Gaza

To Earn Back My Vote, Biden Must Stop Supporting Genocide in Gaza

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Zionist president Joe Biden. 27 July 2021 image by Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz. Original public domain image from Flickr
Zionist president Joe Biden. 27 July 2021 image by Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz. Original public domain image from Flickr

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

We cannot vote for the re-election of a U.S. president who enables Israel’s campaign of mass starvation, bombardment, and murder of Palestinian civilians.

As an anti-Zionist Jew and a lifelong Democrat, I have signed a public statement that bluntly declares, “We will not vote for Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential elections if he continues to support Israel’s ethnic cleansing and genocide of the more than 2 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip.”

In signing this statement, I join with over 1,000 Arab, Muslim, Jewish, Christian and allied U.S. voters who have signed the statement to express our disgust with the horrifying policies being embraced by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. As the statement goes on to say, “We cannot vote for the re-election of a U.S. president who enables Israel’s campaign of mass starvation, bombardment, and murder of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.” Please check it out and join me in signing.

Biden’s actions in blindly supporting Israel’s campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide, along with the plan to give Israel another $14 BILLION in military aid, are the last straw.

In addition to always having voted for Democrats, I have also volunteered for and donated money to many Democratic campaigns. In primary campaigns, I have focused my support on brave candidates like Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Cori Bush. I have done so, not only because of their support for Palestinian rights, but for their overall progressive positions on many issues that I am concerned about. But all too often, I have had to bite my tongue and vote for a Democrat as the least worst candidate in a general election. However, enough is enough. The administration has gone too far by failing to protect Palestinian civilians from a continuing genocide. It is now time to step up and tell the Democratic Party that nominating Biden and Harris for 2024 is both a losing strategy and an act of great immorality.

I too mourn for the many civilians who have been killed in Israel and Gaza, and I demand that all war crimes be vigorously prosecuted. As my late mother often said, “Two wrongs don’t make a right,” yet too many elected leaders ignore Israel’s brutality while condemning the Palestinian victims. Indeed history is clear that for the last 75 years, Israel has been exempted from responsibility for its frequent violations of Palestinian rights, as it uses lethal violence to confiscate Palestinian land and hand it over to Israeli Jews.

We know that Hillary Clinton lost because many Democrats didn’t come out and vote. Biden and Harris won because many of us progressives held our noses and voted for them as the only alternative to former President Donald Trump. However, Biden’s actions in blindly supporting Israel’s campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide, along with the plan to give Israel another $14 BILLION in military aid, are the last straw.

While elected officials like Biden, Harris, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and Nancy Pelosi spout Zionist talking points, many Americans are demanding an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza and an end to U.S. military aid to Israel. In a recent Data for Progress poll, 80% of Democrats and 66% of likely voters want the president to call for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza. A CBS News poll showed that 53% of Democrats oppose sending more weapons to Israel, and 70% support U.S. aid to Gaza.

America’s elected leaders supported apartheid South Africa’s crimes for far too long, and the same can now be said about today’s Democrats as they continue to ignore Israel’s crimes. It is time for all Democratic voters to make it clear that only a significant change in Biden’s approach to Palestine can enable him to earn our votes in 2024. Please join me and over 500 other voters who have declared that we cannot vote for Biden in 2024 if he continues to support Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

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

Continue ReadingTo Earn Back My Vote, Biden Must Stop Supporting Genocide in Gaza

‘A Clear-Cut War Crime’: Outrage Grows as Israel Again Bombs Gaza Refugee Camp

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

Palestinians examine the destruction in the aftermath of a deadly Israeli airstrike on Gaza’s largest refugee camp on November 1, 2023. (Photo: Bashar Taleb/AFP via Getty Images)

“The U.S. government cannot keep funding these atrocities,” said U.S. Rep. Cori Bush. “There must be a cease-fire now.”

The Israeli military bombed Gaza’s largest refugee camp for the second consecutive day on Wednesday as humanitarian groups and lawmakers called the series of attacks a blatant war crime and slammed the U.S. government for enabling such atrocities.

