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/labour-votes-plunge-pensioners-poverty
Morning Star Editorial: The labour movement should call out Chancellor Reeves’ economy con
RACHEL REEVES is having us on. She is not prolonging austerity for the reasons pretended.
The Chancellor claims that it is imperative to balance the books to avoid a collapse in international money market confidence in the British economy. The ghosts of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng are conjured to underline the point.
It is for this reason that pensioners are to shiver in unheated homes this winter as their fuel allowance is cut, and it is for this that hundreds of thousands of children are to remain in poverty, thanks to the maintenance of the two-child benefit cap.
But even in its own terms — and this column would argue that the speculators should be faced down rather than pandered to under any circumstances — the argument is bogus.
The City itself, no less, has blown the whistle on Reeves and other Cabinet members who have echoed her line, including Commons leader Lucy Powell. Powell told the media that the new austerity was vital to stop a run on the pound.
A what? The Financial Times quotes a Paul Dale at Capital Economics as saying: “If there was a risk of a run on the pound I completely missed it.”
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