war crimes

Amnesty War Crimes Probe Exposes Israel’s ‘Wanton Destruction’ in Gaza

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Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

A Palestinian woman surveys the destruction by Israeli forces of her home and neighborhood in Khuza’a, which is located near Gaza’s border with Israel, on November 25, 2023. (Photo: Mustafa Hassona/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“The creation of any ‘buffer zone’ must not amount to the collective punishment of the Palestinian civilians who lived in these neighborhoods,” warned one Amnesty campaigner.

Amnesty International said Thursday that the Israeli military should be investigated for the “war crimes of wanton destruction and of collective punishment” over its destruction of entire communities along Gaza’s border with Israel.

“Using bulldozers and manually laid explosives, the Israeli military has unlawfully destroyed agricultural land and civilian buildings, razing entire neighborhoods, including homes, schools, and mosques,” the London-based rights group said in a new investigation.

Amnesty analyzed satellite imagery, as well as photos and videos posted online by invading Israel Defense Forces troops between October and May, and found that the IDF has cleared wide swathes of land up to 1.2 miles (1.8 km) wide along Gaza’s eastern border.

“In some videos, Israeli soldiers are seen posing for pictures or toasting in celebration as buildings are demolished in the background,” the report states.

Israeli forces laid waste to much of Khuza’a in Khan Younis governate, under the pretext that Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel from the town on October 7.

Salem Qudeih, a teacher who lived in Khuza’a about a mile from the border, told Amnesty that “around my family home we had a three dunam (0.7 acre) orchard full of fruit trees. They were all destroyed. Only an apple tree and a rose were left.”

“I had bees and produced honey. All of it is gone now,” he added. “Out of the 222 houses of my relatives in the area, only about a dozen remain. My home—where I lived with my wife, my five daughters, and one son—was completely destroyed.”

Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty’s senior director for research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns, said in a statement: “The Israeli military’s relentless campaign of ruin in Gaza is one of wanton destruction. Our research has shown how Israeli forces have obliterated residential buildings, forced thousands of families from their homes, and rendered their land uninhabitable.”

“Our analysis reveals a pattern along the eastern perimeter of Gaza that is consistent with the systematic destruction of an entire area,” she continued. “These homes were not destroyed as the result of intense fighting. Rather, the Israeli military deliberately razed the land after they had taken control of the area.”

“The creation of any ‘buffer zone’ must not amount to the collective punishment of the Palestinian civilians who lived in these neighborhoods,” Guevara-Rosas added. “Israel’s measures to protect Israelis from attacks from Gaza must be carried out in conformity with its obligations under international law, including the prohibition of wanton destruction and of collective punishment.”

“The Israeli military deliberately razed the land after they had taken control of the area.”

Other experts—including United Nations officials and scholars—have previously highlighted what Robert Pape, a U.S. military historian and University of Chicago professor, described as “one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history.”

In the 335 days since October 7, Israeli forces have killed or maimed more than 145,000 Palestinians in Gaza while forcibly displacing almost all of the embattled strip’s 2.3 million people and destroying hundreds of thousands of homes and other structures, according to Palestinian and international officials. Rebuilding after Israel’s obliteration of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure is expected to cost over $18.5 billion, or nearly Palestine’s entire annual gross domestic product.

Israel is currently on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Meanwhile, International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan has applied for warrants to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leaders for alleged war crimes including extermination.

“International humanitarian law, which applies in situations of armed conflict, including during military occupation, is comprised of rules whose central purpose is to limit, to the maximum extent feasible, human suffering in times of armed conflict,” Amnesty explained Thursday.

The group noted that under the Fourth Geneva Convention, “extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly,” is a war crime.

Additionally, the treaty bans collective punishment of civilians, stating that “no protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed.”

Amnesty has repeatedly accused Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza and has urged the ICC to open investigations into multiple “indiscriminate” and “disproportionate” IDF massacres, as well as torture and other alleged human rights violations.

Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

Continue ReadingAmnesty War Crimes Probe Exposes Israel’s ‘Wanton Destruction’ in Gaza

Israeli Rights Group Leader Tells UN It’s Clear Netanyahu ‘Does Not Want’ a Hostage Deal

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Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at a press conference in Jerusalem on September 4, 2024. (Photo: Abir Sultan/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

Israel’s far-right government is “cynically exploiting our collective trauma” to “violently advance its project of cementing Israel’s control” over Palestinian land, said B’Tselem CEO Yuli Novak.

The head of a leading Israeli human rights organization told the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday that Israel’s far-right government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, obviously “does not want” to reach a hostage-release and cease-fire agreement with Hamas.

Yuli Novak, the CEO of B’Tselem, said in an address to the U.N. body that the Netanyahu government is “cynically exploiting our collective trauma” in the wake of the October 7 Hamas-led attack to “violently advance its project of cementing Israel’s control” over Palestinian land.

