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Tag: Gaza

  • Israel’s Assault on Gaza Proves the Nakba Never Ended

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    Original article by AMY GOODMAN DENIS MOYNIHAN republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

    Palestinian children are pictured near makeshift tents in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on March 7, 2024. 
    (Photo: Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

    What followed the initial displacement and killing of Palestinians in 1948 has been one of the most violent, costly, and protracted conflicts in the modern era.

    Palestinians and allies marked the 76th anniversary of the Nakba, May 15—the day after the state of Israel was formally declared. “Nakba” is Arabic for “catastrophe,” and is used to describe the murder, dispossession, and forced displacement Palestinians suffered in the years up to and including 1948. As many as 900,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes. Thousands were killed, massacred by Israeli militias like the Irgun and the Stern Gang or while fleeing on foot with no food or water, and some while engaged in armed resistance. What has followed since 1948 has been one of the most violent, costly, and protracted conflicts in the modern era.

    Israel’s assault on Gaza has been termed a genocide by an increasing number of United Nations member states and international legal experts. Egypt joined South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, where an emergency hearing was called this week, following Israel’s ground invasion of Rafah. In Gaza, the official death toll is now over 35,000 Palestinians. Israel’s siege is also responsible for widening famine in Gaza.

    “What we are seeing now, what unfolds in front of our eyes, is a genocidal situation, by which people are targeted, whether they are children, babies, in hospital, or in schools. This is a massive operation of killing, of ethnic cleansing, of depopulation,” renowned Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, who as an Israeli soldier fought in the 1973 war, said on the Democracy Now! news hour. “The Nakba has never really ended for the Palestinians, so it’s a new horrific chapter in the ongoing Nakba that the Palestinians are suffering.”

    Ironically, Israeli nationalists, many who deny that the Nakba occurred at all, are now calling for a second one.

    Professor Pappé was just detained when he flew into Detroit, and described on Facebook two hours of FBI questioning before being released. He said they asked, “Am I a Hamas supporter? Do I regard the Israeli actions in Gaza a genocide? What is the solution to the ‘conflict’ (seriously, this is what they asked!) Who are my Arab and Muslim friends in America?”

    This week, on Nakba Day, Professor Abdel Razzaq Takriti, a Palestinian historian and endowed Arab studies chair at Rice University, said on Democracy Now!:

    “The Nakba is continuing. We have to understand that this is a colonial continuum. This is a structural process. It is not an event. And what we’re seeing now in Gaza is very much connected to what happened in 1948.”

    Professor Takriti assigned historical blame on the United Nations, the United States, and Britain:

    “You had a very aggressive settler-colonial movement develop in Palestine under British rule. It was armed under British rule. It was trained under British rule.”

    Professor Takriti continued, “The Israeli project is very much intertwined with American foreign policy toward the Palestinian people. They don’t see us as human beings. They want to destroy us. But they know that they have to present it in self-defense terms so that it’s palatable to the broader public… this is just a racist, criminal project that is leading and causing immense pain and suffering.”

    South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice is seeking to do just that. On Thursday, human rights attorney Adila Hassim spoke at the ICJ emergency hearing, her voice betraying emotion as she recited grim statistics:

    Children have suffered particularly severely. More than 14,000 have been killed. Thousands more have been injured or lost family members, while an estimated 17,000 children are unaccompanied or separated. Make no mistake. These conditions are a direct result of Israel’s military onslaught on the besieged enclave with full knowledge of the destructive consequences of this humanitarian crisis. In these circumstances, the thwarting of humanitarian aid cannot be seen as anything but the deliberate snuffing out of Palestinian lives, starvation to the point of famine, obstructing aid in the face of famine, and killing of at least 200 aid workers.

    Hassim concluded, “Israel must be stopped.”

    Ironically, Israeli nationalists, many who deny that the Nakba occurred at all, are now calling for a second one. “Right now, one goal: Nakba! A Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 48,” wrote Knesset member Ariel Kellner. On Tuesday, at an Israeli Independence Day march, far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir addressed thousands, saying, “First, we must return to Gaza now! We are coming home to the Holy Land! And second, we must encourage emigration. Encourage the voluntary emigration of the residents of Gaza!”

    Israel’s mass slaughter in Gaza must end immediately. Ultimately, the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and U.S. support for the occupation, also must end. It’s not good for Israel or its national security. It’s devastating for Palestinians. It’s illegal and immoral.

    Original article by AMY GOODMAN DENIS MOYNIHAN republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

  • Suella Braverman blanked by students at Gaza protest camp in excruciating video

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    https://leftfootforward.org/2024/05/suella-braverman-blanked-by-students-at-gaza-protest-camp-in-excruciating-video/

    Suella Braverman has been ridiculed after an excruciating attempt to engage with students at a protest camp in support of Palestine outside the University of Cambridge. 

