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Israel’s attacks on Jabalya camp in Gaza may amount to war crimes: UN rights body

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

Israel bombed the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza for the third time on Thursday. Israel’s attacks on the camp have killed at least 195 Palestinians with at least 120 more people missing under the rubble

Israel bombed the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza for the third time on the morning of Thursday, November 2, killing at least 29 more people, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa. Israel’s attacks on the camp have killed at least 195 Palestinians with at least 120 more people missing under the rubble. 

Over 800 Palestinians have been wounded in the attacks on the densely populated camp. 

The United Nations Human Rights office (OHCHR) said on Thursday that Israel’s repeated attacks on the Jabalya refugee camp are “disproportionate” and may “amount to war crimes.” 

At least five more Palestinians were killed on Thursday morning when Israeli warplanes targeted an UNRWA school which had been converted into a camp, known as al-Shati. Thousands of Palestinians who have lost their homes due to Israeli bombings are living in the camp.

Reports also claimed that the al-Shati camp was attacked with white phosphorus which is banned.   

A total of over 9,000 Palestinians have been killed and over 23,000 have been wounded in the Israeli war on Gaza. More than 70% of all Palestinians killed are children or women, according to the UN. 

The Israeli war began on October 7 after Palestinian resistance groups breached the border fence and entered Israel in what they called Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

Israel has also launched a ground offensive inside Palestinian territory. Reports indicate a large number of killings and destruction of civilian properties in the ground offensive too.  

More hospitals shut in Gaza

Due to the indiscriminate Israeli bombing, 16 out of 35 hospitals in Gaza are already out of service, according to the Health Ministry.  

More hospitals have announced they will be forced to cease their operations soon, citing lack of supply of electricity and essentials such as medicines.  

The Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, the only cancer hospital in the Gaza strip, announced the halting of its operations following repeated attacks by Israel in its vicinity and the shortage of fuel caused due to a complete blockade on the supply of essential commodities by Israel on the territory since October 9. 

Reacting to the news, Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca claimed that the hospital had shut down despite repeated warnings as “unfortunately, the international community and relevant institutions have not taken sufficient action to prevent the attacks on the hospitals” carried out by the Israeli war planes.  

The hospital was attacked by Israel on Monday, October 30, leading to damage. 

Meanwhile, a small number of severely injured Palestinians and some foreign nationals were able to leave the Gaza strip from Rafah border crossing on Wednesday for the first time since the war began. More people are expected to leave on Thursday. 

Israel continues to kill and arrest Palestinians in West Bank and East Jerusalem    

At least three Palestinians, including one child, were killed by the Israeli occupation forces in different parts of the occupied West Bank on Thursday morning. 

The total number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since October 7 has crossed 132 with at least 34 of them being children. The occupation forces have killed more than 343 Palestinians in these territories since the beginning of the year. 

Israeli occupation forces also arrested at least 65 more Palestinians from various parts of the occupied West Bank on Thursday. A total of over 1,900 Palestinians have been arrested by Israeli armed forces in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since October 7.   

Israel’s repeated targeting of civilians in the Palestinian territories has been condemned by many countries. After Bolivia cut ties with Israel on Tuesday, Chile and Colombia recalled their ambassadors from Israel. 

On Wednesday Jordan joined these countries and recalled its ambassador from Israel. It claimed that it won’t send its ambassador back until Israel stops its war in Gaza.

According to Al-Mayadeen, Bahrain announced on Thursday that the Israeli ambassador has left the country and it has recalled its ambassador from Israel. It also claimed that it has halted all economic cooperation with Israel over its attacks on Palestinian people in Gaza. 

Bahrain was the first country in the Arab region to sign the US-backed normalization deal with Israel in 2020 called Abraham Accords. Later, the UAE, Sudan, and Morocco also signed the deal.  

Several other countries, including Argentina, Peru, and Mexico. also condemned Israel’s repeated attacks on the Jabalya refugee camp and on Palestinian civilians. 

Speaking at yet another UN General Assembly session on Palestine, Russian ambassador Vasily Nebenzia reiterated his country’s demand of immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza warning that it is necessary to “prevent the crisis from engulfing the entire region.” 

