Twenty-five-year-old Aaron Bushnell, an active-duty member of the United States Air Force, died on Sunday after setting himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington DC as an act of protest against the slaughter in Gaza. Unfortunately, the act is noteworthy not because of the resulting suicide but for the underlying motivation behind it. That underlying motivation—and his last words, “Free Palestine”—was initially missing in American media coverage of the tragic incident until social media prompted mainstream coverage.
There is a growing sense that corporate America and our politicians just don’t care about our youth, especially those who serve in the military. This extreme form of protest took the life of a serviceman, not in combat abroad, but here at home in defiance of American foreign policy.
For those politicians who profess to genuinely care about our men and women in the armed services, answer this: How many active-duty personnel and veterans took their own lives since 1980 when the U.S. started documenting military suicides? Some estimate it’s in the six figures. That’s double the fifty-eight thousand killed in combat in Vietnam. America’s enemies don’t have to go to war to kill American soldiers. We are doing it to ourselves when we send our boys and girls to go fight in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan under false pretenses. They come back with PTSD, moral quandaries, and a host of other issues that prevent them from successfully reintegrating into society. Urinating on dead Taliban bodies doesn’t make America great.
If things are not bad enough with growing economic disparities between the rich and the poor, the opioid epidemic, the $34 trillion national debt, mass shootings, a growing divide in American society that are turning into battle lines, our best and brightest are killing themselves over a failed foreign policy that is polarizing the world against us. And Aaron is not the first to set himself on fire over the carnage in Gaza. Last December, a woman did something similar in front of the Israeli consulate in Atlanta.
It’s almost thirteen years to the date that Tunisian vendor Tarek Bouazizi self-immolated, igniting the “Arab Spring” in March 2011. He was harassed and humiliated, and had his wares confiscated by municipal officials. Many Arabs and Muslims live under corrupt authoritarian regimes that oppress their people. Those same broken promises of wealth, freedom, and democracy are robbing Americans of their dignity.
Before engaging in such an extreme act of protest documented on social media, Aaron said, “I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people are experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.” Indeed, AIPAC-bought politicians have decided death and destruction, even at home, is the new norm.
All these acts are born of desperation. If young American men are willing to die in their pursuit of freedom and justice, our politicians should take heed. Yet the Joe Biden administration and Congress continue to green light Israel’s atrocities as it fails to achieve any of its stated goals like destroying Hamas, returning the captives, or bringing security to Israelis.
The entire world is fearful of a wider regional conflict. The worse it gets for Israel the more it will want the United States to get involved militarily on its behalf. Israel is drowning, and it has no problem in taking us down with it. America cannot afford more wars, especially in the Middle East.
All too often our elected officials have been hearing from their constituents, “How many Palestinians have to die before you call for a ceasefire?” The question now is, “How many Americans have to die before you call for a ceasefire?”
Ashraf W. Nubani is a Palestinian-American attorney based in the Washington DC area. He holds a Master’s degree in history and writes on Muslim issues and the West.
February 27, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
Leave a comment
Bizarre book description on Amazon
Over coffee this morning, I found myself wondering what Dr. Fauci is up to these days. I was already aware that he’d joined the Georgetown School of Medicine faculty as a “distinguished professor” last summer. More recently in the news is the announcement that his memoir—titled On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service—will be published by Viking on June 18, 2024.
The following is the publisher’s description of the book on Amazon:
The memoir by the doctor who became a beacon of hope for millions through the COVID pandemic, and whose six-decade career in high-level public service put him in the room with seven presidents
Anthony Fauci is arguably the most famous – and most revered – doctor in the world today. His role guiding America sanely and calmly through Covid (and through the torrents of Trump) earned him the trust of millions during one of the most terrifying periods in modern American history, but this was only the most recent of the global epidemics in which Dr. Fauci played a major role. His crucial role in researching HIV and bringing AIDS into sympathetic public view and his leadership in navigating the Ebola, SARS, West Nile, and anthrax crises, make him truly an American hero.
His memoir reaches back to his boyhood in Brooklyn, New York, and carries through decades of caring for critically ill patients, navigating the whirlpools of Washington politics, and behind-the-scenes advising and negotiating with seven presidents on key issues from global AIDS relief to infectious disease preparedness at home. ON CALL will be an inspiration for readers who admire and are grateful to him and for those who want to emulate him in public service. He is the embodiment of “speaking truth to power,” with dignity and results.