    Visiting the camp on Thursday with GB News presenter Patrick Christys, the Tory MP was met with a wall of silence as she and the presenter attempted to talk with activists. 

    The former Home Secretary tried a number of times to ask questions, but was met on all occasions with no response during the humiliating two and half minute encounter.

    She introduced herself with, “Hi, I’m Suella I’m keen to find out your views and what you’re protesting about.” But protesters didn’t give them the response they were after, instead they just stood and stared back. 

    Braverman persisted asking questions such as, “I’m interested in why you’re covering your faces. Is it a Covid or a health measure?” and “I’m really keen to hear what your message is to Israel.”

    …

    https://leftfootforward.org/2024/05/suella-braverman-blanked-by-students-at-gaza-protest-camp-in-excruciating-video/

  • ‘Enough Is Enough’: South Africa Urges ICJ to Halt Israeli Assault on Rafah

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

    South African legal adviser Cornelius Scholtz (L) and South African Ambassador to the Netherlands Vusi Madonsela attend a hearing at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Israel’s incursion in Rafah, Gaza, in The Hague on May 16, 2024. (Photo: Lina Selg/ANP/AFP via Getty Images)

    Israel’s assault on Rafah provides “evidence of the crime of genocide,” one legal expert said. “This attack is the final blow that is intended to destroy the Palestinian group in Gaza.”

    South African officials on Thursday made their case before the International Court of Justice to stop Israel’s brutal invasion of Rafah, warning once again that Israeli officials have displayed clear “genocidal intent” and “genocidal conduct” in their military campaign in Gaza.

    The case for the ICJ to stop the attack on Rafah was made by a number of lawyers, legal experts, and ambassadors, with the South African representatives outlining the bare facts of Israel’s military campaign, blocking of humanitarian aid, and statements of intent, just as they did when the court heard South Africa’s original claim that Israel is committing genocide.

    That case, argued in January, resulted in a preliminary ruling in which the court said South Africa had made a “plausible” case and ordered Israel to prevent genocidal acts by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

    On Thursday, South Africa urged the ICJ to see that Israel has not followed that order.

    “It is difficult to imagine that the situation could get worse” than it was in January, international law professor John Dugard told the court. “But unfortunately, it has… Israel has now commenced its long-threatened assault on Rafah. It has ordered the evacuation of Palestinians in Rafah to the barren sand dunes of Al-Mawasi. It has closed critical border crossings to humanitarian aid, medical supplies, goods, and fuel, upon which the population depends.”

    “Israel’s actions are in violation of fundamental international humanitarian law, but in addition, they provide evidence of the crime of genocide,” Dugard continued. “This attack is the final blow that is intended to destroy the Palestinian group in Gaza.”

    Watch the livestream of the ICJ hearing below:

    The South Africans made their case as the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said Thursday that an estimated 600,000 people have now been forcibly displaced from Rafah by Israel.

    Despite tepid warnings from the U.S.—the biggest international funder of the IDF—for Israel to avoid attacking “population centers,” the IDF this week has moved into dense residential neighborhoods in central Rafah.

    The U.S. has also called for Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, but the IDF’s seizure of the Rafah crossing between the enclave and Egypt last week led the World Food Program (WFP) on Thursday to warn that food and fuel rations “will run out in a matter of days.” Dozens of Palestinians have been starved to death so far by Israel’s blocking of relief shipments.

    “The threat of famine in Gaza never loomed larger,” said the WFP as South Africa made its case in The Hague.

    Three months after giving a 22-minute speech detailing the numerous statements of genocidal intent made by top Israeli officials since the Gaza assault began in October, South African lawyer Tembeka Ngcukaitobi during Thursday’s hearing, used the more recent words of Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who publicly described the aim of the Rafah invasion as “total annihilation.”

    In his presentation before the court, Ngcukaitobi invoked Smotrich’s language by arguing that the Rafah incursion “is the last stage of ‘total annihilation’ of Palestinian life.”

    “For Palestinians to be able to continue to exist as a protected group under the Genocide Convention, they need a place from which to rebuild,” he continued. “Rafah is that place, the last stand… Without Rafah, the possibility to rebuild will be lost forever.”

    In her speech, Irish lawyer Blinne Ni Ghralaigh outlined other developments in Gaza since the ICJ issued its preliminary ruling that illustrate the need for the court’s “invaluable intervention.”

    Ni Ghralaigh detailed the destruction of hospitals like Al-Shifa, where mass graves have been found with the remains of women, children, and medical workers, and warned that “the same fate now awaits Rafah’s remaining hospitals, doctors, and medics.”

