UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights Situation in the Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese speaks at a press conference at a session of the UN Human Rights Council, Geneva, 27 March 2024 (AFP)
The ICJP referred case studies of four charities, including Trinity College Cambridge and Jewish National Fund UK, to the UN
A number of British charities have been referred to the United Nations special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, over allegedly “aiding and abetting international crimes against Palestinians”.
These include both the University of Cambridge’s Trinity College and Jewish National Fund UK, a charity which has former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as honorary patrons.
The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), a UK-based rights group, announced on Monday that it had answered Albanese’s call for evidence ahead of a report to the UN Human Rights Council on “how the private sector has contributed to establishing and maintain Israel’s presence” in the occupied territories.
The ICJP said its submission explains the case studies of four charities, including Trinity College Cambridge and the UK arm of the Jewish National Fund.
Middle East Eye revealed in February that the prestigious Cambridge college, which is one of Britain’s wealthiest landowners, had $78,089 invested in Israel’s largest arms company, Elbit Systems, which produces 85 percent of the drones and land-based equipment used by the Israeli army.
MEE also reported that the college had millions of dollars invested in other companies arming, supporting and profiting from Israel’s war on Gaza.
Amnesty International’s 296-page report – ‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza – documents how, during its military offensive launched in the wake of the deadly Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on 7 October 2023, Israel has unleashed hell and destruction on Palestinians in Gaza brazenly, continuously and with total impunity.
Over the past two months the crisis has grown particularly acute in the North Gaza governorate, where a besieged population is facing starvation, displacement and annihilation amid relentless bombardment and suffocating restrictions on life-saving humanitarian aid.
Amnesty’s report examines in detail Israel’s violations in Gaza over the nine months between 7 October 2023 and early July 2024, with Amnesty interviewing 212 people – including Palestinian victims and witnesses, local authorities in Gaza and healthcare workers – while conducting fieldwork and analysing an extensive range of visual and digital evidence, including satellite imagery. Amnesty also analysed statements by senior Israeli government and military officials, and official Israeli bodies. On multiple occasions, Amnesty shared its findings with the Israeli authorities but has received no substantive response.
Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, said:
“Amnesty International’s report demonstrates that Israel has carried out acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention, with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza.
“These acts include killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.
“Month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them.
“Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now.
“States that continue to transfer arms to Israel at this time must know they are violating their obligation to prevent genocide and are at risk of becoming complicit in genocide.
“All states with influence over Israel, particularly key arms suppliers like the USA and Germany, but also other EU member states – the UK and others – must act now to bring Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza to an immediate end.
“The International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity issued last month offer real hope of long-overdue justice for victims.
“States must demonstrate their respect for the court’s decision and for universal international law principles by arresting and handing over those wanted by the ICC.”
Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty International UK’s Chief Executive, said:
“As a state party to the Genocide Convention, the UK has a legal obligation to use all reasonable means to help prevent genocide.
“The UK must take urgent steps to make clear to Israel that this country does not support genocidal acts against Palestinians in Gaza, and those acts must end immediately.
“The UK government must, as an urgent first step, work with other countries by all diplomatic and legal means to press Israel into fully implementing the provisional measures ordered by the International Court of Justice.
“To avoid the risk of itself being complicit in genocide, the UK must immediately end all arms transfers to Israel.
“The UK should also press for multilateral targeted sanctions at the UN Security Council against Israeli and Hamas officials most implicated in crimes under international law.
“The UK must act to ensure justice and accountability, supporting the ongoing International Criminal Court investigation into Palestine and executing any ICC arrest warrants.”
Genocide denying UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspending 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide and the UK government and military’s active participation in genocide.
A view of destruction near Kamal Adwan Hospital after Israeli forces’ withdrawal, northern Gaza Strip on October 26, 2024. [Karam Hassan – Anadolu Agency]
Three staff members of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza were wounded, one critically, when the Israeli occupation army bombed the facility’s courtyard again on Tuesday, the Palestinian Information Centre has reported. This was the fifth attack by the Israeli occupation army on the medical facility in recent weeks.
A medical source said that at least one Israeli quadcopter was used in the attack. One of the wounded employees is now in the intensive care unit.
The hospital’s director, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, said that drones were dropping bombs, scattering shrapnel at the site.
Meanwhile, media sources reported a surge in Israeli air strikes on Gaza City where Al-Ahli Hospital has been struggling to deal with mass casualties.
