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US, UK sacrifice international security for Israel’s interests: Tehran

Press TV – February 25, 2024

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman has strongly condemned fresh “arbitrary” airstrikes by the United States and Britain on Yemen, saying the raids proved once again that the pair sacrifice international security for Israel’s interests.

Nasser Kan’ani made the remarks on Sunday after American and UK forces carried out a series of aerial assaults against positions across Yemen, including the capital Sana’a.

“Such arbitrary and adventurous attacks contravene the internationally recognized rules and principles and violate Yemen’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” he said.

“The US and the UK once again proved that they fully support the Zionist regime’s war crimes and genocide in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and that they put the illegitimate security and interests of the occupying regime ahead of international peace and security.”

In a statement, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said that the strikes were conducted with the support of Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, and New Zealand in a bid to “degrade” Yemen’s capabilities to conduct naval pro-Palestine operations.

Kan’ani said that the US and Britain showed that they breach all moral and humanitarian principles, as well as international law and the UN Charter.

He added that the two countries are seeking to escalate tensions in the region, expand the scope of the Gaza war and divert public opinion from Israel’s war crimes, and buy an opportunity for the continuation of the ongoing genocide against Palestinians.

“Instead of taking effective and immediate action to eliminate the main cause of insecurity and instability, which is the Zionist regime’s warmongering and its daily killing of hundreds of Palestinians…, the US and the UK are waging military attacks on a country that is trying to somehow put pressure on this killer regime and stop its killing machine,” the top diplomat said.

In recent months, the US and its allies have launched illegal attacks on Yemen amid their frustration in the face of an anti-Israel maritime campaign by the Yemeni armed forces.

Israel waged a US-backed genocidal war on the besieged Gaza Strip on October 7 following a historic operation by the Palestinian Hamas resistance group against the occupying regime.

In support of Gaza, Yemeni armed forces have targeted ships going to and from ports in the occupied territories, or whose owners are linked to Israel, in the southern Red Sea, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the Gulf of Aden, and even in the Arabian Sea.

The US-led attacks on Yemen prompted the country’s military to declare American and British vessels to be legitimate targets.

February 25, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Schools in German capital ordered to distribute leaflets describing 1948 Nakba Day as ‘myth’

Palestinians flee the village of Qumiya during the Nakba in 1948
Press TV – February 24, 2024

Schools in the German capital Berlin have been ordered to distribute leaflets describing the Nakba Day as a “myth”, 76 years after Zionist paramilitaries forcibly removed two-thirds of the Palestinian population from their ancestral homes.

Germany’s leading Social Democratic Party (SPD) – German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s party – and the opposition Christian Democratic Party (CDU) have asked high schools in Berlin’s borough of Neukolln to distribute brochures titled “The Myth of Israel #1948”, the London-based Middle East Eye website said in a report on Friday.

The report cited a motion that was passed during a public meeting of the borough’s council on Wednesday stating that “the district office is asked to advocate the use of the brochure ‘Myths#Israel1948’ in Neukolln’s secondary schools to confront existing anti-Semitic narratives within the educational framework of the school.”

“The expanded definition of anti-Semitism of the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) and the German government should also be communicated,” the motion further read.

More than 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly removed from their ancestral homes in Palestine and 500 villages and towns were destroyed by Zionist militias before the Israeli regime declared its illegal establishment. Palestinians are still enduring the repercussions of this catastrophe to this day. The systematic ethnic cleansing occurred between 1947 and 1949.

The incident is known among Palestinians as the Day of Nakba, or the Day of Catastrophe, and it is commemorated every year on May 15.

The leaflet distributed among high school students in Berlin’s Neukolln borough flatly rejected, among others, this catastrophe as a “myth” despite the fact that ample credible evidence in favor of the occurrence of the incident are impossible to ignore.

Based on such overwhelming evidence, the United Nations, for the first time in its history, commemorated the 75th anniversary of Nakba Day back on May 15 last year.

The UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP), at the time, organized a high-level special meeting.

It was presided over by the chairman of the committee, Ambassador Cheikh Niang of Senegal, and included a keynote address by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Senior UN officials and representatives of regional groups and civil societies also made statements to commemorate Nakba.

The leaflet stresses that criticism of illegal Israeli settlements is anti-Semitic.

According to the report, while Germany stands out with its unwavering political and military support for Israel, the German left is split over its stance on Palestine.

