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Category: Human rights/civil liberties

U.S. investigating the killing of Hersh Goldberg-Polin but not the ‘kill shot’ on Ayşenur Eygi

U.S. investigating the killing of Hersh Goldberg-Polin but not the ‘kill shot’ on Ayşenur Eygi

  Al Jazeera reports: Officials in the United States have said that Washington still does not “know with full certainty what transpired” when a US citizen was killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank last week, stressing that they were waiting for the findings of an Israeli investigation. The US on Monday also appeared to reject calls for an independent investigation into the fatal shooting of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi. State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel declined to acknowledge that…

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Daniel Levy: In the Middle East the U.S. acts in its own interests, not the interests of peace

Daniel Levy: In the Middle East the U.S. acts in its own interests, not the interests of peace

  Public anger in Israel towards Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the war in Gaza has brought hundreds of thousands of Israelis on to the streets. But while Israelis push for a ceasefire deal that would bring captives in Gaza home, there has been noticeably little criticism of the war crimes being committed in Gaza. Richard Gizbert speaks with Daniel Levy, a former senior adviser to the Israeli Prime Minister’s office and negotiator, who knows Israeli politics from the…

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DeSantis’ election police questioned people who signed abortion petitions

DeSantis’ election police questioned people who signed abortion petitions

Tampa Bay Times reports: Isaac Menasche remembers being at the Cape Coral farmer’s market last year when someone asked him if he’d sign a petition to get Florida’s abortion amendment on the ballot. He said yes — and he told a law enforcement officer as much when one showed up at the door of his Lee County home earlier this week. Menasche said he was surprised when the plainclothes officer twice asked if it was really Menasche who had signed…

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Under cover of war, Israel is demolishing home after home in Silwan

Under cover of war, Israel is demolishing home after home in Silwan

+972 Magazine reports: Younes Odeh and his 3-year-old grandson stand atop the remains of a house in Silwan, a Palestinian neighborhood in the shadow of Jerusalem’s Old City. “This is where he slept,” Odeh says, pointing to a pile of broken drywall and crumbled concrete — all that’s left of his grandson’s bedroom. On Aug. 27, Israeli bulldozers tore apart the house belonging to Odeh’s son, also named Younes, which he built adjacent to his father’s home in 2015. The…

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‘Beyond catastrophic’: UN issues dire warning on Gaza as Israel hinders polio vaccination drive

‘Beyond catastrophic’: UN issues dire warning on Gaza as Israel hinders polio vaccination drive

  The United Nations is warning the humanitarian situation in Gaza remains “beyond catastrophic” as more than 1 million Palestinians in Gaza did not receive any food rations in August amid Israel’s relentless assault. Israel’s 11-month campaign has killed more than 15,000 children and enabled the besieged territory’s first polio outbreak in a quarter-century. INARA founder Arwa Damon just got back from spending two weeks in Gaza, where the nonprofit currently provides medical and mental healthcare to Palestinian children. “Israel…

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Israeli forces kill American-Turkish activist in the occupied West Bank

Israeli forces kill American-Turkish activist in the occupied West Bank

Al Jazeera reports: Israeli forces have fatally shot an American-Turkish activist at a demonstration in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian news agency Wafa and a hospital official say. Twenty-six-year-old Aysenur Ezgi Eygi was taking part in the protest against illegal Israeli settlements on Mount Sbeih in Beita, south of Nablus, on Friday when she was shot. Fouad Nafaa, the head of the Rafidia Hospital in Nablus, told the news agency Reuters that Ezgi Eygi arrived at the hospital in…

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Scientists are closing in on the true, horrifying scale of death and disease in Gaza

Scientists are closing in on the true, horrifying scale of death and disease in Gaza

Devi Sridhar writes: In August, a 10-month-old baby in Gaza was partly paralysed from polio, the first confirmed case there in 25 years. The paralysis is probably permanent, and there are no treatments for polio. We have a safe and effective vaccine to prevent serious disease, but the ongoing war in the region has meant vaccination campaigns have stopped. A polio outbreak seems inevitable given that the disease spreads through dirty water and rubbish, which surrounds those living in tents…

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Inside the brutal siege of Jenin

Inside the brutal siege of Jenin

Mariam Barghouti reports: On Aug. 28, Israel launched “Operation Summer Camps,” the largest military invasion witnessed in the northern West Bank in over two decades. In Jenin, Israeli forces first moved into the city before imposing a full-blown siege on the refugee camp within hours; the army simultaneously carried out operations in Tubas, Nablus, Ramallah, and Tulkarem. Since 2021, the Israeli military has repeatedly targeted Jenin refugee camp under the pretext of fighting armed resistance groups. Most of the victims…