Wednesday’s attack reportedly killed and wounded “a number of” people at the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp, where hundreds were killed or injured roughly 24 hours earlier in bombings by the Israeli military.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) asserted that Tuesday’s strikes were aimed at a “tunnel complex” where a senior Hamas commander, Ibrahim Biari, was purportedly hiding. The IDF said the airstrikes killed Biari but denied intentionally bombing the camp’s buildings, more than a dozen of which were leveled in the attack.

“I was waiting in line to buy bread when suddenly and without any prior warning seven to eight missiles fell,” said one eyewitness. “There were seven to eight huge holes in the ground, full of killed people, body parts all over the place. It felt like the end of the world.”

A Doctors Without Borders nurse in Gaza said that after Tuesday’s strikes, “young children arrived at the hospital with deep wounds and severe burns.”

“They came without their families,” the nurse added. “Many were screaming and asking for their parents. I stayed with them until we could find a place, as the hospital was full with patients.”

Asked about the civilians who were killed in the Tuesday strikes, an IDF spokesperson told CNN that “this is the tragedy of war” and that the Israeli military instructed people in the area to “move south.”

Hamas denied the claim that one of its commanders was in the area targeted by the Israeli military.

Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of Refugees International, argued Tuesday that Israel’s assault on Gaza’s largest refugee camp “is a clear-cut war crime.”

“It shows wanton disregard for the legal obligation to minimize civilian harm in targeting military objectives. It is the latest of many such attacks by the IDF,” Konyndyk wrote. “This in turn underscores that Netanyahu is making a mockery of Biden’s repeated pleas to follow the laws of war—without any acknowledgment of that reality by the U.S. This leaves a cease-fire as the only viable path to civilian protection.”

U.S. Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), who is leading a congressional resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza, also denounced the refugee camp bombing as a war crime and said that “this unspeakable violence must end.”

“The U.S. government cannot keep funding these atrocities,” Bush added. “There must be a cease-fire now.”

U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) similarly criticized the Biden administration and Congress for backing Israel as it carries out massive crimes against humanity.

“Make no mistake: these human rights abuses are being carried out with U.S. weapons, U.S. funding, and with ‘no red lines,'” Omar wrote on social media. “And now we are set to vote on an additional $14 billion with no restrictions or conditions. The United States Congress should not fund violations of U.S. and international law.”

Israeli forces have killed at least 8,800 people in Gaza since October 7, when Hamas launched a deadly attack on Israel.

The nation’s relentless bombing campaign and siege have fueled a massive humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, displacing more than a million people, imperiling the enclave’s healthcare system, and decimating much of the territory’s civilian infrastructure—including communication and internet services.

The United Nations and human rights organizations have accused Israeli forces of committing grave war crimes in Gaza, including collective punishment, forcible transfer, and genocide.

The wave of airstrikes that hit Jabalia on Wednesday marked at least the sixth time Israel has bombed the camp since October 7, according toAl Jazeera.

“This is just the latest atrocity to befall the people of Gaza where the fighting has entered an even more terrifying phase, with increasingly dreadful humanitarian consequences,” United Nations emergency relief coordinator Martin Griffiths said of the Jabalia attack on Wednesday. “Meanwhile, the world seems unable, or unwilling, to act. This cannot go on.”

Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights, a United Kingdom-based legal charity, said in a statement Wednesday that the Jabalia strikes “should overwhelmingly signal to the U.K. Government and Labour Party that they must now call for an immediate cease-fire.”

“We urge the U.K. Government and Labour Party to urgently revise their position in light of the Jabalia mass killing, and clearly place the future preservation of civilian life as its highest objective,” the group added.

