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Category: Human rights

With eyes on U.S. college campuses, students stress: ‘Gaza is why we’re here’

With eyes on U.S. college campuses, students stress: ‘Gaza is why we’re here’

Al Jazeera reports: Global attention has turned to universities across the United States, where students have erected encampments to demand action to end Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip. The growing protests have taken root on the campuses of some of the country’s top academic institutions, including Columbia and Harvard. And over the past weeks, they have spurred heated debates around freedom of speech, Palestinian solidarity activism in the US, and the use of force to disperse student protesters, among…

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Israel intensifies strikes on Rafah ahead of threatened invasion

Israel intensifies strikes on Rafah ahead of threatened invasion

Reuters reports: Israel stepped up airstrikes on Rafah overnight after saying it would evacuate civilians from the southern Gazan city and launch an all-out assault despite allies’ warnings this could cause mass casualties. Medics in the besieged Palestinian enclave reported five Israeli airstrikes on Rafah early on Thursday that hit at least three houses, killing at least six people including a local journalist. “We are afraid of what will happen in Rafah. The level of alert is very high,” Ibrahim…

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Blinken hasn’t decided whether to sanction Israel for committing gross human rights abuses

Blinken hasn’t decided whether to sanction Israel for committing gross human rights abuses

JTA reports: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has yet to make a determination on whether the United States will withhold some defense assistance from Israel because of human rights abuses by one of its army’s most notorious units. A source familiar with the State Department review of alleged abuses by units of the Israel Defense Forces on Friday pushed back against reports earlier this week that Blinken had made a determination to withhold funding from the Netzach Yehuda battalion,…

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The protesters Netanyahu is afraid of are mostly young women defending human rights

The protesters Netanyahu is afraid of are mostly young women defending human rights

Anti-Semitism on campuses in the United States is reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s. The world cannot stand idly by. pic.twitter.com/oHlwig1vCl — Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) April 24, 2024 Mr. Netanyahu, antisemitism is a vile and disgusting form of bigotry that has done unspeakable harm to millions. Do not insult the intelligence of the American people by attempting to distract us from the immoral and illegal war policies of your extremist and racist government….

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Global breakdown of international law amid flagrant war crimes in Gaza & beyond, says Amnesty chief

Global breakdown of international law amid flagrant war crimes in Gaza & beyond, says Amnesty chief

  Amnesty International has released its annual report assessing human rights in 155 countries. The report highlights Israel’s assault on Gaza with evidence of war crimes continuing to mount, as well as U.S. failures to denounce rights violations committed by Israel. It also points to Russia’s ongoing aggression against Ukraine, and the rise of authoritarianism and massive rights violations in Sudan, Ethiopia and Myanmar. We speak to Agnès Callamard, the organization’s secretary general, who warns “the international system is on…

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Anguish and fear in Florida amid rising anti-immigrant sentiment

Anguish and fear in Florida amid rising anti-immigrant sentiment

NPR reports: Manuel Vasquez says he remembers when people started to leave. When one by one, people in this community started vanishing. It began about a year ago, in May 2023, when a new law was signed into law by Governor — and then presidential candidate — Ron DeSantis. It’s considered one of the toughest immigration laws in the country. Among other things, SB 1718 penalizes employers from using undocumented labor, prohibits undocumented people from having driver’s licenses, and defines…

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Mass graves in Gaza show victims’ hands were tied, says UN rights office

Mass graves in Gaza show victims’ hands were tied, says UN rights office

UN News reports: Disturbing reports continue to emerge about mass graves in Gaza in which Palestinian victims were reportedly found stripped naked with their hands tied, prompting renewed concerns about possible war crimes amid ongoing Israeli airstrikes, the UN human rights office, OHCHR, said on Tuesday. The development follows the recovery of hundreds of bodies “buried deep in the ground and covered with waste” over the weekend at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, central Gaza, and at Al-Shifa Hospital in…

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Gaza is Biden’s war

Gaza is Biden’s war

Nicholas Kristof writes: Gaza has become the albatross around Biden’s neck. It is his war, not just Benjamin Netanyahu’s. It will be part of his legacy, an element of his obituary, a blot on his campaign — and it could get worse if Gaza cascades into a full-blown famine or violent anarchy, or if a wider war breaks out involving Iran or Lebanon. An Israeli strike on a military base in central Iran early Friday underscored the danger of a…

