crimes against humanity

UN Experts Say ‘Targeted Starvation Campaign’ by Israel Has Led to Famine Across Gaza

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

Fatma Hijazi, the mother of 10-year-old Palestinian boy Mustafa Hijazi, who died due to malnutrition and lack of medication, holds the lifeless body of her child in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on June 14, 2024. (Photo: Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)

The starvation of Palestinians in Gaza “is a form of genocidal violence,” said 10 rights experts.

While the United Nations still has not formally declared a famine in Gaza after nine months of Israel’s near-total blockade on humanitarian aid, 10 top U.N. experts on Tuesday said they have seen enough.

“We declare that Israel’s intentional and targeted starvation campaign against the Palestinian people is a form of genocidal violence and has resulted in famine across all of Gaza,” said the experts.

Michael Fakhri, special rapporteur on the right to food, was joined in the statement by other experts including Francesca Albanese, special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, and Paula Gaviria Betancur, special rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons.

They said the recent deaths of three children in various parts of the enclave led the experts, who do not speak on behalf of the United Nations as a whole, to declare a famine has taken hold.

“Fayez Ataya, who was barely six months old, died on May 30, 2024 and 13-year-old Abdulqader Al-Serhi died on June 1, 2024 at the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah,” said the experts. “Nine-year-old Ahmad Abu Reida died on June 3, 2024 in the tent sheltering his displaced family in Al-Mawasi, Khan Younis. All three children died from malnutrition and lack of access to adequate healthcare.”

“With the death of these children from starvation despite medical treatment in central Gaza, there is no doubt that famine has spread from northern Gaza into central and southern Gaza,” they continued.

At least 34 Palestinians in Gaza—the majority being children—have now died from malnutrition since October, when Israel began its bombardment of the enclave in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced there would “be no electricity, no food, no fuel” allowed in to Gaza.

Israeli officials said in response to Tuesday’s statement that it has increased the aid allowed into Gaza recently, but hundreds of delivery trucks remain stranded in Egypt and a floating pier built by the U.S. has not significantly improved the humanitarian crisis.

The U.N. experts said that with the first death of a child from malnutrition and dehydration, it should have been considered “irrefutable that famine has taken hold.”

“When a two-month-old baby and 10-year-old Yazan Al Kafarneh died of hunger on February 24 and March 4, respectively, this confirmed that famine had struck northern Gaza,” they said. “The whole world should have intervened earlier to stop Israel’s genocidal starvation campaign and prevented these deaths… Inaction is complicity.”

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, which is backed by the U.N., said last month that Gaza is at high risk for famine and that nearly half a million people were facing “catastrophic” food insecurity, with an extreme lack of food.

In May, Human Rights Watch co-founder Aryeh Neier, who had previously hesitated to say Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, said Israel’s “sustained policy of obstructing the movement of humanitarian assistance into the territory” ultimately convinced him that Israeli officials are “engaged in genocide.”

In March, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to ensure its military refrain from violating the Genocide Convention by preventing humanitarian aid from reaching people in Gaza, saying that “the catastrophic living conditions of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have deteriorated further” and that “famine is setting in.”

A woman named Ghaneyma Joma told Reuters on Monday at a hospital in Khan Younis that she feared her son would soon die of starvation.

“It’s distressing to see my child… lying there dying from malnutrition because I cannot provide him with anything due to the war, the closing of crossings, and the contaminated water,” she told the outlet.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations called on the U.S. government, the biggest international funder of Israel’s military and a persistent defender of its actions in Gaza, to ensure that a cease-fire agreement is reached and that Palestinians receive necessary humanitarian aid.

“The intentional starvation of the Palestinian people in Gaza can only occur with the active complicity of the Biden administration in Israel’s campaign of genocide,” said Ibrahim Hooper, national communications director for the group. “This complicity must end, and the Palestinian people must be offered a future in which they are free of occupation and can live in dignity.”

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

Zionist Keir Starmer 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 Starmer is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Continue ReadingUN Experts Say ‘Targeted Starvation Campaign’ by Israel Has Led to Famine Across Gaza

Four arrests at Gaza protest in London

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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jul/06/pro-palestinian-protest-march-london-arrests

Met police confirm protesters held on suspicion of public order offences, including one related to placard

Four people were arrested on Saturday on suspicion of public order offences while attending a pro-Palestinian march in central London, including one relating to a placard.

The Metropolitan police confirmed on X that three people were held on suspicion of breaching Public Order Act conditions imposed on the march, with a fourth man detained on suspicion of a racially aggravated public order offence relating to a placard.

Organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets on the first day of a new Labour government to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

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This latest protest comes after the health ministry in Gaza confirmed that at least 38,098 Palestinians have been killed and 87,705 others injured since Israel’s military offensive in Gaza began on 7 October.

Jeremy Corbyn, the independent MP for Islington North, joined pro-Palestine march in London. Photograph: Yann Tessier/Reuters [Jeremy Corbyn 2nd from right is joined by Andrew Feinstein, far right, former ANC Member of the National Assembly of South Africa who stood as an independent candidate against Starmer because of Starmer’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide.]

