murder

US Urged to Condemn Israel’s ‘Summary Execution’ of Two Journalists

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

Palestinian Al Jazeera journalist Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Rifee were killed by Israeli forces on July 31, 2024. (Photo: Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images)

International outcry and a reporter’s pointed questions weren’t enough to get the State Department to denounce the killings of Al Jazeera journalists.

A Palestinian journalist on Thursday pressed a U.S. State Department spokesperson to characterize the killings of two Al Jazeera journalists by Israeli forces as summary execution.

The heated press briefing followed an airstrike on Wednesday that killed Al Jazeera reporter Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Rifee, and sparked global outrage. Israel’s military acknowledged targeting al-Ghoul, saying he was “eliminated” because he was a Hamas “terrorist,” an allegation the Qatar-based network said was “baseless.”

The death toll of Palestinian journalists and media workers now stands at least 108, including several intentionally targeted by Israel forces, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

Said Arikat, the Washington bureau chief of Al-Quds, an Arabic-language newspaper based in Jerusalem, called the strike a “premeditated crime to kill a journalist for doing their job” and a “summary execution” in the press briefing, but State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel declined to affirm the characterizations or condemn the airstrike.

Al-Ghoul and al-Rifee were killed in northern Gaza after reporting from near the home of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas political leader who was assassinated in Tehran earlier on Wednesday. They wore press vests and had signs on their vehicle identifying them as journalists; they had last contacted their news desk just 15 minutes before the strike, Al Jazeera reported.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) presented no evidence in a social media post claiming that al-Ghoul was a terrorist and Hamas operative. In March, al-Ghoul reported being stripped, handcuffed, and blindfolded during the course of a 12-hour detainment by Israeli forces; he had been covering an Israeli attack on al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. Witnesses said Israeli forces severely beat al-Ghoul at the hospital before arresting him.

Anas al-Sharif, another Al Jazeera reporter in Gaza, was on site at a different hospital on Wednesday when his colleagues’ bodies were brought in, and he spoke about the role al-Ghoul had played in the outlet’s war coverage.

“Ismail was conveying the suffering of the displaced Palestinians and the suffering of the wounded and the massacres committed by the [Israeli] occupation against the innocent people in Gaza,” he told his own news outlet.

“The feeling—no words can describe what happened,” he added.

In protest of the killings, Palestinian journalists gathered to throw off their press vests and vowed to continue showing the suffering of Gazans through their work, despite the dangers they faced.

Condemnation of the killings of the two Al Jazeera journalists came not just from Gaza but all over the world.

CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg said in a statement that she was “dismayed” by the killings and that journalists are civilians who should never be targeted.

Defending Rights & Dissent, a U.S.-based civil liberties nonprofit, also condemned the killing of al-Ghoul and said the reasons for it were clear.

“When you ‘eliminate’ journalists, it’s much easier to hide war crimes, it’s easier to spread lies, it’s easier to commit genocide,” Sue Udry, the group’s executive director, said in a statement.

In response to the killing, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said that journalists “must be protected, and we decry attacks against them.”

William Schomburg, head of the ICRC’s sub-delegation in Gaza, said in a statement that his team had just met with al-Ghoul the previous week to get an update on the humanitarian situation in Gaza. “Journalists in all wars play a central role in highlighting the plight of civilians and in speaking for the voiceless,” Schomburg said.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF, in French), a Paris-based nonprofit, wrote in unequivocal terms about the need for Israel to stop killing journalists.

“RSF is deeply disturbed to see the Israel Defense Forces using social media to justify their targeted killing of Al Jazeera journalist Ismail al-Ghoul,” the organization wrote on social media. “Journalists are not terrorists. This campaign of violence against media in Gaza must stop now.”

The Freedom of the Press Foundation also responded forcefully to the IDF’s claim about al-Ghoul.

“Documenting a war isn’t terrorism, it’s journalism,” the group wrote on social media. “If the IDF can prove al-Ghoul was working for Hamas’ military, it should do so immediately. If not, this looks like a flimsy excuse for intentionally murdering a journalist from an outlet Israel dislikes.”

