destruction

Israeli Assault Turned Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital Into ‘Mass Graveyard’

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

Palestinians walk among the damaged buildings near the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Gaza on April 1, 2024.
 (Photo: Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“This is part of the genocidal machine,” said one surgeon who volunteered at the hospital. “The genocide can only take place if the health system is destroyed.”

The Israeli military withdrew from Gaza’s largest medical facility on Monday after a deadly two-week assault that left the only partially functioning hospital complex in famine-stricken northern Gaza in total ruins.

Israel’s military, which a United Nations expert has accused of waging an “unrelenting war” on Gaza’s healthcare system, claimed in a statement that it killed 200 “terrorists” inside and around the facility and arrested more than 500 people “associated with terrorist organizations” during its prolonged raid on al-Shifa.

The military did not provide evidence that those killed were militants; Israel has repeatedly been accused of labeling unarmed civilians “terrorists.”

According to eyewitness accounts of the raid, Israeli soldiers abused and executed civilians inside the al-Shifa complex, including more than a dozen children. The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said last week that its field team “received identical testimonies about the killings and executions of Palestinian children between the ages of four and 16” in and around the hospital.

Photographs taken in the aftermath of Israel’s assault show al-Shifa buildings scorched, riddled with bullet holes, and reduced to rubble. The hospital’s emergency, surgical, and obstetrics wards were reportedly devastated by Israeli forces, and an unknown number of bodies are believed to be trapped under building ruins.

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Sunday that Israel’s siege of the hospital killed at least 21 patients and left dozens of critically ill or wounded Gazans without “necessary means of care—no diapers, urine bags, water to clean wounds.”

Hossam Shabat, a Palestinian journalist reporting from northern Gaza, said he witnessed “hundreds of bodies” outside of the hospital when he visited the compound on Monday.

“The bodies were in horrific conditions; many had their hands and legs tied behind their backs and were flattened by a bulldozer,” Shabat wrote on social media. “Many of the bodies were burned and left to be crushed to pieces. Several bodies were decomposed and partly eaten by stray dogs. Most of the bodies were unrecognizable; families could only identify them by their clothes.”

“Al-Shifa Hospital was considered the largest medical complex in the Gaza Strip, catering to many complex cases,” Shabat added. “It has been completely destroyed; they burned it down and destroyed all medical equipment. Israeli occupation forces [have] one goal and it’s to destroy every inch of Gaza.”

Ghassan Abu Sitta, a surgeon who volunteered at al-Shifa, told Democracy Now! in an interview on Monday that prior to Israel’s assault on the hospital, al-Shifa “was 30% of the capacity of the health system in Gaza.” Israel raided the facility for the first time in November, and its latest attack began on March 18.

“The destruction of Shifa, the wanton destruction of Shifa, is a critical component of Israel’s plan to genocidally make sure that Gaza becomes an uninhabitable place, even after a cease-fire happens,” said Abu Sitta. “By destroying Shifa and making sure it is irreparable, the Israelis are trying to make sure that for years to come, Gaza does not have a functioning health system.”

Abu Sitta went on to criticize Western journalists for helping Israel perpetuate the narrative that al-Shifa was used by Hamas as a “command center” and thus an “acceptable” target.

“This is part of the genocidal machine,” said Abu Sitta. “The genocide can only take place if the health system is destroyed.”

Reuters described al-Shifa in the aftermath of the Israeli military’s two-week raid as a “wasteland of destroyed buildings” with “Palestinian bodies scattered in the dirt.”

Ismail al-Thawabta, director of Gaza’s media office, said in a statement Monday that Israeli forces “destroyed and burnt all buildings inside al-Shifa medical complex.”

“They bulldozed the courtyards, burying dozens of bodies of martyrs in the rubble, turning the place into a mass graveyard,” said al-Thawabta. “This is a crime against humanity.”

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

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With $280 Billion in Profits, Oil Giants Are ‘Main Winners of the War in Ukraine’

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

A protester pretends to celebrate outside Shell’s London headquarters. (Photo: Greenpeace U.K./X)

“They have amassed untold wealth off the back of death, destruction, and spiraling energy prices,” a Global Witness investigator said of a new analysis.

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches its second anniversary, one group has clearly benefited: the five biggest U.S. and European oil and gas companies.

BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies have made more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in profits since the war began, according to an analysis published by Global Witness on Monday.

“This analysis shows that regardless of what happens on the front lines, the fossil fuel majors are the main winners of the war in Ukraine,” Global Witness senior fossil fuels investigator Patrick Galey said in a statement. “They have amassed untold wealth off the back of death, destruction, and spiraling energy prices.”

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Big Oil’s profits were fueled in part by high wholesale gas prices, which were already elevated before Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022 and skyrocketed afterward. All five companies covered by the analysis reported record profits for 2022.

This bonanza came as the conflict killed more than 10,000 Ukrainian civilians.

“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been devastating for millions of people, from ordinary Ukrainians living under the shadow of war, to the households across Europe struggling to heat their homes,” Galey said.

During 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden accused Big Oil of “war profiteering.”

Global Witness calculated that BP and Shell have raked in enough since the war began—at £75 billion—to pay all British household electricity bills through July 2025. Chevron and ExxonMobil have made a combined $136 billion while Total has netted $50.4 billion.

These massive profits also come as the climate crisis, driven primarily by the burning of fossil fuels, continues to escalate. 2023 was the hottest year on record, and likely the hottest in 125,000 years. Yet instead of using their record profits to invest in renewable energy technology, the five major oil companies have cut back on their climate initiatives and handed massive payouts to shareholders.

“This is yet another way in which the fossil fuel industry is failing customers and the planet.”

Of the more than $280 billion the five companies have brought in since the war began, they returned what Global Witness said was an “unprecedented” $200 billion to shareholders. At the same time, Shell rescinded a promise to curb oil production by 2030 and said it would fire around 200 people employed by its green jobs division. BP, meanwhile, slashed its emissions reduction target from 35-40% of 2019 levels by 2030 to 20-30%.

The money paid to shareholders is also money that could have been paid to help communities adapt to the climate crisis or recover from the damage it has already caused. The $111 billion that the five companies paid to shareholders in 2023 alone is 158 times more than the money pledged to climate-vulnerable nations at COP28, and the €15 billion that TotalEnergies rewarded shareholders with was more than the €10 billion that France needed to recover from droughts and storms in 2022.

Galey said the companies were now “spending their gains on investor handouts and ever more oil and gas production, which Europe doesn’t need and the climate cannot take.”

“This is yet another way in which the fossil fuel industry is failing customers and the planet,” Galey said.

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

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Continue ReadingWith $280 Billion in Profits, Oil Giants Are ‘Main Winners of the War in Ukraine’

2023 was deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since 2005

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

Israeli occupation forces obstructing the work of ambulances in Jenin. (Photo: Mohammad Mansour/WAFA)

Over 500 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank in 2023. Under its undeclared policy of collective punishment, Israel also destroyed a significant amount of civilian infrastructure such as roads, residential buildings, and hospitals in West Bank since October 7

Israel’s war on Gaza has entered its fourth month. It has killed over 23,000 Palestinians in the besieged enclave and injured around 60,000. Nearly 80% of all Gazans have been displaced due to the constant bombings. The amount of destruction and killing in Gaza is horrendous. The offensive has also extended to the West Bank where Palestinians have been facing a form of undeclared collective punishment both before and since the war in Gaza.  

Though the West Bank has always faced violent attacks from Israeli occupation, those attacks have increased manifold since the beginning of the war in Gaza. Despite the fact that Hamas does not rule the territory, Israel used the excuse of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood to justify its unprecedented attacks on civilians and their infrastructure there. 

Between October 7 and December 31, last year more than 340 Palestinians, including a large number of children, were killed in attacks carried out by both the Israeli forces and illegal settlers. 

The Israeli attacks targeted Palestinian civilians, including artists from the famous Freedom Theater, while homes were demolished, hospitals and medical facilities targeted, and roads and other civilian infrastructure uprooted.  

At least three Palestinian men were shot and killed by the occupying Israeli forces during the intervening period of Monday evening and Tuesday night in Tulkarm. Video footage of these attacks showed Israeli forces first shooting and killing the men and then running over the bodies of one of them with their military vehicle.

Israeli forces reportedly conducted similar night raids in Qalqilya, Nablus, Ramallah, and Bethlehem, among several other places on Tuesday night, arresting scores of people and destroying civic infrastructure.

