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Tag: Amnesty International

  • ‘Most Thorough Legal Analysis’ Yet Concludes Israel Committing Genocide in Gaza

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

    A Palestinian boy observes the site of an Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced people in the central Gaza Strip on May 14, 2024.
     (Photo” Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

    The University Network for Human Rights report also stresses that other nations are legally obligated to “refrain from recognizing Israel’s breaches as legal or taking any actions that may amount to complicity.”

    The University Network for Human Rights on Wednesday released and sent to United Nations offices a 105-page report that it called “the most thorough legal analysis” yet to find “Israel is committing genocide” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

    The network partnered with the International Human Rights Clinic at Boston University School of Law, the International Human Rights Clinic at Cornell Law School, the Center for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria, and the Lowenstein Human Rights Project at Yale Law School for the analysis, which draws from “a diverse range of credible sources” and the territory’s history.

    “After reviewing the facts established by independent human rights monitors, journalists, and United Nations agencies, we conclude that Israel’s actions in and regarding Gaza since October 7, 2023, violate the Genocide Convention,” the report states. “Israel has committed genocidal acts of killing, causing serious harm to, and inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza, a protected group that forms a substantial part of the Palestinian people.”

    As of May 1, Israel’s assault had killed “more than 5% of Gaza’s population, with over 2% of Gaza’s children killed or injured,” the analysis notes. In recent days, Israeli forces have ramped up their attack on Rafah—where over a million people from other parts of the besieged enclave sought refuge—and the total death toll has risen to 35,233, according to Gaza health officials, with another 79,141 Palestinians injured.

    “Israel’s military operation has destroyed up to 70% of homes in Gaza, and has decimated civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, schools, universities, U.N. facilities, and cultural and religious heritage sites,” the document says, noting the “staggering” number of forced displacements. “Civilians in Gaza face catastrophic levels of hunger and deprivation due to Israel’s restriction on, and failure to ensure adequate access to, basic essentials of life, including food, water, medicine, and fuel.”

    “Israel’s genocidal acts in Gaza have been motivated by the requisite genocidal intent, as evidenced in this report by the statements of Israeli leaders, the character of the state and its military forces’ conduct against and relating to Palestinians in Gaza, and the direct nexus between them,” the publication continues, pointing to comments from “officials at all levels of Israeli government, up to and including” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

    Israel has faced mounting allegations of genocide since launching its retaliation for the Hamas-led October 7 attack—including an ongoing South Africa-led case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which found in January that the country is “plausibly” committing genocide.

    Bolstering the ICJ’s conclusion, the Wednesday report declares that “Israel’s violations of the international legal prohibition of genocide amount to grave breaches of peremptory norms of international law that must cease immediately.”

    “These violations give rise to obligations by all other states: to refrain from recognizing Israel’s breaches as legal or taking any actions that may amount to complicity in these breaches; and to take positive steps to suppress, prevent, and punish the commission by Israel of further genocidal acts against the Palestinian people in Gaza,” the document adds.

    The United States has long provided Israel with billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic support—which have soared since October 7, despite growing pressure on U.S. President Joe Biden to cut off such assistance. The Democrat has incrementally increased his criticism of the Israeli assault in recent weeks, angering far-right leaders in both countries.

    The new legal analysis—which was sent to the U.N.’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, and the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel—came on the same day that 20 human rights groups issued a joint statement.

    The rights organizations—including Amnesty International, Mercy Corps, and Oxfam—called on world leaders “to urgently act in bringing to an end, and pursue accountability for,” Israel’s grave breaches of international humanitarian law in Gaza.

    Both documents were released on Nakba Day, which commemorates the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Some experts and campaigners contend that the Nakba—Arabic for catastrophe—continues today.

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

  • Biden Moves Forward With ‘Immoral’ $1 Billion Arms Shipment to Israel

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

    U.S. President Joe Biden speaks in the South Court Auditorium at the White House on February 16, 2023 in Washington, DC.
     (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

    The new shipment was announced “right after the State Department admits Israel has ‘likely’ used U.S.-supplied weapons in violation of humanitarian law,” said one journalist.

    Less than a week after U.S. President Joe Biden said he was pausing a shipment of thousands of bombs to Israel, citing concerns over the safety of civilians in Rafah and other “population centers” in Gaza, the White House informed Congress Tuesday that it will soon send over $1 billion more in arms and ammunition to the Israel Defense Forces.

    The package includes about $700 million for tank ammunition, $500 million in tactical vehicles, and $60 million in mortar rounds, congressional aides told TheAssociated Press.

