Tag: ethnic cleansing

Gaza Tribunal in Sarajevo Documents How Genocide Has Eroded International Law

Dozens of lawyers, academics, human rights advocates, and journalists from Palestine, Israel, and global civil society issued a call to conscience on May 29 from a gathering in the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Dubbed the Sarajevo Declaration, the 2,000-word document was the culmination of the three-day preliminary hearing of the Gaza Tribunal, a newly formed people’s justice initiative aiming to voice “collective moral outrage” over what it described as Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and the decades of impunity for atrocities leading to it.

Throughout three eight-hour days, the tribunal heard 45 back-to-back testimonies of research and analysis on the conditions of life and death in Gaza and across the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The entries — about obliteration of cultural heritage, violations of reproductive and disability rights, the weaponization of accusations of antisemitism, capital accumulation on Gaza’s rubble and in the West Bank, and otherwise — made a case beyond the charge of genocide, which members of the tribunal and a growing proportion of the global human rights community view as fact. Unbound by formal procedure and jurisdiction, tribunal members also brought in analysis of the context predating October 7, 2023. All together, they built an argument that the present stage of genocide in Palestine is the logical end point of a Zionism’s project of domination initiated before 1948 — and that the exceptions that have allowed it have also undermined international law, global cooperation and the United Nations system for all.

Israel and those enabling its actions “want Gaza to be the graveyard of international law,” said Raji Sourani, a Palestinian attorney from Gaza and founder and director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza City, in his address at the close of the tribunal’s first day. “Not for Gazans, not for Palestinians, but for the whole world.”

The semi-closed session on the hushed campus of the International University of Sarajevo was the Gaza Tribunal’s first meeting, with the final verdict planned for a last session in October. The proceedings — in their quasi-academic format of panels, PowerPoints, and papers — were both desperate in their desire to impede atrocities and self-conscious of the impossibility to meet the present horror: Israel’s military has intensified its aerial bombardment and blockade of Gaza, in addition to opening fire on people queued for food, leading to some of the deadliest days since Israel broke the last ceasefire in March.

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Israel confirms it is arming Hamas rivals in operation opposition calls ‘complete madness’

Israel is arming local militias in Gaza in an effort to counter Hamas in the besieged enclave, officials say, as opposition politicians warned that the move endangers national security.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended the covert enterprise on Thursday, calling it “a good thing.” In a video posted on social media, Netanyahu said Israel had “activated clans in Gaza which oppose Hamas,” and that it was done “under the advice of security elements.”

Former defense minister and Netanyahu rival Avigdor Liberman divulged the move on Israel’s Ch. 12 News on Wednesday, saying that Israel was distributing rifles to extremist groups in Gaza and describing the operation as “complete madness.”

“We’re talking about the equivalent of ISIS in Gaza,” Liberman said one day later on Israel’s Army Radio, adding that Israel is providing weapons to “crime families in Gaza on Netanyahu’s orders.”

“No one can guarantee that these weapons will not be directed towards Israel,” he said, a warning echoed by one of the officials who spoke with CNN. After Liberman’s revelation, the Prime Minister’s Office issued a statement saying, “Israel is acting to defeat Hamas in various ways upon the recommendation of the heads of the security establishment.”

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Mike Huckabee: US No Longer Pursuing Goal of Palestinian State

Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, told Bloomberg in an interview published on Tuesday that he believes the US is no longer pursuing the goal of an independent Palestinian state.

“Unless there are some significant things that happen that change the culture, there’s no room for it,” the former Arkansas governor told the outlet, adding that he didn’t think those “changes” would happen “in our lifetime.”

When asked if the US was still pursuing the goal of a Palestinian state, he said, “I don’t think so.”

While the US has been working against a Palestinian state for decades by continuing to back Israel as it expands illegal settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Huckabee’s comments mark one of the most explicit denials of the goal of a Palestinian state from a top US official.

Huckabee also suggested that a Palestinian state could be carved out of a Muslim country. “Does it have to be in Judea and Samaria?” he said, using the Biblical name for the West Bank.

For Huckabee, his opposition to a Palestinian state is ideological and rooted in his religious beliefs. As a Christian Zionist, Huckabee believes that God gave historic Palestine to the modern state of Israel.

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State Department Weighing $500 Million Grant to Controversial Gaza Aid Group: Report

According to The New Arab, the State Department is considering a massive distribution to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). The new Israeli and US-backed agency has been accused by human rights groups of being a tool of Tel Aviv to complete the ethnic cleansing of Gaza rather than an organization attempting to feed the starving people of the Strip.