It’s notable that Dr. Fauci hasn’t been “on call” as a treating physician since he joined NIAID as a clinical associate in 1968.
Downright astonishing is the fact that, within the same country, public perceptions of a man can be so diametrically opposed. It’s probably true that, during the COVID pandemic, Dr. Fauci was “a beacon of hope for millions,” even though he did the following:
1). Oversaw grants to the key players who were responsible for creating SARS-CoV-2 in a lab.
2). Concealed the true (lab) origin of SARS-CoV-2.
3). Undermined President Trump’s advocacy of early treatment modalities such as hydroxychloroquine, and was generally dismissive of early treatment.
4). Strongly advocated the widespread use of Remdesivir, in spite of clear data that it causes kidney damage, especially in patients with already compromised kidney function.
5). Was a key actor pushing mass vaccination with mRNA gene transfer shots that are neither safe nor effective.
Especially bizarre in the book description is the final sentence: “He is the embodiment of “speaking truth to power,” with dignity and results.
In fact, Dr. Fauci is the embodiment of overarching, illegitimate power that has no place in a constitutional republic.
February 26, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Book Review, Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, United States |
Leave a comment
The United Nations announced on Friday that the Israeli army has killed more than 400 people who sought refuge in its facilities in the besieged Gaza Strip since 7 October.
This came in a statement by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) posted on its X account: “One million people are sheltering in or around @UNRWA facilities across the #GazaStrip – from newborn babies to the elderly, this has become ‘home’.”
“Devastatingly, now over 400 people have been killed while seeking shelter in these @UN facilities. Nowhere, & no-one, is safe,” it added.
In a previous post, UNRWA stated: “153 different @UNRWA installations have been attacked during the war in #Gaza.”
Israel has repeatedly equated UNRWA staff with Hamas members in efforts to discredit the organisation, providing no proof of the claims, while lobbying hard to have UNRWA closed as it is the only UN agency with a specific mandate to look after the basic needs of Palestinian refugees.
If the agency no longer exists, argues Israel, then the refugee issue must no longer exist, and the legitimate right for Palestinian refugees to return to their land will be unnecessary.
Israel has denied that right of return since the late 1940s, even though its own membership in the UN was made conditional upon Palestinian refugees being allowed to return to their homes and land.
February 24, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Gaza, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
Leave a comment
The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, an independent organisation based in Geneva, confirmed on Friday that it had observed six main indicators that Israel is continuing the crime of genocide in the Gaza Strip within four weeks of the ruling issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which required it to take measures to prevent this.
The organisation added in a press statement that these indicators include the continuation of mass killings of civilians in the Gaza Strip, intentionally inflicting severe physical and psychological harm on the residents of the Strip and deliberately subjecting residents to miserable living conditions with the aim of actual destruction, including the destruction of homes, facilities and infrastructure.
It added that the indicators also include starvation, blocking the entry of humanitarian aid, imposing measures aimed at preventing childbirth within Palestinian families and official and public incitement by Israeli officials to escalate its genocide.
The organisation announced that it documented: “The killing of more than 3,847 Palestinians by the Israeli army, including 1,306 children and 807 women, in addition to the injury of about 5,119 since the ICJ issued its ruling.”
It noted: “The toll of Palestinian victims since 7 October rose to 38,067, including 14,350 children and 8,620 women. This also includes more than 8,000 martyrs under the rubble and in the streets who medical teams were unable to recover, hundreds of which were killed after the ICJ ruling.”
The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor stated: “Israel continues to violate international law with its authoritative rules by committing the crime of genocide as part of it committing grave violations, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, which exist as independent crimes in their own right, against the Palestinians across the Gaza Strip.”
February 24, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Gaza, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
Leave a comment
UN experts have called for an immediate halt to weapons transfer to Israel, warning that state officials involved in arms exports to the regime “may be individually criminally liable for aiding and abetting any war crimes” in the Gaza Strip.
The experts said on Friday that any delivery of weapons or ammunition to the regime that would be used in the genocidal war on Gaza is likely to violate international humanitarian law and must cease immediately, according to a statement by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
The UN experts reiterated that weapons transfers to Israel “are prohibited even if the exporting State does not intend the arms to be used in violation of the law – or does not know with certainty that they would be used in such a way – as long as there is a clear risk.”
They said that “the need for an arms embargo on Israel is heightened,” since the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in late January that “there is a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza and the continuing serious harm to civilians since then.”
