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Tag: ceasefire

  • ‘We Are Complicit’: Sanders Urges Biden to Curb Israel Military Aid

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    U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders speaking with attendees at the Presidential Gun Sense Forum hosted by Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action at the Iowa Events Center in Des Moines, Iowa. Image by Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
    U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders speaking with attendees at the Presidential Gun Sense Forum hosted by Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action at the Iowa Events Center in Des Moines, Iowa. Image by Gage Skidmore shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

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

    Israeli atrocities in Gaza are being carried out by “bombs and equipment produced and provided by the United States and heavily subsidized by American taxpayers,” the Vermont senator wrote.

    Calling the Netanyahu government’s ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip “immoral” and illegal under international law, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday urged President Joe Biden to drop his support for the portion of a supplemental foreign aid package that would give the Israeli military more than $10 billion in unconditional assistance.

    Sanders (I-Vt.), who has faced backlash from Palestinian rights advocates for rejecting calls for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza, also pushed Biden to “support efforts at the United Nations to end the bloodshed, such as the recent resolution, vetoed by the United States, that would have demanded an immediate humanitarian cease-fire, the unconditional release of all hostages, and full humanitarian access.”

    The senator’s letter to Biden was made public a day after the U.S. joined just nine other nations in voting against a U.N. General Assembly resolution calling for a cease-fire. The nonbinding resolution passed overwhelmingly, leaving the U.S. “increasingly isolated in its steadfast support of a war that seems to have no rules and no limits,” as the executive director of Doctors Without Borders put it following Tuesday’s vote.

    “The U.S. must not provide $10 billion in military aid for Netanyahu’s right-wing government to conduct their horrific war against innocent Palestinians.”

    Sanders argued in his letter that “while there is a moral case for a military response against a brutal terrorist attack, it is clear that the Netanyahu government’s current campaign is being conducted in a deeply immoral way.”

    “Israel’s reliance on widespread and indiscriminate bombardment, including with massive explosive ordinance in densely populated urban areas, is unconscionable,” Sanders wrote. “This constitutes not just a humanitarian cataclysm, but a mass atrocity. And it is being done with bombs and equipment produced and provided by the United States and heavily subsidized by American taxpayers.”

    “Tragically, we are complicit in this carnage,” the senator added, pointing to a recent Amnesty International investigation showing that the Israeli military used U.S.-made munitions to bomb two family homes in the Gaza Strip in October, killing 43 members of two families—including 19 children.

    Sanders went on to criticize the Biden administration’s timid response to Israel’s massacres in Gaza, writing that the U.S. has “done little but ask nicely while continuing to enable” the Netanyahu government’s devastating military campaign.

    “While it is appropriate to support defensive systems that will protect Israeli civilians against incoming missile and rocket attacks,” Sanders argued, “it would be irresponsible to provide an additional $10.1 billion in military aid beyond these defensive systems as contained in the proposed supplemental foreign aid package.”

    Sanders asked Biden to “withdraw” his support for that element of the larger aid package to stop fueling “the continuation of the Netanyahu government’s widespread, indiscriminate bombardment.”

    Biden said Tuesday that Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” of the Gaza Strip is costing the country support on the world stage, but administration officials made clear Wednesday that the U.S. “has no plans to shift its position and draw any red lines around the transfer of weapons and munitions to Israel,” CNN reported.

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

  • UN Chief Invokes Article 99 to Spur Security Council Action on Gaza

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    United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres discusses climate change at U.N. headquarters in New York City on July 27, 2023.
    United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres discusses climate change at U.N. headquarters in New York City on July 27, 2023.

    “Facing a severe risk of collapse of the humanitarian system in Gaza, I urge the council to help avert a humanitarian catastrophe and appeal for a humanitarian cease-fire to be declared.”

    With over 16,000 Palestinians dead just two months into Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Wednesday demanded immediate action by the U.N. Security Council.

    For the first time since becoming secretary-general nearly seven years ago, Guterres invoked Article 99, a rarely used section of the U.N. Charter empowering him to bring to the attention of the council “any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security.”

    U.N. spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said that Guterres was invoking Article 99 “given the scale of the loss of human life in Gaza and Israel, in such a short amount of time.”

    “I think it’s arguably the most important invocation,” Dujarric told reporters at U.N. headquarters, “in my opinion, the most powerful tool that he has.”

