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‘A Full-Fledged War Crime’: Israel Condemned Over New Human Shield Footage

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

Footage shows a Palestinian man being used by the Israel Defense Forces as a human shield. (Photo: Al Jazeera)

“These crimes, and dozens of similar cases, require urgent intervention from the international justice system,” said one human rights group.

The latest video evidence of Israel’s use of Palestinians as “human shields” during combat was condemned by one human rights advocate on Monday as “horrifying but not surprising,” as campaigners emphasized that the Israel Defense Forces has long used civilians in Palestine to shield their own soldiers from harm while bombarding Gaza and the West Bank.

Footage released by Al Jazeera on Sunday night showed Israeli forces attaching body cameras to handcuffed Palestinians who they had detained, dressing them in IDF uniforms, and sending them into buildings and tunnels to ensure the locations weren’t rigged with explosives.

The footage presented “evidence of a systematic tactic of the army,” said the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.

“The leaked horrific scenes that were obtained and published by Al Jazeera reveal how the Israeli army uses civilians, including injured detainees, as human shields and forces them into hazardous combat zones after installing cameras on their bodies and binding them with rope,” said Euro-Med. “Each of the aforementioned acts of criminal, brutal, and inhumane behavior constitutes a grave violation of the rules of international humanitarian law, and is a full-fledged war crime. These crimes, and dozens of similar cases, require urgent intervention from the international justice system to ensure the protection of civilians, prevent their use as human shields, and hold the Israeli political and military perpetrators.”

The Israeli government has long blamed Hamas’ use of “human shields” for deaths in Gaza, which now number at least 37,900, saying the group operates out of civilian infrastructure and places Palestinians in harm’s way.

Journalist Dan Cohen pointed out that the IDF has used what it calls “the neighbor procedure” for decades, forcing Palestinian “messengers” to approach the homes of suspected fugitives alone and unarmed while Israeli soldiers announce over a loudspeaker that they are surrounding the building.

The procedure “is so commonplace that the military tried to justify it as a lifesaving measure in use since the 1980s,” said Cohen. “The images… show the reality of this criminal practice.”

In its statement on the new footage, Euro-Med detailed numerous instances in which Israel has appeared to use human shields as defined by the Geneva Conventions: “cases where persons were actually taken to military objectives in order to shield those objectives from attacks.”

As Euro-Med reported:

During the Shifa Medical Complex raid in March 2024, Israeli forces used civilians, including patients and displaced individuals sheltering inside the complex, as human shields. To protect their military operations within the hospital and its vicinity, Israeli forces exploited Palestinian civilians by making them form human barriers to surround Israeli soldiers and military vehicles, or sending them under threat to residential homes and buildings to either help arrest or forcibly evacuate other civilians before army raids and the subsequent destruction of many of these buildings.

[…]

Furthermore, several families residing near the Shifa Medical Complex reported that Israeli forces arrested young men from inside the medical facility, then used them to enter the families’ homes and demand that they immediately evacuate to the central and southern Strip.

The group also cited a recent example from June 22 in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, where Israeli forces placed a wounded Palestinian man on the hood of a military vehicle and drove through the Jabariya neighborhood, and “a compound and comprehensive crime” against a civilian family in Gaza City on June 27.

“A family comprising an elderly woman and her four children, including three young women and a one-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter, was attacked with gunfire and bombs by Israeli forces who stormed their house in the Gaza City neighborhood of Al-Shujaiya,” said the group. “They were later taken outside and detained for over three hours near Israeli tanks in a dangerous combat zone, despite the injuries they sustained in the initial attack on their home, and were used as human shields. The 65-year-old mother, identified as Safiya Hassan Musa Al-Jamal, was run over by an Israeli tank and killed in front of her son.”

On Monday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) condemned the footage released Sunday from the incident in Gaza while noting that Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir was recorded over the weekend calling for Palestinian prisoners to be executed and fed reduced food rations as a “deterrence” tactic.

Almost 10,000 Palestinians have been arrested by Israeli forces, including women and children, CAIR said, demanding that the U.S. end its military support for Israel.

