Support for justice in Palestine soaring on US campuses
ALRAY | November 20, 2014
New York – A student-led movement taking shape on U.S. college campuses have seen a growing number of young activists organizing around solidarity with Palestine.
The Students for Justice in Palestine organization, one of the major solidarity coalitions, now has more than 110 active chapters in the U.S. and the number is growing.
The movement enjoys the backing from those with a wide array of political thought and a support base that significantly grew after Israel’s “Operation Cast Lead” and “Operation Protective Edge” assaults on Gaza in 2008-09 and this summer respectively.
According to Aman Muqeet of the organization’s National Steering Committee, Israel’s summer offensive affected all of those who are in solidarity with the Palestinian people. “It has strengthened our resolve and commitment to the work we do.”
Operation Protective Edge began July 7 and lasted for 51 days; it killed more than 2,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to Palestinian health officials. More than 10,000 others were reported injured.
“Also, it has empowered us because we have seen an unprecedented amount of support from the international community,” Muqeet said. “Musicians, actors, and public figures voicing support for Gaza, corporations distancing themselves from Israeli crimes; consumers joining the Palestinian-led call for a boycott of Israeli goods and corporations that support Israel; millions of people around the world taking to the streets to demand justice.”
He says public opinion in the U.S. and the West shifted significantly after Israel’s summer assault.
“The Protective Edge massacre has brought the realities of a brutal colonial empire to the fore … On campuses, students are more informed than they were in the past and are keeping up with the developments.”
An Oct. 24 report by the New York-based Jewish organization Anti-Defamation League reported a dramatic increase in the number of pro-Palestine events scheduled on U.S. campuses since the massacre.
There were 75 events scheduled since the beginning of the 2014-2015 academic year, which started in late August or early September at most American universities, the report said. That number marks a 114 percent increase compared with the same period last year.
“Israel has done an excellent job of demonstrating to the international community the lack of regard it has for civilians, justice, and human rights,” according to Muqeet.
Brooklyn College has a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter. Organizers there say their aim is to raise awareness about the human rights violations being committed by Israel against the Palestinians and to build solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for justice, freedom, self-determination and the right of return.
The group’s president, Sarah A. Aly, says the chapter has received more requests during the current academic year from students who want to join the chapter when compared to last year.
“Our membership is very diverse and we work with non-Muslim groups on a regular basis on campus, such as the Latino and black clubs as well as DreamTeam and LGBT club,” she said.
The group finds connections between Israeli actions in Gaza and the shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.
“We do draw the parallels because the struggles that communities of colors face in the U.S. are connected to the Palestinian struggle in many ways. We fully support the people in Ferguson and all those fighting for justice and liberation. One of our members was in Ferguson to show support for them and the support for Palestine she received while she was there was very evident.”
Brown’s death set off mass protests, which have since continued at various levels around the country.
Muqeet says the Students for Justice in Palestine stands in solidarity with not just Mike Brown and Trayvon Martin, but all victims of racial violence.
Their fourth annual national conference’s opening keynote featured author Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou speaking on “From Ferguson to Palestine: Resisting State Violence and Racism.”
Israel has traditionally been a close ally of the U.S., and has been assisted since its founding with substantial amounts of American financial and military aid.
What young activists believe to be a “lack of objectivity” from the U.S. government toward Israel’s massacres is also adding to the rise in the number of students who support for the Palestinian cause.
“When students see this, they ask questions and they want to learn more, and effect positive change which will bring an end to the human rights violations and occupation of Palestine, and end U.S. military support for Israel’s occupation and human rights abuses,” Muqeet said.
“So, I anticipate a steady growth of students that support justice in Palestine.”
Israel Has Banned Renowned Doctor and Human Rights Activist Mads Gilbert from Entering Gaza for Life
By Ben Norton | Dissident Voice | November 14, 2014
Israel has banned Norwegian doctor and human rights activist Mads Gilbert from entering Gaza for life.
Gilbert, a professor at the University Hospital of North Norway, where he has worked since 1976, earned international renown for his philanthropic work in late 2008, during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, an attack that, according to Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, killed roughly 1,400 Gazans, including almost 800 civilians, 350 of whom were children.
The aid worker, along with fellow Norwegian doctor Erik Fosse, decided to volunteer in Gaza as soon as he heard that bombing had started, on 27 December 2008. Thanks to diplomatic and economic support (in the sum of $1 million dollar of emergency funding from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs), the two physicians managed to arrive in the strip by 30 December.
The Israeli government prevented all international press from entering Gaza during Cast Lead (a documentary, The War Around Us, was made about the only two foreign reporters in the strip at the time), in what Gilbert called Israel’s insidious “PR plan.” The doctor, as one of the only international aid workers in Gaza, thus devoted considerable time to speaking with local Palestinian news outlets, some of whom were reporting on behalf of foreign networks including BBC, CNN, ABC, and Al Jazeera.
