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Israel is starving Palestinians to death while the world watches

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

Children waiting for food in Gaza. Photo: UNRWA

Israel has deliberately slowed the flow of aid to Gaza with hundreds of trucks stranded on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border at a time when over two dozen Palestinian children have died of malnutrition

UN agencies have repeatedly condemned Israel’s refusal to expedite the process of aid delivery to Gaza which has been under siege by Israel for nearly six months. This is despite repeated calls for urgency in the context of critical humanitarian conditions which are becoming worse with each passing day.

According to the latest alerts issued by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) on March 18, most of northern Gaza would move into the category five indicating the highest stage of food insecurity or catastrophic levels of hunger. The IPC explains that this would mean that Palestinian households would face “an extreme lack of food and extremely critical levels of acute malnutrition.”

The IPC has assessed that the region which continues to face Israeli bombing and ground offensive already faces category four levels of malnutrition with huge gaps between need and actual availability of food.


UNRWA has already confirmed that one in three children in northern Gaza are malnourished. In the last few weeks over 25 children have died due to the same. The situation in other parts of Gaza is approaching similar levels at an alarming speed.

The same day that the IPC released its findings, Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, was denied entry to Gaza by Israeli authorities. In a post on X, Lazzarini wrote, “UNRWA has by far the largest presence among all humanitarian organizations in Gaza. My visit today was supposed to coordinate & improve the humanitarian response.”

He added, “This man-made starvation under our watch is a stain on our collective humanity. Too much time was wasted, all land crossings must open now. Famine can be averted with political will.”

The UNRWA head also noted that over 1.1 million people in Gaza facing phase five levels of starvation “is the highest number of people ever recorded as facing catastrophic hunger and is double the number of just three months ago.”

Beth Bechdol, deputy director general of the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) told Al-Jazeera on Tuesday that, almost half of the total population of Gaza is at the acute level of malnutrition and at the risk of ultimately death.

The United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) stated on Sunday that thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza are so malnourished that they do not have enough “energy to cry.”

Over 13,000 Palestinian children have been killed in the Israeli war on Gaza which began on October 7. According to different UN agencies, as many children have been injured and now hundreds of thousands are being forced into starvation by Israel.

UNICEF’s Executive Director Catherine Russell had earlier made similar assertions saying that there are “very great bureaucratic challenges” which prevent the humanitarian aid to reach two million Palestinians in Gaza.

Israel has restricted the entry of the aid through land borders using different kinds of excuses, for example presence of scissors in the aid boxes or alleged overcrowding of Palestinians at aid distribution centers among others.

James Elder, UNICEF spokesperson, called the blocking of aid supplies to Gaza “outrageous.” He posted on X showing hundreds of trucks with humanitarian aid stranded at the Rafah border as Israel has not allowed them to enter Gaza.

Adele Khodr, UNICEF’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa called for the opening of all crossings. “The world’s inaction is shocking as more children succumb to slow death. All border crossing must open now to allow unfettered access to humanitarian aid” Khodr said in the tweet on Tuesday.

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

Continue ReadingIsrael is starving Palestinians to death while the world watches

800+ Legal Scholars Say Israel May Be Perpetrating ‘Crime of Genocide’ in Gaza

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

Residents seek safety amid destroyed buildings and debris around the Palestinian Telecommunications Company in the Gaza Strip on October 10, 2023. (Photo: Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“The ongoing and imminent Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip are being conducted with potentially genocidal intent.”

More than 800 scholars of international law and genocide have signed a public statement arguing that the Israeli military may be committing genocidal acts against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as the total siege and relentless airstrikes continue to inflict devastation on the occupied territory.

“As scholars and practitioners of international law, conflict studies, and genocide studies, we are compelled to sound the alarm about the possibility of the crime of genocide being perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” reads the statement. “We do not do so lightly, recognizing the weight of this crime, but the gravity of the current situation demands it.”

The scholars noted that Israel’s yearslong blockade on Gaza—which has left much of the territory’s population impoverished and without access to basic necessities—had previously been described as “slow-motion genocide” and cited a United Nations warning about Israelis’ use of dehumanizing language, which is often a prelude to mass atrocities.

But the new statement contends that Israel’s current assault on Gaza, launched in the wake of a deadly Hamas attack on October 7, is “unprecedented in scale and severity.”

“The Gaza Strip has been subjected to incessant and indiscriminate bombardment by Israeli forces,” the scholars wrote. “Israel’s defense minister ordered a ‘complete siege’ of the Gaza Strip prohibiting the supply of fuel, electricity, water, and other essential necessities. This terminology itself indicates an intensification of an already illegal, potentially genocidal siege to an outright destructive assault.”

The scholars also pointed to Israel’s evacuation order aimed at the entire population of northern Gaza—roughly 1.1 million people—and subsequent Israeli attacks on civilian convoys fleeing to the south.

“Statements of Israeli officials since 7 October 2023 suggest that beyond the killings and restriction of basic conditions for life perpetrated against Palestinians in Gaza, there are also indications that the ongoing and imminent Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip are being conducted with potentially genocidal intent,” the scholars wrote.