“Israeli war crimes, and calls for more war crimes, are occurring daily in Gaza and the West Bank, while the Biden administration rushes more American bombs to Israel to complete the genocide,” said CAIR communications director Ibrahim Hooper. “The U.S.-Israeli partnership in genocide, ethnic cleansing, and forced starvation will shape the international community’s image of America for generations to come. The Biden administration must change course to uphold universal human rights and recognize Palestinian humanity.”

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

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Continue Reading‘A Full-Fledged War Crime’: Israel Condemned Over New Human Shield Footage

‘The World Must Not Stay Silent!’: Fresh Israeli Bombings Amid Humanitarian Hellscape in Gaza

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Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

Gazans, including children, walk past rubble and leaked sewage at Bureij camp after Israeli attacks in Deir al Balah, Gaza on June 20, 2024.
 (Photo by Hassan Jedi/Anadolu via Getty Images)

As the IDF stepped up attacks in Gaza City, one resident said, “We are being starved… with no hope that this war is ever ending.”

Residents of Gaza City’s Shujayea neighborhood found themselves on Thursday among the main targets of new Israeli military operations, with thousands of people fleeing as they were “hunted by tanks and planes,” as one Palestinian man told Reuters—even as Israel claimed the “intense” phase of the war was over.

Al Jazeera reported that the Israel Defense Forces targeted five residential homes in the Shujayea and Sabra neighborhoods in the early morning hours of Thursday, killing at least five people in the former area and three in the latter.

Evacuation orders from the IDF came about 30 minutes after the shelling began in Shujayea, according to Al Jazeera, with families rushing to move west after receiving text messages and leaflets from the military. The IDF published a map showing that certain blocks of the residential neighborhood were now part of a combat zone where tanks were moving in.

“We were suddenly and intensively bombarded by Israel,” one man fleeing the area on foot told Al Jazeera. “We came out and we don’t know where to go.”

Artillery attacks were also reported in the Zeitoun, Hawa, and Sheikh Ijlin neighborhoods of Gaza City. Shujayea was a key target of the IDF in the first weeks of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza last October.

As Israel claims to be drawing down its attacks while rejecting a permanent cease-fire agreement, “the world must not stay silent” about the ongoing assault on Gaza, said researcher and academic Nour Naim.

The Gaza Health Ministry reported Thursday that the people who were killed in Gaza City overnight were among 47 Palestinians killed across the enclave in the past 24 hours. Fifty-two people were reported wounded in the same time period—the latest of dozens each day who are taken to hospitals where doctors struggle to treat people with severely limited supplies due to continued humanitarian aid delays and blockades.

“There are moments when anesthesia is not available, but in order to save the lives of citizens, we resort to amputation, and this causes severe pain for the wounded,” a surgeon at al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, told AFP. “Every day, there are attacks that result in amputations of legs or arms for children, adults, and women.”

Six people were killed overnight in an Israeli attack in Jabalia, northern Gaza, and an attack on a family home killed one person in the northern town of Beit Lahiya.

In southern Gaza, women and children were among those killed in an attack on a school where displaced people have been staying, and Israeli ground forces “systematically demolished residential buildings in the west of the city” of Rafah, Al Jazeera reported.

As the IDF has stepped up attacks in Gaza City and continued its bombardment of other areas across the enclave, doctors, humanitarian workers, and civilians described the realities of daily life in Gaza, where aid blockades and the disruption of sanitation services and water treatment have all contributed to “grim living conditions” and heightened health risks.

Joanne Perry, a doctor working with Doctors Without Borders (MSF), described to the Associated Press living conditions that have caused concern that a cholera outbreak could soon take hold.

“The crowded conditions, the lack of water, the heat, the poor sanitation—these are the preconditions of cholera,” Perry told the AP.

Israeli attacks since October have destroyed Gaza’s wastewater treatment plants, water desalination plants, sewage pumping facilities, and wells, and have killed government workers who have tried to repair the infrastructure, leading Palestinians to rely on contaminated and “salty” water.

“We found worms in the water. I had been drinking from it,” 21-year-old Adel Dalloul told the AP. “It was salty, polluted, and full of germs… I had gastrointestinal problems and diarrhea, and my stomach hurts until this moment.”

The World Health Organization has reported 485,000 cases of diarrhea—the third-leading cause of death in young children worldwide—since October, and has warned of at least one outbreak of Hepatitis A, which is spread through the consumption of water and food contaminated with fecal matter.

