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Category: Human rights/civil liberties

Elizabeth Warren says she believes Israel’s war in Gaza will legally be considered a genocide

Elizabeth Warren says she believes Israel’s war in Gaza will legally be considered a genocide

Politico reports: Sen. Elizabeth Warren believes international officials could find that Israel’s assault on Gaza legally constitutes a genocide, she said during an event at a local mosque last week. “If you want to do it as an application of law, I believe that they’ll find that it is genocide, and they have ample evidence to do so,” Warren (D-Mass.) said Friday while taking audience questions during an event at the Islamic Center of Boston in Wayland, Massachusetts. A video…

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IRC President on delivering aid to Gaza: ‘We need a paradigm shift’

IRC President on delivering aid to Gaza: ‘We need a paradigm shift’

  This week Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the Israeli attack on a World Central Kitchen envoy an ‘inflection point’. President of the International Rescue Committee David Miliband tells Ali Velshi that what is really needed is a ‘paradigm shift’ to get more aid into Gaza. ‘Aid workers have a legal right to go about their business without being killed. This couldn’t be more serious.’

The disappeared of Gaza: tens of thousands missing in territory since start of war

The disappeared of Gaza: tens of thousands missing in territory since start of war

The Guardian reports: Late one night in March, Ahmed Abu Jalala rose quietly, trying hard not to wake his family, sleeping around him on the floor of a UN-run school in northern Gaza. The 54-year-old father knew his six children needed food, but after months of war there was none. Little aid reached Jabaliya, where they had been staying since fleeing their small home in the early weeks of the conflict, and his children had been reduced to eating wild…

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‘Unprecedented in modern history’: U.S. aid experts warn Gaza likely already experiencing famine

‘Unprecedented in modern history’: U.S. aid experts warn Gaza likely already experiencing famine

HuffPost reports: A group of U.S. government humanitarian experts on Tuesday privately warned fellow officials that the spread of hunger and malnutrition in Gaza amid the U.S.-backed Israeli offensive is “unprecedented in modern history,” famine is likely already occurring in parts of the Gaza Strip and the pace of hunger-releated deaths will “accelerate in the weeks ahead.” The striking assessment was shared in a cable drafted by officials at the U.S. Agency for International Development and sent to the White…

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José Andrés frustrated it took foreign aid workers’ deaths to spark international outrage over Gaza

José Andrés frustrated it took foreign aid workers’ deaths to spark international outrage over Gaza

HuffPost reports: “There’s way too many cases now of humanitarians dying ― many civilians, women, children that the only thing they did was trying to get close by, to somewhere that they were giving them flour or bread,” Andrés told Martha Raddatz on Sunday during ABC’s “This Week.” "This doesn't seem a war against terror. This doesn't seem anymore a war about defending Israel. This really, at this point, seems it's a war against humanity itself," José Andrés tells @MarthaRaddatz…

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Gaza’s carnage through the eyes of Palestinian photojournalists

Gaza’s carnage through the eyes of Palestinian photojournalists

Rolling Stone reports: On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacked Israel, killing roughly 1,200 people and taking over 200 hostages. Israel began its siege on Gaza that same day. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs recently asked photojournalists to share images, taken in Gaza during the war, that they want the world to never forget. Each image is accompanied by a personal text from the photographer, explaining the context and their emotions as they took these photographs….

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Israeli inquiry findings on aid worker killings lack credibility, World Central Kitchen says

Israeli inquiry findings on aid worker killings lack credibility, World Central Kitchen says

The Guardian reports: World Central Kitchen has rejected as lacking credibility the findings of an Israeli investigation led by a former general into a coordinated series of Israeli drone strikes on the charity’s vehicles in Gaza this week that killed seven aid workers. As the Israel Defense Forces blamed a series of “grave errors” by officers for the deadly attack that killed three Britons, three other foreign nationals and a Palestinian colleague while delivering food, WCK renewed its calls for…

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Organization of Islamic Cooperation condemns Israeli attacks on worshippers at Al-Aqsa Mosque

Organization of Islamic Cooperation condemns Israeli attacks on worshippers at Al-Aqsa Mosque