“This necessitates halting arms exports in the present circumstances.”
The experts warned the US and Germany, in particular, since the two countries have increased arms shipments to Israel, since October, when the regime started its war on the Gaza Strip. Other military exporters include France, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.
The UN experts welcomed the suspension of arms transfers to Israel by Belgium, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and the Japanese company Itochu Corporation.
Washington, the regime’s main supporter, is still preparing to send more bombs and other weapons to Israel, the Wall Street Journal reported last Friday.
The arms are estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars, the journal cited current and former US officials. They said that the proposal which is still undergoing internal administration review, needs to be sent to Congress for approval.
However, US President Joe Biden’s administration has so far twice bypassed Congress to urgently send bombs and other munitions to Israel to support the regime’s war machine that has killed more than 29,000 Palestinians, mostly children and women.
February 23, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Germany, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
Leave a comment
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) condemns in the strongest terms the killing of our dear colleague, Nour Naser Abu Al-Nour and seven of her family members, including her two-years-old daughter, by an Israeli airstrike on her family house in Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip. The killing of Nour along with seven of her family members, comes as the latest example of the genocide that Israel is committing against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and a reminder that all Palestinians, including human rights defenders, are a target for the Israeli government and army. This heinous crime also constitutes further evidence of the lack of safe space for Palestinians in the Strip and an example of what the Palestinians in the Strip have been subjected to for the last 137 days of ongoing Israeli aggression. Nour and her family are among of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, the majority of whom are women and children, unjustly, illegally and cruelly killed as result of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023, which members of the international community have not only failed to bring to an end, but have been complicit by providing Israel with the necessary political, diplomatic and military support.
Our dear colleague Nour worked in the Women’s Rights Unit at PCHR since 2019. She holds a master’s degree in law and worked with distinction, perseverance and dedication until the last days, documenting the violations committed by the Israeli occupation, particularly against women and children, providing legal consultations, and trying to provide self-care to the women victims in shelters despite the difficult conditions. Several weeks ago, Nour was forced to move to her family’s house after Israeli war planes targeted a neighboring house, causing significant damage to her house.
According to information collected by PCHR, last night, 20 February 2024, at approximately 10:00 pm, Israeli war planes directly targeted without any prior warning the house of Nour’s Father, Professor Nasser Abu Al-Nour, Dean of the Faculty of Nursing at the Islamic University in Gaza, located in Al-Jeneina neighborhood in Rafah, on top of its residents. The targeting resulted in the killing of our dear colleague Nour Abu Al-Nour (30), who works as a lawyer in the Women’s Rights Unit, her child, Kenzi Jumaa (2), her father, Professor Nasser Abu Al-Nour (60), her mother, Mjida Farid Abu Al-Noor (55), three of her sisters, Amal Nasser Abu Al Nour (35), Mona Nasser Abu Al Nour (24), and Ayat Naser Abu Al-Nour (19), and her brother, Abdulrahman Nasser Abu Al Nour (23), and the wounding of dozens others.
The crimes committed by the Israeli occupation have not spared anyone, including human rights defenders, who have become themselves, along with their families, actual victims of the aggression by being subjected to targeting, starvation, torture and forced displacement as part of the ongoing genocide against the Palestinians in the Strip.
PCHR extends its deepest condolences to the remaining members of Nour’s family and to the Palestinian human rights community and calls upon the international community to abide by their moral and legal obligations and act promptly to end the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people. With every day that passes, more civilians are targeted and killed. Despite this heinous crime and the challenging working environment, PCHR reiterates its commitment and dedication to documenting and exposing the crimes committed by the Israeli occupation against Palestinian civilians to ensure justice and dignity for the victims.
Our thoughts and prayers are with her loved ones. May the soul of our beloved Nour and her family rest in peace.
February 23, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
Leave a comment
Victims of months of Israel’s attacks on Gaza are filing a criminal complaint against top German government officials for supporting Israel’s war crimes and “genocide” against Palestinians, Anadolu Agency reports.
“We’re filing a criminal complaint against German government officials for the crime of aiding and abetting genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza by providing Israel with weapons and issuing related export permissions,” lawyers for the Gaza victims told a press conference in Berlin on Friday.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, and Economy Minister Robert Habeck all stand accused of “complicity in the genocide in Gaza” by supporting Israel’s military offensive, and authorising the export of €326 million ($350 million) worth of weapons to Israel.
