Copyright and trademark strikes are increasingly being used to force content takedowns
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | March 15, 2024
In a contentious battle over the use of copyright claims to suppress speech, South by Southwest (SXSW), an organizer of a popular annual conference and music festival in Austin, has found itself facing some backlash due to its connections with arms manufacturers that supply Israel.
Rather than responding to the criticism directly, or simply ignoring it, SXSW attempted to get the criticism hidden with questionable legal tactics against a local advocacy group, Austin for Palestine Coalition.
This group has been organizing protests against SXSW, employing strategies such as organizing rallies and spreading awareness through social media.
Austin for Palestine’s social media campaign notably includes altered versions of SXSW’s arrow logo, now featuring fighter jets stained with blood, and other images that mimic SXSW’s marketing style but juxtaposed with stark symbols like bombs or bleeding doves.
This bold visual commentary quickly drew a legal reaction from SXSW. The festival sent a cease-and-desist letter to the advocacy group, alleging trademark and copyright infringement, demanding the removal of these posts.
Additionally, Instagram notified Austin for Palestine about SXSW’s claim on their posts.
According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), SXSW’s copyright infringement claims are baseless. Fundamental elements like their arrow logo do not qualify for copyright protection. Even if SXSW’s allegations targeted the group’s adaptation of their promotional style, such mimicry is arguably not eligible for copyright protection.
Moreover, these posts exemplify non-infringing fair use. Notably, the advocacy group’s use of these materials serves a distinctly different purpose from their original intent, causing no harm to SXSW beyond potential reputation damage, which does not constitute a valid copyright complaint.
Read the EFF’s letter to SXSW here.
The Cradle | March 15, 2024
Israeli forces committed a new massacre against Palestinians late on 14 March as they were waiting for aid near Gaza City’s Kuwait Roundabout, marking the second attack of its kind in the last 24 hours.
Footage on social media shows dead Palestinians laid out across the ground, covered in dust and rubble.
The Health Ministry in Gaza said on Thursday night that at least 20 corpses and 155 injured Palestinians arrived at Al-Shifa Hospital following the attack, calling it a “new premeditated massacre.”
Gaza’s government media office said in a statement that the Israeli army targeted “a gathering of citizens while they were waiting for relief aid at the Kuwait Roundabout in Gaza City.” Israeli troops opened fire at the aid seekers with tanks and helicopters, killing and wounding at least 100, it said.
The attack is “to be added to the series of massacres and brutal attacks against the defenseless civilians who face the Zionist starvation policy,” the media office added, calling the attack “deliberate.”
“The occupation targeted aid recipients for the 20th consecutive day,” the government media office continued.
Israeli forces have repeatedly attacked aid seekers at the Kuwait Roundabout in Gaza City and elsewhere.
Israeli forces shot and killed six Palestinians waiting for aid at the roundabout late on 13 March. Hours earlier, at least five Palestinians were killed and several injured by Israeli army shelling on a UNRWA aid distribution center in the Gaza Strip’s southernmost city of Rafah.
The Rafah attack came a day after Israeli forces opened fire at dozens of Palestinians lined up for food aid near the Kuwait Roundabout.
Israeli troops committed a massacre against Palestinians seeking aid in northern Gaza’s Al-Rashid Street near the Kuwait Roundabout on 29 February. The brutal attack, which killed over a hundred Palestinians, has come to be known as the Flour Massacre.
Due to the several attacks on hungry Gazans near the Kuwait Roundabout and Al-Rashid Street, Al-Jazeera’s correspondent Hani Mahmoud said on 14 March that the area “is now known as a death trap.”
Press TV – March 15, 2024
Iran has censured the United States’ use of human rights as an instrument, saying Washington is the main defendant of violations of rights in the world and in Israel’s months-long crimes against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kan’ani made the statement in a post on his X social media account on Friday following a recent US-instructed report by the United Nations that accused the Islamic Republic of committing what it claimed to be “crimes against humanity” during foreign-backed riots in Iran in 2022.
