Washington police clear pro-Palestine encampment, arrest dozens
Press TV – May 8, 2024
US police have arrested dozens of students after clearing an encampment of pro-Palestinian protesters at George Washington University in Washington, DC.
Just before dawn, hundreds of officers entered the campus and used pepper spray to disperse the protesters and clear the encampment, according to GW Hatchet, the university’s independent student-run newspaper.
“Officers gave their third and final warning to demonstrators to move at about 3:30 a.m., saying all who remained in U-Yard and the stretch of H Street in front of the plaza would be arrested,” GW Hatchet wrote.
Between 30 and 40 protesters were arrested, according to CNN.
Citing familiar sources, the newspaper said police charged several protesters with unlawful entry.
Protesters were carrying signs that read, “Free Palestine” and “Hands off Rafah.”
Since mid-April, students have been demonstrating against Israel’s war on Gaza at about 140 colleges in the United States.
The demonstrators are demanding their universities cut direct or indirect financial ties with US weapons manufacturers and Israeli institutions.
Many also want their universities to end academic relationships with the regime’s institutions.
Similar demonstrations have also spread to campuses in Britain, France, Australia, Canada and elsewhere.
In New York, hundreds of protesters have been marching through the city on Wednesday against Israel’s invasion of Rafah, and US support for the regime’s military.
An estimated 1.4 million people, displaced from elsewhere in Gaza by Israel’s seven-months war, are now sheltering in the southern city of Rafah.
Israel on Tuesday seized control of Gaza’s vital Rafah border crossing, prompting fears of a planned ground offensive on the last refuge of the Palestinians.
Israeli authorities raze dozens of Palestinian homes in Negev
Palestinian Information Center – May 8, 2024
NEGEV – The Israeli authorities demolished on Wednesday morning 47 Palestinian houses in the Wadi al-Khalil area near Umm Batin village, north of the Negev desert.
According to local sources, the houses belonged to the Abu Asa family in the Negev desert, whose members clashed with Israeli police officers who protected the bulldozers.
Police officers reportedly assaulted members of the Abu Asa family as they tried to prevent the demolition of their homes.
This was the largest Israeli demolition campaign in one day in several years in the Negev region, according to the Higher Steering Committee of the Negev Arabs.
The Committee said that these demolitions were carried out at the behest of far-right ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Amichai Chikli, accusing them of seeking to ignite the Negev region in order to deepen racial discrimination.
“The Israeli authorities are trying to force the Abu Asa family to move to another place under threat and intimidation in order to expand Road 60 southwards, but they refuse and insist on living in an agreed-upon neighborhood in Tel as-Sabi town,” the Committee added.
Israel to hand over Rafah crossing to private US firm: Report
The Cradle | May 8, 2024
Israel will grant control of the Rafah border crossing to a private US security company, Haaretz reported on 8 May.
The US, Egypt, and Israel have agreed “that a private American security company will assume management of the crossing after the IDF concludes its operation.”
Discussions between the three sides have been ongoing. Israel has committed to the US and Egypt that it will restrict its operation in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city. Tel Aviv reportedly made it clear during talks that the operation at the Rafah crossing aims to pressure Hamas in ceasefire talks and diminish the crossing’s image as a “symbol of Hamas’ power.”
It has also said the operation aims to cut off Hamas’ ability to channel weapons and funds into Gaza.
Israel has reportedly vowed not to damage the crossing’s facilities to ensure its operation is not hindered. The Rafah crossing is considered a major lifeline for Palestinians in Gaza, and the UN has warned that continuous Israeli operations in the area seriously threaten aid efforts.
Cairo and Washington have been showing serious concern lately over Israel’s plans for Rafah, which the army has been promising to invade for months. The city is overcrowded with over a million besieged Palestinians, and a full-scale assault poses the threat of an unprecedented humanitarian disaster.
“As part of Israel’s efforts to win agreement for a Rafah operation, negotiations have been underway with a private company in the US that specializes in assisting armies and governments around the world engaged in military conflicts,” the Haaretz report adds.
The company, which employs veterans of elite US military units, has been active in several African and West Asian nations, guarding sites such as oil fields, bases, and border crossings.
