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Tag: crimes against humanity

  • US activist shot by Israeli forces in West Bank

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

    Aysenur Ezgi Eygi was shot dead by Israeli forces (Photo via Wafa)

    The shooting occurred while Israeli forces were violently suppressing a weekly protest against an Israeli settlement

    26-year-old US activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi succumbed to her wounds on Friday after being shot by Israeli forces at a protest in Beita, to the south of Nablus. Headlines from Western mainstream media sources have already attempted to obscure who killed the solidarity activist, with CNN stating “American activist shot dead during protest in West Bank, Palestinian officials say,” CBS News writing, “American woman Aysenur Eygi killed in Israeli-occupied West Bank, US confirms,” and BBC writing. “American activist shot dead in occupied West Bank.”

    The shooting occurred while Israeli forces were violently suppressing a weekly protest against an Israeli settlement. Israeli forces employed live ammunition, stun grenades, and tear gas, and also resulted in the injury of an 18-year-old Palestinian man via shrapnel. Eygi was reportedly part of the Faz’a campaign, which aims to mobilize international solidarity activists on the ground in Palestine to protect Palestinian farmers from Israeli settlers and military forces. Eygi was also an activist with the International Solidarity Movement, a Palestinian-led organization committed to resisting the occupation. 

    ISM released a statement condemning Eygi’s killing, quoting multiple ISM members. ISM volunteer Mariam Dag (a pseudonymn) witnessed the shooting, and said ““We were peacefully demonstrating alongside Palestinians against the colonization of their land, and the illegal settlement of Evyatar. The situation escalated when the Israeli army began to fire tear gas and live ammunition, forcing us to retreat. We were standing on the road, about 200 meters from the soldiers, with a sniper clearly visible on the roof. Our fellow volunteer was standing a bit further back, near an olive tree with some other activists. Despite this, the army intentionally shot her in the head.”

    Dag continued, “This is just another example of the decades of impunity granted to the Israeli government and army, bolstered by the support of the US and European governments, who are complicit in enabling genocide in Gaza. Palestinians have suffered far too long under the weight of colonization. We will continue to stand in solidarity and honor the martyrs until Palestine is free.”

    The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the “brutal execution committed today by Israeli occupation forces,” stating that “the ministry views this act as part of the ongoing crimes perpetrated by the Israeli occupation against the Palestinian people, including genocide, forced displacement, and the targeting of individuals who show solidarity with the Palestinian cause.”

    The Ministry “calls on the international community, human rights organizations, and global institutions to take urgent action to provide international protection for Palestinians. The Ministry urges these entities to fulfill their legal and moral responsibilities by addressing violations, including genocide, forced displacement, illegal settlements, and extrajudicial killings, and to hold Israeli war criminals accountable.”

    It is unclear how the United States will respond, beyond offering their “deepest condolences.” Israel has killed several US citizens, including two Palestinian-American teenagers earlier this year, Mohammad Khdour and Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, both 17 years old, also shot by Israeli forces. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken again offered condolences for the teenagers “who reportedly were killed,” but did nothing more than call for an investigation. 

    “We’ve made clear that with regard to the incidents you’ve alluded to, there needs to be an investigation. We need to get the facts. And if appropriate, there needs to be accountability,” Blinken said at the time. 

    The families were unsatisfied with the US’s response. “We don’t need talking, man,” said Adnan Khdour, uncle to Mohammad Khdour, killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank. “We need something. We want to see something.” The US has never conditioned aid to Israel based on the killing of a US citizen. 

    Eygi’s killing recalls the high-profile case of Israel’s murder of US activist Rachel Corrie in 2003, who was run over by a bulldozer trying to demolish a Palestinian home in Rafah. The United States did nothing to punish Israel, despite US officials themselves claiming that the Israeli investigation into Corrie’s death was not “credible.” In fact, the US itself is complicit in the killing as the Caterpillar bulldozer which killed Corrie was supplied by the US as part of its aid to Israel.

    The Party for Socialism and Liberation, a US-based socialist political party active in the Palestine solidarity movement, said of Eygi’s killing: “This killing, like so many others, was carried out thanks to weaponry provided by the United States. We demand the Biden administration end all aid to this genocidal regime. The killers of Aysenur should be brought to justice, alongside the killers of thousands of Palestinians.”

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

  • Israeli forces withdraw after deadly attack on three refugee camps in the occupied West Bank

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    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/israeli-forces-withdraw-after-deadly-attack-three-refugee-camps-occupied-west-bank

    A Palestinian man inspects the damage to a building after Israeli forces raided the West Bank city of Jenin, September 6, 2024

    [Published at Morning Star Friday, September 6, 2024]

    ISRAELI forces appear to have withdrawn from three refugee camps in the occupied West Bank.

    The apparent withdrawal follows a brutal operation lasting more than a week that left dozens of Palestinians dead and a trail of destruction.