The report came as the brutal war in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank by the Israeli regime, which enjoys Washington’s untrammeled support, has lingered for more than five months with no end in sight.
“By preemptively activating their propaganda machine concerning human rights in Iran, American authorities will not be able to expunge the stain of oppression and the US complicity in the genocide and mass murders inflicted upon the oppressed Palestinian population in Gaza and the West Bank,” Kan’ani said.
“In the collective conscience of humanity and global public opinion, America stands as the principal defendant for the violation of various human rights and humanitarian laws, owing to its involvement in the provision of equipment and arms to the Zionist regime,” he added.
The spokesman also underlined that Washington’s move to airdrop humanitarian aid into Gaza would not compensate for its unflinching support to the occupying regime’s crimes in the besieged Palestinian territory.
“The ostentatious and hypocritical display by the United States regarding its endeavors to supply and deliver food to the Palestinians fails to mitigate the undeniable reality of its unwavering support for the war crimes committed by the Zionist regime,” Kan’ani said.
“The politicization and instrumentalization of human rights and international human rights mechanisms constitute an inherent aspect of American foreign policy reality.”
Since the start of Israel’s genocidal war following Operation al-Aqsa Storm by Gaza-based resistance movements on October 7, 2023, more than 31,300 Palestinians, including many women and children, have lost their lives.
The Israeli military offensive has left a trail of destruction in Gaza, leaving hospitals in ruins and displacing around half of its 2.4 million residents.
Tel Aviv has additionally enforced a comprehensive blockade on the territory, severing the supply of fuel, electricity, sustenance and water to the population of over two million Palestinians residing there.
Nation Of Islam Research Group | March 14, 2024
An important myth about the position of Jews in the American South during the slavery and Jim Crow eras continues to heavily influence common perceptions about the role of Jews as victims of hatred and bigotry. Fundamental to the popular legend is the belief that Jews in the South were somehow outsiders in a peculiarly evil culture and thus more prone to be victimized by the swirl of regional race hatreds. Nearly every published handling of that history is framed by the presumption that the well-known anti-Black racism of the South also extended to Jews, but the history of the American South shows that the “atmosphere” for Jews in the apartheid South was not just attractive but especially welcoming and, most of all, extremely profitable.
One of the most popular writers on twentieth-century Southern Jewry, Harry Golden, addressed a persistent theme about Southern Jewish history he was determined to debunk:
“The point I hope to establish… is that this ‘most Gentile’ section of America has provided the most favorable “atmosphere” the Jewish people have known in the modern world.”[1]
Golden was speaking specifically about the American South. The reverence that most bible belt evangelical Christians held for the “People of the Book” placed Jewish immigrants in an especially favored class. Their presence was even taken by many ignorant southern Gentiles as a sign of God’s sacred endorsement of their slave-based society. So Christians in the American South were time and again militantly protective of their Jewish population.[2]
A century and a half before New York became the epicenter of Jewish American life, wealthy and cultured Jews thrived in the large elite community of Charleston, South Carolina. The city was both a major slave-trading center and the birthplace of Reform Judaism, the branch of religion with which most Jews identify today. It was also the home-base of multiple slave-trading Jews who had enthusiastically performed their sacred Southern duties as slave masters and slave dealers, and all had shared in the benefits of the African slave trade. The Jewish Encyclopedia made an astounding claim that put Jewish Americans at the heart of the slavocracy:
“[T]he cotton-plantations in many parts of the South were wholly in the hands of the Jews, and as a consequence slavery found its advocates among them.”[3]
In 1841, the slaveholding Charleston rabbi Gustavus Poznanski summed up the Southern Jewish American credo:
“This [Charleston] synagogue is our temple, this city our Jerusalem, this happy land our Palestine, and as our fathers defended with their lives that temple, that city, and that land, so will our sons defend this temple, this city, and this land.”[4]
