Benjamin Netanyahu

As Gaza Starves, Israeli Minister Ben-Gvir Calls to Reduce Humanitarian Aid

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

Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir speaks during an event on June 3, 2024 in Jerusalem. (Photo: Amir Levy/Getty Images)

The national security minister’s comments came as the number of Palestinian children who have died of malnutrition reached at least 30.

Humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza remained almost entirely halted by Israeli forces on Friday, but Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, suggested he was dissatisfied with the mounting death toll from starvation and called for a complete blockade to be resumed.

“In our opinion Israel should withhold fuel from Gaza and reduce the humanitarian [aid] that enters,” Ben-Gvir said on social media, adding that he would not support a cease-fire deal put forward by Israel because it “would endanger the future of the state of Israel.”

Ben-Gvir’s comments came as just two crossings into Gaza were open—the Western Erez crossing from Israel into the northern part of the enclave and the Karem Abu Salem crossing, which has had “limited functionality” since May 8.

In recent days the number of aid trucks that have entered through the Karem Abu Salem crossing has plummeted from nearly 200 per day in early May to fewer than 50 per day, with as few as just one truck per day entering since mid-May.

With the Rafah crossing closed to all aid shipments since the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched a full-scale invasion of the southern city on May 6, deliveries through the Karem Abu Salem entry point is the best chance that people in Rafah and southern Gaza have for obtaining desperately needed relief.

More than 1 million Palestinians have been displaced to Rafah since Israel began its bombardment of Gaza in October, and the United Nations has said that roughly that number have again fled the city in the past month, trying to escape Israel’s incursion.

More than 36,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s attacks since October, including at least 30 children who have died of starvation. Nearly all of them died in northern Gaza, where World Food Program Executive Director Cindy McCain said “full-blown famine” had taken hold last month.

Along with Israel’s closure of border crossings, Doctors Without Borders said this week that the “systematic obstruction at Israeli-controlled crossing points” has kept trucks from reaching people who need relief. Israeli officials have turned away deliveries that include certain items, like medical kits, that they say could have a “dual use.”

Louise Wateridge a communications officer for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), toldCNN on Friday that intense military action has kept the Karem Abu Salem crossing from operating fully, leaving trucks full of relief deliveries stuck on the Israeli side.

“It’s just a complete waste of vital humanitarian aid, and it’s such a manmade situation,” Wateridge told the outlet.

Amid the ongoing starvation crisis, Ben-Gvir’s call to even further reduce humanitarian aid came a day after he said in a video posted to social media that Israel intends to “occupy all the land” in Gaza, establish settlements like those in the West Bank, and encourage the so-called “voluntary migration” of Palestinians from Gaza—echoing a call from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu which rights advocates denounced as an open endorsement of ethnic cleansing.

Ben-Gvir has opposed a cease-fire deal supported by U.S. President Joe Biden, which calls for Israel’s withdrawal from population centers in Gaza, a release of hostages by Hamas in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinian detainees held in Israeli prisons, and Israel’s eventual withdrawal from the enclave entirely.

One researcher on Wednesday objected to Ben-Gvir’s portrayal in corporate media reports as a far-right extremist figure who is pushing Israel’s government toward a fringe movement.

“It’s time for people to stop calling [Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich, Ben-Gvir, and Netanyahu ‘fringe,'” they said. “They’re not fringe. They’re quite literally the figureheads of the Israeli establishment.”

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

Continue ReadingAs Gaza Starves, Israeli Minister Ben-Gvir Calls to Reduce Humanitarian Aid

‘Historic, But So, So Late’: Israel Added to UN’s Child-Killing ‘List of Shame’

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

Palestinian children injured in Israeli attacks on Al-Maghazi refugee camp are brought to al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza on November 5, 2023.  (Photo: Ashraf Amra/Anadolu Agency)

“It took a genocide that killed 15,000 children and maimed and scarred thousands more but the U.N. has finally and rightly added Israel to its List of Shame,” said one Palestinian observer.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres informed Israel on Friday that, for the first time, it is being added to the so-called “List of Shame” of countries that kill and injure children during wars and other armed conflicts, a decision that infuriated Israeli officials but was welcomed by human rights defenders as long overdue.

The Secretary-General Office’s annual Children and Armed Conflict report—which is likely to be released publicly later this month—has included countries and militant groups such as Afghanistan, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, Iraq, Islamic State, Myanmar, Russia, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. This is believed to be the first time the list has included a nation hailed by Western governments as a democracy.