Nadija Samour, one of the lawyers who filed the criminal complaint with federal prosecutors in Karlsruhe, south-western Germany, said: “Our governments in Europe have a legal obligation not to provide Israel any support in perpetrating the current genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. This has to stop and this is what we hope to achieve by going to court. This lawsuit sends a clear message to German officials: you cannot continue to remain accomplices of such crime without consequences. We want accountability.”
Samour said German law requires a ground for initial suspicion to start investigations on a potential crime being committed.
“The International Court of Justice’s interim ruling clearly showed that there is such ground for initial suspicion when it comes to the crime of genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza,” she stressed, referring to a 26 January ruling ordering Israel’s government to stop genocidal acts and take steps to ensure that civilians in Gaza get humanitarian assistance.
February 23, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Gaza, Germany, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
Leave a comment
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) stated on 22 February that there are “reasonable grounds” to believe that ISIS perpetrated chemical weapons attacks on the town of Marea, close to Aleppo, in 2015.
The Investigation and Identification Team (IIT) of the watchdog determined that ISIS militants utilized sulphur mustard in attacks across various parts of the town on 1 September 2015.
According to a OPCW report, ISIS units deployed sulphur mustard gas via their artillery munitions on the town of Marea between 9:00 and 12:00 pm. OPCW’s report stated, “The chemical agent was delivered using one or more artillery guns.”
IIT discovered that 11 people who were exposed to a “black, vicious substance” present in projectiles at the attack location exhibited symptoms that aligned with sulphur mustard exposure.
The recent report emerges amid ongoing accusations by the international community that the Syrian government conducted chemical attacks within its borders, allegations that Damascus vehemently denies.
In 2014, Syria relinquished its chemical weapons arsenal to a collaborative effort between the US and the OPCW, which then supervised the dismantling of these weapons.
Damascus asserts that the chemical attack was “staged” to exert pressure on and discredit President Bashar al-Assad’s government.
Last August, Syria’s UN representative affirmed that Washington provided chemical weapons to extremist militant groups in the Arab state’s western provinces in addition to training them for false-flag operations.
David Schenker from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) also previously noted that Washington used Al Tanf as a training ground for armed opposition groups in Syria, acting as a strategic asset in the extended discussions on the nation’s future.
According to a Reuters report, in 2018, Syria’s former foreign minister, Walid Muallem, noted that OPCW previously disclosed allegations of the Syrian government using chemical weapons against its civilians were devoid of any evidence.
However, the OPCW retracted its statement following pressure from the US. Several political commentators, including Noam Chomsky, reiterated that the organization had “suppressed” information indicating that the chemical attack by the Syrian government on Douma in 2018 did not occur.
More recently, US journalist Seymour Hersh reported in 2021 that a classified US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) briefing in June 2013 indicated that Al-Nusra Front maintained a sarin production cell and was attempting a large-scale production effort in Syria.
February 23, 2024
Posted by aletho |
War Crimes | ISIS, Syria, United States |
Leave a comment
GAZA – Israel possesses the world’s largest skin bank, a medical facility that stores human skin for later use in treating burns and skin cancers. This bank was established in 1986 under the supervision of the military medical sector of the occupying army, which provides its services internationally, especially to requests from Western countries.
Israeli occupation authorities been stealing organs from the bodies of dead Palestinian, a heinous criminal practice that has been revealed in several reports and through testimonies of Israeli doctors who participated in this gruesome practice, violating professional ethics and constituting a crime against humanity, Al-Ghad reported.
In contrast, this Israeli bank differs from other banks worldwide in that its supply of these vital organs does not come solely from voluntary donors. Instead, documented cases of stealing skin from the bodies of Palestinians have been recorded, individuals whose organs are also stolen.
There is compelling evidence of Israelis engaging in trafficking these stolen organs, making the entity the largest market for organs in the Middle East.
Where did Israel get this inventory from?
Expert in Israeli affairs Anas Abu Arqoub says, “The Israeli skin bank is the largest in the world, surpassing the American skin bank that was established 40 years before it, noting that Israel’s population is much smaller than the United States.”
Arqoub emphasizes that the theft of organs from Palestinian bodies is not just suspicions, stating, “Even the Israeli media acknowledges that it is an extraction process without the knowledge of the dead’s families.”
The reserve of human skin held by the Israeli occupation state, equivalent to 170 square meters, stored within the Israeli skin bank, confirms Arqoub’s account. The number is considered unreasonable since Israel ranks third in its population’s refusal to donate organs, attributed to Jewish religious beliefs.