    She also pointed to evidence that the IDF is treating evacuated areas as “extermination zones,” where soldiers are ordered to kill any remaining people, and its use of an error-prone AI system to target Palestinians.

    The South African legal team said the court must order Israel “to immediately take all effective measures to ensure the access of persons able to investigate ongoing atrocities,” and called on the ICJ to “at least modify its provisional measures” from March, when it demanded that Israel allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.

    “The court has the power to modify or make an explicit order for Israel to cease its military operations in Rafah, Gaza, and to withdraw from the Gaza Strip,” said Ni Ghralaigh, pointing out that the provisional measure from March could only take full effect if a cease-fire agreement was reached.

    “No such resolution is in place. The court must itself, therefore, create the circumstances necessary for its provisional measures to take full effect. It must order Israel to cease its military operations system finally,” she said. “Enough is enough.”

    Israel is expected to address the ICJ at a second day of hearings on Friday.

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

  • World Leaders Blasted Over ‘Grave’ Violations of International Law by Israel

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

    Palestinian who fled Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip ride with their belongings in the back of a truck, as they arrive to take shelter in Deir el-Balah in the central part of the Palestinian territory on May 12, 2024.  (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)

    “The first step for Third States in upholding their own legal obligations to ensure [international humanitarian law] is respected is to stop the Rafah invasion, open all land crossings and lift internal barriers for humanitarian access,” said an international coalition.

    While ordinary citizens from across the globe have expressed their condemnation of the ongoing carnage and suffering in Gaza, a coalition of 20 international human rights groups on Wednesday excoriated world leaders for standing idly by as Israel carries out “a grave violation of international humanitarian law” with its military assault on Rafah.

    With the United Nations agencies reporting that as many as 450,000 people have already attempted to flee the encircled southern city where more than 1.4 million had sought refuge, a joint statement by the groups—including Amnesty International, Oxfam, Médecins du Monde International Network, and Mercy Corps—rebuked Israel’s evacuation orders as “unlawful” and chided third-party countries for violating their own obligations under international humanitarian law (IHL) by refusing to intervene.

    “Third States have the responsibility to urgently act in bringing to an end, and pursue accountability for, the Grave Breaches of IHL taking place in Gaza,” said the groups. “The first step for Third States in upholding their own legal obligations to ensure IHL is respected is to stop the Rafah invasion, open all land crossings and lift internal barriers for humanitarian access.”

    According to the statement, Israel’s ongoing violations are clear and obvious:

    The Israeli military’s “evacuation orders” are unlawful and amount to forcible transfer, a grave violation of international humanitarian law (IHL). Israel has ordered hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to flee, without providing civilians and humanitarian actors clear information nor timeframe. IHL sets clear conditions for an evacuation to be lawful: the occupying power must ensure that these displacements are temporary and that displaced persons are provided with satisfactory conditions of hygiene, health, safety and nutrition, and members of the same family must not be separated. Israeli authorities have failed to meet any of these requirements.

    With Wednesday marking the 76th anniversary of the Nakba, when Palestinians were forced to leave their homes en masse following the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948, a new wave of forced displacement is now upon the people of Gaza only served to heighten the harsh reality for those with nowhere safe to go.

    Ilan Pappe, a scholar of Palestinian history at the University of Exeter, explained to Al-Jazeera that while some comparisons with the original Nakba make sense, what is happening now to the people of Gaza is “even worse” in many ways.

    “What we see now are massacres which are part of the genocidal impulse, namely to kill people in order to downsize the number of people living in Gaza,” Pappe said. On Tuesday, a group of ultra-nationalist Israelis, including members of the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet, marched in the city of Sderot near the Gaza border as they called for resettlement of the enclave.

    “Ethnic cleansing is a terrible crime against humanity but genocide is even worse,” said Pappe. “So I think we are seeing a transition from using ethnic cleansing as the main method of taking as much of Palestine as possible, with as few Palestinians in it as possible—we are moving into a far more lethal method, that of genocide.”

    According to the joint declaration by rights groups on Wednesday, Israel’s military assault in Rafah is “disrupting the humanitarian response” of relief organizations and the United Nations, amounting to a “breach of the U.N. Security Council resolutions 2720 and 2728 as well as the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures ordering Israel to enable the provision of basic services and humanitarian assistance.”

    In remarks Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said Israel’s escalating military operations and evacuation orders in Rafah “are further impeding humanitarian access and worsening an already dire situation.”

    “For people in Gaza,” said Guterres, “nowhere is safe now.”

