- A food survey by aid agencies in May found that 85 per cent of children did not eat for a whole day at least once in the three days before the survey was conducted, with dietary diversity worsening.
- Living conditions are so appalling that in Al-Mawasi, there are just 121 latrines for over 500,000 people – or 4,130 people having to share each toilet.
- Just 19 per cent of the 400,000 litres of fuel a day needed to run the humanitarian operation in Gaza – including transportation, the provision of clean water and sewage removal – is being allowed in and is not delivered every day.
- According to the UN, aid deliveries have dropped by two-thirds since Israel’s invasion of Rafah. Since 6 May, just 216 trucks of humanitarian aid entered via Kerem Shalom and were able to be collected – an average of eight a day
- It’s estimated that hundreds of commercial food trucks are entering daily via the Kerem Shalom crossing. Although important for increasing food availability in Gaza, the consignments include items like non-nutritious energy drinks, chocolate and cookies, and food is often sold at inflated prices that people cannot afford. Lack of dietary diversity is one of the key drivers of acute malnutrition and has been assessed as ‘extremely critical’ in Gaza
- People are paying nearly $700 for the most basic tents and there is so little space left, that some have been forced to set up tents in the cemetery at Deir al-Balah
Tag: travel
Geoffrey Robertson
Human rights barrister
Let’s be clear, Peter Dutton: prosecuting Netanyahu is not antisemitism
As everyone who uses the word should know, antisemitism means hatred of Jewish people in general, and it is the vilest and most destructive form of race hatred. It is not constituted by condemning the policy or the war tactics of the Israeli government. Dutton’s attempt to conflate the two, and his call on the Australian government to withhold support from an independent international justice process, is shameful.
And history would note the irony that a law forged at Nuremberg to prevent repetition of the sufferings of millions of Jewish people was, 77 years later, dodged and despised by none other than the leader of Israel.
Once you get into the text, however, the review is withering, arguing that the lawbreakers have become the law makers:
“Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister and the official in Netanyahu’s government with oversight over the West Bank, was arrested in 2005 by the Shin Bet domestic security service for plotting road blockages to halt the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. He was released with no charges. Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister, had been convicted multiple times for supporting terrorist organisations and, in front of television cameras in 1995, vaguely threatened the life of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was murdered weeks later by an Israeli student.”
Subsequently, the writers note that:
“Prime Minister Rabin was murdered after rabbis passed what amounted to a death sentence on him for his support of the Oslo peace process.”
Source: The New York Times explains how gangsters now Govern Israel – Pearls and Irritations
The British government has imposed a block on all information about Israeli military planes landing in the U.K.
Amidst speculation that the International Criminal Court (ICC) is set to issue arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers, the new blackout could be intended to protect British ministers from possible prosecution for complicity in war crimes, including defence secretary Grant Shapps.
Kenny MacAskill, Alba MP for East Lothian, asked last week how many Israeli Air Force (IAF) planes had landed and taken off from Britain since Oct. 7.
Shapp’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) responded: “For operational security reasons and as a matter of policy, the MoD does not offer comment or information relating to foreign nations’ military aircraft movements or operations.”
However, this is a new policy. MacAskill had asked the same question in February and the MoD revealed that nine IAF planes had visited the U.K. over the previous four months.
Source: Blackout Imposed on Israeli Military Aircraft in U.K.
Long ago, I came to believe that being a Jew, even a secular one like me, entailed certain responsibilities. A people who had suffered so much yet survived were obligated, if not honored, to serve as witnesses and supporters of other oppressed people and to live in the public interest, to model ethical lives. Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk, and Sandy Koufax all made me proud, while I felt ashamed of Roy Cohn, Alan Dershowitz, and Henry Kissinger.
I accepted his offer to meet and talk. We became friends. Over more than 40 years he’s joined Rabbi Landman as my spiritual advisor, officiating at my wedding, while offering rational possibilities in chaotic times. Of course, given the world we’re in, we’ve been talking far more urgently of late. Yes, Hamas are thugs and vandals, but how is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu any different in his behavior?
The truth is we shouldn’t have to choose between them. It’s important to get rid of them both, while, at least in our thinking, separating two power-mad and murderous ruling bodies from their people, most of whom just want peace. How can we use the “ethical monotheism” of Judaism to find common ground and a country for each? We don’t have that answer and don’t even know if it’s possible, but at least we should know what the only true goal is: to end the present horror. And that would be good for the Jews, with or without God.
There are many things wrong with Hochul’s remark. First, Gaza is recognized by the UN and most countries in the world as an occupied territory over which Israel is the occupying power. It isn’t an independent country. It has no port, airport, or heavy armaments. It is almost completely surrounded by Israel, including from the sea and the skies, and even the Egyptian checkpoint of Gaza is de facto controlled by Israeli policy. Israel has the basic right of self-defense, as do all United Nations member states under its charter. But it doesn’t have the right to wage a total war, to wipe out 30,000 people in Gaza, the bulk of them innocent non-combatants, or to ethnically cleanse 1.9 million people. It has a right to defend itself from the Hamas organization, but not to destroy Gaza. As an occupying power it has a special responsibility to ensure the welfare of the Palestinian non-combatants of Gaza, a responsibility it has abandoned with glee.
Source: Gov. Hochul’s Canada Genocide Fantasy and the War of 1812
The Vulgar God botherer who spoke in tongues and denied everything. Was he paid forward for AUKUS?
His record as a bungling advertisement of malice also included his time as immigration minister, when he became Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s attack dog in the “turn back the boats” policy. Refugees and asylum seekers arriving by sea were demonised, lacerated and condemned, to be towed out, made to disappear in watery depths or – much the same thing – taken to Pacific Island concentration camps (Nauru, Manus Island) to be sadistically tortured, sexually molested and left to moulder. When the New York Times interviewed Morrison on becoming prime minister, the paper noticed something grotesque: “His office features a model migrant boat bearing the proud declaration ‘I Stopped These’.”
Pity, then, that the man himself has not been stopped, a vulgar reminder about where Australian politics went grossly wrong, and where its vulnerable, already trimmed sovereignty went.
Source: Scott Morrison: A blight on Australian politics – Pearls and Irritations
Israel, where the Orthodox Religious Zionists are the most powerful political group, although a minority, they hold politically privileged positions. The rise of Zionism in the late 19th century and the beginning of immigration to Eretz Yisrael, coming home as it were to the land God promised to Abraham in Genesis, if the timeline is correct some 4000 years ago, to retake the land at first little bit by little bit but since 1948 laying claim to it exclusively for God’s Chosen Ones. Using the communication tools of orthodoxy, to dumb down the argument, refuse to recognise that the people who have lived there for as long as time can be recorded are not defined as a people, but as terrorists, empty slogans which are never explained to denigrate and dehumanise. That was reminiscent of when Nazis tattooed a number of their prisoners, their names were obliterated, they were dehumanised, made a number.
An important question which deserves an answer is which takes precedence, Orthodoxy or humanity? A brief run through history it appears unfortunately that orthodoxy takes precedence.
Source: Orthodoxies or Humanity? – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Netanyahu insisted that once the war ends, Israel’s IDF will remain in control of Gaza. He said that Israel will have “overall security responsibility” over the Gaza Strip. “IDF forces will remain in control of the Strip, we will not give it to international forces.” In addition, Netanyahu has, in the words of The New York Times, “made clear he has no intention of resigning after the war in Gaza ends.”
Control signifies victory. Such control involves the further “concentration” of a shrinking Palestinian population and habitable land area. Israel may likely be forced to establish a quasi-permanent military presence – an unofficial “occupation force” – in preserve “security.” This also assumes, for example, that the U.S. will not cut a deal with Egypt to absorb the forced displacement of, say, one million Palestinians or those of the West Bank to Jordon.
IDF-above
Jews against Israel in California
Hitler Youth’s blinkered education from the cradle to the grave also hoped to achieve the same result. Israel may have done it in the short term but to last they will need to keep them locked in like they do in North Korea. Note the diaspora hasn’t come rushing to save Israel and they remain the majority and are furious.
It points to automatic obedience rather than to good citizenship. The army is trashing an entire region along with its residents, and that doesn’t bother our forces’ consciences.
We will never hear of any PTSD problem just as we never hear unvetted news from Israel. However, we have heard only 15% of Israelis support Netanyahu. How strange is that? Or that the IDF knew the Oct 7th was coming for a year beforehand and did nothing. They even shot their own and tried to cover it up. Pride comes before the fall
While Goebellian Propagandists like Dr. Eli David brag about Israel’s generosity for allowing hundreds of aid trucks into Gaza the drivers report they are being shot at by the Israelis. Fewer trucks enter daily for the 2.3M people than did before this war and back then they were only delivering the calorific minimum. Gazans had to supplement their own food sterilize their own water and queued for 12 hours to seek permission for medical help. Often simply refused and turned back.
The hospitals are now destroyed nothing grows and the civilians are totally imprisoned and living in tents or scavenged plastic. They are being killed,shot like fish in a barrel by 2000-pound American bomb, tanks, snipers, and conscripted troops on the ground. Meanwhile, The Supreme Court of Israel isn’t cheering as loudly as the Netanyahu Government would want and troops are being pulled out. Will the ICJ let this genocidal activity pass?
The use of mass starvation as a weapon of war echoes a historical barbarity that humanity should have long transcended. This egregious strategy, reminiscent of past sieges where starvation was deliberately employed as a tool of warfare, highlights the dire consequences of collective punishment on innocent civilians.
In Gaza, Israel has been deliberately blocking the delivery of water, food and other essentials to the besieged enclave’s 2.2 million people.
On Friday, the United Nations Security Council voted 13-1 for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and unconditional release of all hostages. The U.S. voted against the resolution. The U.K. abstained. The draft resolution was not adopted due to the U.S. veto.
Source: Chris Hedges: The Evil Israel Does is the Evil Israel Gets – ScheerPost
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