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

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Continue Reading‘A Clear-Cut War Crime’: Outrage Grows as Israel Again Bombs Gaza Refugee Camp

In What Is Called A War

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

Gazan father Muhammed Gouda and his baby daughter Misk lay dead at Aqsa Hospital after an Israeli airstrike hit Deir al-Balah  Photo by Mustafa Hassona/Anadolu via Getty Images

We apologize. The unprecedented human tragedy in Gaza hurtles on; we can record only pitiless catastrophe afflicting the innocent, its numbers and names. Over 3,400 Palestinian children have been killed and 6,300 wounded; Israel is hitting ravaged hospitals without fuel or light with de-facto bombings; their mad “leader” is quoting Biblical bloodbaths, declaring a “holy mission” of annihilation, and refusing to stop in the name of vengeance: “This is a time for war.” Once again: Murdering children is not “war.”

Writer Ahmed Nehad bitterly documents a grim former “normal” Gaza: Scarce food, water, electricity, hospital beds, jobs, hope. That “normal” was long met with “deafening global silence” until the Oct. 7 killings of Israeli civilians: Then, “the world sat upright and saw the horror of blood spilled in historic Palestine, when the blood took on a different hue.” In just over three weeks, Israel has dropped over 12,000 tons of bombs on Gaza; they have killed over 8,300, but their “true cost, says UNICEF’s Catherine Russell, “will be measured in children’s lives.” Over 420 children a day are killed or injured, roughly one every 10 minutes; over 2,000 children are missing under the rubble, and likely dead; 70% of the dead are children and women; frantic rescue crews must decide between retrieving dead bodies or trying to dig out wounded ones; entire families have been wiped out, leaving young survivors as orphans asking where their parents are; over 16,000 people have been wounded, with little medical help available; over 1.4 million people, more than half the population, have been displaced; and there is “no safe place in Gaza.”

Including, grotesquely, hospitals, where many have sought shelter. Over 50,000 people have taken refuge at al-Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital; perhaps 12,000 have fled to al-Quds hospital, the next biggest. But under a siege that has blocked all fuel and medicine, and with over a third of the city’s hospitals shut down, the rest are struggling. Doctors dependent on one generator are operating by flashlight, rationing anesthetics, sterilizing with vinegar or laundry detergent, cutting back on dialysis and chemo treatments, having to choose, “like God,” which of two intensive care babies to save. Meanwhile, “If the electricity goes, it just becomes a mass grave.” Israel has ordered hospitals to “evacuate,” knowing well that’s impossible; says Nebal Farsakh of the Palestinian Red Crescent, “Evacuating them means killing them.” Israel has also issued cruelly pointless “warnings” to “evacuate” before bombardments, face-saving mockeries of humanity that “do not make targeting hospitals less of a war crime,” says Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah: “A crime is a crime, even if you make it by appointment.”

On Democracy Now, Dr. Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian physician who’s helped provide emergency care in Gaza for 16 years during “very hectic periods” – Israeli assaults in 2006, 2009, 2012, 2014 – cites an “urgent fear” among colleagues Israel will move to bomb hospitals directly, as opposed to its “de facto” bombardments of nearby sites. He particularly condemns Israel’s threat to bomb the (clearly civilian) al-Shifa based on their claim Hamas’ command center is under it – a claim he’s heard since 2009, with no proof forthcoming despite having walked freely there, slept there, filmed there for years. As he anxiously waits in Cairo for entry to Gaza, he praises health workers who remain, “moral compasses” and “cornerstones of a social fabric” that’s been largely ripped away. “It’s completely absurd that (we) have a state army threatening to bomb hospitals and killing children” – 5,300 to date – “in what is called a war,” he says, blasting Biden’s refusal to demand a ceasefire. “This has to stop. I don’t need to use the word ‘genocide.’ It’s enough to say ‘mass murder of civilians.’ We need to stand up and say we don’t accept this.”