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Israel destroyed 70% of Jenin’s streets, infrastructure, says municipality

Israel destroyed 70% of Jenin’s streets, infrastructure, says municipality

Anadolu Agency reports: The Israeli army destroyed about 70% of the streets and infrastructure in Jenin city in the northern West Bank during its ongoing military offensive for the fourth consecutive day, the local municipality said on Saturday. “The occupying (Israeli) forces have demolished more than 70% of the city’s streets completely (…) to a depth of approximately one to one-and-half meters, which has led to the destruction of water and sewage networks, as well as communication and electricity cables,…

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Hersh is gone, sacrificed on the altar of Israel’s ‘total victory’

Hersh is gone, sacrificed on the altar of Israel’s ‘total victory’

Orly Noy writes: It has been 11 months since death arrived on our doorstep — first as an unwanted guest and now, it seems, as a permanent squatter who refuses to leave. Its presence is so intimate yet ethereal. The number of Palestinians that Israel has killed in its Holocaust in Gaza makes it difficult to digest the depth of the horror. How many images of dead Palestinian children can a person see before they all morph into one intangible…

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I’m still hoping to vote for Kamala Harris

I’m still hoping to vote for Kamala Harris

Benjamin Moser writes: You’ll often hear that foreign policy is not a priority of Americans. That may be true of some foreign policy issues, but what most people on every side of this issue understand is that Israel-Palestine is not really foreign policy. We all know that this war is made in America: On Monday, Israel received its 500th shipment of bombs from the United States. We know how many billions of dollars in aid we send Israel, without the slightest restriction. We have…

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‘Sowing the seeds for more hatred’ – UN’s top Gaza official speaks to Mehdi Hasan

‘Sowing the seeds for more hatred’ – UN’s top Gaza official speaks to Mehdi Hasan

  In this episode of “Mehdi Unfiltered,” a discussion about the threats facing Palestinians in Gaza in an exclusive interview with the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, Philippe Lazzarini. Mehdi also explores why U.S. news organizations can’t get their coverage of Donald Trump right in a conversation with author Wajahat Ali and James Fallows, former chief speechwriter to President Jimmy Carter. The episode also looks into the situation for women and minorities in Afghanistan with Ali…

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How U.S. universities are trying to muzzle pro-Palestine protests before they restart

How U.S. universities are trying to muzzle pro-Palestine protests before they restart

Middle East Eye reports: The academic semester has kicked off at many US universities this week, and schools are working in a myriad of ways to tamp out the pro-Palestinian and student-led demonstrations that roiled the country this past spring. As students make their way back to campus, familiarising themselves with class schedules and reconnecting with university life, administrations have been working – often in conjunction with the police – to weed out the possibility of a repeat of last…

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‘If you try to defend yourself, you’re dead’: A West Bank village’s night of terror

‘If you try to defend yourself, you’re dead’: A West Bank village’s night of terror

+972 Magazine reports: On Tuesday morning, the streets of Wadi Rahal were littered with stones and bullet casings — evidence of an attack the night before. According to the Palestinian residents of the village, which is located south of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, about a dozen Israeli settlers had driven in, some of them armed. They threw stones at cars and houses, and when residents came out to defend themselves, the attackers opened fire. One resident, 47-year-old Khalil…

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New HRW report: Palestinian healthcare workers chained, starved, sexually abused

New HRW report: Palestinian healthcare workers chained, starved, sexually abused

  We speak with Human Rights Watch researcher Milena Ansari about the organization’s new report detailing the torture of Palestinian medical workers in Israeli prisons. HRW spoke with eight doctors, paramedics and nurses who were picked up in Gaza before being transferred to the notorious Sde Teiman camp and other facilities, where they say they suffered beatings, starvation, humiliation, electric shocks and other forms of abuse. The men also describe threats of sexual violence during brutal interrogations and seeing another…

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Israeli settler: ‘I think colonialism gets a bad rap’

Israeli settler: ‘I think colonialism gets a bad rap’

  Violence has flared in the Occupied West Bank. At least five Palestinians, including two children, have been killed in an Israeli air strike on a refugee camp, and one Palestinian man was shot dead in an attack by Israeli settlers near Bethlehem. The West Bank has seen a surge in violence since the October 7 attacks. 607 Palestinians have been killed, largely in Israeli military raids, while attacks by settlers have displaced more than 1,500. In the same period,…

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