February 24, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , | Leave a comment

UNRWA: ‘Over 400 Palestinians killed seeking refuge in our Gaza facilities’

MEMO | February 24, 2024

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 | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Occupation army has killed 3,847 Palestinians since ICJ ruling

MEMO | February 24, 2024

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 | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

The EU Is Hotel California

An Unelected Body Of Ruling Class Elites, Indistinguishable From Feudal Leaders Of Europe’s Bloodstained Past

By Manorborn | The Truth Barrier | February 20, 2024

Two weeks ago, leaks emerged in The Financial Times revealing how the EU is setting out to destroy Hungary economically for its refusal to fund the war against Russia.

The irony is stunning. Viktor Orban, the president of Hungary, who was once arrested in his youth for protesting the brutality of the USSR toward his little nation, is now objecting to the EU’s strongarmed sabotage of the sovereignty of member states like his and by the EU’s unjustified, unreasonable treatment of the Russian Federation as an enemy instead of a beneficial economic partner.

Orban was forced to back down a few days later. But by backing down, he weakened Hungary vis a vis Ursula van der Leyen and her minions. Orban should have presented the EU’s unacceptable, coercive plan of economic warfare against the Hungarian people and their livelihoods before the UN.

Hungary has many allies around the world – it’s time to go to them for support now that he’s discovered what Greece discovered a decade or so ago – that the EU is Hotel California.

It was that “lovely face” of Western Europe that drew the love starved Easterners once free from the Soviets. Nimium non crede lepidi faciei. (Trust not too much to an enchanting face).  – Virgil

Before the inception of the EU, Europe was a region of free, sovereign, more or less democratic nation-states with bright economic futures. After federalization under the EU and concurrent with the neocon capture of the US government, EU member states absent Germany, France, Italy and the Twisted Sisters of Benelux gradually found themselves inured in a 21st Century version of the Warsaw Pact with a grim future of belt tightening, war and downward mobility.

Now we are witnessing just how individual European nations are no longer free in all instances to make decisions that best serve their distinctive populations. Instead they’re tightly bound to EU governance – a commissariat administered by an unelected body of ruling class elites who’re indistinguishable in character and ambitions from the feudal leaders of Europe’s bloodstained past.

But whereas the Warsaw Pact was formed to protect the interests of the USSR, the EU exists to serve the interests of the US hegemon and the competing globalist vision of the WEF who groom and vet future EU leaders.

Fortunately, Orban, along with Fico in Slovakia, Vučić in Serbia and Matteo Salvini in Italy is one of the few European leaders who is not afraid to call out the authoritarian nature and mounting abuses of the EU. Surely he’s noted the EU’s subservience to US plans for escalating wars to target Iran and eventually directly target Russia for its refusal to lie down and allow the West to select its leaders and open up its resources to the kind of pillaging by the West that transpired under Boris Yeltsin.

Orban knows that what the EU is doing to Russia, it could and would do to Hungary. EU membership will not shield it. Western NGOs have been working round the clock to create regime change in Slovakia, Serbia and Hungary. In 2020 the EU ruled that national laws like the law in Hungary requiring NGOs to register as foreign agents are unlawful. That can only signify one thing: Room keys will always be held by the front desk at Hotel California.

February 24, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

“SELF-SPREADING” VACCINES TAKE A DANGEROUS STEP FORWARD

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | February 22, 2024

A genetically engineered, self-spreading vaccine may be poised to alter humanity’s biological make-up forever, and you won’t be able to opt out. Could we be facing a mass extinction event?

February 24, 2024 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

Biden Admin Wants To Spend Around $1 Million on University “Disinformation” Monitoring Program

Despite legal scrutiny, the Biden administration continues its interest in speech monitoring.

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | February 23, 2024

The White House’s latest initiative to carry out its brand of combating misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation (which is now referred to by the handy “MDM” initial) continues to co-opt the education sector.

The Department of Justice agency the National Institute for Justice (NIJ) is behind the funding effort that is said to be designed to study and research “effective technologies and tools for identification, moderation, and/or removal of extremist content.”

A grant worth $1 million will be spent to come up with a dashboard featuring an MDM tracker, which is supposed to surveil the internet for both speech, and narratives, and do so in real time. The project’s official name is, “Networks and Pathways of Violent Extremism: Effectiveness of Mis/Disinformation Campaigns.”

And reports say that the targeted speech coincides with “contentious political events.” Critics say that the taxpayer dollars here are in reality going towards suppression of conservative and religious groups, rather than as declared, violent extremists.