Israeli forces have killed at seven journalists or media workers affiliated with Al Jazeera during the war, and Israel shut down the network’s local operations in May, citing a security threat, though critics said it was a case of censorship—an attempt to hide the brutality of the assault on Gaza.

In total, 113 journalists and media workers have died since the war began, including two Israelis and three Lebanese, according to CPJ, which says this has been the deadliest period for journalists anywhere in the world since it began collecting data in 1992.

The international outcry over all of the killings has ramped up pressure on the U.S.—which has backed the Israeli assault with weapons and diplomatic support— to condemn them, and Wednesday’s strike on al-Ghoul and al-Rifee has only increased that pressure. Still, Patel, the spokesperson, wouldn’t issue any such condemnation on Thursday.

Arikat also pressed Patel to call for the release of Palestinian journalists being held in Israeli detention centers without charges, but Patel didn’t do so.

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

Continue ReadingUS Urged to Condemn Israel’s ‘Summary Execution’ of Two Journalists

Israel’s Assault on Gaza Proves the Nakba Never Ended

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Original article by AMY GOODMAN DENIS MOYNIHAN republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Palestinian children are pictured near makeshift tents in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on March 7, 2024. 
(Photo: Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

What followed the initial displacement and killing of Palestinians in 1948 has been one of the most violent, costly, and protracted conflicts in the modern era.

Palestinians and allies marked the 76th anniversary of the Nakba, May 15—the day after the state of Israel was formally declared. “Nakba” is Arabic for “catastrophe,” and is used to describe the murder, dispossession, and forced displacement Palestinians suffered in the years up to and including 1948. As many as 900,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes. Thousands were killed, massacred by Israeli militias like the Irgun and the Stern Gang or while fleeing on foot with no food or water, and some while engaged in armed resistance. What has followed since 1948 has been one of the most violent, costly, and protracted conflicts in the modern era.

Israel’s assault on Gaza has been termed a genocide by an increasing number of United Nations member states and international legal experts. Egypt joined South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, where an emergency hearing was called this week, following Israel’s ground invasion of Rafah. In Gaza, the official death toll is now over 35,000 Palestinians. Israel’s siege is also responsible for widening famine in Gaza.

“What we are seeing now, what unfolds in front of our eyes, is a genocidal situation, by which people are targeted, whether they are children, babies, in hospital, or in schools. This is a massive operation of killing, of ethnic cleansing, of depopulation,” renowned Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, who as an Israeli soldier fought in the 1973 war, said on the Democracy Now! news hour. “The Nakba has never really ended for the Palestinians, so it’s a new horrific chapter in the ongoing Nakba that the Palestinians are suffering.”

Ironically, Israeli nationalists, many who deny that the Nakba occurred at all, are now calling for a second one.

Professor Pappé was just detained when he flew into Detroit, and described on Facebook two hours of FBI questioning before being released. He said they asked, “Am I a Hamas supporter? Do I regard the Israeli actions in Gaza a genocide? What is the solution to the ‘conflict’ (seriously, this is what they asked!) Who are my Arab and Muslim friends in America?”

This week, on Nakba Day, Professor Abdel Razzaq Takriti, a Palestinian historian and endowed Arab studies chair at Rice University, said on Democracy Now!:

“The Nakba is continuing. We have to understand that this is a colonial continuum. This is a structural process. It is not an event. And what we’re seeing now in Gaza is very much connected to what happened in 1948.”

Professor Takriti assigned historical blame on the United Nations, the United States, and Britain:

“You had a very aggressive settler-colonial movement develop in Palestine under British rule. It was armed under British rule. It was trained under British rule.”

Professor Takriti continued, “The Israeli project is very much intertwined with American foreign policy toward the Palestinian people. They don’t see us as human beings. They want to destroy us. But they know that they have to present it in self-defense terms so that it’s palatable to the broader public… this is just a racist, criminal project that is leading and causing immense pain and suffering.”

