States must stop Israel before all journalists in Gaza are silenced: UN rapporteurs

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This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Ibrahim Kannan, a 53-year-old journalist, who was injured in the leg during the Israeli attacks on journalists, continues his work under difficult conditions from a tent set up in front of the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis, Gaza on September 3, 2025. [Abdallah F.s. Alattar - Anadolu Agency]
Ibrahim Kannan, a 53-year-old journalist, who was injured in the leg during the Israeli attacks on journalists, continues his work under difficult conditions from a tent set up in front of the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis, Gaza on September 3, 2025. [Abdallah F.s. Alattar – Anadolu Agency

UN human rights experts condemned the killing of six more Palestinian journalists in Israeli strikes across Gaza over the past 10 days, warning that the international community must act before all journalistic voices in the enclave are silenced, Anadolu reports.

At least 248 journalists have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, the highest number in any modern conflict, according to the experts. The victims include two women.

“On the one hand, Israel continues to deny access to any international media and on the other, it kills with impunity local journalists who are the world’s only professional lens into the agony of genocide and famine unfolding in Gaza,” Irene Khan, special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, and Francesca Albanese, special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, said in a statement.

Despite facing starvation, displacement, and targeted attacks, local journalists in Gaza have continued to report on atrocities, including alleged acts of genocide and famine, the experts added.

The latest deaths follow Israel’s intensified military operations in Gaza City and come just two weeks after a strike near Al Shifa Hospital killed six journalists, including Al Jazeera’s chief Gaza correspondent Anas Al-Sharif.

The UN experts called for independent criminal investigations into the attacks on journalists and demanded full reparation for the families of those killed.

“We urge the international community – member states as well as the key organs of the United Nations to act without delay before Israel shuts down the last voices in Gaza,” they said.

Israel has killed more than 63,000 people in Gaza since October 2023, damaged or destroyed most buildings in the enclave and forced multiple migrations. A global hunger monitor says parts of the enclave are now suffering a man-made famine.

READ: Israeli airstrike kills photojournalist Rasmi Salem in Gaza city

Experiencing issues with this image not appearing. I suspect because it's so critical of Zionist Keir Starmer's support of and complicity in Israel's genocides.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpA
UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel's Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don't do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.

Continue ReadingStates must stop Israel before all journalists in Gaza are silenced: UN rapporteurs

I’m facing 10 years in prison for climate protest. I’d still do it again

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Original article by Ella Ward republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Matthew Chattle/Future Publishing via Getty Images

The UK’s broken justice system is locking young activists like me away – and we’ll all suffer the consequences

My name’s Ella. I am a fairly average 22-year-old from Birmingham, central England. I have friends, a supportive family, and hopes and dreams for after graduation. I’m also facing up to ten years in prison.

On 5 August last year, I was arrested along with three others on a side street in Gatley, near Manchester, just after 4am. We had been planning to enter Manchester Airport’s airfield – provided it was safe to do so – to block the taxiway by glueing our hands to the tarmac. 

We didn’t get near the airport, but I have been held in HMP Styal, a women’s prison just outside Manchester, ever since. I was charged with conspiracy to cause a public nuisance and spent six months in prison awaiting trial. I was found guilty in February and will have served three months by the time I am sentenced at the end of this month.

So what drives a young person like me to take nonviolent action as drastic as this? You may have realised that I am a member of Just Stop Oil. At the time of my arrest, I was carrying boltcutters, glue, a hi-vis jacket, and a banner reading ‘sign the treaty’ in all caps.

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It was the summer of 2024, the hottest year ever recorded. We were trying to send a message to the British government: it must sign the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty and make an immediate plan to transition away from oil, gas and coal to prevent further global heating, climate breakdown, and eventual societal collapse.

We wanted to go to an airport – a symbol of the carbon economy – to make clear that the UK’s ‘business as usual’ approach is sending humanity over a cliff edge into destruction, displacement, and massive loss of life. 

Our protest may have seemed drastic, but as I tried to explain to the judge and the jury, it was proportionate to the scale of the crisis we are facing. We all stand to lose everything. 

