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IDF Let Israeli Civilians Film Torture of Palestinian Detainees: Report

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

Stripped, blindfolded, and bound Palestinian civilians are taken prisoner and ordered into a line by Israeli occupation forces in Gaza in December 2023.  (Photo: Social media post by Israeli soldier)

“This is beyond military occupation, apartheid, economic exploitation, and all the rest,” asserted one journalist. “There is something extremely sickening happening here.”

Israel Defense Forces officers brought Israeli civilians into detention centers and allowed them to watch and film Palestinian prisoners being tortured, according to survivor testimonies published this week by the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.

Prisoners held at detention centers in Zikim on the northern border of the Gaza Strip and at a site in southern Israel affiliated with Naqab Prison “told Euro-Med Monitor that the Israeli soldiers had purposefully presented them before Israeli civilians, falsely claiming that they were fighters affiliated with Palestinian armed factions and that they had taken part in the October 7 attack on Israeli towns,” the group said.

The former detainees said groups of 10-20 Israeli civilians were brought in and allowed to record torture sessions in which the men, stripped nearly naked, were beaten with metal batons, electrocuted, and had hot water poured over their heads. The ex-prisoners said some of the Israelis laughed while filming their torture.

“I was arrested at the checkpoint set up near the Kuwait roundabout, which separates Gaza City from the central region, as part of the Israeli random arrest campaigns. I was subjected to all types of torture and abuse for approximately 52 days,” 43-year-old Omar Abu Mudallala told Euro-Med Monitor, adding that his IDF captors “brought Israeli civilians to watch our nude torture.”

Abu Mudallala continued:

The Israeli army brought a number of Israeli civilians into our detention centers while beating us and telling them, “These are Hamas terrorists who killed you and raped your women on 7 October,” while the Israeli civilians were filming us being beaten, abused, and tortured while making fun of us.

This happened five times while I was being held. The first time was in Barkasat Zikim, where we were blindfolded. However, one of the detainees who speaks Hebrew told us that the soldiers were interacting with Israeli civilians claiming that we were armed fighters. The other four incidents took place in the Negev detention facility, where successive Israeli groups were taken inside tents to witness our abuse and record the torture methods we were subjected to without allowing us to speak or interact with them. Since we were not wearing blindfolds at the time, I saw them all four times with my own eyes.

“One of the detainees who speaks Hebrew tried to explain to the Israeli civilians that we are civilians and we had nothing to do with any military activities, but that also did not help,” Abu Mudallala added. “However, he was subjected to severe psychological and physical torture. It was really shameful to bring Israeli citizens to record our torture for being allegedly involved in killing and rape incidents.”

Another former prisoner, identified only as 42-year-old D.H., told Euro-Med Monitor that “Israeli civilians were brought to witness the abuse and torture that we were subjected to, which the army deliberately began when they were present.”

“These Israelis sometimes brought their dogs with them to bark at us,” he added. “They also took pictures of us and posted them on social media apps, particularly TikTok, with the soldiers themselves doing the same.”

Euro-Med Monitor asserted that “the vast majority of those arrested from within the Gaza Strip have been subjected to arbitrary detention without being charged or brought to justice, with no legal measures taken against them.”

“They are also denied a fair trial and are subjected to forced disappearance, torture, and inhumane treatment,” the group added. “Israeli practices against Palestinian detainees are blatant violations of international conventions and standards, particularly the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, which forbids an occupying authority from transferring prisoners from the occupied territory to detention facilities on its territory, as well as torturing, attacking, or otherwise degrading the human dignity of those detained.”

Israeli forces, with their long history of torturing Palestinian prisoners, have been accused during the current war on Gaza of torturing civilian detainees before executing them. Photos and videos of Israeli troops abusing Palestinians—both alive and dead—have been published by perpetrators on social media. Human rights defenders point to such images and their proud display as evidence of Israeli genocide in a war in which more than 100,000 Palestinians have been killed, maimed, or gone missing.

The International Court of Justice found last month in a preliminary ruling that Israel is “plausibly” committing genocide in Gaza, while ordering Israeli forces to “take all measures” to avoid perpetrating genocidal acts.

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

Continue ReadingIDF Let Israeli Civilians Film Torture of Palestinian Detainees: Report

South Africa makes ‘urgent request’ to top UN court over Israeli attacks on Rafah

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/south-africa-makes-urgent-request-top-un-court-over-israeli-attacks-rafah

Smoke rises after a bombardment in the Gaza Strip, February 12, 2024

SOUTH AFRICA said it had lodged an urgent request with the United Nations International Court of Justice (ICJ) over Israel’s assault on Palestinians in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

The South African government is asking the ICJ to consider whether Israel has committed a “further imminent breach of the rights of Palestinians in Gaza” following the provisional orders the court handed down last month.

