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SvennoJ on 16 April 2024

Iraqi PM: No reports of drones launched from territory during Iranian attack

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani says he has not received any reports or indications that missiles or drones were launched from Iraq during Iran’s attack on Israel.

“Our position is clear, and we will not allow Iraq to be thrown into the arena of conflict,” al-Sudani said in a statement.

Iraqi airspace was a main route for Iran’s Saturday night attack on Israel, and Iraqi officials say Iran informed them, as well as other countries in the region, before the attack.

More lies exposed from US and UK. It was obvious anyway that the countries in the region were informed before the attack. Unless they're all clairvoyant and synchronized closing their air spaces to commercial traffic by coincidence before the attack.


Google employees protest company’s ties with Israeli government

Groups of employees of the tech giant have entered two of the company’s offices, one in Sunnyvale, California, and one in New York City.

The protesters at the California office say they will not leave until Google pulls out of a $1.2bn contract it shares with Amazon, that would see it provide the Israeli government with cloud services and data centres.

Some at the company have long opposed the contract, known as “Nimbus”, but the conflict within the tech giant has expanded since Israel began its assault on Gaza.


US politics is just embarrassing. 

Qatar responds to congressman’s threat to ‘re-evaluate’ US-Qatar relationship

The Qatari embassy in the US has issued a statement saying it was “surprised” by comments made by US lawmaker Steny Hoyer and his threat to “re-evaluate” the US’s relationship with Qatar.

Yesterday, Hoyer released a statement calling on Qatar to put pressure on Hamas to accept a ceasefire proposal that is acceptable to the Isralei government, and threatened to reassess ties between the US and Qatar if it does not do so.

“Hamas has also sought to use its intermediary Qatar – which has long helped finance, back, and house the terrorist organization – to exact greater concessions from Israel”, Hoyer’s statement read.

The Qatari embassy said that it “shares” Hoyer’s frustration at the slow progress of truce talks, but stressed that “Israel and Hamas are entirely responsible for reaching an agreement”.

“Blaming and threatening the mediator is not constructive, especially when the target is a friend and major non-NATO ally that presently hosts 10,000 US troops and America’s largest military presence in the Middle East”, the embassy’s statement added.



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SvennoJ on 16 April 2024

Palestinians subjected to ‘ill-treatment’ during detention, says UNRWA

The UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) says in a new report that since April 4, Israeli forces have released 1,506 detainees from Gaza through the Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing point. Those released included 43 children and 84 women. Among them were 16 family members of UNRWA staff and “326 Gazan labourers working in Israel”.

Following the launch of Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza in October, reports emerged of Palestinians being detained. During their detention, many reported “ill-treatment”.

“This included being subjected to beatings while made to lie on a thin mattress on top of rubble for hours without food, water or access to a toilet, with their legs and hands bound with plastic ties,” the report found. “Several detainees reported being forced into cages and attacked by dogs. Some released detainees, including a child, had dog-bite wounds on their body”.

The report added that some detainees were threatened with extended detention times, injury or the deaths of family members if they did not give authorities the information they wanted.

Palestinian detainees subjected to ‘sexual violence’ by Israeli army: UNRWA

A report from the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) on the treatment of Palestinian detainees finds that in “most” reported incidents, the Israeli army forced males, both men and boys, to “strip down” to their underwear.

“Both men and women reported threats and incidents that may amount to sexual violence and harassment by the [Israeli army] while in detention. Male victims reported beatings to their genitals while one detainee reported being made to sit on an electrical probe,” the report said.

The report added that female detainees had also described “psychological abuse”.

“They asked the soldiers to spit on me, saying, ‘She is a b****. She is from Gaza.’ They were beating us as we moved and saying they would put pepper on our sensitive parts [genitals],” a 34-year-old female detainee told UNRWA.


Gaza’s interior ministry decries Israeli attack on police vehicle

Several people were killed in the Tuffah neighbourhood of eastern Gaza City in an attack on a police vehicle. Gaza’s Interior Ministry has condemned the attack, which it said killed seven “officers and members of the police force”, as well as other bystanders, for a total of nine deaths.

The Israeli army’s “repeated, targeted attacks on security forces” across Gaza is an attempt to create an atmosphere of chaos among residents of the strip, the ministry said in a statement.

“We call on all parties within the international community to pressure the occupation to halt its attacks against members of the police force, who are carrying out their duties to serve and protect our people,” it added.



UN calls on states to end ‘horrific’ humanitarian crisis in Gaza

Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the UN high commissioner for human rights, has called on states to help halt the “increasingly horrific human rights and humanitarian crisis in Gaza”.

“No area of the Gaza Strip has been spared from Israel’s bombardment. We have nearly 1.7 million people who remain forcibly displaced, living in appalling conditions and under constant threat,” she told reporters in Geneva.

In the past week alone, she said, fighting intensified in central Gaza, leading to the displacement of 10,000 people.

UN calls for protection of Palestinians from settler attacks in occupied West Bank

In further remarks to reporters from Geneva, the spokesperson for the UN high commissioner for human rights called on countries “with influence to do everything in their power” to end violence in the occupied West Bank.

Shamdasani made the comments as attacks by settlers against Palestinians and their property continue to rise. At least four Palestinians have been killed in such attacks since Friday, and many have taken place with the support of Israeli soldiers.

“Dozens of Palestinians have reportedly been injured, including through the use of firearms, by settlers and by Israeli security forces, and hundreds of homes and other buildings as well as cars have been torched,” Shamdasani said.

“Israel, as the occupying power, must take all measures in its power to restore and ensure as far as possible public order and safety in the occupied West Bank. This obligation includes protecting Palestinians from settler attacks and ending unlawful use of force against Palestinians by Israeli security forces,” she added.



Settler violence backed by Israel’s ‘impunity’: Human rights group

Last week began a massive surge in violence by Israeli settlers on Palestinian residents of the occupied West Bank.

But Wesam Ahmad, head of the Center for Applied International Law at Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq, says it stems from the policy long held by the Israeli government, which allows and tacitly supports these kinds of attacks.



Settler violence backed by Israel’s ‘impunity’

Wesam Ahmad, head of the Al-Haq human rights group’s Center for Applied International Law, says the rise in settler violence in the occupied West Bank is linked to the war on Gaza and emboldened by Israel’s sense of “impunity”.

“There’s a strong symbiotic relationship between the Israeli occupying forces and Israeli settlers working in collaboration to various levels or, at the very least, the Israeli occupying forces allowing the settlers to carry out these attacks without doing anything to prevent them,” Ahmad told Al Jazeera.

He explained that the Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank, has “very limited” power.

“I think it’s inherent for the international community to step in. This is a context of coloniser and colonised, and the idea that the colonised with their limited capacity can confront the coloniser in this asymmetrical power dynamic is absurd. This is where the international community needs to step up,” he added.

 



SvennoJ on 16 April 2024

Time to ‘right historic wrong’ of Palestine’s UN membership: Arab countries

A group of Arab UN member states has written to UN Security Council (UNSC) members imploring them to support Palestine’s bid for full UN membership.

“The time has come to right this historic wrong and fulfill the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination, sovereignty, and statehood,” the Arab Group statement said.

“At the very least, we implore Council members not to obstruct this critical initiative”, the statement added, saying “anything less would be a blatant abdication of the Council’s responsibility to uphold the principles of the UN Charter and international law”.

More than the required two-thirds of UN General Assembly member states already recognise Palestinian statehood but the application must first be approved by the UNSC where permanent members, including the United States, can veto resolutions.






‘Vast majority’ of attacks on UN sites in Gaza carried out by Israeli forces: UNRWA

In the five months between the start of Israel’s war on Gaza on October 7 and March 15, the UN has documented 349 “incidents” – including attacks from air, land and naval forces – against premises flying the UN’s flag in the Palestinian enclave, which has resulted in the killing of 408 displaced people.

At least 15 children are among those killed and seven UN staff members, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said. At least 1,406 people were also injured in the documented attacks on UN facilities in Gaza, including 111 children and 43 UNRWA staff, according to data released on Tuesday.

UNRWA said it had been providing the coordinates of all its premises in Gaza to both Israeli forces and authorities in the Palestinian territory and had “strengthened” engagement regarding the location of UN sites in Gaza following the start of the war on October 7.