    Overnight, Israeli armoured personnel carriers were seen leaving the Jenin refugee camp from a checkpoint set up on one of the main roads, and reporters inside the camp saw no evidence of any remaining troops inside as dawn broke early this morning.

    Israeli military officials said the operation in Jenin, Tulkarem and the Al-Faraa refugee camps was an attempt to curb recent attacks against Israeli civilians they say have become more sophisticated and deadly.

    …

    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/israeli-forces-withdraw-after-deadly-attack-three-refugee-camps-occupied-west-bank

  • Amnesty War Crimes Probe Exposes Israel’s ‘Wanton Destruction’ in Gaza

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    Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

    A Palestinian woman surveys the destruction by Israeli forces of her home and neighborhood in Khuza’a, which is located near Gaza’s border with Israel, on November 25, 2023. (Photo: Mustafa Hassona/Anadolu via Getty Images)

    “The creation of any ‘buffer zone’ must not amount to the collective punishment of the Palestinian civilians who lived in these neighborhoods,” warned one Amnesty campaigner.

    Amnesty International said Thursday that the Israeli military should be investigated for the “war crimes of wanton destruction and of collective punishment” over its destruction of entire communities along Gaza’s border with Israel.

    “Using bulldozers and manually laid explosives, the Israeli military has unlawfully destroyed agricultural land and civilian buildings, razing entire neighborhoods, including homes, schools, and mosques,” the London-based rights group said in a new investigation.

    Amnesty analyzed satellite imagery, as well as photos and videos posted online by invading Israel Defense Forces troops between October and May, and found that the IDF has cleared wide swathes of land up to 1.2 miles (1.8 km) wide along Gaza’s eastern border.

    “In some videos, Israeli soldiers are seen posing for pictures or toasting in celebration as buildings are demolished in the background,” the report states.

    Israeli forces laid waste to much of Khuza’a in Khan Younis governate, under the pretext that Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel from the town on October 7.

    Salem Qudeih, a teacher who lived in Khuza’a about a mile from the border, told Amnesty that “around my family home we had a three dunam (0.7 acre) orchard full of fruit trees. They were all destroyed. Only an apple tree and a rose were left.”

    “I had bees and produced honey. All of it is gone now,” he added. “Out of the 222 houses of my relatives in the area, only about a dozen remain. My home—where I lived with my wife, my five daughters, and one son—was completely destroyed.”

    Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty’s senior director for research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns, said in a statement: “The Israeli military’s relentless campaign of ruin in Gaza is one of wanton destruction. Our research has shown how Israeli forces have obliterated residential buildings, forced thousands of families from their homes, and rendered their land uninhabitable.”

    “Our analysis reveals a pattern along the eastern perimeter of Gaza that is consistent with the systematic destruction of an entire area,” she continued. “These homes were not destroyed as the result of intense fighting. Rather, the Israeli military deliberately razed the land after they had taken control of the area.”

    “The creation of any ‘buffer zone’ must not amount to the collective punishment of the Palestinian civilians who lived in these neighborhoods,” Guevara-Rosas added. “Israel’s measures to protect Israelis from attacks from Gaza must be carried out in conformity with its obligations under international law, including the prohibition of wanton destruction and of collective punishment.”

    “The Israeli military deliberately razed the land after they had taken control of the area.”

    Other experts—including United Nations officials and scholars—have previously highlighted what Robert Pape, a U.S. military historian and University of Chicago professor, described as “one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history.”

    In the 335 days since October 7, Israeli forces have killed or maimed more than 145,000 Palestinians in Gaza while forcibly displacing almost all of the embattled strip’s 2.3 million people and destroying hundreds of thousands of homes and other structures, according to Palestinian and international officials. Rebuilding after Israel’s obliteration of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure is expected to cost over $18.5 billion, or nearly Palestine’s entire annual gross domestic product.

    Israel is currently on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Meanwhile, International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan has applied for warrants to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leaders for alleged war crimes including extermination.

    “International humanitarian law, which applies in situations of armed conflict, including during military occupation, is comprised of rules whose central purpose is to limit, to the maximum extent feasible, human suffering in times of armed conflict,” Amnesty explained Thursday.

    The group noted that under the Fourth Geneva Convention, “extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly,” is a war crime.

    Additionally, the treaty bans collective punishment of civilians, stating that “no protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed.”

    Amnesty has repeatedly accused Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza and has urged the ICC to open investigations into multiple “indiscriminate” and “disproportionate” IDF massacres, as well as torture and other alleged human rights violations.

    Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

  • Israeli Rights Group Leader Tells UN It’s Clear Netanyahu ‘Does Not Want’ a Hostage Deal

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    Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at a press conference in Jerusalem on September 4, 2024. (Photo: Abir Sultan/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

    Israel’s far-right government is “cynically exploiting our collective trauma” to “violently advance its project of cementing Israel’s control” over Palestinian land, said B’Tselem CEO Yuli Novak.

