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Forums - Politics Discussion - Israel-Hamas war, Gaza genocide

SvennoJ on 09 August 2024

Eastern Khan Younis becoming ‘a wasteland’

What’s going on in Khan Younis is basically a repeat of what happened two weeks ago, when the Israeli military took over major parts of the city’s east. Now they’re coming back again.

The military put out a statement justifying its return, saying there are more Hamas operatives in the area. But this is close to the same wording they use when justifying any incursion.

What we see on the ground is recurrent displacement for many families who just made their way back to their homes.

Last night, eastern Khan Younis faced a heavy bombing campaign. Close to 30 air attacks took place in the span of a few hours, destroying buildings and infrastructure. Eastern Khan Younis is becoming uninhabitable, turning gradually into a wasteland.

‘It’s a pattern’: UNRWA official on Israeli attacks on schools in Gaza

Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees, told US newspaper The Washington Post that Israel has hit 70 percent of the agency’s schools since the outbreak of the Gaza war, the majority of which were being used as shelters for displaced Palestinians at the time they were attacked.

Her comments to the paper came after Israel attacked two more schools in the northern Gaza Strip yesterday, killing at least 15 people and injuring about 30 others.

Touma said that the Israeli army has started immediately releasing statements after such attacks, claiming that the buildings are being used by Hamas fighters and that attacking them is justified.

“These are very serious claims,” she said. “We have no way to confirm or deny these claims, nor do we have the ability to investigate. What we do know is that every time these schools or buildings are hit, we’ve had civilians hit, women and children.”


Israel has bombed nine Gaza City school shelters in eight days: Monitor

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor says that the Israeli army has intensified its policy of bombing schools used as shelters for displaced Palestinians in Gaza City, killing and injuring hundreds of them.

Just yesterday, two attacks on school shelters in Gaza City killed at least 15 Palestinians and injured some 30 others.

In a report, the human rights group said that these attacks over the past eight days have killed 79 Palestinians and injured 143 others, most of them women and children.

The report says that the actual casualty figures are likely much higher, due to the “loss of others under the rubble who cannot be recovered due to the lack of appropriate equipment for rescue crews”.


63% of Gaza structures damaged, destroyed: UN

The United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT) estimates that 63 percent of all structures in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed during the war. Its findings, based on satellite imagery analyses, classify 156,409 structures as destroyed, severely damaged, moderately damaged or possibly damaged.

The hardest hit areas in recent months have been Rafah and northern Gaza, said UNOSAT, with 2,300 new structures assessed as damaged in northern Gaza and some 15,030 in Rafah.



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SvennoJ on 09 August 2024

EU to send 43-million-euro support package to PA: Report

The European Union has committed 43 million euros ($46.9m) to help the Palestinian Authority (PA) pay salaries and pensions in the occupied West Bank, the Wafa news agency reports.

The support will mainly benefit retirees and civil service employees in the health and education fields, according to Wafa. The PA’s financing needs are compounded by struggles to access some of its tax funds, which Israel collects on its behalf and transfers to it via Norway.

Israel has stopped sending the funds to Oslo in retaliation for its recognition of Palestinian statehood.


Oslo activists show support for killed Al Jazeera journalist

Dozens of pro-Palestine activists have gathered in a train station in Norway’s capital to pay tribute to Al Jazeera journalist Ismail al-Ghoul, who was killed in an Israeli attack along with his cameraman on July 31 while reporting near Gaza City.

The protesters sat in the station’s lobby with press vests and pictures of al-Ghoul and other journalists killed during the Gaza war, a video verified by Al Jazeera’s Sanad fact-checking agency showed.

According to preliminary figures by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), at least 111 journalists and media workers have been killed since the start of the war on October 7.



SvennoJ on 09 August 2024

Palestinian Mission to the UK hails fund’s Israeli assets divestment

In a statement, the Palestinian Mission to the UK has hailed the 80 million British pounds ($102m) divestment by the country’s biggest private pension fund from Israeli assets.

“We welcome this principled policy as it moves us a step closer to peace and justice in the region,” it said, referring to the move by Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), and urged others to also “adopt an ethical investment policy in line with domestic and international law” and follow the fund’s “principled and effective” decision.