They continued:

Language used by Israeli political and military figures appears to reproduce rhetoric and tropes associated with genocide and incitement to genocide. Dehumanising descriptions of Palestinians have been prevalent. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared on 9 October that “we are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.” He subsequently announced that Israel was moving to “a full-scale response” and that he had “removed every restriction” on Israeli forces, as well as stating: “Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything.”

On 10 October, the head of the Israeli army’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian, addressed a message directly to Gaza residents: “Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water, there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell.” The same day, Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari acknowledged the wanton and intentionally destructive nature of Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza: “The emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.”

Under international law, a party is guilty of genocide if it kills or severely harms members of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group with the “intent to destroy” that group.

Raz Segal—an Israeli historian, associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University, and signatory of the new statement—argued in Jewish Currents last week that Israel’s actions in Gaza since October 7 constitute “a textbook case of genocide.”

“Indeed, Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza is quite explicit, open, and unashamed,” Segal wrote. “Israel’s goal is to destroy the Palestinians of Gaza. And those of us watching around the world are derelict in our responsibility to prevent them from doing so.”

Segal and the 800 other statement signatories implored nations around the world to swiftly “take concrete and meaningful steps to individually and collectively prevent genocidal acts, in line with their legal duty to prevent the crime of genocide.”

“We call on all relevant U.N. bodies, including the Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, as well as the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to immediately intervene, to carry out the necessary investigations, and invoke the necessary warning procedures to protect the Palestinian population from genocide,” they added.

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

Continue Reading800+ Legal Scholars Say Israel May Be Perpetrating ‘Crime of Genocide’ in Gaza

‘Not In Our Name!’ Hundreds Arrested at US Capitol as Jewish-Led Protest Demands Gaza Cease-Fire

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

Jewish Americans and allies are lined up after being arrested during an October 18, 2023 protest calling for a cease-fire in Gaza at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Ariel Gold/X)

“Cease-fire is the first step to stop the ongoing genocide by the Israeli military of the over 2 million Palestinians in besieged Gaza,” asserted Jewish Voice for Peace.

Hundreds of Jewish Americans and allies were arrested at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday during a protest demanding members of Congress push Israel for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza, where nearly 3,500 Palestinians have been killed over 12 days of relentless Israeli bombardment.

Thousands of protesters led by members of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), IfNotNow, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ), and other groups rallied on the Capitol grounds and inside the building, where hundreds of people took part in a sit-in.

Their chanted slogans—including “not in our name” and “cease-fire now”—resounded thunderously under the Capitol Rotunda, while at other times they clapped their hands and sang with solemn determination in Hebrew.

“We’re here to say: not in our names, and never again,” JVP declared. “And we’ll continue our civil disobedience until Congress calls for a cease-fire in Gaza, or until they force us to leave.”

“Cease-fire is the first step to stop the ongoing genocide by the Israeli military of the over 2 million Palestinians in besieged Gaza, unable to leave,” the group continued. “In the past week, over 3,000 Palestinians, including 1,000 children, were murdered by Israeli and U.S. bombs. Over 1 million people are displaced. We have the power to stop this violence.”

“What we know from past Israeli state atrocities against Palestinians is that the bombs only stop once there is a sufficient mass outcry from the international community,” JVP added. “It’s on us to build that outcry—as fast as we possibly can.”

Speaking outside the Capitol, U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.)—the only Palestinian American in Congress—said that “the majority of Americans are literally against oppression.”

“They are,” she insisted. “They are against occupation. They are against human rights violations. If you just tell them the truth, they will be on our side. So we have to speak the truth.”

Tlaib had a message for President Joe Biden, who has declared his “rock-solid and unwavering support” for Israel, which he visited Wednesday and receives nearly $4 billion in annual U.S. military aid.

“I want him to know, as a Palestinian American and also as someone of the Muslim faith: I’m not gonna forget this,” she vowed. “And I think a lot of people are not gonna forget this.”

Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), who led a resolution with Tlaib and 14 progressive co-sponsors calling on Biden to push for a cease-fire, also spoke at the rally.

“We thank our Jewish community for being out here saying ‘Never Again’,” she said.

Author and activist Naomi Klein told the demonstrators that “it’s crucial that we become huge, become unignorable, and throw all our support behind this brave legislation.”

JVP, IfNotNow, and peace activist Ariel Gold—who was at the event—said hundreds of protesters were arrested.

Wednesday’s protest and arrests followed a string of Jewish-led peace demonstrations across the nation, including two major rallies in Washington, D.C. IfNotNow’s website lists many events planned in cities around the country in the coming days.

“The Israeli military is preparing for a massive ground invasion of Gaza. Israeli and American leaders are dehumanizing Palestinians with vitriolic rhetoric that calls to mind the most hysterical days of… [the] War on Terror,” JVP said Wednesday. “We know where this will lead: genocide.”

“Many of us are mourning our Israeli and Palestinian friends and loved ones,” the group continued. “We are in pain and grief, trying to process a week of horrific violence that has left so many that we know injured, traumatized, kidnapped, or killed.”

“But we refuse to let our grief be weaponized to justify the murder of more Palestinians,” JVP added. “As American Jews, we demand a cease-fire now. No genocide in our name.”

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

Continue Reading‘Not In Our Name!’ Hundreds Arrested at US Capitol as Jewish-Led Protest Demands Gaza Cease-Fire