Washington’s economic contribution to UNRWA is now halted after accusations surfaced that UNRWA personnel had participated in the October 7 terrorist attack against Israel.
In October 2021, Israel outlawed six Palestinian NGOs arguing they were controlled by the PFLP. Among them were organizations such as Al-Haq or Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCI-P). The Israeli government underestimated the strong connections between these six NGOs and large international organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, which stood up for the Palestinian NGOs. Key European countries also continued to work with the NGOs targeted by Israel. A staffer at the NGO Al-Haq told Bhungalia that “Israel did not expect this outcome.”[3]
Israel miscalculated the effects of the move against the Palestinian NGOs. This, Bhungalia argues, has much to do with Israel’s nervousness over the ongoing investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for possible Israeli war crimes. The targeted NGOs had been providing evidence to the ICC to document the case.
Israel moved against the six Palestinian NGOs soon after it became known that they had been targeted with Pegasus, the spying malware developed by the Israeli company NSO Group. For Israel, one of the goals for banning the NGOs was to retroactively justify the espionage they had suffered. Since The Guardian’s revelations two months ago, we also know now that Israeli intelligence agencies have been spying on the ICC for nine years.
Washington’s economic contribution to UNRWA is now halted after accusations surfaced that UNRWA personnel had participated in the October 7 terrorist attack against Israel.
In October 2021, Israel outlawed six Palestinian NGOs arguing they were controlled by the PFLP. Among them were organizations such as Al-Haq or Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCI-P). The Israeli government underestimated the strong connections between these six NGOs and large international organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, which stood up for the Palestinian NGOs. Key European countries also continued to work with the NGOs targeted by Israel. A staffer at the NGO Al-Haq told Bhungalia that “Israel did not expect this outcome.”[3]
Israel miscalculated the effects of the move against the Palestinian NGOs. This, Bhungalia argues, has much to do with Israel’s nervousness over the ongoing investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for possible Israeli war crimes. The targeted NGOs had been providing evidence to the ICC to document the case.
Israel moved against the six Palestinian NGOs soon after it became known that they had been targeted with Pegasus, the spying malware developed by the Israeli company NSO Group. For Israel, one of the goals for banning the NGOs was to retroactively justify the espionage they had suffered. Since The Guardian’s revelations two months ago, we also know now that Israeli intelligence agencies have been spying on the ICC for nine years.
Fadi Deeb is a shot putter who was paralyzed by an Israeli sniper and who lost at least 17 relatives to Israel’s onslaught.
Israeli forces detained Jibril Rajoub, President of the Palestinian Football Association upon his return from the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, and handed him a summons for questioning next Thursday
Believing that “our lives are more important than their lives,” Israel Defense Forces soldiers have widely used Palestinians including civilians as booby trap detectors in Gaza, according to a new Haaretz investigation, the latest of numerous reports detailing IDF use of kidnapped Gazans as human shields.
A voice that reminds us of these ideas can carry weight because of what it says, not because of the identity of who says it. The values articulated shouldn’t be accepted because they’re Jewish, but because they’re values that should carry meaning for those struggling today for freedom.
we can turn attention away from identities of people, which are so often invoked to justify oppression (the need for a Jewish state, the defense of the Jewish people, the superiority of one people to uncivilized others, and so on). We can draw attention instead to traditions of emancipation, which can be meaningful to anyone who cares about them.
A new Israeli human rights group report shows that Palestinians held in Israeli prisons and detention centers during the war on Gaza are subjected to torture, sexual abuse, violence, humiliation, starvation, sleep deprivation, and denial of medical care.
“There was a water well in the school that provided for more than 300 families inside the school, and the Israeli army directly bombed the well,” Hamada said. “The world ignores our slaughter, if these scenes were published somewhere else, it would be a crime that everyone would condemn.”
The controversy arose because of comments Smotrich, a far-right politician, made about humanitarian aid at a conference on Monday.
“We bring in aid because there is no choice,” he said. “We can’t, in the current global reality, manage a war. Nobody will let us cause 2 million civilians to die of hunger, even though it might be justified and moral, until our hostages are returned.”
Critics argued that Smotrich’s remarks conveyed not only indifference to Palestinian suffering and death but also, more specifically, an attempt to justify Israel’s documented practice of blocking or disrupting aid from reaching the Gaza Strip.
The brave and meticulous Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem, has issued a report aptly entitled “Welcome to Hell” on the functioning of the Israeli prison system, in which it concludes that Israeli authorities are now routinely using torture on Palestinian prisoners.
Israeli society is divided over the arrest of 10 soldiers for the brutal gang rape of a Palestinian prisoner caught on video.
The video, which has been verified by Al Jazeera, shows the prisoner being selected from a larger group lying bound on the floor. The victim is then escorted to a wall, where guards, using their shields to hide their identity from the camera, proceed to rape him.
“Look, the question really isn’t about rape,” Ori Goldberg, a Tel Aviv-based political analyst, told Al Jazeera. “The question is – can Israel, or Israelis, be reproached for anything they do in defence of the state?”
“The 100 unit has been assigned to guard the prisoners. Their job is supposed to be to intervene when there is disorder. They are rough people. So they are guarding the prisoners. You are letting animals guard animals without supervision and in nightmarish conditions.”
The bombing on Sunday was not the first time that the Israeli army has targeted the tents of the displaced people in Gaza. Just last month, an Israeli airstrike targeted tents housing displaced Palestinains in the al-Mawasi area outside of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, killing 90 people. Two weeks ago, an Israeli strike targeted a tent housing journalists inside the courtyard of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, killing one person.
The back-to-back assassinations of Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut and Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran were acts of either strategic folly or willful pyromania. While Israel has claimed responsibility for the former and remained cryptic about the latter, there is little doubt that it orchestrated both — and even some of its allies believe that, this time, the Israelis went too far.
Last month, the International Court of Justice issued a damning assessment of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land and the apartheid system it has built. All states now have a clear obligation to impose sanctions on Israel until the occupation ends.
As assiduously as Israel seeks war with Iran is precisely the extent to which it will seek to draw the U.S. into it. That is what made Congress’ insanely intemperate recent reception of Netanyahu so dangerous.
Juan Cole In a 2011 exposé , Mike Stobbe of NBC news revealed a long history of federal physicians from the US deliberately infecting challenged persons or prisoners with diseases so as to experiment on them.
For many, the spectacle of those in power rioting on behalf of sadistic thugs evinced the “deep moral deterioration” of a nation already deemed barbaric by much of the world – ghastly proof, writes Nesrine Malik, that despite rulings and protests, the war “has found its place, nestled within the status quo” of an apartheid Israel where there are no innocents in Gaza and “the most abject Palestinian suffering (is) normalized as just a part of life.” This “dissolution (of) a fundamental human law…seems to say: Yes, this is the world we live in now. Get used to it,” says Malik. “What does getting used to it look like? It looks like accepting that there are certain groups of people who can be killed…That it is, in fact, reasonable and necessary that they should die in order to maintain a political system (built) on the inequality of human life, (where) we exist and deserve freedom from hunger, fear and persecution (and) others have demonstrated some quality that shows they are not owed the same.””Justice, justice shall you pursue,” Judaism teaches. In Genesis 18:19, “We are called to be just and righteous.”God, if She’s implausibly watching, weeps.
Will Israel call them HAMAS and summarily imprison and assassinate them?
Israeli soldiers, like soldiers in other countries, bask in the self-serving effusive praise showered upon them by politicians, but privately they know BS when they hear it.
Right from the start on October 7th, the soldiers knew that the sudden collapse of Netanyahu’s state-of-the-art multi-tiered border defense system left the door open for the Hamas attack. Still denied an official investigation by Netanyahu, people know that had the border defense been in place, all the terrible consequences never would have occurred. (See, the open letter by six very prominent Israelis in the New York Times on June 26, 2024: “We Are Israelis calling on Congress to Disinvite Netanyahu.”)
The soldiers also know that the small Hamas militia of some 25,000 fighters hidden in tunnels, having only small arms with dwindling ammunition, is up against the 465,000–person military armed with 1,500 F-16 fighter pilots and nuclear weapons. The Israeli military is also equipped daily by Biden with the most modern weapons. All this makes Netanyahu’s absurd description of Hamas as an existential threat sheer propaganda designed to protect his job.
“Everything’s quiet until it’s not,” Arab al-Aramshe resident Kareem Suidan told me while we walked through the village in late July. Three months earlier, the apparent calm had been broken when Hezbollah targeted an Israeli command center inside the village, killing one soldier and injuring 16 other people, including four civilians. In the wake of the April 17 drone strike, the targeted building was described in news reports as a “community center,” but according to Suidan and the aftermath of the bombing that I observed, the building was in fact a school.
“It’s an academy for the children, but the soldiers were inside,” the 33-year-old Suidan said. The kids “go there to learn, for activities, and the soldiers during the war go to sleep there.” For the village’s Arab community, the school is incredibly important, as it allows a degree of autonomy relative to sending their children to schools in nearby kibbutzim.
Far-right protesters, soldiers, and MKs rallied for guards suspected of raping a Palestinian detainee. Once fringe, they’re now the public face of the state.
Israel lobby groups have increased efforts to silence those accusing the nation of genocide in Gaza.
The United States makes much of the role of the Iranian Council of Guardians selecting acceptable candidates for political office but ignores the role of its own Council of Guardians, AIPAC, which decides on suitable candidates for office.
U.S. Congressman Jamaal Bowman, once a recipient of lobby largesse, after seeing reality in Palestine on a J Street-funded excursion, called Gaza a genocide and said boycotts were legitimate.
Israeli lobby groups spent $9.9 million in a Democrat primary to get rid of him in favour of a supporter of Israel.
The scare campaign around rising anti-Semitism, which conflates criticism of Israel’s mass atrocities with prejudice against Jews, is a feature of most of the old colonial countries.
Mary Kostakidis, one of Australia’s most respected journalists, who speaks truth to power, has written regarding the Israeli genocide in Gaza:
‘In an effort to silence me, the Zionist Federation have filed a complaint with the [Australian Human Rights Commission] for racial vilification, aided by a reporter who can’t do his own research.’
The lobby levelled another case of harassment and suspicious accusations against a Palestinian Australian engaged in anti-genocide activity
Hash Tayeh, who had to present himself to the police over alleged anti-Semitic comments, was not charged and his matter has been referred to the Office of Public Prosecutions.
His Caulfield Burgertory outlet was set on fire, allegedly by two men, on 10 November, an attack he claimed was linked to his involvement in a pro-Palestine rally and thus a hate crime.
Then we witnessed the arrest of a Palestinian activist in the Prime Minister’s electoral office.
Sarah Shaweesh, who was asking about the delay in visas for her family in Gaza, was arrested.
The office refused to help her.
She is a key organiser of the 24/7 Gaza sit-in protest in front of the PM’s office.
The large number of Palestinians – men, women, children, doctors, journalists, human rights defenders – detained since 7 October, most of them without charges or trial and in conditions that raise concerns of the abuse of administrative detention, along with reports of torture and other ill-treatment and violation of due process, raises serious concerns regarding the arbitrariness and punitive nature of such arrests and detention. Many of those detained and subsequently released have reported being subject to forms of torture or other ill-treatment, including severe beatings, electrocution, being forced to remain in stress positions for prolonged periods, or waterboarding. At least 53 detainees from Gaza and the West Bank have died in Israeli detention since 7 October.
Israel has refined the practice of targeted assassinations, often coupled with the arrest of key leaders, to eliminate influential political and military figures. This strategy is not merely about neutralizing immediate threats; it is also about shaping the composition and character of the resistance it faces in the region.
These assassinations reinforce the bond between political-military organizations and the broader society within which they are enmeshed. . . Instead of weakening their opponents, such tactics can unintentionally solidify unity and resolve.
The real reason for Israel’s current policy of assassinations serves more as a mechanism to galvanize its own society rather than genuinely altering the political or military stance of its adversaries.
Nagham Abu Samrah was 24 years old Palestinian karate champion from Gaza. She had the potential to participate in the 2024 Paris Olympic games. Unfortunately, an Israeli attack on her home killed her sister and left her seriously wounded . Unconscionably, Israeli authorities delayed her permission to leave Gaza for treatment, and when she finally reached an Egyptian hospital, she died soon thereafter.
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Israeli newspaper Arab 48 reports that on Monday, military police raided the Sde Teiman detention center where Palestinian prisoners […
With thousands of faculty and students likely killed and campuses destroyed, Palestinian universities in the Strip are barely surviving Israel’s scholasticide.
Israel’s excuse they were UNWRA who are Hamas who are targets. It became a way for Israel to stop saying Oops! We are sorry for our accidental mistake. It became better Hasbara to call them Hamas
A leaked report obtained by Drop Site estimates that Israeli forces have killed at least 366 United Nations staffers and their family members in the Gaza Strip since October, an indication of the grave threat Israel’s ongoing assault poses to humanitarian relief workers and the enclave’s broader civilian population.
The miracle of Israelis turning the desert into a garden Halaluja has always been propaganda by the water-thieving Zionist Cult of Israel
The “Exploitation of natural resources” section (V/B.4, 124-133) was of particular interest to me. In it, the Court confirmed what I had set out to disclose, that Israel has used, misused and abused its illegal control over the water resources of Palestine to gain a permanent hold over all of the land.
The Court concluded that the occupied West Bank (especially Area C), rich in natural resources, has been used by Israel to the exclusive benefit of its own population, while disadvantaging Palestinians and their communities. Area C covers 61 percent of the West Bank and is under the complete control of Israel.
CBS News was the worst. The network, which once employed genuine journalists like Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather, has so far not aired a single report on the court’s decision.
How have these apologists for genocide justified Israel’s latest atrocity? Al Mawasi, which was specifically designated by Israel as a ‘safe zone’? Israeli planes bombed the tents in this desolate area on the pretext of trying to murder Hamas leader Mohamad El Deif. Their response is to say nothing.
The Biden administration, and all its predecessors, have attempted to deflect questions about the concerted Israeli land theft from Palestinians in the Occupied Territories since 1967 by underlining Washington’s commitment to a “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The last time, however, that a US president put himself on the line in a serious way to attain any such thing was the 1993 Oslo Accords, which required Israel to withdraw from the Palestinian West Bank by 1997. When the Israeli Right, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, sabotaged Oslo and refused to withdraw, and on the contrary doubled the number of Israeli squatters in the years 1993-2003, the Clinton and Bush administrations rolled over and played dead, letting the far right Likud Party get away with murder. At least in those days the US spokesmen occasionally politely demurred from Israeli war crimes. As time went on, and we got to Trump and Biden, the US began actively supporting the war crimes and avoided criticizing the Israeli government almost entirely.
I saw the first bulldozers arrive in my village 17 years ago. Now, after the most brutal weeks in our history, my son will carry similarly painful memories.
Responsible governments, like Spain, Norway and Ireland, are responding to the wishes of their people accordingly. Others, including the US, should follow suit.
Since Israel launched its retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on October 7, Israeli forces partly armed by the U.S. government have killed at least 38,848 people and wounded another 89,459—according to Gaza officials—while destroying civilian infrastructure and restricting the flow of humanitarian aid into the Palestinian enclave.
StoryJul 26, 2024
olddogthoughts 
You must be logged in to post a comment.