BBC aired an interview with Gilbert, conducted in the hospital. The questions asked, and the answers garnered, were eerily similar to those he would give just five years later, during Operation Protective Edge. The interviewer began asking him to respond to Israel’s claims that it was not targeting civilians, that it was only attacking Hamas militants. Gilbert called the claim “an absolutely stupid statement” and explained that, among the hundreds of patients he had seen at that point, only two had been fighters. The “large majority” were women, children, and men civilians. “These numbers are contradictory to everything Israel says,” he reported.
Gilbert drew attention to the fact that the overflowing hospital did not have enough supplies to treat all of its patients, and censured the international community for doing nothing to assist them. Israel would not let in foreign doctors, and yet Palestinians were “dying waiting for surgery.” “This is a complete disaster,” he remarked, calling it “the worst man-made disaster” he could think of. “There are injuries you just don’t want to see in this world.”
Operation Protective Edge
In 2008 and 2009, Gilbert treated Palestinians who had been grievously wounded by Israel’s use of experimental and illegal chemical weapons, including white phosphorous, dense inert metal explosives (DIME) munitions, and flechette shells. In July 2014, in the midst of Israel’s most recent attack on Gaza, Gilbert spoke with Electronic Intifada, revealing that he saw indications of renewed use of DIME weapons and flechettes.
While volunteering in Shifa hospital, Gaza’s principal medical facility, Gilbert penned an open letter, lamenting the unspeakable horrors the Israeli military was instigating.
[Israel’s] “ground invasion” of Gaza resulted in scores and carloads with maimed, torn apart, bleeding, shivering, dying… All sorts of injured Palestinians, all ages, all civilians, all innocent.
The heroes in the ambulances and in all of Gaza’s hospitals are working 12 to 24‑hour shifts, grey from fatigue and inhuman workloads (without payment in Shifa for the last four months). They care, triage, try to understand the incomprehensible chaos of bodies, sizes, limbs, walking, not walking, breathing, not breathing, bleeding, not bleeding humans. Humans!
…
Ashy grey faces – Oh no! not one more load of tens of maimed and bleeding. We still have lakes of blood on the floor in the emergency room, piles of dripping, blood-soaked bandages to clear out – oh – the cleaners, everywhere, swiftly shovelling the blood and discarded tissues, hair, clothes, cannulas – the leftovers from death – all taken away… to be prepared again, to be repeated all over.More than 100 cases came to Shifa in the last 24 hours. Enough for a large well-trained hospital with everything, but here – almost nothing: electricity, water, disposables, drugs, operating-room tables, instruments, monitors – all rusted and as if taken from museums of yesterday’s hospitals. But they do not complain, these heroes.
Now, once more treated like animals by “the most moral army in the world.”
The doctor directed one heart-wrenching passage to President Obama, writing “Mr Obama – do you have a heart? I invite you – spend one night – just one night – with us in Shifa. I am convinced, 100 per cent, it would change history. Nobody with a heart and power could ever walk away from a night in Shifa without being determined to end the slaughter of the Palestinian people.”
Israel later attacked Shifa hospital. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) “strongly condemn[ed]” the incursion, saying it “demonstrate[d] how civilians in Gaza have nowhere safe to go.” MSF director Marie-Noëlle Rodrigue stated, in an official statement, “When the Israeli army orders civilians to evacuate their houses and their neighborhoods, where is there for them to go? Gazans have no freedom of movement and cannot take refuge outside Gaza. They are effectively trapped.” Shifa was one of the over 10 medical facilities Israel bombed in its 50-day offensive.
Human Rights Work
In 2000, Gilbert made headlines for saving the life of a skier who had been trapped in sub-zero water. She had been pronounced clinically dead, with a body temperature of 57 °F, but Gilbert managed to revive her. For his service, Gilbert was awarded the Northern Norwegian of the Year award.
Before Operation Protective Edge commenced in early July 2014, Gilbert toured medical and health facilities and individual homes in Gaza, researching for a United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) report on the dire state of the strip’s health sector. He wrote of “overstretched” health facilities, widespread physical and psychological trauma, “a deep financial crisis,” a lack of needed medical supplies, and a “severe energy crisis.” He also noted the “devastating results of the blockade imposed by the Government of Israel,” with rampant poverty, a 38.5% unemployment rate, food insecurity in at least 57% of households, and inadequate access to clean water. All of these already extreme ills were only exacerbated by the July-August Israeli assault on Gaza, an onslaught that left roughly 2,200 Palestinians dead, including over 1,500 civilians, more than 500 of whom were children.
