Tag: palestine

Witnesses Say the Israeli Army Is Using Facial Recognition Technology in Its Assault on North Gaza

Ishaaq al-Daour, 32, was sheltering with his family at the UN-run Abu Hussein School in Jabalia refugee camp when the Israeli army stormed the shelter on October 20, forcing over 700 hundred people out of the school and leading them into a large ditch that had been dug in advance by the military.

“They made all of the men go down into the ditch first,” al-Daour told Mondoweiss from the Remal neighborhood in Gaza City. “Then they ordered us to climb out of the ditch one by one and stood each of us in front of a camera that had been installed nearby.”

The army made the men stand in front of the “camera” for at least three minutes per person, al-Daour said, long enough for the cameras to scan their faces and reveal personal data seemingly already stored in the Israeli military’s system. After the scans, al-Daour said the soldiers would reveal information about each individual, including their “name, age, work, family members and names, place of residence, and even their personal activities.”

“When they suspected someone, they took him away [to an unknown location” al-Daour said. As for those who had relatives who belonged to Palestinian resistance movements or who personally belonged to resistance factions, al-Daour speculated that “their fate was immediate death,” citing stories he had heard from others in Gaza, whose friends and relatives were taken at checkpoints and had not been seen again, or who returned to Gaza in body bags. 

Al-Daour is one of the thousands of people who were expelled from the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza and ordered to move south at gunpoint by the Israeli army. The forced exodus of thousands out of Jabalia is part of an Israeli offensive on northern Gaza that started on October 5. Its objective is to implement a proposal put forward by a group of senior Israeli generals that aims to empty northern Gaza of its inhabitants through starvation and bombardment, the so-called “Generals’ Plan.”

Survivors from Jabalia like al-Daour report that the Israeli army is using facial recognition technology to screen residents in the ongoing assault, often identifying people from long distances and picking them out from a crowd. 

Witnesses say that the Israeli army has set up security checkpoints throughout northern Gaza where the facial recognition technology is being deployed. The military is also reportedly using this technology when it storms shelters for the displaced. Witnesses report that in these cases Israeli forces will corral people in enclosed places, usually ditches dug by military bulldozers, and process them individually.

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‘Israel Forced to Kill Civilians in Gaza’ – Clinton’s Remarks Spark Outrage

The backlash against the former US President came following remarks he made at a rally in Michigan in support of presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris.

Former United States President Bill Clinton is facing wide criticism for controversial remarks he made on Wednesday, which justified the killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza by the Israeli occupation army.

The backlash against the former US President came following remarks he made at a rally in Michigan in support of presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris when he said that Hamas “forced” Israel to kill Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

“I understand why young Palestinians and Arab Americans in Michigan think too many people have died. I get that,” Clinton said addressing Arab American voters.

He continued: “But if you lived in one of those kibbutzim in Israel right next to Gaza, where the people there were the most pro-friendship with Palestine, most pro-two-state solution of any of the Israeli communities — were the ones right next to Gaza. And Hamas butchered them.”

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The Israeli task force deporting foreign activists from the West Bank

Israel has intensified its efforts to disrupt the work of international solidarity activists in the occupied West Bank in recent weeks, especially those supporting Palestinians during the olive harvest. Since the start of October, eight foreign activists have been detained; five of them were subsequently either deported or pressured to leave the country, while the other three were banned from the West Bank for varying lengths of time.

The detentions represent an escalation in Israel’s restrictions on international access to the occupied territory, a policy now facilitated by a special “task force” created in April by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. Specifically targeting foreign activists in the West Bank, it operates under Israel’s Shai (West Bank) Central Police Unit and coordinates with the Population and Immigration Authority to expedite detentions and deportations.

The task force was set up shortly after the Biden administration and other foreign governments began imposing sanctions on violent Israeli settlers and settler organizations, and appears to be a direct response to it. According to data from the Human Rights Defenders Fund, 15 foreign human rights activists have been detained and then deported or coerced into leaving the country under the task force’s authority.

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Chuck Schumer labeled ‘traitor’ after damning report reveals he quietly advised Columbia leaders to ignore criticism of campus antisemitism

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is being slammed as a traitor following damning claims he instructed administrators at Columbia University to dismiss any criticism of the school’s handling of blatant violence and antisemitism on campus in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in Israel.

The GOP-lead House Education and Workforce Committee, in a 325-page report, contended the New York Democrat advised then-university president Minouche Shafik that the school would be spared any scrutiny by Democrats, explaining that the elite university’s “political problems are really only among Republicans.”

