complicity

‘War Criminals’: IDF Strikes Rafah After Hamas Agrees to Cease-Fire

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[This article remains relevant despite having been published 2 days ago]

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

Smoke rises from buildings after Israeli strikes on Rafah, Gaza on May 6, 2024.  (Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“Why?” asked Israeli lawmaker Ofer Cassif. “Because killing Palestinians is more important for the Israeli government than saving Israelis.”

Israel on Monday launched long-awaited strikes on Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip despite Hamas publicly confirming it agreed to a cease-fire and hostage release proposal from Egyptian and Qatari mediators.

The Israel Defense Forces said on social media that “the IDF is currently conducting targeted strikes against Hamas terror targets in eastern Rafah,” the city to which over a million Palestinians have fled since October 7, when Israel launched a retaliatory war that has already killed at least 34,735 people in Gaza and wounded another 78,108.

Earlier Monday, the IDF had dropped leaflets directing residents and refugees in that part of Rafah to relocate to a strip along Gaza’s coast, ignoring warnings from the international community and humanitarian groups that a full-scale Israeli attack on the crowded city would further endanger civilians and relief efforts.

“It is obvious Netanyahu wants this genocidal war to continue indefinitely so that he can remain in power.”

In addition to sparking outrage around the world, the Israeli government’s Rafah attack and rejection of the Hamas-backed proposal was met with criticism from people across Israel. The Associated Press reported that “thousands of Israelis rallied around the country Monday night calling for an immediate deal to release the hostages still held in the Gaza Strip.”

Ofer Cassif, a member of the Knesset who was almost expelled by fellow Israeli lawmakers earlier this year for backing South Africa’s ongoing genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), again called out his own government.

“Israeli tanks and infantry enter east Rafah while planes bomb from above, just hours after Hamas’ decision to accept the hostages/prisoners exchange deal,” Cassif said Monday. “Why? Because killing Palestinians is more important for the Israeli government than saving Israelis. War criminals!”

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that “the War Cabinet unanimously decided this evening Israel will continue its operation in Rafah, in order to apply military pressure on Hamas so as to advance the release of our hostages and achieve the other objectives of the war.”

Along with the prime minister, Israel’s War Cabinet includes Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Benny Gantz, former IDF chief of the general staff, along with three observers.

Netanyahu added that “while the Hamas proposal is far from meeting Israel’s core demands, Israel will dispatch a ranking delegation to Egypt in an effort to maximize the possibility of reaching an agreement on terms acceptable to Israel.”

Reuters reported that “an Israeli official said the deal was not acceptable to Israel because terms had been ‘softened.'”

According to the news outlet, the first part of a three-phase plan that Hamas—which has controlled Gaza for nearly two decades—agreed to includes a 42-day pause in fighting, the release of 33 hostages held by the group and some Palestinians in Israeli jails, a partial IDF withdrawal, and free movement in the besieged enclave.

Phase two would be “another 42-day period that features an agreement to restore a ‘sustainable calm’ to Gaza, language that an official briefed on the talks said Hamas and Israel had agreed in order to take discussion of a ‘permanent cease-fire’ off the table,” Reuters detailed. This phase also includes withdrawing most Israeli troops and Hamas releasing some soldiers and reservists.

The third phase would involve the exchange of bodies; reconstruction of Gaza overseen by Egypt, Qatar, and the United Nations; and ending the complete blockade on the strip, the outlet added.

Shortly before Israel’s Monday night strikes on Rafah began, Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, said that the U.N. chief “reiterates his pressing call to both the government of Israel and the leadership of Hamas to go the extra mile needed to make an agreement come true and stop the present suffering.”

Expressing concern about the then-imminent Israeli operation in Rafah, the spokesperson said that “we are already seeing movements of people—many of these people are in desperate humanitarian condition and have been repeatedly displaced. They search safety that has been so many times denied. The secretary-general reminds the parties that the protection of civilians is paramount in international humanitarian law.”

Other U.N. officials have been warning of what an assault on Rafah will mean for the over 1.4 million Palestinians there, among them 600,000 children. So have humanitarian and political leaders, including U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—who on Monday urged President Joe Biden to stand by his earlier position that attacking the city was a “red line” and “end all offensive military aid to Israel.”

Council on American-Islamic Relations national executive director Nihad Awad issued a similar call Monday evening, warning that “the Israeli government is hellbent on using American financial, military, and diplomatic support to ethnically cleanse what remains of Gaza and commit another massacre.”

“President Biden must stand up to Benjamin Netanyahu and take concrete action to end the genocide now,” Awad continued, nodding to the Israeli leader’s legal trouble. The prime minister faces not only potential consequences on a global scale for what the ICJ has deemed a “plausibly” genocidal war on Gaza but also a corruption trial in his own country.

