ethnic cleansing

This May Day, workers mobilized for Palestine

Spread the love

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

Student workers of Columbia organized in UAW 2710 participate in May Day rally. Photo: Wyatt Souers

On International Workers’ Day, workers around the world continued to join hands with the student movement to stand with Palestine

On May Day, workers around the world mobilized for the liberation of Palestine. “This May Day, workers of the world are called to declare their solidarity with Palestine, to denounce the Israeli Genocide, and to call for an end to all aggressions in the region and to all wars,” wrote the International People’s Assembly.

“Beyond the call for a ceasefire we must say no to the transportation of arms and arms caches to Israel. Workers in all industries – especially workers in the transport sector – that can withhold their labor in order to halt the continued slaughter of the people of Palestine are emphatically called to do so!”

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa released a statement calling on workers around the world to mobilize for Palestine. “The working class are the creators of wealth, and it is the united power of the working class that has the power to overthrow hateful, brutal regimes like Apartheid Israel,” wrote the union. “On this Workers Day, we call on workers of the world to unite in defense of Palestine so that its people can be free, from the river, to the sea!”

“The working class in South Africa must celebrate the defeat of Apartheid, because its destruction was due, largely to the unity of workers, who used their labor power to collapse the system through rolling mass action, strikes and protest,” the union added.

Several Palestinian union formations have called the people in the world to action against the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza. This includes the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions, which in March called on US unions in particular to “be our voice and advocate inside and outside America.”

“What our people are experiencing and what workers and unions in particular, are exposed to is the most horrific catastrophe known to humanity in recent decades,” the PGFTU wrote. “We ask that you convey our message and give voice to the suffering of hungry, starving workers and their families—not just to the American people, not just to your unions, but to the entire world.”

Palestinian trade unions have also responded in support of the student movement for Palestine that has taken the world by storm. “The Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) in Palestine extends our deepest solidarity to you, the revolutionary youth who are changing the world,” reads a statement of support from a prominent Palestine farmworkers’ union, addressed to the students movement around the world that is taking action in solidarity with Gaza. “We write to you from Palestine to tell you that your actions are resonating across oceans. In you, we see the echoes of our struggle, the echoes of our resistance, and the echoes of our hope.”

“Our people, along with all the workers and free people of the world, commemorate the first of May this year, at a time when they are subjected to the most brutal and fierce campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing, surpassing in savagery and bloodiness the fascists and the Nazis, at the hands of a group of murderers calling themselves an army for an invasive replacement entity, under the leadership, partnership, support, cover, and complicity of the American administration and the colonial Western imperial powers, the enemies of humanity,” wrote the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in a pre-May Day statement. “We send a salute of respect and pride to the university students all over the world, especially to the students at American universities, who are protesting against the crimes of the occupation and the support of the American administration for it, and who demand a halt to the aggression against the Palestinian people.”

Within the student movement in the US, university workers are mobilizing their unions to stand with their students in solidarity with Gaza. On April 29, within the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at the City College of New York in New York City, university workers organized under the Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY) held a town hall meeting to deliberate on how to use their labor power to support the five demands of the student encampment. The members attending the town hall organized a wildcat sick-out, in which union members will call in sick en masse to disrupt business as usual at the larger City University of New York (CUNY) system. Workers in the United States face a variety of strike prohibitions, including a nationwide ban on striking for political reasons rather than economic issues such as wages and benefits under the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947.

Nevertheless, the PSC faculty at the town hall voted overwhelmingly to stage a sick-out. “At UT Austin, faculty did a one day job action in support of their students. Palestinian trade unions, National SJP, and National Faculty for Justice in Palestine have called for a mass job action on May 1st,” faculty wrote in a statement. “Our students are taking incredible risks to support the Palestinian people. They have asked for our help. We must stand ready to struggle alongside them, and to take these risks.”

Workers organized with the United Auto Workers, which also represents many graduate student workers across the country, staged a rally in Washington Square Park on April 26 in support of their students staging Gaza Solidarity Encampments at NYU, Columbia, and the New School.

Workers engaged in mass mobilizations around the world on May 1.

Thousands took to the streets in major US cities including Washington, DC and Los Angeles. In DC, demonstrators marched to the Gaza Solidarity Encampments at George Washington University.

‼️🇵🇸A massive May Day march in Los Angeles takes the streets for Palestine! pic.twitter.com/YfDrwNiBis

— Party for Socialism and Liberation (@pslnational) May 1, 2024

✊🏽🇵🇸RIGHT NOW: A massive May Day march is en route to the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at George Washington University pic.twitter.com/esXOVUrhqv

— Party for Socialism and Liberation (@pslnational) May 2, 2024

In New York City, unions such as the United Auto Workers and the New York Taxi Workers Alliance expressed explicit support for the Palestinian cause in a march of 20,000, which ended at the New York University Gaza Solidarity Encampment.

