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Category: Human rights/civil liberties

Gaza is starving

Gaza is starving

Isaac Chotiner writes: Last month, a United Nations report on hunger described a catastrophic situation in Gaza, where more than ninety per cent of the population has been facing “acute food insecurity,” and where “virtually all households are skipping meals every day.” Much of Gaza is at risk of famine in the next several months. Parents have been going without food to insure that their kids have at least something to eat; where food is available, moreover, prices have skyrocketed,…

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Dying in the fields as temperatures soar

Dying in the fields as temperatures soar

Liza Gross and Peter Aldhous report: For most of July 2019, stifling heat hung over the agricultural fields of California’s Central Valley, as farmworkers like William Salas Jiminez labored under the sun’s searing rays. Temperatures had dipped from 99 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit the last day of the month, when the 56-year-old Puerto Rico native was installing irrigation tubing in an almond orchard near Arvin, at the valley’s southern edge. Around 1:30 that afternoon Salas sat down to rest. When…

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South Africa files genocide case against Israel at International Court of Justice over Gaza war

South Africa files genocide case against Israel at International Court of Justice over Gaza war

The Guardian reports: South Africa has launched a case against Israel at the UN’s international court of justice (ICJ) accusing the state of committing genocide in its military campaign in Gaza. Israel responded to the allegations “with disgust”, calling South Africa’s case a “blood libel” and urging the ICJ to reject it. Any case at the ICJ is likely to take years to resolve, but South Africa has called for the court to convene in the next few days to…

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Thousands of children in Gaza have lost limbs and their dreams

Thousands of children in Gaza have lost limbs and their dreams

🚨Read it twice. 9,000 Palestinian children have had to amputate 1 or more limbs and 1000 children endured it without anesthesia. https://t.co/HhFWFD5bjH — Ramy Abdu| رامي عبده (@RamAbdu) December 29, 2023 UNICEF: In the Gaza Strip, the life of any child could turn into a nightmare in the blink of an eye. Families try to keep their children safe, but this becomes harder and harder with the intense bombardments. Many houses have been destroyed, and many children ended up under…

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Palestinian Christian pastor slams Western silence on genocide in Gaza

Palestinian Christian pastor slams Western silence on genocide in Gaza

  Through the Christmas holiday, Israel continued its relentless bombardment and siege of the Gaza Strip that has seen over 20,000 Palestinians killed. In the West Bank, we speak with Reverend Munther Isaac, pastor at the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bethlehem, which canceled Christmas festivities in the storied birthplace of Jesus to mourn the deaths in Gaza and received worldwide attention for their nativity scene depicting the baby Jesus surrounded by rubble. “Christianity started here and never ceased to exist…

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Biden continues to undermine UN efforts; he once defended ‘killing women or children’

Biden continues to undermine UN efforts; he once defended ‘killing women or children’

The Intercept reports: An estimated 570,000 people in the Gaza Strip are now starving. Three-quarters of the territory’s 36 hospitals are closed. The remaining nine, all in southern Gaza, are “partially functional.” The shuttered hospitals in the north are serving as impromptu shelters for some of the 85 percent of Palestinians in Gaza who have been displaced, but did not trek south to escape the ravages of Israel’s ground invasion. Beyond an estimated death toll of 20,000, according to the…

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The cruelty and futility of Israel’s starvation blockade on Gaza

The cruelty and futility of Israel’s starvation blockade on Gaza

Alexander B. Downes writes: Immediately after Hamas’s terrorist attack of Oct. 7 that killed more than 1,200 Israelis, Israel imposed a “complete siege” on Gaza. “No electricity, no food, no water, no gas — it’s all closed,” as Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant put it. For weeks, supplies into Gaza were reduced to a trickle. Although the recent cease-fire increased the number of trucks carrying aid to about 150 per day, that is a drop in the bucket compared to…

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Entire Gaza population facing hunger crisis, famine risk, UN-backed report finds

Entire Gaza population facing hunger crisis, famine risk, UN-backed report finds

Reuters reports: The entire 2.3 million population of the Gaza Strip is facing crisis levels of hunger and the risk of famine is increasing each day as the Israel-Hamas war grinds on, a U.N.-backed body said in a report published on Thursday. That makes the proportion of households in the Palestinian enclave that are in hunger crisis, or suffering from high levels of acute food insecurity, the largest ever recorded globally, the report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification…