“It is obvious Netanyahu wants this genocidal war to continue indefinitely so that he can remain in power, avoid jail, and fulfill his racist, far-right Cabinet’s demands for the complete destruction of Gaza and the massacre of its people,” Awad said. “It is long past time for President Biden to end our nation’s complicity in this 21st-century genocide.”

Biden spoke with Netanyahu by phone ahead of the IDF strikes on Monday and “reiterated his clear position on Rafah,” according to a White House readout. They also discussed the hostage negotiations, humanitarian aid, the Holocaust, and antisemitism.

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, also suggested that the Israeli prime minister wants the bloodshed in Gaza to continue for personal reasons.

“Netanyahu does not want an end to the war because the moment the war ends, his political career ends as well. And his prison sentence will commence,” said Parsi. “Yet, Biden has for seven months deferred to Netanyahu.”

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

Continue Reading‘War Criminals’: IDF Strikes Rafah After Hamas Agrees to Cease-Fire

‘How many more Palestinian children need to be killed before Westminster finally acts?’

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/how-many-more-palestinian-children-need-to-be-killed-before-westminster-finally-acts

World calls on Israel to halt its slaughter of helpless refugees trapped in Rafah

An Israeli tank overlooks the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, May 6, 2024

APPEALS to Israel to halt its merciless slaughter of helpless refugees trapped in the city of Rafah in Gaza rang out nationally and internationally today.

Refugees began streaming out of the town on the Egyptian border after Israel warned 100,000 people to evacuate, saying it was planning to attack.

An emergency demonstration has been called outside Downing Street for Tuesday night.

After another night of bombardment which left more than 20 dead, Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn said: “This is disgusting beyond belief, that Israel continues to bombard one million people stuck in Rafah and has now asked 100,000 to move to ‘humanitarian safe zones’.”

“Thirty-four thousand lives have already been lost. Now is the time to cease fire and stop arms sales to Israel.”

The Stop the War Coalition, which has called this evening’s Downing Street rally at 6pm, said: “As Israel continues its bombing of civilians trapped in Rafah and prepares a ground invasion, knowing nowhere is safe for the 1.7 million Palestinians trapped there, Sunak, Starmer and Biden continue to support Netanyahu’s genocide.

“Rather than pulling their support, including by stopping arms sales, they attack our marches, attack student protests, and attack anyone who calls out Israel’s atrocities.

…

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/how-many-more-palestinian-children-need-to-be-killed-before-westminster-finally-acts

Continue Reading‘How many more Palestinian children need to be killed before Westminster finally acts?’

UN Warns Israeli Ground Invasion Rafah Will Lead to ‘Slaughter of Civilians’

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

Palestinians wounded in Israeli attacks on Rafah attempt to collect belongings from bombed-out homes on May 1, 2024 in the southern Gaza city. 
(Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“The simplest truth is that a ground operation in Rafah will be nothing short of a tragedy beyond words,” said a top U.N. aid official. “No humanitarian plan can counter that.”

The United Nations’ humanitarian aid agency warned Friday that an Israeli ground invasion of Rafah would put hundreds of thousands of Palestinians “at imminent risk of death.”

“Any ground operation would mean more suffering and death” for the approximately 1.5 million Palestinians—including around 1.2 million people forcibly displaced from other areas of the embattled enclave—sheltering in Gaza’s southernmost city, U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) spokesperson Jens Laerke told reporters in Geneva on Friday.

“The hundreds of thousands of people who are there would be at imminent risk of death if there is an assault,” he added, warning of not only “a slaughter of civilians, but also at the same time an incredible blow to the humanitarian operation in the entire strip, because it is run primarily out of Rafah.”

According to Politico, Israel has shared with the U.S. government its plan to move the civilian population out of Rafah ahead of a looming ground assault the Wall Street Journal reported earlier on Friday could begin next week.

Conditions in Rafah are already dire. The city—which was home to fewer than 300,000 people before the war—is now one of the most densely populated places on the planet. Hundreds of thousands of refugees are crowded together in tents and other makeshift shelters. Water and other necessities are in desperately short supply. According to James Elder, the global spokesperson for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), there is approximately one toilet for every 850 people in Rafah and one shower for every 3,500 people.

“Try to imagine, as a teenage girl, or elderly man, or pregnant woman, queueing for an entire day just to have a shower,” Elder wrote for The Guardian this week.

There are nearly 600,000 children in Rafah, nearly all of whom are “injured, sick, malnourished, traumatized, or living with disabilities,” UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell said Wednesday.

Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, who represents the U.N. World Health Organization in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories, on Friday called contingency response plans for a Rafah invasion a “Band-Aid” solution.

“It will absolutely not prevent the expected substantial additional mortality and morbidity caused by a military operation,” he stressed.