The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on October 27 demanding an immediate humanitarian truce in Gaza with over 120 countries supporting it. However, Israel has refused to adhere to it and continues its bombings targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure in Gaza.

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

Continue ReadingIsrael’s attacks on Jabalya camp in Gaza may amount to war crimes: UN rights body

Do American Taxpayers Really Want to Fund Israel’s Genocide of the Palestinian People?

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Congress should hold public hearings to get an answer to this question.

Original article by RALPH NADER and BRUCE FEIN republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Civilians try to reach survivors, dead bodies amid destruction caused by Israeli strikes on Bureij refugee camp located in central Gaza Strip on November 02, 2023.  (Photo by Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Dear Congressional Leaders Sen. Schumer, Rep. Johnson, Sen. McConnell and Rep. Jeffries:

We strongly urge Congress to hold public hearings, with testimony from a broad range of witnesses, before voting on President Biden’s request for an additional $14.3 billion in military funding to further subsidize Israel’s overwhelming military superiority over Hamas in the war that erupted on October 7, 2023.

We believe these questions, among others, should be examined:

1. Why should American taxpayers pay for Israeli military spending incurred because of its stupendous intelligence failure and ongoing genocidal war?
2. Does Israel need the additional aid since the United States already provides Israel $3-4 billion annually and statutorily guarantees it “a qualitative military advantage” over its neighbors?
3. Can the United States afford the $14.3 billion in additional spending with a national debt soaring past $33 trillion, and annual trillion-dollar budget deficits?
4. Israel is among the top 20 global economies in terms of GDP per capita. Could the $14.3 billion be better spent on assisting the world’s 71 million impoverished internally displaced refugees, many created by undeclared, lawless, U.S. wars?
5. Would the military subsidies make the United States even more of a co-belligerent with Israel in a war against Hamas and, under international law, legally responsible for war crimes or genocide?
6. Should the additional $14.3 billion in deficit or unpaid-for funding be conditioned on Israel’s compliance with the laws of war and the Genocide Convention as certified under oath by the President, the Attorney General, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of Defense with an accompanying written explanation? All of these officials have urged the Israeli government to “comply with the laws of war.”
7. How did the Biden Administration come up with the outsized figure of $14.3 billion for a prosperous economic, technological, and military superpower having a greater social safety net for its people than the United States?

Asking the American people for their advice on sending $14.3 billion to Israel for its acknowledged, defense blunders is not difficult. Conservative Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie polled 49,000 people from his impoverished state. They registered overwhelming opposition to sending these billions of dollars for Israel’s daily slaughter of the civilians in Gaza, nearly half of whom are children.

Disaster is courted when the United States races to begin or join military conflicts without measured, sober second thoughts born of hearings and debates that entertain diverse views. The House held no hearings on the ill-fated Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964 which expanded the Vietnam War. The Resolution passed unanimously with but 40 minutes of debate. Senate action was only modestly less rash in voting 98-2 to open the gates to a trillion-dollar military disaster.

Congress never inquired whether the Executive Branch’s dubious Domino Theory was fantasy. Indeed, Vietnam today is an ally of the United States.

Congress held no hearings before approving the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) with but one dissenting vote, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA). After spending more than $2 trillion fighting the Taliban over 20 years, the United States de facto conceded defeat in 2021 with an even more militant version of the Taliban now in power in Afghanistan.

Such hearings will not place Israel in jeopardy. Hamas is no existential threat. And all the world can see Israel pulverizing Gaza daily, including its civilian population, half of whom are children, with brutal air and land attacks on critical civilian infrastructure.

Sincerely,
Ralph Nader, Esq.
Bruce Fein, Esq.

Original article by RALPH NADER and BRUCE FEIN republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue ReadingDo American Taxpayers Really Want to Fund Israel’s Genocide of the Palestinian People?

