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India supplied Israel with arms amid war on Gaza

MEMO | June 24, 2024

India has reportedly provided Israel with advanced Hermes 900 drones as well as other weaponry manufactured in the city of Hyderabad, Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported on Sunday.

The report said the factory, established by Israel to supply these drones to the Indian military, converted 20 of them specifically for the Israeli army due to the shortage created during the war back in February.

The factory, a joint venture between the Israeli defence company, Elbit Systems, and the Indian billionaire, Gautam Adani’s consortium, is the first in the world to produce these drones outside of Israel.

This dramatic decision was likely approved by the highest officials in India, likely due to Israel being one of its main arms suppliers to the country.

The move joins other reports indicating India has supplied Israel with artillery shells and weapons since the start of the war. The strategic partnership between the countries has proven highly beneficial for Israel, according to the Israeli paper.

June 24, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel and Hezbollah on the brink of war

By Steven Sahiounie | Strategic Culture Foundation | June 23, 2024

The Middle East is sitting on a powder keg, and every minute that passes brings heightened tensions between Israel and Hezbollah.

Canada, the U.S., Great Britain and Kuwait have all warned its citizens in Lebanon to evacuate.

The impending war is caused by Israeli refusal of a ceasefire in Gaza. Hezbollah says they will continue to stand in solidarity with the Palestinians of Gaza as the continuing genocide is perpetrated by Israel, but as soon as a ceasefire begins, Hezbollah’s response will cease.

Hezbollah is a Lebanese resistance group which is heavily armed. Most experts agree that the military might of Hezbollah and Israel are quite comparable on many levels, but Israel has air superiority.

Israel has a sophisticated air defense system, the ‘Iron Dome’. However, this system can be overwhelmed by Hezbollah if they were to launch a massive amount of missiles at Israel, and all agree that Hezbollah has a huge arsenal of missiles.

If the ‘Iron Dome’ was inundated by missiles launched from Lebanon, the effectiveness of the Israeli defenses would stop, and Israel could suffer destruction on a scale it has never experienced before. We have witnessed the destruction of Israeli missiles on Gaza, and homes and buildings across Israel could face a similar disaster.

Hezbollah demonstrated it has an air defense system, but it has been secretive in showing the capabilities of its defense from Israeli jets; however, on at least one occasion Hezbollah utilized their air defenses to repel an Israeli jet flying over Lebanon.

Amos Hochstein, the U.S. special envoy dispatched recently to Israel and Lebanon in hopes of averting a war between Israel and Hezbollah, came back empty-handed. Hochstein had been successful in a negotiation between Israel and Lebanon in 2022 over the maritime borders, but this time he was not negotiating with the Lebanese government alone, but with the most powerful resistance group in the Middle East.

The root cause of all conflicts in the Middle East emanate from the brutal Israeli occupation of Palestine, which has stripped away all human rights, and civil rights, from about six million Palestinians, while the six million Jews in Israel live in a quasi-democracy with human rights and civil rights comparable to most western democracies.

U.S. President Joe Biden and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken have repeatedly told Israeli officials the U.S. does not want to see a wider war in the Middle East, where other nations could be involved should Lebanon face destruction.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned Israel would “turn Beirut into Gaza” in the event of a war.

Experts agree that Biden would continue to support Israel even in the face of a war on Hezbollah. The international community has come out against Israel and its genocide on Gaza, but Biden continues to support war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Israel.

Biden has sponsored a ceasefire plan, but Israel refused it, and experts suggest that the Biden plan was not designed by Washington to succeed, but was drafted only as an exercise in buying time for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Israeli public and military are divided on the war on Gaza. Many are demanding Israel stop the war and get the hostages out after almost 9 months of captivity. Others support the war on Gaza as part of the Zionist plan to eliminate all non-Jews and create one Jewish nation from the ‘river to the sea’.

Netanyahu firmly demands the continuation of the war on Gaza and demands that Hamas be destroyed, but his military leaders have said that is an impossible task, as Hamas is an ideology, that of resistance to occupation, which is guaranteed to all people through the Geneva Convention.

On June 18, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said plans for an attack in southern Lebanon had been approved and steps had been taken to “accelerate readiness in the field.” The statement came from Major General Ori Gordin, the head of IDF Northern Command, and Major General Oded Basiuk, who heads the IDF’s Operations Division.

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz threatened Hezbollah that they faced “destruction” amid “all-out war” at the Israel-Lebanon border.