Israel’s 210-day assault on Gaza in retaliation for the October 7 attacks has already killed at least 34,622 Palestinians—a large majority of them civilian men, women, and children—while wounding more than 77,800 others, according to Palestinian and international officials. At least 11,000 other Gazans are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of the more than 370,000 homes and other buildings destroyed or damaged during the war.

That means around 5% of Gazans have been killed or wounded during Israel’s onslaught, the U.N. Development Program and the U.N. Economic Commission for Western Asia said in a report published Wednesday. The agencies called this an “unprecedented” level of casualties in modern warfare and said it would take until at least 2040 to restore all the homes destroyed or damaged during the war.

As many as 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have also been forcibly displaced by Israeli forces, who despite a January International Court of Justice (ICJ) order to prevent genocidal acts continue to block adequate humanitarian aid from reaching the starving people of Gaza.

Despite pleas and protestations from world leaders including U.S. President Joe Biden, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to invade Rafah to “eliminate Hamas’ battalions there.”

Earlier this week, far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for the “total annihilation” of Gaza, specifically mentioning Rafah. The South Africa-led case against Israel at the ICJ has centered similar statements of intent to destroy Palestinians—which are key to proving the crime of genocide—made by Israeli officials since October.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces have ramped up aerial attacks on Rafah in what is likely preparation for a ground invasion. Palestinian and international media reported Friday that an overnight Israeli airstrike on a home killed at least eight people, mostly children.

“After almost seven months of brutal hostilities that have killed tens of thousands of people and maimed tens of thousands more, Gaza is bracing for even more suffering and misery,” U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths said earlier this week.

“The world has been appealing to the Israeli authorities for weeks to spare Rafah, but a ground operation there is on the immediate horizon,” he continued. “For the hundreds of thousands of people who have fled to Gaza’s southernmost point to escape disease, famine, mass graves, and direct fighting, a ground invasion would spell even more trauma and death.”

“The simplest truth is that a ground operation in Rafah will be nothing short of a tragedy beyond words,” Griffiths added. “No humanitarian plan can counter that. The rest is detail.”

U.S. officials have also privately sounded the alarm over the likely consequences of an Israeli invasion of Rafah.

In March, according to a leaked cable obtained by The Intercept, members of the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance at the U.S. Agency for International Development warned the State Department that a Rafah invasion “could result in catastrophic humanitarian consequences, including mass civilian casualties, extensive population displacement, and the collapse of the existing humanitarian response.”

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

Continue ReadingUN Warns Israeli Ground Invasion Rafah Will Lead to ‘Slaughter of Civilians’

This May Day, workers mobilized for Palestine

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Original article by Natalia Marques republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Student workers of Columbia organized in UAW 2710 participate in May Day rally. Photo: Wyatt Souers

On International Workers’ Day, workers around the world continued to join hands with the student movement to stand with Palestine

On May Day, workers around the world mobilized for the liberation of Palestine. “This May Day, workers of the world are called to declare their solidarity with Palestine, to denounce the Israeli Genocide, and to call for an end to all aggressions in the region and to all wars,” wrote the International People’s Assembly.

“Beyond the call for a ceasefire we must say no to the transportation of arms and arms caches to Israel. Workers in all industries – especially workers in the transport sector – that can withhold their labor in order to halt the continued slaughter of the people of Palestine are emphatically called to do so!”

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa released a statement calling on workers around the world to mobilize for Palestine. “The working class are the creators of wealth, and it is the united power of the working class that has the power to overthrow hateful, brutal regimes like Apartheid Israel,” wrote the union. “On this Workers Day, we call on workers of the world to unite in defense of Palestine so that its people can be free, from the river, to the sea!”

“The working class in South Africa must celebrate the defeat of Apartheid, because its destruction was due, largely to the unity of workers, who used their labor power to collapse the system through rolling mass action, strikes and protest,” the union added.

Several Palestinian union formations have called the people in the world to action against the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza. This includes the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions, which in March called on US unions in particular to “be our voice and advocate inside and outside America.”

“What our people are experiencing and what workers and unions in particular, are exposed to is the most horrific catastrophe known to humanity in recent decades,” the PGFTU wrote. “We ask that you convey our message and give voice to the suffering of hungry, starving workers and their families—not just to the American people, not just to your unions, but to the entire world.”

Palestinian trade unions have also responded in support of the student movement for Palestine that has taken the world by storm. “The Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) in Palestine extends our deepest solidarity to you, the revolutionary youth who are changing the world,” reads a statement of support from a prominent Palestine farmworkers’ union, addressed to the students movement around the world that is taking action in solidarity with Gaza. “We write to you from Palestine to tell you that your actions are resonating across oceans. In you, we see the echoes of our struggle, the echoes of our resistance, and the echoes of our hope.”