In line with the understandings reached between Cairo, Washington, and Tel Aviv, the US firm will assume responsibility for the crossing after Israel’s “limited” operation there is over. This includes overseeing the delivery of goods arriving from Egypt to Gaza and ensuring Hamas does not re-establish control of the crossing.
“According to the agreement, Israel and the US will assist the company as necessary.”
The White House and a State Department spokesman said on 8 May that they are unaware of any such plans. Several Palestinian resistance factions said in a joint statement on Wednesday that they refuse any attempt to “impose any form of [foreign] guardianship of the Rafah crossing,” adding that they consider this a “form of occupation.”
“Any plan of this kind … will be dealt with in the same way as the occupation is dealt with,” the statement added.
Sources told CNN and the Times of Israel on Tuesday that Israel’s operation at the Rafah crossing is a limited one, which aims to pressure Hamas in ongoing truce negotiations. Hamas accepted on Monday an updated proposal for a deal, which Israel finds unacceptable given its explicit call for a cessation of hostilities and withdrawal of all Israeli forces from Gaza.
Hamas has accused Israel of continuously sabotaging efforts to reach a truce agreement.
US Report on Israel’s Conduct in Gaza Strip Delayed Indefinitely – Reports
Sputnik – 08.05.2024
WASHINGTON – The Biden administration’s report on whether Israel violated US law and international humanitarian law during its military operations in the Gaza Strip has been delayed indefinitely, Politico reported on Tuesday.
If the report determines that US and international law have been violated, the Biden administration would be expected to stop sending military assistance to Israel.
The administration emailed Congress notifying lawmakers that it will miss the deadline to submit the report but did not provide additional details.
When the National Security Council was asked to explain the delay, they referred any inquiries to the State Department.
Earlier on Tuesday, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said that the US government is trying very hard to meet the “self-imposed deadline.”
Miller said it is possible to “slip” a little bit, but the administration is trying to get the report done by Wednesday.
On Monday night, some 200 attorneys, 27 of whom are currently in the Biden administration, sent a letter to top US officials arguing that sending weapons to Israel would be illegal.
The report’s delay comes as Israel started a military operation in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, where some 1.4 million Palestinians – are sheltering.
Ecocide: Israel’s systematic destruction of Palestinian agriculture revealed
British-based investigation unveils targeting, destruction of land by Israeli forces in Gaza Strip since last October
By Dilara Hamit – AA – 05.05.2024
A British-based investigation group has unveiled the systematic targeting and destruction of orchards and greenhouses by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip since last October, when the current conflict in Gaza began, undermining Gazan Palestinians’ ability to feed and provide for themselves.
Analysis by Forensic Architecture, a multidisciplinary research group based at Goldsmiths, University of London, identified more than 2,000 agricultural sites, including farms and greenhouses, that have been deliberately destroyed, and often replaced with Israeli military earthworks.
The destruction, particularly intense in northern Gaza, has led to the devastation of nearly one-third of the region’s greenhouses and approximately 40% of agricultural land previously used for food production.
The investigation suggests that the destruction is a deliberate act of ecocide exacerbating the ongoing catastrophic famine in Gaza, part of a wider pattern of depriving Palestinians of critical resources for survival.
“Since 2014, Palestinian farmers along Gaza’s perimeter have seen their crops sprayed by airborne herbicides and regularly bulldozed, and have themselves faced sniper fire by the Israeli occupation forces. Along that engineered ‘border,’ sophisticated systems of fences and surveillance reinforce a military buffer zone,” according to a statement from Forensic Architecture marking March 30, Land Day, a day when Palestinians protest and plant olive trees to reaffirm their connection to the land.
The investigation, built on collaborations with local farmers’ associations and agricultural workers, highlights the ongoing Israeli destruction of vegetation in Gaza and its severe effects on Palestinian food security and livelihoods.
The analysis indicates the ongoing resilience of Palestinian farmers who continue to cultivate their lands despite forced alterations to the landscape by the Israeli occupation.
Greenhouses, farmland replaced by Israeli military construction
Before 2023, Gaza boasted 170 square kilometers (65 square miles) of agricultural land, or 47% of its total area. The fields and orchards were crucial for local food security amid the siege conditions faced by Palestinians under the 15-year blockade of Gaza since 2007, followed by the even harsher blockade since last Oct. 7.