Havana, like every year, was flooded with huge crowds on May Day as President Miguel Diaz-Canel sent an explicit message in support of Palestine and the pro-Palestine student movement. “All our solidarity with the students in the United States, who have taken the side of justice, have come out to support the cause of the Palestinian people, and are brutally repressed on their own university campuses. Today our [May Day] is also going through Palestine,” Diaz-Canel wrote.

In Bogota, President Gustavo Petro made a special announcement during the May Day celebration in front of thousands of Colombians: the nation would officially cut all diplomatic ties with Israel.

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

Continue ReadingThis May Day, workers mobilized for Palestine

US Reportedly Working to Stop ICC From Issuing Arrest Warrant for Netanyahu

Spread the love

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

“There is absolutely no reason for Biden to be involved in this,” said one analyst. “But once again, Biden steps in to protect Netanyahu from the consequences of the war crimes he commits.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly growing increasingly concerned that the International Criminal Court is preparing to issue arrest warrants for him and other top government officials for committing war crimes in the Gaza Strip.

The Times of Israel reported Sunday that the Israeli government, in partnership with the U.S., is “making a concerted effort to head off” possible arrest warrants from the ICC, which first launched its war crimes investigation in the occupied Palestinian territories in 2021.

Israel does not recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction and has refused to cooperate with the probe. The ICC says it has jurisdiction over Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem.

Citing an unnamed Israeli government source, The Times of Israel reported that “a major focus of the ICC allegations will be that Israel ‘deliberately starved Palestinians in Gaza.'” Other officials who could face arrest warrants are Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi.

The Times of Israel‘s reporting came shortly after Israeli journalist Ben Caspit wrote that Netanyahu is “under unusual stress” over the possibility of arrest warrants and is leading a “nonstop push over the telephone” to forestall ICC action.

Like Israel, the U.S. is not a party to the Rome Statute, which established the ICC in 2002. The legal body is tasked with investigating individuals, not governments.

The U.S., Israel’s leading arms supplier, has opposed the ICC’s Palestine investigation from the start, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying in a 2021 statement that the court “has no jurisdiction over this matter” because “Israel is not a party to the ICC.”

But the Biden administration vocally supported the ICC’s decision to issue an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin over war crimes committed in Ukraine, even though neither Russia nor Ukraine are parties to the Rome Statute.

The Israeli government has been accused of committing numerous war crimes in Gaza since the October 7 Hamas-led attack, including genocide, ethnic cleansing, and using starvation as a weapon of war. Late last year, the human rights group Democracy for the Arab World Now submitted to the ICC the names of dozens of Israeli military commanders who are believed to have been directly involved in violations of international law.

Reports of potentially imminent ICC action have sparked alarm among conservatives in the United States.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) wrote on social media Friday that the court should “should stand down on this immediately.”

In an editorial published that same day, The Wall Street Journal suggested the U.S. and United Kingdom could “risk finding Americans and Britons under the gun” next if they don’t warn ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan against issuing arrest warrants for Israeli officials. Human rights organizations and legal experts have said Biden and other U.S. officials could be held liable under international law if they continue supporting Israel’s war on Gaza.

“Mr. Khan’s candidacy was championed by his native Britain and supported by the U.S.,” continues the Journal editorial, “so both countries may have influence if they warn Mr. Khan of what will happen if he proceeds.”

The Times of Israel noted Sunday that according to reports in several Israeli media outlets, the U.S. is “part of a last-ditch diplomatic effort to prevent the International Criminal Court from issuing arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials.”

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, argued Sunday that “there is absolutely no reason for Biden to be involved in this.”

“But once again,” Parsi added, “Biden steps in to protect Netanyahu from the consequences of the war crimes he commits, which Biden claims he privately is frustrated about.”

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

Leaked State Department Memo: Israeli Assurances ‘Neither Credible Nor Reliable’

Disgust Greets White House Correspondents’ Dinner as Israel Kills Journalists in Gaza

Columbia Climate School Alumni Slam ‘Violent Repression’ of Gaza Solidarity Protests

Continue ReadingUS Reportedly Working to Stop ICC From Issuing Arrest Warrant for Netanyahu

Killing humanitarian workers as a strategy: Israel’s endgame in Gaza

Spread the love

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/killing-humanitarian-workers-strategy-israels-endgame-gaza

TARGETING AID: World Central Kitchen vehicle hit in an Israeli airstrike in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, on Tuesday, April 2 2024

RAMZY BAROUD explains that Israel isn’t making mistakes, even due to callous carelessness — killing aid workers is part of a wider plan to make life in northern Gaza impossible, to facilitate ethnic cleansing

ISRAEL described its clearly deliberate killing of seven humanitarian aid workers on April 1 as a “grave mistake,” a “tragic event” that “happens in war.”

