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SvennoJ on 19 February 2024
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Brazil will not retract Lula’s comments comparing Israel’s war on Gaza to Hitler: Report

Brazil has said that it won’t be retracting comments made by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva drawing parallels between Israel’s war on Gaza and the Holocaust despite an ongoing diplomatic fallout, the Reuters news agency reports, citing anonymous sources.

“What is happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people has no parallel in other historical moments,” Lula said at the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. “In fact, it did exist when Hitler decided to kill the Jews,” he said.

In the ensuing fallout, Brazil summoned Israel’s Ambassador to Brazil for talks. Brazil’s Foreign Ministry has also recalled its ambassador to Israel following an announcement by Tel Aviv that Lula would be “persona non grata” until he retracted his comments. “We will not forget nor forgive,” Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz said.


Israeli forces kill, wound Palestinians waiting for food aid in Gaza

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/20/israeli-forces-kill-wound-palestinians-waiting-for-food-aid-in-gaza

Video footage verified by Al Jazeera shows Palestinian people fleeing to take cover after coming under attack from Israeli forces as they waited for humanitarian aid in northern Gaza. At least one Palestinian man was killed and many others wounded in the barrage of gunfire that targeted a group of people waiting for the distribution of food aid.


Volunteers distribute rations of red lentil soup to displaced Palestinians in the southern Gaza Strip on February 18, 2024

Time has run out

In Gaza ‘hunger and disease’ a deadly combination for children, UN warns

Alarm bells are being sounded by the UN’s children agency (UNICEF), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Food Programme following the publication of a new report on malnutrition in Gaza. “We’ve been warning for weeks that the Gaza Strip is on the brink of a nutrition crisis,” UNICEF Deputy Executive Director for Humanitarian Action Ted Chaiban said.

“The Gaza Strip is poised to witness an explosion in preventable child deaths which would compound the already unbearable level of child deaths in Gaza,” Chaiban said.

According to the report, the situation is extreme in the north of Gaza, which has been cut off from almost all humanitarian aid relief for weeks and where 15.6 percent – or one in six children – under the age of two are “acutely malnourished”. In the south, in Rafah, 5 percent of children under two are acutely malnourished.

“Hunger and disease are a deadly combination,” Dr Mike Ryan, head of the WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme said. “Hungry, weakened and deeply traumatised children are more likely to get sick… It’s dangerous, and tragic, and happening before our eyes,” Ryan said.

Irish FM: EU ‘must do everything possible’ to stop Rafah attack

Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin has said the European Union must pressure the Israeli government into not attacking Rafah in southern Gaza. Speaking in Brussels, Martin said the “level of inhumanity that’s now happening within Gaza” has shocked the world, the German news agency dpa reports.

He said Europe “must do everything possible” to prevent Israel’s planned ground offensive in Rafah. Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister Xavier Bettel said that he had warned Israel that it was in danger of losing “the last support they have in the world” should they attack Rafah, where some 1.5 million Palestinians have fled for safety.


Palestinians at a market in Rafah, Gaza Strip, on February 18, 2024



It's clear Netanyahu doesn't give a crap about the ICJ or anyone really

Netanyahu says Palestinian state would ‘endanger our existence’

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that there has been an “international attempt to force upon us a Palestinian state”, as he reiterated his opposition to a two-state solution.

“Citizens of Israel, Everyone knows that it was me who – for decades – has blocked the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger our existence,” he said in a post on X. Netanyahu added that Israel will maintain “full security control” over all areas west of the Jordan River, including Gaza.

Yesterday, we reported that Netanyahu announced that he will submit legislation to the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, to formally reject a two-state solution.





The Westbank keeps turning more and more into a war zone, resistance is getting more violent as well

Israeli forces targeted with Molotov cocktails in Ramallah

Video footage verified by Al Jazeera captures the moment Israeli military vehicles were hit by Molotov cocktails in the occupied West Bank’s Ramallah. The video clip shows two military trucks being hit when at least three petrol bombs were hurled at the moving Israeli vehicles.

The Wafa news agency reported earlier that a young Palestinian man was arrested in Kafr Ni’ma town, west of Ramallah, in the early hours of Tuesday morning following a raid on his family home by Israeli forces.