Human rights investigators have shared new information with Channel 4 News that they say casts doubt on some aspects of Israel’s account of the Gaza hospital explosion.@alextomo reports. pic.twitter.com/h9C02qMYLj — Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) October 20, 2023
BBC News reports: Meta has apologised for adding “terrorist” to the biographies of some Instagram users describing themselves as Palestinian. Meta said it fixed a problem “that briefly caused inappropriate Arabic translations” in some of its products. “We sincerely apologise that this happened,” it told the BBC. The platform has also faced accusations of suppressing content voicing support for Palestinians during the Israel-Gaza conflict. Some users say they have been “shadow banned” on Instagram over pro-Palestinian posts. This is when…
Lisandra Novo writes: On October 13, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)—an impartial, neutral humanitarian organization key to the origin story of the Geneva Conventions—issued a rare and exceptional public statement reminding parties to the escalating Israel-Hamas conflict of their obligations under international humanitarian law. After first condemning Hamas’s brutal attack on Israel on October 7, ICRC stated that “[t]he instructions issued by the Israeli authorities for the population of Gaza City to immediately leave their homes, coupled with the complete siege…
The Washington Post reports: The announcement Wednesday that President Biden had secured a deal to allow aid into the besieged and bombarded Gaza Strip was hailed as a humanitarian breakthrough, but it was a limited and incomplete agreement, and there are some steep diplomatic hurdles to clear before aid can reach Palestinians in need. Wrapping up a trip to Israel on Wednesday, Biden told reporters that up to 20 trucks of aid from Egypt would be allowed into the enclave…
Politico reports: Tomer Eliaz, a 17-year-old boy in the kibbutz of Nahal Oz, was forced to go door-to-door by Hamas and tell neighbors to come out, saying he would be killed if they didn’t. Several opened up and were murdered, while others were hauled off as hostages to Gaza — with several children cooped up in chicken pens. After using the teenage boy as bait, the Islamist militants shot him dead too. Just 800 meters from the Gaza border, Nahal…
Reuters reports: U.S. military forces in Iraq were targeted on Wednesday in two separate drone attacks, with one causing minor injuries to a small number of troops even though the U.S. military managed to intercept the armed drone, a U.S. official said. The official, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, did not say who was suspected of the attacks on the al-Asad air base and the al-Harir air base. But Washington is on heightened alert for activity by…
The Guardian reports: Senator Lindsey Graham wants to see Gaza flattened. Congressman Max Miller said the laws of war should be swept aside. A former US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, suggested that Palestinians as a whole were responsible for Hamas’s crimes. American politicians have rushed to plant their flags firmly with Israel after Hamas killed more than 1,400 people, and abducted about 200 others, in its unprecedented attack from the Gaza Strip. Some have echoed the demand by the…
Wired reports: Yesterday evening around 7 pm local time, an explosion rocked the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City. Within minutes, information about what had happened was distorted by partisan narratives, disinformation, and a rush to be first to post about the blast. Add in mainstream media outlets parroting official statements without verifying their veracity, and the result was a chaotic information environment in which no one was sure what had happened or how. “There’s just been this massive sort…
The Guardian reports: The first local reports of the blast started to come in between 7pm and 7.20pm. Throughout the day the Telegram channels of Hamas’s armed wing, al-Qassam brigades, had been posting updates of attempted strikes into Israel. Updates at 7pm described “bombardment by rockets” on Ashdod. Another, three minutes later, described an attack on Tel Aviv. At 8.14pm, Hamas gave a further update, describing how al-Qassam brigades had targeted the northern Israeli city of Haifa with a R160…
CNN reports: Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping discussed the conflict in the Middle East during a meeting on the sidelines of the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing Wednesday, according to the Russian leader – who said “common threats” brought the two countries closer. The international gathering, which saw leaders and representatives from countries mostly in the Global South congregate in the Chinese capital, took place under the shadow of war between Israel and militant group Hamas that…
HuffPost reports: Veteran State Department official Josh Paul resigned from the agency on Tuesday over President Joe Biden’s approach to Israel-Palestine, telling HuffPost he felt he had to do so because he knew he could not push for a more humane policy within the U.S. government. “I have had my fair share of debates and discussions and efforts to shift policy on controversial arms sales,” said Paul, who spent more than 11 years at State’s bureau of political-military affairs, which…
MSNBC’s Raf Sanchez: We should also say that this kind of death toll is not what you normally associate with Palestinian rockets. These rockets are dangerous, they are deadly — they do not tend to kill hundreds of people in a single strike in the way that Israeli high explosives, especially these [U.S. made] bunker buster bombs that are used to target these Hamas tunnels under Gaza City, do have the potential to kill hundreds of people. And we…
NBC News reports: The taps in the besieged Gaza Strip are running dry, and residents are scrambling to save every last drop of water as the shortage reaches a crisis point. Dunia Aburahma said her family has rationed supplies, allowing her only a quart of drinking water per day. “I haven’t taken a shower for four days now,” said Aburahma, 22, an architecture student who fled northern Gaza with her family last week ahead of Israel’s threatened ground invasion and…
Reuters reports: One Israeli cabinet minister was barred from a hospital visitors’ entrance. Another’s bodyguards were drenched with coffee thrown by a bereaved man. A third had “traitor” and “imbecile” shouted at her as she came to comfort families evacuated during the horror. The shock Oct. 7 massacre by Hamas gunmen has rallied Israelis to one another. But there is little love shown for a government being widely accused of dropping the country’s guard and engulfing it in a Gaza…
NBC News reports: The suburban Chicago landlord accused of stabbing a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy to death and badly wounding his mother was ordered held behind bars Monday while federal authorities opened a hate crimes investigation into what they say was a deadly anti-Muslim attack. Dressed in an orange prison-issued jumpsuit, his hair disheveled, 71-year-old Joseph Czuba answered “yes sir” to the judge but otherwise sat quietly in a Will County courtroom where he was formally charged with three counts…
Politico reports: The Ukrainian military on Tuesday used U.S.-supplied longer-range missiles to strike nine Russian helicopters in eastern Ukraine, after Washington secretly shipped the weapons in recent weeks. The delivery and use on the battlefield, confirmed by two people familiar with the move, marks a major ramp up of the administration’s defense of Ukraine, for the first time providing Kyiv’s forces with the ability to strike Russian targets far behind the front lines. President Joe Biden had been hesitant to…