Israel is, obviously, lying. This entire so-called war — actually genocide — in Gaza has been based on a series of lies, some of which Israel continues to peddle.

For some, in the mainstream media, it took months to accept the obvious fact that Israel has been lying about the events that led to the war and the military objectives of its constant targeting of hospitals, schools, shelters and other civilian facilities.

So, it was only logical for Israel to lie about killing the six internationals, and their Palestinian driver, of the World Central Kitchen (WCK). Notwithstanding an event as atrocious as this, it is implausible for Israel to start telling the truth now.

Luckily, few seem to believe Israel’s version regarding WCK, or its continued massacres elsewhere in Gaza. Israel “cannot credibly investigate its own failure in Gaza,” the US-based NGO said in a statement on April 5.

The issue of targeting these internationals, however, has to be placed within a larger context.

Israel was hardly secretive about its intention to deny Palestinians even the most basic necessities of survival in Gaza, epitomised in the words of Israeli Minister of Defence Yoav Gallant on October 9: “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.”

Initially, this statement, and many others, were understood at the time to be an outcome of Israel’s desire to punish Palestinians for the October 7 al-Aqsa Flood operation, by resorting to its typical tactic of collective punishment.

With time, however, and based on statements made by other Israeli officials, it became clear that Israel wanted to ethnically cleanse Palestinians altogether.

…

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/killing-humanitarian-workers-strategy-israels-endgame-gaza

Continue ReadingKilling humanitarian workers as a strategy: Israel’s endgame in Gaza

World Marks Six Months of ‘Relentless Death and Destruction’ in Gaza

Spread the love

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

An aerial photography taken October 10, 2023 shows a neighborhood of Gaza City destroyed by Israeli bombardment. 
(Photo: Al Araby/Wikimedia Commons)

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres reiterated his call for an “immediate humanitarian cease-fire, the unconditional release of all hostages, the protection of civilians, and the unimpeded delivery of humanitarian aid.”

Peace and human rights advocates on Sunday renewed calls for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and an increase in lifesaving humanitarian aid for its starving people as the embattled enclave marked six months since the start of Israel’s genocidal retaliation for the October 7 attacks.

In six months of bombardment by air, land, and sea following the Hamas-led attacks that killed more than 1,100 people in Israel—with over 240 people taken hostage—Israeli forces have killed or maimed more than 116,000 Palestinians, including people believed to be dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed-out homes and other buildings. Gazans—especially children—are starving to death as Israel severely restricts the amount of aid allowed to enter the strip. Women are “burying their newborns every day” as they have nothing to feed them.

Around 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been forcibly displaced, perhaps permanently, in what many Palestinians and international observers are calling a new Nakba, the ethnic cleansing catastrophe perpetrated by Jewish militants during the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948. Gaza’s infrastructure has been obliterated, with reconstruction expected to cost $18.5 billion, or nearly Palestine’s entire annual gross domestic product.

“Over the last six months, the Israeli military campaign has brought relentless death and destruction to Palestinians in Gaza—with more than 32,000 people reportedly killed and more than 75,000 injured—the vast majority women and children,” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said during a press conference marking six months of a war in which the International Court of Justice has found that Israel is plausibly committing genocide.

“During my visit to the Rafah crossing 10 days ago, I met veteran humanitarians who told me categorically that the crisis and suffering in Gaza is unlike any they have ever seen,” Guterres continued. “Meanwhile—as I saw on my way to the Rafah crossing—long lines of trucks loaded with humanitarian aid continued to face obstacle after obstacle.”

“When the gates to aid are closed, the doors to starvation are opened,” he said. “More than half the population—over a million people—are facing catastrophic hunger. Children in Gaza today are dying for lack of food and water. This is incomprehensible, and entirely avoidable. Nothing can justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”

Guterres noted the 196 humanitarian aid workers—including more than 175 U.N. personnel and members of Doctors Without Borders, the International Red Crescent, World Central Kitchen, and other organizations—who have been killed by Israeli bombs and bullets over the past six months.

“I repeat my urgent appeals for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire, the unconditional release of all hostages, the protection of civilians, and the unimpeded delivery of humanitarian aid,” Guterres said.

Demonstrators took to the streets of cities around the world to condemn Israel’s genocide and demand an immediate cease-fire.

