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Category: Human rights/civil liberties

Bernie Sanders becomes first senator to acknowledge that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza

Bernie Sanders becomes first senator to acknowledge that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza

The Guardian reports: Senator Bernie Sanders said on Wednesday that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, calling the conclusion “inescapable” and becoming the first US senator to use the term. “Over the last two years, Israel has not simply defended itself against Hamas,” Sanders wrote. “Instead, it has waged an all-out war against the entire Palestinian people.” Sanders had long received flak from supporters and protesters alike for avoiding the term, which he previously said made him “queasy” when protesters…

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Detained Korean workers report ‘human rights violations’ by ICE after being treated like dogs

Detained Korean workers report ‘human rights violations’ by ICE after being treated like dogs

Hankyoreh reports (translated from Korean to English by Google): Their waists and hands were tied together, forcing them to bend down and lick water to drink. The unscreened bathrooms contained only a single sheet to cover their lower bodies. Sunlight barely penetrated through a fist-sized hole, and they were only allowed access to the small yard for two hours. Detained by US immigration authorities for eight days, the workers and their families expressed shock, describing human rights violations and absurdities…

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As the world recognizes a Palestinian state, Israel’s E1 plan moves to bury it

As the world recognizes a Palestinian state, Israel’s E1 plan moves to bury it

+972 reports: On the scorched hills to the east of Jerusalem, the Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim spreads outward, casting a long shadow over the bustling Palestinian town of Ezariyah. These are the hills where Israel is set to break ground on its E1 settlement bloc, carving the West Bank in two in a bid to erase the possibility of a Palestinian state once and for all. If realized, the Israeli plan to build 3,400 new settlement homes — which…

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‘Louisiana is where people go to be disappeared’

‘Louisiana is where people go to be disappeared’

The Guardian reports: He arrived in Alexandria exhausted and sick. It was early April, and Amilcar Lisser-Posadas – shackled at his hands and feet – had been transferred from a nearby immigration detention center to this remote US immigration facility in Louisiana. He feared it would be his last stop before deportation. He remembered the stench of the place. The packed jail rooms where hundreds of men were warehoused together with little access to showers, which sometimes spouted brown, rusty…

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The Gaza family torn apart by IDF snipers from Chicago and Munich

The Gaza family torn apart by IDF snipers from Chicago and Munich

The Guardian reports: Daniel Raab shows no hesitation as he watches footage of 19-year-old Salem Doghmosh crumpling to the ground beside his brother in a street in northern Gaza. “That was my first elimination,” he says. The video, shot by a drone, lasts just a few seconds. The Palestinian teenager appears to be unarmed when he is shot in the head. Raab, a former varsity basketball player from a Chicago suburb who became an Israeli sniper, concedes he knew that….

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Anti-Islamic American biker gang members run security at deadly Gaza aid sites

Anti-Islamic American biker gang members run security at deadly Gaza aid sites

BBC News reports: The firm guarding sites where aid is distributed in Gaza has been using members of a US biker gang with a history of hostility to Islam to run its armed security, a BBC investigation has found. BBC News has confirmed the identities of 10 members of the Infidels Motorcycle Club working in Gaza for UG Solutions – a private contractor providing security at Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites, where hundreds of civilians seeking food have been killed in…

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ICE is destroying the soul of America

ICE is destroying the soul of America

Garrett Graff writes: If you’re brown, speak Spanish, and work in a blue-collar job, you officially belong to a different class of citizen and according to Chief Justice John Roberts, it’s okay to racially profile you. We have never in US history seen a federal law enforcement agency operate the way ICE has operated this summer — it marks the arrival of a new style of domestic policing, more in line with the infamous “brown shirts” of authoritarian regimes the world…

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Department of Homeland Security claims videotaping ICE raids is ‘violence’

Department of Homeland Security claims videotaping ICE raids is ‘violence’

The American Prospect reports: President Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claims that making and posting videos of ICE agents as they disappear tens of thousands of immigrants from America’s streets, workplaces, and courtrooms without due process is an act of “violence” to be dealt with accordingly. DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin told the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) that “videotaping ICE law enforcement and posting photos and videos of them online is doxing our agents,”…

