Tag: war crimes

Israel Might Well Fall Apart

A somewhat premature comment on the conflict between the Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant and Minister of National Security (and convicted radical) Itamar Ben-Gvir:

10:36 AM · Jul 30, 2024 Hussein @EyesOnSouth1 – 10:36 AM · Jul 30, 2024

The disintegration of the Zionist society is happening earlier than expected. This will exacerbate the more Israelis become aware that war failure is inevitable. Civil war is very likely, but almost a third of the population (liberals & affiliates) would leave rather than fight.

This is not a clash between two officials, this is an ideological clash between two schools of thought who are at the complete opposite spectrum.

This will not stay between Ben-Gvir & Gallant/Halevi, it will become a conflict between the army and the police/militias.

The current conflict between Gallant and Ben-Gvir comes after the Military Police arrested nine soldiers accused of raping a Palestinian prisoner.

The Israeli investigation of the rape became necessary after reports by CNN, the New York Times (archived) and the Washington Post (archived) about prisoner abuse and murder in Israeli jails. The reports threatened to trigger international investigations:

Judicial officials told Ynet that the serious suspicions must be investigated. “An internal Israeli investigation is better than an international probe,” the said.

“Abuse of prisoners could cause unprecedented damage internationally. Internal investigations protect Israel from the International tribunals in the Hague. If we do not investigate, we are ensuring the political and military leaders end up before those courts and Israel subjected to grave steps. The suspects were detained for questioning and not arrested. They will receive a fair and just due process.”

Lawyers for the suspected reservists denied the accusations of rape and said the prisoner refused a search when he was moved to the Sde Teiman facility and was restrained by force.

To describe a brutal anal gang rape as “restrain by force” requires some chutzpah.

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Only a failing US empire would be so blind as to cheer Netanyahu and his genocide

There is only one country in the world right now, in the midst of Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is guaranteed dozens of standing ovations from the vast majority of its elected representatives.

(Article by Jonathan Cook republished from MiddleEastEye.net)

That country is not Israel, where he has been a hugely divisive figure for many years. It is the United States.

On Wednesday, Netanyahu was back-slapped, glad-handed, whooped and cheered as he slowly made his way – hailed at every step as a conquering hero – to the podium of the US Congress.

This was the same Netanyahu who has overseen during the past 10 months the slaughter – so far – of some 40,000 Palestinians, around half of them women and children. More than 21,000 other children are reported missing, most of them likely dead under rubble.

It was the same Netanyahu who levelled a strip of territory – originally home to 2.3 million Palestinians – that is expected to take 80 years to rebuild, at a cost of at least $50bn.

It was the same Netanyahu who has destroyed every hospital and university in Gaza, and bombed almost all of its schools that were serving as shelters for families made homeless by other Israeli bombs.

It was the same Netanyahu whose arrest is being sought by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, accused of using starvation as a weapon of war by imposing an aid blockade that has engineered a famine across Gaza.

It was the same Netanyahu whose government was found last week by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to have been intensifying Israel’s apartheid rule over the Palestinian people in an act of long-term aggression.

It was the same Netanyahu whose government is standing trial for committing what the ICJ, the world’s highest judicial body, has termed a “plausible genocide”.

And yet, there was just one visible protester in the congressional chamber. Rashida Tlaib, the only US legislator of Palestinian heritage, sat silently grasping a small black sign. On one side it said: “War criminal”. On the other: “Guilty of genocide.”

One person among hundreds mutely trying to point out that the emperor was naked.

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Israel bombs Gaza field hospital massacring dozens of displaced Palestinians

Israeli jets launched airstrikes on a girls’ school in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah being used as a field hospital on 27 July, killing at least 30 Palestinians and injuring dozens more.

Following the latest massacre of Palestinian civilians, the Israeli army claimed its attack was targeting a “Hamas command and control center.”

“The occupation continues to lie by claiming that the Khadija school is a leadership complex for the movement. What happened in Deir al-Balah is a continuation of the genocide plan practiced by the Israeli occupation,” Hamas leader Osama Hamdan said on Saturday afternoon.