Gilbert is not the only one Israel has recently prevented from entering Gaza. In August, just after the end of its military assault, Israel refused to allow Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, the world’s leading human rights organizations, from entering the strip, impeding them from conducting war crimes investigations. The organizations had been requesting access for over a month, before Israel had even begun its ground invasion of Gaza, yet were continuously prevented from doing so, Israeli journalist Amira Hass reported in Haaretz, “using various bureaucratic excuses.”
Israel has banned Human Right Watch investigators from entering Gaza since 2006; Amnesty International has been refused access since 2012. Dr. Mads Gilbert is the latest esteemed persona non grata to be added to this growing list.
Solidarity, Not Pity
Other aid workers and medical professionals have faced even worse consequences for volunteering to help Palestinians. In August, Israeli occupation forces killed a social worker. In the same month, as the Israeli military engaged in a campaign to target and openly murder Palestinian civilians who spoke Hebrew, Israeli forces assassinated volunteers working with the Palestine Red Crescent, a non-profit humanitarian organization, part of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.
A common myth suggests that Israel ended its occupation of Gaza with its 2005 disengagement. The state’s ability to ban, and even kill, internationally recognized human rights organizations and doctors—not to mention food, construction equipment, and medical supplies—from entering Palestinian territory, however, demonstrates that Gaza is by no means autonomous. Israel’s siege of the strip is clearly a continuation of its 47-year-long illegal military occupation.
As legal scholar Noura Erakat explains
Despite removing 8,000 settlers and the military infrastructure that protected their illegal presence, Israel maintained effective control of the Gaza Strip and thus remains the occupying power as defined by Article 47 of the Hague Regulations. To date, Israel maintains control of the territory’s air space, territorial waters, electromagnetic sphere, population registry and the movement of all goods and people.
…
Palestinians have yet to experience a day of self-governance. Israel immediately imposed a siege upon the Gaza Strip when Hamas won parliamentary elections in January 2006 and tightened it severely when Hamas routed Fatah in June 2007. The siege has created a “humanitarian catastrophe” in the Gaza Strip. Inhabitants will not be able to access clean water, electricity or tend to even the most urgent medical needs. The World Health Organization explains that the Gaza Strip will be unlivable by 2020. Not only did Israel not end its occupation, it has created a situation in which Palestinians cannot survive in the long-term.
In his July interview with Electronic Intifada, Gilbert made it clear that his work as a medical professional cannot be done—the Palestinian people cannot live healthy, yet alone free, lives—while Israel continues its illegal siege and occupation. “As a doctor, my prescription is very clear. Number one, stop the bombing, and that means stop Israel from bombing civilians and indiscriminately hitting families. Number two, lift the siege. And number three, find a political solution,” he stated.
In a late October discussion with the Daily Targum, Gilbert encouraged Americans to do what they can to speak out against Israel’s illegal occupation and blockade of the Palestinian territories, and to pressure their government to stop its indefatigable support for Israeli crimes.
At present, the US provides Israel with over 3.1$ billion of military aid per year. In the past 52 years, over $100 billion US tax dollars have been given to the country in military aid alone.
“You are the change-makers,” Gilbert told American readers. “The key to the change when it comes to the occupation of Palestine lies in the United States.” “Solidarity, not pity,” he said, is the solution.
Ben Norton is an activist, artist, and freelance writer. He can be found on Twitter at @HeartsMindsEars.
Israel won’t cooperate with UN as it continues to violate Gaza ceasefire
Al-Akhbar | November 13, 2014
The Israeli authorities decided not to cooperate with a United Nations Human Rights Council investigation into this year’s Israeli aggression on Gaza, an Israeli spokesman said Wednesday.
“Since the Schabas commission is not an inquiry but a commission that gives its conclusions in advance, Israel will not cooperate with the UN Commission on Human Rights over the last conflict with Hamas,” Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said in a statement.
The UN panel, due to make its first report by March, is meant to look into the conduct of both the Israeli Occupation Forces and the Hamas resistance movement during the 50-day assault.
But the Israeli government has already dismissed the investigation as a “kangaroo court,” accusing its chairman, Canadian academic William Schabas, of anti-Israeli bias.
In August, Canadian lawyer William Schabas was named as the head of the UN commission, angering Israel, where he is widely regarded as hostile to Israel over reported calls to bring Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before the International Criminal Court.
“In view of the fact that the Schabas committee is not a fact-finding panel but an investigation whose results are predetermined … Israel will not cooperate with the committee,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.
It added that the decision was also taken due to what it called the Geneva-based council’s “obsessive hostility to Israel.”
