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Category: Human rights

The ‘hierarchy of racism’ in Keir Starmer’s Labour Party

The ‘hierarchy of racism’ in Keir Starmer’s Labour Party

Shaista Aziz writes: I spent six years serving as a councillor in my home city of Oxford, where I was born and raised. I was a council cabinet member for close to three years before I resigned from the Labour party, over what I saw as a horrifying endorsement by Keir Starmer of the collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza, in a now infamous LBC interview. I and another British Muslim, the Oxonian councillor Dr Amar Latif, were the first…

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Gaza: The war on hospitals

Gaza: The war on hospitals

  Israel is attacking Gaza’s hospitals in violation of international law, but is it part of a pattern going back to 1948? Hospitals are supposed to be immune from attack in times of war but Israel has repeatedly bombed and shelled them since October 7, 2023. This film looks at Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s hospitals in the context of its historical expansion at the expense of the Palestinian population, going back to 1948. The Israeli army cut off water, power,…

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Ghent University severs ties with Israeli universities; calls on EU to expel Israel from academic cooperation treaty

Ghent University severs ties with Israeli universities; calls on EU to expel Israel from academic cooperation treaty

VRT News reports: Ghent University (UGent) has said that it is to halt all cooperation and joint projects that it currently has with Israeli research institutes and universities. However, the pro-Palestinian activists that have been occupying a building at the university for over 3 weeks are not satisfied. They are demanding that the university also cease cooperation with Israeli companies. Under pressure from the pro-Palestinian activists and following fresh advice issued by the university’s Human Rights Committee, UGent has decided…

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‘Catastrophic consequences’ in Rafah due to Israel’s actions, bystander Power warns as more staffers resign

‘Catastrophic consequences’ in Rafah due to Israel’s actions, bystander Power warns as more staffers resign

Politico reports: USAID head Samantha Power warned on Wednesday that Israel’s military operation in southern Gaza is having “catastrophic consequences” despite Biden administration efforts to minimize the negative impacts. “Despite currently more limited military operations around Rafah and the Egypt/Gaza border, the catastrophic consequences that we have long warned about are becoming a reality,” Power said during a virtual event with governments that aid the humanitarian response in Gaza. Her comments are one of the harshest assessments yet from the…

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Veteran State Dept. official says she quit over Biden administration ‘twisting the facts’ on Gaza

Veteran State Dept. official says she quit over Biden administration ‘twisting the facts’ on Gaza

HuffPost reports: Veteran State Department official Stacy Gilbert quit the agency because the Biden administration is “twisting the facts” to make a “patently, demonstrably, quantifiably false” claim that Israel is not blocking humanitarian aid for Gaza in order to justify his administration’s continued military support to the country, she told HuffPost on Wednesday in the first interview since her resignation. Gilbert, who has over 20 years experience in U.S. policy toward global crises and conflicts, said she is convinced Israel’s…

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Israeli campaign against ICC may be ‘crimes against justice’, say legal experts

Israeli campaign against ICC may be ‘crimes against justice’, say legal experts

The Guardian reports: Efforts by Israel’s intelligence agencies to undermine and influence the international criminal court (ICC) could amount to “offences against the administration of justice” and should be investigated by its chief prosecutor, legal experts have said. Responding to revelations about Israeli surveillance and espionage operations against the ICC, multiple leading international law experts said the conduct of Israeli intelligence services could amount to criminal offences. The disclosures about Israel’s nine-year campaign against the court were published on Tuesday…

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U.S.-made munitions used in deadly strike on Rafah tent camp, CNN analysis shows

U.S.-made munitions used in deadly strike on Rafah tent camp, CNN analysis shows

CNN reports: Munitions made in the United States were used in the deadly Israeli strike on a displacement camp in Rafah on Sunday, a CNN analysis of video from the scene and a review by explosive weapons experts has found. At least 45 people were killed and more than 200 others injured after a fire broke out following the Israeli military’s strike on the outskirts of Gaza’s southernmost city, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health…

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Spying, hacking and intimidation: Israel’s nine-year ‘war’ on the International Criminal Court exposed

Spying, hacking and intimidation: Israel’s nine-year ‘war’ on the International Criminal Court exposed

