Oxfam placed a replica Mark 84 2,000-pound bomb, used by the Israeli military in Gaza to devastating effect, opposite Parliament, July 30, 2024Photo: Andy Aitchison / Oxfam
Oxfam warns that 7,000 people are estimated to be killed or injured in Gaza by Israeli military during Parliament recess
AS BRITAIN remains complicit in Israel’s war crimes by refusing an arms embargo, a replica of a 2,000-pound bomb was placed outside of Parliament today, serving as a stark reminder of the innocent lives that will be claimed while the government breaks up for summer.
The 16-foot replica was placed by Oxfam after it released a new analysis estimating that around 7,000 people in Gaza will be killed or injured over the next 33 days.
A carpet of flowers around the bomb symbolised those who are likely to be killed by the Israeli military, as well as the Israeli hostages still in captivity.
Using UN cumulative impact reports, Oxfam estimated that Israel will likely murder more than 1,800 people — a third of them children — if its military offensive continues at its current level.
The analysis comes as Britain refuses to commit to an arms embargo, despite warnings that exports are likely being used to commit war crimes.
This includes components for F-35 Israeli fighter jets, which carry out devastating strikes.
According to Action on Armed Violence, air-strikes were responsible for more than 45 per cent of recent fatalities.
Oxfam GB chief executive Halima Begum said: “By selling F-35 components to Israel, the UK government is effectively facilitating many of the Israeli air strikes and the decimation of Gaza.
“The government is fully aware of the risk that arms exported from the UK are likely being used to commit war crimes in Gaza.
“It is critical that the UK government immediately suspend both existing and new licences for all arms sales, whether direct to Israel or via third parties.”
Britain is legally obliged to halt arms exports if there is a clear risk they might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law.
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.Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.UK Labour Party Shadow Foreign Secretary repeatedly heckled at a speech to the Fabian Society over his and the Labour Party’s support for and complicity in Israel’s genocide of Gaza.
Israeli soldiers and police clash with a far-right mob that invaded the Beit Lid army base in Kfar Yona on July 29, 2024. (Photo: Oren Ziv/AFP via Getty Images)
Several Israeli lawmakers and one minister took part in the attempt to free the nine reservists, who were hailed as heroes by multiple Cabinet members.
Far-right Israelis including government officials stormed two military bases late on Monday, sparking clashes with troops and police over the arrest of Israel Defense Forces reservists who allegedly gang-raped a Palestinian prisoner.
Hundreds of protesters broke into the notorious Sde Teiman base in the Negev Desert in an attempt to stop the detention of nine reserve troops accused of sodomizing a Palestinian jailed there. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the victim is hospitalized with severe injuries and is unable to walk.
The nine suspects were then taken to the Beit Lid army base, which was also mobbed by at least dozens of demonstrators.
Supporters of president-elect Nicolas Maduro celebrate his proclamation as president-elect in the vicinity of the CNE headquarters during the ceremony to deliver the majority of the vote Certificate at CNE Headquarters on July 29, 2024 in Caracas, Venezuela. (Photo by Jesus Vargas/Getty Images)
Shortly before midnight on 28 July, Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) announced that — with 80 percent of the over 20 million votes counted — the trend was irreversible: Nicolás Maduro had been re-elected president of Venezuela.
According to the CNE, Maduro received 51.2 percent of the vote, while his primary opponent, the little-known Edmundo Gonzales, received 44.02 percent. With that result, it was clear that the Venezuelan majority chose to continue the project of Bolivarian socialism introduced by Hugo Chavez at the end of the nineties. Recognizing the economic turn-around of the last two years and proud of their achievements in building 5.1 million housing units, securing food sovereignty, and deepening communal democracy, Venezuelans re-elected Maduro for a third six-year term.
A former ambassador to Argentina, the opposition candidate Gonzales replaced far-right leader Maria Corina Machado as the candidate of the Unity Platform after Machado was disqualified from running. Machado has long been an outspoken critic of Chavismo, supporting US sanctions and advocating foreign intervention in the country. In 2018, she asked Benjamin Netanyahu for military assistance in dismantling the Maduro government. Machado has close ties in the United States. In 2009, she was a Yale World Fellow. On June 23, 2024 she spoke at a National Endowment for Democracy awards ceremony in Washington, DC. She has been nicknamed the new “iron lady” after her idol Margaret Thatcher. In contrast, Maduro supports the Palestinian liberation struggle, linking it to the struggle of the indigenous peoples of Venezuela against colonial genocide.