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Humanitarian groups urge Defense Secretary Austin to halt Israel aid over Gaza operations

Humanitarian groups urge Defense Secretary Austin to halt Israel aid over Gaza operations

Politico reports: A group of prominent humanitarian organizations is calling on Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to halt military and other aid to Israel over its operations in Gaza that they say have caused “staggering” civilian harm, according to a letter sent to the Pentagon chief on Wednesday. The groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, urged Austin in the letter to “withhold U.S. assistance, in accordance with U.S. law and policy, that would facilitate violations of international humanitarian law”…

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Pope condemns Israeli attack on Catholic church in Gaza as ‘terrorism’

Pope condemns Israeli attack on Catholic church in Gaza as ‘terrorism’

  BBC News reports: Civilians trapped in a church in Gaza City are living in an “unreal” sense of fear, a relative of one of those confined there has said. Fifi Saba, whose sister is trapped inside the Holy Family Church, said people were scared to move out of fear of being shot. A mother and her daughter were killed inside the church by sniper fire on Saturday, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem said. Pope Francis condemned the attack. “A…

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UN commissioner: ‘Gazans could start dying of hunger’

UN commissioner: ‘Gazans could start dying of hunger’

Bruno Maçães writes: Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), was two days back from the city of Rafah in southern Gaza when we spoke earlier today (15 December). He compared this latest trip with a previous visit he made on the eve of the November truce between Israel and Hamas. Lazzarini had been shocked by the squalid conditions of the shelters at the UNRWA refugee camp,…

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Why Samantha Power would resign over Gaza — if she had any integrity

Why Samantha Power would resign over Gaza — if she had any integrity

Jon Schwarz writes: A State Department official resigned on October 14, writing in a letter that the U.S. support for Israel’s assault on Gaza “will only lead to more and deeper suffering for both the Israeli and Palestinian people.” The director of the New York office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights resigned on October 31, stating that “once again we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes and the organization we serve appears powerless to…

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Bernie Sanders demands answers on Israel’s ‘indiscriminate’ Gaza bombing

Bernie Sanders demands answers on Israel’s ‘indiscriminate’ Gaza bombing

The Guardian reports: The US’s support for Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza is facing new scrutiny in Washington following a proposed resolution by the independent senator Bernie Sanders that could ultimately be used to curtail military assistance. It is far from clear whether Sanders has the support to pass the resolution, but its introduction in the Senate this week – by an important progressive ally of the US president, Joe Biden – highlights mounting human rights and political concerns by…

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A Texas case shows that abortion ban exemptions are a sham

A Texas case shows that abortion ban exemptions are a sham

Michelle Goldberg writes: Soon after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, horror stories started emerging of women denied medically urgent abortions for pregnancies gone dangerously awry. In response, the anti-abortion movement developed a sort of conspiracy theory to rationalize away the results of their policies. Abortion rights activists, they argued, were deliberately misconstruing abortion laws, leading doctors to refuse to treat women who obviously qualified for exceptions. “Abortion advocates are spreading the dangerous lie that lifesaving care…

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The Texas abortion case blows up the abortion ban rationale

The Texas abortion case blows up the abortion ban rationale

Jennifer Rubin writes: Abortion rights activists, medical professionals and ordinary women warned the Supreme Court in advance of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision: Legislatures cannot dictate medical decisions without creating horrendous injustices and medical travesties. A recent case from Texas, which has a ban on abortions after six weeks, leaves no doubt about the merits of that argument. The Texas case undermines the rationale for abortion bans and adds to Republicans’ political liability on an issue uppermost…

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Half of Gaza’s population is starving, warns UN

Half of Gaza’s population is starving, warns UN

The Independent reports: Half of Gaza’s population is now believed to be “starving” as Israel’s attack on the besieged strip continues to escalate, a senior UN official warned. Calling for an immediate “humanitarian ceasefire”, Carl Skau, deputy executive director of the UN World Food Programme, took to X saying: “There’s not enough food. People are starving. “WFP has reached over one million people, but the situation is untenable. We need to get our supplies in [and we need] a humanitarian…

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