On October 30, the UN Human Rights Committee, chaired by British expert Sir Nigel Rodley, said Israel’s latest land and aerial attacks on the Gaza Strip in July-August caused a “disproportionate number of casualties among civilians, including children.”
For 51 days this summer, Israel pounded the Gaza Strip by air, land and sea.
More than 2,180 Palestinians, at least 70 percent of whom were civilians, were killed and 11,000 injured during seven weeks of unrelenting Israeli attacks in July and August.
According to UN figures, at least 505 Palestinian children were killed during the offensive.
UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said 138 of its students were killed during the assault, and the organization’s spokesperson Christopher Gunness said an additional 814 UNRWA students were injured and 560 have become orphans due to the Israeli onslaught.
The offensive ended on August 26 with an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire deal.
Gaza’s attack this summer was the third major conflagration in just seven years.
“(Israel) should ensure that all human rights violations committed during its military operations in the Gaza Strip in 2008-2009, 2012 and 2014 are thoroughly, effectively, independently and impartially investigated, that perpetrators, including, in particular, persons in positions of command are prosecuted and sanctioned,” the committee of 18 experts said.
Moreover, Amnesty International said in a report last week that the Israeli military displayed “shocking disregard” for civilian lives in Gaza and documented eight instances in which Israeli forces attacked homes in Gaza “without warning,” killing “at least 104 civilians including 62 children.”
“The report reveals a pattern of frequent Israeli attacks using large aerial bombs to level civilian homes, sometimes killing entire families,” Amnesty added.
Leftover Israeli shells
On Wednesday, a Palestinian man in Gaza was injured after an Israeli ordnance exploded in Khan Younis, medics said.
The man, identified only as M.A. and said to be in his 20s, was moderately injured.
Witnesses said he was removing rubble from a building destroyed during Israel’s summer assault when the explosion occurred.
The Gaza Strip is still littered with a large number of unexploded Israeli shells, one of which recently killed 4-year-old Mohammed Sami Abu-Jrad from the northern Gaza city of Beit Hanoun.
Although Gaza police explosives teams have been working across the territory to destroy unexploded ordnance and prevent safety threats to locals, lack of proper equipment due to the seven-year Israeli siege as well as a general lack of resources have hindered efforts.
Even before the most recent Israeli assault, unexploded ordnance from the 2008-9 and 2012 offensives were a major threat to Gazans.
A 2012 report published by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said that 111 civilians, 64 of them children, were casualties to unexploded ordnance between 2009 and 2012, reaching an average of four every month in 2012.
Watch groups have warned that the ordinance can be a particular threat to children, who often think the bombs are toys.
Gaza fishermen continue to suffer
Meanwhile, Israeli naval boats fired at and sank a Palestinian fishing boat in the sea off the coast of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Wednesday evening.
Witnesses said that the Israeli navy fired shells at a boat belonging to the al-Bardaweel family and completely destroyed it.
Fishermen on board jumped into the water before the shell exploded.
On Monday, the Israeli navy shot and injured three Palestinian fishermen off the coast of the southern Gaza Strip.
Witnesses said Israeli forces shot at the boat until it caught fire, and that fishermen in a nearby boat managed to pull the injured aboard and escape under heavy fire.
The injured fishermen were taken to the Abu Yousef al-Najjar hospital in Rafah.
The Egypt-brokered ceasefire agreement stipulated that Israel would immediately expand the fishing zone off Gaza’s coast, allowing fishermen to sail as far as six nautical miles from shore, and would continue to expand the area gradually.
However, since the ceasefire was signed, Israeli forces have fired at several fishermen who they claim have ventured beyond the newly-imposed limit of six nautical miles.
There have also been widespread reports of the Israeli navy opening fire at fishermen within those limits.
In October, the head of the Gaza fishermen syndicate accused Israel of constantly violating the terms of the agreement.
“Since signing the truce, the Israeli army has violated (the agreement) many times, arresting fishermen and destroying a giant fishing boat, in addition to firing at fishermen on a daily basis,” he said.
There are an estimated 4,000 fishermen in Gaza. According to a 2011 report by the International Committee of the Red Cross, 90 percent are poor, a 40 percent increase from 2008. This change is believed to be a direct result of Israeli limits on the fishing industry.
The eight-year Israeli blockade has severely crippled Gaza’s economy and contributed to the frequent humanitarian crises and hardship for Gaza residents.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces detained two Palestinians who allegedly crossed the Gaza Strip border into Israeli-occupied territories, a military official claimed Wednesday.
The two unarmed Palestinians were taken for questioning, an Israeli army spokeswoman said.
Goods and reconstruction material to enter Gaza
On Thursday, the Israeli authorities opened the Kerem Shalom crossing in the southeastern Gaza Strip to allow aid and goods into the enclave.