Handing over Palestinian bodies to their families without organs!
The details of the story date back to 2001 when Swedish investigative journalist Donald Boström published an investigation exposing the theft of organs from the bodies of Palestinian martyrs and their trafficking by Israeli entities. This was the first time this crime was revealed to the international public.
Boström did not stop at this point but published another investigation on the same subject in 2009 in the pages of the Swedish magazine Aftonbladet. The investigation mentions that the Israeli Ministry of Health launched a national campaign to encourage organ donation in 1992. However, despite that, a significant gap persisted between the demand and the supply of donations.
Coinciding with that campaign, cases of the disappearance of several Palestinian youth began, only to return afterward in closed coffins. The Israeli authorities imposed on their families to bury them at night without funerals.
Boström says, “I was in the region at that time, and on several occasions, UN employees contacted me concerned about the developments. The individuals who contacted me said that organ theft certainly happened, but they were prevented from doing anything about it.”
These contacts prompted the journalist to delve further into the issue, so he went to interview the families of the dead who confirmed the theft of their sons’ organs before their killing. Among them was the son of the martyr Bilal Ahmed Ghannan, who was 19 years old when the Israeli army arrested him in the village of Um al-Tut in the West Bank in 1992. He returned with a body without internal organs, from the neck to below the abdomen.
The Israeli medical authorities did not deny the torture and theft of Bilal’s organs. At that time, the director of the Israeli Institute of Forensic Medicine, Chen Kugel, said that Bilal’s family could be right because they “took everything that could be taken from all the bodies that came to the Institute of Forensic Medicine,” without the family’s consent. His family did not receive any explanation, apology, or compensation for what happened.
Israeli confessions of organ theft from Palestinians
In a 2009 documentary on the issue, there are admissions from the former director of the Israeli Institute of Forensic Medicine, Yehuda Hiss, confirming the theft of organs from the bodies of Palestinian in the institute. Hiss stated, “We took corneas, skin, heart valves, and bones … Almost everything was done unofficially to a large extent… and permission was not sought from the families.”
In her study on dealing with the bodies of Palestinians at the Abu Kabir Forensic Medicine Center in Tel Aviv, published in a book titled “On Their Bodies,” anthropologist Meirav Feis stated that she witnessed “how they take organs from the bodies of Palestinians. In return, they leave the bodies of soldiers intact.”
The researcher added, “They take corneas, skin, and heart valves in a way that makes the absence of those organs unnoticed by non-specialists. They replace corneas with plastic bodies and remove the skin from the back so that the family does not see it. In addition, the bodies of the dead are used in medical schools in Israeli universities for research purposes.”
Feis said, “In the first intifada, the army effectively allowed the institute to extract organs from Palestinians under a military procedure that required dissecting the bodies of Palestinian prisoners. The autopsy procedure was accompanied by the removal of organs used by the Israeli skin bank, established in 1985 to treat burns suffered by Israeli soldiers.”
Trafficking in the organs of Palestinian casualties
Israel is one of the largest markets for trafficking in human organs in the world, and the largest in the Middle East. Media reports revealed that the Israeli entity is involved in killing Palestinians to steal their internal organs illegally and trade them within an illegal international network.
In 2009, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested an Israeli settler named Levy Izhak Rosenbaum. After investigating him, it was revealed that he played the role of a broker in organ-selling operations in the United States for the benefit of a criminal cell led by rabbis, politicians, and government officials in Israel.
Journalist Donald Boström, in his mentioned investigation, suggests a connection between this network and the theft of organs from Palestinian martyrs taking place in “Israel.” Boström said, “Half of the kidneys transplanted to Israelis since the beginning of the first decade of the 21st century were illegally purchased. The Israeli health authorities have full knowledge of this activity but do nothing to stop it.”
In a report published by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in 2016, Israel admitted to losing dozens of bodies of Palestinians. The newspaper quoted statements from sources in the Israeli judicial and security apparatuses about the loss of 121 bodies of Palestinians held by the occupation authorities since the 1990s.
Continued organ theft
Following the explosion of the organ theft scandal in 2009, the Israeli government tried to evade the proven charges against it. The spokesperson for the Israeli Ministry of Health at that time, Einav Shimron Greenboim, issued a statement saying, “The practice mentioned in the investigation is an old story that ended years ago.”