This comes as progress is reportedly being made in securing a ceasefire deal between Hamas and the Israeli government.

In December, South Africa instituted proceedings at the ICJ accusing Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.

Among its six orders, the ICJ said that Israel must do all it can to prevent the deaths of Palestinians and the destruction of Gaza.

…

A statement released by the office of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, said: “The South African government was gravely concerned that the unprecedented military offensive against Rafah, as announced by the state of Israel, has already led to and will result in further large-scale killing, harm and destruction.

“This would be in serious and irreparable breach both of the Genocide Convention and of the court’s order of January 26 2024.”

…

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/south-africa-makes-urgent-request-top-un-court-over-israeli-attacks-rafah

Continue ReadingSouth Africa makes ‘urgent request’ to top UN court over Israeli attacks on Rafah

UK won’t say when or if it will restart aid to Gaza despite reports of famine

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Original article by Adam Ramsay republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

RAFAH, GAZA – JANUARY 04: UNRWA personnel distribute flour to Palestinian families  | (Photo by Abed Zagout/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Aid is suspended amid allegations about UNRWA. There is no such suspension of arms exports despite evidence of genocide

The UK government still has no answers about if or when it will restart funding to the main relief agency in Gaza despite mounting reports of famine.

Britain’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said last month it was stopping aid to UNRWA while it “reviewed” allegations from the Israeli government that 12 of the agency’s 13,000 staff had been involved in attacks on Israel in October.

No such suspension has been announced of Britain’s arms exports to Israel, despite the International Court of Justice having found there was a plausible case that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. The ICJ also ordered Israel to allow aid into the region.

The Israeli government’s allegations came in the form of a six-page dossier, which Israel passed to UNRWA and its donors the day after the genocide ruling. In recent years, claims made by the Israeli government have repeatedly been subsequently dismissed as propaganda intended to influence geopolitics at key moments.

Labour MP Zarah Sultana has submitted a parliamentary question asking the department what the review involves and how long it will take given the urgent humanitarian crisis in the region more than two weeks on, but it has snubbed both her and openDemocracy’s questions.

While the dossier that Israel passed to UNRWA and its donors was confidential, Channel 4 News managed to get a copy, and said it provided no evidence for the explosive claims, which knocked the genocide ruling off front pages across the western world.

UNRWA, whose full name is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, was founded in 1949 to support the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees forced from their homes in order to create the state of Israel in 1948.

It currently supports 5.9 million Palestinian refugees, including those in Gaza and the West Bank affected by the current conflict, in Lebanon where there is ongoing socio-economic collapse, in Syria, where the civil war continues, and in Jordan. With its projects including running schools, medical clinics and hospitals and the distribution of food aid, it is the biggest single UN agency.

Before the allegations were made, senior Israeli officials had argued that it would be necessary to destroy UNRWA in order to win the war on Gaza.

Sultana called the government’s suspension of UNRWA funding “an act of collective punishment on the Palestinian people, millions of whom are currently displaced, unable to access food and water, and in urgent need of humanitarian aid”.

She said it was right that the allegations against UNRWA staff were investigated, but added that it was Britain’s duty under international law to ensure Palestinians in Gaza have access to humanitarian assistance. “The government’s refusal to be transparent about this decision and the process for its investigation is wholly unacceptable,” she said.

The UK’s contributions to UNRWA have varied over the years, peaking at around £90m in 2019 before being slashed to around £25m in 2022. UNRWA has subsequently admitted it fired all the staff members accused by Israel of involvement in the attacks before investigating whether there was any truth to the allegations.

The UN Secretary General has called for the donors who have suspended their funding “to, at least, guarantee the continuity of UNRWA’s operations”. UNRWA has said that the decision of some donors to suspend funding “threatens our ongoing humanitarian work across the region”. While some governments, like the UK, have suspended aid, others including Belgium, Ireland, Denmark and Spain have continued their funding.

The UK government has said that it remains “committed to getting humanitarian aid to the people in Gaza who desperately need it,” but other aid organisations who operate in Gaza have argued that none but UNRWA has the capacity to deliver it. More than 20 aid groups, including Oxfam and Save the Children, have warned that, if funding suspensions are not reversed, “we may see a complete collapse of the already restricted humanitarian response in Gaza”, calling the government’s decision “reckless”.

The UK says it “allocated” £16m to UNRWA between 7 October and the suspension in January, and that no further UK funding was due until April 2024. It has not said how much of the £16m has already been paid or spent, and how much is affected by the decision to suspend payments.