    The head of a leading Israeli human rights organization told the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday that Israel’s far-right government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, obviously “does not want” to reach a hostage-release and cease-fire agreement with Hamas.

    Yuli Novak, the CEO of B’Tselem, said in an address to the U.N. body that the Netanyahu government is “cynically exploiting our collective trauma” in the wake of the October 7 Hamas-led attack to “violently advance its project of cementing Israel’s control” over Palestinian land.

    “To do that, it is waging war on the entire Palestinian people, committing war crimes almost daily,” said Novak. “In Gaza, this has taken the form of expulsion, starvation, killing, and destruction on an unprecedented scale.”

    Watch Novak’s full speech:

    Novak’s remarks came days after Israelis poured into the streets en masse over the weekend following their government’s announcement that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers recovered the bodies of six hostages in Gaza, heightening outrage over Netanyahu’s obstruction of cease-fire talks.

    In a speech on Monday, Netanyahu doubled down on his new hardline demands that have dampened hopes of a deal to end Israel’s U.S.-backed assault on Gaza and free the more than 60 living hostages still in captivity in the besieged Palestinian enclave.

    Hamas has rejected the prime minister’s demand that any deal include indefinite Israeli military control of the Philadelphi Corridor—a narrow strip of land along Gaza’s border with Egypt—leaving cease-fire talks at a standstill as the war on Gaza nears the 11-month mark.

    Gershon Baskin, a longtime Israeli hostage negotiator who has engaged in back-channel talks with Hamas since the October 7 attack, told Democracy Now! on Wednesday that the Philadelphi Corridor demand “is a made-up issue by Netanyahu to create… a new excuse for Israel to remain in Gaza.”

    “It’s very clear that Netanyahu doesn’t want to end the war,” Baskin said.

    In a social media post earlier this week, Baskin accused Netanyahu of “sacrificing the hostages on an altar of his own personal political survival.”

    The view that Netanyahu is deliberately sabotaging hostage-release talks is hardly fringe: As Jacobin‘s Branko Marcetic observed Wednesday, that assessment has become commonplace across Israeli society, including inside Netanyahu’s government.

    Marcetic cited recent reports from dozens of mainstream Israeli and U.S. media outlets casting Netanyahu—who faces corruption charges in his country—as the primary obstacle to a cease-fire agreement.

    One unnamed Israeli official, identified as a senior member of the country’s government, told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz over the weekend that the blood of hostages “is on [Netanyahu’s] hands.”

    “He knew the hostages are living on borrowed time, that the sand in their hourglass was running out,” said the senior official, referring to the six hostages who, according to the Israeli Ministry of Health, were shot at close range sometime around last Thursday.

    “He knew there were orders to kill them if there’d be rescue attempts. He understood the significance of his orders and acted in cold blood and cruelly,” the Israeli official continued. “They all knew he is corrupted, a narcissist, a coward, but his lack of humanity was fully revealed in all its ugliness in recent months.”

    Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

  • Coalition Statement: We Will March on Sat 7 Sept

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    https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/coalition-statement-we-will-march-on-sat-7-sept/

    “We will assemble at the advertised point, and, in exercising our right to peaceful protest, we will march to the Israeli Embassy.”

    We are deeply concerned by the Metropolitan Police’s decision to impose severe and unjustified restrictions on Saturday’s demonstration against the ongoing genocide in Gaza. These new conditions, including a delayed start time of two and a half hours after the advertised assembly, effectively hinder our fundamental right to peaceful assembly and protest. For 18 consecutive marches since October, we have gathered at 12 PM and commenced shortly thereafter—an arrangement that accommodates those travelling long distances, including thousands who have pre-booked coach travel. The last-minute disruption of these plans, without any clear rationale, raises serious questions about the police’s respect for our democratic rights.

    Since notifying the police of our intentions on 8 August, we have faced a series of delays, obstacles, and uncooperative behaviour. Meetings have been cancelled without notice, and our reasonable proposal for an alternative route to the Israeli Embassy was dismissed outright. Now, with just four days’ notice, the police have imposed these new conditions without explanation, creating unnecessary obstacles for a demonstration expected to draw over one hundred thousand people.

    The treatment of the Palestine movement by the police is unprecedented and deeply troubling. The consistent refusal to consider our proposed routes and the imposition of unreasonable conditions appear to be based on unfounded assumptions that our protests will lead to disruption or disorder, despite our long history of peaceful demonstrations. Such actions risk undermining the right to protest, a cornerstone of democracy.

    It is crucial that the police reconsider these actions in light of their responsibility to uphold democratic freedoms. We will assemble at the advertised point, and, in exercising our right to peaceful protest, we will march to the Israeli Embassy. It is essential that the police recognise the importance of respecting the rights of citizens to gather and express their views peacefully.

    Palestine Solidarity Campaign

    Palestinian Forum in Britain

    Friends of Al-Aqsa

    Stop the War Coalition

    Muslim Association of Britain

    Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament