"The #Israeli#Lavender system, supported by artificial intelligence, identifies Palestinians by tracking their communications via WhatsApp or the groups they join."
from #CommonDreams
We Risked Our Lives to Treat Patients in Gaza. Now President Biden Must Act to Save Lives
As I think about my colleagues who put their lives at stake to save #Palestinians wounded in #Gaza, the question I must ask is: when will President #Biden force the #Israeli government to stop this slaughter?
The #Republican-led UnitedStates House of
Representatives passed a bill on Thurs that would force President Joe #Biden to send weapons to Israel, seeking to rebuke the Democrat for delaying bomb shipments as he urges Israel to do more to protect #civilians during its war w/ #Hamas.
"To counter this insidious attempt at #Nakba memoricide by U.S. politicians and others, it is instructive to review the archives of U.S. diplomats stationed in #Palestine and surrounding Arab countries who witnessed the Nakba unfold and reported back to the #StateDepartment on the magnitude and gravity of #Israel’s dispossession of Palestine’s indigenous inhabitants." - #JoshRuebner
"The US actually understood quite early on that the partition plan as proposed by #UNSCOP was not workable and not feasible [..] The US did more than think about going back on partition. In March 1948 [..] the US actually proposed in the Security Council that an international trusteeship be appointed for #Palestine instead of partition." - #JoshRuebner
Palestinians living in Israel hold Palestinian flags as they take part in the annual Return March to mark the 76th anniversary of the Nakba, the catastrophe of their mass dispossession in the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation, near Haifa, in northern Israel. REUTERS/Ammar Awad
#FarhanHaq, a #UN spokesperson, said the new smaller numbers reflected those bodies which had been fully identified. The bigger figures included corpses for whom identification has so far not been completed.
Francesca Albanese, #UN special rapporteur on the #HumanRights situation in #Gaza, concluded in her 25. March 2024 report that "there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of #genocide is met". Do you agree with her conclusion?
Here is the Summary of Albanese's #UN report -
"After five months of military operations, #Israel has destroyed #Gaza. Over 30,000 #Palestinians have been killed, including more than 13,000 #children Over 12,000 are presumed dead and 71,000 injured, many with life-changing mutilations. Seventy percent of residential areas have been destroyed. Eighty percent of the whole population has been forcibly displaced. Thousands of families have lost loved ones or have been wiped out. Many could not bury and mourn their relatives, forced instead to leave their bodies decomposing in homes, in the street or under the rubble. Thousands have been detained and systematically subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment. The incalculable collective trauma will be experienced for generations to come.
By analysing the patterns of violence and Israel’s policies in its onslaught on Gaza, this report concludes that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of genocide is met. One of the key findings is that Israel's executive and military leadership and soldiers have intentionally distorted jus in bello principles, subverting their protective functions, in an attempt to legitimize genocidal violence against the Palestinian people."
JERUSALEM — #Hamas leader #YehiaSinwar has for years overseen a secret police force in the Gaza Strip that conducted surveillance on everyday #Palestinians and built files on young people, #journalists and those who questioned the government, according to intelligence officials and a trove of internal documents reviewed by The New York Times.
The #Biden admin has concluded it is “reasonable to assess” that #Israel’s military campaign in #Gaza has violated #InternationalLaw, but has not found specific instances that would justify the withholding of #military aid, #State Dept told #Congress Fri.
In the admin’s most detailed assessment of #Israel’s conduct in #Gaza, #State said in a written report to #Congress that Israel “has the knowledge, experience & tools to implement best practices for mitigating #civilian harm in its #military operations.”
But it added that “the results on the ground, including high levels of civilian casualties, raise substantial questions” as to whether the #IDF are using them sufficiently.
The report said that conclusion was based in part on the difficulty of collecting reliable information from the #war zone & the way #Hamas operates in densely populated areas. It also stressed that #Israel has begun the process of seeking accountability for possible violations of the #law, a key component in the #UnitedStates assessment about whether to provide #military aid to allies accused of #HumanRights violations.
"After serving in Israel’s war against Gaza in 2014 and seeing their country’s military operations up close, Benzion Sanders and Ariel Bernstein, two former special forces soldiers, turned into anti-occupation activists and have been speaking out ever since against their country’s brutal oppression of Palestinians."
"They joined ‘Mehdi Unfiltered’ to discuss what they learned from their own Gaza experience and how they view the current Israeli campaign in Rafah – and the right-wing trends in Israeli society. …
'It seems like something that I am ashamed that I took part in,' Bernstein told Mehdi."
“#Civilians have been killed in #Gaza as a consequence of those bombs & other ways in which they go after population centers,” #Biden said in an interview airing Wed evening on CNN, referring to 2k-pound #bombs supplied by the #US “I made it clear that if they go into #Rafah — they haven’t gone in…yet — if they go…, I’m not supplying the #weapons that have been used historically to deal …with the cities….”
@Nonilex "The #Biden administration's announcement that it has halted a shipment of thousand-pound bombs to #Israel was met with little fanfare from rights advocates and government watchdog groups, who said it is likely "too late" for a change in US policy to undo the damage to #Palestinians life spurred by Israel's war on #Gaza.
"A clear line of argument has emerged from many progressive commentators: First, the overwhelming majority of the protesters are peaceful and not anti-Semitic. Second, it undermines and mischaracterizes a vital movement to focus on a few bad actors who spout anti-Semitic vitriol, or to emphasize a few chants that glorify Hamas or call for the destruction of Israel."
"Third, the obsessive coverage of these protests is coming at the expense of the much more important story, which is the war itself. And in many respects, this is a sensible position. A war costing tens of thousands of lives, conducted by a key U.S. ally following a horrific terrorist attack, is a much more important story than whatever college students are doing in the United States."
The #Biden admin paused the shipment of thousands of weapons to #Israel, including controversial 2k-pound bombs, amid mounting concern about the country’s plan to expand a military operation in southern #Gaza that could dramatically increase the conflict’s death toll, U.S. ofcls said Tues.
When asked about the delays earlier Tues, #StateDepartment spox Matthew Miller declined to offer a rationale but said that US support for Israel’s right to defend itself against #Hamas remains intact.
[nonanswer answer]
In Washington, #US military support for #Israel receives overwhelming support from #Republicans & #Democrats in #Congress…
…powerful pro-Israel interest groups including the American Israel Public Affairs Cmte… is spending tens of millions …this #election cycle to unseat #Democrats it views as insufficiently pro- #Israel.
#Republicans assailed news of a delay in #weapons approvals as a “reprehensible” betrayal. “The #UnitedStates must stand with Israel. Period,” said Rep. Russell Fry (R-SC).
"In this conversation, Said addresses comparatively his years of experience during #ForeignPolicy briefings, notably on Palestine, at the #USStateDepartment and #WhiteHouse, with focus on the current war on #Gaza."