A mother of six in Khan Younis told Reuters that her family is relying on a charity kitchen’s daily visits to their U.N.-run shelter, as 12 million pounds of food aid and other supplies have been held up since June 9, according to U.S. officials.

“If the charity kitchen did not come here for one day, we would wonder about what we will eat that day,” Umm Feisal Abu Nqera told Reuters. “We are living the worst days of our lives in terms of famine and deprivation… Today, your son looks at you and you bleed from within, because you cannot provide him with his most basic rights and the simplest needs for his life.”

A girl died of malnutrition on Thursday at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, bringing the official death toll from malnutrition and dehydration among children to 31.
“We are being starved in Gaza City,” 25-year-old Mohammad Jamal toldReuters as the renewed Israeli offensive took hold, “with no hope that this war is ever ending.”

Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted "I support Zionism without qualification." He's asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.

Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
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Continue Reading‘The World Must Not Stay Silent!’: Fresh Israeli Bombings Amid Humanitarian Hellscape in Gaza

Jeremy Corbyn: I was asked to ‘automatically support’ Israel action

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dizzy: There’s no need to ask that of Zionist Keif Starmer

Image of Jeremy Corbyn MP, former leader of the Labour Party
Jeremy Corbyn (technically not currently an MP since Parliament is in recess), former leader of the Labour Party

https://www.thenational.scot/news/24402478.corbyn-says-asked-automatically-support-israel

JEREMY Corbyn has claimed he was once asked to give a “blanket undertaking” that he would automatically support any military action Israel undertakes while Labour leader.

Corbyn – who is running as an independent candidate at the General Election – said during an interview with Declassified UK co-founder Matt Kennard that he was confronted with the request at an “extremely hostile” meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party Committee and declined.

He said: “During one extremely hostile meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party Committee they confronted me and said will you give a blanket undertaking that you, as party leader and potentially prime minister, will automatically support any military action Israel undertakes?

“And I said no, I will give no such undertaking, because the issue of Palestine has to be resolved and Palestinian people do not deserve to live under occupation, and the siege of Gaza has created such incredible stress.

“By the way I’ve been there on nine occasions in Israel, Palestine and the West Bank.”

…

https://www.thenational.scot/news/24402478.corbyn-says-asked-automatically-support-israel

Jeremy Corbyn makes the claim in this interview (50 min long)

Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted "I support Zionism without qualification." He's asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.

Continue ReadingJeremy Corbyn: I was asked to ‘automatically support’ Israel action

The Gaza Project Exposes Israel’s ‘Chilling Pattern’ of Killing Journalists

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Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

Forbidden Stories and its Gaza Project partners investigated Israel’s killing of journalists in Gaza and elsewhere.
 (Illustration: Forbidden Stories/The Gaza Project)

“This is one of the most flagrant attacks on press freedom that I can remember,” said one campaigner. “The impact on press freedom in Gaza, in the region, and the rest of the world is something we cannot accept.”

With more than 100 media professionals—nearly all of them Palestinian—killed in Gaza since October, a group of 50 reporters from 13 international organizations this week shared the results of a new investigative journalism initiative aimed at exposing the deadly toll Israel’s onslaught has taken on those reporting it to the world.

The Gaza Project—led by the Paris-based nonprofit Forbidden Stories—”analyzed nearly 100 cases of journalists and media workers killed in Gaza, as well as other cases in which members of the press have been allegedly targeted, threatened, or injured since October 7,” when Hamas-led attacks on Israel left more than 1,100 people dead and over 240 others kidnapped.

“Faced with what is being reported as the record number of journalists killed, Forbidden Stories, whose mission is to pursue the work of journalists who are killed because of their work, set out to investigate the targeting of journalists,” the group said

“For four months, Forbidden Stories and its partners investigated the circumstances of their killings, as well as those who have been targeted, threatened, and injured in the West Bank and Gaza,” it added. “These investigations point to a chilling pattern and suggest some journalists may have been targeted even though they were identifiable as press.”

Gaza Project member Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned what it called an “apparent pattern of targeting journalists and their families,” noting cases in which media workers were killed while wearing press insignia and after being threatened by Israeli officials.