There were also protests in cities including Tel Aviv and New York calling for the release of all Israelis and others held hostage in Gaza. New York rabbi Ellen Lippman said she wouldn’t be attending the rally because she “cannot call for the release of the hostages without an explicit demand for an immediate cease-fire and an end to the Israeli assault on Gaza.”

Left-wing Israelis held vigils outside the U.S. embassies in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv on Friday to demand an end to Washington’s military and diplomatic support for Israel’s genocide.

“The United States supplies the guns, and Israel pulls the trigger,” organizer Erez Bleicher told the crowd.

President Joe Biden in recent days has urged an immediate cease-fire, even as the U.S. continues to provide the bulk of Israel’s weapons. In a Thursday call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden “made clear the need for Israel to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers,” the White House said in a statement. “He made clear that U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps.”

Israel responded by saying it would temporarily allow more aid to enter Gaza.

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

Continue ReadingWorld Marks Six Months of ‘Relentless Death and Destruction’ in Gaza

Palestinian Journalists Urge US Media to Boycott White House Correspondents’ Dinner

Spread the love

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

A funeral ceremony is held for Palestine TV correspondent Mohammed Abu Hatab, who was killed, along with his family members, in an Israeli airstrike on his home in Khan Yunis, Gaza on November 3, 2023.  (Photo: Abed Zagout/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“The Biden administration’s ongoing support for Israel’s genocidal policies implicates it directly in the relentless targeting and massacring of journalists in Gaza, including hundreds of our colleagues and their families.”

Palestinian journalists this week issued an appeal to their U.S. counterparts urging them to boycott the April 27 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner over the Biden administration’s complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

“In the past six months alone, the Israeli military has executed over 125 Palestinian journalists in Gaza—10% of Gaza’s community of journalists,” notes the appeal, which is being organized with the help of Adalah Justice Project and the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights. “The year 2023 marked the bloodiest year for journalists worldwide in over a decade, with over 75% of killed journalists targeted by Israel’s attacks on Gaza.”

“As Palestinian journalists, we urgently appeal to you, our colleagues globally, with a demand for immediate and unwavering action against the Biden administration’s ongoing complicity in the systematic slaughter and persecution of journalists in Gaza,” the authors wrote.

“We bear the enormous burden of exposing the realities of Israel’s genocidal campaign to the world while living through it in real-time. Israel has killed more than 32,000 Palestinians as we watch on,” the journalists said. The death toll in Gaza now exceeds 33,000—mostly women and children—with at least 75,550 other Palestinians wounded since October 7.

The appeal continues:

In Gaza, journalism is synonymous with putting our lives on the line as Israel methodically targets us in its desperate bid to silence our voices and obscure the grim reality of its genocidal actions and its project of ethnic cleansing in Palestine. For Palestinian journalists in Gaza, the blue press vest does not offer us protection, but rather functions as a red target.

The Biden administration’s ongoing support for Israel’s genocidal policies implicates it directly in the relentless targeting and massacring of journalists in Gaza, including hundreds of our colleagues and their families.

“Western media has played an integral role in manufacturing consent for Israel’s ongoing violence against the Palestinian people, while obfuscating U.S. complicity,” the journalists continued. “Over the past six months, the mainstream press has become the mouthpiece of the homicidal Israeli regime, promoting dehumanizing anti-Palestinian propaganda and platforming genocide apologists and perpetrators, while simultaneously ignoring, downplaying, and underreporting Israel’s war crimes against Palestinians.”

“The White House Correspondents’ dinner is an embodiment of media manipulation, trading journalistic ethics for access,” the appeal argues. “For journalists to fraternize at an event with President [Joe] Biden and Vice President [Kamala] Harris would be to normalize, sanitize, and whitewash the administration’s role in genocide.”

“As journalists reporting from the belly of the beast, you have a unique responsibility to speak truth to power and uphold journalistic integrity,” the Palestinians implored U.S. journalists. “It is unacceptable to stay silent out of fear or professional concern while journalists in Gaza continue to be detained, tortured, and killed for doing our jobs.”

The appeal’s authors noted that American media professionals have demanded justice for journalists like Palestinian American Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh—who numerous probes found was intentionally killed by Israeli forces in 2022—and Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi Washington Post columnist gruesomely murdered in 2018 by Saudi Arabian operatives in Turkey.

“It is past time journalists take action for journalists in Gaza,” the Palestinians asserted. “We call on all journalists of conscience to stand with us and uplift our call to boycott the White House Correspondents’ dinner.”

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

Continue ReadingPalestinian Journalists Urge US Media to Boycott White House Correspondents’ Dinner