Citing two current and two former officials, the outlet reported that the State Department is considering a $500 million transfer to the GHF. The money would fund the organization for about six months.

Responding to an inquiry by the Libertarian Institute, the State Department press office declined to confirm the report, only stating that the GHF is “an independent organization” that “currently does not receive [US government] funding.” It directed further questions to the organization itself, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Some US officials have opposed the large grant, raising concerns related to incidents when Israeli forces killed scores of Palestinians near GHF aid sites.

The GHF has met intense criticism for being unprepared to provide food and other desperately needed supplies in Gaza. UN and other aid agencies previously used established distribution networks to feed the millions of people languishing under the Israeli blockade. However, since the GHF was established in February, Israel has refused to allow UN and international agencies to bring aid into Gaza in favor of the new organization.

In the first weeks of the GHF operations in Gaza, Israeli forces killed scores of Palestinians attempting to get food, prompting top officials and firms to cut ties with the agency. GHF’s previous executive director, Jake Wood, resigned just hours before the organization began operating in the Strip, arguing the group’s plans were not in line with “humanitarian principles.”

Reverend Johnnie Moore, an American evangelical Christian leader and staunch Zionist, took over Wood’s role last week.

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US and Israel turn “aid” centers into slaughter zones

Israeli forces massacred more than 400 Palestinians and injured more than 2,000 in airstrikes, tank shellings, drone attacks and with sniper fire between 29 May and 4 June.

Attacks continued against hospitals, medical clinics, residential buildings, schools turned into shelters and inside humiliating death traps engineered by US mercenaries and Israeli soldiers under the guise of distributing meager amounts of snacks to millions of starving people – while real international aid remains in trucks, stuck behind the crossings, for more than three consecutive months.

Nearly 100 Palestinians were killed and 440 injured between 3 and 4 June alone, according to the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza.

On Monday, 2 June, Israeli airstrikes flattened a home in Gaza City, pinning a baby and his 5-year-old brother beneath the rubble. This clip, filmed by Al Jazeera reporter Anas al-Sharif, shows the moment the two children were rescued by Palestinian first responders and civil defense workers.

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Former State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller Admits Israel Has Committed War Crimes in Gaza

Former State Department spokesman Matthew Miller has said that Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza, an admission that comes after he spent his time in the Biden administration providing cover for Israeli atrocities in the besieged Palestinian territory.

Miller made the comments on a Sky News podcast when asked if he thought Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. “I don’t think it’s a genocide, but I think it is without a doubt true that Israel has committed war crimes,” he said.

From the podium at the State Department, Miller repeatedly claimed that there wasn’t enough proof to conclude that Israel was committing war crimes despite the overwhelming evidence, and justified continued US support for the slaughter of Palestinians.

“At the podium, you’re not expressing your personal opinion, you’re expressing the conclusions of the United States government. The United States government had not concluded they have committed war crimes,” Miller said.

Miller admitted that he believed Israel committed war crimes while he was in the State Department, but “qualified” his answer, claiming it wasn’t clear whether it was Israeli state policy to commit war crimes or if they had been committed only by individual members of the military.

But Miller also admitted there hasn’t been any accountability for the war crimes committed by the Israeli military. “We have not yet seen them hold sufficient numbers of the military accountable, and I think it’s an open question whether they’re going to,” he said.

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Palestinians flee intensified Israeli attacks after mass displacement orders in north Gaza

Israel intensified its aerial attacks and ground operations in northern Gaza on 30 May, as Palestinians began fleeing due to the massive-scale evacuation orders issued by the Israeli army the night before. 

Al Jazeera reported that “families were forced to wait until sunrise to begin escaping” due to the continuous attacks early on Friday, which began shortly after the order was issued. 

Since the early morning hours, Israel has been targeting homes and high-rise residential buildings in Jabalia al-Balad, Shujaiya, and Al-Tuffah, Palestinian media outlets reported. 

A woman was killed and several people injured in an Israeli airstrike on a house in Jabalia al-Balad.

Three people were also killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Saftawi area, north of Gaza City. In total, at least 18 people have been killed across Gaza since dawn. 

“There’s no safe place at all. Where can we go? We’re better off dying here than being displaced again, because death is more merciful than that. There’s bombing everywhere,” a Gaza City resident told Al Jazeera.

