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Category: War

Gaza at risk of becoming ‘graveyard of international law’ – Palestinian lawyer

Gaza at risk of becoming ‘graveyard of international law’ – Palestinian lawyer

The Guardian reports: A prominent Palestinian human rights lawyer whose Gaza home was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in the early weeks of the war has called on western powers and global institutions to do more to prevent the territory becoming “the graveyard of international law”. Raji Sourani, who founded the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in 1995 and was a key member of the South African legal team that took Israel to the international court of justice on a…

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Netanyahu tells U.S. that Israel will strike Iranian military, not nuclear or oil, targets, officials say

Netanyahu tells U.S. that Israel will strike Iranian military, not nuclear or oil, targets, officials say

The Washington Post reports: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told the Biden administration he is willing to strike military rather than oil or nuclear facilities in Iran, according to two officials familiar with the matter, suggesting a more limited counterstrike aimed at preventing a full-scale war. In the two weeks since Iran’s latest missile barrage on Israel, its second direct attack in six months, the Middle East has braced for Israel’s promised response, fearing the two countries’ decades-long shadow…

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Surrender or starve: Netanyahu mulls plan to force residents out of northern Gaza and cut off aid to those left inside

Surrender or starve: Netanyahu mulls plan to force residents out of northern Gaza and cut off aid to those left inside

The Associated Press reports: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is examining a plan to seal off humanitarian aid to northern Gaza in an attempt to starve out Hamas militants, a plan that, if implemented, could trap without food or water hundreds of thousands of Palestinians unwilling or unable to leave their homes. Israel has issued many evacuation orders for the north throughout the yearlong war, the most recent of which was Sunday. The plan proposed to Netanyahu and the Israeli…

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U.S. to deploy about 100 troops to operate advanced anti-missile system in Israel amid heightened tensions

U.S. to deploy about 100 troops to operate advanced anti-missile system in Israel amid heightened tensions

CNN reports: The US will send an advanced anti-missile system — and US troops to operate it — to Israel “to help bolster Israel’s air defenses following Iran’s unprecedented attacks against Israel on April 13 and again on October 1,” the Pentagon said Sunday. It is not the first time the US has deployed the system, the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery, to the Middle East, Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said in the statement, and…

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UN says no food has entered northern Gaza since start of October, putting 1 million people at risk of starvation

UN says no food has entered northern Gaza since start of October, putting 1 million people at risk of starvation

CNN reports: No food has entered northern Gaza since the start of October, putting 1 million people at risk of going hungry, the World Food Programme told CNN on Friday. In August, approximately 700 hundred aid trucks entered northern Gaza. In September, only 400 aid trucks entered, after commercial operations ceased at the Allenby Crossing on the border between the occupied West Bank and Jordan, the WFP added. No food trucks have entered northern Gaza in October, the WFP told…

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UK urged to take action against Israel as ‘Generals’ Plan’ takes shape in north Gaza

UK urged to take action against Israel as ‘Generals’ Plan’ takes shape in north Gaza

Middle East Eye reports: Several MPs have urged the UK government to take firm action against Israel after it launched a major military offensive in northern parts of Gaza and ordered the forced mass displacement of nearly 400,000 Palestinians living there. For six consecutive days, Israeli forces have pummelled the Jabalia refugee camp with air strikes and artillery shelling, despite ordering residents to leave their homes and head south to the Mawasi “humanitarian zone”. At least 120 Palestinians are known…

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Israel orders Gazans to leave the north, but most are staying put

Israel orders Gazans to leave the north, but most are staying put

The New York Times reports: For more than a year, as Israeli bombs pounded northern Gaza around Mariam Awwad’s home, she and her family of 11 have refused to leave. Their resolve did not change even after the Israeli military dropped leaflets over the town of Jabaliya on Sunday, ordering Palestinians in northern Gaza to evacuate to the south. The military was renewing an offensive on the north, saying it was going after Hamas fighters. “We refuse to flee only…

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Inside Turkey’s EU-funded deportation machine

Inside Turkey’s EU-funded deportation machine

New Lines Magazine reports: Dawood remembers the disgust in the eyes of the Turkish security guards in the deportation center where he was held last year. “I felt like humanity had died,” said the soft-spoken Syrian man in his 30s, who is identified by a pseudonym to protect his safety. “They just kept shouting: ‘You are like animals! We’re tired of you. If you are a man, go back to Syria and fight!’” The humiliation hit hard for Dawood, who…