Raed Fattouh, a Palestinian official responsible for the entry of goods into Gaza, said that the Israeli authorities will allow 350 truckloads of goods for the trade, agricultural, transportation and aid sectors.
Fattouh added that Israel will also allow five trucks of cement for international construction projects.
Meanwhile, Ann-Sofie Nilsson, from the Swedish Consul General, on Wednesday signed an agreement with Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah to fund a project led by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to step up financial support for the reconstruction of the war-torn Gaza Strip.
“The situation in Gaza is alarming after the devastating war this summer, especially with winter approaching. There is a need for rapid support to the Government of National Consensus in its efforts to kick-start the reconstruction. We are pleased to contribute to alleviate somewhat the difficult situation,” Nilsson said.
Sweden, the first Western European Union country to recognize Palestine as a state, also announced last week a five-year strategy for developing cooperation with Palestine which entails a 50 percent increase in development support.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon said last month during a visit to the Gaza Strip that the devastation he had seen was “beyond description.”
According to UN estimates based on preliminary information, as many as 80,000 Palestinians homes were damaged or destroyed during the days of hostilities, and over 106,000 of Gaza’s 1.8 million residents have been displaced to UN shelters and host families.
Israel routinely bars the entry of building materials into the embattled coastal enclave on grounds that Palestinian resistance faction Hamas could use them to build underground tunnels or fortifications.
For years, the Gaza Strip has depended on construction materials smuggled into the territory through a network of tunnels linking it to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
However, a recent crackdown on the tunnels by the Egyptian army has effectively neutralized hundreds of tunnels, severely affecting Gaza’s construction sector.
(Al-Akhbar, Ma’an)
Critics Slam US Military’s ‘Disturbing’ Praise for Israel’s Gaza Offensive
Palestinians collect their belongings from under the rubble of a residential tower, which was destroyed by an Israeli air strike in Gaza City on August 24, 2014. (Photo: UN Photo-Shareef Sarhan/flickr/cc)
Common Dreams | November 7, 2014
Critics say it is “shameful” that a high-ranking U.S. military official suggested the Pentagon can learn lessons from Israel’s 50-day attack on Gaza this summer.
According the Jerusalem Post, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey made statements Thursday praising the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) for taking “extraordinary lengths to limit collateral damage and civilian casualties” during Operation Protective Edge.
Dempsey told an audience at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs: “We sent a team of senior officers and non-commissioned officers over to work with the IDF to get the lessons from that particular operation in Gaza.” He referred to the group of officers as the “lessons learned team.”
But Ramah Kudaimi of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation said Israel’s tactics should not be replicated.
“It is very disturbing and shameful that U.S. military commanders believe that what Israel did in Gaza is something to be applauded,” Kudaimi told Common Dreams. “Five hundred dead children does not seem to be evidence that Israel was trying to not kill civilians. The seven-year siege on Gaza is not a policy to avoid civilian suffering.”
Israel’s recent seven-week military assault on Gaza killed at least 2,194 Palestinians, at least 75 percent of them civilians and over 500 of them children.
“At least 80 percent of the 100,000 Palestinian homes damaged or destroyed were refugee homes,” the United Nations Relief and Works Agency reports.
The offensive damaged or destroyed over half of Gaza’s hospitals and health centers at a time when more than 11,000 were wounded, a UNRWA and World Health Organization joint investigation found.
Israel struck six UN schools sheltering Palestinians, including in cases where exact coordinates of the shelters were formally submitted by UNRWA to the Isreali military. These strikes alone killed at least 47 people and wounded hundreds.
Furthermore, Israel has been accused of potential war crimes by Amnesty International and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay.
“It is very despicable that the U.S. continues to white-wash Israeli crimes while funding them through military aid,” said Kudaimi. “Dempsey’s statements are not shocking. Anyone who follows U.S. military policy, knows they too have problematic definitions of protecting civilians.”
Gaza residents lose faith in international aid
MEMO | November 6, 2014
It has been more than three months since the end of the war on Gaza however Fadl Misbah, 41, is still living as others are, in a house which is covered in plastic sheets and which is not suitable for winter.
Fadl, whose family is made up of 13 members, said: “We are always subjected to extreme cold, and this is the case for most people whose homes were destroyed in the war. My children sit in this place and raindrops fall from the roof of the house which is made up of nylon sheets which do not protect us from the elements or the cold.”
“We have heard a lot about the donor conference to reconstruct Gaza, however they are working so slowly and we no longer believe what the international institutions are saying or what they are promising.”