    Despite the Biden administration’s repeated claims that it believes U.S. bombs should not “be dropped in densely populated cities,” Intercept reporter Prem Thakker pointed out that the arms shipment was announced days after the State Department admitted in a report that it was “reasonable” to conclude Israel has used U.S. weapons to violate international humanitarian law in its relentless bombing of Gaza.

    It was unclear whether the $1 billion shipment was part of an existing arms sale or a new transaction with Israel. The weapons are not among those included in the $17 billion in military aid for the IDF included in a foreign aid package passed last month.

    At Al Jazeera, Shihab Rattansi reported that the weapons shipment is “being presented as the long-term U.S. commitment to supplying Israel with weaponry” and “has been under consideration since mid-spring,” with some of the weapons potentially not reaching the IDF for months or even up to three years.

    But foreign policy analyst Rula Jebreal suggested that regardless of whether the weapons are used in Rafah, where Israel is currently expanding its assault, the shipment goes “against U.S. national security interest and global standing” and will aid Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “on his lawless path of colonization.”

    The shipment was announced ahead of a statement released by Amnesty International and other humanitarian groups condemning international governments—including that of the U.S.—for standing by as Israel has killed at least 35,173 Palestinians in Gaza since October while also blocking nearly all humanitarian aid, pushing part of the enclave into famine that is expected to spread.

    The U.S. and other suppliers of weapons to Israel must respect last month’s United Nations Human Rights Council resolution demanding an end to weapons sales to the IDF, said the groups.

    “As the main weapon provider for Israel’s military effort, the United States bears a significant responsibility for Israel’s international humanitarian law violations. In addition to halting the transfer of high payload bombs, the U.S. should also use all its leverage to halt the ongoing military operation in Rafah,” said the organizations, including Relief International and Oxfam. “All states must act now to ensure an immediate and sustained cease-fire.”

    Amnesty released an analysis late last month showing that U.S. bombs were used in attacks on Gaza that likely fit the definition of war crimes.

    Al Jazeera‘s Tareq Abu Azzoum reported Wednesday from Deir el-Balah, Gaza that Israel has intensified its attacks on Rafah as well as in cities in northern Gaza.

    “Over the past couple of hours, we have recorded more victims in central areas of Gaza City,” reported Abu Azzoum. “Ten Palestinians have been killed in the city’s Sabra neighborhood after a U.N.-run clinic was targeted by Israeli jets.”

    The IDF said Tuesday that it had hit more than 100 targets across the Gaza Strip in a 24-hour period and was continuing to carry out attacks in Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians have been forcibly displaced since October.

    Nearly 450,000 people have now been forced to flee the southern city once again, and Al Jazeerareported Tuesday that at least one family that escaped Israel’s Rafah incursion was killed days later in an attack on a refugee camp.

    Moving forward with another weapons shipment to Israel, said U.S. economic justice group Debt Collective, was “murderous” and “immoral.”

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

  • Israel’s War on Gaza Has Helped Fuel ‘Near Breakdown of International Law’: Amnesty

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

    Body bags are laid in front of the White House as part of a protest calling for a Gaza cease-fire.  (Photo: Lauren Murphy/Amnesty International USA)

    “What we saw in 2023 confirms that many powerful states are abandoning the founding values of humanity and universality enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” Amnesty’s secretary-general said.

    Government aggression and the rise of Big Tech are threatening the rules-based international order and global human rights, Amnesty International warned in its annual State of the World’s Human Rights report, released Wednesday.

    The organization expressed particular alarm over Israel’s war on Gaza and the inability or unwillingness of its allies to rein in the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from bombing civilian populations, displacing more than 1.9 million people, and restricting the flow of aid into the besieged Gaza Strip. This and other conflicts, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, had led to a “near breakdown of international law,” Amnesty said.

    “For millions the world over, Gaza now symbolizes utter moral failure by many of the architects of the post-World War Two system; their failure to uphold the absolute commitment to universality, our common humanity, and to our ‘never again’ commitment,” Amnesty International’s secretary-general Agnès Callamard wrote in the preface to the report.

    “One country, one government is allowed to annihilate international law, to put its middle finger in the eye of international law.”

    Amnesty wrote that Israel had made a “mockery” of some of the key tenants of international humanitarian law such as proportionality and distinction by targeting civilization populations and infrastructure such as refugee camps, hospitals, bakeries, and United Nations schools. As of the end of 2023, Israel had killed 21,600 Palestinians, a third of them children. At present, the death toll has surpassed 34,200, though that is likely an undercount as many remain buried beneath rubble.

