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Category: Human rights/civil liberties

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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Humanitarian catastrophe is Israeli policy

Humanitarian catastrophe is Israeli policy

B’Tselem reports: The humanitarian crisis currently underway in the Gaza Strip is not a side effect of the war, but the direct intended result of the policy implemented by Israel. The people behind this policy see inflicting a humanitarian crisis on more than two million people as a legitimate way to put pressure on Hamas. Energy Minister Israel Katz, who signed an order to stop the supply of electricity to the Gaza Strip on the very first day of the…

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Civilians make up 61% of Gaza deaths from airstrikes, Israeli study finds

Civilians make up 61% of Gaza deaths from airstrikes, Israeli study finds

The Guardian reports: The aerial bombing campaign by Israel in Gaza is the most indiscriminate in terms of civilian casualties in recent years, a study published by an Israeli newspaper has found. The analysis by Haaretz came as Israeli forces fought to consolidate their control of northern Gaza on Saturday, bombing the Shejaiya district of Gaza City, while also conducting airstrikes on Rafah, a town on the southern border with Egypt where the Israeli army has told people in Gaza…

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Unexploded bombs, many U.S.-made, could make parts of Gaza uninhabitable

Unexploded bombs, many U.S.-made, could make parts of Gaza uninhabitable

The Washington Post reports: Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip has reduced entire neighborhoods to dust. The resumption of fighting and intensified airstrikes on southern Gaza after a week-long pause could mean that even more of the territory could meet the same fate. But the war, however long it continues, is only the beginning. Parts of a postwar Gaza could long be dangerous to inhabit, let alone rebuild. Riddled with hundreds if not thousands of unexploded ordnance, ranging from makeshift…

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The ‘darkest hour’ in the UN’s history as the U.S. vetoes a call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza

The ‘darkest hour’ in the UN’s history as the U.S. vetoes a call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza

This is how 'concerned' the USA is about Palestinians being killed in Gaza. They just vetoed a UN security council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire. pic.twitter.com/xBrORvQMJz — Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) December 8, 2023 The Guardian reports: The UN is at “breaking point” in Gaza, its most senior official has warned, as his colleagues described the “untenable” humanitarian catastrophe in the territory, with 700 people sharing a single toilet and people burning plastic to keep warm. One official said UN…

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Save the Children: We are failing the children of Gaza

Save the Children: We are failing the children of Gaza

Inger Ashing, Save the Children’s Chief Executive Officer,says: We are running out of words to describe the horror unfolding for Gaza’s children. Most of them have been forcibly displaced, squeezed into a tiny sliver of land that cannot accommodate them. Those who haven’t been forced from their homes are cut-off from the basics needed for survival, far away from the little amount of humanitarian assistance that can be delivered. Those who have survived the bombardment so far face the imminent…

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