“We agreed to the serious proposals of the mediators, but the occupation does not want to stop its aggression. The occupation is trying to pressure the resistance by escalating its military operations,” Hamdan added.

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Israeli soldiers suspected of raping Palestinian prisoner arrested, sparking far-right riot

Nine Israeli soldiers in the notorious Sde Teiman detention centre were arrested on Monday on suspicion of raping a Palestinian detainee, sparking a riot where far-right activists and MPs stormed the facility.

Israeli military police raided Sde Teiman but were met with resistance by soldiers, who reportedly barricaded themselves into the facility and used pepper spray to defend themselves before eventually being taken into custody.

The soldiers were suspected of abusing a Palestinian detainee, who according to Arab48 is suffering from “a serious wound in his rectum area”.

The prisoner had been transferred from Sde Teiman in the Negev desert to a hospital in Beersheba, which is also in southern Israel. Haaretz said the prisoner is unable to walk.

The Israeli army said an investigation is underway.

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‘Terrorist Organization’? What’s Behind the Israeli War on UNRWA

Targeting a school during a war could be justified or, at least, argued to have been a mistake. But striking over 120 schools, killing and wounding thousands of civilians sheltered inside, can only be intentional and horrific war crimes.

Between October 7 and July 18, Israel has done precisely that, targeting with total impunity, United Nations infrastructure in the besieged Gaza Strip.

The price has been horrific. According to UNRWA estimates, at least 561 internally displaced people in UNRWA shelters have been killed and 1,768 injured since the start of the war.

In fact, within a period of ten days, between July 8 and July 18, at least six UN-run schools which have served as makeshift shelters for displaced Palestinians have been targeted by the Israeli army, resulting in the killing and wounding of hundreds.

Historically, UN-linked organizations seemed to be somewhat immune from the impact of war on local populations. The privilege of being neutral outsiders to the conflict, allowed those affiliated with such organizations to carry out their duties largely unhindered.

The Israeli war on Gaza, however, is the primary exception among all modern conflicts. According to UN sources, 274 aid workers and over 500 healthcare workers have been killed.

These figures are consistent with all other numbers produced by the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza. Indeed, not a single category of people has been spared: neither doctors nor civil defense workers, nor mayors or even traffic police.

It was obvious from the very start of the war that Israel wanted to criminalize all Palestinians, not only those affiliated with Hamas or other groups, but the very civilian population and any international organization that came to their aid.

Blaming and dehumanizing all of Gaza was and remains part of an Israeli strategy that would allow the Israeli army to operate without any restraints, and without even the most minimal threshold of morality or respect for international law.

But the Israeli attacks on the UN, all its institutions, but particularly the UN agency responsible for the welfare of Gaza’s refugees (UNRWA), serve a different purpose than that of mere ‘collective punishment’.

Israel does not attempt to mask or justify its attacks on the organization as it did during previous Gaza wars. This time around, the Israeli war was accompanied, from the very start, with the outlandish accusation that UNRWA members had participated in the October 7 assault by Hamas and other Palestinian groups.

Without providing any evidence, Tel Aviv launched an international campaign of vilification against the UN organization which has, for decades, provided educational, medical and humanitarian services to millions of Palestinian refugees.

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ICC to Delay Arrest Warrants for Israeli, Hamas Leaders – What We Know So Far

On May 20, ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan requested arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant as well as senior Hamas officials on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has accepted the requests of more than 60 states, organizations and individuals to intervene in Prosecutor Karim Khan’s application to issue arrest warrants for top Israeli and Hamas officials, reportedly slowing down the process on the matter.

This means that “an ICC decision to grant or reject the arrest warrants will be significantly delayed, likely by several months,” according to The Times of Israel.

The US, Germany, Palestine, Norway, Ireland, Czech Republic, Ireland, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile and Mexico (jointly), Union of Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo and Djibouti were among the states whose filings were accepted.

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RFK Jr, Tells Uncomfortable Truths During DC NATO Summit – Condemns Reports Of Executions Of Russian Prisoners By ‘American-Led’ Units

U.S. Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. had a son travel to Ukraine and fight against Russian forces in Donbass. He knows the inner-workings of the conflict.