“While facts surrounding many incidents remain under verification, the information so far available to UNRWA indicates that damage and/or harm caused in the vast majority of incidents appears to have resulted in whole or in part from attacks and actions undertaken by Israeli Forces (both munitions impacts and interference with UN premises),” UNRWA said.

There were “a much smaller number of incidents from attacks and actions undertaken by Palestinian armed groups”, UNRWA added.

Search for survivors in Rafah city bombing



Palestinians search for survivors after an Israeli air attack on a house in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Wednesday morning. The AP news agency said the home belonged to the Abo al Hanood family. Wafa reported that seven people including children were killed in the attack.



SvennoJ on 16 April 2024

US war mongering

Evangelical Pastor John Hage is urging D.C. lawmakers to RESIST the urge to deescalate the war between Israel and Iran.




This Republican Wants People To Violently Attack Pro-Palestinian Protesters





SvennoJ on 16 April 2024

"Israel Has Been DEFEATED. A Total Defeat" - Israeli Newspaper's Shocking Admission




Jewish German ARRESTED Over Gaza Speaks Out



Germany is persecuting Jews in the name of combating antisemitism. The world is turned upside down.



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SvennoJ on 17 April 2024

Hamas says freeing prisoners a ‘top priority’

Today is Palestinian Prisoner’s Day, a national day dedicated to freeing Palestinian prisoners and showing support for their rights. In a statement marking the day, Hamas emphasised that freeing its prisoners from Israeli jails is a “top priority”.

“[Israel] continues to practice the most heinous crimes against prisoners inside prisons and detention centres, including medical negligence, torture and direct killing,” said Hamas.

It added that it holds Israel “fully responsible for the lives and safety of thousands of abductees detained in the West Bank” since October 7.



9,500 political prisoners held in Israel on Palestinian Prisoner’s Day






SvennoJ on 17 April 2024

‘Terrible scale’: Fake images hit social media after Iran strikes on Israel

Social media was swamped with dozens of misrepresented visuals after Iran’s attack on Israel.

Many of the falsehoods about the Iranian strikes were amplified by what researchers identified as accounts posing as “OSINT” – or open-source intelligence – investigators, feigning digital expertise to further blur the distinction between fact and fiction.

“The fact that so much misinformation is being spread by accounts looking for clout or financial benefit is giving cover to even more nefarious actors,” Isabelle Frances-Wright, director of technology at the nonprofit Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), told AFP news agency.

“The corrosion of the information landscape is undermining the ability of audiences to distinguish truth from falsehood on a terrible scale.”

ISD identified nearly three dozen false, misleading, or artificial intelligence-generated images and videos that claimed online to show the Iran attack. The posts received more than 37 million views on X in the hours afterwards.


UK is fine with WW3

‘Clear’ Israel has decided to respond to Iran attack: UK’s Cameron

British Foreign Minister David Cameron says it’s clear Israel has made the decision to respond to the Iranian drone and ballistic missile attack. Cameron said he hoped the retaliation would be carried out in a way that “minimised” escalation.

“It’s clear the Israelis are making a decision to act,” Cameron, speaking to reporters in Israel, said. “We hope they do so in a way that does as little to escalate this as possible.”

Britain wants to see coordinated sanctions against Iran, he added. “They need to be given a clear unequivocal message by the G7.”


‘We cannot stand still from this kind of aggression’: Israel army

Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari says Iran will not get off “scot-free” after Tehran and its allies launched a barrage of more than 300 missiles, drones and rockets at Israel. “We cannot stand still from this kind of aggression,” Hagari said.

World leaders have urged restraint and de-escalation in the aftermath of the unprecedented weekend attack.

Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi said: “What our armed forces have done is a declaration to Washington and Israel’s supporters that our forces are strong and ready to face any threat. The Iranian military operation against Israel is a strategic defeat for the Zionist entity.”

Iran’s Raisi: We have shattered Israel’s perceived ‘hegemony’

Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi has completed his speech as Iran begins its annual military parade.