The recipient of the grant is South Carolina-based Clemson University. Researchers there are expected to come up with computer models that will keep an eye on accounts singled out as MDM peddlers and identify people associated with allegedly spreading MDM.

Eventually, the effort should produce the real-time tracking dashboard.

Regular citizens may not benefit from this project – considering the “fluid” nature of the very definitions of misinformation and its companions (some reports mention the initial, and subsequent treatment of the Covid origin and Hunter Biden laptop stories as examples of this.)

But the grant does specify who will benefit: law enforcement and policymakers.

This is by no means the only initiative of the kind coming from the Biden administration – since the current US president came to power, $39 million went to “MDM research” from the National Science Foundation (NSF) alone, also in some cases involving prominent educational institutions, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

And while Clemson researchers are reassuring that their efforts are not politically or ideologically biased, the Internet Accountability Project and the Foundation for Freedom Online are voicing their fears that the end result will be yet another tool facilitating censorship, specifically by suppressing conservative voices.

February 23, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Arms transfer to Israel must stop immediately: UN experts

Press TV – February 23, 2024

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 | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

PCHR condemns the killing of its lawyer, and her family by an Israeli airstrike on Rafah

PCHR | February 21, 2024

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 | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel’s skin bank raises ethical concerns on organ consent

Jordan News – November 17, 2023

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 | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Despite coordination with Red Cross, Israel targets municipality vehicles

Palestinian Information Center – February 22, 2024

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 | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

China backs Palestinians’ right to ‘armed struggle’ against Israeli occupation

The Cradle | February 22, 2024

China expressed support for the right of Palestinians to engage in “armed struggle” against Israel, stressing this is not “terrorism” during the fourth day of hearings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in a case against Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories.

“In pursuit of the right to self-determination [the Palestinian people have the right to the] use of force to resist foreign oppression and to complete the establishment of the Palestinian state,” Ma Xinmin, a Chinese Foreign Ministry legal adviser, told the World Court on 22 February.

Citing examples of “various people [who] freed themselves from colonial rule” through armed resistance, Xinmin argued that acts of resistance against the Israeli occupation are “not terrorism” but a legitimate armed struggle and an “inalienable right.”

“Numerous other resolutions recognize the legitimacy of struggle by all available means, including armed struggle by people under colonial domination or foreign occupation to realize the right of self-determination,” the Chinese official said.

“Chinese President Xi Jinping has stressed on multiple occasions that China calls for a comprehensive ceasefire and the early solution to the question of Palestine on the basis of a two-state solution through negotiation,” he added.

Xinmin took to the podium ahead of Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs, Reza Najafi, who highlighted Israel’s historic violations of Palestinians’ right to self-determination.

“The establishment of the Israeli regime was done through a violent process which involved the forcible displacement of native Palestinian people to create a majority Jewish colony in line with the Zionist movement,” Najafi said.

He also listed a series of ongoing violations by Tel Aviv, which include the prolonged occupation and manipulation of the demographic composition in the occupied Palestinian territories, the alteration of the character and status of Jerusalem, and the discriminatory measures and violations of the rights of Palestinian people to permanent sovereignty over their natural resources.

“The expansion of settlements, segregated roads and barriers as well as checkpoints has created a system of apartheid which is isolating Palestinian communities,” Najafi added before addressing the UN Security Council (UNSC) for their “inaction or insufficient action,” saying this was one of the “main causes of prolonged occupation of the Palestinians” and highlighting that the top UN body is “paralyzed due to the stalemate” caused by a “certain permanent member.”

“All the atrocities and crimes committed by the Israeli regime in the past almost eight years are a consequence of such inaction,” the Iranian official concluded.

The Iraqi representative to the ICJ, Hayder Shiya al-Barrak, took to the podium next and called on the ICJ to respect previous court orders against Israel, such as the provisions made after South Africa’s case to “stop the systematic killing machine against the Palestinian people.”

“We hope that the court’s commitment to justice will lead to additional decisions … affirming its dedication to ending the campaign of mass murder and preventing acts of genocide as well as policies of harassment, blockade, and starvation against the Palestinian people,” he said.

Barrak concluded his intervention by calling on the World Court to take decisions “that safeguard the lives of the Palestinian man, women, children, and elders, allowing them to enjoy a dignified and secure life where all human rights are achieved.”

February 22, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , , | Leave a comment