As to Netanyahu, his blood lust is far from sated. On Monday, in a chilling speech experts deemed “an explicit call to genocide,” he termed Israel’s slaughter of innocents “a holy mission” and invoked their ancient foe from the Old Testament: “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible: ‘Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.'” Calls for a ceasefire, he declared with stunning cognitive dissonance, are “a call for Israel (to) surrender to barbarism…The Bible says there is a time for peace and a time for war. This is a time for war.” Still, mournfully, Ahmed Nehad nonetheless pleads for the trifling mercy of a ceasefire, that “a mere handful might endure.” “Grant us the luxury of one last hug,” he writes. “Our end is nigh, rest assured.” Those already dead and documented – name, age, ID number – total 6,747; the number excludes thousands still under rubble or not yet identified. To read the list, you must keep scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. May their memories be for a blessing.

Injured child at Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital after Israeli airstrikes. Photo by Saeed Jaras/APA Images

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

Continue ReadingIn What Is Called A War

Rights Group Warns US Congress Not to Bankroll Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza

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On the night of October 27, Israel cut all communication services in Gaza and intensified the aerial bombing campaign.
On the night of October 27, Israel cut all communication services in Gaza and intensified the aerial bombing campaign.

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

“Gaslighting Americans into facilitating long-held Israeli plans to depopulate Gaza under the cover of ‘humanitarian aid’ is a cruel and grotesque hoax.”

Human rights advocates are warning that U.S. President Joe Biden’s new supplemental funding request could—under the guise of humanitarian aid—bolster, or even help finance, the far-right Israeli government’s plans for ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip.

Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) raised alarm on Monday over language in Biden’s request that says resources from the supplemental package “would support displaced and conflict-affected civilians, including Palestinian refugees in Gaza and the West Bank, and to address potential needs of Gazans fleeing to neighboring countries.”

The White House request adds that “this crisis could well result in displacement across [the] border and higher regional humanitarian needs, and funding may be used to meet evolving programming requirements outside of Gaza.”

DAWN said that “any authorization for funding activities, infrastructure, or aid outside of Israel and Palestine” should be opposed “because they effectively facilitate, fund, and reward the forced transfer of Palestinians.”

Days after the Biden White House sent its request to Congress, an Israeli newspaper reported on a leaked document from Israel’s Intelligence Ministry that proposes the forcible and permanent transfer of all of Gaza’s 2.2 million Palestinian residents to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. A full English translation of the document was published Monday by +972 Magazine.

The Israeli government has already ordered the entire population of northern Gaza to evacuate to the southern half of the strip as Israel’s military decimates the north with airstrikes and expands its ground operations there.

The internal document states that the “evacuation of the civilian population from Gaza to Sinai” would “yield positive, long-term strategic outcomes for Israel” and “is an executable option” that is preferable to alternatives, such as “the population remaining in Gaza along with the emergence of a local Arab authority” following Israel’s devastating assault on the territory.

The policy paper adds that the Israeli government’s efforts to “bring about a significant change in the civilian reality in the Gaza Strip” would require “intensive action to harness the United States and other countries to support this goal.”

“Both by word and by deed, Israeli officials are pursuing a broader strategy to permanently remove Palestinians from their native lands, and counting on the U.S. to pay for it.”

DAWN expressed grave concern Monday that, if approved by Congress, Biden’s supplemental funding proposal would provide critical support for the Israeli government’s plans for forcible transfer, which is a violation of international law.

“The Biden administration isn’t just giving a green light for ethnic cleansing—it’s bankrolling it,” said DAWN executive director Sarah Leah Whitson. “Gaslighting Americans into facilitating long-held Israeli plans to depopulate Gaza under the cover of ‘humanitarian aid’ is a cruel and grotesque hoax.”

DAWN urged Congress to vote against any supplemental funding legislation that includes humanitarian aid language mirroring the White House’s request, which also includes $14 billion in military aid for Israel on top of weaponry that the U.S. has already sent to Israel in recent weeks.

“Supporting Israeli efforts to forcibly transfer Palestinians to Egypt would make U.S. officials liable for complicity in war crimes,” the group said.

Former Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth echoed DAWN:

House Republicans introduced legislation on Monday that includes mostly military assistance for Israel—omitting Ukraine funding, disaster relief, and humanitarian aid that the Biden administration requested. The GOP bill is likely a non-starter in the U.S. Senate, where Democratic lawmakers objected to the inclusion of Internal Revenue Service cuts.