His staff then encouraged Columbia administrators that the “best strategy is to keep heads down,” according to the report.

“The self-proclaimed protector of the Jewish people. Chuckey Schumer is nothing but a kapo traitor. He should be ashamed of himself,” said former Brooklyn state Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a Democrat-turned-Republican who heads the group Americans Against Antisemitism.

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Genocidal Scorecard

A United Nations report, published on Monday, lays out in chilling detail the advances made by Israel in Gaza as it seeks to eradicate “the very existence of the Palestinian people in Palestine.” This genocidal project, the report ominously warns, “is now metastasizing to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.” 

The Nakba or “catastrophe,” which in 1948 saw Zionist militias drive 750,000 Palestinians from their homes, carry out more than 70 massacres and seize 78 percent of historic Palestine, has returned on steroids. It is the next and, perhaps, final chapter in “a long-term intentional, systematic, State-organized forced displacement and replacement of the Palestinians.”

Francesca Albanese, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, who issued the report, titled “Genocide as colonial erasure,” makes an urgent appeal to the international community to impose a full arms embargo and sanctions on Israel until the genocide of Palestinians is halted. She calls on Israel to accept a permanent ceasefire. She demands that Israel, as required by international law and U.N. resolutions, withdraw its military and colonists from Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. 

At the very least, Israel, unchecked, should be formally recognized as an apartheid state and persistent violator of international law, Albanese states. The U.N. should reactivate the Special Committee Against Apartheid to address the situation in Palestine, and Israel’s membership in the U.N. should be suspended. Short of these interventions, Israel’s goal, Albanese warns, will likely come into fruition.

You can see my interview with Albanese here.

“This ongoing genocide is doubtlessly the consequence of the exceptional status and protracted impunity that has been afforded to Israel.” she writes. “Israel has systematically and flagrantly violated international law, including Security Council resolutions and [International Criminal Court] ICJ orders. This has emboldened the hubris of Israel and its defiance of international law. As the ICC Prosecutor has warned, ‘if we do not demonstrate our willingness to apply the law equally, if it is seen as applied selectively, we will be creating the conditions of its complete collapse. This is the true risk we face at this perilous moment.’”

The U.N. report comes amid an Israeli blockade of northern Gaza where over 400,000 Palestinians are enduring a starvation siege and constant airstrikes in an attempt to depopulate the north. Israeli forces have killed 1,250 Palestinians in the assault, launched on October 5, a medical source told Al Jazeera. Reports from northern Gaza are difficult to obtain as internet and phone services have been cut and the few journalists on the ground continue to be killed. Israel’s ground and aerial assaults are centered on Jabaliya, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun. Civil defense units say they have been barred by Israeli forces from reaching the sites of recent strikes and their crews have been attacked. 

Israel has ordered Palestinians to flee to designated “safe zones,” but once in these “safe zones” they have been attacked and ordered to move to new “safe zones.” 

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Israel bombs medical equipment in besieged north Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital

Israel bombed Beit Lahia’s besieged Kamal Adwan Hospital in north Gaza on 31 October, killing several people and causing serious damage to essential departments within the medical facility. 

Palestine Today’s correspondent reported “four martyrs, including two children, in the occupation’s bombing of the third floor of Kamal Adwan Hospital.”

The attack targeted the hospital’s desalination plant in the kidney dialysis department, the engineering and maintenance departments, and water tanks. 

It led to the burning of a warehouse of medicines and medical supplies in the hospital that had been received by the World Health Organization (WHO) just five days ago.

The attack on the hospitals came just days after Israel’s deliberate bombing of the oxygen station in the hospital, which led to the death of several patients, among them children. It also came the week after Israeli troops stormed the hospital and abducted dozens of patients and medical staff.

Surgical operations have been completely suspended due to the ongoing aggression on the hospital. Hospital Director Dr Hussam Abu Safia has called on anyone with surgical expertise to head to the hospital, as there are dozens of injured patients in critical condition. 

Kamal Adwan Hospital and the Indonesian Hospital, which is also besieged, are the last two functioning hospitals in northern Gaza.

The recent cessation of Civil Defense operations, which comes as a result of the month-long Israeli siege on the north, has made transferring casualties from non-stop Israeli attacks impossible. 

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Israeli army ethnically cleanses half of Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza: Schools burned, men kidnapped

Israel is in its third week of ethnically cleansing northern Gaza, particularly around the Jabalia refugee camp. And according to reports, about half of all the Palestinians there have been removed as Israeli soldiers burn down schools and kidnap people.