“It took a genocide that killed 15,000 children and maimed and scarred thousands more but the U.N. has finally and rightly added Israel to its List of Shame,” Palestinian political analyst Nour Odeh said on social media. “Arms embargo NOW!”

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “the U.N. has put itself on the blacklist of history today when it joined the supporters of the Hamas murderers.”

“The IDF is the most moral army in the world and no delusional decision by the U.N. will change that,” added the prime minister, who International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan is seeking to arrest along with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes including extermination.

This year’s 2024 List of Shame will also include Hamas, which led the October 7 attack that left more than 1,100 Israelis and others dead, including 38 children. Around 30 minors were also kidnapped by Hamas, all of whom are believed to have been freed. Khan wants to arrest three leaders of Hamas, whose members are accused of extermination, rape, and other crimes.

In retaliation, Israel launched an assault and siege on theGaza Strip—now on its 244th day—killing more than 36,700 Palestinians including at least 15,000 minors, according to Palestinian and international agencies. Some children have allegedly been sexually abused and executed by Israeli troops.

More children were killed in Gaza in the first four months of the war than in four years of conflict worldwide, in what Philippe Lazzarini, who heads the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, called a “war on children… their childhood, and their future.”

There are also tens of thousands of children among the more than 83,000 Palestinians wounded by Israeli bombs and bullets in Gaza. Hundreds of thousands of children have been forcibly displaced by Israel’s bombardment and invasion, but there’s no safe place for them to go.

The Israeli blockade of Gaza and obliteration of its healthcare infrastructure have exacerbated what the U.N.’s top food official has called a “full-blown famine” in the north and widespread starvation throughout the strip. Dozens of children have starved to death.

Israel’s conduct in the war is under investigation by the International Court of Justice in The Hague in a genocide case brought by South Africa and supported by more than 30 other nations and regional blocs.

The U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) calls Gaza the most dangerous place in the world for children. The perils are not only physical; the annihilation of Gaza has also wrought tremendous psychological damage upon its children, many of whom have survived multiple Israeli campaigns.

According to UNICEF, more than 17,000 Gazan children are now orphans, with some having lost their entire families to Israeli attacks. International medical workers have coined a new acronym for these children: WCNSF, or, wounded child, no surviving family.

Between 2000 and the start of the Gaza war, Israeli forces killed more than 2,300 children throughout Palestine, according to Defense for Children International-Palestine. Prior to the current war, the highest number of Palestinian children killed in one year was 546 in 2014, when Israel carried out its Operation Protective Edge invasion of Gaza.

Despite all this killing, Israel was perennially given a pass from the List of Shame.

“Including Israel in the List of Shame is an urgent necessity to put an end to its severe and horrific violations and to protect the rights of Palestinian children. It is also crucial for maintaining the integrity and credibility of U.N. mechanisms, which are at risk of erosion due to double standards,” said Radhya Al-Mutawakel, who heads the Yemen-based group Mwatana for Human Rights.

Al-Mutawakel asserted that blacklisting Israel sends “a clear message that the U.N. stands firmly for the protection of children’s rights worldwide and will not tolerate violations against them” and also conveys “that the U.N. deals uniformly with all parties involved in grave violations against children, regardless of the perpetrators’ identities or the children’s backgrounds.”

Numerous Palestine advocates said Israel’s inclusion on the list of shame underscores the urgency of halting shipments of weapons used to kill Palestinian children.

“Israel is a terrorist nation,” said British union leader Howard Beckett. “Arms embargo. Sanctions. Hague.”

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

Continue Reading‘Historic, But So, So Late’: Israel Added to UN’s Child-Killing ‘List of Shame’

Biden Claims Israel Isn’t Starving Gazans. Rights Groups Say ‘It Is Clear as Day’

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

Palestinians wait in line to receive food distributed by charitable organizations amid Israeli attacks in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza on May 28, 2024. (Photo: Hassan Jedi/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“The fact that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza is not in contention,” said a Human Rights Watch researcher.

U.S. President Joe Biden said in an interview published Tuesday that he does not believe the Israeli government is using starvation as a weapon of warfare in Gaza, contradicting the findings of leading human rights organizations that have documented Israel’s deliberate obstruction of food aid as Palestinians die of malnutrition.

“No, I don’t think that,” Biden said in response to TIME magazine’s Washington bureau chief Massimo Calabresi and editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs, who noted some have “alleged that Israel is intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.”