    Amnesty International researcher Budour Hassan toldDeutsche Welle that it was “utterly disappointing” that “one country, one government is allowed to annihilate international law, to put its middle finger in the eye of international law, and go on as if nothing has happened, normalizing the abnormal, normalizing the atrocities that have been happening, so that the crime that was an atrocity two days ago would become normal.”

    Hassan said there were things that the international community could do to try to stop the violence, such as cutting off weapons sales to Israel and Palestinian armed groups.

    “It’s just that the international community has proven desperately unwilling and incapable of upholding these norms,” Hassan added, saying that, by failing to act, it could be “signing a death sentence to the whole international order.”

    https://twitter.com/dwnews/status/1783124986309517396?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1783124986309517396%7Ctwgr%5E7140da0cc58c4fdb2d02a566a047cf4b17b64012%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2F2023-near-breakdown-international-law

    In particular, Amnesty criticized the U.S. for spending months vetoing U.N. Security Council resolutions calling for a cease-fire, as well as European Union countries like Germany and the U.K. that called out their opponents’ human rights abuses but continued to back Israel.

    “What we saw in 2023 confirms that many powerful states are abandoning the founding values of humanity and universality enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” Callamard said.

    In addition to Israel and its Western allies, Amnesty also pointed to Russia and its ongoing invasion of Ukraine, as well as China’s human rights abuses against the Uyghur and financial backing of the Myanmar military, which killed at least 1,000 civilians in 2023.

    “We have here three very large countries, superpowers in many ways, sitting on the Security Council that have emptied out the Security Council of its potentials, and that have emptied out international law of its ability to protect people,” Callamard toldThe Associated Press of the U.S., Russia, and China.

    In addition to state actors, Amnesty International sounded the alarm about the growing power of large technology companies, and, in particular, the rollout of artificial intelligence. The human rights group said that both new and existing technologies were making it easier for governments to target vulnerable groups like women, minorities, and members of the LGBTQ community. For example, the New York City Police Department informed Amnesty that it used facial recognition technology to keep tabs on Black Lives Matter activists, while Israel used it in the West Bank to help control Palestinian movement. The organization warned of how under-regulated technologies could exacerbate the scapegoating of marginalized groups as many countries hold elections in 2024.

    “Big Tech’s surveillance business model is pouring fuel on this fire of hate, enabling those with malintent to hound, dehumanize, and amplify dangerous narratives to consolidate power or polling,” Callarmard said. “It’s a chilling specter of what’s to come as technological advances rapaciously outpace accountability.”

    Callarmard called for reforms to the U.N. Security Council so that no country could use its veto power to obstruct action and for better governmental regulation of developing technologies.

    The silver lining is that ordinary people around the world continue to demonstrate for human rights, both their own and others. Amnesty cited the international movement for a cease-fire in Gaza; abortion rights protests in the U.S., El Salvador, and Poland; and the Fridays for Future youth movement to phase out fossil fuels and address the climate emergency.

    “People have made it abundantly clear that they want human rights; the onus is on governments to show that they are listening,” Callamard said.

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

  • Amnesty condemns UK for ‘appalling’ domestic policies in damning report

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    https://leftfootforward.org/2024/04/amnesty-condemns-uk-for-appalling-domestic-policies-in-damning-report/

    ‘The UK is deliberately destabilising the entire concept of universal human rights’

    The world’s leading human rights organisation has issued a damning condemnation of the UK government’s domestic policies and failure in Gaza, accusing the UK of “deliberately destabilising” global human rights.

    In a truly bleak assessment, Amnesty International said Britain had breached international human rights commitments at a “perilous” time in global history, as a result of the UK government’s policies targeting asylum seekers and protesters. 

    Amnesty’s 2024 annual global report notes Britain’s weakening global and domestic human rights protections for the sake of the government’s own political gain, and at a time when the global community is failing to uphold international law.

    Amnesty also accused the UK Government of ‘grotesque double-standards’ for bolstering the actions of Israel and the US in Gaza, as the UK continues to arm Israel while failing to condemn Israel’s actions in the region which ‘likely amounts to war crimes’. 

    The UK’s weak support for the international criminal court (ICC) investigation into human rights violations in Israel and Palestine was also condemned, along with its failure to stand up as a strong voice in the UN to stop human rights violations in Gaza. 

    …

    https://leftfootforward.org/2024/04/amnesty-condemns-uk-for-appalling-domestic-policies-in-damning-report/

  • West Bank Pogrom ‘Underscores Urgent Need to Dismantle Apartheid’: Amnesty

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

    Mourners carry the body of one of the Palestinian men killed during an Israeli settlers’ attack on the village of Aqraba in the illegally occupied West Bank on April 19, 2024. (Photo: Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP via Getty Images)

    “The appalling spike in settler violence against Palestinians in recent days is part of a decadeslong state-backed campaign to dispossess, displace, and oppress Palestinians in the occupied West Bank,” said one Amnesty official.