Doubts persist about the continuation of these unethical practices that violate human rights, as indicated by the Israeli authorities’ continued detention of dozens of bodies of Palestinian dead, justifying it as a punitive measure.
According to Abdel Nasser Farwana, the head of the Studies and Documentation Unit at the Palestinian Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs Commission, Israel still holds more than 370 bodies of Palestinian and Arab bodies who died in different circumstances and years apart. He added, “The list of these detained martyrs includes individuals who died from the 1970s until around 2023.”
February 23, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
Leave a comment
GAZA – Israeli occupation forces (IOF) targeted the Gaza Municipality parking once again, and destroyed what has remained of public service vehicles on Tuesday night.
The IOF had previously targeted the same place several times in an attempt to hinder the access to municipality services, as part of the Israeli genocidal war against the trapped people in the Gaza Strip since October 7.
The municipality said in a statement posted on its Facebook page on Wednesday that the IOF targeted the municipality’s cars despite being marked in coordination with the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza.
The Gaza Municipality explained that its vehicles were given special marks that show the kind of service provided and the identities of its drivers to be distinguished and accordingly protected in times of emergency.
The statement added that the vehicles that were completely destroyed encompassed 3 road-repair bulldozers, an excavator used to repair water and sewage lines, a water pump and sewage suction truck, and a car used for administrative purposes, in addition to multiple damages to the garage and its facilities.
The municipality reported a severe shortage in operating vehicles after repetitive Israeli targeting of the garage led to the destruction of about 95 vehicles of various types and sizes, in addition to the destruction of the maintenance workshop.
The Gaza Municipality called on the international community and human rights organizations to intervene urgently to improve the humanitarian conditions in the city, by the provision of fuel and electricity and the implementation of urgent projects that would enable the municipality to provide basic municipal services such as water, sanitation, and waste collection services.
Since the beginning of the genocidal war on the Gaza Strip in October last year, the IOF has been deliberately destroying the infrastructure, service facilities, water, and sewage networks, and preventing the arrival of fuel, causing health and environmental crises as a result of sewage overflow and waste accumulation in the streets.
February 22, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Gaza, Human rights, Palestine, Zionism |
Leave a comment
The High Court in London has rejected a legal challenge against UK weapons exports to Israel, despite growing concerns over human rights violations in war-torn Gaza Strip.
The court refused the appeal against the UK Department for Business and Trade (DBT) on Tuesday, saying the criteria requiring the DBT to consider whether there is a risk the weapons might be used in a violation of international law must be “clear” and has to be “of a serious violation”.
The court refusal said there was a “high hurdle” to overcome to establish the government’s conclusion was “irrational,” adding that “There is no realistic prospect of that hurdle being surmounted here.”
Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq and UK-based Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) applied for a judicial review of the government’s export licenses for the sale of British weapons capable of being used in Israel’s war on Gaza.
They warned that the UK government is ignoring its own rules in the Israeli war on Gaza, saying they are seeking to overturn the court’s decision.
The legal challenge stated that the government has granted licenses for the sale of British weapons to Israel under a wide range of categories in recent years.
Existing UK arms export criteria say that if there is a “clear risk” that a weapon might be used in a serious violation of international humanitarian law (IHL) then an arms export should not be licensed.
Shawan Jabarin, general director of al-Haq, said the UK government’s decision to continue supplying Israel with weapons for offensive against men, women, and children in Gaza is effectively arming the occupying regime to “completely decimate” the Gaza Strip, reducing the besieged enclave’s vital civilian infrastructure to rubble.
GLAN also said the high court’s decision is out of step with the growing international consensus that Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to genocide.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has issued a preliminary ruling on a genocide case brought by South Africa against the Israeli regime, ordering Tel Aviv to take all measures necessary to prevent genocide in the Gaza Strip
Last week, a Dutch court ordered the government of the Netherlands to stop supplying F35 fighter jet parts to Israel within seven days, citing violations of international and humanitarian law. Italy and Spain also blocked all arms exports to Israel as soon as the attacks in Gaza started.
Israel waged the devastating war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas carried out a surprise retaliatory attack, dubbed Operation Al-Aqsa Storm, against the occupying entity over its intensified violence against Palestinians.
The Israeli aggression has so far killed more than 29,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, and injured about 70,000 others in Gaza.
The Tel Aviv regime has imposed a “complete siege” on the territory, cutting off fuel, electricity, food, and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.
According to the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), between 2015 and 2022, the UK licensed more than half a billion dollars worth of weapons to Tel Aviv.
