Tag: palestine

Israel’s systematic and wanton destruction of Gaza has raised long-standing issues of its political and legal culpability over the treatment of Palestinians to a new level of seriousness. 

It obviously poses familiar issues of Israeli war crimes, and Amnesty International had already clearly designated it as such after just the first week. The human rights organization also asked the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to “urgently expedite” its investigation of the aims of all parties.

But this Israeli campaign now poses the even graver issue of genocide of Palestinians as a nation. The utter devastation of Gaza and the vast numbers of civilians facing death from bombardment and from deliberately engineered starvation and sickness already presents the world with a spectacle of mass murder of unspeakable proportions. 

The Israelis should face accountability for its crimes. 

A panel of nine distinguished independent experts on human rights who investigated the Gaza emergency for the United Nations’ Human Rights Council has just warned that the Israeli campaign of destruction of Gaza poses “a risk of genocide against the Palestinian people.”  

And there is a long history of genocidal thinking and action behind this “genocidal moment”.  It should be recalled that during the previous Gaza crisis in 2014, an equally extremist Israeli government openly threatened genocide against the Palestinians.  

Keep reading

If you suspect that, with Hamas’s brutal attack on Israel added to the Ukraine war and other global conflicts, matters worldwide are heating up in unfortunate ways for all concerned including Americans, the U.S. State Department wants to tell you: You’re right.

“Due to increased tensions in various locations around the world, the potential for terrorist attacks, demonstrations or violent actions against U.S. citizens and interests, the Department of State advises U.S. citizens overseas to exercise increased caution,” warns a recent travel advisory.

Where should Americans “exercise increased caution?” Well, it’s a worldwide advisory, so everywhere. That’s understandable given that preexisting tensions with Russia and its allies almost pale in comparison to the growing stresses following Hamas’s atrocities against Israeli citizens. As fighting rages, other nations are being drawn in, including traditional Israeli ally, the U.S.

“On Wednesday, the USS Carney, an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, opened fire on four cruise missiles and 15 airborne drones for nine hours, far longer than the military first said,” reports military news site Task & Purpose. “Citing an American official familiar with the matter, the path and trajectory of the missiles had them en route to Israel. The missiles were fired by the Houthi rebels in Yemen, according to the Department of Defense, and would be the first attempt by any group in Yemen to strike at Israel in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 terror attacks by Hamas two weeks ago.”

There’s a lot to unpack there. But it’s not the full story.

Keep reading

A total of 5,000 US servicepeople took part in Israel’s overnight ground operation in northern Gaza, Iranian news agency reported on Saturday, citing sources.

The Israeli operation reportedly involved three divisions and several brigades of the US Armed Forces, according to the news agency.

The Israeli army is now trying to divide the Gaza Strip into two or three zones by entering from these areas and then starting the next phase of the war with Palestine to eliminate the link between the forces of Palestinian movement Hamas, the report said.

Keep reading

On October 7th, a large group of armed fighters broke out of the Gaza Strip to launch an unprecedented attack – by air, land, and sea – in southern Israel, thousands of rockets were launched, military bases as well as kibbutzim were targeted and briefly seized.

During the operation, dubbed Al-Aqsa Flood, over a thousand people were slaughtered, including hundreds of military personnel and innocent civilians. In order to secure concessions such as the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by the Israeli authorities, more than 200 prisoners including some soldiers were taken back to Gaza to be used as bargaining chips amid Israel’s ongoing relentless airstrikes.

Israel has occupied Palestine longer than the Soviet Union occupied Eastern Europe. The so-called “Palestinian Authority” (PA) is trained and supported by the Tel Aviv, London, and Washington, not the people. Essentially trustees in an Israeli prison, the PA is not a sovereign state of any kind. The people of Palestine live under a foreign military occupation.

Gaza, on the other hand, is a concentration camp which measures only 25 miles in length and five miles in width making it one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Crammed inside the camp are 2.3 million Palestinians, refugees in their own ancestral lands along with their descendants.

Since 2007, Israel has imposed a full blockade on Gaza from the air, land, and sea. Gaza is completely controlled by the Israeli military. For more than 15 years, food, potable water, electricity, medicine, building materials, etc. have been severely restricted by Tel Aviv. All the while, Palestinians besieged in the coastal enclave are routinely subjected to small as well as large-scale indiscriminate bombing campaigns.

This recent terrorist attack in Israel which saw so many civilians killed – including in crossfire with Israeli forces – was in fact a prison break led by Hamas, the armed militia which rules the Strip.

This horrible attack was blatantly, if unintentionally, provoked by Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party and his ruling coalition full of extremist settlers and Jewish supremacists bent on the de jure annexation of the entire West Bank, or “Judea and Samaria” as they call it.

It does not have to be this way at all.

Keep reading

Israeli ground forces have ramped up activities in Gaza in what anonymous US officials are reportedly telling the press is a “rolling start” to the long-anticipated ground invasion.

Israel has also concurrently crippled Gaza’s largest telecommunications service, which had been the enclave’s last remaining contact with the outside world after Israel knocked out all the others. Humanitarian organizations and mainstream press outlets now say they have lost communication with their contacts in Gaza in a level of information blackout we’re unaccustomed to seeing in modern times.

“This information blackout risks providing cover for mass atrocities and contributing to impunity for human rights violations,” Human Rights Watch correctly notes.

And I’m going to go ahead and say that’s probably not just a convenient coincidence for Israel. A genocidal massacre in total darkness works very much to the advantage of those doing the massacring.

Keep reading

The brutal Hamas massacre on October 7 was preceded by months of warning signs noted by IDF surveillance soldiers and disregarded as unimportant by intelligence officials, according to eyewitness accounts given in recent days.

At least three months prior to the attack, surveillance soldiers serving on a base in Nahal Oz reported signs that something unusual was underway at the already-tumultuous Gaza border, situated a kilometer from them.

The activity reported by the soldiers included information on Hamas operatives conducting training sessions multiple times a day, digging holes and placing explosives along the border. According to the accounts of the soldiers, no action was taken by those who received the reports.

IDF surveillance soldiers, referred to in Hebrew as tatzpitaniyot, belong to the Combat Intelligence Corps and operate along the country’s borders, as well as throughout the West Bank.

The surveillance soldiers are referred to by many as “the eyes of the army” as they provide real-time intelligence information to soldiers in the field, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Keep reading