After the Civil War Atlanta became the region’s new urban and industrial center, attracting enough of their faith to have the largest population of Jews of any city in the South. Jewish upward mobility was described by historian Albert Lindemann as “more striking in Atlanta than in most northern cities,”[5] and Jews routinely held positions of public trust in this ultra-Christian, militantly white supremacist region. At least twelve Jews held office in Jim Crow Atlanta between 1874 and 1911—considerable representation for a group that never exceeded three percent of the total population.[6]
Scholar of Southern Jewry Dr. Mark K. Bauman maintains that of all the immigrant groups, the German Jewish community particularly “exerted power beyond its size so that it wielded considerable political influence and preferment.” Jews played a disproportionate role in the city’s economy, a high proportion being merchants, wholesalers, and tradesmen. According to one scholar:
“[Jewish] business leaders owned many of the largest commercial and manufacturing enterprises that provided employment for many local citizens…”[7]
Jews were partners in their own and Gentile law firms; they sat on grand juries; they served as bank founders, presidents, and officers; and they became officials in the chamber of commerce. “From 25 to over 35 percent” of Freemasons and many of the highest officers in the Masonic order were Jews.[8] Praise of Jews by their Gentile neighbors was effusive, as in this 1890 statement from an Alabama merchant extolling the “Hebrews of Atlanta,” in the pages of the Atlanta Constitution:
“[T]here is no one element in this city’s make-up more powerful than that. Look around you in any and every business, in every walk of life, and you will see that the leaders are the Hebrews. Everybody must admire the wonderful business capacity with which the race seems imbued, and everybody who makes any study of their home life will agree with me when I say that no people in the world are happier in their homes, none are better to their kinfolk, and none are better to the poor and needy….No religion has such well organized, such sensible and such beautiful charities…”
In that same year, a Jewish man surveying his own people’s accomplishments crowed:
“Here in Atlanta, they [Jews] are found in all walks of life, and they own, I suppose, between two [to] three million dollars’ worth of property. That is a conservative estimate.”[9]
The editor of the Atlanta-based Jewish South was bursting with justifiable optimism about the fortunes of Southern Jews when he wrote in 1878:
“[A]lthough [Judaism’s] growth in all sections of this land of the free has been most prosperous, still the South succeeded in producing the loftiest of fruits, of the greatest bounty and grandeur.[10]
“The Jews in Georgia, however, did more than merely become a part of the existing Georgia tradition. In many instances, they created, shaped, and influenced both the character and course of many of those traditions and institutions.”[Emphasis ours][11]
Jews embraced the race laws of America voluntarily and encouraged their Gentile neighbors to adhere to them unquestionably. It would take the Thirteenth Amendment, passed in 1865, to end American slavery legally, but a full thirty years later in 1896 the editors of the Jewish South newspaper opined, “Negroes are intellectually, morally, and physically an inferior race—a fact none can deny.”[14]
As lynching became the white national pastime the Jewish press turned on the most vulnerable and easy target. The Jewish Sentiment editor Frank Cohen cheer-led the lynchers and wrote in 1898:
“… The white man is not only superior to the black man but will assert his supremicy (sic) at the proper time and in the proper manner…”
It only improved for Jews as they moved into the 20th century. When the home of Jewish furniture magnate Oscar Pappenheimer burned down in May of 1914, the Atlanta police formed a cordon around the house to guard it overnight. It seems that Pappenheimer’s jewelry collection was one of the most valuable in the city. Destroyed were “the finest pipe organ in a private home in Atlanta,” three Steinway pianos, and “prized violins and cellos.”[12]
In 1906, that same Oscar Pappenheimer proposed a law targeting all Blacks: “I propose the registration of negroes in the southern states 14 years of age and more… Each person so registered should possess… a certificate… in which should be entered description, date and place of birth and, at each registration, record of abode, employment, conduct and reference….Let others decide whether it be legal to pass laws bearing on this subject with reference to the colored race only…” Pappenheimer’s Atlanta proposal was nearly identical to that which Adolf Hitler enforced against Jews in Nazi Germany 30 years later.