South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice is seeking to do just that. On Thursday, human rights attorney Adila Hassim spoke at the ICJ emergency hearing, her voice betraying emotion as she recited grim statistics:

Children have suffered particularly severely. More than 14,000 have been killed. Thousands more have been injured or lost family members, while an estimated 17,000 children are unaccompanied or separated. Make no mistake. These conditions are a direct result of Israel’s military onslaught on the besieged enclave with full knowledge of the destructive consequences of this humanitarian crisis. In these circumstances, the thwarting of humanitarian aid cannot be seen as anything but the deliberate snuffing out of Palestinian lives, starvation to the point of famine, obstructing aid in the face of famine, and killing of at least 200 aid workers.

Hassim concluded, “Israel must be stopped.”

Ironically, Israeli nationalists, many who deny that the Nakba occurred at all, are now calling for a second one. “Right now, one goal: Nakba! A Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 48,” wrote Knesset member Ariel Kellner. On Tuesday, at an Israeli Independence Day march, far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir addressed thousands, saying, “First, we must return to Gaza now! We are coming home to the Holy Land! And second, we must encourage emigration. Encourage the voluntary emigration of the residents of Gaza!”

Israel’s mass slaughter in Gaza must end immediately. Ultimately, the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and U.S. support for the occupation, also must end. It’s not good for Israel or its national security. It’s devastating for Palestinians. It’s illegal and immoral.

Original article by AMY GOODMAN DENIS MOYNIHAN republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingIsrael’s Assault on Gaza Proves the Nakba Never Ended

‘Death Sentence for Thousands’: Israel Bars UNRWA Food Aid to Northern Gaza

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

United Nations workers and volunteers unload aid from a truck at a school housing displaced Palestinians on the 29th day of fighting between Israel and the armed Palestinian factions in Khan Yunis on November 8, 2023.  (Photo: Ahmed Zakot/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

“By preventing UNRWA to fulfill its mandate in Gaza, the clock will tick faster toward famine and many more will die of hunger, dehydration, and lack of shelter,” UNRWA’s commissioner-general said.

Israel will no longer permit the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East to drive convoys bearing food aid into northern Gaza, even as the area is on the brink of famine.

Israeli officials informed the U.N. of the new restrictions on Sunday, prompting outrage and dire warnings from U.N. officials and other human rights advocates.

“By preventing UNRWA to fulfill its mandate in Gaza, the clock will tick faster toward famine and many more will die of hunger, dehydration, and lack of shelter,” UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini posted on social media. “This cannot happen, it would only stain our collective humanity.”

“I have urged Israel to lift all impediments on aid to Gaza. Now this—MORE impediments.”

In his response, Lazzarini said that UNRWA was the largest organization operating in Gaza with the greatest capability to distribute aid.

“This is outrageous and makes it intentional to obstruct lifesaving assistance during a man-made famine,” Lazzarini said. “These restrictions must be lifted.”

The news comes as medical workers and international aid organizations have sounded the alarm about famine in Gaza. At least 23 children in northern Gaza have already died from starvation or dehydration, and one-third of children under two years old suffer from acute malnutrition, according to the United Nations’ International Children’s Emergency Fund. A new Integrated Food Security Phase Classification report published on March 18 found that famine was “imminent” in Gaza’s northern governorates and likely to begin “anytime” between the report’s publication and May. In the northern governorates, where around 300,000 live, almost two-thirds of households endured at least 10 days and nights when they did not eat at all in the last 30 days.

“Blocking UNRWA from delivering food is in fact denying starving people the ability to survive,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on social media. “This decision must be urgently reversed. The levels of hunger are acute. All efforts to deliver food should not only be permitted but there should be an immediate acceleration of food deliveries.”

U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths also called for Israel’s decision to be “revoked.”

