Tag: war crimes

A US Middle East official explained that Israeli decisions to target police in Gaza have made the distribution of aid in the besieged enclave “virtually impossible.” The official added that Israel has failed to provide evidence for its claim that Hamas is stealing the aid sent into Gaza. Tel Aviv has used allegations that Hamas is tied to international humanitarian agencies and steals shipments to severely restrict aid deliveries into Gaza as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are starving to death. 

David Satterfield, the Biden administration’s special Middle East envoy for humanitarian issues, explained that Israel had killed several members of the police force in Gaza that safeguarded aid deliveries. Targeting the police force led to them being unable to escort aid deliveries. 

“With the departure of police escorts, it has been virtually impossible for the UN or anyone else, Jordan, the UAE, or any other implementer to safely move assistance in Gaza because of criminal elements,” Satterfield said at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Friday.

The Middle East envoy went on to admit that Israel has not presented “evidence of diversion or theft” of aid shipments into Gaza. Tel Aviv has used claims that assistance to the Palestinian people is exploited and stolen by Hamas to restrict the amount of food, fuel, and medicine that enters the enclave. Tel Aviv also restricts many medications, including painkillers, antibiotics, and anesthetics, from entering Gaza, claiming the aid could be used by Hamas militants. 

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Israeli strikes that killed dozens of civilians in Gaza had no legitimate military objectives, an investigation by Amnesty International has found.

Amnesty’s report details how 95 civilians, including 42 children, were killed across four separate strikes — three in December and one in January — in Rafah. Israel had previously designated the southern border city as a safe zone, causing around 1.5 million Palestinians to seek shelter there.

As part of the investigation, Amnesty went to the sites of the strikes, received witness testimony, and analysed satellite imagery in order to determine whether the strikes lawful.

It also analysed the Israel’s war diary published by the military, finding no reference to the strikes.

Amnesty International’s Senior Director of Research, Advocacy, Policy and Campaigns Erika Guevara-Rosas said the strikes killed whole families who sought refuge from Israel’s military campaign.

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There was never any possibility that the Israeli government would agree to a pause in the fighting proposed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, much less a ceasefire.

Israel is on the verge of delivering the coup de grâce in its war on Palestinians in Gaza – mass starvation.

When Israeli leaders use the term “absolute victory,” they mean total decimation, total elimination. The Nazis in 1942 systematically starved the 500,000 men, women and children in the Warsaw Ghetto. This is a number Israel intends to exceed. 

Israel, and its chief patron the United States, by attempting to shut down the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which provides food and aid to Gaza, is not only committing a war crime, but is in flagrant defiance of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). 

The court found the charges of genocide brought by South Africa, which included statements and facts gathered by UNWRA, plausible. It ordered Israel to abide by six provisional measures to prevent genocide and alleviate the humanitarian catastrophe. The fourth provisional measure calls on Israel to secure immediate and effective steps to provide humanitarian assistance and essential services in Gaza. 

UNRWA’s reports on conditions in Gaza, which I covered as a reporter for seven years, and its documentation of indiscriminate Israeli attacks illustrate that, as UNRWA said, “unilaterally declared ‘safe zones’ are not safe at all. Nowhere in Gaza is safe.” 

UNRWA’s role in documenting the genocide, as well as providing food and aid to the Palestinians, infuriates the Israeli government.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused UNRWA, after the ruling, of providing false information to the ICJ. Already an Israeli target for decades, Israel decided that UNRWA, which supports 5.9 million Palestinian refugees across the Middle East with clinics, schools and food, had to be eliminated.

Israel’s destruction of UNRWA serves a political as well as material objective. 

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Dozens of patients stand in line for hours outside the pharmacy booth in the Kuwaiti Hospital compound. They all start out by asking the pharmacist the same question: is my medication available? The answer for most is no.

Amid the long lines of the elderly, the ill, and mothers carrying their children, a man appearing to be middle-aged leaning on a young boy arrives, speaking in a loud voice and asking to be allowed to jump the line — he’s just been released from prison, and can barely stand.

“I spent sixty days of constant beating and humiliation,” he says. “They just released me, and I need to just get my medicine. Please let me take it without having to wait any longer.”