Jews reveled in their position as leaders among the many ethnic Europeans that settled the American South. No public position was denied to them, and the positions they attained found them eagerly swearing a solemn oath to uphold the sacred tenets of the apartheid legal system. They participated in the violence and terror that framed the slave system and stood elbow to elbow with all whites as slavery’s most ardent enforcers.[13]
It is true that the corrupt forces of historical revisionism have succeeded in burying this unsavory Jewish past, but all of these uncomfortable realities are well documented throughout the Jewish historical record. The Jewish role in the establishment and growth of apartheid societies goes even further back than Christopher Columbus and is much wider in scope than just the American South. It is a testament to the skill and reach of the Jewish myth-makers that so much race-hating Jewish history has been erased from the popular American consciousness.
[1] Harry L. Golden, Jewish Roots in the Carolinas: A Pattern of American Philo-Semitism (Greensboro, NC: Deal Printing, 1955), 6. He calls the Carolinas a “completely free society” and a “300-year-old ‘laboratory of philo-semitism.’”
[2] The Secret Relationship Between Blacks & Jews, vol. 2.
[3] Jewish Encyclopedia (1901), s.v. “agriculture.”
[4] David Philipson, The Reform Movement in Judaism (New York: Macmillan, 1907), 466-67.
[5] Albert S. Lindemann, The Jew Accused (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993), 230.
[6] Steven Hertzberg, “The Jewish Community of Atlanta: From the End of the Civil War until the Eve of the Frank Case,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 62, no. 3 (March 1973): 267.
[7] Steve Oney, And The Dead Shall Rise (New York: Pantheon Books, 2003), 7, writes that “many of Atlanta’s factories…were Jewish-owned.”
[8] Mark K. Bauman, “Jewish Community of Atlanta,” New Georgia Encyclopedia, March 15, 2004, http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org: “Jews routinely held seats on the aldermanic board, the school board, and in the state legislature.”
[9] “Hebrews of Atlanta: The Important Part They Have Taken,” Atlanta Constitution, Jan. 12, 1890, 16.
[10] Jewish South, Feb. 8, 1878, and Nov. 7, 1879. Also, Abraham J. Peck, “That Other ‘Peculiar Institution’: Jews and Judaism in the Nineteenth Century South,” Modern Judaism 7, no. 1 (Feb. 1987): 101, 102.
[11] “A History of Jews in Georgia,” William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum, http://www.the
breman.org/research/stategeorgia.htm (retrieved April 9, 2009).
[12] “Pappenheimer Home Burned to Ground with $25,000 Loss,” Atlanta Journal, May 31, 1914, 1; Atlanta Constitution, May 31, 1914, 1.
[13] The Secret Relationship Between Blacks & Jews, vol. 2.
[14] Lindemann, The Jew Accused, 225.
FREE PDF DOWNLOAD: Highlights and Key Points of The Secret Relationship Between Blacks & Jews
Press TV – March 14, 2024
The leader of Yemen’s Houthis has said that the Yemeni armed forces will continue their retaliatory operations against Israeli-affiliated commercial vessels, preventing the passage of the ships even through the Indian Ocean and through the Cape of Good Hope.
About 34 Houthi fighters have been killed since the Yemeni armed forces began to attack shipping lanes in solidarity with the people of Palestine under attack in Gaza by Israel, Ansarullah leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi said in a televised speech on Thursday.
Yemeni forces have repeatedly launched drones and missiles against Israeli and Israel-bound ships since mid-November, saying they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians against Israel’s war on Gaza.
Al-Houthi said 73 ships have been targeted in Yemeni operations in support of Gaza so far, adding rarely does any ship associated with the Israeli enemy pass through Bab al-Mandab.
“This week, support operations included 12 operations targeting ships and barges, executed with a total of 58 ballistic and cruise missiles and drones in the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea, and the Gulf of Aden,” he said.
“Our operations this time reached unprecedented ranges, with 3 operations reaching the Indian Ocean, by the grace of Allah,” he added. “The total number of targeted ships and barges reached 73.”
Al-Houthi said that the operations will continue as long as the aggression and siege on Gaza persist.