Israeli occupation is targeting the Palestinians in the West Bank economically as well by refusing to transfer millions of dollars in tax revenue to the Palestinian Authority, leaving it with no money to pay the salaries to its over 140,000 employees. It has also refused to allow around 150,000 workers from the territory to return to their jobs in Israel since October 7.  

Deadliest Year since 2005

Israeli forces similarly attacked the Jenin refugee camp a couple of days ago and killed at least 7 Palestinians. They have targeted the camp repeatedly since October 7, killing over 60 Palestinians there and deliberately destroying most of the roads and other civil infrastructure. According to Al-Jazeera, Tulkarm too has been a center of Israeli attacks with at least 60 Palestinians killed since October 7.

In August, the UN had already declared 2023 to be the deadliest year for the West Bank as the number of Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks had crossed 200, more than the previous high of 167 in 2022.

According to the latest data, the total number of Palestinians killed in 2023 has crossed 500 with over 13,000 more injured in the attacks carried out by both illegal settlers as well as Israeli soldiers.

More than 70 of the Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks were children. This is the highest number of the Palestinian children ever killed in the occupied West Bank in a year. Some sources say the death toll among children is even higher.

Settler Violence

According to Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din, 2023 was also the most violent year for the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank in terms of the number of attacks carried out by the illegal settlers. According to it, at least 10 Palestinians were killed in 2023 just in those attacks.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), at least 1,225 cases of settler violence were recorded in 2023.

The figure presented by the Palestinian officials for the same is almost double at 2,410. It also claims that the number of Palestinians killed in settler violence in 2023 was 22.

There are around 500,000 Israeli settlers living illegally inside the occupied West Bank. Most of these illegal settlers participate in attacks on nearby Palestinian villages under security cover provided by the Israeli occupation forces.

The settlers attack the villages, burn Palestinian houses, their farms and other properties, and attack people trying to prevent those attacks with the objective of terrorizing people to leave their villages and farms.

Record number of Palestinians detained

More than 11,000 Palestinians were also arrested or detained by Israel in the last year in the occupied West Bank alone, which is almost three times higher than the total number of Palestinians inside Israeli prisons before the beginning of the year.

Some of them were later released after a brief period of detention. Some others were released as part of the prisoner exchange deal between Hamas and Israel. Still the number of Palestinian prisoners inside Israeli jails has jumped from around 4,500 before the beginning of the year to over 7,000 at the end of it.

A joint statement issued by Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs Commission, the Palestinian Prisoners Society, Addameer, and others stated that 1,085 of those detained by the Israeli occupation forces from the West Bank in 2023 were children.

As per reports, scores of Palestinian prisoners have been killed inside Israeli jails with large number of them reporting torture and abuse by the prisoner authorities.

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

Continue Reading2023 was deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since 2005

Amazon’s emissions ‘doubled’ under first half of Bolsonaro presidency

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/23/amazons-emissions-doubled-under-first-half-of-bolsonaros-presidency-aoe

New study published in Nature says period was as destructive as record 2016 El Niño drought and heatwave

The first half of Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency was so destructive for the Amazon that it was comparable to the record 2016 El Niño drought and heatwave in terms of carbon emissions, according to scientists.

Annual emissions from the world’s largest rainforest roughly doubled in 2019 and 2020, compared with the 2010 to 2018 average, according to a new study published in Nature, as swaths of forest were deliberately cleared and burned for cattle ranching and farming during the first two years of the far-right leader’s time in office.

While the amount of carbon that the Amazon absorbs and emits changes with weather cycles, generally sucking in more in wet years and less in dry periods, the study found that the rise in emissions under Bolsonaro had little to do with natural processes, but was instead caused by the systematic removal and downgrading of environmental law enforcement in Brazil.

Under Bolsonaro, the number and severity of fines for illegal deforestation by Brazilian authorities fell dramatically while fires and land-clearing soared, the study found. Carbon emissions increased from an annual average of 0.24 gigatonnes from 2010-18 to 0.44GtC in 2019 and 0.55GtC respectively.

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/23/amazons-emissions-doubled-under-first-half-of-bolsonaros-presidency-aoe

Continue ReadingAmazon’s emissions ‘doubled’ under first half of Bolsonaro presidency