    Despite the concerns from U.N. agencies and international relief groups, the U.S. government under President Joe Biden on Tuesday said it was preparing a $1 billion weapons shipment for Israel to bolster its military capabilities.

    Because of such military support, the human rights coalition argued in its Wednesday declaration that the U.S. “bears a significant responsibility” for Israel’s violations of international humanitarian law. “In addition to halting the transfer of high payload bombs, the U.S. should also use all its leverage to halt the ongoing military operation in Rafah,” the groups said.

    Those in the human rights coalition said it is the Palestinian people paying the price for the failure of world leaders to meet their obligations to put a stop to the forced displacement of civilians in Gaza.

    “We have been warning for months that Israel must be stopped from entering Rafah or Gaza would face an even greater humanitarian catastrophe” than it already has, said Florence Rigal, president of Médecins du Monde France. “The inaction of third countries is seen as a lack of concern for the consequences for the exhausted civilian population. It is unacceptable and immediate action must be taken to prevent further suffering.”

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

  • ‘Most Thorough Legal Analysis’ Yet Concludes Israel Committing Genocide in Gaza

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

    A Palestinian boy observes the site of an Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced people in the central Gaza Strip on May 14, 2024.
     (Photo” Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

    The University Network for Human Rights report also stresses that other nations are legally obligated to “refrain from recognizing Israel’s breaches as legal or taking any actions that may amount to complicity.”

    The University Network for Human Rights on Wednesday released and sent to United Nations offices a 105-page report that it called “the most thorough legal analysis” yet to find “Israel is committing genocide” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

    The network partnered with the International Human Rights Clinic at Boston University School of Law, the International Human Rights Clinic at Cornell Law School, the Center for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria, and the Lowenstein Human Rights Project at Yale Law School for the analysis, which draws from “a diverse range of credible sources” and the territory’s history.

    “After reviewing the facts established by independent human rights monitors, journalists, and United Nations agencies, we conclude that Israel’s actions in and regarding Gaza since October 7, 2023, violate the Genocide Convention,” the report states. “Israel has committed genocidal acts of killing, causing serious harm to, and inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza, a protected group that forms a substantial part of the Palestinian people.”

    As of May 1, Israel’s assault had killed “more than 5% of Gaza’s population, with over 2% of Gaza’s children killed or injured,” the analysis notes. In recent days, Israeli forces have ramped up their attack on Rafah—where over a million people from other parts of the besieged enclave sought refuge—and the total death toll has risen to 35,233, according to Gaza health officials, with another 79,141 Palestinians injured.

    “Israel’s military operation has destroyed up to 70% of homes in Gaza, and has decimated civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, schools, universities, U.N. facilities, and cultural and religious heritage sites,” the document says, noting the “staggering” number of forced displacements. “Civilians in Gaza face catastrophic levels of hunger and deprivation due to Israel’s restriction on, and failure to ensure adequate access to, basic essentials of life, including food, water, medicine, and fuel.”

    “Israel’s genocidal acts in Gaza have been motivated by the requisite genocidal intent, as evidenced in this report by the statements of Israeli leaders, the character of the state and its military forces’ conduct against and relating to Palestinians in Gaza, and the direct nexus between them,” the publication continues, pointing to comments from “officials at all levels of Israeli government, up to and including” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

    Israel has faced mounting allegations of genocide since launching its retaliation for the Hamas-led October 7 attack—including an ongoing South Africa-led case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which found in January that the country is “plausibly” committing genocide.

    Bolstering the ICJ’s conclusion, the Wednesday report declares that “Israel’s violations of the international legal prohibition of genocide amount to grave breaches of peremptory norms of international law that must cease immediately.”

    “These violations give rise to obligations by all other states: to refrain from recognizing Israel’s breaches as legal or taking any actions that may amount to complicity in these breaches; and to take positive steps to suppress, prevent, and punish the commission by Israel of further genocidal acts against the Palestinian people in Gaza,” the document adds.

    The United States has long provided Israel with billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic support—which have soared since October 7, despite growing pressure on U.S. President Joe Biden to cut off such assistance. The Democrat has incrementally increased his criticism of the Israeli assault in recent weeks, angering far-right leaders in both countries.

    The new legal analysis—which was sent to the U.N.’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, and the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel—came on the same day that 20 human rights groups issued a joint statement.

    The rights organizations—including Amnesty International, Mercy Corps, and Oxfam—called on world leaders “to urgently act in bringing to an end, and pursue accountability for,” Israel’s grave breaches of international humanitarian law in Gaza.

    Both documents were released on Nakba Day, which commemorates the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Some experts and campaigners contend that the Nakba—Arabic for catastrophe—continues today.

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