Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir on 10 September, 2023 [OHAD ZWIGENBERG/POOL/AFP via Getty Images]
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has instructed Israeli forces to prioritise demolishing homes in Palestinian towns and villages within Israel, based on claims that they were built without permits.
According to Haaretz, Ben-Gvir lacks the legal authority to determine demolition policies, a responsibility held by Israeli Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara in coordination with enforcement agencies.
Nevertheless, during private meetings with Israeli forces, he pushed for the destruction of Palestinian family buildings.
Sources reveal that Ben-Gvir justified these orders as a way to “demonstrate governance and increase deterrence,” even stating: “The best deterrent is evicting a family from its home.”
One source noted: “It was completely clear he meant demolitions in the Arab community. Ben-Gvir is seeking provocation and chaos; that’s what interests him.”
Senior Israeli occupation officers confirmed that Ben-Gvir insisted on prioritising demolitions of occupied homes, even when such structures are not high-priority cases.
The Israeli government justifies these demolitions by claiming the structures were built without permits, although obtaining such permits is nearly impossible for Palestinians under what Amnesty and other human rights groups have described as Israel’s two-tier apartheid system.
Ben-Gvir’s push to add occupancy as a criterion for demolition drew objections from senior Justice Ministry officials, who urged the Israeli forces to assert their independence. “Ben-Gvir is acting like a ‘super-commissioner’,” said one official.
Despite resistance, Israeli forces operations increasingly align with Ben-Gvir’s focus on demolishing Arab community homes, reported Haaretz.
State Prosecutor Amit Aisman and Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara are aware of Ben-Gvir’s interference but have yet to confront him directly. Meanwhile, Ben-Gvir continues to issue demolition orders against Palestinian homes.
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The logo of Human Rights NGO Amnesty International is pictured in Paris on May 28, 2024 [STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP via Getty Images]
Amnesty International has suspended its Israel branch for failing to align with the organisation’s stance that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and accused the branch of “anti-Palestinian racism,” according to the New York Post.
The report, published on Tuesday, references a 6 January letter in which Tiumalu Lauvale Peter Fa’afiu, Amnesty’s interim international chairman, stated that the Israel branch had acted in ways that undermined the group’s mission.
The suspension is set to last two years, during which a review panel will evaluate whether to reinstate Amnesty International Israel or impose a permanent ban. The branch retains the option to appeal the decision.
“We take this action in response to evidence of endemic anti-Palestinian racism within AI Israel, which violates core human rights principles and Amnesty values, and evidence of AI Israel’s misalignment with and hostility to Amnesty positions,” read a Monday email from Fa’afiu.
The interim international chairman also stated that Amnesty Israel had actively opposed the organisation’s research and reports, particularly the 2022 publication “Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity” and the 2024 report, “’You Feel Like You Are Subhuman:’ Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza.”
“AI Israel has sought to publicly discredit Amnesty’s human rights research and positions,” wrote Fa’afiu.
“Its efforts to publicly undermine the findings and recommendations of Amnesty’s 2022 report on Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians and, more recently, Amnesty’s 2024 report on Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, have been deeply prejudicial to Amnesty’s human rights mission, threatening our credibility, integrity and operational coherence.”
In response, members of Amnesty International’s Israeli branch have pushed back against their suspension, accusing the global organisation of overlooking anti-Semitism within its ranks.
Former Amnesty Israel Director, Yonatan Gher, criticised the move, describing the Israeli branch as “the guardian of the Israeli government against the human rights movement.”
In a leaked email, Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard announced that the suspension would be formally addressed on 21 January. Fa’afiu reportedly added that a committee would “determine whether Amnesty International Israel has a future within the Amnesty movement.”
Amnesty did not reply to MEMO’s request for comment at the time of going to press.
A view of damage to several buildings at Sana’a International Airport following an airstrike carried out by the Israeli army last night in the Houthi-controlled capital of Yemen on December 27, 2024. [Mohammed Hamoud – Anadolu Agency]
Israel, the US and Britain, on Friday, carried out their first coordinated attack on Houthi targets in Yemen, the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation reported.
Houthi-affiliated Al-Masirah TV also reported that a series of air strikes targeted the vicinity of the Al-Sabeen Square in the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, Anadolu Agency reports.
The attack coincided with a rally in support of Palestine amid Israel’s 16-month-old continuing genocidal war on Gaza.
Additionally, the Houthis reported six air strikes on the port city of Al-Hudaydah in western Yemen.
The report did not provide additional details on the impact of the strikes.
The escalation came after the Houthis said, on Monday, that they had attacked the US aircraft carrier, “USS Harry Truman” in the northern Red Sea and claimed missile and drone attacks on targets in southern and central Israel.
The Houthis have targeted Israeli cargo ships or ones linked with Tel Aviv in the Red Sea with missiles and drones in a show of support with the Gaza Strip, where over 46,000 people have been killed in Israel’s genocidal war since October 2023.
Since early 2024, a coalition led by the US has been carrying out air strikes that it said target Houthi locations in Yemen in response to the group’s Red Sea attacks, with occasional retaliation from the Houthis.
Newborn, baby and child patients are deprived of necessary treatment due to power crisis and lack of medicines as Israeli forces cutting off electricity, preventing the entry of fuel and various supplies disrupted the functioning of all hospitals in the region, at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, Gaza on July 04, 2024. (Photo: Hani Alshaer/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“It’s an impossible situation, because even if we prioritize the little fuel that is left to the most urgent departments, we know that they won’t last more than 36 to 48 hours,” said Julie Faucon, MSF medical team leader in Gaza.