    Amnesty International said Monday that the ongoing surge in deadly violence by Israeli settlers and soldiers in the West Bank “underscores [the] urgent need to dismantle apartheid” in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories.

    For more than a week now, Israeli settlers have been attacking West Bank Palestinians in towns and villages including Al-Mughayir, Duma, Deir Dibwan, Beitin, and Aqraba, killing at least four people including a child; wounding dozens of others; and destroying homes, vehicles, and other property.

    Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops have either stood and watched or participated in the settler attacks, which the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem and others are calling a “pogrom.”

    Amnesty said the “alarming spike in violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians across the occupied West Bank in recent days highlights the urgent need to dismantle illegal settlements, end Israel’s occupation of the occupied Palestinian territories, and its longstanding system of apartheid.

    “The appalling spike in settler violence against Palestinians in recent days is part of a decadeslong state-backed campaign to dispossess, displace, and oppress Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, under Israel’s system of apartheid,” Amnesty Middle East and North Africa regional director Heba Morayef said. “Israeli forces have a track record of enabling settler violence and it is outrageous that once again Israeli forces stood by and in some cases took part in these brutal attacks.”

    “Establishing Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories flagrantly violates international law and constitutes a war crime,” Morayef added. “Violence is integral to the establishment and expansion of these settlements and to sustaining apartheid. It’s time for the world to recognize this and pressure Israeli authorities to abide by international law by immediately halting settlement expansion and removing all existing settlements.”

    The latest wave of settler violence was sparked by the disappearance of Binyamin Achimair, a 14-year-old Israeli from the illegal settler outpost of Mal’achei Hashalom who went missing on April 12 while herding sheep near the village of Al-Mughayir east of Ramallah. As Israelis searched for Achimair, settlers began attacking Al-Mughayir’s residents and property.

    Achimair’s body was found the following day. Israeli officials said he was killed in a “terrorist attack.” However, no Palestinian resistance group has claimed responsibility for the incident. A 21-year-old Palestinian man was arrested Monday in alleged connection with the boy’s death.

    Late Friday, IDF troops and armored vehicles surrounded the Nur Shams refugee camp east of Tulkarem and besieged the community of more than 6,000 Palestinians during a 50-hour raid in which residents were shot, homes were destroyed, and scores of people were arrested.

    By Saturday, IDF soldiers had killed 14 people in the camp, including at least one child. More than 40 other Palestinians were wounded.

    “I saw one of my relatives, Jihad Zandiq, put his hands in the air to the soldiers but then they shot him anyway from point-blank range and killed him. Half of his skull exploded,” eyewitness Mahmoud Qazmouz told Middle East Eye on Sunday.

    Palestinian officials said Israeli troops attacked first responders attempting to rescue victims, including a volunteer paramedic who was shot in the leg.

    Meanwhile, a funeral was held Sunday for Mohammed Awad Allah Musa, a 50-year-old Palestinian Red Crescent Society volunteer paramedic who was shot dead Saturday by Israeli settler-colonists while trying to reach Palestinians wounded by rampaging settlers in the town of Sa’wiyah south of Nablus.

    The Nur Shams raid and ongoing settler attacks came as the U.S. State Department on Friday announced new sanctions targeting far-right Israeli settler leaders including Ben Zion Gopstein, the founder and head of the Jewish supremacist group Lehava.

    The Biden administration—which backs Israel with billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic support—is also reportedly considering imposing sanctions on the IDF’s Netzah Yehuda battalion over war crimes committed in the West Bank before the current Israeli war on Gaza, including the January 2022 death of Omar Assad, a 78-year-old Palestinian American man.

    Responding to the prospect of the first-ever U.S. sanctions on his country’s military, far-right Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that “I will fight it with all my strength.”

    According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, at least 485 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank since October 7, when Gaza-based militants attacked Israel. More than 1,100 people were killed in the attack—some by responding Israeli forces—and over 240 Israelis and others were kidnapped by Hamas and other militants.

    Israel’s 199-day retaliatory assault on Gaza—which critics including Israelis have called genocidal—has killed at least 34,151 Palestinians, mostly women and children, while wounding over 77,000 others, according to Palestinian and international officials. At least 11,000 Gazans are missing, presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of the hundreds of thousands of homes and other buildings that have been destroyed or damaged by Israeli bombardment. Around 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been forcibly displaced, and Israel’s continued obstruction of humanitarian aid delivery has fueled a burgeoning famine in which dozens of people, mostly children, have perished.

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