The United States and Britain began striking Yemen in January in order to dissuade the country from targeting Israeli ships which carry arms and logistics for the onslaught on the besieged Gaza Strip.
Al-Houthi said the Americans and the British have received “painful blows” from the Yemeni armed forces in retaliation.
The American-British “aggression will not affect the escalating course of our operations in terms of range, momentum, precision, and strength,” said Al-Houthi.
“What can stop the Yemeni military’s maritime operations is only the cessation of aggression and siege on Gaza,” he noted.
The American stubbornness and escalation of aggression result in only one outcome: the expansion of the conflict, the widening of the circle of war and events, and the tension of the situation at the regional level in general, he stated.
He went on to say that the Yemeni armed forces will continue and effectively expand the range of the operations to reach areas and locations that the enemy never expected.
Al-Houthi said what insures the navigation security in the Red Sea is for any country not to participate in the Israeli aggression against Gaza.
He said the Americans and those who drag the United States towards the militarization of the Red Sea are the ones who undermine international navigation.
“By the grace of Allah and His assistance, we aim to prevent the passage of ships associated with the Israeli enemy even through the Indian Ocean and from South Africa towards the Cape of Good Hope,” he stated.
“For this important, advanced, and significant step, we have begun to implement our operations related to it through the Indian Ocean and from South Africa towards the Cape of Good Hope,” he said.
There is absolutely no choice for the Americans and the British but to stop the aggression on Gaza and stop starving the people in Gaza, he declared.
“Our human conscience, our religion, our morals, our dignity, our pride, our belonging to Islam, prohibit us from watching the oppression of Palestine or remaining silent about it,” said Houthi.
He added that the Yemeni military is in continuous development of capabilities and in constant expansion of the stance in its range, effectiveness, and impact.
“The American’s actions this week, involving aerial bombings and naval shelling, amounted to 32 bombing raids and strikes, which, as usual, were unsuccessful,” he revealed.
“The impact of the American raids and bombings is negligible regarding our missile and drone capabilities and in terms of continuing operations effectively to counter it, and in preventing ships associated with the Israeli enemy,” he stated.
He concluded by saying that the Yemeni armed forces are continuously escalating, and increasing capabilities to attack enemy ships. “No matter what the Americans do, they will not be able to stop us from supporting the Palestinian people in Gaza.”
Yemenis have declared their open support for Palestine’s struggle against the Israeli occupation since the regime launched a devastating war on Gaza on October 7 after the territory’s Palestinian resistance movements carried out the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm.
The Yemeni Armed Forces have said they won’t stop retaliatory strikes.
The maritime attacks have forced some of the world’s biggest shipping and oil companies to suspend transit through one of the world’s most important maritime trade routes.
Tankers are instead adding thousands of miles to international shipping routes by sailing around the continent of Africa rather than going through the Suez Canal.
Since the start of Israel’s genocidal war following Operation al-Aqsa Storm by Gaza-based resistance movements on October 7, 2023, more than 31,000 Palestinians, including many women and children, have lost their lives.
The Israeli military offensive has left a trail of destruction in Gaza, leaving hospitals in ruins and displacing around half of its 2.4 million residents.
Israel has additionally enforced a comprehensive blockade on the coastal sliver, severing the supply of fuel, electricity, sustenance and water to the population residing there.
The Cradle | March 14, 2024
The Ansarallah-allied Yemeni armed forces recently tested a hypersonic missile and are preparing to introduce the technology into the country’s military arsenal, a Yemeni military source revealed to Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti news agency on 14 March.
“[Ansarallah’s] missile forces have successfully tested a missile that is capable of reaching speeds of up to Mach 8 and runs on solid fuel; Yemen intends to begin manufacturing it for use during attacks in the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea, and the Gulf of Aden, as well as against targets in Israel,” the source is quoted as saying.
The unnamed official also revealed Sanaa has, over the past three months, “upgraded its missiles and drones, modifying explosive warheads to double their destructive power.”
Last week, Ansarallah leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi said during a televised speech that Yemen has been making efforts to “produce hypersonic missiles,” saying: “Our enemies, friends, and our people will see a level of achievement of strategic importance that will put our country in the ranks of few countries with these capabilities in the world.”
