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Category: Human rights

Israel storms northern Gaza’s last hospital as remaining residents forced south

Israel storms northern Gaza’s last hospital as remaining residents forced south

+972 reports: In the morning hours of Dec. 27, Israeli army forces stormed the Kamal Adwan Hospital compound in Beit Lahiya, culminating a nearly week-long siege of the last functioning hospital in northern Gaza. Soldiers forcibly moved patients out of Kamal Adwan to the Indonesian Hospital further south in the city, which had itself been subjected to an evacuation order by the military several days earlier. “Surgical departments, laboratory, maintenance, and emergency units have been completely burned, and the fire…

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U.S.-funded report, suppressed by Biden administration, says North Gaza on threshold of famine

U.S.-funded report, suppressed by Biden administration, says North Gaza on threshold of famine

A report by the U.S.-funded Famine Early Warning System Network published on December 23, says: Israel’s near-total blockade of humanitarian and commercial food supplies to besieged areas of North Gaza Governorate (including Jabaliya, Beit Lahiya, and Beit Hanoun) has been in place for nearly 80 days. As of November 16, OCHA estimated 65,000-75,000 people remained in North Gaza Governorate, including civilians who have been unable to or prevented from evacuating. More recent satellite-derived imagery suggests thousands of people evacuated in…

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The Texan doctor and the disappeared Saudi princesses

The Texan doctor and the disappeared Saudi princesses

Heidi Blake writes: Dwight Burdick, a private physician to the Saudi royal family, was on a rotation at the King’s palace, in Jeddah, when he got an urgent summons. Princess Hala, a daughter of King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, had gone wild with a knife. Burdick was asked to enter her quarters and forcibly sedate her. Burdick, a lifelong peacenik with a neat white beard, had moved to Saudi Arabia from Texas in the mid-nineties. He had served for…

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Optimism survives even in beleaguered Venezuela

Optimism survives even in beleaguered Venezuela

Anne Applebaum writes: Late last year, Venezuela’s democratic opposition set out to choose, jointly, someone who could challenge Nicolás Maduro, the country’s autocratic president, in an election that was sure to be violent and unfair. Hundreds of thousands of participants from different political parties voted in a primary held across Venezuela and in exile communities abroad. Although they risked harassment and arrest, people donated space in private homes and offices to make the vote possible. Others stood in line for…

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IDF shoots at Syrian villagers protesting against being blocked from accessing their own farmland

IDF shoots at Syrian villagers protesting against being blocked from accessing their own farmland

The Times of Israel reports: Israeli troops wounded one person after opening fire Friday on demonstrators in southern Syria, with the military saying the soldiers did so to remove “a threat.” According to the local Daraa 24 outlet, residents of towns in the Yarmouk River basin gathered near a former Syrian army post close to the village of Maariya to protest against the IDF presence in Syria. The outlet said the soldiers opened fire in the air to stop the…

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Human Rights Watch: Israel is guilty of extermination and acts of genocide in Gaza

Human Rights Watch: Israel is guilty of extermination and acts of genocide in Gaza

Middle East Eye reports: Israel is guilty of the crime of extermination and acts of genocide in Gaza, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has concluded in a new report published on Thursday. The US-based human rights organisation found that Israel has inflicted conditions of life in Gaza calculated to destroy the enclave’s Palestinian population. This amounts to extermination, which is a crime against humanity, and acts of genocide. Coming two weeks after fellow rights group Amnesty International similarly concluded that Israel…

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‘My hands are paralyzed from torture’: Gazans reveal horrors of Ofer Camp

‘My hands are paralyzed from torture’: Gazans reveal horrors of Ofer Camp

+972 and Local Call report: In February, Rami was arrested by the Israeli army at Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital. The 42-year-old Palestinian was taken to the notorious Sde Teiman detention center, where, like thousands of Gazans detained there, he endured severe abuse at the hands of the guards. But he was soon transferred out. “I thought I was being returned to Gaza, but I found myself in another prison,” he told +972 and Local Call. That prison was Ofer Camp —…

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The Democrats’ stubborn refusal to learn from the campus protests for Palestine

The Democrats’ stubborn refusal to learn from the campus protests for Palestine

Ahmed Moor writes: In mid-November, I attended a public meeting organized by Reclaim Philadelphia, a progressive group founded in the aftermath of the first Trump presidency. The event served as an election post-mortem, but also as a place to begin to chart a way forward — to consider what the next four years may bring. Speakers, including members of the local Philadelphia community and Reclaim’s leadership, described the ways in which the Democratic party leadership had failed them: plenty of…

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True scale of Assad’s slaughter revealed at Syrian mass grave

True scale of Assad’s slaughter revealed at Syrian mass grave

  His prisons held hundreds of thousands of people: relentlessly tortured and abused, many of them did not survive. But since Bashar Al-Assad fell from power – the full horror of the regime’s crimes is being revealed. Syria was largely cut off to journalists during his 24 years in power. But now the daunting task of documenting Assad’s atrocities can begin: starting with the country’s mass graves. Including one where around 150 thousand people may have been buried.