    “The international community has a responsibility to use all its influence to prevent further escalation and end this crisis.”

    Guterres wrote to José Javier De la Gasca Lopez Domínguez, the Ecuadorian president of the Security Council, that “more than eight weeks of hostilities in Gaza and Israel have created appalling human suffering, physical destruction and collective trauma across Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory.”

    The U.N. chief reaffirmed his condemnation of the October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel—in which around 1,200 people were killed and over 200 others were captured—that led to the war. He called accounts of sexual violence “appalling” and stressed that the remaining hostages “must be immediately and unconditionally released.”

    He also emphasized that “civilians throughout Gaza face grave danger,” with the Israeli airstrikes and raids damaging more than half of all homes and displacing about 80% of the 2.3 million residents. Over a million of them have sought shelter at U.N. facilities, “creating overcrowded, undignified, and unhygienic conditions,” while others “find themselves on the street.”

    “The healthcare system in Gaza is collapsing,” he noted, pointing out that only 14 of 36 hospitals are operating at all. “I expect public order to completely break down soon due to the desperate conditions, rendering even limited humanitarian assistance impossible. An even worse situation could unfold, including epidemic diseases and increased pressure for mass displacement into neighboring countries.”

    Already, conditions in Gaza are making “it impossible for meaningful humanitarian operations to be conducted,” Guterres added. “The capacity of the United Nations and its humanitarian partners has been decimated by supply shortages, lack of fuel, interrupted communications, and growing insecurity.”

    “The situation is fast deteriorating into a catastrophe with potentially irreversible implications for Palestinians as a whole and for peace and security in the region. Such an outcome must be avoided at all cost,” the U.N. leader warned. “The international community has a responsibility to use all its influence to prevent further escalation and end this crisis.”

    “I urge the members of the Security Council to press to avert a humanitarian catastrophe,” he wrote. “I reiterate my appeal for a humanitarian cease-fire to be declared. This is urgent. The civilian population must be spared from greater harm.”

    The United States—a supporter of Israel’s war and one of the U.N. Security Council’s five permanent members—vetoed a mid-October resolution condemning violence against civilians in Israel and Gaza and urging “humanitarian pauses” for aid delivery.

    Roughly a month later, the Security Council approved a Gaza resolution that calls on all parties to abide by their obligations under international law and advocates for “urgent and extended humanitarian pauses and corridors.”

    Dr. Christos Christou, international president of Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders, said at the time that “the unacceptably jumbled and sluggish process finally led to the adoption of a text that does not come close to reflecting the severity of the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.”

  • ‘Hell on Earth’ returns to Gaza as Israel extends bombing to the south

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    A Palestinian girl wounded in Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip is brought to a hospital in Khan Younis, Friday, Dec. 1, 2023.

    https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/hell-earth-returns-gaza-israel-extends-bombing-south

    “HELL on Earth” returned to Gaza today in the words of a UN official, as Israel resumed its murderous bombing campaign with dozens of air strikes on the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.

    Over 100 solidarity actions will take place for Palestine across Britain on Saturday as peace campaigners demand an end to the killing.

    After almost a week’s truce which saw Hamas release 78 hostages seized in its October 7 raid on Israel, and Israel free 240 Palestinian prisoners of the thousands in its jails, Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) unleashed another wave of bombing which had killed at least 109 people today when the Morning Star went to press, bringing the total death toll from its war above 15,000.

    …

    The Stop the War Coalition’s Lindsey German told the Morning Star that Gaza faced the “hideous prospect [of] winter cold, disease and food shortages and now renewed bombardment by Israel.

    “The West Bank is also seeing increasing violence with many young Palestinians being shot and arrested every day.”

    A window on the horror was exposed by the Unite union, which has a twinning arrangement with Shu’fat refugee camp which borders East Jerusalem and houses more than 16,000 refugees.

    Colin Lomas, secretary of the twinning group, said: “The Shu’fat checkpoint [into Jerusalem] is frequently closed, making the camp an open prison subject to frequent incursions by the Israeli army.

    “The United Nations health centre in the camp, already desperately overstretched, has experienced extensive damage.

    “The Shu’fat youth centre has been raided on several occasions, resulting in the arrest of many young people.