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Esmail Qaani under guard and questioned as Iran probes Nasrallah killing

Esmail Qaani under guard and questioned as Iran probes Nasrallah killing

Middle East Eye reports: Esmail Qaani, the leader of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force, is alive and unhurt but under guard and being questioned as Iran investigates major security breaches, multiple sources have told Middle East Eye. Qaani has not been seen in public since Israel killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in a massive air strike on Beirut on 27 September, an event that rocked the anti-Israel Axis of Resistance alliance. Since then, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps…

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‘The first live-streamed genocide’: Al Jazeera exposes war crimes Israeli troops filmed themselves

‘The first live-streamed genocide’: Al Jazeera exposes war crimes Israeli troops filmed themselves

A new documentary from Al Jazeera takes a look at evidence of war crimes in Gaza in the form of social media posted by Israeli soldiers recording and celebrating their own attacks on Palestinians. We play excerpts from the film Investigating War Crimes in Gaza, now available online, and speak to two of the journalists involved in its production, director Richard Sanders and Gaza-based correspondent Youmna ElSayed. “Israelis themselves were telling us precisely what they were doing and why they…

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Evidence that Israeli snipers have repeatedly shot children in the head in Gaza

Evidence that Israeli snipers have repeatedly shot children in the head in Gaza

Dr Feroze Sidhwa writes: I worked as a trauma surgeon in Gaza from March 25 to April 8. I’ve volunteered in Ukraine and Haiti, and I grew up in Flint, Mich. I’ve seen violence and worked in conflict zones. But of the many things that stood out about working in a hospital in Gaza, one got to me: Nearly every day I was there, I saw a new young child who had been shot in the head or the chest,…

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Rashid Khalidi, America’s foremost scholar of Palestine, is retiring: ‘I don’t want to be a cog in the machine any more’

Rashid Khalidi, America’s foremost scholar of Palestine, is retiring: ‘I don’t want to be a cog in the machine any more’

Razia Iqbal writes: History has a striking capacity to intrude on the present day, as it does when I meet Rashid Khalidi. The Palestinian American professor’s retirement from his position as the Edward Said chair of modern Arab history at Columbia University was imminent, and that morning he has received alarming news: a gang of extremist Israeli settlers had stormed a house on Silsila Road in Jerusalem, a property that had been in his family’s possession since the time of…

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Will Biden sink Harris?

Will Biden sink Harris?

Stephen Zunes writes: President Joe Biden’s continued support for Israel’s far-right government, including his refusal to pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to the U.S. cease-fire proposal for Gaza put forward in May and his failure to demand an end to Israel’s ever-widening warfare, has not only led to the loss of countless civilian lives — it could also lead to the election of Donald Trump. In her interview with 60 Minutes on Sunday, Kamala Harris skirted a number…

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Why it would be counterproductive for Israel to attack Iran’s nuclear program

Why it would be counterproductive for Israel to attack Iran’s nuclear program

John Mecklin, editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, interviews James Acton, a physicist and wide-ranging nuclear policy expert who co-directs the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: John Mecklin: I gather you think it would be a bad idea for Israel to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. Can you explain why for our readers? James Acton: Sure. If Israel or the United States tries to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, my belief is that that will…

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A year after the Nova massacre, survivors are still paralyzed with grief

A year after the Nova massacre, survivors are still paralyzed with grief

Alice Austin writes: At Adama Tova, grief hangs thick in the air. The sun seems to linger as it sets over the horizon, shining warm golden light on a yurt where siblings of Nova festival survivors are finishing up an art therapy session. Others mill about the garden, sitting on bean bags and sofas, and snacking on cakes and fruit in the communal kitchen. People move slowly here. Even the crickets sound mournful. “Anyone you see here over the age…

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Mossad’s pager operation: Inside Israel’s penetration of Hezbollah

Mossad’s pager operation: Inside Israel’s penetration of Hezbollah

The Washington Post reports: Among the half dozen Iranian-backed militia groups with weapons aimed at Israel, Hezbollah is by far the strongest. Israeli officials had watched with increasing anxiety as the Lebanese group added new weapons to an arsenal already capable of striking Israeli cities with tens of thousands of precision-guided missiles. Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service responsible for combating foreign threats to the Jewish state, had worked for years to penetrate the group with electronic monitoring and human informants….

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