Here are highlights from his remarks:

  • Iran’s weekend attack against Israel — operation “True Promise” — demonstrated the Iranian military’s strength and shattered Israel’s perceived “hegemony”.
  • The attack against Israel was “limited” in nature. But if Israel retaliates by waging the slightest attack on Iranian interests, there will be a “fierce response”.
  • Islamic countries that sought to normalise ties with Israel have experienced failure and are now “ashamed”.
  • Public opinion is turning against the United States and Israeli governments at an unprecedented rate. This shows the “victory of the discourse of the Islamic resistance movement”.
  • Iran’s armed forces are trustworthy, reliable, and a “source of pride for the Islamic Ummah”. Countries in the region should rely on “the powerful Muslim forces” rather than striking deals with Israel.

 

Divided Israeli war cabinet likely to deliver ‘measured’ response to Iran attack

For the first time in the history of the Middle East, there was a coalition of countries that worked together to protect Israel – including Arab countries – during Iran’s attack, an analyst says.

Part of Israel’s war cabinet would like to see more efforts towards this coalition-building as opposed to the “warmongers'” side which wants to attack Iran directly, said Tamer Qarmout, assistant professor of public policy at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.

Israel’s retaliatory response is on the horizon but it will likely be “a measured, calculated one”, Qarmout told Al Jazeera.

Western leaders, meanwhile, have full leverage in directing Israel, while sanctions on Iran would hardly make an impact, he added. “I think the era of sanctions is over. I mean, you see the Russian-Ukraine war – Western countries were betting that Russia’s economy will collapse in three or four months. But it didn’t happen. Iran is more or less in a similar position. And it has a new strategic partners including Russia and China.”

 

Last edited by SvennoJ - on 17 April 2024

SvennoJ on 17 April 2024

‘5,000 lives in one shell’: Gaza fertility clinic hit by Israeli strike

When an Israeli shell struck Gaza’s largest fertility clinic in December it destroyed more than 4,000 embryos plus 1,000 sperm specimens and unfertilised eggs, according to a report by Reuters news agency.

The Israeli strike blasted the lids off five liquid nitrogen tanks stored in a corner of the embryology unit. As the ultra-cold liquid evaporated, the temperature inside the tanks rose, destroying the reproductive specimens at Gaza City’s al-Basma invitro fertilisation centre.

“We know deeply what these 5,000 lives, or potential lives, meant for the parents, either for the future or for the past,” said Bahaeldeen Ghalayini, a Cambridge-trained obstetrician and gynaecologist who first opened the clinic in 1997.

At least half of the couples affected will not have another chance to get pregnant, he added. “All these lives were killed or taken away: 5,000 lives in one shell.”

Children among the dead in Israeli attacks on refugee camps




‘No tangible change’ in aid flow to Gaza

The number of aid trucks getting into Gaza is still very limited with hundreds of thousands of starving Palestinians.

Aid groups say there’s been no tangible change in terms of aid flow, and it doesn’t meet the immense needs of the population. The amount coming in needs to reach at least 500 trucks a day with signs of famine looming.

Yesterday, for example, only 178 trucks were allowed into Gaza through both the Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) and Rafah crossings – even as the Israeli military has been saying it’s increasing the amount of aid into the besieged territory.

People we’ve been talking to in northern Gaza say they are only receiving enough aid to provide them with one meal per day.

 

Gaza Health Ministry appeals for sick, wounded patients to travel abroad

In a statement on Telegram, the ministry called for Palestinians in Gaza who need treatment for cancer and other severe illnesses or injuries to be granted permission to travel abroad so their lives can be saved.

After more than six months of war, there are at least 76,465 wounded people in Gaza with few functional health facilities that also lack the resources to effectively treat them or those severely ill.

“We lose some of them every day,” said the ministry.




Israel’s war on Gaza death toll hits 33,899

The number of Palestinians killed in Israel’s six-month war on the Gaza Strip has reached 33,899, the Health Ministry says. Fifty-six Palestinians have been killed and 89 injured in the past 24 hours, the ministry added. At least 76,664 people have now been wounded in relentless attacks.

Among the dead are more than 14,520 children and 10,000 women. The death toll is likely far higher with thousands of bodies buried in the rubble of buildings collapsed by Israeli strikes.