    “Homes have also been raided, with people being summarily arrested and imprisoned, mostly without charge or trial.

    …

    https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/hell-earth-returns-gaza-israel-extends-bombing-south

  • 1,500 Block Manhattan Bridge Demanding Lasting Gaza Cease-Fire

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    More than 1,000 protesters block the entrance to the Manhattan Bridge on Sunday, November 26, 2023, to demand a lasting cease-fire in Gaza.  (Photo: Jewish Voice for Peace/Twitter)

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

    “We will make business as usual impossible until the U.S. stops funding and fueling a genocide,” Jewish Voice for Peace said.

    In what organizers said was the largest action of civil disobedience in New York City since the Iraq War, more than 1,000 protesters blocked traffic on the Manhattan Bridge for hours Sunday to demand a permanent cease-fire in Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza.

    The action, organized by Jewish Voice for Peace, began around 2 pm Eastern Time, and traffic began moving again around 5:30 pm, The New York Times reported. The group included 1,500 Jews, Palestinians, religious leaders, and elected officials, Jewish Voice for Peace said on social media.

    “These kind of things where you stop traffic brings more attention to the issue,” 74-year-old participant Joan Glickman, who lives in Westchester, toldGothamist. “I do think there are many Americans who don’t really pay attention to how serious this is.”

    The protest came on the third day of a negotiated four-day pause in hostilities between Israel and Hamas. On Sunday, Hamas released a third group of 17 hostages while Israel released 39 Palestinian prisoners, The Associated Press reported. However, activists expressed concern about what would happen when the temporary truce ended.

    “There are only two days left before the Israeli government resumes its genocidal onslaught against the people of Gaza—funded and fueled by the U.S. Netanyahu has said, ‘We will come back to annihilate them,’” Jewish Voice for Peace tweeted Sunday.

    On October 7, Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking around 240 hostages. In the month and a half since, Israel has killed more than 14,800 Palestinians in Gaza, including 10,000 women and children. That figure is more than double the number of women and children confirmed killed in Ukraine in two years of war against Russia. More than 800 legal scholars have said Israel may be committing a genocide in Gaza, and one human rights lawyer and former United Nations official called Israel’s campaign in Gaza a “textbook case of genocide.”

    The protesters Sunday blocked the Manhattan entrance to the bridge and sat down in the center of the entrance ramp, The New York Times reported. One person scaled the arch over the ramp to unfurl a Palestinian flag.

    “We needed to continue to raise our voices and continue to speak out because there’s thousands of Palestinians that are under the rubble right now,” Jewish Voice for Peace member Jay Saper said at the protest, as the Times reported.

    At one point, the protesters said they would refuse to leave until U.S. President Joe Biden called for a permanent cease-fire to the conflict, and they unfurled banners reading, “Lasting cease-fire,” and “The whole world is watching.”

    “We will make business as usual impossible until the U.S. stops funding and fueling a genocide,” Jewish Voice for Peace tweeted.

    A spokesperson for the New York Police Department told Gothamist that it made “multiple” arrests.

    “I hope that this message is strong and they’re listening in the White House,” Palestinian American activist Linda Sarsour said during the protest, as Gothamist reported.

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

  • Liverpool Independents launch fundraiser to fight Eagle in next general election

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    Original article republished from the Skwawkbox.

    The Liverpool Community Independents (LCI) group announced last week that it will stand a candidate to challenge Labour incumbent MP Maria Eagle in the Liverpool Garston constituency at the next general election, because – as a last straw – her decision to abstain on a Commons vote earlier this month calling for a ceasefire in Israel’s slaughter of civilians in Gaza.

    Labour has cause to worry – in May, the working-class south Liverpool community threw out Labour, which heavily lost both its council seats heavily to LCI’s Lucy Williams and Sam Gorst, despite a disgusting Labour smear campaign in the election. But the group will need an even greater influx of resources and volunteers to win the parliamentary seat.

    LCI leader Alan Gibbons – who trounced Labour in May in Orrell Park in the north of the city – has said that the decision to fight Eagle for the seat is a ‘historical necessity’ after the abstention.

    As a first step, the group has launched a crowdfunder with a target of £15,000 to create a campaign fund for the seat. Readers who would like to contribute toward the effort can do so here.

    Original article republished from the Skwawkbox.