Venezuela’s far-right opposition is doubling down on its refusal to accept defeat in the country’s presidential election amid simmering unrest and violence in the streets of Caracas, sparking warnings of another coup attempt in a nation that has long faced interference from the United States and other Western powers.
Led by María Corina Machado, who was disqualified from running in Sunday’s election, Venezuela’s opposition claimed that its candidate—ex-diplomat Edmundo González—defeated President Nicolás Maduro with over 70% of the vote, contradicting the official results announced by the Consejo Nacional Electoral (CNE).
Machado, who once urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to back an effort to topple Maduro’s elected government, pointed Venezuelans to a website the opposition is using to assemble its own vote counts.
“So far, she hasn’t presented any evidence [of fraud],” Caracas-based reporter Andreína Chávez Alava said in an appearance on Democracy Now! Tuesday morning. “In past elections they have also said they have evidence that they won and they never actually showed any proof.”
Republican vice presidential nominee U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) arrives to speak during a rally with running mate U.S. Republican Presidential nominee former President Donald Trump at Herb Brooks National Hockey Center on July 27, 2024 in St Cloud, Minnesota. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
The former Republican president, despite all his allegedly populist rhetoric, has a deeply anti-worker record from his first term. Vance’s record is no different and he’s no better.
“These attempts to create the appearance of distance between Trump and Project 2025 are happening because Americans are starting to learn about this extreme takeover plan,” said one Democratic congressman.
At least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration—including six former Cabinet secretaries—have been involved with Project 2025, according to a CNN analysis published earlier this month. Among them is the outgoing director, Paul Dans.
“Dans served in the Trump administration as chief of staff at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management where he managed the federal agency in charge of human resources policy for the more than 2 million federal workers,” according to his profile on the Heritage website.
Smoke billows following an Israeli airstrike in the southern Lebanese border village of Chihine on July 28, 2024. (Photo by Kawnat Haju/AFP via Getty Images)
A barrage of Israeli strikes across Gaza killed many dozen Palestinians over the weekend, while a strike attributed to Hezbollah killed 12 children in Israeli-controlled territory.
Israel’s war in Gaza continued in full force on Saturday and Sunday, with at least 66 Palestinians killed in roughly the last 24 hours, as international attention shifted to concern about an all-out war with Lebanon following an attack on Israeli-controlled territory that killed 12 children, with international diplomats pushing for deescalation.
At least 66 people were killed in Israeli strikes across Gaza in a 24-hour period, and another 241 were injured, the enclave’s health ministry reported Sunday. Fifteen were also killed in strikes on Khan Younis that apparently weren’t included in the 24-hour count, including a four-month-old girl, Al Jazeera reported.
The strikes in Gaza came as the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, a heavily armed militia and political party in Lebanon, intensified. A rocket attack on a soccer field in the town of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights, an Israeli-controlled territory, killed 12 children—the most deadly attack on Israeli-controlled land since October. The victims were Druze Arab; it’s not clear from media reports if they were Israeli citizens.
Israel blamed Hezbollah for the attack, and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said there was “every indication” that the group was behind it, though Hezbollah denied responsibility, which it hasn’t done for previous strikes.
“Hezbollah will pay a heavy price, which it has not paid up to now,” Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in an overnight statement.
The Israel-Hezbollah conflict, featuring cross-border strikes, has killed more than 500 since October, including more than 100 civilians, but has thus far remained relatively contained, with both sides saying that they are willing to engage in full-scale war but want to avoid it. About 100,000 people in Lebanon and 60,000 in Israel have been already displaced due to the strikes.
Hezbollah is seen as far stronger and better equipped than Hamas, the Palestinian militant and political group which Israel is seeking to eliminate, following the group’s massacre of more than 1,100 Israelis on October 7. Both groups are classified by the U.S. State Department as foreign terrorist organizations.
Israel’s conflicts with the two groups are related and ending one could help end the other. Hezbollah has said it would stop its attacks if a cease-fire in Gaza is reached.
Experts are calling on U.S. diplomats not just to diffuse Israel-Hezbollah tensions but also to use its leverage, as the main arms supplier and backer of Israel, to bring an end to the assault on Gaza.
“The U.S. administration has not done enough to [reach a ceasefire] in Gaza,” Heiko Wimmen, an analyst at the International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera on Sunday. “The incident in Majdal Shams is a potent reminder of why it is necessary to bring this unending conflict to an end.”
For now, the violence continues on multiple fronts. An Israeli drone strike killed two Palestinians in the West Bank on Saturday and injured 28, according to Al Jazeera.
