Palestinians walk through dust by the rubble of houses, destroyed by Israeli strikes in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, July 22, 2024
AN INTERNATIONAL human rights group issued a fresh warning on Tuesday over the complicity of the United States in alleged Israeli war crimes.
The warning from Amnesty International came as protests mounted over the visit of Israel’s far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Amnesty demanded a “comprehensive arms embargo on Israel, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups.”
The rights group said the embargo should remain in place “until there is no longer a substantial risk that arms could be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international human rights or humanitarian law.”
Amnesty International US executive director Paul O’Brien said: “Enough is enough. The US government has been presented with ample evidence from experts around the world that US-origin arms have been used in war crimes and unlawful killings by the Israeli government.
A Palestinian girl reacts as a child is carried from the rubble of a building after an airstrike in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, October 21, 2023
RAMZY BAROUD exposes the systematic targeting of UN facilities in Gaza, explaining how this is part of a broader strategy of erasing Palestinian refugee rights and history while blocking international aid
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Israel does not attempt to mask or justify its attacks on the organisation as it did during previous Gaza wars. This time around, the Israeli war was accompanied, from the very start, with the outlandish accusation that UNRWA members had participated in the October 7 assault by Hamas and other Palestinian groups.
Without providing any evidence, Tel Aviv launched an international campaign of vilification against the UN organisation which has, for decades, provided educational, medical and humanitarian services to millions of Palestinian refugees.
Sadly, and tellingly, some Western, and even non-Western governments, answered the Israeli call of punishing UNRWA by withholding badly needed funds, the urgency of which did not only stem from the direct impact of the Israeli war, but the acute famine resulting from the war, as well.
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Jared Kushner, Trump’s former adviser on the Middle East, said in January 2018 that it was “important to have an honest and sincere effort to disrupt UNRWA.” For him, the dismantlement of the organisation meant the dismissal of the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
Indeed, the issue is not just about UNRWA, but rather the historic role the organisation has served as a reminder of the plight of millions of Palestinian refugees in occupied Palestine, the Middle East and across the world.
UNRWA was established through general assembly resolution 302 (IV) of December 8 1949. The founding of UNRWA came one year after the passing of UN resolution 194, which granted Palestinian refugees the right to “return to their homes.”
Although UNRWA’s mission has turned into a permanent mandate, since Palestinian refugees were not granted their right of return, the role of the organisation remained as critical as it was decades ago.
Since Kushner and others have failed to dismantle UNRWA, the Israeli government has taken advantage of its war on Gaza to achieve the exact purpose. In Israeli thinking, without UNRWA, the issue of Palestinian refugees would lose its main legal platform and would ultimately disappear.
This would give Israel the space and leverage to “resolve” the problem of the refugees in any way it finds fit, especially if it has the full backing of Washington.
Israel must not be allowed to dismantle UNRWA or to dismiss the generational struggle of Palestinian refugees, which is the core of the Palestinian fight for justice and freedom.
The international community must challenge Israel’s vilification of UNRWA and insist on the centrality of the right of return for Palestinian refugees. Without it, no real peace is possible.
Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the editor of the Palestine Chronicle (www.palestinechronicle.com).
An RAF Shadow R1 spy plane over the Mediterranean. (Photo: Gordon Zammit / Alamy)
Declassified Exclusive: Royal Air Force has surveillance tape of Gaza from the day Israel killed British aid workers – but refuses to publish it.
Family of slain aid worker demands to see footage
UN expert warns British military may have to hand tape to International Criminal Court
Britain’s Ministry of Defence holds video surveillance footage of Gaza from the day that Israel killed seven international aid workers but is refusing to publish the tape.
Among those killed in the World Central Kitchen convoy on 1 April were three British military veterans: John Chapman, James Kirby and James ‘Jim’ Henderson.
The footage was taken by a Royal Air Force (RAF) surveillance plane which spent approximately five hours above Gaza that day.
