Browsed by
Category: Human rights/civil liberties

We won’t stop speaking out about Gaza’s suffering – there is no climate justice without human rights

We won’t stop speaking out about Gaza’s suffering – there is no climate justice without human rights

Greta Thunberg and Fridays for Future Sweden write: More than 15,000 people, of whom at least 6,000 were children. That’s how many people Israel has reportedly killed in the Gaza Strip in a matter of weeks – and those numbers are still rising. Israel has bombed basic societal infrastructure and civilian targets such as hospitals, schools, shelters and refugee camps. Israel has imposed a siege, preventing food, medicine, water and fuel from reaching the 2.3 million Palestinians trapped in the occupied Gaza…

Read More Read More

The scale of displacement in Gaza is unparalleled

The scale of displacement in Gaza is unparalleled

The New York Times reports: Up to 1.8 million Gazans — around 80 percent of the population — have been forced to leave their homes since Israel began its bombardment in response to Hamas’s attack on Oct. 7. That number is expected to rise after Israel issued a new evacuation order on Saturday for areas in the south. Gaza has never experienced so much internal displacement in such a short time. Earlier conflicts forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from…

Read More Read More

Iran ‘using Gaza conflict as cover’ for execution of 127 people since war began

Iran ‘using Gaza conflict as cover’ for execution of 127 people since war began

The Guardian reports: The Iranian regime has executed more than 127 people, including women and children, since the Hamas attacks of 7 October, according to human rights groups. According to data collected by Iran Human Rights (IHR) and the Norway-based organisation Hengaw, which have been cross-referenced by the Observer, there has been an alarming rise in executions since the beginning of the war between Israel and Hamas. A third group, Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRA), confirmed that there has…

Read More Read More

Why does Israel have so many Palestinians in detention and available to swap?

Why does Israel have so many Palestinians in detention and available to swap?

Omar Shakir writes: The last week has seen, as of Nov. 28, the release of 69 civilians held hostage in Gaza in exchange for 180 Palestinian prisoners as part of a short-term cease-fire agreement between Israeli authorities and Palestinian armed groups. While many have rightly hailed the release of civilians held hostage by Hamas after the killings of hundreds of Israelis and other civilians on Oct. 7 — hostage-taking is a war crime — less attention has been focused on…

Read More Read More

While the world has abandoned Gaza, its doctors have done the opposite. They are our heroes

While the world has abandoned Gaza, its doctors have done the opposite. They are our heroes

Ghada Ageel writes: In the movie Any Given Sunday, Al Pacino plays a highly strung football coach. In a key scene, he gives a speech about how “life is a game of inches” and how when “you add up all those inches that’s gonna make the difference between livin’ and dyin’”. For Pacino, the rousing words are a figure of speech. For the people of Gaza – particularly its doctors, nurses and medical staff – these words are a matter…

Read More Read More

Growing numbers of Chinese migrants are crossing the southern border

Growing numbers of Chinese migrants are crossing the southern border

The New York Times reports: The surge of migrants entering the United States across the southern border increasingly includes people from a surprising place: China. Despite the distances involved and the difficulties of the journey, more than 24,000 Chinese citizens have been apprehended crossing into the United States from Mexico in the past year. That is more than in the preceding 10 years combined, according to government data. They typically fly into Ecuador, where they do not need a visa….

Read More Read More

Pope Francis: ‘this is not war, it is terrorism’

Pope Francis: ‘this is not war, it is terrorism’

The Guardian reports:Pope Francis has faced criticism for allegedly drawing equivalence between Israel and Hamas. During a general audience after meeting with Israeli and Palestinian delegations at the Vatican, the pope reportedly remarked, “They suffer so much, I heard how they both suffer.” This statement referred to testimonies brought by the Israeli group, who shared their experiences of having relatives taken hostage by Hamas during the 7 October attacks, as well as the Palestinians with family members living in the…

Read More Read More

Gaza’s next tragedy: Disease risk spreads amid overcrowded shelters, dirty water and breakdown of basic sanitation