“Our analysis shows that Israel’s ground invasion has advanced over nearly 50 percent of Gazan farms and orchards,” said Forensic Architecture.
“We used remote sensing to measure the scale of agricultural destruction resulting from this military activity, by comparing the region’s ‘vegetation index’ (an indicator of the health and robustness of plant life, measured by analysing satellite imagery) before and after the invasion. This comparison reveals that as of March 2024, of the agricultural areas targeted, approximately 40 percent of the land in Gaza previously used for food production has been destroyed.”
The findings show that the destruction of agriculture along Gaza’s perimeter suggests a potential expansion of the Israeli army’s buffer zone, further limiting livable space for Palestinians.
Additionally, vital agricultural infrastructure like greenhouses has been systematically targeted since the onset of the ground invasion.
It stressed that satellite imagery reveals extensive destruction of greenhouses, with nearly one-third of Gaza’s greenhouses demolished between last October and this March. Forensic Architecture identified more than 2,000 agricultural sites, including farms and greenhouses, destroyed during that period, often replaced by Israeli military constructions.
The destruction has been particularly severe in northern Gaza, where 90% of greenhouses were demolished in the early stages of the invasion, an area which the head of the UN World Food Program (WFP) said Saturday was in “full-blown famine.”
“As the Israeli military advances south, destruction of agricultural land and infrastructure moves with it. We observe that 40% of the greenhouses in the areas around the southern city of Khan Younis, where many hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are now displaced, have been destroyed since January 2024,” said Forensic Architecture.
“Military support vehicles and tractors accompany the Israeli ground invasion, routinely building earthworks to reinforce military outposts. Once those vehicles depart, they leave behind a devastated and unliveable area,” it added.
Dutch police smash pro-Palestine protest camp
The Cradle | May 7, 2024
Riot police bulldozed barricades and temporarily detained 125 people to break up a pro-Palestine student protest at the University of Amsterdam in the early hours of 7 May, Reuters reported.
Four of the protesters are still being held on charges of public violence and insulting an officer, while the remainder have been released.
Organizers said they were “taking back this campus” in solidarity with Palestine and “in the spirit” of student protests that began in the US in response to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Along with pro-Palestine demonstrators at universities in the US and Europe, the Dutch students are demanding the university boycott academics and businesses in Israel.
Similar protests have occurred at Ghent University in Belgium and France’s prestigious Sciences Po University.
The National reported that in a social media message shortly before 3 am, organizers said they were being “violently evicted” by police arriving in riot vans.
Dutch television showed footage of police wielding batons advancing on the protesters and destroying tents.
Reuters adds that the police claimed student protesters ignored requests from university administrators and the mayor for the protesters to leave the campus and threw stones and fireworks.
“The police’s input was necessary to restore order. We see the footage on social media. We understand that those images may appear as intense,” police claimed.
Due to pressure from students, the University of Amsterdam published a list of eight research projects with ties to Israel.
It said one was about detecting explosives but “does not contribute to Israel’s military actions,” while others involved machine learning, gender issues, and safer streets.
Israel has used machine learning and artificial intelligence to generate bombing targets in Gaza.
A group of academics called Dutch Scholars for Palestine expressed support for the student protests.
“We have to resist political frames that will cast their efforts as antisemitic or a danger to the university community,” they said.
The media in the US and Europe have attempted to cast the protests as driven by antisemitism rather than by anger at Israel’s horrific bombing campaign in Gaza that has killed over 14,000 children.
Many Jewish students have participated in the university protests in opposition to Israeli policies.
“As the death toll and humanitarian crisis in Gaza increases … we should be proud of our students who are standing up to these abhorrent atrocity crimes,” the academics added.
Target Israel and we’ll target you: US senators warn ICC
Press TV – May 6, 2024
A dozen American senators have strongly warned the International Criminal Court (ICC)’s chief prosecutor against the UN court’s potential issuance of arrest warrants against Israeli officials over the regime’s ongoing genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.
The warning was issued in a harshly-toned letter addressed by the senators to the British lawyer Karim Khan on Monday.
“Target Israel and we will target you,” wrote the senators, who included Tom Cotton, Mitch McConnell, Rick Scott, Tim Scott, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio.