“I have urged Israel to lift all impediments on aid to Gaza. Now this—MORE impediments,” Griffiths posted on social media, calling UNRWA the “beating heart of the humanitarian response in Gaza.”

UNRWA Communications Director Juliette Touma told BBC World on Monday that a quarter of a million people in the north rely on UNRWA food aid, yet the agency has not been able to deliver to them in two months. An attempt on February 5 had to turn back after the Israeli Navy fired on an aid convoy even as it traveled along a pre-approved route.

Touma told BBC World that more than 1 million people in Gaza now live in UNRWA shelters.

“They lost everything, and they need everything,” Touma said.

Touma added that the most important commodity people in Gaza need is food, but they also need “safety, and they need protection, above all, and a cease-fire, which is very, very much overdue.”

The U.N. Security Council finally succeeded in passing a resolution on Monday calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and the release of all hostages as the U.S. abstained from the vote.

Outside the U.N., former Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth said on social media that the food aid decision showed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “starvation strategy at work,” as well as his “vendetta against Palestinian refugees.”

CEO of Medical Aid for Palestinians Melanie Ward also decried Israel’s decision to permanently block UNRWA convoys from the north.

“This would be a death sentence for thousands,” Ward said on social media. “They cannot be allowed to do this.”

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

Continue Reading‘Death Sentence for Thousands’: Israel Bars UNRWA Food Aid to Northern Gaza

75% of all journalists killed across the world in 2023 were killed in Israeli war on Gaza, says CPJ

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

A protest against the killing of journalists in Gaza. Photo: International Federation of Journalists/X

A report by the Committee to Protect Journalists said that 78 journalists and media workers were killed in Gaza in the first three months of Israel’s war. The report added that the circumstances leading to the killing of these media professionals were difficult to ascertain due to Israel’s refusal to cooperate

Nearly three fourths of all journalists and media workers killed in 2023 were Palestinians who were killed in the first three months of the Israeli war in Gaza, said the annual report of Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released on Thursday, February 15.

According to the CPJ, at least 99 journalists and media workers were killed in 2023. This is the highest number of journalists and media persons killed in a year since 2015 and was a 44% increase from last year when the figure was 69.

Among the 78 journalists and media workers killed in the Israeli war on Gaza, 72 were Palestinians, three were Lebanese and two were Israeli journalists.

The report stated that the details of the circumstances leading to the killing of most of the journalists and media workers in Gaza were difficult to obtain due to Israel’s refusal to cooperate. A large number of family members of those journalists and media workers were also killed in the Israeli bombings and ground offensive which made the task of investigating the circumstances of their killing difficult.

A total of more than  28,700 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 69,000 others have been wounded in the Israeli war in Gaza since October 7. Many journalists have lost their entire families in Israeli attacks.

CJP claimed that at least 78 of the journalists and thirteen media workers were killed on duty in 2023. It also claimed that there were eight more journalists killed last year but the investigation into the circumstances in which they were killed was still not complete.

CJP claimed that a large number of journalists in Palestine were killed deliberately and it has raised the issue with the Israelis.

Most of the Palestinian journalists killed on duty in Gaza were in full gear and easily identifiable when they were targeted in air strikes or during Israeli ground offensives.

Deliberately targeting and killing journalists on duty is a war crime as per international law. Israel often claims that journalists killed in Gaza were members of “terrorist groups” without providing any evidence.

The numbers are much higher, say other groups

Several more journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza by Israeli forces since December, including Al-Jazeera journalist Hamza al-Dahdouh who was targeted and killed by a missile attack on the car in which he was traveling with another freelance journalist Mustafa Thuraya.

Hamza was the son of prominent journalist Wael Dahdouh, most of whose family members were killed in Israeli strikes earlier. Wael himself was injured in one of the attacks carried out by the Israelis while on duty.

According to estimates by other organizations, the number of Palestinian journalists killed is higher. The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS) claimed at least 95 journalists or around 8% of all registered journalists in Palestine have been killed by Israel between October 7 and December 19.

