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SvennoJ on 18 January 2024
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Biden’s admission about Yemen strikes sparks discussion on US foreign policy failure

US President Joe Biden’s acknowledgement that strikes on Yemen’s Houthi rebels have failed to halt the group’s attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea has set social media abuzz with discussion about the track record of US foreign policy.

Asked by a reporter on Thursday if the strikes on Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen were working, Biden said: “Well, when you say working, are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they gonna continue? Yes.”

Some commentators online have taken Biden’s remarks as a rare admission – albeit inadvertent – that Washington’s foreign policy has routinely failed to achieve its aims.




No longer maybe, UN special rapporteur now certain International law was breached

https://www.barrons.com/news/un-expert-says-israel-s-gaza-offensive-breaches-international-law-3117d048

UN Expert Says Israel's Gaza Offensive Breaches International Law

Israel has broken international law with its "relentless" bombardment of Gaza that has levelled neighbourhoods and killed thousands of Palestinians, a UN rights expert said Thursday. The comments by Francesca Albanese, an Italian lawyer who is the UN special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, came as Israel confronts a case brought by South Africa to the UN's International Court of Justice accusing it of genocide.

"Israel has done a number of things that are highly illegal, highly unlawful," Albanese told a Madrid news conference. While Israel has the right to self-defence, international humanitarian law must be respected "to protect people who are not actively involved in combat. Civilians, prisoners of war and the sick and wounded," she added. This meant distinguishing between combatants and civilians and ensuring military attacks are proportionate to avoid excessive harm to civilians, Albanese said.

"Instead what has happened is over 100 days of relentless bombing  -- the first two weeks using 6,000 bombs per week, bombs of 2,000 pounds, in highly crowded area." she said. "Most hospitals have been made dysfunctional. A good number of them, the major ones, have been closed, bombed or taken over by the army. People are dying now not only because of the bombs but because there is not sufficient health infrastructure to cure them of wounds. "The number of kids who get amputated every day is shocking, one or two limbs. During the first two months of this (war) 1,000 kids were amputated without anaesthesia. It is a monstrosity," she added.


Obstetrician says she is “ashamed and shocked that we’re doing this to fellow humans” after Gaza visit

A British obstetrician who spent two weeks volunteering at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza says she feels “desperate … ashamed, and shocked that we’re doing this to fellow humans.” 

Dr. Deborah Harrington told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour she traveled to the strip at the end of December as part of a team led by the International Rescue Committee and Medical Aid for Palestine. Most of the patients Harrington attended to in the emergency department were children.  Every day she saw “a horrendous mix of [children with] open fractures, partial amputations, open chest wounds, horrendous lacerations from shrapnel to the sort of chest.” 

Harrington, who has visited Gaza since 2016, also painted a dire picture for pregnant women and babies in the enclave. “There is no antenatal care for women… and the women I saw were really severely anemic,” she said. “Many women can never even reach a hospital to give birth.

”At least 20 out of 22 hospitals identified by CNN in northern Gaza were damaged or destroyed in the first two months of Israel's war against Hamas, from October 7 to December 7, according to a review of 45 satellite images and around 400 videos from the ground, as well as interviews with doctors, eyewitnesses and humanitarian organizations. Fourteen were directly hit, based on the evidence collected and verified by CNN and analyzed by experts. 

The Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza says Israel “has deliberately targeted 150 health institutions, putting 30 hospitals and 53 health centers out of service, and targeting 122 ambulances." CNN cannot independently verify these numbers and CNN has reached out to the Israeli military for comment.



Israeli PM repeats ‘total victory’ eight times in fiery speech on Gaza war

Benjamin Netanyahu invoked the name of god in a speech in which he said the war on the Palestinian territory “will not stop” until Israeli forces are completely victorious in their war aims. Amid reports that Israel’s military is moving to a less-intensive form of combat in Gaza, Netanyahu said Israeli forces “will continue to fight with full force until we achieve all of our goals”.

“I say this again so that no one will be in doubt: We are striving for total victory, not just ‘to strike Hamas’ or ‘to hurt Hamas’, not ‘another round with Hamas’, but total victory over Hamas,” he said in a heated speech, extracts of which were released later in a statement. “We will not stop. We will not finish the war before returning our loved ones home; we will not finish the war before total victory,” he said.



Israeli ‘massacres’ carried out under communications blackout: Ministry

Under the cover of a near-total communications blackout in the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces have carried out 15 “massacres” that killed 172 people and injured 326 others in a 24-hour period, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said.

In a post on social media, the ministry asks how much more Palestinian “blood and lives” must be lost before countries “recognise the urgent need for an immediate ceasefire”. “Are they waiting for the displacement of millions of Palestinians to understand Netanyahu’s true goals for the war?” the ministry asks.

Gaza is entering its seventh day of a communications blackout on Friday, which has hampered aid agencies from accurately reporting the humanitarian situation on the ground.

The UN reports that, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, between the afternoons of January 17 and 18, 172 Palestinians were killed, and another 326 people were injured.

OCHA also noted that the availability of water for drinking and domestic use in Gaza is shrinking each day, with only one of the three Israeli water supply lines functional.

OCHA also said that in the first two weeks of January, only seven of 29 planned humanitarian missions delivering life-saving aid to areas in northern Gaza were completed, with Israeli authorities denying humanitarian access 76 percent of the time.

Last edited by SvennoJ - on 18 January 2024