“To do that, it is waging war on the entire Palestinian people, committing war crimes almost daily,” said Novak. “In Gaza, this has taken the form of expulsion, starvation, killing, and destruction on an unprecedented scale.”

Watch Novak’s full speech:

Novak’s remarks came days after Israelis poured into the streets en masse over the weekend following their government’s announcement that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers recovered the bodies of six hostages in Gaza, heightening outrage over Netanyahu’s obstruction of cease-fire talks.

In a speech on Monday, Netanyahu doubled down on his new hardline demands that have dampened hopes of a deal to end Israel’s U.S.-backed assault on Gaza and free the more than 60 living hostages still in captivity in the besieged Palestinian enclave.

Hamas has rejected the prime minister’s demand that any deal include indefinite Israeli military control of the Philadelphi Corridor—a narrow strip of land along Gaza’s border with Egypt—leaving cease-fire talks at a standstill as the war on Gaza nears the 11-month mark.

Gershon Baskin, a longtime Israeli hostage negotiator who has engaged in back-channel talks with Hamas since the October 7 attack, told Democracy Now! on Wednesday that the Philadelphi Corridor demand “is a made-up issue by Netanyahu to create… a new excuse for Israel to remain in Gaza.”

“It’s very clear that Netanyahu doesn’t want to end the war,” Baskin said.

In a social media post earlier this week, Baskin accused Netanyahu of “sacrificing the hostages on an altar of his own personal political survival.”

The view that Netanyahu is deliberately sabotaging hostage-release talks is hardly fringe: As Jacobin‘s Branko Marcetic observed Wednesday, that assessment has become commonplace across Israeli society, including inside Netanyahu’s government.

Marcetic cited recent reports from dozens of mainstream Israeli and U.S. media outlets casting Netanyahu—who faces corruption charges in his country—as the primary obstacle to a cease-fire agreement.

One unnamed Israeli official, identified as a senior member of the country’s government, told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz over the weekend that the blood of hostages “is on [Netanyahu’s] hands.”

“He knew the hostages are living on borrowed time, that the sand in their hourglass was running out,” said the senior official, referring to the six hostages who, according to the Israeli Ministry of Health, were shot at close range sometime around last Thursday.

“He knew there were orders to kill them if there’d be rescue attempts. He understood the significance of his orders and acted in cold blood and cruelly,” the Israeli official continued. “They all knew he is corrupted, a narcissist, a coward, but his lack of humanity was fully revealed in all its ugliness in recent months.”

Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

Continue ReadingIsraeli Rights Group Leader Tells UN It’s Clear Netanyahu ‘Does Not Want’ a Hostage Deal

Coalition Statement: We Will March on Sat 7 Sept

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https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/coalition-statement-we-will-march-on-sat-7-sept/

“We will assemble at the advertised point, and, in exercising our right to peaceful protest, we will march to the Israeli Embassy.”

We are deeply concerned by the Metropolitan Police’s decision to impose severe and unjustified restrictions on Saturday’s demonstration against the ongoing genocide in Gaza. These new conditions, including a delayed start time of two and a half hours after the advertised assembly, effectively hinder our fundamental right to peaceful assembly and protest. For 18 consecutive marches since October, we have gathered at 12 PM and commenced shortly thereafter—an arrangement that accommodates those travelling long distances, including thousands who have pre-booked coach travel. The last-minute disruption of these plans, without any clear rationale, raises serious questions about the police’s respect for our democratic rights.

Since notifying the police of our intentions on 8 August, we have faced a series of delays, obstacles, and uncooperative behaviour. Meetings have been cancelled without notice, and our reasonable proposal for an alternative route to the Israeli Embassy was dismissed outright. Now, with just four days’ notice, the police have imposed these new conditions without explanation, creating unnecessary obstacles for a demonstration expected to draw over one hundred thousand people.

The treatment of the Palestine movement by the police is unprecedented and deeply troubling. The consistent refusal to consider our proposed routes and the imposition of unreasonable conditions appear to be based on unfounded assumptions that our protests will lead to disruption or disorder, despite our long history of peaceful demonstrations. Such actions risk undermining the right to protest, a cornerstone of democracy.

It is crucial that the police reconsider these actions in light of their responsibility to uphold democratic freedoms. We will assemble at the advertised point, and, in exercising our right to peaceful protest, we will march to the Israeli Embassy. It is essential that the police recognise the importance of respecting the rights of citizens to gather and express their views peacefully.

Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Palestinian Forum in Britain

Friends of Al-Aqsa

Stop the War Coalition

Muslim Association of Britain

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

Continue ReadingCoalition Statement: We Will March on Sat 7 Sept

UN Expert Says Impunity for Israel Must End as ‘Genocidal Violence’ Spreads to West Bank

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Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

Israeli forces are pictured moving the body of a Palestinian man during a raid in the West Bank city of Hebron on September 1, 2024. (Photo: Hazem Bader/AFP via Getty Images)

“Apartheid Israel is targeting Gaza and the West Bank simultaneously, as part of an overall process of elimination, replacement, and territorial expansion,” said United Nations special rapporteur Francesca Albanese.


An independent United Nations expert warned Monday that “Israel’s genocidal violence risks leaking out of Gaza and into the occupied Palestinian territory as a whole” as Western governments, corporations, and other institutions keep up their support for the Israeli military, which stands accused of grave war crimes in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories, said in a statement that “there is mounting evidence that no Palestinian is safe under Israel’s unfettered control.”

“The writing is on the wall, and we cannot continue to ignore it,” said Albanese, who released a detailed report in May concluding that there are “reasonable grounds to believe” Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza.

Albanese’s new statement came as the Israeli military’s largest assault on the West Bank in decades continued into its second week. At least 29 Palestinians have been killed during the series of military raids, according to Al Jazeera, including at least five children.

“Apartheid Israel is targeting Gaza and the West Bank simultaneously, as part of an overall process of elimination, replacement, and territorial expansion,” Albanese said Tuesday. “The longstanding impunity granted to Israel is enabling the de-Palestinization of the occupied territory, leaving Palestinians at the mercy of the forces pursuing their elimination as a national group.”

“The international community, made of both states and non-state actors, including companies and financial institutions, must do everything it can to immediately end the risk of genocide against the Palestinian people under Israel’s occupation, ensure accountability, and ultimately end Israel’s colonization of Palestinian territory,” Albanese added.

Defense for Children International–Palestine noted Monday that “dozens of Israeli military vehicles” have “stormed” the West Bank city of Jenin over the past week as “Israeli forces deployed across the targeted refugee camps, seizing Palestinian homes to use as military bases and stationing snipers on the roofs of buildings, subjecting their residents to field investigations.”

“The military bulldozers began destroying the civil infrastructure in Jenin city and camp, which led to the destruction of the main water networks and power outage in several neighborhoods in Jenin and surrounding villages,” the group said. “Israeli forces besieged several hospitals in Jenin and impeded the movement of ambulances and paramedics.”

Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed more than 620 people in the occupied West Bank since October 7, on top of the roughly 40,800 killed by the Israeli military in Gaza.

Unlawful Israeli land seizures have also surged in the West Bank as settlers and soldiers wipe out entire Palestinian communities. The BBC reported Monday that, according to its own analysis, there are “currently at least 196 across the West Bank, and 29 were set up last year—more than in any previous year.”

Israel’s multi-day attack on the West Bank that began last week has intensified fears that unless there’s a permanent cease-fire, the assault on Gaza could expand to the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories and throughout the Middle East.

David Hearst, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye, wrote Monday that “even with the obvious reluctance of Hezbollah and Iran to get involved, all the ingredients are there for a much larger conflagration.”

“An Israel in the grip of an ultra-nationalist, religious, settler insurgency; a U.S. president who allows his signature policy to be flouted by his chief ally, even at the risk of losing a crucial election; resistance that will not surrender; Palestinians in Gaza who will not flee; Palestinians in the West Bank who are now stepping up to the front line; Jordan, the second country to recognize Israel, feeling under existential threat,” Hearst wrote.

For U.S. President Joe Biden or Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, he added, “the message is so clear, it is flashing in neon lights: The regional costs of not standing up to Netanyahu could rapidly outweigh the domestic benefits of being dragged along by him.”

James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, similarly argued Tuesday that “the U.S. must reverse course—and do so dramatically.”

“A long-overdue cut-off of U.S. arms to Israel and recognition of the Palestinian right to self-determination would provide exactly the shock to the system that is needed,” Zogby wrote. “It would force an internal debate in Israel, empowering those who want peace. It might also serve to send a message to the Palestinian people that their plight and rights are understood.”

These actions, especially if followed up with determination and concrete steps, won’t end the conflict tomorrow,” Zogby continued, “but they would surely put the region on a more productive path towards peace than the one it is on now.”

Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted "I support Zionism without qualification." He's asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Continue ReadingUN Expert Says Impunity for Israel Must End as ‘Genocidal Violence’ Spreads to West Bank

Israeli forces use diggers to target journalists in the West Bank

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Israeli occupation forces use diggers to prevent journalists from covering the destruction in Jenin amid ongoing raids in the occupied West Bank. At least 4 journalists have been injured as they came under direct attacks by Israeli snipers, despite them wearing their press vests.

Continue ReadingIsraeli forces use diggers to target journalists in the West Bank