The ICC, located in The Hague, is currently conducting investigations into reported war crimes committed by the Israeli military.
Speculations have been rife that the court could issue arrest warrants against top Israeli officials over the October-present war that has so far killed nearly 35,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children.
The Israeli officials facing the prospect include Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Minister for Military Affairs Yoav Gallant, and the Israeli military’s Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi.
The senators, however, said by serving the warrants, the ICC risked losing the United States’ support.
The undersigned also cautioned Khan that they would move to “sanction your employees and associates, and bar you and your families from the United States,” adding, “You have been warned.”
Back in January, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations’ legal arm, ruled that “there is a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza and the continuing serious harm to civilians since then.” The court ordered Tel Aviv to take all measures to prevent genocide in the coastal sliver, but stopped short of ordering a ceasefire.
Ever since the ruling, though, the regime has even stepped up its deadly assaults on the Palestinian territory, and has vowed to carry out a ground invasion against the southern Gazan city of Rafah, where some 1.5 million people are seeking refuge from the ravages of the war.
Israel acknowledges barbarous strike on UNRWA building in Gaza
Press TV – May 6, 2024
Israel has bombed a building belonging to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Israel’s broadcaster KAN said the military hit the UN facility late Sunday on the proclaimed grounds that it was being used as a “military command center” by the resistance movement Hamas.
Many people were also killed in airstrikes by Israeli warplanes on two schools in Gaza where displaced families had taken shelter.
Israel has previously targeted UNRWA centers and UN-run schools across the besieged Palestinian territory.
UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini recently called for countries to back an independent investigation into killings and detentions of its staff and damage to its premises in Gaza.
UNRWA has accused Israel of targeting its facilities since early October.
The agency says 182 of its staff there had been killed and more than 160 of its shelters hit, resulting in the death of hundreds of people fleeing Israeli bombardment.
UNRWA is the biggest humanitarian aid provider in Gaza, where its 13,000 staff there also run schools and social services for the refugees who make up the majority of Gazans.
The regime is forcibly evacuating Palestinians from the eastern part of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip amid the prospect of its widely-discouraged ground invasion.
Hamas has called on humanitarian organizations, including UNRWA, not to leave Rafah.
The Palestinian resistance movement has also called on the international community to take urgent action to stop Israel’s planned invasion.
Israel has killed nearly 34,700 Palestinians, mostly women and children, in Gaza since October 7, 2023.
The International Court of Justice has said it is “plausible” that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Israel signals rejection of ceasefire proposal accepted by Hamas
Press TV – May 6, 2024
The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has agreed to a ceasefire proposal in Gaza, where it has fought a seven-month Israeli aggression that has left tens of thousands dead.
A short statement from Hamas on Monday said that head of the group’s politburo, Ismail Haniyeh, had informed Qatari and Egyptian mediators that it accepted their proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza.
The Israeli regime, however, appears not to have accepted the deal.
If the ceasefire agreement takes effect, it would be the first truce since a week-long pause in the fighting in November 2023.
The statement by Hamas came hours after senior officials in the group said efforts for reaching a ceasefire would stop if Israel goes ahead with its plans to invade the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, where more than half of the territory’s population of 2.3 million people has been sheltering from Israel’s brutal bombardments in other regions.
Israel on Monday ordered people in some parts of Rafah to evacuate in an apparent move to prepare for an invasion of the city.
The US government said it had warned the Israeli regime against a major operation in Rafah.
Speaking to reporters after Hamas’ announcement on the ceasefire, the Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari would not confirm whether Israel would go ahead with plans to attack Rafah.
However, he said that the Israeli regime will exhaust “every possibility regarding negotiations and returning the hostages.”
A senior Hamas official told Al Jazeera that the proposal presented by Qatar and Egypt consists of a three-stage plan, and includes the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, the return of Palestinian refugees, and a prisoner exchange.
Khalil al-Hayya, deputy head of Hamas politburo in Gaza, explained that the plan is interconnected in terms of the stages of its implementation.
In the first stage of the agreement, the Israeli military will withdraw to areas adjacent to Gaza, he said. In the second stage, he said, a permanent ceasefire and cessation of hostilities will be declared.