Yesterday, he issued this statement in response to reports ‘American-led’ mercenary units were executing Russian prisoners of war in violation of the Geneva Convention.

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SAS war crimes inquiry obtains huge cache of new evidence, BBC reveals

The public inquiry into alleged SAS war crimes in Afghanistan has obtained a previously deleted cache of data that could hold crucial evidence, the BBC can reveal.

The files were permanently erased from a server by a UK Special Forces contractor in 2016, during a murder investigation into the SAS.

But the public inquiry team has now secured backups of the server – part of a Special Forces communications system codenamed “Sonata” – believed to have been created before the files were erased.

The backups are likely to contain information about SAS operations on which members of the elite regiment were suspected of unlawfully killing unarmed Afghan detainees and civilians.

A spokesperson for the inquiry confirmed to the BBC that they had obtained the backups, adding: “We now hold the relevant material and are exploring a technical solution to retrieve and review the data to determine its relevance to the investigation.”

The spokesperson said the inquiry team was approached during several days of hearings about computer evidence last December by someone offering them access to the backups, but the inquiry declined to comment on the source of the offer.

This is the first time backups of Sonata have been obtained by investigators outside UK Special Forces, which blocked previous efforts by the Royal Military Police (RMP) to copy the server.

To the dismay of the RMP investigators, a contractor hired by UK Special Forces (UKSF) during the murder investigation ran a program on the server in 2016 designed to permanently erase previously deleted files.

This process, known as “zeroing”, flew in the face of explicit instructions the RMP had given to UKSF that no data should be tampered with before the server could be copied.

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Israel bombed southern Lebanon with banned white phosphorus munitions: Report

Israeli forces in recent months have targeted forests and populated areas in southern Lebanon with internationally banned white phosphorus bombs and munitions, local media reports say.

Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported that the most recent attacks occurred near the town of Kfar Kila.

Israeli forces are also carrying out “a search operation” near Kfar Kila from their base in Metula, a town on the northern side of the 1948 Israeli-occupied territories.

The report further says the attacks endangered civilians’ lives and caused massive fires in the region.

Israel continues to use white phosphorus munitions in south Lebanon, causing lasting damage and driving villagers away.

A series of reports have said that white phosphorus attacks are “putting civilians at grave risk” and “contributing to displacement”.

A recent investigation by Qatar-based al-Jazeera found that Israel had dropped 117 phosphoric bombs on southern Lebanon, striking at least 32 towns and villages between October and March.

The impacted area spanned nearly the entirety of Lebanon’s 100km southern border with the occupied territories. Israel’s repeated use of white phosphorous has drawn the ire of international humanitarian organizations.

On March 19, Oxfam called on the administration of US President Joe Biden to “immediately suspend arms transfers to Israel.”

Israel reportedly used US-supplied white phosphorus munitions in an October attack in southern Lebanon, according to a Washington Post investigation in December.

Photos and videos verified by international rights groups and reviewed by The Post show the characteristic ribbons of white phosphorus smoke falling over Dheira, a southern Lebanese village, on October 16.

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British-Israeli Soldiers in the War-Crimes Zone

British nationals are serving in some of Israel’s “craziest” combat units in Gaza where they view Palestinian fighters as “rats” and “animals”.

The soldiers have pledged to “kill these sons of whores” and “start pummelling them again.”

Declassified has gathered names and photographs of 15 Britons who have recently fought for Israel, and has partially identified another 10.

They are among at least 80 U.K. nationals who the Foreign Office knows to have enlisted in the IDF but is doing nothing to stop.

One of the soldiers, master sergeant Sam Sank, filmed himself fighting in Gaza between December 2023 and January 2024.

Declassified showed the footage to open source intelligence analyst Alysia Alexandra who located the neighbourhood where it was taken.

The tape puts Sank in the Gazan border settlement of Khuza’a while it was being flattened by the IDF during his two-month tour.

Israel’s top human rights group, B’Tselem, has described the IDF’s operation to create a buffer zone in Khuza’a throughout that period as a “war crime”.

“The military demolished the entire town, including residential buildings and mosques,” B’Tselem said, warning that the level of destruction was disproportionate and “violates a basic principle of international humanitarian law.”

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