USS manages investments worth 79 billion pounds ($100.8bn) in total and has more than 500,000 members.

‘No more delays, the fighting must stop now’: UK foreign secretary

David Lammy has issued a statement welcoming the mediators’ efforts for the renewal of talks next week to agree to a ceasefire deal.

The foreign secretary said the UK “fully endorses” Thursday’s statement by Egypt, Qatar and the US “calling for the immediate resumption of ceasefire negotiations and a hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas”.

“There can be no more delays, the fighting must stop now” while demanding “all hostages still cruelly detained by Hamas must be released,” Lammy said, also calling for “the urgent delivery of unfettered aid into Gaza”.

The foreign secretary said that it was in the “long-term interests” of Israelis, Palestinians, and other parties to agree to the deal on the table “urgently”.

Still not mentioning the 10,000 cruelly detained Palestinians in Israeli torture camps nor the brutal illegal occupation of the West Bank which is slowly turning into another Gaza.

US National Security Council spokesman rebukes Israeli finance minister as ‘dead wrong,’ amid push for ceasefire talks

https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/09/politics/kirby-israeli-finance-minister-reaction/index.html

John Kirby, the spokesman for the US National Security Council, issued a stark rebuke Friday of the Israeli finance minister over comments undercutting a ceasefire proposal between Israel and Hamas, calling Bezalel Smotrich’s comments “dead wrong.”

“Some critics, like Mr. Smotrich, for example, have claimed that the hostage deal is a surrender to Hamas, or that hostages should not be exchanged for prisoners,” Kirby said. “Mr. Smotrich essentially suggests that the war ought to go on indefinitely without pause and with the lives of the hostages of no real concern at all – his arguments are dead wrong. They’re misleading the Israeli public.”

Not as much as you have been misleading the US public...



Chances of Netanyahu agreeing to ceasefire ‘almost always been nil’

Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, Marwan Bishara, says the US does not want a wider regional escalation so close to its elections in November.

The fact that Washington – alongside other mediating countries – is pushing for Gaza ceasefire talks to happen on Thursday is a sign it wants to put as much pressure on Iran as possible and to delay a potential strike on Israel, he said.

Bishara added, however, that the chances of Netanyahu agreeing to a ceasefire “has almost always been nil”. He said not only is Netanyahu “ideologically and personally invested in war” but the conflict also keeps his Israeli government coalition together.

Hamas, he said, will want real guarantees that the war will not continue, that reconstruction will be allowed to take place and Israeli soldiers will withdraw from the enclave.



SvennoJ on 09 August 2024

Biden backing down to Netanyahu certainly won't get a ceasefire through.

US will not impose sanctions on Israel’s Netzah Yehuda battalion: Report

Axios is reporting that US President Joe Biden’s administration has decided to end an investigation into potential rights violations by the unit in the occupied West Bank. Citing two senior US and Israeli officials, Axios said US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant of the change in a conversation today.

Israeli media had previously reported that Washington would impose sanctions on the battalion over accusations its members have committed rights abuses against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Biden will not let ‘extremists’ derail truce talks: White House

White House spokesperson John Kirby says the Biden administration will not allow “extremists”, including in Israel, to push Gaza ceasefire talks off course.

Kirby also accused Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of making false claims. He said Smotrich’s claim that a ceasefire deal would amount to surrendering to Hamas or that captives should not be exchanged for prisoners is “dead wrong” and accused the minister of misleading the Israeli public.

You just caved into Smotrich, not sanctioning his extremist settler battalion... US always does the opposite of what they say.



US releases $3.5 billion to Israel to spend on US weapons and military equipment, months after Congress appropriated

https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/09/politics/us-releases-billions-israel-weapons-military-equipment/index.html

The US is set to provide Israel with $3.5 billion to spend on US weapons and military equipment, releasing the money months after it was appropriated by Congress as tensions continue to rise between Israel and Iran, multiple officials familiar with the matter told CNN.

“The funding is essentially money Israel can use to buy advanced weapons systems and other equipment from the US through the Foreign Military Financing program,”


Biden admin says Netzah Yehuda battalion can still receive US assistance

US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller has now confirmed that the Biden administration will not sanction the Israeli military unit.