Katz’s threat came after Hezbollah published a surveillance video that it took by a drone over various Israeli military, infrastructure and civilian installations, including some in the Israeli port city of Haifa.

“In an all-out war, Hezbollah will be destroyed and Lebanon will be severely hit,” Katz wrote on X.

On June 21, Hezbollah said it fired dozens of rockets into northern Israel in retaliation for a deadly air strike in south Lebanon that Israel said killed one of the group’s operatives. Hezbollah also claimed several other attacks on Israeli troops and positions over the course of the day.

In a meeting with visiting Israeli officials in Washington, Blinken underscored “the importance of avoiding further escalation in Lebanon and reaching a diplomatic resolution that allows Israeli and Lebanese families to return to their homes”, according to a statement.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah had warned “no place” in Israel would “be spared our rockets” if a wider war began, in a TV address on Wednesday. He also threatened Cyprus if it opened its airports or bases to Israel “to target Lebanon”. Cyprus houses two British bases, including an airbase.

Israel invaded and brutally occupied Lebanon from 1982 to 2000. Its withdrawal was a victory for Hezbollah. In 2006, Israel launched a second war on Hezbollah which saw Israel prevented from invading by the might of Hezbollah, and in the following years the resistance group has gotten much stronger militarily.

Dozens of Israeli towns are now deserted, with around 60,000 Israelis evacuated to temporary accommodation, while about 90,000 have also fled from southern Lebanon.

Israel has launched roughly four times as many attacks as Hezbollah over the course of the conflict, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a Wisconsin-based research group specializing in conflict data analysis. Last week, Israel made its deepest attack yet into Lebanon, striking 75 miles north of the border.

Israeli troops have also deployed white phosphorus in Lebanon, a substance that burns at high temperature and can be used to create smokescreens to obscure troop movements, but can cause respiratory damage and deadly burns. Its use near civilian areas is a violation of international humanitarian law.

“It’s not a question of if it will happen but when it will happen,” Avichai Stern, the mayor of Kiryat Shmona, the largest town in Israel’s north, said in an interview, and added, “We have to wipe them out.”

The war between Israel and Lebanon can be avoided if Israel will stop the unrelenting attacks on Gaza, which have resulted in over 36,000 deaths, mostly women and children.

June 23, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Investigation confirms Israeli tank killed six-year-old Hind Rajab

The Cradle | June 23, 2024

An investigation by open-source analysis firm Forensic Architecture concluded that a six-year-old Palestinian girl, Hind Rajab, and several of her relatives were killed by an Israeli tank gunner opening fire on their car.

Hind and her relatives were killed on 29 January while fleeing their neighborhood in Gaza City after the Israeli military issued evacuation orders for the area. Their bodies were finally recovered 12 days later.

Forensic Architecture mapped a total of 335 bullet holes in the Kia sedan they were killed in.

The investigation, carried out in cooperation with Earshot and journalists from Al-Jazeera’s Fault Lines, also found that two Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) medics who tried to save Hind were also killed by Israeli tank fire.

While the deaths of most Palestinians killed by Israel in its genocidal war in Gaza pass unnoticed, Hind’s killing gained international attention when the PCRS published the audio of the call for help made by Hind’s cousin, 15-year-old Layan Hamadam.

After the adults in the car had been shot and killed, Layan desperately used a cell phone to call the PRCS dispatcher.

Layan said, “They are shooting at us. The tank is next to me. [We are hiding] in the car. We’re next to the tank.”

Layan screams until her voice stops abruptly twenty seconds into the call.

During the call, a total of 64 gunshots are heard within just 6 seconds, indicating a firing range of 750–900 rounds per minute. This range of rounds per minute is consistent with Israeli army-issued weaponry, such as the M4 assault rifle or the FN MAG machine gun on a Merkava tank.

Israel has tried to claim that its tanks were not in the area where Hind, Layan, and their relatives were killed. Israel instead suggested they were killed by gunfire from Hamas. But Forensic Architecture notes that the firing range observed in the call exceeds that of the AK-47 assault rifles most commonly used by Hamas.

By measuring the sound of the bullet traveling at supersonic speed and comparing it to the sound of the blast from the muzzle of the gun reaching the recording device at the speed of sound, Earshot was able to determine that the tank firing at Hind and Layan’s car was located between 13 and 23 meters away.

“At such proximity, it is not plausible that the shooter could not have seen that the car was occupied by civilians, including children,” Forensic Architecture writes.

The “ballistic analysis supports the final words of Layan Hamada: the gunfire came from a tank that was next to them.”