The president, who has approved more than 100 arms sales to Israel during its eight-month assault on the Gaza Strip, acknowledged that Israel’s military has “engaged in activity that is inappropriate” and that “Palestinians have suffered greatly.”

But he stopped well short of the conclusions reached by Oxfam International, Human Rights Watch (HRW), and the International Criminal Court, which recently applied for arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for their role in the “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare” and other war crimes.

The U.S. Agency for International Development has also determined that Israel has unlawfully impeded the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Gaza, leading to a “deterioration of food security and nutrition in Gaza [that] is unprecedented in modern history.”

“The fact that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza is not in contention. It is clear as day,” Hiba Zayadin, a researcher at HRW, wrote in response to Biden’s TIME interview, pointing to her group’s December report that found the Israeli military was “deliberately blocking the delivery of water, food, and fuel, while willfully impeding humanitarian assistance, apparently razing agricultural areas, and depriving the civilian population of objects indispensable to their survival.”

“The evidence is even stronger today,” Zayadin added, citing HRW’s April report that focused specifically on the Israeli military’s starvation of Gaza children. Dozens of Palestinian kids, some just months old, have died of malnutrition since October, a figure that is almost certain to grow as Israel’s bombing campaign and ground offensive in Rafah continue.

The World Food Program said Wednesday that unless Israel’s assault on Gaza ends and desperately needed humanitarian aid is allowed to flow, more than a million people in the occupied enclave “are expected to face death and starvation… by mid-July.”

Humanitarian groups and experts—including an outspoken former U.S. State Department official—have argued that by continuing to arm Israel and provide it with diplomatic cover on the world stage, the Biden administration is complicit in Gaza’s increasingly dire hunger crisis.

“This is not just turning a blind eye to the man-made starvation of an entire population, it is direct complicity,” Josh Paul, who resigned from the State Department in October over the administration’s support for Israel’s assault on Gaza, told The Independent last month.

In a speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate earlier this week, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) displayed photos of emaciated children as he explained his decision to boycott Netanyahu’s upcoming speech to Congress.

“Blocking humanitarian aid and creating the conditions for famine is not only an act of extreme cruelty—using starvation as an act of war—but it is a violation of both American and international law,” Sanders added. “It is a war crime.”

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

Continue ReadingBiden Claims Israel Isn’t Starving Gazans. Rights Groups Say ‘It Is Clear as Day’

‘OUR FRIEND’: HOW THE ISRAEL LOBBY SPENT £30,000 ON WES STREETING

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https://www.declassifieduk.org/our-friend-how-the-israel-lobby-spent-30000-on-wes-streeting/

Wes Streeting faces a backlash over his support for Israel. (Photo: Imageplotter / Alamy)

Labour’s shadow health secretary has a long history of supporting Israel going back to his days at the National Union of Students—and has been rewarded handsomely for it.

  • Streeting was Keir Starmer’s first shadow minister to visit Israel
  • His visit in 2022 was paid for by Labour Friends of Israel, which “works really closely” with Israeli embassy in London
  • He has taken over £20,000 from Israel lobbyists Sir Trevor Chinn, Lord Mendelsohn and David Menton, with donations as recently as April
  • Pro-Israel newspaper said Streeting’s “track-record on Israel is clear” and called him “our friend at the NUS”
  • Streeting is being challenged by British-Palestinian independent Leanne Mohamad

Wes Streeting has received nearly £30,000 from Britain’s powerful pro-Israel lobby, Declassified has found. 

Two years ago, Streeting became the first member of Keir Starmer’s shadow cabinet to visit Israel, in a move designed to signal a break with Jeremy Corbyn’s pro-Palestine position. 

The trip was paid for by Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) and cost £4,700. LFI also paid for Sarah Harrison, one of Streeting’s staffers, to visit Israel with him.

Another Streeting staffer, Anna Wilson, was paid an undisclosed amount to visit Israel last July. 

Her trip was funded by the European Leadership Network, a group whose UK branch is run by Joan Ryan, former chair of LFI. 

LFI is a secretive organisation that does not disclose its funders, although undercover reporting revealed Ryan, then a Labour MP, discussing a £1 million payment from Israel with Shai Masot, an Israeli diplomat, in 2016. 

In another covertly filmed conversation outside a London pub, LFI’s Michael Rubin said that he and Masot “work really closely together…but a lot of it is behind the scenes”. 

Masot was eventually forced to quit his job at the Israeli embassy and return home after he was caught on camera plotting to “take down” British MPs.

