UN Declares GENOCIDE – Israel’s Cheerleaders Have NOWHERE Left To Hide
Thousands protest Trump in London, voice support for Gaza
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Thousands of demonstrators staged a rally in London on Wednesday to protest US President Donald Trump while chanting pro-Palestine slogans in solidarity with the Gaza Strip
Thousands of demonstrators staged a rally in London on Wednesday to protest US President Donald Trump while chanting pro-Palestine slogans in solidarity with the Gaza Strip, Anadolu reports.
Protesters gathered at Portland Place upon a call by Stop Trump Coalition to oppose Trump’s state visit to the UK and his policies on immigration, climate change and particularly his stance on Gaza.
Carrying various signs, the crowd criticized the British government for the state visit and continued Israeli attacks on Gaza.
Some of the signs read: “Migrants welcome, Trump not welcome” and “No to racism, no to Trump.”
Demonstrators later held a march toward Parliament Square to attend the main rally.
“Donald Trump, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide,” and “Keir Starmer, shame on you” were chanted by demonstrators.
The US president and first lady Melania Trump landed in London late Tuesday for an unprecedented second state visit to Britain.
READ: Thousands in London call for arrest of Israeli president during UK visit
The visit came after an invitation extended by King Charles in February during Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s visit to Washington.
It has already been dubbed “historic” and “unprecedented” as Trump became the first elected political leader in modern times to be hosted for two state visits by a British monarch.
The US president and first lady will be hosted by Charles at Windsor Castle for two days of events.
Trump and Starmer will meet Thursday at Chequers, the official country residence of the UK’s prime minister.
On Tuesday, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory confirmed that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza.
The commission’s report concluded that Israel committed four of the five acts of genocide defined in the “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.”
The Israeli army has killed almost 65,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, in Gaza since October 2023. The relentless bombardment has rendered the enclave uninhabitable and led to starvation and the spread of diseases.
The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants last November for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
READ: Qatar, Saudi Arabia denounce Israel’s expanded ground offensive in Gaza City
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UN says at least 75 Palestinians died in Israeli detention since October 2023
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At least 75 Palestinians, including a 17-year-old, have died in Israeli detention since Oct. 7, 2023, according to a report released on Wednesday by the UN human rights office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Anadolu reports.
The report accused Israeli authorities of systematic torture, deliberate ill-treatment, and denial of medical care.
The office said Israeli authorities “must urgently end the systematic torture and other ill-treatment of Palestinians held in their prisons and other places of detention and protect and ensure their right to life.”
Of the deaths, 49 were from Gaza, 24 from the West Bank, and two were Palestinian citizens of Israel. Another 19 deaths were acknowledged by Israeli authorities without sufficient details to verify identity. At least five Palestinians, including a 16-year-old, died in custody shortly after being shot by Israeli security forces, some without timely medical attention.
READ: Qatar, Saudi Arabia denounce Israel’s expanded ground offensive in Gaza City
The report cited repeated beatings, waterboarding, stress positions, sexual violence, starvation, and denial of hygiene and medical care.
At least 22 detainees who died had pre-existing health conditions, while testimonies and autopsy reports in 12 cases indicated death followed torture or beatings.
The office also drew attention to Israel’s refusal to comply with a Sept. 7 High Court ruling ordering improved food supplies for prisoners and attempts to conceal reports on detention conditions.
“Unless rebutted by investigations respecting international standards for each incident, Israel remains responsible for every single death in custody,” it said, warning such practices may amount to war crimes or crimes against humanity.
“Israel has the obligation to end all practices that amount to torture or other ill-treatment, and to protect all detainees against such practices, including by ensuring prisoners have regular access to their families, their lawyers, the courts and that independent bodies such as the (International Committee of the Red Cross) ICRC conduct regular inspections of places of detention,” the rights office said. “Israel must protect and respect the right to life of all prisoners, and must provide access to adequate medical care, including to ensure that prisoners do not die from preexisting conditions.”
READ: 79,000 Israelis left country in 2024, outnumbering newcomers, official figures show
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Qatar, Saudi Arabia denounce Israel’s expanded ground offensive in Gaza City
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Qatar and Saudi Arabia on Wednesday condemned an Israeli decision to expand its ongoing military assault in Gaza City as a “flagrant violation of international law,” Anadolu reports.
On Tuesday, the Israeli army expanded its offensive in the densely populated city, as part of Tel Aviv’s plan to entirely occupy the area.
In a statement, Qatar’s Foreign Ministry decried the assault as “an extension of the war of genocide against the brotherly Palestinian people and a flagrant violation of international law.”
The ministry warned that the Israeli escalation threatens regional and international peace and security, calling for a “decisive international solidarity to compel Israel to comply with international legitimacy resolutions.”
Saudi Arabia strongly denounced the deadly military operations in the Gaza Strip and continued crimes against Palestinians “amid the international community’s failure to take effective measures to put an end to this criminal approach.”
READ: UN chief: What is happening in Gaza is horrendous
“The Kingdom warns of the grave danger of Israel’s ongoing bloody policy against the Gaza Strip and its population,” the ministry said.