After the Israeli tank gunner killed Layan, six-year-old Hind was the only person left alive in the car. PCRS dispatchers sent paramedics Yusuf al-Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoun in an ambulance to rescue her. When they reached the site of Hind’s car, they were immediately killed.

Forensic Architecture reported the ambulance was destroyed using a 120mm M830A1 High Explosive Anti-Tank Multi-Purpose-Tracer (HEAT-MP-T) round.

“Our assessment of the position of the tanks at the time of the attack, together with the direction of the shot, suggests that the ambulance was likely hit by ammunition from an Israeli tank,” Forensic Architecture wrote.

June 23, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Rafah: More than 50 martyred in Israeli attack on tents, homes in Al-Shati Camp

MEMO | June 22, 2024

Twenty-one Palestinians were martyred and dozens injured on Friday in a new massacre committed by the Israeli army bombing tents housing displaced Palestinians in the Al-Mawasi area, west of the city of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) reported in a statement that the martyrs and wounded were recovered after Israeli tanks bombed a displacement camp in the Al-Mawasi area with artillery shells.

Eyewitnesses reported that two Merkava tanks mounted a hill opposite the Shakoush area and fired artillery shells at a gathering of displaced people near the gate of the field hospital affiliated with the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The eyewitnesses added that ambulances immediately rushed to the scene and began transporting the martyrs and wounded to field hospitals. Operations to recover people are ongoing.

The Civil Defence Service in the Gaza Strip conveyed in a statement: “Our crews transported a number of martyrs and injured displaced persons in the Shakoush area, northwest of Rafah Governorate after being targeted by Israeli artillery shells.”

The Israeli army is seeking to push displaced Palestinians into the Al-Mawasi area on the coastal strip of the Mediterranean Sea, claiming that they are safe areas.

Al-Mawasi is a sandy area along the coastline, extending from southwest of the city of Deir Al-Balah in the middle of the Gaza Strip, passing west of Khan Yunis to west of Rafah (south).

The area is largely open and not residential. It also lacks infrastructure, sewage networks, electricity lines, communications networks and the Internet, while most of its land is divided into agricultural land or greenhouses.

The displaced people in Al-Mawasi are living in a tragic situation and are suffering a significant shortage of essential resources such as water, sanitation, medical care and food.

Director of Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City Fadel Naim announced in a statement on Friday published by the Ministry of Health on Telegram: “It has been a difficult and brutal day in Gaza City, as nearly 30 martyrs arrived at the hospital so far as a result of several Israeli attacks since the morning.”

Earlier on Friday, medical sources reported that seven Palestinians were killed and 20 others were injured as a result of an attack by an Israeli warplane on a house in the Al-Shati Camp, west of Gaza City.

The sources added that six Palestinians were martyred and a number injured as a result of another bombing launched by Israeli warplanes on two residential apartments belonging to the Mushtaha and Abu Al-Atta families behind the Latin Patriarchate School in central Gaza City.

The Civil Defence Service announced the deaths of five Palestinians due to an Israeli warplane bombing the Gaza Municipality headquarters on Al-Wahda Street.

June 22, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli pressure on Labour party, British politics ‘huge’, Corbyn says

Al Mayadeen | June 21, 2024

Before Keir Starmer took over the Labour leadership, he demanded full party backing for future Israeli military operations, Jeremy Corbyn, former UK Labour Party leader, said in an interview with independent journalist Matt Kennard published on Wednesday.

Corbyn’s statement comes amid ongoing debate and scrutiny surrounding his tenure, which ended amid accusations—widely contested—of failing to effectively address “antisemitism” within the party. It is worth noting that Corbyn has a longstanding record of advocating for peace and Palestinian rights.

When asked by Kennard if he was surprised by the level of support that Starmer and other senior Labour figures had shown for “Israel” during its aggression on Gaza, Corbyn responded that he was not shocked, explaining that the reason was “because I know where many of these people are coming from.”

“During one extremely hostile meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party Committee, they confronted me and said: ‘Will you give a blanket undertaking that you as party leader and potentially prime minister will automatically support any military action Israel undertakes?’ And I said no,” he stressed.

Corbyn stated that the Israeli government’s influence on the party is “huge”, as is the impact of the pro-Israeli lobby on British politics as a whole.

Furthermore, he criticized his successor over an interview for LBC shortly after October 7, where Starmer argued that “Israel” has the “right” to cut water and power supplies to Gaza in “self-defense”.