A demonstrator is seen wearing a placard that calls for the arrest of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the rally. Pro-Palestine demonstrators joined the 21st demonstration organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) since October 2023. (Photo by David Tramontan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
The live-documented ethnic cleansing in Gaza, much like in 1948, alongside the expansion of Jewish-only colonies in the West Bank, underscores the true undeclared objectives in Israel’s ostensible “total victory.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared that Israel’s war on Gaza will continue until achieving what he terms “total victory.” Instead of critically examining Netanyahu’s vague and open-ended objectives, much of the Western media and many governments frame the onslaught as self-defense, and some even normalize the genocide as a “humane” attempt to “free” Israeli captives.
At the same time, the same pundits decontextualized the Palestinian right to self-defense by ignoring that the October 7 revolt was a direct response to over two decades of Israel’s imposed “starvation diet” blockade on Gaza. Exactly, as the West turns a blind eye, and continues to enable Israel’s theft of Palestinian-occupied land in the West Bank to benefit Jewish-only colonies.
Meanwhile, these media outlets downplay or dismiss Israel’s treacherous undeclared war objectives, even to the detriment of Israeli captives and the immense civilian suffering in Gaza.
For over a year, Netanyahu has prioritized an agenda to reoccupy and to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza rather than engage in negotiations for prisoner’s swap. Especially since the release of Israeli captives would undermine one of Netanyahu’s primary pretexts for pursuing his sinister objectives.
This is only possible in the wake of Western leaders embracing Netanyahu’s racist perspective, focusing only on the well-being of Israeli captives, while ignoring the over 10,000 Palestinian hostages held in Israeli jails, and the welfare of the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza. For instance, Joe Biden has expressed recently his concern over Netanyahu potentially delaying action to secure the release of Israeli captives until January 20, 2025, while expressing no sympathy for the suffering of Palestinians in 2024 and beyond.
With the conspicuous silence or impotence of world bodies, the Israeli captives became a convenient fig leaf under which Netanyahu saw as an opportunity to reoccupy Gaza. It is worth recalling that in 2005, Netanyahu resigned from the Israeli government in protest against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s decision to “disengage” and remove the Jewish-only colonies from the Gaza strip.
Immediately following October 7, Netanyahu launched a genocidal war, disregarding the Palestinian Resistance’s proposal for prisoner’s exchange. His decision to pursue war instead of negotiations was motivated by several factors:
a) Deflect responsibility for the intelligence failure under his watch. b) Evade scrutiny of his role in facilitating external funding to Hamas. c) Execute a campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing to reoccupy Gaza.
The strategy to ethnically cleanse Gaza was openly advocated by Israel’s racist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who three months following October 7 called for Palestinians to leave Gaza. The scion of an Ukrainian immigrant repeated the century-old European Zionist myth of blooming the desert⎯a narrative that not only ignores historical and geographical realities but also contradicts his own Old Testament that once described Canaan, the land of the Filastin (Palestine), as the “land of milk and honey,” before the ancient Hebrews migrated from their original homes to Palestine.
Further, and on January 1, 2024, Smotrich’s fellow racist National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir declared in a Knesset speech that Israel should never withdraw from any territory it occupies and explained that the establishment of new Jewish-only colonies in Gaza as “an important thing.” The following day, on January 2, Ben Gvir doubled down, stating that displacing “hundreds of thousands” of Palestinians from Gaza would help pave the way for the creation of the new Jewish-only colonies.
More recently, on Monday, November 25, Smotrich declared to the Yesha Council, an umbrella group representing the Jewish-only colonies in the occupied West Bank, “We can and must conquer the Gaza Strip.” He claimed there is “a unique opportunity” with Donald Trump’s election to halve Gaza’s population—a veiled euphemism for ethnic cleansing. Last Thursday, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir echoed similar calls to “reoccupy the Gaza Strip.”
On the ground inside Gaza, the tools of occupation were more explicit in defining the meaning of Netanyahu’s ostensible mantra: “total victory.” Israeli soldiers posed before an orange banner that read, “Only (Jewish-only) settlement (in Gaza) would be considered victory!” Notably, the orange color harkens back to the banners used by the settler movement in 2005 to protest Sharon’s decision to evacuate the Jewish-only colonies from Gaza.
On November 29, Ajith Sunghay, head of the U.N. Human Rights Office for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, stated after visiting Gaza that the “U.N. had been unable to deliver any aid to northern Gaza” due to “repeated impediments or outright rejections of humanitarian convoys by the Israeli authorities.”