The Guardian reports: When the chief prosecutor of the international criminal court (ICC) announced he was seeking arrest warrants against Israeli and Hamas leaders, he issued a cryptic warning: “I insist that all attempts to impede, intimidate or improperly influence the officials of this court must cease immediately.” Karim Khan did not provide specific details of attempts to interfere in the ICC’s work, but he noted a clause in the court’s foundational treaty that made any such interference a criminal…

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EU foreign ministers discuss sanctions against Israel

EU foreign ministers discuss sanctions against Israel

Politico reports: EU foreign ministers have for the first time engaged in a “significant” discussion on sanctioning Israel if it doesn’t comply with international humanitarian law, Irish Foreign Minister Micheál Martin said Monday. “There was a very clear consensus about the need to uphold the international humanitarian legal institutions,” Martin told reporters following the Foreign Affairs Council. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled Friday that Israel must immediately halt its offensive in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, and…

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Biden was my boss. I resigned because as a Jew I cannot endorse the Gaza genocide

Biden was my boss. I resigned because as a Jew I cannot endorse the Gaza genocide

Lily Greenberg Call writes: Until last week, President Biden was my boss. Last week, I resigned from my post at the United States Department of the Interior, becoming the first Jewish politically appointed administration official to publicly resign in protest – and in mourning – of President Biden’s endorsement of genocide in Gaza, where more than 35,000 Palestinians have been murdered. This was an incredibly difficult decision, but one that was necessary – and one that felt even more urgent,…

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Israel is committing genocide, says Human Rights Watch founder and Holocaust survivor, Aryeh Neier

Israel is committing genocide, says Human Rights Watch founder and Holocaust survivor, Aryeh Neier

Read Aryeh Neier’s article on Israel and the question of genocide here: https://t.co/nX1cUoauuC https://t.co/zQomIrXw16 — The New York Review of Books (@nybooks) May 27, 2024 Columbia University World Leaders Forum: Before joining the Open Society Institute and the Soros Foundations as President in September 1993, Aryeh Neier spent twelve years as Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, of which he was a founder in 1978. Prior to that position, he worked for the American Civil Liberties Union for fifteen years,…

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Israelis celebrate Rafah massacre as attack prompts international outcry

Israelis celebrate Rafah massacre as attack prompts international outcry

VOA reports: The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees described the situation in Gaza as “hell on earth” Monday, following an Israeli attack in the southern city of Rafah that Gaza’s health ministry said killed at least 45 people. “Information coming out of Rafah about further attacks on families seeking shelter is horrifying,” UNRWA said. “There are reports of mass casualties including children and women among those killed.” Israel’s military said it was reviewing an incident in Rafah following reports that…

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Access to aid in Gaza was dire. Now, it’s worse

Access to aid in Gaza was dire. Now, it’s worse

The New York Times reports: The flow of aid into Gaza has shrunk so much in May that humanitarian officials say their operations are at risk of shutting down, and that the threat of widespread starvation is more acute than ever. The entry of aid trucks through Gaza’s southern crossings, where most aid has arrived since the war began, has nearly ground to a halt since Israel expanded its fighting in the southern city of Rafah. In northern Gaza, new…

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Biden’s bogus ‘red line’ on Rafah operation

Biden’s bogus ‘red line’ on Rafah operation

These public comments from Satterfield confirm what I’ve already heard privately: the impact on civilians of the Rafah operation is as bad as the administration feared, Biden has simply chosen not to enforce his red line. https://t.co/30PDE7Cxnc pic.twitter.com/YuofGtThoH — Matt Duss (@mattduss) May 26, 2024 Jacobin reports: A little more than a month ago, President Joe Biden very publicly and explicitly identified the point that he would not allow Israel’s war on Gaza to reach: an offensive on the city…

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EU foreign chief says Israel must respect UN court, control settler violence in the West Bank

EU foreign chief says Israel must respect UN court, control settler violence in the West Bank

The Associated Press reports: The European Union’s foreign policy chief insisted Sunday that Israel must abide by the U.N. top court’s rulings and end its offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah and, at the same time, questioned the possible involvement of authorities in the settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. On a day that visiting Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa basked in the attention after two EU nations and Norway pledged to recognize a Palestinian…

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