The BBC reported yesterday that children in northern Gaza have been going for days without food as aid can no longer reach them.

Original article by Adam Ramsay republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Image of UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. UK halts aid to UNRWA in Gaza over Israeli allegations that 12 staff from a total of 13,000 were involved in the 7 October 2024 attack on Israel.
Image of UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. UK halts aid to UNRWA in Gaza over Israeli allegations that 12 staff from a total of 13,000 were involved in the 7 October 2024 attack on Israel.
Zionist Keir Starmer supports Israel's Gaza genocide.
Zionist Keir Starmer supports Israel’s Gaza genocide.
Continue ReadingUK won’t say when or if it will restart aid to Gaza despite reports of famine

‘Scandal’: Israeli Dossier ‘Provides No Evidence’ for Claims Against UNRWA Staff

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

Palestinians gather for a demonstration in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on January 30, 2024. (Photo: AFP via Getty Images)

“People in Gaza are starving, and because of spurious allegations made in a dodgy dossier, they will experience worse hunger.”

An Israeli dossier that more than a dozen countries have cited to justify cutting off funding to the United Nations’ Palestinian refugee agency “provides no evidence” that a small number of the key U.N. aid body’s employees were involved in the October 7 Hamas-led attack, according to an investigation released Monday by the British outlet Channel 4.

The dossier merely states that “from intelligence information, documents, and identity cards seized during the course of the fighting, it is now possible to flag around 190 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist operatives who serve as UNRWA employees.”

“More than 10 UNRWA staffers took part in the events of [October 7],” reads the six-page dossier, which Israel provided to UNRWA donor countries—including the agency’s top contributor, the United States—shortly after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) handed down an interim decision ordering Israel to take concrete steps to prevent genocide in the Gaza Strip.

The ICJ instructed the Israeli government to ensure that sufficient humanitarian assistance flows to desperate and starving Gazans, but Israel’s allegations against UNRWA employees led at least 16 countries to suspend funding for the agency, the most critical aid body operating in the Palestinian enclave. Around a million displaced Gazans are currently sheltering at facilities run by UNRWA, which has 13,000 employees across the strip.

The UNRWA is reportedly set to lose $65 million by the end of February as donors’ funding cuts take effect, imperiling the agency’s operations in Gaza and across the Middle East.

Channel 4 noted Monday that all 13,000 of UNRWA’s Gaza employees’ names “have been checked against the U.N. terrorism list and, as recently as last May, were vetted and approved by Israel.”

The UNRWA quickly fired nine of the employees named by Israel. On Monday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres established “an independent review group to assess whether the agency is doing everything within its power to ensure neutrality and to respond to allegations of serious breaches when they are made.”

The Daily Beast also obtained a copy of the Israeli dossier and—similar to Channel 4—reported Tuesday that it “includes little evidence to back up” Israel’s allegations against UNRWA employees.

Ashish Prashar, a spokesperson for Gaza Voices, said in response to the new reporting that “we now know that the document used to suspend funding to UNRWA ‘provides no evidence.'”

“This is the latest campaign in a decades-long attack on UNRWA by Israel and a subset of the broader campaign to eliminate the Palestinian refugee issue,” said Prashar. “People in Gaza are starving, and because of spurious allegations made in a dodgy dossier, they will experience worse hunger. This scandal should lead to resignations from officials in the U.S., UK, Germany, and elsewhere who all suspended funding to a besieged people experiencing a genocide as a result of a baseless accusation by the génocidaires themselves.”

“The fact that the U.S., U.K., and several other Western governments instantly attacked UNRWA on the orders of a genocidal foreign government (based on bogus claims) should make you very worried about your own democracy.”

Jeremy Scahill, a senior correspondent at The Intercept‘s criticized the Biden administration and The Wall Street Journal for characterizing the dossier as “some smoking gun.”

During a press conference last week, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the allegations in the dossier “highly, highly credible.”

The same day as Blinken’s remarks, the Journal ran a story stating that “around 10%” of UNRWA’s Gaza employees have ties to Islamist militant groups,” pointing to an “intelligence dossier.”

But questions about the reliability of the purported intelligence cited in the Israeli dossier have been swirling since the details of its contents began to trickle out in the press late last month. Citing one unnamed senior Israeli official, Axios reported that “the intelligence is a result of interrogations of militants who were arrested during the Oct. 7 attack.”

Israeli forces have repeatedly been accused by U.N. experts and human rights groups of using torture to extract forced confessions from Palestinian detainees.