“The Yemeni forces used new weapons in recent operations in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea, which surprised the United States and Britain,” the Ansarallah leader revealed during his speech.
Hypersonic weapons fly at speeds in excess of Mach 5, can strike targets thousands of miles away within minutes, and pose crucial challenges to missile defense systems. While a traditional ballistic missile travels into the atmosphere and then returns to Earth on top of the target, a hypersonic missile travels much closer to the Earth, allowing it to switch targets on the fly.
Only four countries have successfully developed and tested hypersonic missiles: Iran, Russia, China, and North Korea. The US is also developing hypersonic missiles; however, its program has trailed behind the others due to a lack of planning, technological gaps, and Washington’s belief that ballistic missiles are a better and more cost-effective bet against an adversary.
The US navy – with minimal support from the UK – has been waging its biggest battle since WWII against the Arab world’s poorest country since early January in support of Israel’s genocide campaign in Gaza. Despite launching hundreds of attacks inside Yemen, Washington has not managed to deter the country’s pro-Palestine actions.
Ansarallah leaders have vowed to continue attacking US, UK, and Israeli ships in the waters surrounding the Gulf Arab nation until Israel’s assault on Gaza ends.
The Cradle | March 14, 2024
The EU is preparing a €7.4 billion ($8 billion) aid package for Egypt, citing “concerns” that the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the ballooning crisis in Sudan could “risk exacerbating financial troubles in the North African nation and raising immigration pressure on Europe,” according to a report by the Financial Times (FT).
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen is set to visit Cairo on 17 March alongside the Greek, Italian, and Belgian prime ministers to “finalize and announce the agreement.”
Completion of the deal accelerated following the start of Israel’s campaign of genocide in the Gaza Strip. The terms of the agreement reportedly include support for Egypt’s energy sector, assistance to deal with the rising number of refugees entering the country, and help to fortify the country’s border with Libya.
An estimated €1bn in emergency financial assistance could be paid immediately to Cairo, while another €4 billion in “macro-financial assistance” hinges on implementing reforms under an expanded loan program with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Officials told FT the rest of the funds would be drawn from various EU funding streams.
The funds from Brussels is the latest in a recent string of investment packages coming from the west and Gulf states for cash-strapped Egypt.
“With respect to the question on the potential impact pressures from refugees from Gaza, what we do see in Egypt is that there is a need to have a very comprehensive support package for Egypt. And we’re working … to ensure that Egypt does not have any residual financing needs,” IMF spokesperson Julie Kozack said on 22 February.
The IMF agreed just days later to expand its financial rescue program for Egypt to $8 billion after the Egyptian central bank let loose its currency to help stabilize the economy. Egypt is the second most indebted country to the IMF, behind only Argentina, with an international debt that grew from $37 billion in 2010 to $164 billion in 2023.
In late February, UK oil giant BP announced plans to develop gas projects and drilling in Egypt over the next three to four years at a cost of $1.5 billion. This came just after the North African nation sealed a massive $35 billion real estate development deal with the UAE, which will see Emirati investment vehicle ADQ build a 170 km tourism and financial center in the Ras al-Hekma area.
In recent weeks, Cairo has also been in discussions to sell prime Red Sea coastal land near Sharm al-Sheikh to Saudi investors.
The unprecedented windfall comes as Egypt is putting the finishing touches on a kilometers-wide buffer zone and wall along its border with southern Gaza, allegedly in preparation to take in hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians once the Israeli ground invasion of Gaza’s southernmost city begins.
Amnesty International and other NGOs have also accused Cairo of “harassing” the director of the UK-based Sinai Foundation for Human Rights, which revealed the construction of the buffer zone last month.
Geopolitical analysts, including The Cradle’s Mohamad Hassan Sweidan, have speculated that Egypt may be willing to accept refugees from Gaza in exchange for a significant offset of its staggering debt.