Regarding the genocide by terror, U.N. Human Rights Chief Volker Türk reported that residents of northern Gaza are subjected to “non-stop” bombing. Simultaneously, hundreds of thousands have been ordered to evacuate, likely to make way for new Jewish-only settlements.
As part of the forced depopulation of Gaza’s northern region—the most fertile land in the strip—Israel is constructing a topographic barrier to isolate this area from the rest of Gaza. Beginning in early October, Israel carried out extensive controlled explosions, demolishing multi-story buildings to clear a path for a 5.6-mile road cutting across the strip. This road divides Gaza City from the northern towns of Jabalia, Beit Hanoun, and Beit Lahia. Human Rights Watch (HRW) has characterized this widespread forced displacement as part of an official government policy amounting to “crimes against humanity.”
On November 30, former Defense Minister and IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Ya’alon confirmed HRW findings, stating that Netanyahu and “far-right” (racist) elements are waging a war of “occupation, annexation, and ethnic cleansing.” He added, “There is no Beit Lahia, there is no Beit Hanoun.”
The live-documented ethnic cleansing in Gaza, much like in 1948, alongside the expansion of Jewish-only colonies in the West Bank, underscores the true undeclared objectives in Israel’s ostensible “total victory.” In this contest, Netanyahu’s deliberate undermining of U.S.-led negotiations for prisoner’s swap exemplifies his quintessential diabolical persona: exploiting the predicament of his own Israeli captives to further his cynical undeclared agenda of slaughtering the “Amalek,” and ethnically cleansing Gaza to pave the way for new Jewish-only colonies.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAGenocide denying UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspending 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide and the UK government and military’s active participation in genocide.
Palestinians gather to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen in Khan Younis, Gaza on December 1, 2024. (Photo: Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
“The window of opportunity to deliver assistance is now, today, not tomorrow,” said the deputy director-general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
A top official at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization said Monday that food availability across Gaza has reached “an all-time low” under Israel’s suffocating blockade, which has heavily restricted the entrance of lifesaving humanitarian assistance and plunged the enclave into famine.
“Food supply has sharply deteriorated,” FAO Deputy Director-General Beth Bechdol said at a conference in Cairo, Egypt. “The window of opportunity to deliver assistance is now, today, not tomorrow. Food, medicine, and fuel are self-evident priorities, but we must also prioritize the ability to grow food locally where it is needed most to ensure survival.”
Bechdol’s grim assessment came weeks after the Biden administration pressuredIsrael to improve conditions on the ground in Gaza, which has been utterly devastated by more than a year of bombing.
Aid organizations say that far from improving, Gaza’s humanitarian crisis has only gotten worse since the Biden administration threatened to cut off the supply of U.S. weapons to Israel. Last month, the U.S. effectively dropped its pressure campaign by concluding that Israel was not violating international law by blocking American humanitarian assistance.
Most of Gaza’s population is currently experiencing “high levels of food insecurity,” according to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) figures, and the “risk of Famine persists across the whole Gaza Strip.”
“The catastrophe in Gaza is nothing short of a complete breakdown of our common humanity. The nightmare must stop.”
In addition to obstructing aid deliveries, Israeli forces have decimated Gaza’s agricultural infrastructure and cropland, repeatedly attacked aid workers, and facilitated the looting of humanitarian supplies, fueling desperation among Gaza’s starving population. Last week, as The Associated Pressreported, “two children and a woman were crushed to death… as a crowd of Palestinians pushed to get bread at a bakery in the Gaza Strip amid a worsening food crisis in the war-ravaged territory.”
Amina Mohammed, the U.N.’s deputy secretary-general, said at the Cairo conference on Monday that “conditions for Palestinians in Gaza are appalling and apocalyptic,” with malnutrition running “rampant” and famine “imminent.”
“In the past four months alone, nearly 19,000 children were hospitalized due to acute malnutrition—nearly double the cases in the first half of the year,” Mohammed said. “In the face of the gigantic needs, humanitarian aid is—outrageously—being blocked. This flies in the face of the clear requirements under international humanitarian law to respect and to protect civilians and to ensure their essential needs are met.”
“It’s past time for an immediate cease-fire and the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages,” she added. “The catastrophe in Gaza is nothing short of a complete breakdown of our common humanity. The nightmare must stop. We cannot continue to look away.”
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAGenocide denying UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspending 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide and the UK government and military’s active participation in genocide.