Days after Israel killed 7 aid workers in Gaza…on one of the holiest nights of Ramadan for Muslims…Israeli forces used drones to tear gas worshipers inside Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied E Jerusalem.Imagine the outrage if Jewish worshipers were similarly attacked in a synagogue. https://t.co/ljK0CYDw6A — Rula Jebreal (@rulajebreal) April 6, 2024 Arab News reports: The Organization of Islamic Cooperation strongly condemned Israeli forces for preventing thousands of people from entering Al-Aqsa Mosque on Friday. It also denounced a “blatant attack…

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Blinken warns: Israel risks becoming indistinguishable from Hamas if it doesn’t protect Gaza civilians

Blinken warns: Israel risks becoming indistinguishable from Hamas if it doesn’t protect Gaza civilians

The Times of Israel reports: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warns that Israel risks becoming indistinguishable from Hamas if it continues to fail to protect civilians amid the Gaza war. “What happened after October 7 could have ended immediately if Hamas had stopped hiding behind civilians, released the hostages and put down its weapons, but Israel is not Hamas. Israel is a democracy; Hamas, a terrorist organization. Democracies place the highest value on human life, every human life. As…

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Norman Finkelstein on Gaza: The U.S. could have stopped Israel on day one

Norman Finkelstein on Gaza: The U.S. could have stopped Israel on day one

  Renowned scholar and activist Norman Finkelstein discusses Israel’s war on Gaza with Marc Lamont Hill. As Israel’s war on Gaza continues, killing more than 33,000 people, numerous scholars and politicians have voiced concern and condemned Israel’s policies and actions. Among those critics is Norman Finkelstein, a staunch advocate for Palestinian freedom and one of the foremost historians on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, himself a son of Holocaust survivors. This week on UpFront, Norman Finkelstein shares his insights on Israel’s war…

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A blinking red light for Israel in American politics

A blinking red light for Israel in American politics

Politico reports: In notably blunt terms Thursday, top U.S. officials made a series of warnings to the Israeli government that they were nearly out of patience with its conduct of the war in Gaza. President Joe Biden and his top deputies said they would consider changing their policy towards Israel unless more consideration was given towards the humanitarian crisis its military was producing. A top Biden ally in the Senate argued that aid could be conditioned should Israel follow through…

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Chef José Andrés: Israel is engaged in ‘a war against humanity itself’

Chef José Andrés: Israel is engaged in ‘a war against humanity itself’

  World Central Kitchen founder José Andrés is speaking out after seven aid workers were killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza: “Humanitarians and civilians should never be paying the consequences of war. This is a basic principle of humanity.” video showing the Israeli army shooting a Palestinian civilian several times after he managed to get an aid package thrown from the air . The Israeli army continued shooting him after he was injured while he was trying to crawl…

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MSF dismisses Israeli claim of ‘regrettable incident’ in strike against aid workers in Gaza

MSF dismisses Israeli claim of ‘regrettable incident’ in strike against aid workers in Gaza

Reuters reports: The Doctors Without Borders medical charity (MSF) said on Thursday it rejected Israel’s position that an airstrike which killed seven aid workers was a “regrettable incident”, saying many humanitarian personnel have been attacked previously. Seven workers from World Central Kitchen, which provides food relief in crisis and conflict zones, were killed when their convoy was hit on Monday night shortly after they oversaw the unloading of 100 tons of food brought to the Palestinian enclave by sea. “We…

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Former supreme court judges say UK arming Israel breaches international law

Former supreme court judges say UK arming Israel breaches international law

The Guardian reports: A fourth former supreme court justice has put his name to a letter warning Rishi Sunak that the UK is breaching international law by continuing to arm Israel, as the number of legal experts signing the letter rose to more than 750. Lord Carnwath joins Lady Hale, who was president of the UK’s highest court, and lords Sumption and Wilson, in urging ministers to act to prevent the “plausible risk” of genocide in Gaza. Another new signatory…

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In Gaza, Israel unleashed a rogue army in which ‘every commander makes his own rules’

In Gaza, Israel unleashed a rogue army in which ‘every commander makes his own rules’

The Times of Israel reports: [O]n Tuesday evening, the Haaretz daily spoke to unnamed military sources who revealed that the cause of the strike [killing seven World Central Kitchen staffers] was undisciplined, rogue commanders, not a lack of coordination between the IDF and the WCK. A source in the intelligence branch told Haaretz that the IDF’s Southern Command “knows exactly what the cause of the attack was: in Gaza, everyone does as they please.” Army regulations require final approvals from…

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