Miller said in an email to Reuters that after new information provided by Israel, the US has determined that alleged human rights violations carried out by the Netzah Yehuda battalion have been “effectively remediated”.

Miller added that the military unit could continue to receive US security assistance following the determination.

The US had called for a criminal investigation after battalion soldiers were accused of being involved in the death of an elderly Palestinian-American man, Omar Assad, in the occupied West Bank in 2022.

Before receiving new information in April, Washington was reportedly intending to designate the unit under a US law that prohibits military assistance to those committing gross human rights violations.

So it was just more virtue signalling. Israel says it's ok, here have some more money. Disgusting. The whole Settler movement is a human rights violation as confirmed by the ICJ ruling on the occupation, apartheid and slow annexation of the West Bank. Nvm the daily attacks from Settlers.



SvennoJ on 09 August 2024

US Muslim group urges Blinken to resign over refusal to sanction Israeli army unit

The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) says the US secretary of state has “knowingly violated US law by backtracking” on plans to sanction the Netzah Yehuda battalion over rights abuse allegations.

The Israeli military unit “has clearly committed gross human rights violations using US weapons”, CAIR Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said in a statement.

“Secretary Blinken’s cowardly, morally reprehensible and blatantly illegal decision confirms what numerous State Department whistleblowers have said: he is disregarding the conclusions of career diplomats, as well as experts on federal and international law,” Mitchell said.

“Secretary Blinken is now as much of a war criminal as the war criminal he will continue to arm, Israeli defense minister Gallant, and he should resign his office in disgrace.”

As we reported earlier, the State Department said today that Netzah Yehuda could continue to receive US security assistance after Washington determined – based on information provided by Israel – that alleged violations carried out by the unit had been “effectively remediated”.


‘Everything is legitimate’: Israeli leaders defend soldiers accused of rape

Video verified by Al Jazeera has emerged of a gang rape of a Palestinian prisoner by Israeli guards at the Sde Teiman detention facility in Israel’s southern Negev desert. The video has shocked many within Israeli society, while rights groups and the UN have voiced concerns about Israel’s treatment of Palestinian prisoners. However, for some, including Israel’s far-right finance minister, the outrage has centred on the “crime” of recording the video, rather than the alleged rape itself.


Protesters wave Israeli flags in support of soldiers being questioned for detainee abuse outside of the Sde Teiman military base, July 29



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SvennoJ on 09 August 2024

Israel carries out several strikes on Lebanese villages

We’re getting reports from our Lebanon correspondent Zeina Khodr that Israel launched “near simultaneous air strikes” on a number of Lebanese villages near the border.

The attacks came “shortly after reports of a strike targeting a car in the southern city of Sidon”, about 40km (25 miles) south of Beirut, Khodr said.


Israel striking ‘deeper into Lebanon’

Reporting from Marjayoun in southern Lebanon, Al Jazeera’s Assed Baig says the Israeli drone attack on a car near Sidon comes amid a busy day of cross-border attacks. At least one person has been killed in the attack.

“Sidon is roughly just over 50km [31 miles] from Lebanon’s southern border and around 40km [25 miles] from the capital, Beirut, and what it shows is that Israel is going deeper into Lebanon,” Baig said.

He noted that the strike is also “quite significant” because observers are expecting the Lebanese group Hezbollah to launch a retaliatory attack on Israel for the Israeli military’s assassination of Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut late last month.

“Elsewhere, there have been strikes carried out by Israel across southern Lebanon,” Baig added.


Hezbollah claims ‘direct hit’ on Israeli soldiers

The Lebanese group says it struck buildings housing Israeli soldiers “with the appropriate weapons”. In a statement on Telegram, Hezbollah said the soldiers were stationed in the “Dovev Barracks”.

It said the raid was in response to the Israeli army’s attacks on towns and villages in southern Lebanon and in support of Palestinians in Gaza.