Until my arrest, I was a final-year environmental science student at the University of Leeds. As I told the court, the science is clear: burning and extracting fossil fuels is heating the planet and leading to mass crop failure, with food insecurity and starvation for large parts of the world and drastic price hikes on staples for the rest of us. Crop failure on this scale will kill millions and displace many more. A billion people could be on the move within 25 years. The impacts will be felt everywhere, by everyone. 

I spoke about my university lecturers, who are prominent climate scientists and are fearful for their children’s lives. They feel they aren’t being listened to, that the government is implementing policies contrary to science. I said that the knowledge I had gained from studying gave me a responsibility to act.

Court trials like mine are remarkably technical – you must submit a legal defence if you want the judge to allow jurors to consider your motivation, or the context of your actions. I did not have a lawyer and, like my co-defendants, put forward a defence of ‘self-defence’ and ‘necessity’.  

I argued that I acted not only to protect the lives of the millions already living on the frontline of climate breakdown, but in defence of myself and young people globally. I told the court how I am afraid for my own future, the future of my brother, my friends, my cousins, and all young people everywhere. 

The judge dismissed this, saying the climate crisis does not pose an ‘immediate threat to life’. He told jurors to ignore the context around our actions and focus only on whether we had planned to commit a ‘crime’, saying that anything they’d heard about climate change during the hearing was irrelevant as it was a political or philosophical belief.

But the climate crisis is not a belief, it is science, and science doesn’t care about legal defences, judges’ rulings or prison sentences. It will continue to worsen and take more lives until governments work together to stop burning fossil fuels.

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Over the past six months in prison, this truth has become clearer and clearer. Climate breakdown is no longer something I read about in textbooks, study in lectures, or write about in exams. I’m seeing it through the bars of my cell window. 

On New Year’s Day, a state of emergency was declared as Greater Manchester was hit by heavy rains. Over a thousand people were evacuated from flooded homes – HMP Styal’s prison officers among them – their possessions ruined, and huge disruption caused. 

The rising waters cut off the roads leading to the prison, causing a staffing crisis that compromised our safety, with no one allowed to leave their wings or houses. The prison’s library and workplaces were flooded, ruining books and leaving some prisoners with no work or activities even after the regime returned to normal. 

Such extreme weather is being seen everywhere. On the penultimate day of my hearing, 14 people were killed in floods in the US state of Kentucky, including a seven-year-old girl and her mother, who were washed away in their car. I used my closing speech to tell jurors about this, about how upset it made me. How many people will die before we open our eyes? 

The judge ruled it irrelevant.

Having been barred from considering almost everything we’d said, the jury had little choice but to find us guilty. I am grateful to all twelve of them, though, for listening to what we had to say for three weeks and making the only decision they could within the constraints given.

Despite the guilty verdict, being in prison and my impending sentencing, I am at peace. I should have had my whole life ahead of me, and my future now hangs in the balance, but I know that I acted in line with my conscience and moral convictions and, above all, nonviolently: without violence and actively against violence. 

Being on trial at a crown court in my early twenties was the scariest thing I’ve ever done. But what choice did I have? At university, I studied the truth, and now I have to act on it.

Original article by Ella Ward republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes' concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country's economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Continue ReadingI’m facing 10 years in prison for climate protest. I’d still do it again

Amnesty International issues report detailing Israel’s genocide in Gaza

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Amnesty International’s 296-page report – ‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza – documents how, during its military offensive launched in the wake of the deadly Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on 7 October 2023, Israel has unleashed hell and destruction on Palestinians in Gaza brazenly, continuously and with total impunity. 

Over the past two months the crisis has grown particularly acute in the North Gaza governorate, where a besieged population is facing starvation, displacement and annihilation amid relentless bombardment and suffocating restrictions on life-saving humanitarian aid. 

Amnesty’s report examines in detail Israel’s violations in Gaza over the nine months between 7 October 2023 and early July 2024, with Amnesty interviewing 212 people – including Palestinian victims and witnesses, local authorities in Gaza and healthcare workers – while conducting fieldwork and analysing an extensive range of visual and digital evidence, including satellite imagery. Amnesty also analysed statements by senior Israeli government and military officials, and official Israeli bodies. On multiple occasions, Amnesty shared its findings with the Israeli authorities but has received no substantive response. 

Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, said:

“Amnesty International’s report demonstrates that Israel has carried out acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention, with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza. 

“These acts include killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction. 

“Month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them.

“Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now.

“States that continue to transfer arms to Israel at this time must know they are violating their obligation to prevent genocide and are at risk of becoming complicit in genocide. 

“All states with influence over Israel, particularly key arms suppliers like the USA and Germany, but also other EU member states – the UK and others – must act now to bring Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza to an immediate end.

“The International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity issued last month offer real hope of long-overdue justice for victims.

“States must demonstrate their respect for the court’s decision and for universal international law principles by arresting and handing over those wanted by the ICC.”

The UK’s responsibility to prevent genocide

Experiencing issues with this image not appearing. I suspect because it's so critical of Zionist Keir Starmer's support of and complicity in Israel's genocides.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpA

Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty International UK’s Chief Executive, said:

“As a state party to the Genocide Convention, the UK has a legal obligation to use all reasonable means to help prevent genocide.

“The UK must take urgent steps to make clear to Israel that this country does not support genocidal acts against Palestinians in Gaza, and those acts must end immediately.

“The UK government must, as an urgent first step, work with other countries by all diplomatic and legal means to press Israel into fully implementing the provisional measures ordered by the International Court of Justice.  

“To avoid the risk of itself being complicit in genocide, the UK must immediately end all arms transfers to Israel. 

“The UK should also press for multilateral targeted sanctions at the UN Security Council against Israeli and Hamas officials most implicated in crimes under international law.

“The UK must act to ensure justice and accountability, supporting the ongoing International Criminal Court investigation into Palestine and executing any ICC arrest warrants.”

Genocide denying UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspending 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government's support for Israel's Gaza genocide and the UK government and military's active participation in genocide.
Genocide denying UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspending 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide and the UK government and military’s active participation in genocide.

Continue ReadingAmnesty International issues report detailing Israel’s genocide in Gaza

Israel demolishes over 1,500 Palestinian structures in occupied West Bank in 2024

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Original article republished from MEMO under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Israeli security forces demolish buildings and mosque in the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran, where an evacuation and demolition order has been issued for the construction of Israeli settlements, in Negev Region, Israel on November 14, 2024 [Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu Agency]

Israeli occupation forces have demolished more than 1,500 Palestinian structures in the occupied West Bank since the start of the year, resulting in the displacement of over 3,600 Palestinians and affecting nearly 164,000 others, according to the United Nations.

Data from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reveals that between 1 January and 29 November, Israeli forces destroyed 1,528 structures, including 700 inhabited homes, 118 uninhabited homes and 398 agricultural facilities.

The demolitions have primarily targeted vulnerable Palestinian communities, displacing 3,637 people and severely impacting 163,769 others. The most affected area was the Tulkarm Refugee Camp in the northern occupied West Bank where 171 structures were destroyed, followed by the Nur Shams Refugee Camp which witnessed 118 demolitions, Jenin Refugee Camp, Jericho and other parts of the West Bank.

The Israeli government justifies these demolitions by claiming the structures were built without permits, although obtaining such permits is nearly impossible for Palestinians under the occupation’s restrictive policies.


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Israeli demolition policies have escalated recently in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem. They are intended to displace the Palestinians and expand illegal Jewish-only settlements amid the ongoing genocidal war against the Palestinian people in the occupied Palestinian territories.

It comes despite a landmark opinion by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 19 July, which declared Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian land unlawful and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

READ: Israel demolishes last mosque in Bedouin village in Negev desert

Original article republished from MEMO under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Continue ReadingIsrael demolishes over 1,500 Palestinian structures in occupied West Bank in 2024

Analysis Details How Israel’s Gaza Siege ‘Is Driving a Humanitarian Disaster’

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

Trucks carrying aid supplies to Gaza are seen at the Karem Abu Salem border crossing on February 17, 2024. (Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“Over 11 months, we have reached shocking levels of conflict, displacement, disease, and hunger,” said one campaigner.