A Palestinian boy walks past the rubble of a school destroyed in an Israeli airstrike on Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, July 27, 2024
ISRAELI air strikes destroyed a school used by displaced Palestinians in central Gaza on Saturday, killing at least 30 people, including several children.
Seven children and seven women were reportedly among the dead taken from the girls’ school in Deir al-Balah to al-Aqsa Hospital.
Israel’s military said that the air raid was targeted at a Hamas command centre used to direct attacks against Israeli troops and store “large quantities of weapons.”
Hamas slammed the Israeli claim as false.
Civil defence workers in Gaza said thousands had been sheltering in the school, which also contained a medical site.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said at least another 12 people were killed in other strikes on Saturday.
Palestinians wounded by Israeli attacks are brought to Nasser Hospital for medical treatment in Khan Younis, Gaza on July 22, 2024. (Photo: Doaa Albaz/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“Every day that we continue supplying weapons and munitions to Israel is another day that women are shredded by our bombs and children are murdered with our bullets.”
As President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Thursday, dozens of American healthcare workers who recently volunteered in the Gaza Strip urged the U.S. leaders to do everything in their power to end Israel’s assault on the enclave, citing the horrors they witnessed firsthand.
In an open letter addressed to Biden, Harris, and First Lady Jill Biden, 45 physicians, surgeons, and nurses wrote that “we wish you could see the nightmares that plague so many of us since we have returned: dreams of children maimed and mutilated by our weapons, and their inconsolable mothers begging us to save them.”
“We wish you could hear the cries and screams our consciences will not let us forget,” the letter reads. “We cannot believe that anyone would continue arming the country that is deliberately killing these children after seeing what we have seen.”
The healthcare workers called on the Biden administration to “withhold military, economic, and diplomatic support from the state of Israel and to participate in an international arms embargo of both Israel and all Palestinian armed groups until a permanent cease-fire is established, and until good-faith negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians lead to a permanent resolution of the conflict.”
“We are not politicians. We do not claim to have all the answers,” they continued. “We are simply physicians and nurses who cannot remain silent about what we saw in Gaza. Every day that we continue supplying weapons and munitions to Israel is another day that women are shredded by our bombs and children are murdered with our bullets. President Biden and Vice President Harris, we urge you: End this madness now!”
This is an open letter addressed to @POTUS, @VP , and @FLOTUS signed by 45 American physicians and nurses, about what we saw while working in Gaza. Please feel free to distribute. A PDF can be downloaded from the link and/or QR code on page 1. pic.twitter.com/LHVvmeAFad
The letter was released as Netanyahu, fresh off his widely condemned address to the U.S. Congress, met separately on Thursday with Biden and Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
In remarks following her meeting with Netanyahu, Harris said that “what has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating,” pointing to “the images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third, or fourth time.”
“We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies,” the vice president added. “We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering. And I will not be silent.”
Harris said she told Netanyahu directly to “get this deal done”—referring to a cease-fire agreement with Hamas—but, as expected, she did not break with the administration on supplying arms to the Israeli military.
While there has been no obvious policy change from the administration now that Harris has taken over for Biden at the top of the Democratic Party’s presidential ticket, Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft argued that the vice president “clearly broke with Biden on Israel in terms of rhetoric and tone.”
Parsi also contended that there was “a substance shift.”
“Biden has disingenuously claimed that Hamas blocked a cease-fire deal,” Parsi wrote on social media. “By saying that she urged Netanyahu ‘to clinch the deal,’ Kamala pointed to the real obstacle.”
BREAKING: VP Harris speaks after meeting with Israeli PM Netanyahu
Harris calling for an immediate cease-fire deal to free the hostages.
The VP saying she “will not be silent" about the suffering in Gaza, the "devastating" loss of life and the "dire" humanitarian crisis. pic.twitter.com/Fe5QPoOuFh
In their letter to Harris and Biden, the healthcare workers wrote that Israel “has directly targeted and deliberately devastated Gaza’s entire healthcare system” and “targeted our colleagues in Gaza for death, disappearance, and torture.” According to figures from the United Nations Human Rights Office, Israeli forces have killed one in every 40 healthcare workers in the Palestinian territory since October as diseases spread and the number of Gazans killed or wounded continues to grow by the hour.
The healthcare workers expressed the view that—based on available evidence and their experiences—”the death toll from this conflictis many times higher than what is reported by the Gaza Ministry of Health,” which currently stands at over 39,100.
“We also believe this is probative evidence of widespread violations of American laws governing the use of American weapons abroad, and of international humanitarian law,” they continued. “We cannot forget the scenes of unbearable cruelty directed at women and children that we witnessed ourselves.”