Those remarks “totally shocked” Corbyn, he said, because “it’s absolutely clear in every aspect of law, never mind morality, that you don’t bomb schools, you don’t destroy water supplies, you don’t cut off electricity.” Contrary to Starmer’s assessment, such actions constitute “a war crime,” he emphasized.

It is worth noting that the interview further addressed the UK’s involvement in what Kennard described as the US “imperial project”, Corbyn’s efforts to diminish the “special relations” between the two countries, and speculated on the potential outcomes of the early July snap election for British citizens.

June 21, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Nearly 50,000 Palestinians reported dead, missing in Gaza

The Cradle | June 20, 2024

The Ministry of Health in Gaza reported on 20 June that Israel’s assault on the strip has left over 47,000 Palestinians killed or missing, with at least 3,000 massacres to date.

“There are more than 47,000 martyrs and missing persons in Gaza due to the occupation committing more than 3,000 massacres,” the government ministry said.

Gaza’s health ministry emphasized that they are working with the “bare minimum” equipment in the northern Gaza Strip as Israel continues to deny medicines, medical supplies, and fuel to the besieged enclave.

“We are trying to restart vital departments in the Al-Shifa Medical Complex and the Indonesian Hospital,” the health ministry added.

Both hospitals have come under direct attacks by the Israeli army in the 258 days of war in the Gaza Strip.

The government body registered 37,431 Palestinian deaths and estimates at least 10,000 bodies trapped under rubble that health workers are unable to reach, with around 5,000 of them children.

Three-quarters of the registered deaths are children (about 15,747), women (10,406), and elderly people.

Over 85,653 have been injured due to Israel’s bombing of the strip, most of whom are children and women.

Gaza’s health ministry also noted that 98 percent of children in Gaza “do not have access to safe drinking water.”

At least “33 children across the Gaza Strip, especially in the northern areas, died as a result of malnutrition and dehydration amid growing famine,” the ministry wrote.

Israel continues its onslaught on the Gaza Strip as it seeks to push further into the southernmost city of Rafah despite international condemnation.

Rafa’s mayor, Ahmed al-Soufi, told Anadolu Agency that “over 70 percent of public facilities and infrastructure have been destroyed in the Israeli onslaught.”

Soufi noted that Israel, earlier this week, destroyed dozens of homes in western Rafah’s Saudi neighborhood.

“Israel seeks to turn Gaza into an uninhabitable area by destroying the Rafah Crossing and preventing the entry of humanitarian and relief aid,” the mayor said.

June 20, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Criminal college poison mandates, and what to do going forward

Info that people with high school kids will need

BY MERYL NASS | JUNE 18, 2024

What bothered me the most about the COVID poison shots was the extreme interest in giving them to children. And while most parents of controllable children said no, over 50% of impressionable high schoolers wound up getting them, often with rewards and almost always with peer pressure. (The usefulness of providing rewards to induce acceptance had been tested in this age group with the HPV vaccine.)

But it was almost impossible to get to college without a shot. It turned out that college administrators were worse than drill sergeants when it came to requiring the shots. How much were they paid? We don’t know yet. We do know that both Pfizer and the CDC had given substantial grants to the American college health organization before COVID shots had even rolled out, which pushed out propaganda about the shots to all college health providers. Many medical providers in colleges are paraprofessionals, who are used to taking orders. The planners, I believe, counted on their obedience. I blogged about this organization’s grants 3 years ago on my anthrax blog. Then the organization took down the info about their grants. Either Zeke or Rahm Emanuel (can’t recall which evil brother it was) had something to do with the plan to force the jabs on students.

Children were least likely to suffer from COVID. And for some yet unearthed reason, colleges were the last to end their shot mandates. Even today some colleges still mandate these poison shots.

Anyway, Lucia Sinatra (and CHD) has sued colleges over the mandates, and Lucia has fought against these mandates in many ways. CHD has asked the Supreme Court to take its mandate case against Rutgers University.

Today Lucia provides a list of colleges that still have these mandates and lots of advice about which ones never had mandates, etc. If you have a child who will enter college soon, this is really important information. Please share.

June 19, 2024 Posted by | Corruption, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Israeli actions in Gaza ‘intentional attack on civilians’: UN inquiry

Press TV – June 19, 2024

A new report by a United Nations-backed independent commission has discovered that the Israeli military’s deliberate use of heavy weapons during its relentless offensives in the Gaza Strip has been an “intentional and direct attack on the civilian population.”

Navi Pillay, chairperson of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, said on Wednesday that “Israeli authorities are responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.”