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How UK bureaucracy enables Israel’s genocide

How UK bureaucracy enables Israel’s genocide

Katie Fallon writes: For the last four years, my job has been to comb through government statements, along with policy and legal documents, and then brief members of parliament on exactly what linguistic and legal gymnastics the government of the day is using to justify exports of military equipment – despite evidence that these exports are likely to be used in war crimes. At a certain point, I recognised these documents and legal arguments for what they really are: the…

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The Epstein cover-up is an affront to American democracy

The Epstein cover-up is an affront to American democracy

Rebecca Solnit writes: Rape is a crime against democracy in the most immediate sense of equality between individuals and the premise that we’re all endowed with certain inalienable rights. Most rapists operate on the premise that they can not only overpower the victim physically, but can do so socially and legally. They count on a system that discounts the voices of victims and only too often cooperates in silencing them, through shame, intimidation, threats, discrediting, the obscene legal instrument known…

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A map to a place that no longer exists

A map to a place that no longer exists

Abdullah Hany Daher writes: In Gaza, the landscape changes faster than memory can keep up. Every neighborhood carries its own scars, some fresh, some already fading into dust. Places once familiar become unrecognizable overnight; streets you walked yesterday may not be there tomorrow. On this shifting ground, home is not just a structure. It is a fragile anchor to a previous version of life, one that can vanish without warning. Losing this place means losing the map inside you. I…

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International Association of Genocide Scholars: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza

International Association of Genocide Scholars: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza

The Associated Press reports: The largest professional organization of scholars studying genocide said Monday that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The determination by the International Association of Genocide Scholars — which has around 500 members worldwide, including a number of Holocaust experts — could serve to further isolate Israel in global public opinion and adds to a growing chorus of organizations that have used the term for Israel’s actions in Gaza. Israel rejects the accusation and called the resolution…

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U.S.-Israeli Gaza plan calls for ‘voluntary’ exodus with remaining Palestinians placed in concentration camps

U.S.-Israeli Gaza plan calls for ‘voluntary’ exodus with remaining Palestinians placed in concentration camps

The Cradle reports: A postwar plan for Gaza circulating within President Donald Trump’s White House envisions demolishing the strip, confiscating all public land within it, paying small amounts to remove the entire population of more than 2 million Palestinians, and building “a gleaming tourism resort and high-tech manufacturing and technology hub” on its ruins, The Washington Post reported on 31 August. A 38-page prospectus seen by The Post envisions placing Gaza in a trust controlled by Israeli and American investors….

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Israel’s onslaught on Gaza City forces thousands to flee with nowhere to go

Israel’s onslaught on Gaza City forces thousands to flee with nowhere to go

Abdel Qader Sabbah reports: Israeli tanks backed by warplanes and quadcopters are pushing deeper into Gaza City, destroying entire neighborhoods and leaving people with nowhere to go. The escalating assault comes amid a widening famine, with Palestinians starving to death every day. Airstrikes continue to pound civilians in central and southern Gaza. It has been one of the deadliest periods for journalists since Israel’s assault began, with at least 11 journalists killed in two bombardments just two weeks apart. Palestinians…

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How AI became the far right’s latest weapon against refugees

How AI became the far right’s latest weapon against refugees

Anagha Nair writes: Earphones plugged in, a cigarette dangling from his hand, Mohammed al-Mohammed was waiting for a train at a station in Hamburg, Germany, when he was enveloped by screams of horror. Amid the chaos of people fleeing, he glimpsed a flash of metal out of the corner of his eye. Turning, he saw a lady clutching a raised knife, pointed toward him. Mohammed’s reflexes kicked in, and he pushed the lady away. As another man tackled her and…

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How Israelis turned atrocity denial into an art

How Israelis turned atrocity denial into an art

Ron Dudai writes: A decade ago, in the final days of the weekly joint Palestinian–Jewish protests against Israel’s construction of the separation wall in the West Bank village of Al-Ma’asara, one of our pre-demonstration rituals was a speech by Mahmoud, a local community leader. Phone in hand, he would declare: “We will not have another Nakba, because now we have this. We have a smartphone. We have Facebook. They will try to drive us away again, but everyone will see…

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