“The occupation is the main problem; it allowed 440 tonnes of cement to enter Gaza 20 days ago during [UN Secretary-General] Ban Ki-moon’s visit to show a positive side to itself in front of the world, but after that it didn’t allow any more items into Gaza. Solving our problem will need contracts to be signed, and that’s if it is resolved at all,” Fadl said.
“International institutions have appealed to intervene and find a solution to this disaster, which hundreds of families whose homes were destroyed during the war on Gaza are now living through.
The West must be mobilise itself and not be satisfied by its silence. Those who call for human rights and advocate for it on behalf of those who are oppressed have exposed this world. It has no credibility.”
ICC: Israel Committed ‘War Crimes’ but It’s Not Our Problem
teleSUR | November 6, 2014
International Criminal Court (ICC) lawyers believe that Israel is guilty of “war crimes” for the raid on an aid ship bound for Gaza in 2010 that killed nine Turkish activists. However, they have also decided that the case does not meet their criteria for prosecution, according to court papers seen by Reuters on Wednesday.
On May 31, 2010, the Israeli military forcefully boarded six civilian ships from the “Gaza Freedom Flotilla” that were traveling from Turkey to deliver humanitarian aid and construction materials to the besieged region. The army boarded the ships in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea.
The activists on board say they did not put up a fight, however the Israeli army insists that they were met with resistance – which led to several activists being killed, including eight Turkish nationals and an American of Turkish origin on the Mavi Marmara boat.
The ICC does not have jurisdiction over crimes committed in either Turkey, where most the boats were registered, or Israel, since neither are members of the ICC. However, the Mavi Marmara was registered to the Comoros Islands, which is a member, making the crimes on board eligible for ICC investigation.
“The information available provides a reasonable basis to believe that war crimes under the Court’s jurisdiction have been committed in the context of interception and takeover of the Mavi Marmara by IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) soldiers on 31 May 2010,” read the papers.
But the papers also added that prosecutors had decided the crimes “were not of sufficient gravity to fall under the court’s jurisdiction,” reported Reuters. Their evidence and criteria for making this decision however, remained vague.
“Not having collected evidence itself, the Office’s analysis in this report must therefore not be considered to be the result of an investigation,” the paper read.
However, according to the ICC website, considering individuals guilty of war crimes does make them eligible to be tried under the ICC.
“The mandate of the Court is to try individuals rather than States, and to hold such persons accountable for the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole, namely the crime of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression…”
The Indian Ocean State, another ICC member, referred the raid to court, which obligated the ICC to begin preliminary examinations into the matter, according to their mandate.
“The Prosecutor’s decision marks the first time a State referral by an ICC States Party has ever been rejected by … Prosecutor without even initiating an investigation,” said lawyers Rodney Dixon and Geoffrey Nice in a statement.
“It confirms the view expressed by politicians, civil society organizations, NGOs and commentators from many quarters that Israel has a ‘special status,'” they added.
The report comes the same day that Bulent Yildirim, president of the Turkish NGO Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) – one of the NGOs who organized the flotilla – praised the ICC, expecting that they would announce on Thursday that Israel is guilty of “war crimes.”
The ICC’s final decision is likely to anger other Turkish activists, but also Ankara who accused Israel of mass murder after the IDF attacked the flotilla.
Israel guilty of war crimes over Turkish aid ship attack, ICC says
Al-Akhbar | November 5, 2014
Prosecutors of the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague have told a Turkish organization that Israel is guilty of “war crimes” for attacking a Turkish aid ship for Gaza in 2010.
In May of that year, Israeli commandos killed nine peaceful activists, eight Turkish nationals and an American of Turkish origin, in international waters by using lethal force on the Mavi Marmara, a ship participating in a “Gaza Freedom Flotilla” carrying humanitarian aid and construction materials for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, which was under a seven-year Israeli blockade at the time.
The Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), a Turkish NGO, in a statement Tuesday said the prosecution team had finished its investigation in the Mavi Marmara case and concluded that Israel committed “war crimes.”
The aid ship Mavi Marmara belonged to the foundation, whose law committee had filed a petition at the court for a fair and speedy trial in the case. The court took up the petition in March 2014.
The 2010 incident caused international outrage and soured Turkish-Israeli ties.
In March 2014, Turkey received an apology from the Israeli government.
The two states are now looking to normalize their relations with a deal said to be involving compensation for the victims’ families.
The Palestinians have threatened to join the ICC to allow legal action to be taken against Israel.
Based in The Hague, the ICC opened its doors in 2003 and is the world’s first independent court set up to try the worst crimes, including genocide and war crimes.
In 2012, the Palestinians won the status of observer state in the United Nations, which gives them the ability to become a party to the ICC, where they could sue Israeli officials over alleged war crimes.