MEMO | March 14, 2024
The ongoing Israeli aggression on the besieged Gaza Strip has targeted historic sites and cultural centres destroying them either completely or partially while the indiscriminate killing has led to the death of many of the enclave’s writers, artists and activists, a joint report issued by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) and the Ministry of Culture has revealed.
The report issued yesterday on the Palestinian National Culture Day said Israel has destroyed 32 cultural centres and institutions as well as 12 museums while more than 2,100 pieces of heritage dresses and embroidered items had been lost. As many as 45 writers, artists and activists have been killed by Israel since it started its war in October.
The Israeli aggression has led to the destruction of about 27 murals, and the bombing of more than eight publishing houses and printing presses, three media and art production companies and studios, nine public libraries as well as four religious shrines.
The Israeli bombing has completely destroyed 219 mosques and partially destroyed 287 mosques and three churches, 195 historical buildings, nine archaeological sites and 19 universities and colleges.
In the occupied West Bank, the Israeli army’s restriction on movement, repeated invasions and various massacres have caused the halting of many cultural activities including the soap festival in the city of Nablus, which was scheduled in April as part of the Ministry of Culture’s preparations to register the soap on the World Heritage List.
The statement said that Palestinian institutions and associations in the occupied city of Jerusalem “were subjected to attempts to dismantle them… as happened with the Al-Hakawati Theatre,” adding that “the [Israeli] occupation authorities are working to put in place everything that would keep these associations ineffective and completely stop their activity, through stifling administrative and legal processes.”
Press TV – March 14, 2024
A United Nations investigation singles out the preventability of an October 13 Israeli attack on a group of journalists in southern Lebanon that led to the death of a Reuters reporter.
The attack consisted of two tank strikes that claimed the life of the agency’s 37-year-old visuals journalist Issam Abdallah, and wounded six other journalists, including Agence France-Presse (AFP) photographer Christina Assi, 28, near the Lebanese village of Alma al-Chaab. Assi later had a leg amputated.
The investigation by the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) found out that the attack targeted “civilians, in this instance clearly identifiable journalists.”
The attack, it said, “constitutes a violation of UNSCR 1701 and international law,” the UNIFIL report said, referring to United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended a 33-day-long Israeli military onslaught on the country in the summer of 2006.
The seven-page report dated February 27 said further, “It is assessed that there was no exchange of fire across the Blue Line at the time of the incident,” referring to a temporary line that was drawn after the withdrawal of the Israeli regime from Lebanon during an earlier war in 2000.
“The reason for the strikes on the journalists is not known,” the probe added.
At least 133 journalists and media workers have been killed since October 7, when the Israeli regime launched a genocidal war against the Gaza Strip that has so far claimed the lives of 31,300 Gazans, most of them women, children, and adolescents.
MEMO | March 13, 2024
In just five months, Israel has killed more children in a strip of land the size of the US city of Philadelphia than all conflicts worldwide did in the past four years combined, said a UN special rapporteur today.
In a scathing report presented to the United Nations, Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, decried the ongoing crisis in Gaza, describing it as a systematic process tantamount to genocide.
Albanese’s report underscores the harrowing reality faced by Palestinian children under Israeli occupation, highlighting the devastating toll of the conflict.
“Destroying a population from its roots. Genocide is a process, not an act, and what is happening in Gaza is a tragedy foretold. See my report on the treatment of Palestinian children under Israeli occupation,” she wrote on X.
The report details the relentless assault on Gaza’s civilian population, particularly its children, who have borne the brunt of the violence. Albanese’s findings paint a disturbing picture of systematic targeting, indiscriminate bombings and the destruction of essential infrastructure, leaving countless families displaced and communities in ruins.
Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on the Gaza Strip since October. Over 31,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have since been killed in Gaza, and over 73,000 others injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.
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Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
By Lisa Pease | Consortium News | September 16, 2013
More than a half century ago, just after midnight on Sept. 18, 1961, the plane carrying UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 others went down in a plane crash over Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). All 16 died, but the facts of the crash were provocatively mysterious. … continue
Aletho News If Americans Knew No Tricks Zone
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