At least the US is starting to take Settler violence more seriously:
https://www.axios.com/2023/12/13/us-israel-rifle-sale-delay-west-bank-violence
The Biden administration is again holding up the licenses for selling more than 20,000 U.S.-made rifles to Israel over concerns about attacks by extremist Israeli settlers against Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank, two U.S. officials told Axios.
- The Israeli request was treated with caution by the Biden administration because of concerns Itamar Ben Gvir, the ultra-nationalist minister of national security who oversees the police, would distribute the rifles to extremist settlers in the West Bank, according to U.S. officials.
- The Biden administration and Congress approved the export licenses for U.S. defense companies only after being assured the weapons wouldn't go to civilian teams in Jewish settlements.
Behind the scenes: Several weeks after the deal was approved, the U.S. State Department decided to slow-walk the process and put the licenses under a new review, the U.S. officials said.
- The U.S. officials said the reason for the new review was the feeling in the Biden administration that the Israeli government wasn't doing enough to tackle settler violence and claiming the U.S. is "inflating the issue."
- The Biden administration was alarmed by a report in the Israeli press about a secret document written by the commander of the IDF central command that claimed Ben Gvir gave an order to the police not to arrest violent settlers in the West Bank.
However the shipments of tank shells and heavy bombs continues.
https://abc7chicago.com/hamas-israel-war-tank-ammunition-joe-biden/14163284/
Going around Congress, the Biden administration said Saturday it has approved the emergency sale to Israel of nearly 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition worth more than $106 million as Israel intensifies its military operations in the southern Gaza Strip.
More attacks on free speech and the freedom of assembly, more distractions
Rutgers University has issued an "interim suspension" of the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter on its New Brunswick campus, in response to complaints of disruptive behavior and vandalism by the group.
"You allegedly have had multiple cases of disrupting classes, a program, meals, and students studying," Associate Dean of Students Michelle Jefferson told the organization in a letter sent Monday. She also cited "allegations of vandalism occurring at the Rutgers Business School while your program was taking place."
In a statement on Wednesday, the student group defended its protests as peaceful and said Rutgers had punished it based on unsubstantiated allegations. It accused the school of applying a "racist double-standard," alleging it had failed to act upon allegations of harassment and doxxing directed at Palestinian and Muslim students.
Geneva - Israel has killed more than 10,000 infants and children since the start of its attack on the Gaza Strip on 7 October, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reported in a statement issued Saturday.
Euro-Med Monitor said that 23,012 Palestinians have been killed so far in the intense Israeli air and artillery attacks on the Gaza Strip, including 9,077 children. As hundreds of additional children remaintrapped under the rubble of destroyed buildings with little chance of survival, the total number of child deaths is likely to exceed 10,000.
According to Euro-Med Monitor figures, roughly 700,000 children have been affected by Israel’s Gaza genocide, a number that includes those who were killed, injured, and internally displaced.
The rights group said that United Nations agencies such as UNICEF have declined to disclose the actual number of casualties, as this would require confronting their own inability to perform their roles, which supposedly entail saving trapped or wounded victims and effectively preventing the deaths of countless children in Gaza.
The ongoing Israeli attacks have left over 18,000 Palestinian children injured, with many in critical condition. Dozens more have suffered amputations, and hundreds more have suffered severe burns to various parts of their bodies.
Euro-Med Monitor further estimated that between 24,000 and 25,000 children in the Gaza Strip have lost one or both parents, and approximately 640,000 have had their homes destroyed or damaged, leaving them without a place to live.
https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/horrific-testimonies-shared-field-executions-forced-displacement-and-random-arrests-gazan-civilians-including-children-enar
Reem Alsalem, the UN’s special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, says that during this war, “being a Palestinian woman or a child has really meant being stripped of any humanity, dignity, safety or any special considerations” usually accorded to them.
“I cannot think of any protection that civilians are entitled to according to the laws of war that have been upheld in this conflict,” she told Al Jazeera.
“And I cannot think of any violation of the laws of war and human rights that Palestinians – including women and children – have not been subjected to.”
https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6030/Israel-turns-schools-into-military-centres,-conducting-field-executions-and-mass-killings
https://www.commondreams.org/news/gaza-school-attack
https://www.cair.com/press_releases/cair-calls-on-biden-admin-to-respond-to-alleged-israeli-execution-style-massacre-of-women-children-and-babies-seeking-refuge-in-gaza-school/
https://www.btselem.org/press_releases/20231213_israeli_organizations_to_president_biden_stop_the_humanitarian_catastrophe
Israeli Human rights and civil society organizations sent a letter yesterday (Tuesday, 12 Dec. 2023) to US President Biden, asking him to use his influence to change Israel’s policy and prevent the deteriorating humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip. The letter is also published as a print advertisement in the New York Times.
The problem is not the USA supporting Israel, it's the USA supporting and standing firmly behind the ultra right wing nationalist government in Israel.
https://www.vox.com/world/2023/1/20/23561464/israel-new-right-wing-government-extreme-protests-netanyahu-biden-ben-gvir
Nationalist, exclusionist, and far, far right: The most extreme Israeli government in the nation’s history has taken shape.
The policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s newly sworn-in governing coalition brought out 80,000 protesters over the weekend in Tel Aviv. The protesters were largely focused on the government’s proposals to overhaul the judicial system, which could weaken the country’s democracy and separation of powers. But the effects of the policies on the 1.6 million Palestinian citizens of Israel and the 5.2 million Palestinians living in the occupied territories will be catastrophic, building upon years of policies that Israeli human rights organizations say constitute crimes against humanity.
That was last Januari...