Israel’s latest evacuation orders were issued late on 29 May for almost all of Gaza City and other areas in the north. 

Around one million people who have already been displaced multiple times across the area are now being forcibly uprooted once again. 

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Trump’s Useful Idiots

The media, universities, the Democratic Party and liberals, by embracing the fiction of “rampant antisemitism,” laid the groundwork for their own demise.

Columbia and Princeton, where I have taught, and Harvard, which I attended, are not incubators of hatred towards Jews.

The New York Times, where I worked for 15 years and which Trump calls “an enemy of the people,” is slavishly subservient to the Zionist narrative. What these institutions have in common is not antisemitism, but liberalism. And liberalism, with its creed of pluralism and inclusiveness, is slated by our authoritarian regime for obliteration.

The conflation of outrage over the genocide with antisemitism is a sleazy tactic to silence protest and placate Zionist donors, the billionaire class and advertisers.

These liberal institutions, weaponizing antisemitism, aggressively silenced and expelled critics, banned student groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, allowed police to make hundreds of arrests of peaceful protests on campuses, purged professors and groveled before Congress.

Use the words “apartheid”’ and “genocide”’ and you are fired or excoriated.

Zionist Jews, in this fictional narrative, are the oppressed. Jews who protest the genocide are slandered as Hamas stooges and punished. Good Jews. Bad Jews. One group deserves protection. The other deserves to be thrown to the wolves. This odious bifurcation exposes the charade.

In April 2024, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik, along with two board members and a law professor, testified before the U.S. House of Representatives’ education committee. They accepted the premise that antisemitism was a significant problem at Columbia and other higher education institutions.

When Co-Chair of the Board of Trustees of Columbia University David Greenwald and others told the committee that they believed  “from the river to the sea” and “long live the intifada” were antisemitic statements, Shafik agreed. She threw students and faculty under the bus, including long-time professor Joseph Massad.

The day after the hearings, Shafik suspended all the students at the Columbia protests and called in the New York City Police Department (NYPD), who arrested at least 108 students.

“I have determined that the encampment and related disruptions pose a clear and present danger to the substantial functioning of the University,” Shafik wrote in her letter to the police.

NYPD Chief John Chell, however, told the press, “the students that were arrested were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever, and were saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner.”

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Germany threatens steps against Israel as tone shifts over Gaza

Germany’s foreign minister threatened unspecified measures against Israel on Tuesday and said Berlin would not export weapons used to break humanitarian law, as he and Chancellor Friedrich Merz delivered their most severe rebuke yet over Gaza.

Germany, along with the United States, had long remained in support of Israel’s conduct since the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas, even as Israel became increasingly isolated internationally. Its about-turn comes as the European Union is reviewing its Israel policy and Britain, France and Canada also threatened “concrete actions” over Gaza.

Speaking to broadcaster WDR, Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul warned Germany’s historic support for Israel must not be instrumentalised, as massive air strikes and shortages of food and medicines had made the situation in Gaza “unbearable”.

Earlier, Merz criticised air strikes on Gaza as no longer justified by the need to fight Hamas and “no longer comprehensible”, in comments at a press conference in Finland.

While not a complete rupture, the shift in tone is significant in a country whose leadership follows a policy of special responsibility for Israel, known as the Staatsraeson, due to the legacy of the Nazi Holocaust.

It also reflects a broader shift in German public opinion.

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Israeli settlers set fire to Palestinian homes in northern West Bank

Israeli settlers set fire to several Palestinian homes on Thursday evening after storming the outskirts of Bruqin town, west of Salfit province in the northern occupied West Bank.

According to WAFA, the official Palestinian news agency, a group of settlers attacked the area, setting fire to a number of homes. The fires caused extensive damage and led to large-scale blazes across parts of the town. Footage circulating on social media showed flames spreading in several locations in Bruqin.

The arson attack took place just hours after Israeli forces re-entered the town on Thursday evening, following a brief withdrawal earlier in the day. WAFA reported that the army returned in large numbers with military vehicles, blocked several internal roads, and raided multiple houses, launching thorough searches.

Earlier on Thursday, Israeli troops had withdrawn from Bruqin and the nearby town of Kafr ad-Dik after a nine-day military operation. The campaign included the killing of a Palestinian man, widespread arrests, and the conversion of several homes into military outposts, under the pretext of searching for the person behind a shooting incident that killed an Israeli woman and injured her husband.

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