These include “extermination, intentionally directing attacks against civilians and civilian objects, murder or willful killing, using starvation as a method of war, forcible transfer, gender persecution targeting Palestinian men and boys, sexual and gender-based violence amounting to torture, and cruel or inhuman treatment,” Pillay said as she presented the report to the UN Human Rights Council.

The UN commissioner said the Israeli military “forcibly transferred almost the entire population [in Gaza] into a small enclosure that is unsafe and uninhabitable” and used heavy weapons in densely populated areas in “an intentional and direct attack on the civilian population”.

Pillay said the commission concluded that specific forms of sexual and gender-based violence constituted part of the Israeli forces’ procedures.

The UN commissioner said the world faces its biggest threat of impunity for violations of international law unless perpetrators are held to account and justice is delivered for all victims.

She underscored that the large-scale surprise attack by members of Hamas and other Gaza-based resistance fighters against Israel in early October did not occur in a vacuum as it was preceded by decades of violence and retribution against Palestinians.

“Thousands of Palestinians have been detained and are being held incommunicado… ” Pillay said.

“The enormity of this tragedy overwhelms us, and we are deeply disturbed by the immense human suffering.”

Pillay’s commission found that the immense numbers of civilian casualties in Gaza, and the widespread destruction of civilian objects and infrastructure were the inevitable result of an intentional strategy to cause maximum damage.

Pillay also noted that the daily onslaught in Gaza must not sideline attention to a parallel wave of violence in the occupied West Bank, where more Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers since the start of the Gaza war in any other recorded period.

Israel waged the atrocious onslaught against the Gaza Strip, targeting hospitals, residences, and houses of worship after Palestinian resistance movements launched a surprise attack, dubbed Operation al-Aqsa Storm, against the usurping regime on October 7.

Israel has killed more than 37,390 Palestinians, most of them women and children, in Gaza since that October day.

Over 85,500 individuals have also sustained injuries. More than 1.7 million people have been internally displaced during the war as well.

June 19, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

‘France provided Israel with weapons used to bomb civilians in Gaza’

MEMO | June 19, 2024

France has approved the sale of weapons equipment used by Israel to bomb civilian targets in the Gaza Strip, including a hospital, an investigation by the French non-profit media outlet Disclose revealed on Monday.

Dozens of classified documents obtained by the outlet revealed that French IT company the Thales Group has recently delivered electronic components used to construct Israel’s Hermes 900 armed drones. France owns a 26 per cent stake in the company.

The investigation showed that “the French company delivered to Israel the communication equipment during 2024,” despite repeated confirmations by the French defence ministry that “French arms exports to [Israel] were limited to defensive military equipment used in the Iron Dome to confront Palestinian resistance rockets.”

The outlet quoted the head of Israel’s Squadron 166, which flies Hermes 900 assault drones, as admitting to targeting a hospital in Khan Yunis in February following France’s delivery of the surveillance and targeting equipment.

“At least eight of these transponders were supposed to be flown to Israel between December 2023 and the end of May 2024,” said Disclose. “That’s several months after the first aerial bombings. Two transponders were delivered in 2024… The other six are reported to have been stopped by French customs.”

According to the outlet, the French armed forces ministry’s Directorate General for International Relations stated that the eight TSC 4000 IFF transponders are not allowed to be “sold, gifted, leased nor transformed without the prior agreement of the French government.”

Since 7 October, the Israeli occupation forces have continued to bombard the besieged Gaza Strip, killing 37,343 Palestinians and wounding 85,372 others. Around 1.7 million people have been displaced, according to the UN, amid massive destruction of civilian infrastructure.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. The occupation state denies the allegation.

June 19, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Palestinian doctor tortured to death during Israeli interrogation

The Cradle | June 18, 2024

A senior doctor from Gaza was killed in November while under interrogation by the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, Haaretz reported on 18 June.

Dr Iyad Rantisi, 53, directed a women’s hospital that is part of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, in the northern Gaza Strip.

Rantisi was detained on 11 November at an Israeli army checkpoint while seeking to flee south to escape Israeli bombing in northern Gaza. Rantisi’s family and hospital colleagues heard nothing more about him, leading them to worry he was killed in Israeli custody.

Rantisi was declared dead six days later at Shikma Prison, which is home to a Shin Bet interrogation facility.

It is unclear how Dr Rantisi died, but Israel has a long history of torturing Palestinian detainees.

His death has prompted a probe by the Justice Ministry department that investigates complaints against Shin Bet interrogators.