In attendance was the re-elected independent MP for Islington North, Jeremy Corbyn, who told protesters that “a change in government doesn’t change the facts that the people of Gaza are still being murdered in their sleep”.

“We said it to the Tories, and now we will say it to Labour: a government that sells arms to Israel is a government that is complicit in crimes against humanity.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jul/06/pro-palestinian-protest-march-london-arrests

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 Starmer 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.
Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
Continue ReadingFour arrests at Gaza protest in London

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

Governments, arms companies and banks urged to end weapon sales to Israel

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/governments-arms-companies-and-banks-urged-end-weapon-sales-israel

Palestinian children sit at the edge of a crater after an Israeli airstrike in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, June 21, 2024

‘By sending weapons, parts, components and ammunition to Israeli forces,’ the above risk being ‘complicit in serious violations of international human rights laws,’ UN experts warn

STATES and companies must end arms sales to Israel immediately or risk responsibility for human rights violations, UN experts have warned.

The transfer of weapons and ammunition to Israel may “constitute serious violations of international humanitarian laws and risk complicity in international crimes, possibly including genocide,” UN Special Rapporteurs for the Human Rights Council said in a statement on Thursday night.

The experts also called on BAE Systems, Boeing, Caterpillar, Lockheed Martin, Rolls-Royce Power Systems, and many other arms firms to end sales to Israel even if they have been granted licences to do so.

“These companies, by sending weapons, parts, components and ammunition to Israeli forces, risk being complicit in serious violations of international human rights and international humanitarian laws,” the experts said.

“This risk is heightened by the recent decision from the International Court of Justice ordering Israel to immediately halt its military offensive in Rafah, having recognised genocide as a plausible risk, as well as the request filed by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court seeking arrest warrants for Israeli leaders on allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity,” the statement said.

“In this context, continuing arms transfers to Israel may be seen as knowingly providing assistance for operations that contravene international human rights and international humanitarian laws and may result in profit from such assistance.”

The experts also warned that financial institutions investing in arms companies could also be held accountable, and called on Bank of America, BlackRock, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and many others to take urgent action.

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/governments-arms-companies-and-banks-urged-end-weapon-sales-israel

Continue ReadingGovernments, arms companies and banks urged to end weapon sales to Israel

93 Countries Back ICC Probe Into Israeli War Crimes in Gaza

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

Palestinian child, injured in the Israeli attack on Abu Aisha family house is taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on June 14, 2024.
 (Photo by Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)

A joint statement calls on “all States to ensure full co-operation with the Court for it to carry out its important mandate of ensuring equal justice for all victims of genocide, war crimes, [and] crimes against humanity.”

Ninety-three nations on Friday, all them state parties to the Rome Statute that created the International Criminal Court, reiterated their support for the ICC as it assesses an application for arrest warrants of high level Israeli government officials accused of perpetrating war crimes in Gaza.

The 93 countries—including Canada, Bangladesh, Belgium, Ireland, Afghanistan, Costa Rica, Chile, Germany, France, Mongolia, Mexico, New Zealand, and scores of other—cited separate ICC statements defending its mandate for independence and upheld in their joint statement “that the Court, its officials and staff shall carry out their professional duties as international civil servants without intimidation.”

Though neither nation is named in the joint statement, both the United States and Israel have publicly condemned ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan for his May 20 arrest warrant applications for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over alleged “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” in the Gaza Strip.

Khan also submitted arrest warrants for Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, and Ismail Haniyeh for their alleged roles in the October 7 attack on southern Israel. Following Khan’s announcement in May, U.S. President Joe Biden said, “Whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence—none—between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.”

In April it was reported that the U.S. government was working behind the scenes to block the ICC from issuing any arrest warrants targeting Israel officials. Neither Israel nor the U.S. is party to the Rome Statute, though the United Nations has recognized the ICC’s jurisdiction over the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), where the alleged war crimes by the occupying power, Israel, took place.

After Khan made his application for warrants, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said, “We’ve been really clear about the ICC investigation. We do not support it.” On June 4, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, along with 42 Democrats, passed a measure that would sanction ICC officials if the arrest warrants for any Israeli officials were approved or carried out.

Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, was among those who applauded Friday’s public statement.

Rajagapol thanked the signatory nations “for defending the ICC and standing up against the bullies, including the relics from the U.S. Senate whose idea of engaging with the world is to use threats,” a possible reference to Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) who denounced Khan’s applications as “outrageous,” applauded the House approval of sanctions, and vowed further punishment for the ICC.

Such punitive measures and high-profile threats directed at the ICC appeared to be the exact kind of intimidation Friday’s joint pledge of support is responding to.

“The ICC, as the world’s first and only permanent international criminal court, is an essential component of the international peace and security architecture,” the statement reads. “We therefore call on all States to ensure full co-operation with the Court for it to carry out its important mandate of ensuring equal justice for all victims of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression, grave crimes that threaten the peace, security and well-being of the world.”

With their show of unified support for the ICC and its mandate, the countries said they aim to “contribute to ending impunity for such crimes and preventing their recurrence while defending the progress we have made together to guarantee lasting respect for international humanitarian law, human rights, the of law and the enforcement of international criminal justice.”

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

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Continue Reading93 Countries Back ICC Probe Into Israeli War Crimes in Gaza