As neither Israel nor Palestine are ICC members, the court lacks jurisdiction over Gaza. This could be granted by a UN Security Council resolution, but Israel’s main ally, the United States, would probably veto any such proposal.
The overwhelming General Assembly vote recognizing the “non-member state” of Palestine was strongly opposed by the United States and Israel.
Membership of the ICC opens countries to investigations both on their behalf and against them. Several major powers, including the United States, as well as Israel, have declined to ratify the court’s founding treaty, the Rome Statute.
The Palestinians in 2009 and 2014 pushed the ICC’s prosecutor’s office to investigate alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Israeli military in Gaza.
(Anadolu, Al-Akhbar)
Israeli Matrix of Control: Use of Palestinian Civilians as Human Shields
Euromid Observer – October 30, 2014
This report presents documented cases of Palestinian civilians used as human shields by Israeli military forces during the 51-day conflict in the Gaza Strip, 8 July-26 August, 2014. It also discusses Israeli claims that Palestinian armed factions used their own civilians as human shields.
After interviewing Palestinians who reported being used as shields by Israeli forces, and documenting the testimonies of additional eyewitnesses, Euro-Mid Observer concluded that the Israeli army committed this violation of international law in at least six cases in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip. These civilians were held against their will for hours or days to protect Israeli soldiers from fire, and in the meantime were subjected to inhumane and abusive treatment such as beating, humiliation and exposure to the hot sun while naked for long periods of time.
Israeli authorities deny using Palestinian civilians as human shields. However, the testimonies documented by Euro-Mid prove the lie. Moreover, it seems that using Palestinian civilians as human shields is an Israeli policy, since other, similar cases have been documented in the West Bank.
In contrast, the Euro-Mid team did not find any evidence of Palestinians who were forced to stay in their homes or to use their bodies for the protection for Palestinian resistance factions. Likewise, the Israeli army did not provide any evidence to substantiate their accusations. Moreover, the UN’s Goldstone Report issued following Operation Cast Lead in 2009 exonerated Palestinian armed factions from previous claims by Israeli forces that Palestinians used their own people as human shields.
The use of human shields is a form of cruel and inhumane treatment, and constitutes a flagrant violation of the international humanitarian law and a war crime according to the Rome Statue of the International Criminal Court.
Euro-Mid Observer for Human Rights calls on Israel’s military prosecutors to carry out a serious and reliable investigation of the cases discussed in this report, and to hold the individuals found guilty to account. Euro-Mid also calls on the Fact Finding Committee on the Gaza Conflict recently established by the UN Human Rights Council to make every effort to focus international attention and pressure on all parties found to be guilty of this crime.
Download the Report: Here
Over 1.7 million Gazans isolated from the world after Israel, Egypt close crossings
Al-Akhbar | November 2, 2014
Gaza has become an open-air prison after Israel decided to close two border crossings with Gaza, the army said on Sunday, after a rocket allegedly fired from the Palestinian enclave struck its territory.
The Israeli blockade comes a week after Egypt closed its border with Gaza. With all borders closed, more than one and a half million people in Gaza are now isolated from the outside world. They are prisoners inside the 360 square kilometers that make up the coastal Strip.
“The crossing points for people and goods, Erez and Kerem Shalom, have been closed until further notice except for humanitarian aid,” an army spokeswoman said.
She said that the measure was taken after a rocket fired from Gaza hit Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory on Friday, without causing any casualties or damage.
There was no claim of responsibility from any armed faction in Gaza. A military spokeswoman said forces were still searching for debris.
The projectile struck harmlessly was the first to strike Israeli-occupied territory since September 16, and the second since the end of the Zionist state’s devastating 51-day assault on Gaza.
For 51 days this summer, Israel pounded the Gaza Strip – by air, land and sea – with the stated aim of ending rocket fire from the coastal enclave.
More than 2,160 Gazans, at least 505 of them children, were killed – and 11,000 injured – during seven weeks of unrelenting Israeli attacks in July and August.
The Israeli offensive ended on August 26 with the an Egypt-brokered cease-fire agreement.
However, Israel has violated the terms of the agreement repeatedly ever since.
The agreement calls for reopening Gaza’s border crossings with Israel after an eight-year blockade. Instead, Israel has further sealed the crossings.
The truce also stipulated that Israel would immediately expand the fishing zone off Gaza’s coast, allowing fishermen to sail as far as six nautical miles from shore, and would continue to expand the area gradually.
However, since the ceasefire was signed, Israeli forces have fired at several fishermen who they say have ventured beyond the newly-imposed limit of six nautical miles.
The head of the Gaza fishermen syndicate accused Israel of constantly violating the terms of the agreement.
“Since signing the truce, the Israeli army has violated (the agreement) eight times, arresting fishermen and destroying a giant fishing boat, in addition to firing at fishermen on a daily basis,” he said.
Besides the fishermen, Israeli forces have also fired at other civilians. On Wednesday, Israeli forces shot and injured a Palestinian man on the beach in the northern Gaza Strip.
Furthermore, Gaza is also littered with a large number of unexploded Israeli shells, one of which has recently killed 4-year-old Mohammed Sami Abu-Jrad from the northern Gaza city of Beit Hanoun.
Israel also agreed to allow construction material into Gaza. But two months after the war ended, no building material has entered Gaza due to Israel’s ongoing blockade.
Israel routinely bars the entry of building materials into the embattled coastal enclave on grounds that Palestinian resistance faction Hamas could use them to build underground tunnels or fortifications.
For years, the Gaza Strip has depended on construction materials smuggled into the territory through a network of tunnels linking it to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
A recent crackdown on the tunnels by the Egyptian army, however, has effectively neutralized hundreds of tunnels, severely affecting Gaza’s construction sector.
Egypt leaves Gaza isolated
On Wednesday, Egypt began setting up a buffer zone along its border with the Gaza strip in a move which will see about 800 homes demolished.
It comes in the wake of a suicide car bombing which killed 30 Egyptian soldiers in Sinai last week, the deadliest attack on the military since ousting Egypt’s former president Mohammed Mursi.
Following the bombing, Egypt immediately closed the Rafah crossing into the Gaza Strip, the principal connection between Gaza’s 1.7 million people and the outside world.
In August, Egypt’s authorities have used an attack on the Egyptian military in Sinai as a pretext to start a campaign to destroy lifelines into Gaza. Over 120 tunnels were blown up or filled in.
More than just being the only way for some products to make it into the over 1.5 million Palestinians living in the strip, the Gaza tunnels have become a major source of income for the transporters of goods. Egypt has closed Gaza’s lifelines.
Since the beginning of 2014 until the end of May, Rafah crossing has been opened only 14 out of 120 days, limiting access to humanitarian cases and for other authorized travelers – including foreign nationals and visa holders.
(AFP, Reuters, Al-Akhbar)
UN Report: Israeli settlements have doubled in the last four years
MEMO | October 31, 2014
The number of Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land have doubled in the last 54 months, UN Commission on Human Rights member Cees Flinterman said today.
Flinterman presented the fourth stage of a report monitoring activity of Israel’s practices in Palestinian territory at a press conference held at the United Nations in Geneva.
He said: “We are concerned by the level of violence that settlers are using against Palestinian civilians and property owners in both the West Bank and East Jerusalem.”
The UN official asked Israel to halt settlement expansion on occupied Palestinian land adding: “We have yet to receive an official response from Israel in regards to the increased number of settlements in the West Bank.”
Flinterman also expressed his disappointment at the fact that the Israeli government refuses to recognise that torture is a crime. “The committee is greatly disappointed in Israel for not recognising that torture is a crime. The torture and mistreatment that Israel practices in detention centres is a serious problem and we call on Israel to address them within a year’s time.”
Nigel Rodley, president of the UN Commission on Human Rights, pointed out that the situation in the region has not changed despite the number of international efforts in the region; very few changes have been implemented. Rodley also pointed out that the UN Commission on Human Rights criticised the latest Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip and called on Tel Aviv to conduct the necessary investigations into human rights violations.
The UN committee’s report stressed the need to investigate Israeli violations in the 2008, 2009, 2012 and 2014 wars on the Gaza Strip.
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Trans agenda is ‘normalization of sadism’ – US author
RT | September 23, 2026
The US Democratic Party has embraced a transgender agenda that amounts to “the normalization of sadism,” author A.J. Rice has said, warning that radical trans policies would return if the party is allowed to regain power.
Speaking to RT’s America First host Scotty Nell Hughes about his new book, ‘The Curse of the Bearded Lady: How the Trans Mafia Whacked American Sanity’, Rice argued that activists have gained significant influence in schools, medicine, and corporate America while people who questioned the agenda have faced pressure to stay silent.
The author described the “trans mafia” as the sprawling network of people and institutions that have helped the movement gain influence. He singled out parts of academia, wealthy backers, and corporations, and stated that providers of transition-related treatment also have a financial incentive to keep young people in their care indefinitely.
Rice argued that the consequences of these policies ultimately fall on children who are being drawn toward gender-affirming medical treatments and on girls who are expected to share locker rooms or compete in sports with biological males.
He noted that while voters rejected the Democrats’ approach to gender in 2024, the party, which has been “captured by madness,” has since only doubled down and is seeking what is effectively “the normalization of sadism.” … Full report
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