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Category: War

Where is America’s ‘rules-based order’ now?

Where is America’s ‘rules-based order’ now?

Spencer Ackerman writes: No sooner had a nearly unanimous United Nations Security Council passed a resolution demanding an “immediate cease-fire” in Gaza last month than the United States and Israel acted as if it were a meaningless piece of paper. Israel, unwilling to accept a U.N. mandate, continued bombing the overcrowded southern city of Rafah and besieging Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Shortly after the vote, Biden administration officials called the resolution, No. 2728, “nonbinding,” in what appeared to be…

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Israel braces for imminent Iranian retaliation after embassy strike

Israel braces for imminent Iranian retaliation after embassy strike

Reuters reports: Israel on Friday braced for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of retaliation for the killing last week of a senior officer in Iran’s embassy in Damascus. Countries including India, France, Poland and Russia have warned their citizens against travel to the region, already on edge over the war in Gaza, now in its seventh month. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the threat from Iran was real and viable. The…

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‘No tech for apartheid!’: Google workers revolt over $1.2 billion contract with Israel

‘No tech for apartheid!’: Google workers revolt over $1.2 billion contract with Israel

Time reports: In midtown Manhattan on March 4, Google’s managing director for Israel, Barak Regev, was addressing a conference promoting the Israeli tech industry when a member of the audience stood up in protest. “I am a Google Cloud software engineer, and I refuse to build technology that powers genocide, apartheid, or surveillance,” shouted the protester, wearing an orange t-shirt emblazoned with a white Google logo. “No tech for apartheid!” The Google worker, a 23-year-old software engineer named Eddie Hatfield,…

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American surgeons return from Gaza, call for end of U.S. culpability in genocide

American surgeons return from Gaza, call for end of U.S. culpability in genocide

  We speak with two doctors who’ve just returned after two weeks at the European Hospital in Gaza. Dr. Feroze Sidhwa and Dr. Mark Perlmutter are co-authors of a new piece for Common Dreams titled “As Surgeons, We Have Never Seen Cruelty Like Israel’s Genocide in Gaza.” They describe a hospital “hanging on by a thread,” with the majority of patients being young children, and bombing targeted at Muslim Palestinians “concentrated at the time of evening prayer.” “Genocide was the…

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David Miliband, International Rescue Committee: There’s only a trickle of aid going into Gaza right now

David Miliband, International Rescue Committee: There’s only a trickle of aid going into Gaza right now

There’s a trickle of aid going into Gaza right now, as the population faces imminent famine. There needs to be a deluge. For every hour that the war goes on, the desperate need increases. I spoke to @WagnerTonight about the situation on the ground and the work of @RESCUEorg: pic.twitter.com/bYNsFTXtCC — David Miliband (@DMiliband) April 11, 2024

Israel’s ‘disproportionate response’ in Gaza a global threat, says Spain’s PM

Israel’s ‘disproportionate response’ in Gaza a global threat, says Spain’s PM

AFP reports: Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez warned Wednesday that Israel’s “disproportionate response” in the Gaza war with Hamas risks “destabilising the Middle East, and as a consequence, the entire world”. Sanchez also insisted that the recognition of a Palestinian state, long resisted by Israel and its key allies, is “in Europe’s geopolitical interests”. Sanchez had already raised the subject of statehood during a visit last week to Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, when he told reporters that Spain could…

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Israel inflates truck count by halving volume of each truckload then restricting distribution across Gaza

Israel inflates truck count by halving volume of each truckload then restricting distribution across Gaza

Reuters reports: The UN agency for Palestinian refugees is disputing claims by Israel and the US that aid into Gaza has been significantly increased. “There has been no significant change in the volume of humanitarian supplies entering Gaza or improved access to the north,” UNRWA says in its daily situation report. Red Crescent officials in Egypt say more than 350 trucks had crossed from there into Gaza on Monday and 258 on Sunday. That was much more than in recent…

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U.S. intel warns of imminent Iranian strike on Israel

U.S. intel warns of imminent Iranian strike on Israel

The Daily Beast reports: The Biden administration believes that an Iranian attack on Israel is imminent, according to a Bloomberg report released Wednesday. The dramatic escalation would come days after a strike on an Iranian mission in Damascus killed a top Iranian commander and other IRGC officials. Iran has blamed Israel for the attack and vowed to retaliate. The Israeli military has been on “heightened” alert for possible attacks from Iran in the aftermath of the assassination, although it has…

