‘Another day, another war crime’
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/another-day-another-war-crime
More than 30 killed by Israeli strike on UN school sheltering displaced Palestinians
MORE than 30 people — mostly children — were killed by an Israeli strike on a UN school sheltering displaced Palestinians today.
Israel defended the latest bloodshed among Palestinians seeking refuge by claiming that Hamas was operating from within the UN refugee agency (UNRWA) school in Nuseirat refugee camp, central Gaza.
It did not provide evidence for its claims, as is usually the case with such attacks.
A CNN analysis indicated that the weapons used in the pre-dawn attack were US-made.
It is not the first time that air-strikes have targeted the school.
The attack followed Israel’s announcement on Wednesday of a new military campaign in central Gaza, saying that there would be no pause in fights amid ceasefire talks.
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Peace and Justice Project founder Jeremy Corbyn, who is defending his Islington North seat as an independent MP, said he is “appalled by the ongoing loss of life,” telling the Star: “Another day, another war crime.
“What kind of world are we living in when this kind of horror becomes part of our weekly or even daily routine?
“How have we allowed these atrocities to become so normalised?
“A school is a place of learning, growth and joy. In Gaza, they have been turned into a place of death, trauma and grief.”
Mr Corbyn vowed to continue to speak up for a ceasefire, the end to arms sales to Israel and “the only path to a just and lasting peace: the end to the occupation of Palestine.”
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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/another-day-another-war-crime
Biden Claims Israel Isn’t Starving Gazans. Rights Groups Say ‘It Is Clear as Day’
Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
“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).
- ‘Children Are Starving’: Rafah Suffers As Israel Halts All Aid And Escalates Assault ›
- As Starvation Death Toll Grows In Gaza, Israel Blocks Aid Over Scissors In Child Medical Kits ›
- ‘Complete Madness’: Israel Blocks Food Aid As More Gaza Children Starve To Death ›
- ‘End This War Crime’: HRW Says Israel Is Starving Children To Death In Gaza ›
Jewish US Army Major Explains Why He Resigned Over Gaza
Original article by JESSICA CORBETT republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
“I knew that as long as I stayed, I’d be contributing to this campaign that had already demonstrated basically it was going to be indiscriminately killing civilians at an industrial scale,” said Harrison Mann.
After Harrison Mann’s resignation from the U.S. military was finalized on Monday, the Jewish U.S. Army major who worked in the Defense Intelligence Agency gave a pair of interviews this week explaining his decision to resign over American support for Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip.
“We saw, even from the first days of the Israeli air campaign, willingness to inflict very high civilian casualties,” Mann toldCBS News chief investigative correspondent Jim Axelrod in a conversation that aired Tuesday.
Even before the Hamas-led October 7 attack prompted the ongoing Israeli bombardment, ground assault, and restrictions on humanitarian assistance deliveries into Gaza, the United States gave Israel billions of dollars in annual military aid. U.S. weapons and diplomatic support for the Middle East ally has increased over the past eight months, as the death toll has topped 36,500.
Journalists and human rights groups have documented Israel’s use of U.S. arms to kill and injure civilians in Gaza. Asked by Axelrod whether Israeli forces were intentionally doing so, the Mann responded, “I don’t know how you kill 35,000 civilians by accident.”
During Mann’s first televised interview, Axelrod also asked, “You felt your work was directly connected to starving children?”
The 13-year Army veteran simply said, “Yes.”
U.S. President Joe Biden, meanwhile, said in an interview this week that he doesn’t think Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war, contradicting conclusions by global human rights organizations and the International Criminal Court.
Bend the Arc: Jewish Action CEO Jamie Beran, whose group has historically stayed out of the decadeslong Israel-Palestine conflict, wrote in a Tuesday letter to Biden that “we, as American Jews, are sounding an alarm: U.S. support for continued violence in Gaza is putting American safety and U.S. democracy in danger.”
In his CBS appearance, Mann read from his resignation letter, in which he notes his experience as a Jewish person, writing that “as the descendant of European Jews, I was raised in a particularly unforgiving moral environment when it came to the topic of bearing responsibility for ethnic cleansing—my grandfather refused to ever purchase products manufactured in Germany—where the paramount importance of ‘never again’ and the inadequacy of ‘just following orders’ were oft repeated.”
Mann addressed his decision to make his letter public on LinkedIn last month after distributing it internally at DIA on April 16. He cited the Biden administration’s May report—which critics called a “Friday news dump”—about Israeli assurances regarding the use of U.S. weapons in Gaza and the delivery of humanitarian aid.
That administration’s report states that although “it is reasonable to assess” that Israeli forces used U.S. arms in Gaza in manners inconsistent with their international law obligations and expresses “deep concerns” about Israel’s action and inaction on humanitarian aid, American support for the Israeli war effort can continue.
Mann also appeared Wednesday on Mehdi Hasan’s new show for Zeteo, the media platform that the journalist launched following the cancellation of his program at MSNBC after he aired content critical of Israel’s assault on Gaza.
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https://zeteo.com/p/jewish-american-soldier-quits-biden
Mehdi speaks to newly-resigned Major Harrison Mann. Plus: the forgotten genocide in Sudan.
While Joe Biden struggles to draw a red line for Israel in its genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, a handful of principled officials within the administration are making their red lines very clear. This week on ‘Mehdi Unfiltered’, Mehdi dives into the ]
Mann told Hasan that he started his resignation process in November but revealed why in April, saying that “the war in Gaza and our role in it and my contribution to that was the straw that broke the camel’s back and the reason I ultimately understood I could not do this work anymore.”
By November, “I knew that as long as I stayed, I’d be contributing to this campaign that had already demonstrated basically it was going to be indiscriminately killing civilians at an industrial scale,” Mann said. He added that it was clear that the U.S. would continue to provide Israel with “unwavering” support.
Others who have quit their jobs over U.S. government support for the Israeli war include Lily Greenberg Call, a special assistant in the Department of the Interior and the first Jewish political appointee to resign in protest; Tariq Habash, a Palestinian American who worked as a policy adviser in the Education Department; and Stacy Gilbert, Josh Paul, Hala Rharrit, and Annelle Sheline, who all left the State Department.
Original article by JESSICA CORBETT republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
‘OUR FRIEND’: HOW THE ISRAEL LOBBY SPENT £30,000 ON WES STREETING
https://www.declassifieduk.org/our-friend-how-the-israel-lobby-spent-30000-on-wes-streeting/
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.
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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”.
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https://www.declassifieduk.org/our-friend-how-the-israel-lobby-spent-30000-on-wes-streeting/