“The fact that the U.S., U.K., and several other Western governments instantly attacked UNRWA on the orders of a genocidal foreign government (based on bogus claims) should make you very worried about your own democracy,” Craig Mokhiber, a former U.N. official who resigned over the global institution’s failure to stop Israel’s assault on Gaza, wrote Tuesday.

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

Senate Deal Would Block All Funding to UNRWA as Gazans Starve

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Continue Reading‘Scandal’: Israeli Dossier ‘Provides No Evidence’ for Claims Against UNRWA Staff

Amnesty Says Cutting Off Aid to UNRWA While Arming Israel Is ‘Stark’ Hypocrisy

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

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks during a press conference in Washington, D.C. on January 29, 2024.  (Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

“Some of the very governments that announced they will cut off funds to UNRWA over these allegations have, in the meantime, continued to arm Israeli forces despite overwhelming evidence that these arms are used to commit war crimes.”

Amnesty International on Monday joined the growing global chorus denouncing Israel’s allies for suspending aid to the United Nations’ Palestinian refugee agency even as they continue to support the Israeli military’s war on the Gaza Strip, risking complicity in genocide.

Agnès Callamard, Amnesty’s secretary-general and the former U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, said that while Israel’s claim that a dozen staffers at the refugee agency played a role Hamas’ October 7 attack is “serious and must be independently investigated,” the “alleged actions of a few individuals must not be used as a pretext for cutting off lifesaving assistance in what could amount to collective punishment.”

“Some of the very governments that announced they will cut off funds to UNRWA over these allegations have, in the meantime, continued to arm Israeli forces despite overwhelming evidence that these arms are used to commit war crimes and serious human rights violations,” said Callamard. “Rushing to freeze funds for humanitarian aid, based on allegations that are still being investigated, while refusing to even consider suspending support for the Israeli military is a stark example of double standards.”

“Instead of suspending vital funding to those in need,” Callamard added, “states should be working to halt arms transfers to Israel and Palestinian armed groups and pushing for an immediate and sustained cease-fire and full humanitarian access to help alleviate devastating suffering.”

“The humanitarian crisis has reached catastrophic levels, and any additional limitations on aid will result in more deaths and suffering.”

The United States announced last week that it would temporarily cut off UNRWA funding as it reviews Israel’s allegations against the low-level agency employees—a decision that came just hours after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel must ensure the provision of humanitarian aid to Gazans, tens of thousands of whom have been killed or wounded by Israeli bombs and shells in less than four months.

Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, said that “defunding UNRWA at this critical time overtly defies” the ICJ’s ruling.

Médecins Sans Frontières, also known as Doctors Without Borders, similarly warned Monday that “the consequences these cuts in funding will have on the ground contradict the provisional measures issued by the International Court of Justice.”

“The humanitarian crisis has reached catastrophic levels,” the group added, “and any additional limitations on aid will result in more deaths and suffering.”

Just over a week before the Biden administration decided to suspend its UNRWA contributions, a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department described the agency’s work as “invaluable” and “lifesaving.”

On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged that the UNRWA “has played and continues to play an absolutely indispensable role in trying to make sure that men, women, and children who so desperately need assistance in Gaza actually get it.”

“And no one else can play the role that UNRWA’s been playing, certainly not in the near term,” he added. “So that only underscores the importance of UNRWA tackling this as quickly, as effectively, and as thoroughly as possible, and that’s what we’re looking for.”

At least a dozen countries—including the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands—have joined the U.S. in suspending aid to the UNRWA, the most critical humanitarian aid organization in the famine-stricken Gaza Strip.

The moves have put the UNRWA’s operations in jeopardy, with the U.N. chief warning that the agency’s current funding levels won’t be enough to meet all of its requirements in February. The agency has no strategic financial reserves.

Amnesty said the countries that have suspended aid to the UNRWA thus far provided more than half of the agency’s budget in 2022.

Several major nations, including Norway and Spain, have refused to join the U.S.-led freeze of aid to the UNRWA, which the Israeli government has been targeting for years and is hoping to push out of Gaza entirely. The UNRWA quickly fired nine of the 12 workers that Israel accused of taking part in the October 7 attack and has launched an investigation.

On Monday, Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said his country will not suspend UNRWA funding, which he said helps “alleviate the terrible humanitarian situation in Gaza.”

Albares also pledged to continue pushing for an end to Israel’s assault on Gaza, the release of hostages, and a lasting diplomatic solution.

“We will not resign ourselves to watching more innocent women, men, and children killed in Gaza and more suffering of Palestinian families,” he said. “We will not resign ourselves to keep watching the suffering of the families of hostages. The violence must stop.”

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

Continue ReadingAmnesty Says Cutting Off Aid to UNRWA While Arming Israel Is ‘Stark’ Hypocrisy