The international humanitarian group Médecins Sans Frontières, also kno wn as Doctors Without Borders or MSF, warned in a Wednesday statement that newborn babies and other patients are at dire risk as southern Gaza’s Nasser Hospital runs out of fuel.
The group warned that electricity for the MSF-supported Nasser Hospital, where MSF members are providing emergency, maternity, pediatric, burn, and trauma care, may be cut off for some hospital departments leaving patients without “lifesaving care.” The hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit is currently treating children and newborns who are reliant on mechanical ventilation and incubators. All of these young patients are dependent on electricity from fuel generators, MSF wrote.
Nasser Hospital, as well as two other facilities in the Gaza Strip, Al-Aqsa Hospital and European Gaza Hospital, are nearing the need to close due to lack of fuel, the group reported Wednesday.
“It’s an impossible situation, because even if we prioritize the little fuel that is left to the most urgent departments, we know that they won’t last more than 36 to 48 hours,” said Julie Faucon, MSF medical team leader in Gaza, according to the statement. “While some patients are hanging on by a thread, the lack of sustained electricity is impacting the level of care we can provide to those with burns and trauma.”
Pascale Coissard, MSF emergency coordinator, said that the situation is “a consequence of Israel’s ongoing blockade and continuous criminal looting of lifesaving supplies.”
In mid-July, the United Nations reported that “Israeli authorities continue to tightly control allocations of incoming fuel, thereby limiting humanitarian operations, especially by local partners,” and just last week the body noted that only 16 of the region’s 36 hospitals remained partially in operation.
Pointing to lack of medical supplies, equipment, and personnel, Rik Peeperkorn, the World Health Organization representative for the West Bank and Gaza, told a recent U.N. Security Council meeting that “the health sector is being systematically dismantled.”
Attacks by the Israeli military have left northern Gaza’s three hospitals—the Kamal Adwan Hospital, al-Awda Hospital, and the Indonesian Hospital—either entirely out of service or barely functioning.
Hussam Abu Safia, the head of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, was detained by Israeli forces during their raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital in late December.
Human rights defenders and the medical community have called for his release, it’s believed that he is being held in an Israeli detention center, though the Israeli officials had given news media and human rights groups conflicting messages about his whereabouts.
The New York Times headquarters in New York, US, on 4 February, 2024 [Shelby Knowles/Bloomberg via Getty Images]
A prominent American Quaker organisation has cancelled its advertising with the New York Times (NYT) after the newspaper refused to allow an advertisement referring to Israel’s aggression in Gaza as genocide.
The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a century-old peace and justice organisation, had proposed an advertisement reading: “Tell Congress to stop arming Israel’s genocide in Gaza now! As a Quaker organization, we work for peace. Join us. Tell the President and Congress to stop the killing and starvation in Gaza.”
Commenting on the newspaper’s decision not to run the advertisement, AFSC General Secretary Joyce Ajlouny said: “The refusal of The New York Times to run paid digital ads that call for an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza is an outrageous attempt to sidestep the truth. Palestinians and allies have been silenced and marginalised in the media for decades as these institutions choose silence over accountability. It is only by challenging this reality that we can hope to forge a path toward a more just and equitable world.”
US media reported that the NYT’s advertising team suggested AFSC replace the word “genocide” with “war” – a term with fundamentally different implications both colloquially and under international law. When AFSC rejected this proposal, the Times’ Ad Acceptability Team responded that “various international bodies, human rights organisations, and governments have differing views on the situation,” citing a need for “factual accuracy and adherence to legal standards.”
Ajlouny highlighted the organisation’s direct experience of the situation: “Our courageous staff members in Gaza witness daily horrors and continue to provide vital support despite Israel’s relentless attacks on their homes and families. Our ad campaign aims to shed light on these atrocities while urging people in the U.S. to pressure the President and Congress to halt weapons shipments to Israel and advocate for an end to the genocide.”
AFSC, which has operated in Gaza since 1948, currently maintains staff in the besieged Strip, Israeli occupied Ramallah and Jerusalem. Since October 2023, their Gaza team has distributed 1.5 million meals, hygiene kits and other humanitarian aid to displaced people.
The controversy comes after the International Court of Justice’s provisional ruling in January 2024 that Israel’s actions in Gaza were “plausibly genocidal” in the case brought by South Africa, now supported by 14 countries. Notably, the Washington Post has run advertisements from Amnesty International using genocide terminology.
“The suggestion that the New York Times couldn’t run an ad against Israel’s genocide in Gaza because there are ‘differing views’ is absurd,” said Layne Mullett, AFSC’s director of media relations. “The New York Times advertises a wide variety of products and advocacy messages on which there are differing views. Why is it not acceptable to publicise the meticulously documented atrocities committed by Israel and paid for by the United States?”
There is growing consensus among major human rights organisations, legal scholars and international experts that Israel’s military onslaught in Gaza amounts to genocide. This includes assessments from prominent organisations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Centre for Constitutional Rights, and the University Network for Human Rights, along with numerous Palestinian human rights groups and genocide scholars. Many of these organisations are regularly cited as authoritative sources in the New York Times’ own reporting on other matters.
The UK’s Guardian newspaper pointed out that the NYT has previously run advertisements using the term genocide. In 2016, it published an ad from the Armenian Educational Foundation thanking Kim Kardashian for opposing denial of the Armenian genocide. In 2008, presidential candidates Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain co-signed a letter advertisement in the New York Times calling out the genocide in Sudan’s Darfur.
It also highlighted that the Times’ advertising guidelines state that its “advertising space is open to all points of view” and that submissions may be subjected to factchecking. It reserves the right to reject an ad if it is found to be deceptive or inaccurate.
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