“Both by word and by deed, Israeli officials are pursuing a broader strategy to permanently remove Palestinians from their native lands, and counting on the U.S. to pay for it,” said Whitson. “Congress should vote against any aid package that could support these acts, which amount to violations of human rights and grave breaches of the laws of war.”

+972 Magazine reported Monday that the Israeli Intelligence Ministry document “proposes promoting a campaign targeting Palestinian civilians in Gaza that will ‘motivate them to accept this plan’ and lead them to give up their land.”

“The messages should revolve around the loss of land, making it clear that there is no hope of returning to the territories Israel will soon occupy, whether or not that is true,” the document states. “The image needs to be, ‘Allah made sure you lose this land because of Hamas’ leadership—there is no choice but to move to another place with the assistance of your Muslim brothers.”

A similar plan has been outlined by an Israeli think tank with ties to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

As his government continues its bombardment of Gaza and ramps up its ground attack, Netanyahu has reportedly lobbied European leaders to pressure Egypt to accept refugees from Gaza. More than a million Gazans have been internally displaced since October 7, when Israel launched its latest assault on the Palestinian territory in the wake of a deadly Hamas attack.

An unnamed Western diplomat told the Financial Times that Netanyahu “pushed quite hard that the solution was for Egyptians to take Gazans at least during the conflict.”

“But we didn’t take it very seriously,” the diplomat added, “because the Egyptian position is and has always been very clear and they just won’t do it.”

The Israeli government’s actions and rhetoric since October 7 have sparked international warnings that Palestinians are “in grave danger of mass ethnic cleansing,” as United Nations expert Francesca Albanese put it earlier this month.

“What we are witnessing may be a repeat of the 1948 Nakba, and the 1967 Naksa, yet on a larger scale,” Albanese said. “The international community must do everything to stop this from happening again.”

Israel’s attack on Gaza has killed more than 8,000 people—including more than 3,400 children—in just over three weeks. The Israeli military’s bombing campaign has destroyed or damaged at least 45% of Gaza’s housing units.

Around 40% of Gaza’s schools have also been damaged by Israeli bombs, according to the United Nations.

“The best way to protect Palestinian civilians from the wrath of war is to announce and enforce a cease-fire,” Raed Jarrar, DAWN’s advocacy director, said Monday. “Rather than pushing Palestinians to Egypt, Israel should allow Palestinian civilians to cross the apartheid fence into Israel. Maybe Palestinians can set up tent cities in the same towns and villages they were displaced from during the first Nakba 75 years ago.”

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

Continue ReadingRights Group Warns US Congress Not to Bankroll Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza

Hundreds reported dead after Israel wipes out entire neighborhood in Gaza

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

Jabayla refugee camp’s most populated neighborhood is razed using six US-made bombs, each weighing one ton

Jabalya Refugee Camp Gaza 31 October 2023 Photo: Quds News Network
Jabalya Refugee Camp Gaza 31 October 2023 Photo: Quds News Network

On October 31, Israel dropped six US-made bombs (each weighing one ton) on the most populated neighborhood of Jabayla refugee camp in Gaza, killing and injuring 400, reports the Palestinian Ministry of Health. The death toll is likely to increase as more information becomes known. 

According to the Quds News Network, Jabalya is one of the most populated areas of Gaza, with 60,000 residents in only 1.4 square kilometers. 

The United States funds Israel to the tune of USD 4 billion each year. As Israel carries out its genocide in Gaza, the US Congress is set to approve USD 14.3 billion in emergency funds for Israel. 

US activists have argued that Israel’s heavy funding and military support from the US is due to the state’s unique position as a Western military outpost in West Asia. As current US President Joe Biden himself said in 1986, “It’s the best three billion dollar investment we made. Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region.”

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

Continue ReadingHundreds reported dead after Israel wipes out entire neighborhood in Gaza