February 21, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Gaza, Israel, Palestine, UK, Zionism |
Leave a comment
Is a rival resolution from Washington another trick to protect Israel?
There have been several interesting developments relating to Israel’s ongoing destruction of Gaza and its people, but one might well question the motives of at least one of the principal players in the drama, namely Joe Biden’s United States government. Last Tuesday the United States, acting to protect Israel, vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution, arguing that it would “jeopardize” the ongoing negotiations between the two parties to release the Israeli hostages and it wouldn’t be “conducive to a sustainable peace and would instead empower Hamas.” Thirteen of the fifteen members of the Security Council supported the resolution, Britain abstained, and US alone voted against it. It was the third humanitarian resolution incorporating a ceasefire vetoed by Washington over Gaza, each of which was intended by the White House to give Israel a completely free hand to deal with the Palestinians.
The resolution had been proposed by Algeria and it called for an immediate ceasefire and the expediting of emergency humanitarian assistance to the in-peril Gazan population. The UN has been warning that a humanitarian catastrophe that could kill hundreds of thousands is about to take place if nothing is done to reverse what is being called a genocide due to the deliberate employing of famine and disease, not to mention the killing of more than 30,000 Palestinians by the Israeli military aided and abetted by the US. After the UN vote, the Algerian ambassador to the UN said Washington’s lone opposing vote should be understood as “approval of starvation as a means of war against hundreds of thousands of Palestinians” and “ it “implies an endorsement of the brutal violence and collective punishment inflicted upon” those Palestinians in Gaza.” The Algerian resolution also came at a time when the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague is beginning its separate review of whether Israel has used the past month to mitigate or cancel its genocidal acts in Gaza
Opinion polls suggest that most Americans oppose what Israel and Washington are doing, but they have little ability to influence choices made by Congress and the White House, which are overwhelming inclined to defer to Israeli points of view due to the fact that they have been bought by the powerful Zionist Lobby in the US. Nota bene one of the biggest sellouts to Israel of all time, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi who, with impeccable timing given both the Algerian proposal and the ICJ review, stated last week that Israel has not used any weapons provided by the United States in its military action against Gaza. She said “There’s nothing that we have sent since Oct. 7 that has contributed to this brutality. In the longer run, they are in a dangerous neighborhood.” That is, of course a complete lie, as the Biden Administration has carried out hundreds of airlifts of “emergency” weapons to the Jewish state, to include the 2,000 pound bunker buster bombs whose use against hospitals and other large buildings has been well-attested to by some of the eyewitness journalists, medical doctors and UN officials who have managed to avoid being targeted and assassinated by Israel.
What followed on the Monday announcement by US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield about the impending Algerian veto surprised many who were watching developments. The media were informed that Washington would be presenting its own rival Security Council draft resolution that would call for a temporary ceasefire and which also would advise Israel against launching a ground invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza over Ramadan, which starts on March 10th, due to the fact that more than a million Gazans are trapped in the region with, quite probably, nowhere to go. The resolution calls for a “viable plan” for protecting civilians in Rafah, whatever that is supposed to mean, which Israel will presumably ignore, and it includes no sanctions if Israel refuses to comply. The US indicated that its draft document would be discussed in the UN over the next several weeks or more and might be subject to considerable editing, but it set no time table for initiating the temporary ceasefire apart from “as soon as practicable,” which is where a warning flag went up for me and others.
The resolution gives Israel considerable freedom of action without any bothersome timetable to worry about and “temporary” means it can resume military action when it wishes to do so and there is no threat of possible punishment if Israel does decide to invade Rafah and kills another 30,000 Palestinians while doing so. It is well known in Washington circles that follow foreign policy and Biden’s wars that the US doesn’t make any moves on the Middle East without complete prior consultation with the Israelis. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has even participated in Israeli War Cabinet meetings. Against those weak but positive moves spelled out in the resolution, there is the fact that Netanyahu and his political allies, long opposed to a two-state solution, have recently repeatedly rejected proposals for any Palestinian sovereign entity which means that the intention is to destroy and/or annex Gaza. Israel is in fact using its formidable lobby and international press/narrative control to work assiduously to isolate the Palestinians by blocking any recognition by individual countries or as a full member at the UN. The greatest effort is inevitably being directed at working to keep the United States under control. Both Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan carefully coordinate every step the administration takes with the Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs and former ambassador to Washington Ron Dermer who reports directly to Netanyahu.