‘As a Human Being, I Beg’: Doctors Say Cease-Fire in Gaza Only Way to Save Countless Lives

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

Trauma surgeons treat an injured man after Israeli bombardment, at the Kuwaiti hospital in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on October 21, 2023  (Photo: Said Khatib/AFP via Getty Images)

Fresh demands for a major increase in humanitarian aid and an end to the bombing came as Gaza’s only cancer hospital shut down due to a lack of fuel.

As the World Health Organization warns of an “imminent public health catastrophe” in Gaza amid Israeli attacks on medical workers and infrastructure, doctors and other frontline medics said Wednesday that only an immediate cease-fire would give them a fighting chance to save countless lives.

Responding Wednesday to the shutdown of the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital—Gaza’s only cancer treatment center—due to lack of fuel and damage from Israeli airstrikes, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that “no words can describe our concern for the patients who have just lost the only possibility to receive lifesaving cancer treatment or palliative care.”

Tedros added: “I urge and I plead—for full medical and fuel aid access NOW! The more we wait, the more we put these fragile lives at risk.”

The WHO chief’s plea came a day after Christian Lindmeier, a spokesperson for the Geneva-based United Nations agency, warned that “an imminent public health catastrophe… looms with the mass displacement, the overcrowding, the damage to water and sanitation infrastructure.”

Meanwhile, James Elder, a spokesperson for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said Tuesday that “child deaths due to dehydration, particularly infant deaths due to dehydration, are a growing threat.”

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) called Gaza a “graveyard” for children, more than 3,600 of whom have been killed by Israeli bombardment, with another 1,000 minors reported missing, according to Palestinian and other officials.

Israeli forces have attacked numerous hospitals, clinics, ambulances, and medical workers, including the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital and al-Hilu Hospital. The Gaza Health Ministry said Wednesday that the bombardment that damaged al-Hilu “endangers the lives of women in the maternity wards and medical staff.”

According to an “urgent call for protecting healthcare workers in Gaza” published Tuesday in the British medical journal The Lancet, Israeli forces have attacked 57 medical facilities since launching the war on Gaza on October 7, killing 73 workers—including doctors, nurses, paramedics, and others—as of October 24. Sixteen of the medical personnel were killed while on duty.

As Israel’s bombardment of Gaza exacts a heavy toll on overwhelmed medical workers and infrastructure in the besieged strip, frontline medics like Dr. Noureddein al-Khateeb—a 38-year-old resident doctor in the emergency department at the Nasser Medical Center in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis—say they are living “in a constant state of threat and fear.”

“It’s constant fear on top of the exhaustion we’re experiencing,” al-Khateeb toldThe New Humanitarian on Wednesday. “But one shouldn’t think of that too much. I can’t. If I do, I won’t get any work done.”

Al-Khateeb added that “we’re also afraid for our families’ safety, but what can we do?”

Dr. Mohamed Abu Mousa, a radiologist at Nasser, said one of the few trips he’s made outside the hospital since Israeli bombardment began was to bury his 7-year-old son after he was killed in an October 15 Israeli airstrike on their family home.

“We don’t have the luxury of pausing to grieve,” he told The New Humanitarian. “The heartache is immense, but the wounded are endless. We have to keep going.”

Conditions are dire inside Gaza’s hospitals, which are running out of or low on fuel, medicines, equipment, and other essential services and supplies.

“We’re operating on children without anesthetics,” Léo Cans, who heads the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) mission in Palestine, toldCNN Tuesday. “We don’t have morphine for them.”

On Wednesday, MSF international president Dr. Christos Christou said in a video published on social media that “we’ve seen and heard the stories of the hell being unleashed on Gaza” as “helpless people are being subjected to horrific bombing” and “families have nowhere to run or hide.”

Christou continued:

So many people need help. What medical staff can do is just a drop in the ocean compared to the immense needs. Our teams working in Gaza are exhausted and terrified. Our staff tell us that pregnant women can’t get to hospitals to deliver. People are stuck under the rubble of shelled-out buildings. Children are having limbs amputated while lying on the floor.

“An immediate cease-fire is the only way the people of Gaza can find safety and the essential aid they urgently need,” Christou asserted. “The bombing, the all-out assault, needs to stop now… As a human being, I beg—stop the bombing and allow people in Gaza to live.”

The Gaza Health Ministry said Wednesday afternoon that at least 8,796 Palestinians—including nearly 2,300 women and over 3,600 children—have been killed in Israeli attacks, while around 23,000 other people have been injured.

Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common

Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue Reading‘As a Human Being, I Beg’: Doctors Say Cease-Fire in Gaza Only Way to Save Countless Lives

To Earn Back My Vote, Biden Must Stop Supporting Genocide in Gaza

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Zionist president Joe Biden. 27 July 2021 image by Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz. Original public domain image from Flickr
Zionist president Joe Biden. 27 July 2021 image by Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz. Original public domain image from Flickr

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

We cannot vote for the re-election of a U.S. president who enables Israel’s campaign of mass starvation, bombardment, and murder of Palestinian civilians.

As an anti-Zionist Jew and a lifelong Democrat, I have signed a public statement that bluntly declares, “We will not vote for Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential elections if he continues to support Israel’s ethnic cleansing and genocide of the more than 2 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip.”

In signing this statement, I join with over 1,000 Arab, Muslim, Jewish, Christian and allied U.S. voters who have signed the statement to express our disgust with the horrifying policies being embraced by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. As the statement goes on to say, “We cannot vote for the re-election of a U.S. president who enables Israel’s campaign of mass starvation, bombardment, and murder of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.” Please check it out and join me in signing.

Biden’s actions in blindly supporting Israel’s campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide, along with the plan to give Israel another $14 BILLION in military aid, are the last straw.

In addition to always having voted for Democrats, I have also volunteered for and donated money to many Democratic campaigns. In primary campaigns, I have focused my support on brave candidates like Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Cori Bush. I have done so, not only because of their support for Palestinian rights, but for their overall progressive positions on many issues that I am concerned about. But all too often, I have had to bite my tongue and vote for a Democrat as the least worst candidate in a general election. However, enough is enough. The administration has gone too far by failing to protect Palestinian civilians from a continuing genocide. It is now time to step up and tell the Democratic Party that nominating Biden and Harris for 2024 is both a losing strategy and an act of great immorality.

I too mourn for the many civilians who have been killed in Israel and Gaza, and I demand that all war crimes be vigorously prosecuted. As my late mother often said, “Two wrongs don’t make a right,” yet too many elected leaders ignore Israel’s brutality while condemning the Palestinian victims. Indeed history is clear that for the last 75 years, Israel has been exempted from responsibility for its frequent violations of Palestinian rights, as it uses lethal violence to confiscate Palestinian land and hand it over to Israeli Jews.

We know that Hillary Clinton lost because many Democrats didn’t come out and vote. Biden and Harris won because many of us progressives held our noses and voted for them as the only alternative to former President Donald Trump. However, Biden’s actions in blindly supporting Israel’s campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide, along with the plan to give Israel another $14 BILLION in military aid, are the last straw.

While elected officials like Biden, Harris, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and Nancy Pelosi spout Zionist talking points, many Americans are demanding an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza and an end to U.S. military aid to Israel. In a recent Data for Progress poll, 80% of Democrats and 66% of likely voters want the president to call for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza. A CBS News poll showed that 53% of Democrats oppose sending more weapons to Israel, and 70% support U.S. aid to Gaza.

America’s elected leaders supported apartheid South Africa’s crimes for far too long, and the same can now be said about today’s Democrats as they continue to ignore Israel’s crimes. It is time for all Democratic voters to make it clear that only a significant change in Biden’s approach to Palestine can enable him to earn our votes in 2024. Please join me and over 500 other voters who have declared that we cannot vote for Biden in 2024 if he continues to support Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

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

Continue ReadingTo Earn Back My Vote, Biden Must Stop Supporting Genocide in Gaza

‘A Clear-Cut War Crime’: Outrage Grows as Israel Again Bombs Gaza Refugee Camp

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

Palestinians examine the destruction in the aftermath of a deadly Israeli airstrike on Gaza’s largest refugee camp on November 1, 2023. (Photo: Bashar Taleb/AFP via Getty Images)

“The U.S. government cannot keep funding these atrocities,” said U.S. Rep. Cori Bush. “There must be a cease-fire now.”