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Nuclear deal in tatters, Iran edges close to weapons capability

Nuclear deal in tatters, Iran edges close to weapons capability

The Washington Post reports: For the past 15 years, the most important clues about Iran’s nuclear program have lain deep underground, in a factory built inside a mountain on the edge of Iran’s Great Salt Desert. The facility, known as Fordow, is the heavily protected inner sanctum of Iran’s nuclear complex and a frequent destination for international inspectors whose visits are meant to ensure against any secret effort by Iran to make nuclear bombs. The inspectors’ latest trek, in February,…

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Rebuilding Gaza was seen as a ‘Herculean’ task before Oct. 7; six months of bombing has led to crises that will long outlive the war

Rebuilding Gaza was seen as a ‘Herculean’ task before Oct. 7; six months of bombing has led to crises that will long outlive the war

Palestinians look for survivors after a Israeli strike in Gaza on Oct. 31, 2023. AP Photo/Doaa AlBaz By Dima Nazzal, Georgia Institute of Technology Over a decade ago, a United Nations report described the Gaza Strip as virtually unlivable, adding that it would require “Herculean efforts” to change that. Today, after six months of bombardment, mass displacement and siege by Israel, the task of rebuilding Gaza seems practically unimaginable. I’m a scholar and a systems engineer who, as research director…

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Gaza: Israel’s imposed starvation deadly for children

Gaza: Israel’s imposed starvation deadly for children

Human Rights Watch: Children in Gaza have been dying from starvation-related complications since the Israeli government began using starvation as a weapon of war, a war crime, Human Rights Watch said today. Doctors and families in Gaza described children, as well as pregnant and breastfeeding mothers, suffering from severe malnutrition and dehydration, and hospitals ill-equipped to treat them. Concerned governments should impose targeted sanctions and suspend arms transfers to press the Israeli government to ensure access to humanitarian aid and…

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Leaders of Jordan, France and Egypt: Cease fire now in Gaza

Leaders of Jordan, France and Egypt: Cease fire now in Gaza

King Abdullah II, Emmanuel Macron and Abdel Fatah El-Sisi writes: The war in Gaza and the catastrophic humanitarian suffering it is causing must end now. Violence, terror and war cannot bring peace to the Middle East. The two-state solution will. It is the only credible path to guaranteeing peace and security for all, and ensuring that neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis ever have to relive the horrors that have befallen them since the Oct. 7 attack. On March 25,…

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Germany is accused of complicity in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza

Germany is accused of complicity in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza

  Germany has been accused of aiding and abetting genocide in Gaza, in a case before the UN’s top court. It was brought by Nicaragua and calls for emergency measures to stop Germany from selling weapons to Israel. It also wants Berlin to restore funding to the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA. Nicaragua’s lawyer had harsh words for the dual role Germany’s playing in what the ICJ’s already ruled to be a plausible case of genocide. Al Jazeera’s senior…

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Elizabeth Warren says she believes Israel’s war in Gaza will legally be considered a genocide

Elizabeth Warren says she believes Israel’s war in Gaza will legally be considered a genocide

Politico reports: Sen. Elizabeth Warren believes international officials could find that Israel’s assault on Gaza legally constitutes a genocide, she said during an event at a local mosque last week. “If you want to do it as an application of law, I believe that they’ll find that it is genocide, and they have ample evidence to do so,” Warren (D-Mass.) said Friday while taking audience questions during an event at the Islamic Center of Boston in Wayland, Massachusetts. A video…

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IRC President on delivering aid to Gaza: ‘We need a paradigm shift’

IRC President on delivering aid to Gaza: ‘We need a paradigm shift’

  This week Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the Israeli attack on a World Central Kitchen envoy an ‘inflection point’. President of the International Rescue Committee David Miliband tells Ali Velshi that what is really needed is a ‘paradigm shift’ to get more aid into Gaza. ‘Aid workers have a legal right to go about their business without being killed. This couldn’t be more serious.’

The disappeared of Gaza: tens of thousands missing in territory since start of war

The disappeared of Gaza: tens of thousands missing in territory since start of war

The Guardian reports: Late one night in March, Ahmed Abu Jalala rose quietly, trying hard not to wake his family, sleeping around him on the floor of a UN-run school in northern Gaza. The 54-year-old father knew his six children needed food, but after months of war there was none. Little aid reached Jabaliya, where they had been staying since fleeing their small home in the early weeks of the conflict, and his children had been reduced to eating wild…

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