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SvennoJ on 16 July 2024
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HRW slams EU’s inability to jointly condemn Israel’s killing of Gaza civilians

Human Rights Watch has inked a letter calling out the EU’s inability to jointly condemn Israel’s killing of civilians in Gaza due to the persistent refusal of some member states.

The EU has “yet to collectively acknowledge, denounce, and adopt appropriate measures to address the Israeli authorities’ war crimes and other international humanitarian law (IHL) violations, some of which have led to the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza,” the letter said.

The group said the EU faces “growing and well-grounded” accusations of double standards on Israel and Palestine, “which are harming the EU’s reputation as a global champion of human rights and international law”.

The double standards, they attribute to some countries and civil rights groups, are in reference to the EU’s use of slogans and generic statements of concern, instead of condemning war crimes and other IHL violations, “and adopting effective and persuasive measures to address them”.

Some detainees sexually assaulted in Israeli prisons: Lawyer

Editor’s note: This reporting contains graphic descriptions of torture and sexual assault.

A lawyer for the Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs has said that a prisoner gave eyewitness testimony of other detainees being sodomised or sexually assaulted.

According to the commission and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, Khaled Mahajna spoke with journalist Mohammed Arab, who was detained in Gaza and taken from Sde Teiman in the Negev Desert and was later taken to Ofer prison, near Ramallah.

At Sde Teiman, Arab said he witnessed prisoners “being raped, including a detainee who was completely stripped and had a fire extinguisher hose inserted into his rectum, and the extinguisher was discharged inside him. The detainee is in a very serious physical and psychological condition”.

“Another detainee was completely stripped and electrocuted, his genitals were yanked, in addition to other methods of sexual abuse that are difficult to describe,” Arab told Mahajna, according to the organisations’ statement.