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SvennoJ on 11 March 2024
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Palestinian minister to speak at UN on Gaza women’s suffering

Palestine’s UN delegation has presented the team that will represent the state at today’s session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women. They are led by Amal Hamad, minister of women’s affairs of  Palestine, and will be “speaking on the inhumane suffering of Palestinian women in Gaza”.

Palestine envoy tells UN that settler sanctions should encompass whole communities

Riyad Mansour, Palestine’s envoy to the United Nations, says sanctions should include an entire illegal Israeli settlement built on Palestinian land, rather than individual settlers. He told a meeting of the UN Palestinian Rights Committee in New York that such settlements “stem from an illegal system” and must be treated as illegal as a whole, reports Al Jazeera Arabic’s Rami Ayari.

Mansour is also following up on his position that Israel’s membership in the UN General Assembly must be frozen as Tel Aviv has rejected the interim rulings of the UN’s top court on genocide in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian team is also pushing for a full membership for Palestine at the UN.

Israel coerced some agency employees to falsely admit Hamas links: UNRWA report

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) says some employees released into Gaza from Israeli detention have reported being pressured by Israeli authorities to falsely state that the agency has Hamas links and staff took part in the October 7 Hamas attacks on southern Israel.

The assertions are contained in a report by UNRWA reviewed by the Reuters news agency and dated February 2024. The report details allegations of mistreatment in Israeli detention made by unidentified Palestinians, including several working for UNRWA.

The document said several of UNRWA’s Palestinian staffers had been detained by the Israeli army and the ill-treatment and abuse they said they experienced while they were held included severe beatings, waterboarding and threats of harm to family members.

“Agency staff members have been subject to threats and coercion by the Israeli authorities while in detention, and pressured to make false statements against the Agency, including that the Agency has affiliations with Hamas and that UNRWA staff members took part in the 7 October 2023 atrocities,” the report said.

UNRWA, which provides aid and essential services to Palestinian refugees, is the subject of Israeli allegations made in January that 12 of its 13,000 staff in Gaza took part in the Hamas attacks on Israel. The Israeli accusations led 16 countries, including the United States, to pause $450m in UNRWA funding, throwing its operations into crisis.

US progressives push back against AIPAC’s influence as war rages in Gaza

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/11/reject-aipac-us-progressives-join-forces-against-pro-israel-lobby-group

Prominent progressive organisations in the US are joining together to push back against the political and electoral influence of the country’s most powerful pro-Israel lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

More than 20 advocacy groups launched a formal coalition called Reject AIPAC to organise against what they called AIPAC’s campaign to​​ silence the “growing dissent in Congress” against Israel’s war on Gaza.


Protesters gather near the offices of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on February 22, 2024, during a rally in New York City demanding a ceasefire and an end to Israel’s attacks on Gaza



Another war criminal

Netanyahu meets with Indian national security adviser in Israel

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has received Indian National Security Adviser Ajit Doval in order to “update” him on Gaza, Netanyahu’s office says in a post on X. “The sides also discussed the effort to release the hostages and the issue of humanitarian assistance,” his office said.

The Hindu nationalist government of India has stood staunchly behind Israel amid its war on Gaza, overturning decades of support for the Palestinian cause, and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi established warm relations with Netanyahu as he began his premiership in 2014.