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Category: Human rights/civil liberties

Israel rescues hostages from Gaza, leaving trail of death and destruction

Israel rescues hostages from Gaza, leaving trail of death and destruction

The Washington Post reports: Israel’s military staged a blistering operation to rescue four hostages from the central Gaza Strip on Saturday, leaving hundreds of Palestinians dead or wounded in its wake and marking a much-needed political victory for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is under both domestic and international pressure to wind down the nine-month-long war. The Israel Defense Forces said it retrieved Almog Meir Jan, 21; Andrey Kozlov, 27; Shlomi Ziv, 40; and Noa Argamani, who turned 26 in…

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‘We have normalised horror’ says UNRWA official, after Israeli strike on school

‘We have normalised horror’ says UNRWA official, after Israeli strike on school

The Guardian reports: Mass casualty incidents caused by the Israeli military offensive in southern Gaza are becoming normalised in the west and leading to a sense of fatalism inside Gaza itself, according to Sam Rose, the director of planning for the Palestinian relief agency Unrwa. He was speaking after an Unrwa school at Nuseirat was bombed by Israeli forces leaving at least 33 dead, including 12 women and children. “When everyone is living in cramped, overcrowded conditions, we always said…

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NAACP asks Biden to halt weapons to Israel as he seeks to shore up Black voter support

NAACP asks Biden to halt weapons to Israel as he seeks to shore up Black voter support

Reuters reports: The NAACP urged President Joe Biden on Thursday to “indefinitely” halt all weapons deliveries to Israel and pressure the U.S. ally to end its war in the Gaza Strip, sending a reminder that his support for Israel could hurt him among Black voters in November’s election. The NAACP’s call was a rare instance of the influential civil rights organization taking a position on U.S. foreign policy towards a country without a significant Black population. It appeared likely to…

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Spain applies to join South Africa’s case at top UN court accusing Israel of genocide

Spain applies to join South Africa’s case at top UN court accusing Israel of genocide

The Associated Press reports: Spain became on Thursday the first European country to ask a United Nations court for permission to join South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza. South Africa filed its case with the International Court of Justice late last year. It alleged that Israel was breaching the genocide convention in its military assault that has laid waste to large swaths of Gaza. The court has ordered Israel to immediately halt its military offensive in the…

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‘America kills a person and then attends their funeral’

‘America kills a person and then attends their funeral’

  Sky News has followed the treatment of a Palestinian woman who was evacuated from Gaza to the US after an Israeli tank shell hit her home. Ahed Bseiso’s leg was badly injured and had to be amputated by her uncle, who is a surgeon. Video of the amputation went viral on social media. Ahed’s treatment in the US was arranged by the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, which has extracted about 100 injured children from Gaza since the conflict began.

Biden’s new immigration policy is an affront to survivors of the Holocaust

Biden’s new immigration policy is an affront to survivors of the Holocaust

Judd Legum writes: The political impetus for Biden’s new policy is clear. Immigration is one of the top issues for voters, and is top of mind for many independents who will play a critical role in the upcoming presidential election. Moreover, polls consistently show voters prefer Trump’s hardline approach toward immigration policy. Unilaterally imposing severe restrictions on asylum seekers appears to be an effort to diffuse the issue politically. But the political realities do not obviate the human and moral…

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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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