“Our people, along with all the workers and free people of the world, commemorate the first of May this year, at a time when they are subjected to the most brutal and fierce campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing, surpassing in savagery and bloodiness the fascists and the Nazis, at the hands of a group of murderers calling themselves an army for an invasive replacement entity, under the leadership, partnership, support, cover, and complicity of the American administration and the colonial Western imperial powers, the enemies of humanity,” wrote the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in a pre-May Day statement. “We send a salute of respect and pride to the university students all over the world, especially to the students at American universities, who are protesting against the crimes of the occupation and the support of the American administration for it, and who demand a halt to the aggression against the Palestinian people.”

Within the student movement in the US, university workers are mobilizing their unions to stand with their students in solidarity with Gaza. On April 29, within the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at the City College of New York in New York City, university workers organized under the Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY) held a town hall meeting to deliberate on how to use their labor power to support the five demands of the student encampment. The members attending the town hall organized a wildcat sick-out, in which union members will call in sick en masse to disrupt business as usual at the larger City University of New York (CUNY) system. Workers in the United States face a variety of strike prohibitions, including a nationwide ban on striking for political reasons rather than economic issues such as wages and benefits under the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947.

Nevertheless, the PSC faculty at the town hall voted overwhelmingly to stage a sick-out. “At UT Austin, faculty did a one day job action in support of their students. Palestinian trade unions, National SJP, and National Faculty for Justice in Palestine have called for a mass job action on May 1st,” faculty wrote in a statement. “Our students are taking incredible risks to support the Palestinian people. They have asked for our help. We must stand ready to struggle alongside them, and to take these risks.”

Workers organized with the United Auto Workers, which also represents many graduate student workers across the country, staged a rally in Washington Square Park on April 26 in support of their students staging Gaza Solidarity Encampments at NYU, Columbia, and the New School.

Workers engaged in mass mobilizations around the world on May 1.

Thousands took to the streets in major US cities including Washington, DC and Los Angeles. In DC, demonstrators marched to the Gaza Solidarity Encampments at George Washington University.

‼️🇵🇸A massive May Day march in Los Angeles takes the streets for Palestine! pic.twitter.com/YfDrwNiBis

— Party for Socialism and Liberation (@pslnational) May 1, 2024

✊🏽🇵🇸RIGHT NOW: A massive May Day march is en route to the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at George Washington University pic.twitter.com/esXOVUrhqv

— Party for Socialism and Liberation (@pslnational) May 2, 2024

In New York City, unions such as the United Auto Workers and the New York Taxi Workers Alliance expressed explicit support for the Palestinian cause in a march of 20,000, which ended at the New York University Gaza Solidarity Encampment.

Havana, like every year, was flooded with huge crowds on May Day as President Miguel Diaz-Canel sent an explicit message in support of Palestine and the pro-Palestine student movement. “All our solidarity with the students in the United States, who have taken the side of justice, have come out to support the cause of the Palestinian people, and are brutally repressed on their own university campuses. Today our [May Day] is also going through Palestine,” Diaz-Canel wrote.

In Bogota, President Gustavo Petro made a special announcement during the May Day celebration in front of thousands of Colombians: the nation would officially cut all diplomatic ties with Israel.

Original article by Natalia Marques republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Continue ReadingThis May Day, workers mobilized for Palestine

UK BLOCKS DETAILS ON ISRAEL MILITARY TRAINING IN BRITAIN

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https://www.declassifieduk.org/uk-blocks-details-on-israel-military-training-in-britain/

An Israeli F-15 takes off from RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire on Exercise Cobra Warrior in 2019. (Photo: John Lambeth / Alamy)

The UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) is refusing to give parliament any information about the Israeli military personnel currently being trained in Britain.

In February, the government admitted that “there are currently six Israeli Armed Forces officers posted in the UK”. It added that “Israel is represented by Armed Forces personnel in its Embassy in the UK, and as participants in UK defence-led training courses”.

Yet when asked this week by Alba MP Kenny MacAskill about the ranks of these personnel and where they are posted, defence minister Leo Docherty, Grant Shapps’ deputy, refused to say. 

He replied in a written answer to parliament: “This information is being withheld in order to protect personal information and to avoid prejudicing relations between the United Kingdom and another State”.

The MoD also refused to say how many British military personnel are currently stationed in Israel. 

Docherty again replied evasively, writing: “The UK has a number of Armed Forces personnel across the Middle East, working closely with partners to carry out defence engagement and to uphold regional stability. I cannot go into specifics for operational security purposes.”

The UK government is clearly imposing a blackout on providing much information to the public about its support for Israel as it continues its mass attacks on Palestinians in Gaza.

…

https://www.declassifieduk.org/uk-blocks-details-on-israel-military-training-in-britain/

Continue ReadingUK BLOCKS DETAILS ON ISRAEL MILITARY TRAINING IN BRITAIN