It seemingly returned to base in Cyprus minutes before the airstrikes were launched.
The RAF may therefore have collected footage of events leading up to the tragedy, which could provide clarity over Israeli claims that “Hamas gunmen” were seen near the convoy.
July 6 was the 16th national march which took place in London since the genocide in Gaza began on October 7.
On July 6th, more than 100,000 people marched in London, UK, in solidarity with the people of Palestine. Organized by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and the Stop the War coalition, the event also saw participation from five recently elected independent MPs, who focused their campaign on the struggle for Palestinian liberation. The demonstrators called on the newly elected Labour government, led by Keir Starmer, to take action to end the genocide. Here is our report from the ground.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is seen at the NATO 75th anniversary summit in Washington, D.C., on July 10, 2024. (Photo: Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images)
“We are asking this government for leadership and to take a just decision, for the sake of Palestinians in Gaza who are living through ‘hell on Earth,'” said six rights groups.
A week after the British Labour Party won control of the United Kingdom’s government, six rights organizations called on Prime Minister Keir Starmer to bring the country “back from the brink” and restore its “credibility on the international stage” by ending its military support for Israel.
“The Labour Party now has the chance to start restoring some credibility by ensuring the U.K. abides by international law, thereby extricating the U.K. from the indelible stain of complicity in Israeli crimes that deeply shock the conscience of humanity,” wrote the British Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) and Al-Haq, based in Palestine.
The groups wrote the letter with the support of the International Center of Justice for Palestinians, War on Want, the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
Addressing Starmer along with newly appointed Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Secretary of State for Business and Trade Jonathan Reynolds, the groups reminded the prime minister that following his election, he promised Britons that the “sunlight of hope was shining once again” after 14 years of Conservative rule, and called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to say there is a “clear and urgent need for a cease-fire.”
“Calls for a cease-fire are evidently not enough, in particular when the U.K. is arming one party to the conflict,” wrote the groups, pointing out that earlier this week Palestinians in northern Gaza reported that recent bombing there has “matched October 2023 in its intensity—with levels of destruction not witnessed since World War II, nearly all civilian infrastructure is completely destroyed.”
“We are asking this government for leadership and to take a just decision, for the sake of Palestinians in Gaza who are living through ‘hell on Earth,'” they wrote. “The world should have put an end to their unimaginable suffering a long time ago. Labour must suspend, revoke, and refuse all arms licenses for Israel now.”
The U.K. licensed about £859,381 ($1.09 million) of weapons to Israel in the last three months of 2023, as the Israel Defense Forces relentlessly attacked Gaza and blocked nearly all humanitarian aid, leading to what 10 independent United Nations experts this week said is now famine across the enclave.
“The new Labour government’s calls for a cease-fire are meaningless while it continues to arm Israel. British weapons have killed too many Palestinians,” said GLAN lawyer Charlotte Andrews-Briscoe. “This government knows that the only lawful and moral decision is to stop arming Israel. Britons have voted for change: This government must deliver that change.”
On social media, GLAN amplified a video posted by Starmer on Sunday in which he pledged to “restore politics as a force for good.”
“We are calling on Keir Starmer to put these words into action,” said the legal group.
— GLAN | Global Legal Action Network (@GLAN_LAW) July 12, 2024
When the war on Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people ends, said the groups, Starmer’s government must expect that there will be “a reckoning in which Israel will be found to have committed mass atrocities.”
But the organizations called on Starmer—who, months before he called on Netanyahu to agree to a cease-fire, said Israel had “the right” to withhold power and water from Gaza—to see that ending military support for Israel “is not only the legal obligation of the U.K., it is a moral obligation.”
“Schoolchildren will learn about this period for years to come, just as we have all learned about past genocides and wondered how they could be allowed to happen,” reads the letter. “Will they read about a new Labour government that acted with respect for the sanctity of all human life?”
Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