Hamas official killed in Israeli attack in Lebanon’s Sidon: Reports


Civil defence workers check a car that was hit by an Israeli air attack in the southern Lebanese port city of Sidon on August 9

Lebanon’s official news agency, NNA, and Reuters are reporting that the attack in southern Lebanon has killed Hamas official Samer al-Hajj. Al-Hajj was based in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain al-Hilweh near the coastal Lebanese city.

The strike also injured two civilians, NNA reported.

Impromptu protests have broken out in Sidon to denounce the killing.


Israel confirms it killed Hamas member in Lebanon’s Sidon

The Israeli military says it targeted al-Hajj, who we reported earlier was killed in the attack in the southern Lebanese coastal city. The army accused al-Hajj of being “responsible for the recruitment and training of terrorists to attack the State of Israel”.




Iran’s Khamenei orders IRGC to ‘harshly punish’ Israel: Report

Ali Fadavi, a commander in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has said Iran is set to carry out an order by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to “harshly punish” Israel over the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, according to a report in Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency.

“The supreme leader’s orders regarding the harsh punishment of Israel and revenge for the blood of martyr Ismail Haniyeh are clear and explicit … and they will be implemented in the best possible way,” Fadavi was quoted as saying.



SvennoJ on 09 August 2024

Journalist among several Palestinians killed in latest Khan Younis attacks

Israeli forces have targeted a home in eastern Khan Younis, killing at least seven people, including Palestinian journalist Tamim Muammar, Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary reports from the city in the southern Gaza Strip.

This brings the total number of journalists killed in Gaza since October 7 to at least 167, according to figures by the Government Media Office in Gaza.

Khoudary said Israeli forces also targeted another residential building in al-Mawasi near Khan Younis, which has been designated as a “safe zone” by Israeli forces. At least six people were killed.

The area, to which Israeli forces ordered Palestinians in Khan Younis to evacuate, has been ravaged by the Israeli army’s invasion, Khoudary said. Israeli soldiers destroyed infrastructure, houses, medical facilities and schools, she added.

“This is the third time that Israeli forces invaded this area. Those Palestinians who were called to evacuate yesterday … were scattered on the streets. They did not have any shelters. They did not have any homes, and they spent eight days on the streets,” Khoudary said.

She also reported that Israeli forces are stepping up artillery shelling and air strikes in parts of Khan Younis as well as Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah.


Palestinians flee the Khan Younis area after Israeli military evacuation orders on August 8



Israeli air strike destroys home in Khan Younis


Four killed in Israeli attack on central Gaza

Our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic are reporting that three children were among those killed in the Israeli attack on a house west of Deir el-Balah.


Two more journalists killed in Gaza, gov’t media office says

Gaza’s government media office has identified the pair as:

  • Tamim Abu Muammar, who worked for Palestine TV.
  • Abdullah Maher al-Suwaisi, who worked for al-Aqsa news channel.

This brings the total number of journalists killed in Gaza since the start of Israel’s assault on the besieged enclave to 168, the office said.

“The media office strongly condemns the targeting and killing of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli occupation,” it said in a statement.


Three killed in Israeli attack near Nuseirat refugee camp

Our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic are reporting that three people have been killed in an Israeli air attack on a house west of the camp, located in the centre of the Palestinian enclave.


Four killed in Israeli attack near central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp

We earlier reported on an Israeli air attack that struck a house west of the camp. Gaza’s civil defence has now said its teams recovered four bodies from the scene, as well as a number of wounded individuals.

The attack struck a residential home belonging to the Hamada family, it said. Two homes nearby sustained damage, the civil defence added.



SvennoJ on 09 August 2024

UK ‘deeply concerned’ over Israel’s revocation of Norwegian envoys’ status

The British Foreign Office has urged the Israeli government to reconsider its decision to revoke the status of eight Norwegian diplomats serving the occupied Palestinian territory.

“Norway has long played a unique and valued role in supporting peace for Israelis and Palestinians,” it said in a statement.

Yesterday, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz announced the move, citing Norway’s recognition of Palestinian statehood and its backing of an International Criminal Court (ICC) case accusing Israeli leaders of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

“There is a price for anti-Israel behaviour,” Katz said.

Apparently there is no price for anti-human behavior...