It called on the permanent members of the UN Security Council “to adopt immediate resolutions to stop Israel’s mechanism of killing, starvation, and displacement” against Palestinians and “to firmly enforce all relevant international resolutions on the (Israeli) occupation authorities.”
The Israeli army has killed almost 65,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, in Gaza since October 2023. The relentless bombardment has rendered the enclave uninhabitable and led to famine and the spread of diseases.
On Tuesday, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory confirmed that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza.
READ: F1 driver Lewis Hamilton decries Gaza crisis, urges public to help
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Trump Threatens to Jail CodePink Protesters Who Disrupted His Dinner With Chants for Gaza
Original article by Stephen Prager republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
“It is all very reminiscent of McCarthyism,” a CodePink spokesperson said.
President Donald Trump threatened on Monday to jail the peace activists who disrupted his dinner with pro-Palestinian chants last week, referring to their behavior as “subversive.”
Last Tuesday, members of CodePink, a women-led antiwar group, verbally confronted the president and several top members of his administration—including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth—as they dined on steak and seafood at a swanky DC eatery.
The small group of activists castigated the president for his support for Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza and its blockade on humanitarian aid, which has caused mass starvation throughout the strip.
The activists chanted, “They feast while Gaza starves,” and called Trump “the Hitler of our time” for supporting the military campaign, which an Israeli general recently admitted has resulted in over 220,000 people being killed or wounded.
On Monday, as Trump and his administration continued to map out a sweeping crackdown against left-wing speech following the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, the president suggested that the women of CodePink should also be punished for their peaceful display of dissent, referring to them as “professional agitators” and “total phonies.”
“They started to scream when I got into the restaurant,” he said, “‘Ohhh’…Something with Palestine. And I said, ‘Well, I’m doing a great job for peace in the Middle East, I should get lots of awards for that, right, with the Abraham Accords and everything else.’ But the woman just stood up and started screaming. And she got booed out of the place.”
Trump called the protester a “mouthpiece” and a “paid agitator,” before saying that he’d “asked [Attorney General Pam Bondi] to look into that in terms of RICO, bringing RICO cases against them. Criminal RICO. Because they should be put in jail, what they’re doing to this country is really subversive.”
RICO refers to the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which the government has traditionally used to prosecute organized crime groups. But following Kirk’s shooting, Trump has suggested it be used to carry out what his deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said on Friday would be an effort to “dismantle” left-wing organizations in the United States.
Trump has threatened to use RICO charges against liberal nonprofits, including the Open Society Foundations and the Ford Foundation, which Vance referred to on Monday as “terrorist networks.” The vice president claimed that these groups push “messaging designed to trigger and incite violence,” with his leading example being an article published in The Nation that harshly criticized Kirk’s political views following his assassination.
Melissa Garriga, a spokesperson for CodePink, told Common Dreams that Trump’s allegations against her antiwar group are untrue.
“CodePink has a very small staff,” Garriga said. “A majority of our work is done by CodePink volunteers, who are not paid. ThRacketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act,ey represent the majority of the American public and are not ‘mouthpieces’ of any foreign government or political party. They are workers, veterans, artists, and peace activists from across the country. We are committed to peaceful, nonviolent means of protest when executing our actions.”
“This is not new for us,” Garriga added. “Over the past few years, elected officials, more often Republican elected officials, have constantly called for investigations into progressive organizations such as ours. They’ve launched baseless congressional investigations over CodePink’s funding sources that their Democrat colleagues often parrot.”
Earlier this year, Senate Intelligence Committee chair Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) claimed that the group was funded by “Communist China” after a retired Army colonel working with the group disrupted a committee hearing with chants of “Stop funding Israel!” CodePink filed an ethics complaint against Cotton in response, calling his accusation “untrue and libelous.”
In 2024, when CodePink was castigating the Biden administration’s unwavering support for Israel, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) made a similar suggestion that the group should be investigated by the FBI because, “when they advocate for a ceasefire, it’s Putin’s agenda at play.” Prior to that, when a member of the group confronted Pelosi, the congresswoman responded, “Go back to China.”
CodePink strenuously denied having received any funding from the Chinese government or any other foreign governments following calls from several Republicans for the group to be investigated over its campaign against military escalation with China.
“Our financial records are transparent and audited, and any suggestion that external governments or political entities influence us is ludicrous,” Garriga reiterated to Common Dreams. “As we have officially stated multiple times, CodePink receives no money from any foreign government, and we are funded by thousands of individual donors and US-based foundations.”
“President Trump is trying to intimidate people who speak up for peace and justice, and we won’t be intimidated,” she continued. “We represent the popular opinion in the United States: the majority who are against war and genocide.”
According to a Quinnipiac poll released at the end of August, 60% of voters across all parties said they opposed sending more military aid to Israel, compared to just 32% who said they supported it. Half of the respondents said they agreed with the international community’s growing consensus that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza.
“It is all very reminiscent of McCarthyism,” Garriga said of Trump’s threats to crack down on left-wing speech. “It’s a critical moment for other organizations to stand in solidarity, loud and clear solidarity with organizations facing repression.”
Original article by Stephen Prager republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
