UN official criticised for not naming Israel in a statement after Gaza trip
Tor Wennesland, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, posted the statement on X in which he condemned the “horrifying civilian death toll” and the “tragic killing of six hostages” but did not name Israel as the perpetrator.
“Really, Tor? Almost a year in, and you still speak of ‘conflict’, with not a whisper about Israel’s genocide in Palestine? You condemn the ‘death toll’ in Gaza but don’t utter the name of the victims (say it, Tor, ‘Palestinians’), or the name of the killers (say it, Tor, ‘Israel’),” said Craig Mokhiber, a former top UN official.
Mouin Rabbani, a co-editor of Jadaliyya and non-resident fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies posted a response on X in which he said: “What’s the point of retaining a UN diplomat on the payroll who, visiting Gaza for the first time in months, cannot muster the courage to even mention Israel by name.”
What’s the point of retaining a UN diplomat on the payroll who, visiting Gaza for the first time in months, cannot muster the courage to even mention Israel by name and amidst more than 40,000 killings condemns only the killings of six Israelis. This goes beyond moral and… https://t.co/0RntvjVhPl
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) September 2, 2024
UNSC set to discuss plight of Israeli captives
Danny Danon, Israel’s envoy to the UN, said the Security Council will convene a meeting on Wednesday to hold an official discussion on Israeli captives for the first time.
“It is a disgrace that it has taken the Council 11 months and the brutal execution of six hostages by Hamas terrorists to finally convene this discussion,” he wrote in a post on X.
Danon said the UNSC should unequivocally condemn Hamas’s actions and “demand the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages”.
Scabies spreading in Israeli prisons, say Palestinian prisoner organisations
The Israeli Prison Service (IPS) in the Ramon and Nafha prisons told lawyers that scheduled visits were cancelled for quarantine reasons due to the spread of scabies among the prisoners on a large scale, the Palestinian Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs Commission and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) said.
The two organisations explained that scabies had spread widely among the detainees in several prisons, specifically in Naqab, Megiddo, Nafha and Rimon, due to harsh measures imposed by the IPS on the prisoners after October 7.
The organisations added that according to testimonies from detainees inside the prisons, conveyed to their lawyers, the IPS had turned scabies into a tool of “torture and abuse” by deliberately committing medical crimes against them, depriving them of treatment, and not taking any of the necessary measures to prevent the spread of the disease.
IPS measures imposed on prisoners, including the lack of necessary quantities of shower materials, a lack of ventilation and the isolation of prisoners in cells that lack sunlight, have contributed significantly to the spread of diseases, the organisations said.