British foreign secretary tells UK citizens in Lebanon: ‘Leave now’

David Lammy says the UK “continues to use all diplomatic levers to push for de-escalation” in the Middle East.



Apart from the ones that would actually work, sanctions.

Former State Department official slams decision on Netzah Yehuda battalion

Charles Blaha, a former director of the US State Department’s Office of Security and Human Rights, says the Biden administration’s decision to allow the Netzah Yehuda battalion to receive military assistance “appears directly contrary” to US law.

Among other things, the office oversees the implementation of the Leahy Law, which mandates the cutoff of US assistance to military units involved in human rights violations.

In a column for the legal forum, Just Security, Blaha, who directed the office from 2016 to 2023, said the State Department’s decision “strongly suggests that the US position is likely a result, in significant part, of pressure by Prime Minister Netanyahu”.

He added that it also raises questions about “the value the Department places on the lives of not just Palestinians, but Palestinian Americans as well”.

As we reported earlier, Netzah Yehuda soldiers fatally detained an elderly Palestinian-American man in the occupied West Bank in 2022, prompting calls for justice and accountability.



SvennoJ on 09 August 2024

Iran’s UN mission says retaliation will not be ‘to the detriment’ of possible ceasefire

In response to questions about whether Iran would defer retaliatory strikes against Israel until proposed ceasefire talks happen next week, the Iranian mission to the UN has said any ceasefire agreement recognised by Hamas would also be recognised by Iran.

“Our priority is to establish a lasting ceasefire in Gaza; any agreement accepted by Hamas will also be recognised by us,” the mission said in a statement.

“The Israeli regime has violated our national security and sovereignty through its recent act of terrorism,” it said, referring to the killing of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in late July in an attack widely believed to have been carried out by Israel.

“We have the legitimate right to self-defence – a matter totally unrelated to the Gaza ceasefire. However, we hope that our response will be timed and conducted in a manner not to the detriment of the potential ceasefire,” the statement reads.

The mission added that “direct and intermediary” lines of communication have “always existed” between Iran and the US.

 

UN rapporteur condemns Israel’s extrajudicial ‘killings and murders’

The UN’s special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territory Francesca Albanese has condemned Israel’s use of extrajudicial “killings and murders”, saying recent assassinations of Hamas and Hezbollah officials in Iran and Lebanon may “amount to an act of aggression”.

“Israel’s history of targeted assassinations [of mostly Palestinians] in Palestine and abroad, is long and can no longer remain unaccounted for. Independent and transparent investigations and accountability must be part of the road to peace,” she wrote in a post on X.

May amount? How is it not an act of aggression?



SvennoJ on 09 August 2024

US ambassador leads boycott of Nagasaki atomic bombing ceremony over Israel exclusion

A boycott led by the US ambassador to Japan drew focus away from the official ceremony marking the 79th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. Rahm Emanuel and several European ambassadors skipped the event over Japan’s exclusion of Israel based on “security” concerns amid Israel’s war on Gaza.

Anything not to remember the ultimate war crime.


Blinken tells Gallant that Middle East escalation is in ‘no party’s interest’

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has told Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant that an escalation in Middle East tensions is in “no party’s interest”, and “reiterated the urgent need to reach a ceasefire in Gaza”.

“The secretary reaffirmed the United States’ ironclad commitment to Israel’s security and discussed how escalation is in no party’s interest,” he told Gallant during a call on Friday, according to a State Department statement.

Except in Netanyahu's interest and his right wing cabinet. Daily calls for escalating the conflict. And you just gave them another 3.5 billion in military aid to carry on escalating.


US troops attacked by drone in Syria, no injuries reported

A US official has confirmed that the country’s troops have been attacked in northeastern Syria with a drone, the Reuters news agency reports.

There have been no reports of injuries to US personnel following the attack, which took place at Rumalyn Landing Zone, the US official said on condition of anonymity.

“Medical evaluations are ongoing. We are currently conducting a damage assessment,” the official said.

No group has claimed responsibility for Friday’s attack yet. On Monday, five US personnel were injured in a rocket attack blamed on Iran-backed proxies at the Ain al-Assad airbase in western Iraq.