Nor is there any hint in what is included in the upcoming US resolution regarding what Biden and Netanyahu might seek to do afterwards to end the conflict. In fact, Netanyahu has indicated that he is quite willing to expand the fighting as his government has moved to restrict access to Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque during Ramadan on “security grounds,” hardly a conciliatory move, while also widening the conflict with Hezbollah by an airstrike deep into Lebanon. Nevertheless, nearly everyone, except Israel and its US lobby, agrees that both justice and political realities demand that some kind of genuine Palestinian state should be allowed to develop if the ancient land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is ever to find peace. Predictably, the problem is in the details, not to mention that Israel’s current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly insisted that no such an entity will ever be allowed to exist to challenge Israeli political and military supremacy in the region. And, for the moment, Netanyahu has the force majeure and both the active and passive support from the United States that he needs to enforce his writ over nearly all the occupied and under siege territory that he clearly sees as Eretz or Greater Israel.
Given the reality of who is capable of doing what to whom, the United States is perhaps hesitantly taking the lead on proposing something like a revived two-state solution to the problem, as originally envisioned in the UN partition that created Israel in 1948 as well as in the Oslo Accords of 1993, even though most Middle East experts have long asserted that such a formula can no longer succeed or even be attempted. Given the horrors taking place in Gaza, there is inevitably some interest in resuscitating a political formula that has already failed, largely because the existing Palestinian Authority (PA) has long since lost its legitimacy in the eyes of its most important audience, the Palestinian people. Any suggestion that a unity government for Palestinians combining the PA and Hamas is somehow viable is therefore delusional. Both Washington and Jerusalem know that, so one might consider that talk of some kind of empowered and enabled government for Palestinians is at best notional.
To be sure, the proposals that have been leaked in one form or another appear to be a way for the United States to save face and give some Palestinians a token voice while also funding and supplying weapons to Israel to enable and even advance the crushing of the Gazans and increasingly also of the West Bank Palestinians by the Netanyahu regime. Leading extremists like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich in the Israeli government have made no attempt to conceal their desire to expel the Palestinians from the historic Palestine, killing them as necessary if they resist or attempt any “intifada” type uprising such as occurred in Gaza in October.
The United States and some Europeans are recognizing that a Palestinian state with what amounts to full sovereignty will not be allowed due to Israeli resistance and willingness to militarily destroy any such entity, but some leaders are nevertheless hoping to create some sort of “semi-sovereign” disarmed Palestinian government that will be entirely subservient to Israel in every way that matters. As a model, it would function similarly to how Israel currently retains and sometimes holds back the excise and other taxes due to the rump Palestinian Authority governing entity in Ramallah, making it a “subcontractor of the Israeli occupation,” that is completely surrounded and dominated by Israel.
Biden’s impending Gaza proposal also has a domestic political aspect. With Israel’s slaughter of Gazans still continuing, a situation that is enabled by Washington’s unflinching support of Israeli behavior, serious problems as the US is an active participant in a genocide are beginning to surface as the war spreads throughout the Middle East. One presumes that Blinken has finally decided that something must be done to salvage the international reputation of the United States while also undoing damage to Joe Biden’s electoral prospects as American voters increasingly are disgusted by the images of dead and tortured Palestinians that flash on national television screens nightly.
Aware that Netanyahu wants the war to continue until total victory to include opposition to the development of any Palestinian government entity, Blinken has reportedly asked the State Department to conduct a review and “present policy options on possible US and international recognition of a Palestinian state after the war in Gaza” if presumably it does end and is not completely annexed by the Jewish state. Netanyahu, for his part is also reading the political tea leaves that show his popularity is sharply declining. He counters that by repeating claims that Israel is winning what will be a long war completely destroying Hamas and, to show that he is serious, he has recently rejected a serious Hamas proposal for a ceasefire followed by prisoner and hostage exchanges and talks to resolve the conflict.
So the United States’ UN security Council resolution to advance some kind of peace process between Israel and the Palestinians might be much ado about nothing, just a way to buy time and to help Biden transform himself and his administration to make it look like they are interested in peace and reconciliation when they are really acting on behalf of Israel. As usual, the reality is in the details and we will soon enough know what the US president and his advisers have been up to and what they expect to achieve beyond the dissemination of the characteristic bipartisan lies and evasions that have constituted US foreign policy since 9/11.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
February 21, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
Leave a comment
Aletho News
Aletho News 