Gaza’s next tragedy: Disease risk spreads amid overcrowded shelters, dirty water and breakdown of basic sanitation

By Yara M. Asi, University of Central Florida After more than a month of being subjected to sustained bombing, the besieged people of the Gaza Strip are now confronted with another threat to life: disease. Overcrowding at shelters, a breakdown of basic sanitation, the rising number of unburied dead and a scarcity of clean drinking water have left the enclave “on the precipice of major disease outbreaks,” according to the World Health Organization. As an expert in Palestinian public health…

Read More Read More

Asylum in America, by the numbers

Asylum in America, by the numbers

The New York Times reports: Under President Biden, the Border Patrol has arrested more people for illegally crossing the southern border into the country than in any other period since the government started keeping count in 1960. His time in office coincides with a global migration movement driven by tens of millions of people displaced because of war, persecution, climate change, violence and human rights abuses, according to the United Nations. More Americans far from the border are witnessing the…

Read More Read More

The richest 1% — the ‘polluter elite’ — are plundering the planet to point of destruction

The richest 1% — the ‘polluter elite’ — are plundering the planet to point of destruction

The Guardian reports: The richest 1% of humanity is responsible for more carbon emissions than the poorest 66%, with dire consequences for vulnerable communities and global efforts to tackle the climate emergency, a report says. The most comprehensive study of global climate inequality ever undertaken shows that this elite group, made up of 77 million people including billionaires, millionaires and those paid more than US$140,000 (£112,500) a year, accounted for 16% of all CO2 emissions in 2019 – enough to…

Read More Read More

Pro-Israel groups are weaponizing civil rights law to suppress dissent on campuses across America

Pro-Israel groups are weaponizing civil rights law to suppress dissent on campuses across America

The Intercept reports: In front of Columbia University’s Low Memorial Library, seven infant-sized bundles of white cloth rested on the steps, splattered with red paint. Behind the swaddles, plywood boards read “10,600 lives slaughtered,” “4,412 children,” and “let Gaza live,” alongside images of Palestinian flags and olive trees. This was the scene where Columbia students gathered last Thursday for a “peaceful protest art installation” and demonstration organized by the campus chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice…

Read More Read More

Here’s what the mass violence in Gaza looks like to a scholar of genocide

Here’s what the mass violence in Gaza looks like to a scholar of genocide

Raz Segal writes: I cannot stop thinking about the dozens of Israeli children held in captivity by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad in underground tunnels in Gaza, while above them Israel’s attack has killed, so far, nearly 4,500 Palestinian children. Stopping the violence, and returning the hostages, is urgent for any person who values all lives. That it is very difficult to imagine how this happens tells a terrible truth: Those with the most power to effect change refuse to…

Read More Read More

Israel has killed more children in Gaza than have died in all other conflict zones globally over the last year

Israel has killed more children in Gaza than have died in all other conflict zones globally over the last year

The New York Times reports: Barefoot and weeping, Khaled Joudeh, 9, hurried toward the dozens of bodies wrapped in white burial shrouds, blankets and rugs outside the overcrowded morgue. “Where’s my mom?” he cried next to a photographer for The New York Times. “I want to see my mom.” “Where is Khalil?” he continued, barely audible between sobs as he asked for his 12-year-old brother. A morgue worker opened a white shroud, so Khaled could kiss his brother one final…

Read More Read More

Israeli strikes hit maternity ward in Gaza’s largest hospital, evidence indicates

Israeli strikes hit maternity ward in Gaza’s largest hospital, evidence indicates

The New York Times reports: Minutes after 1 a.m. Friday, as active fighting raged between Israeli forces and Hamas militants, a projectile streaked over Gaza’s largest medical complex and crashed into the center of the courtyard of Al-Shifa Hospital, a place where thousands of displaced Gazans had sought shelter. It landed just a few feet from Ahmed Hijazi, a social media personality who has been documenting the conflict. He filmed a video of the projectile flying in, and then of…

Read More Read More