Congress keeps trying to hide the true Gaza death toll

Congress keeps trying to hide the true Gaza death toll

The Intercept reports: Tucked into a $895 billion Pentagon bill making its way through Congress is a little-noticed provision to further conceal the death toll in Gaza — the latest effort by U.S. policymakers to cast doubt on casualty figures reported by Palestinian health officials. The House approved this year’s National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, on Wednesday and sent it to the Senate for a vote, despite Democratic objections over a GOP proposal to prohibit transgender children on military…

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Israel to close Dublin embassy after Ireland supports ICJ genocide petition

Israel to close Dublin embassy after Ireland supports ICJ genocide petition

The Guardian reports: Israel has announced it will close its embassy in Ireland, citing Dublin’s decision last week to support a petition at the international court of justice accusing Israel of genocide. The move was announced by the Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, who said it was prompted by the Irish government’s “extreme anti-Israeli policies”, noting its decision to join the ICJ petition last week. The Irish taoiseach, Simon Harris, said on X: “This is a deeply regrettable decision from…

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Turkey exploits post-9/11 counterterrorism model to target critics in exile

Turkey exploits post-9/11 counterterrorism model to target critics in exile

The Washington Post reports: As abduction teams fanned out across neighborhoods in Nairobi in October, their targets — members of a Turkish religious movement — seemed to have few worries beyond the hassles of a hectic weekday. One was returning from a visa appointment with his family; a second was at the motor vehicle office for a driving test; still others were trying to beat traffic during the early Friday commute. By morning’s end, seven Turkish nationals had been abducted…

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Hope and despair at Assad’s ‘human slaughterhouse’

Hope and despair at Assad’s ‘human slaughterhouse’

Aubin Eymard and Cian Ward write: Crowning the top of a small hill, surrounded by the rocky outcroppings of the Anti-Lebanon mountain range about 20 miles north of Damascus, Sednaya Prison has attracted thousands of Syrians since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime on Dec. 8. For more than half a century, many of the secrets of the regime’s inner workings remained impenetrable. Sednaya was one of the best kept. “Until last Sunday, people could drive by the prison, but…

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New set of human rights principles aims to end displacement and abuse of Indigenous people through ‘fortress conservation’

New set of human rights principles aims to end displacement and abuse of Indigenous people through ‘fortress conservation’

Many protected areas, including California’s Yosemite National Park, displaced Indigenous people in the name of protecting wildlands. Matthew Dillon/Flickr By John H. Knox, Wake Forest University For more than a century, conservationists have worked to preserve natural ecosystems by creating national parks and protected areas. Today the Earth faces a global biodiversity crisis, with more than 1 million species at risk of extinction. This makes it even more important to conserve places where at-risk species can thrive. In 2022, governments…

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Syrians, in a triumph of hope, turn the page on the horrors of Assad

Syrians, in a triumph of hope, turn the page on the horrors of Assad

Syrians gather in the heart of Damascus on Dec. 9, 2024, to celebrate the fall of the Assad regime. Rami Alsayed/NurPhoto via Getty Images) Rami Alsayed/NurPhoto via Getty Images By Wendy Pearlman, Northwestern University Millions of Syrians are feeling hope for the first time in years. The authoritarian regime of Bashar al-Assad fell on Dec. 8, 2024, after a 12-day rebel offensive. Most commentaries on this stunning reversal of a conflict seemingly frozen since 2020 emphasize shifts in geopolitics and…

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Death feels imminent for 96% of children in Gaza, study finds

Death feels imminent for 96% of children in Gaza, study finds

The Guardian reports: A new study of children living through the war in Gaza has found that 96% of them feel that their death is imminent and almost half want to die as a result of the trauma they have been through. A needs assessment, carried out by a Gaza-based NGO sponsored by the War Child Alliance charity, also found that 92% of the children in the survey were “not accepting of reality”, 79% suffer from nightmares and 73% exhibit…

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