“This is one of the most flagrant attacks on press freedom that I can remember,” CPJ program director Carlos Martínez de la Serna said of the ongoing war. “The impact on press freedom in Gaza, in the region, and the rest of the world is something we cannot accept.”

Basel Khair Al-Din, a Palestinian journalist in Gaza who believes he was targeted by a drone strike while wearing a press vest, said, “Whereas this press vest was supposed to identify and protect us, according to international laws, international conventions, and the Geneva Conventions, it is now a threat to us.”

“It’s this vest that almost got us killed, as has happened to so many of our fellow journalists and media workers,” he added.

Groups like Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International have called for official investigations into Israeli killing of journalists including an October 13 attack that killed 37-year-old Lebanese Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and wounded half a dozen other journalists who were covering cross-border clashes between Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon.

Dylan Collins, an American deputy editor at Al Jazeera English, was wounded while administering first aid to Christina Assi, an Italian Agence-France Presse journalist whose legs were blown off in the attack.

Reuters determined that an Israeli tank crew “fired two shells in quick succession” at the journalists, who HRW said were “clearly identifiable as members of the media, and had been stationary for at least 75 minutes.” HRW “found no evidence of a military target near the journalists’ location.”

Amnesty International, meanwhile, asserted that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) strike was “likely a direct attack on civilians that must be investigated as a war crime.”

Asa Kasher, the lead author of the IDF’s Code of Ethics, told Forbidden Stories that “no member of the press should have been killed under normal circumstances of hostilities in Gaza.”

“It shouldn’t happen, even a single one,” he added. “It’s illegal. It’s unethical. The person who does it should be brought to court.”

Israel’s alleged deliberate targeting of journalists is part of the evidence presented in a South Africa-led genocide case against Israel being reviewed by the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

Separately, the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC), also located in the Dutch city, is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity including extermination and forced starvation in the case of the Israelis and extermination, rape, and torture in the case of Hamas.

The international press freedom group Reporters Without Borders last month filed a third ICC complaint alleging “war crimes against journalists in Gaza.”

According to Palestinian and international officials, at least 37,718 Palestinians—mostly women and children—have been killed during Israel’s 264-day assault on Gaza, which has also left more than 86,300 people wounded and 11,000 others missing and feared dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of homes and other bombed-out buildings.

Around 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have also been forcibly displaced, and the Israeli siege on Gaza has caused widespread—and deadly—starvation and what the head of the United Nations food agency called a “full-blown famine” in northern parts of the strip.

Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted "I support Zionism without qualification." He's asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.

Continue ReadingThe Gaza Project Exposes Israel’s ‘Chilling Pattern’ of Killing Journalists

As she is arrested, a Youth Demand Activist explains “the Labour Party is complicit in Genocide.”

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As she was arrested following a flash sit down Gaza ceasefire now protest at Oxford Circus earlier this afternoon (Saturday 22 June 2024), a Youth Demand Activist declared that “the Labour Party is complicit in genocide. They refuse to call for a ceasefire. They refuse to stop buy and selling weapons with Israel. These weapons are creating tens of thousands of deaths. Our government is able to do something about this but they refuse to;” adding “We can not vote Tory. We can not vote Labour. We must act. We must take to the streets. We must civilly resist. Join us at YouthDemand.org.” My own comment – Although some Labour Party MPs have made some fairly empty and vague declarations in support of a “sustainable” ceasefire, it’s clear they are not willing to declare that Israel must commit to one immediately, let alone to exert any real pressure on the Israeli government.

As of 11 June 2024, at least 37,702 Palestinians have been killed since 7 October, including more than 15,000 children. An estimated 10,000 are missing, of whom most are probably dead.

There is also an unknown number of additional deaths due to excess mortality from food shortages, disease and difficulties in obtaining essential medical care and medicines, while more than 84,000 Palestinians have been injured, many of them with life-changing injuries including many amputations.

According to the United Nations, as of 9 June, more than half of all residential buildings have been destroyed or damaged but with some key infrastructure the destruction is even more devastating – including 130 ambulances, 267 places of worship, 80% of commercial facilities and 88% of school buildings damaged or destroyed. Additionally some 83% of groundwater wells are no longer operational.

Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted "I support Zionism without qualification." He's asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.

Continue ReadingAs she is arrested, a Youth Demand Activist explains “the Labour Party is complicit in Genocide.”