The Shin Bet claims Dr Rantisi was interrogated on suspicion of involvement in holding Israeli captives in Gaza.

Israel’s Justice Ministry said the department had concluded its investigation into the circumstances of Rantisi’s death and is reviewing its findings, Haaretz reported.

The liberal Israeli daily added that after Rantisi was killed, the Ashkelon Magistrate’s Court issued a six-month gag order prohibiting the publication of all details of the case, including the existence of the gag order. Haaretz is now able to report on the case because the court order expired in May.

Another Palestinian physician from Gaza, Dr Adnan al-Bursh, 53, was also killed while in Israeli custody.

Bursh led the orthopedic surgery department at Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital and was detained by Israeli forces in Khan Yunis in December.

The father of six died four months later, on 19 April, at Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank.

Israeli authorities have not explained the circumstances of Bursh’s death.

Thirty-six Palestinians from Gaza detained at Israel’s Sde Teiman detention facility have also died, presumably under torture.

On 6 June, the New York Times published a report which included accounts of torture at Sde Teiman. Israeli guards used electric chairs to shock detainees and anally raped them with hot, electrified metal rods.

Two Palestinians have also died at the Anatot detention center, while two more died en route to a detention center.

These figures do not include Palestinians from Gaza who died in prisons operated by the Israel Prison Service. Thousands of Palestinians have been detained and held captive in Israel’s detention facilities and prisons since the start of the war on 7 October last year.

June 18, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Russian news photographer killed in Ukrainian drone strike

RT | June 16, 2024

Russian news photographer Nikita Tsitsagi has died from injuries sustained in a drone strike in the Donetsk People’s Republic, the portal News.ru reported on Sunday. According to the publication, the correspondent was killed in an attack by Ukrainian drones in the area of the Nikolsky Monastery near the Donbass city of Ugledar, where he was filming a report.

The tragedy was confirmed by Tsitsagi’s colleagues working in the area and local operational services. The details of the incident are unclear so far.

Tsitsagi collaborated with several Russian media outlets, including TASS and Lenta.ru. In June last year, he received the ‘Editorial Board’ journalistic award for a report he did on the Ukraine conflict and its repercussions in the Russian border town of Shebekino in Belgorod Region.

Earlier this week, another photojournalist, NTV crew member Valery Kozhin, died from wounds he suffered in a Ukrainian drone attack on Gorlovka, also in the Donetsk People’s Republic. Kozhin was filming in the area when a mortar round exploded on top of his crew. Journalist Aleksey Ivliev and an accompanying Russian military officer were also injured.

At least 30 Russian journalists have lost their lives in the Ukraine conflict since it began in February 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a press briefing during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) earlier this month. Among them are Boris Maksudov, who worked for Russia 24 TV, RIA Novosti’s Rostislav Zhuravlev, Tavria TV’s Oleg Klokov, and RuBaltic’s Aleksey Ilyashevich.

Moscow has repeatedly accused Ukrainian forces of deliberately targeting members of the Russian press who are reporting from the frontline. Earlier this week, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova lashed out at international human rights organizations, including the UN, for remaining silent in the face of Ukrainian attacks. She accused them of becoming Kiev’s accomplices in “this monstrous hunt for our correspondents” and encouraging further atrocities.

June 16, 2024 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Dozens of Gazan detainees released by Israel show ‘signs of torture’

MEMO | June 12, 2024

Israel released dozens of Palestinian detainees from the Gaza Strip yesterday, according to a local source, with many showing signs of torture and abuse.

“Around 50 detainees from Gaza City and northern Gaza were freed,” a Palestinian source told Anadolu.

The source said some 33 freed Gazans were taken to Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza for medical attention “due to difficult health conditions.”

“Some of the detainees had signs of torture on their bodies,” he added.

There are no available estimates about the number of Palestinians detained by the Israeli army in Gaza, but human rights groups estimate that thousands have been arrested.

In videos circulating on social media, released detainees are seen to be visibly weak, explaining that they were not allowed to sleep and were not provided food or clean water.

“No food, no water and no toilet. I swear we pooped on ourselves and they’d make us drink sewage water,” one of the men tells gathered reporters as he is reunited with his daughter. He had been held by occupation forces for eight months, reporters said.

Israel has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza since October.

Nearly 37,000 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, most of them women and children, and nearly 85,000 others injured, according to local health authorities.

Those who survive the bombing are struggling as a result of a “man-made famine” which Israel is imposing by blocking the entry of humanitarian aid.

June 12, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment