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SvennoJ on 10 February 2024
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US Senator Sanders says military aid for Israel ‘unacceptable’ amid fears of Rafah catastrophe

US Senator Bernie Sanders has taken aim at Congress for considering sending $14bn in military aid to Israel as it prepares to launch an assault on Rafah, which has raised fears of a humanitarian catastrophe. Sanders said it was “quite unbelievable” that the US was planning to provide more military aid to Benjamin Netanyahu’s government given the enormous death toll and destruction in Gaza.

“Does the United States Congress really want to provide more military aid to Netanyahu so that he can annihilate thousands and thousands more men, women and children? Sanders said in impassioned remarks to the US Senate. “Do we really want to reward Netanyahu even while he ignores virtually everything the president of the United States is asking him to do?”

‘Clearing’ Rafah ‘an outright attack on the innocent’: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has said that the planned Israeli “clearing” of Rafah is “a humanitarian disaster in the making”. “There is no other place for Gazans to go. Clearing Rafah is not war, it is not defense, it is an outright attack on the innocent,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a post on social media. “This is the moment for the United States to act,” she added, “we must exhaust the levers we have to prevent a humanitarian disaster in the making”.

Assault on Rafah would entail ‘grave violations’ of international law: Irish foreign minister

Ireland’s foreign minister has condemned Israel’s planned assault on Rafah, warning it is certain to entail “grave violations of international humanitarian law.” “It is absolutely clear that a military operation in Rafah, which has effectively now become one of the largest and most overcrowded refugee camps in the world, would entail grave violations of international humanitarian law,” Micheál Martin said in a statement on Saturday.

“It is also absolutely clear that ordering the evacuation of 1.5 million people, who have nowhere safe to go, risks mass forced displacement. This cannot be allowed to happen. All countries, including all EU Member States, must demand an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. There can be no further equivocation.”

Martin, who is also deputy prime minister, also called on Hamas to “immediately and unconditionally” release all of its captives in Gaza, and criticised the decision of some countries to freeze funding for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees over some staffs’ alleged links to Hamas. He added that UNRWA Commissioner-General Philip Lazzarini would visit Dublin next week to discuss further support Ireland can provide for his agency’s work.

Israel’s end game ‘the permanent destruction of the Gaza Strip and its people’: MEP

Irish MEP Clare Daly has called for an emergency conference of the EU Council to demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and prevent the “murderous onslaught” facing one million Palestinians in Rafah. Daly, a member of The Left in the European Parliament – GUE/NGL, said it has been clear since the start of the war that Israel’s “end game was the permanent destruction of the Gaza Strip” and it must be restrained by the European community.

“Right now a million defenceless and starving people with nowhere to go are facing Israel’s murderous onslaught,” Daly said in a post on X. “It is already too late for so much of Gaza, and for so many lives that are never coming back, but it is not too late to STOP THE KILLING and to save lives.”



Israeli transport minister: I will not agree to stop the war

Miri Regev, a member of PM Netanyahu’s Likud Party, has given an interview with Israeli broadcaster Channel 14, in which he said that regardless of any deal Israel agrees to with Hamas to secure the release of Israeli captives, he will not agree to a permanent ceasefire. “We need to understand that if we stop the war, the next step is massacre,” he said.

25 killed in bombing of home east of Rafah: Report

Our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic are reporting that 25 people have been killed and dozens more injured in the bombing of a home where displaced people were sheltering East of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip.

WHO expresses solidarity with PRCS after two ambulance crew killed rescuing 6-year-old

The World Health Organization’s office in the occupied Palestinian territory has issued a statement in solidarity with the Palestine Red Crescent Society after two of its ambulance crew members were killed while trying to reach six-year-old Hind Rajab. “WHO stands in solidarity with our colleagues at PRCS and mourns the deaths of Yusuf Zeino and Ahmed Al-Madhoun, brave PRCS ambulance crew members killed while trying to reach 6-year-old Hind.”

“We offer our deepest condolences to the families of those who were killed, including Hind,” the statement added. “Despite prior coordination to allow the ambulance to reach the location to rescue the child, Hind, the occupation deliberately targeted the Palestine Red Crescent ambulance crew,” the PRCS said earlier.






Still denying the 75 years of oppression

France condemns UN rapporteur for denying anti-Semitism behind October 7 attacks

The French government has condemned a UN special rapporteur after she denied that Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel were anti-Semitic. “The October 7 massacre is the largest anti-Semitic massacre of the 21st century. Disputing it is a mistake. Seeming to justify it, by including the name of the United Nations, is a disgrace,” France’s Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs said in a post on X. “These comments are all the more scandalous since the fight against anti-Semitism and all forms of racism are at the heart of the founding of the UN.”

The rebuke comes after Francesca Albanese, the special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, disputed French President Emmanuel Macron’s description this week of the attacks as the “greatest anti-Semitic massacre of our century”. “The victims of 7/10 were not killed because of their Judaism, but in response to Israel’s oppression,” Albanese said on X. “France & the international community did nothing to prevent it. My respects to the victims.”

Ofcourse France wouldn't want to look into the past, admitting the Sykes-Picot agreement and French colonialism is a big part of the mess the Middle East is in. Stick to the approved Hasbara, conflict started on Oct 7 and Hamas just hates jews because.