According to Palestinian Authority’s media office, the total number of media workers killed in Palestine since October 7 is 126.

PJS claims that most of the journalists killed in Gaza were deliberately targeted by Israeli forces with the intention of “assassination and murder.” Some of the journalists were also threatened by Israeli forces before they were actually killed for covering the Israeli genocide, PJS alleged.

In addition to killing Palestinian journalists, Israel has also resorted to other means of shutting down the spread of information, including media gags, denial of visas to foreign journalists, and repeated shutdowns of the internet and telecommunication services, sometimes for weeks.

“The war [Israeli war in Gaza] is unprecedented in terms of threats to journalists” Jodie Ginsberg, Chief Executive Officer of the CPJ, told Al-Jazeera.

Israel has a long history of targeting and killing journalists. In 2022, Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed when she was reporting the Israeli military raid on Jenin. CPJ claims there were at least 20 such cases before the current war in Gaza but no one has ever been charged or held responsible for these killings.

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

Continue Reading75% of all journalists killed across the world in 2023 were killed in Israeli war on Gaza, says CPJ

Commentary on and analysis of recent political events

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Two main political news stories from yesterday dominate today’s news: the Gibson report and the completion of the trial of the murderers of soldier Lee Rigby. There was also a ceiling collapse at the packed Apollo theatre in the Soho area of London. 

Firstly, the Gibson report into UK involvement in torture and rendition was published. The report was paused while police investigations into torture and rendition were in progress so that the report should be considered incomplete and unfinished.

Unfortunately for previous and current governments and particularly Jack Straw evidence of renditions by the UK and UK complicity with torture come to light while the report was being conducted. While Blair’s government repeatedly denied being involved in torture and rendition the wording was always very carefully crafted and it was obvious that the Fascist bstards were at it.

A further unfortunate consequence for Blair’s former cabinet and government is that cabinet ministers are jointly responsible according to UK law. The current UK Conservative-Liberal-Democrat (Conservative) coalition government is keen deal with this problem. It is likely that they would ideally like to postpone it indefinitely so that by the time it’s addressed Blair and his associated Fascist scum will be dead of old age. Accordingly they have broken commitments to appoint a judge-led inquiry and instead have referred it to the intelligence and security committee of selected MPs and peers, a body renowned for ignoring official crimes.

Secondly, the trial of the brutal murderers of soldier Lee Rigby in Woolwich, East London finished yesterday. Soldier Lee Rigby was first run over by a car before a meat cleaver was used to hack at his neck. Early news reports were wrong claiming that he had been decapitated.

An emergency meeting of Cobra was held because of the political nature of the murder. The murderers asked bystanders to film them explaining their purpose. It was both a brutal murder and a political protest. It was not terrorism because ordinary people were not the target.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/dec/19/woolwich-attack-first-uk-murder-transmitted-live-internet

Michael Adebolajo speaks to a witness videoing him on a smartphone after killing Lee Rigby in Woolwich

…

Adebolajo actively sought out a witness with a camera phone to deliver what he saw as a 21st-century press conference. It was supposed to be his martyrdom video. But there were no satellite trucks or television crews, only a handful of bystanders armed with a smartphone.

“The only reason we have killed this man today is because Muslims are dying daily by British soldiers,” said Adebolajo into the lens of a BlackBerry, his bloodied hands still holding the meat cleaver and butcher’s knife used to slaughter his victim. “By Allah, we swear by the almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone.”

…

The murderers were driven by Western invasions of Muslim countries claiming that they were soldiers attacking another soldier. I disagree with a psychiatrist’s decision that one of the defendants was not insane. The barbarity of the act shows that he was insane.

I am willing to discuss these issues in the comments.

Philip Hammond ignores the truth about drone atrocities

Lord Janner’s home searched in child abuse probe

theneedleblog: Lord Janner: Home Searched.

theneedleblog: Threatening Letter To Teresa Cooper From ‘Eric’

 

Continue ReadingCommentary on and analysis of recent political events