…

Israel is a serial violator of international law, and is judged to be practising apartheid against the Palestinians by both the US and UK’s top human rights groups, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Leading Israeli group B’Tselem has also reached the same conclusion.

It is currently being investigated by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for genocide, while the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor Karim Khan is seeking arrest warrants for prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes in Gaza.

Streeting described the ICJ case as a “distraction”.

…

https://www.declassifieduk.org/our-friend-how-the-israel-lobby-spent-30000-on-wes-streeting/

Continue Reading‘OUR FRIEND’: HOW THE ISRAEL LOBBY SPENT £30,000 ON WES STREETING

Conditions ‘Unspeakable’ as Israeli Onslaught Forces Over 1 Million to Flee Rafah

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

A truck is used to evacuate the International Medical Corps American field hospital in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on June 2, 2024.
 (Photo: Eyad Baba/AFP via Getty Images)

“Public health concerns are beyond crisis levels” in the areas where Palestinians have been forced to shelter, and “the sounds, the smells, the everyday life, are horrific and apocalyptic,” a U.N. official said.

More than 1 million Palestinians have fled Rafah as the city comes under a continued Israeli assault, forcing many to shelter in badly damaged buildings in the nearby city of Khan Younis, according to the United Nations.

The assault on Rafah, a city in the southern Gaza Strip, has left the displaced in “unspeakable” conditions, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said on social media. Approximately 1.7 million displaced people are now in Khan Younis and “Gaza Middle Areas,” according to UNRWA.

Khan Younis, which saw sustained fighting earlier in the war, still does not appear to be a safe zone: Israeli military vehicles entered the city in recent hours after advancing to two towns just east of Khan Younis with “heavy gunfire and artillery shelling,” Al Jazeerareported.

Since early May, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has issued evacuation orders for parts of Rafah, telling people to go to an “expanded humanitarian zone” in Al-Mawasi, located roughly 12 miles from the city.

Israeli forces subsequently launched attacks on designated safe zones, including in Al-Mawasi. Two strikes killed 45 and 21 people last week, mostly women and children. The first of the attacks, known as the “tent massacre,” was carried out with U.S. weapons, later analysis showed.

Many of the people fleeing Rafah are having to move for at least the second time during the war. Roughly 1 million Palestinians who’d been displaced elsewhere had gone to Rafah for refuge earlier in the war. They began to leave Rafah nearly four weeks ago as Israeli started its assault on the city. Before the war, Rafah’s population was about 275,000, but the governorate reached a population of 1.4 million by February as Israel ordered Palestianians to move there from northern Gaza. This meant squeezing more than half of Gaza’s prewar population of 2.3 million into one governorate, NPR reported.

More than 18,500 pregnant women have been forced to leave Rafah, while about 10,000 pregnant women remain in the city in “desperate conditions,” the U.N. reported.

“They’re exhausted, traumatized, dehydrated, and malnourished,” the U.N. Population Fund wrote on social media of pregnant women dealing with “Israel’s terrifying military operation in Rafah.”

“Pregnant women in Gaza are living in an unrelenting nightmare,” the agency added.

After successive operations last month, Israel now controls the entire Gaza-Egypt border. Humanitarian corridors have shut down, with many agencies and aid groups pausing operations in Rafah due to lack of supplies and security concerns.

“We are living and working precariously in the south,” Matthew Hollingsworth said, World Food Program (WFP) country director in Palestine, said late last week, the U.N. reported. The areas where the displaced have been forced to shelter are nightmarish, he said.

“Public health concerns are beyond crisis levels” and “the sounds, the smells, the everyday life, are horrific and apocalyptic,” Hollingsworth added.

More than half of the structures in the Gaza Strip have been damaged, destroyed, or possibly destroyed during the eight-month Israeli assault, the United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT) concluded, in findings released Monday.

The mass displacement from Rafah continued as the Biden administration sought to arrange a cease-fire after after being pressured for months to end its military support for Israel’s onslaught. President Joe Biden called for an end to the war on Friday and backed a roadmap to a deal, which drew praise from Palestine defenders—the Council on American-Islamic Relations called it “long overdue” and a “positive step”—as well as criticism that it did not address the root causes of the conflict.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that the deal would not stop the war, which could not end until “total victory” had been achieved, according to Israeli National News.

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

Continue ReadingConditions ‘Unspeakable’ as Israeli Onslaught Forces Over 1 Million to Flee Rafah