Everyone lets him through, allowing him to collect his medications from the booth and leave. 

I stand beside him in the hospital courtyard, asking him how he came to be arrested by the Israeli army — and how he was eventually released.

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Palestinian authorities have demanded an international investigation after a mass grave was found in Gaza with the decomposing bodies of Palestinian detainees who were blindfolded and handcuffed.

At least 30 bodies were found in “black plastic bags” near the Hamad school in northern Gaza, with Palestinian officials accusing Israeli soldiers of killing the civilians “execution-style”.

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs called for an international investigation on Wednesday into what it described as Israeli “massacres”, demanding that a team visit Gaza “to find out the truth and dimensions of the genocide to which our people are exposed”.

Witnesses told Al Jazeera that the deceased were blindfolded, tortured and killed before being placed in the bags.

“As we were cleaning, we came across a pile of rubble inside the schoolyard. We were shocked to find out that the dozens of dead bodies were buried under this pile,” one witness told  Al Jazeera.

“The moment we opened the black plastic bags, we found the bodies, already decomposed. They were blindfolded, legs and hands tied,” the witness added.

“The plastic cuffs were used on their hands and legs and cloths straps around their eyes and heads.”

Hamas said human rights organisations should “document” the mass grave.

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More than 800 government officials in the United States and Europe released a letter Friday criticizing their countries’ leaders for providing unconditional military and diplomatic support to Israel as it inflicts disaster on Gaza’s population.  

[The 800-plus figure is ascribed to an organizer of the letter who is quoted anonymously, for fear of reprisal, in a report in The New York Times.] 

The authors of the letter, who remain anonymous, wrote that their attempts to voice concerns internally about their governments’ support for Israel’s assault on Gaza “were overruled by political and ideological considerations.”

“We are obliged to do everything in our power on behalf of our countries and ourselves to not be complicit in one of the worst human catastrophes of this century,” the letter reads. “We are obliged to warn the publics of our countries, whom we serve, and to act in concert with transnational colleagues.”

“Israel has shown no boundaries in its military operations in Gaza, which has resulted in tens of thousands of preventable civilian deaths,” the letter continues.

“There is a plausible risk that our governments’ policies are contributing to grave violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes, and even ethnic cleansing or genocide.”

The letter was coordinated by government officials in The Netherlands, the U.S., and European Union bodies and endorsed by civil servants in 10 countries, including Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

Josh Paul, a former U.S. State Department official who resigned in October over the Biden administration’s decision to continue arming Israel as it pummeled Gaza, called the new letter “a remarkable statement from hundreds of individuals who have devoted their lives to building a better world.”

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A TEAM OF Israeli lawyers and officials presented their defense at The Hague on Friday in the second day of the genocide case brought before the International Court of Justice by the government of South Africa. The lawyers portrayed Israel as the actual victim of genocide, not Gaza, accused South Africa of supporting Hamas, and painted South Africa’s government as functioning as the legal arm of the Palestinian militants who led the deadly raids into Israel on October 7.

Israel benefitted greatly from the fact that there was no cross examination permitted or debate allowed during these proceedings. It embarked on a bold mission to do in a court of international law what its military and political officials have done day and night throughout the course of this war against Gaza: unleash a deluge of what was known within the Trump administration as “alternative facts.” 

Israel’s defense was the inverse of South Africa’s case yesterday, and as weak in offering documented facts as South Africa’s was powerful. History began on October 7, the Israelis seemed to say, South Africa is Hamas, South Africa did not give Israel a chance to meet up and chat about Gaza before suing for genocide, and actually the Israel Defense Forces is the most moral entity on earth. As for the voluminous public statements by senior Israeli officials indicating genocidal intent, those were just “random assertions” by some irrelevant underlings. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statements invoking a murderous story from the Bible about killing the women, infants, and cattle of your enemies? The South Africans just don’t understand theology and presented Netanyahu’s words out of context.

While Israel’s lawyers made legal arguments that the genocide charges leveled against it are invalid, their primary strategy was to appeal to the court on jurisdictional and procedural matters, hoping that they could form the basis for the panel of international judges to dismiss South Africa’s case. Aware of the global audience, Israel also sought to reinforce its claims of righteousness and self-defense in fighting the war in Gaza. 

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