The Israeli military bombed Gaza’s largest refugee camp for the second consecutive day on Wednesday as humanitarian groups and lawmakers called the series of attacks a blatant war crime and slammed the U.S. government for enabling such atrocities.

Wednesday’s attack reportedly killed and wounded “a number of” people at the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp, where hundreds were killed or injured roughly 24 hours earlier in bombings by the Israeli military.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) asserted that Tuesday’s strikes were aimed at a “tunnel complex” where a senior Hamas commander, Ibrahim Biari, was purportedly hiding. The IDF said the airstrikes killed Biari but denied intentionally bombing the camp’s buildings, more than a dozen of which were leveled in the attack.

“I was waiting in line to buy bread when suddenly and without any prior warning seven to eight missiles fell,” said one eyewitness. “There were seven to eight huge holes in the ground, full of killed people, body parts all over the place. It felt like the end of the world.”

A Doctors Without Borders nurse in Gaza said that after Tuesday’s strikes, “young children arrived at the hospital with deep wounds and severe burns.”

“They came without their families,” the nurse added. “Many were screaming and asking for their parents. I stayed with them until we could find a place, as the hospital was full with patients.”

Asked about the civilians who were killed in the Tuesday strikes, an IDF spokesperson told CNN that “this is the tragedy of war” and that the Israeli military instructed people in the area to “move south.”

Hamas denied the claim that one of its commanders was in the area targeted by the Israeli military.

Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of Refugees International, argued Tuesday that Israel’s assault on Gaza’s largest refugee camp “is a clear-cut war crime.”

“It shows wanton disregard for the legal obligation to minimize civilian harm in targeting military objectives. It is the latest of many such attacks by the IDF,” Konyndyk wrote. “This in turn underscores that Netanyahu is making a mockery of Biden’s repeated pleas to follow the laws of war—without any acknowledgment of that reality by the U.S. This leaves a cease-fire as the only viable path to civilian protection.”

U.S. Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), who is leading a congressional resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza, also denounced the refugee camp bombing as a war crime and said that “this unspeakable violence must end.”

“The U.S. government cannot keep funding these atrocities,” Bush added. “There must be a cease-fire now.”

U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) similarly criticized the Biden administration and Congress for backing Israel as it carries out massive crimes against humanity.

“Make no mistake: these human rights abuses are being carried out with U.S. weapons, U.S. funding, and with ‘no red lines,'” Omar wrote on social media. “And now we are set to vote on an additional $14 billion with no restrictions or conditions. The United States Congress should not fund violations of U.S. and international law.”

Israeli forces have killed at least 8,800 people in Gaza since October 7, when Hamas launched a deadly attack on Israel.

The nation’s relentless bombing campaign and siege have fueled a massive humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, displacing more than a million people, imperiling the enclave’s healthcare system, and decimating much of the territory’s civilian infrastructure—including communication and internet services.

The United Nations and human rights organizations have accused Israeli forces of committing grave war crimes in Gaza, including collective punishment, forcible transfer, and genocide.

The wave of airstrikes that hit Jabalia on Wednesday marked at least the sixth time Israel has bombed the camp since October 7, according toAl Jazeera.

“This is just the latest atrocity to befall the people of Gaza where the fighting has entered an even more terrifying phase, with increasingly dreadful humanitarian consequences,” United Nations emergency relief coordinator Martin Griffiths said of the Jabalia attack on Wednesday. “Meanwhile, the world seems unable, or unwilling, to act. This cannot go on.”

Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights, a United Kingdom-based legal charity, said in a statement Wednesday that the Jabalia strikes “should overwhelmingly signal to the U.K. Government and Labour Party that they must now call for an immediate cease-fire.”

“We urge the U.K. Government and Labour Party to urgently revise their position in light of the Jabalia mass killing, and clearly place the future preservation of civilian life as its highest objective,” the group added.

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

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Continue Reading‘A Clear-Cut War Crime’: Outrage Grows as Israel Again Bombs Gaza Refugee Camp