An Israeli bombardment in the Daraj neighbourhood in Gaza City on Tuesday



SvennoJ on 17 April 2024

‘Big Tech is streamlining this genocide against Palestinians’

Earlier we reported on protests by Google staff calling on the company to drop Project Nimbus, a $1.2bn contract with Israel jointly held with Amazon.

Google software engineer Emaan Haseem was one of the demonstrators outside the tech giant’s office in Sunnyvale, California.

“Not only is the lack of transparency concerning, but just the context of this contract taking place. We know the genocide taking place in Gaza is the first AI-powered genocide. So we find that Big Tech is streamlining this genocide against Palestinians,” Haseem said.

Big Tech ‘basically complicit’ in civilian deaths in Gaza

Ramesh Srinivasan, a professor of information studies at UCLA, says “there’s a shocking lack of transparency” over Google’s Project Nimbus that’s being used by the Israeli military in Gaza.

Big technology companies working with Israel’s army could be found complicit in the attacks on civilians there, he told Al Jazeera.

“Corporate America Big Tech is actually aligned with many of the Israeli military’s actions. The fact that AI systems are being used indicates there’s a lack of regard by the Israeli state. Everybody knows these AI systems will make mistakes,” said Srinivasan.

“There will be wrongful deaths and wrongful assassinations that we’ve seen with so many civilians in Gaza. They’re basically complicit.”




Google employees arrested protesting company’s ties with Israeli government

Employees of the tech giant have been arrested after holding sit-in protests in the company’s New York and Sunnyvale, California offices for more than nine hours. Earlier, we reported that the protesters said they would not leave until Google pulls out of a $1.2bn artificial intelligence and surveillance contract between Israel, Google and Amazon.

Google employees have long spoken out against project “Nimbus”, with Palestinian employees describing “institutionalised bias” within the company.






SvennoJ on 17 April 2024

UN agency says Israel’s war on Gaza also a ‘war on women’

More than 10,000 women have been killed in Gaza so far, among them 6,000 mothers who have left behind 19,000 orphaned children, according to the UN’s women’s rights organisation.

In a new report on the gender impact of the war, UN Women also said that Palestinian women who have survived the Israeli air strikes and military ground operations are now displaced, widowed and facing starvation.

Israel’s war on Gaza is “also a war on women”, the UN agency said at the launch of the report: Scarcity and fear: A gender analysis of the impact of the war in Gaza on vital services essential to women’s and girls’ health, safety, and dignity.




Israeli settlers displaced entire West Bank communities: Human Rights Watch

Israeli settlers have “entirely uprooted” seven communities and displaced many more Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since October 2023, according to a new report from Human Rights Watch (HRW).

“Settlers and soldiers have displaced entire Palestinian communities, destroying every home, with the apparent backing of higher Israeli authorities,” said Bill Van Esveld, associate children’s rights director at HRW.

The seven communities HRW found were entirely displaced in October and November 2023 were:

  • Khirbet Zanuta and Khirbet ar-Ratheem, south of Hebron
  • Al-Qanub east of Hebron
  • Ein ar-Rashash and Wadi as-Seeq, east of Ramallah

None of the families have been able to return home, with “one family with seven children, forced to flee on foot from al-Qanub” now living in a cinderblock storeroom, HRW said.


A Palestinian man looks at his torched car, in the occupied West Bank village of al-Mughayyir on Saturday


Israeli forces demolish Palestinian homes in occupied West Bank

Our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic have shared video footage showing Israeli forces using heavy construction equipment to destroy the home of a Palestinian family in the town of Bani Naim east of Hebron city.

Earlier, Israeli forces used explosives and poured fresh concrete to destroy the family home of a killed Palestinian in the town of Beit Hanina, north of Jerusalem, the Wafa news agency reported.

Wafa also reported raids on homes in Tubas city in the north of the occupied West Bank. Raids were also under way in Marda village, located north of Salfit city, and the town of al-Khader, south of Bethlehem.

A young Palestinian man was beaten by Israeli forces, then arrested during a raid south of Jenin, in the village of al-Fandaqumiya, according to Wafa.



Translation: Occupation forces begin demolishing the home of a Palestinian family in the town of Bani Naim in Hebron after storming it.