Israel’s “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip “is driving a humanitarian disaster,” with 83% of required food aid failing to enter the embattled enclave, where the entire population is facing hunger and disease and almost half a million Palestinians are at risk of starvation, an analysis published Monday revealed.starvation,

The analysis by 15 international aid organizations noted that a record-low average of just 69 aid trucks are entering the Gaza Strip each day, compared with an already insufficient 500 daily truckloads a year ago. Additionally, the groups said that “only 17 out of Gaza’s 36 hospitals remain partially functional, and “critical infrastructure such as water networks, sanitation facilities, and bread mills” have been destroyed.

“While Israeli military attacks on Gaza intensify, lifesaving food, medicine, medical supplies, fuel, and tents have been systematically blocked from entering for almost a year,” the aid groups—which include ActionAid, American Friends Service Committee, CARE International, Christian Aid, Islamic Aid, Oxfam International, and Save the Children—said in a statement.

The publication highlights numerous ways that “lifesaving aid is systematically obstructed on a daily basis” in Gaza.

“These include the denial of safety, with more than 40,000 Palestinians and nearly 300 aid workers killed since last October; the sharp tightening of a 17-year blockade to a full siege, which prevents aid from entering Gaza; delays and denials which restrict the movement of aid around Gaza; tightly restrictive and unpredictable control of imports; the destruction of public infrastructure such as schools and hospitals; and the displacement of civilians and humanitarian workers,” the analysis’ authors wrote.

Zenab, a 33-year-old Palestinian woman pregnant with her second child, said that her pregnancy “has been the hardest time of my life.”

“It was also hard to get the medication I needed,” she continued. Sometimes I had to walk for hours to different pharmacies, hospitals, and health centers to see if anyone had my medication available. For me as a pregnant woman, there has been hardly any healthcare support, no proper hygiene and sanitation, and no suitable mattress to sleep on.”

“I was suffering from complications during my pregnancy,” Zenab added. “We didn’t have enough water to drink, and had hardly any food. The doctors again told me that my pregnancy was in danger.”

Among the report’s key findings:

  • 83% of required food aid doesn’t make it into Gaza, up from 34% in 2023;
  • An estimated 50,000 children aged between 6-59 months urgently require treatment for malnutrition by the end of the year;
  • 65% of the insulin required and half of the required blood supply are not available in Gaza;
  • Availability of hygiene items has dropped to 15% of the amount available in September 2023, with 1 million women now going without the hygiene supplies they need;
  • Only around 1,500 hospital beds in Gaza remain operational, compared to around 3,500 beds in 2023 which was already well below sufficient to meet the needs of a population of more than 2 million people; and
  • 1.87 million people are in need of shelter with at least 60% of homes destroyed or damaged as of January, yet tents for around just 25,000 people have entered Gaza since May 2024.

“There is a shortage of all humanitarian items. We are overwhelmed [with] these needs and [these] urgent requirements,” said Amjad Al Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGOs Network. “People [are] starving due to the shortage of aid. One hundred percent of the population depends on humanitarian aid.”

The authors of the analysis—which was released ahead of this week’s United Nations General Assembly in New York—are demanding that Israel secure an immediate and lasting cease-fire. They are also calling for an arms embargo on Israel and Israeli compliance with the recent International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion, which found that the occupation of Palestine is an illegal form of apartheid that must end immediately. Israel is on trial for genocide in a separate ICJ case.

“The situation was intolerable long before last October’s escalation and is beyond catastrophic now.”

“The situation was intolerable long before last October’s escalation and is beyond catastrophic now,” CARE International West Bank and Gaza country director Jolien Veldwijik said in a statement. “Over 11 months, we have reached shocking levels of conflict, displacement, disease, and hunger.”

That includes dozens of children who have died due to malnutrition, dehydration, and lack of adequate medical care.

“Aid is still not getting in, and humanitarian workers are risking their lives to do their jobs while attacks and violations of international law intensify,” Veldwijik added. “Aid, which is urgently required for 2.2 million people at risk of dying in the coming weeks and months, should never be politicized. We demand an immediate and sustained cease-fire, and the free flow of humanitarian aid into and throughout Gaza.”

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

Continue ReadingAnalysis Details How Israel’s Gaza Siege ‘Is Driving a Humanitarian Disaster’