Al-Hayya insisted that the ball was now in the Israeli regime’s court whether to accept the deal and end the war.
The Hamas official also said that the mediators promised that US President Joe Biden had signaled a commitment to ensuring the implementation of the proposed deal.
Biden spoke over the phone with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday to warn him that Washington is concerned about Israel’s Rafah invasion plans.
Saudi Arabia also warned of the dangers of Israel targeting Rafah as part of its “bloody” and “systematic campaign to storm all areas of the Gaza Strip and displace its residents”.
Nearly 35,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its aggression on the enclave on October 7 last year.
The invasion came hours after Hamas carried out a brief but extensive military operation into the Israeli-occupied territories near Gaza, killing nearly 1,200 Israeli settlers and military forces.
Hamas also took some 250 captives during its anti-Israeli operation in October. Under growing pressure from settler communities living in the occupied Palestine, the Israeli regime has been pushing for the release of the captives as part of a potential ceasefire deal with Hamas.
Belgium working on Israel sanctions
RT | May 6, 2024
The Belgian government is “working on further sanctions against Israel,” Deputy Prime Minister Petra De Sutter said on Monday. Brussels has already sanctioned Israeli settlers, and plans to cut trade ties with the Jewish state over the war in Gaza.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), De Sutter said that Israel’s planned invasion of Rafah – a city in southern Gaza where around 1.4 million Palestinian refugees have sought shelter – would “lead to [a] massacre.”
Israel ordered the evacuation of Rafah on Monday, with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) warning that it would strike the city with “extreme force” shortly thereafter.
“I met with Palestinian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr. Riad Malki. We discussed how Belgium can help to end the atrocities,” De Sutter said in a follow-up post, adding that “Belgium is working on further sanctions against Israel.”
Belgium and the EU’s 26 other member states imposed sanctions last month on four individuals and two organizations involved in the construction of illegal Jewish settlements on Palestinian land in the West Bank. The people and entities sanctioned are responsible for property theft and “serious human rights abuses against Palestinians,” according to the European Council.
Belgium currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Council. Speaking to Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws on Monday, Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said that he would use the presidency to push the European Commission to review its trade agreement with Israel, and if necessary, gather a group of like-minded European leaders willing to cut ties with the country.
“Can we now simply continue with Israel as a trading partner? I do not think so,” he told the newspaper.
De Croo rejected calls from the Belgian opposition to sanction Israel two months ago. “But in the meantime there have been 35,000 deaths, including 10,000 children,” he explained. “In ten years’ time people are going to say, ‘You watched and took no action.”
The EU is Israel’s largest trading partner, with 32% of Israel’s imports originating from the EU and 25% of its exports sent to the bloc, according to data from 2022. Belgium is Israel’s fourth biggest trading partner within the EU, largely due to the diamond trade.
Türkiye announced on Thursday that it would suspend all trade with Israel due to the latter’s “aggression against Palestine in violation of international law and human rights.” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been one of Israel’s fiercest critics since the war in Gaza began, comparing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler and accusing him of committing “genocide” against the Palestinians.
Israel declared war on Hamas after the Palestinian militants launched a surprise attack on October 7, killing around 1,200 people and taking roughly 250 hostages back to Gaza. The death toll from Israel’s retaliation in the enclave is approaching 35,000 as of Monday, according to the Palestinian health authorities.
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From the Archives
Genetic baloney in thick slices
MAYBE COULD BE INC.
By Jon Rappoport | No More Fake News | July 8, 2021
Gene research companies tend to come and go. They start out banging and popping like fireworks in the sky, and then they fade out—selling themselves to larger outfits who’ve hired better liars…
Once upon a time, it sounded easy. Start with a disease, find the gene responsible for the disease, and correct the problem.
Then, researchers wondered, was disease the result of one gene or a group of genes acting together?
Either way, the proof would be in devising cures for diseases using gene therapy. “Not yet, but soon…”
And regardless, the major need was: money. Lots and lots of money.
This need required good PR people. “We have to pump up the idea that we’re on the edge of tremendous breakthroughs. We’re always on that edge…”
This hype also needed to obscure the fact that there wasn’t (and isn’t) ANY gene cure for ANY disease. … continue
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