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The media should be celebrating college protesters instead of demonizing them

The media should be celebrating college protesters instead of demonizing them

Dan Froomkin writes: Mainstream-media reporters covering the growing wave of college protests against Israel’s war in Gaza have adopted an overwhelmingly negative tone about something they should be celebrating: the peaceful free expression of college students understandably devastated by the pulverizing of Gaza and the slaughter of over 34,000 Palestinians by the Israeli military. The root cause of this journalistic dysfunction is that too many reporters have embraced the toxic presumption that any anti-Gaza-war protest is inherently antisemitic, and that…

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We visited the solidarity encampment at Columbia University. Here’s what it’s really like

We visited the solidarity encampment at Columbia University. Here’s what it’s really like

New York City Council Members Tiffany Cabán, Alexa Avilés, Shahana Hanif, and Sandy Nurse write: If you only go by the recent statements from Mayor Eric Adams, Gov. Kathy Hochul, and President Joe Biden, you might conclude that a student protest against the mass killing in Gaza is worse than the killing itself. These official statements, and so many posts on social media, depict the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on the Columbia University campus as a cesspit of antisemitic hatred and…

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Pro-Palestinian encampments and protests spread on college campuses across the U.S.

Pro-Palestinian encampments and protests spread on college campuses across the U.S.

NPR reports: Tensions are growing on U.S. college campuses, as the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have rocked New York-area schools in recent days — and the ensuing arrests of participants — spread from coast to coast. Students have launched protests and encampments at more than a dozen schools across the country, from Massachusetts to Michigan to California. They are calling for an end both to the Israel-Hamas war and their universities’ investment in companies that profit from it or, more broadly,…

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Protests at Columbia, Yale, and many other campuses across the U.S.

Protests at Columbia, Yale, and many other campuses across the U.S.

Bruce Robbins, the Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities at Columbia, writes: When Minouche Shafik, the president of Columbia University, testified before the House of Representatives on 17 April, she didn’t fall into the traps set a few months earlier for the presidents of Penn, MIT and Harvard, two of whom are now gone. They had been asked whether they would permit genocidal talk against the Jews on their campuses – a dark discourse that lurked, according to the…

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How the Democratic party is hurting itself by betraying young voters and failing to defend free speech

How the Democratic party is hurting itself by betraying young voters and failing to defend free speech

The New York Times reports: It’s a nightmare scenario for Democrats: Protesters disrupt their convention this summer; they clash with the police; chaos seems to take hold. It may not be imaginary. As protests over Israel’s war in Gaza continue to intensify, especially on college campuses, activists are preparing to be in Chicago this summer for the Democratic National Convention. The very idea sends some Democrats right back to 1968, when their convention, also in Chicago, was overshadowed by infighting…

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Columbia University protests and the lessons of ‘Gym Crow’

Columbia University protests and the lessons of ‘Gym Crow’

Judd Legum writes: In the early morning hours of April 30, 1968, then-Columbia University President Grayson Kirk summoned the NYPD to arrest hundreds of student protestors. About 1,000 police officers arrived on campus and, wielding nightsticks, violently arrested about 700 students. Almost 150 protesters ended up in the hospital with lacerations, a few broken bones, and other injuries. The student protesters had occupied several university buildings, forcing the school to suspend classes, in protest of Columbia’s plans to build a…

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Israel has yet to provide evidence of alleged UNRWA staff terrorist links, Colonna report says

Israel has yet to provide evidence of alleged UNRWA staff terrorist links, Colonna report says

The Guardian reports: Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence of its claims that employees of the UN relief agency Unrwa are members of terrorist organisations, an independent review led by the former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna has said. The Colonna report, which was commissioned by the UN in the wake of Israeli allegations, found that Unrwa had regularly supplied Israel with lists of its employees for vetting, and that “the Israeli government has not informed Unrwa of any…

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U.S. poised to impose sanctions on IDF unit accused of violations in West Bank

U.S. poised to impose sanctions on IDF unit accused of violations in West Bank

The Guardian reports: A unit of the Israel Defense Forces is facing US sanctions over its treatment of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, even as Congress voted for $26bn in new emergency aid to Israel. According to reports in the Israeli media, US state department officials have confirmed they are preparing to impose sanctions on the IDF’s Netzah Yehuda battalion, which has been accused of serious human rights violations against Palestinians. The highly significant move, which would be the…

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