At the same time that Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are launching airstrikes on the region, ground forces are going door to door looking for starving, unarmed Palestinians to forcibly remove from their homes and send elsewhere.

Heavy airstrikes and artillery shelling are destroying entire homes and buildings where the Palestinians are sheltering. Increasingly more displaced families have nowhere to go while IDF soldiers knock down schools, homes and other facilities to prevent the Palestinians from returning.

After burning down or leveling the structures, the IDF is forcing whoever is still alive to head south. Many of the refugees who obey end up dead anyway as Israel then proceeds to shoot and kill them for no apparent reason while they are fleeing.

Some of the refugees are disobeying the orders and heading west of Jabalia instead of south to a place called Beit Lahia. Others are trying to flee to Gaza City. No matter where they try to go, the Palestinians are being killed left and right.

“This is a genocide,” said a resident of north Gaza named Hasan. “They’re starving people, blockading people. There are still tens of thousands of people here in Jabalia.”

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Why the Democrats were Israel’s perfect partners in genocide

Over the last year, we have witnessed President Joe Biden elevate the U.S.-Israel “special relationship” to new heights. From replenishing Israel’s weapons stocks and shielding it from accountability on the international stage, to deploying U.S. assets and personnel in Israel’s defense, the Biden administration has gone above and beyond to ensure that Israel not only could sustain its unprecedented assault on Gaza, but that it wouldn’t have to bear the full cost of war.

Biden went into his reelection campaign wrestling with Donald Trump for the title of “Israel’s best friend” — a grotesque race to the bottom that has become a tradition during U.S. election seasons. So when the president ultimately decided to drop out, some were hopeful that Vice President Kamala Harris would release us from this downward spiral. They were soon disappointed.

Media outlets eagerly insisted that Harris seemed to show “greater understanding and empathy for Palestinians,” and surmised that such a difference in perspective might lead to a change in policy. But in the months since assuming the head of the Democratic ticket, Harris has made it clear that she is ready and eager to carry on Biden’s catastrophic legacy for the next four years.

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Israel’s parliament votes to ban UNRWA, the UN’s Palestine aid agency

The Israeli parliament has approved two controversial bills to ban the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) from operating on Israeli territory and areas under Israel’s control.

The legislation, passed on Monday, risks collapsing the already fragile aid distribution process at a moment when the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is worsening and Israel is under increased pressure to allow in aid supplies.

The ban is set to take effect in 90 days and lead to the closure of UNRWA’s premises in the occupied Palestinian territory – the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem – and Gaza, effectively paralysing the agency’s ability to fulfil its mandate as set out by the UN General Assembly in 1949.

UNRWA is the leading agency running humanitarian aid in Gaza, which has been devastated by more than a year of Israel’s war. Hundreds of UNRWA workers have been killed in Israeli strikes, making it the deadliest conflict for UN workers.

The first law, which bans UNRWA from conducting “any activity” or providing any service inside Israel, passed 92-10 following a fiery debate between supporters of the bill and its opponents, primarily members of Arab parliamentary parties.

The second legislation, which declares UNRWA a “terror” group and bans Israeli officials from any contact with the agency, passed 87-9.

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Israel traps 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza extermination zone

Israeli tanks thrust deeper on Monday into northern Gaza, trapping around 100,000 civilians, while the air force carried out airstrikes that brought the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces since last October above 43,000.

The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said around 100,000 people were stuck in Jabalia, Beit Lahia, and Beit Hanoun without medical or food supplies as a result of the siege imposed by Israeli forces.

The emergency service said it was forced to end its operations because of the three-week-long Israeli assault on Gaza’s north.

The Israeli military says it seeks to destroy Hamas and claimed it had captured 100 “suspected Hamas militants” during a raid of the Kamal Adwan hospital in the Jabalia camp in recent days.

Hospital officials said that Israeli forces detained members of the hospital staff, patients, and Palestinians sheltering in the hospital complex.  

Since the start of the war, Israel has claimed that Hamas uses hospitals as command centers as a pretext to deliberately destroy Gaza’s hospitals and health system.

Israeli forces carried out multiple airstrikes across Gaza on Monday, killing five people and bringing the number killed by Israel during the war on Gaza to more than 43,000.

The Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that an Israeli drone struck a group of people in the Beit Lahia area Monday, killing one and injuring several others.

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