“Let them expose themselves,” experts on Israel/Palestine discuss ‘Israel’s Reel Extremism’ film

Mehdi Hasan moderates a panel with prominent voices from Israeli and Palestinian society after the premiere of Zeteo’s documentary “Israel’s Reel Extremism,” which was produced by UK documentary company Basement Films.

The panel includes acclaimed Haaretz correspondent Amira Hass, author of "Drinking the Sea at Gaza"; Simone Zimmerman, the co-founder of the Jewish anti-apartheid organization “IfNotNow”; and Najla Said, an award-winning actor, playwright, author, and activist.

They talked about the film (which, if you haven’t seen it yet, what are you waiting for!), each of their unique experiences in Israel, in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and for Najla and Simone, living in the U.S. and navigating life here as activists critical of Israel and supporters of a free Palestine.

‘Israel’s Reel Extremism’ is an on-the-ground examination of Israel and its society after many months of war, seen initially through the prism of viral social media posts from Gaza.

Official Gaza Death Toll Reaches 40,000 - But It's Wrong

UN expert condemns alleged sexual assault of Palestinian by Israeli soldiers

The special rapporteur on torture, Alice Jill Edwards, has responded to the alleged gang rape by Israeli soldiers at the Sde Teiman detention facility in the Negev Desert in southern Israel, calling the case “particularly gruesome”.

“There are no circumstances in which sexual torture or sexualised inhuman and degrading treatment can be justified,” Edwards said in a statement. “This alleged sexual torture involving multiple offenders is particularly gruesome.”

A video of the alleged attack, which has been verified by Al Jazeera, shows the prisoner being selected from a larger group lying bound on the floor. The victim is then escorted to a wall, where guards, using their shields to hide their identity from the camera, proceed to rape him.

‘Inappropriate’, France says of Israeli expectations for allies to carry out attacks if Iran strikes

France’s top diplomat describes as “inappropriate” a statement from his Israeli counterpart that his country expects support from its allies “in attacking” Iran if Tehran attacks Israel.

Iran and its regional allies have promised retaliation for high-profile killings late last month blamed on Israel, including an attack in Tehran that killed Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, which Israel has not claimed responsibility for.

“If Iran attacks, we expect the coalition to join Israel not only in defence but also in attacking significant targets in Iran,” Katz told his visiting counterparts, France’s Sejourne and Britain’s Lammy, according to a statement from the Israeli foreign minister’s office.

Sejourne said it would be “inappropriate” to discuss responding to any attack while diplomacy is under way to stop it from happening.

“It would be inappropriate to speak of an Israeli response while we work towards a diplomatic solution. … We are working to prevent Iranian retaliation,” he told reporters in Jerusalem.

OIC condemns escalating violence by Israeli settlers

The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has condemned the escalating violence and crimes committed by Israeli settlers against Palestinians and their properties in the occupied West Bank.

In a statement, the OIC “strongly condemned the organised terrorism and daily crimes committed by extremist settler gangs, under the protection of Israeli occupation forces”.

On Thursday evening, Israeli settlers killed a Palestinian citizen, seriously injured another, and set fire to four homes and six vehicles owned by Palestinians during an incursion into the village of Jit.

OIC said it considered these assaults as “part of the ongoing Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people, their land, and their holy sites, in blatant violation of international humanitarian law”.

OIC held Israel “fully responsible for the consequences of the continued perpetration of these heinous crimes”.

Danger of escalation in settler attacks following Jit attacks: Palestinian presidency

A spokesperson for the Palestinian president’s office has warned of the dangers of escalation in settler assaults amid attacks by Israeli settlers on the occupied West Bank village of Jit on Thursday, Wafa news agency has reported.

According to Wafa, Nabil Abu Rudeineh said the attacks were “a result of the continued war of extermination waged by the Israeli occupation state against our people”.

A Palestinian man was killed and several people were injured after dozens of Israeli settlers went on a rampage in Jit, drawing widespread condemnation. Dozens of masked Israeli settlers, some armed, hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails as they stormed the village, setting fire to several cars and destroying property. They also attacked the town of Huwara.

Palestinians describe ‘brutal’ settler attack on West Bank village

Muawiya Sedeh, a 38-year-old father of five was at home in the occupied West Bank village of Jit when his house was set ablaze by a band of Jewish settlers, some masked and wielding Molotov cocktails, who stormed in on Thursday night.

He told the Reuters news agency that he escaped with his family with only minutes to spare.

“I was lucky, it was a matter of minutes between life and death,” Sedeh said. When he returned, he said the settlers were jeering and taunting him, saying, “We will come back and kill you!” and telling him to go to Jordan or Syria.

Local people said more than 100 people took part in the attack, many wearing masks and clad in black, and appeared well-coordinated, dividing into groups armed with guns and others throwing stones and Molotov cocktails. A Palestinian man was killed by gunfire during the rampage.

“We’ve seen attacks before but not in such a brutal and organised way,” said Hassan Orman, a resident who saw the attack.

“What happened wasn’t about four or five settlers who just wanted to carry out an attack. What happened is something organised, they planned for it for days, they had weapons, tear gas, pepper spray, knives, all kinds of weapons.”

_{A Palestinian woman inspects a vehicle destroyed during an Israeli settlers attack in Jit}

Israeli settlers assault villagers and steal livestock in new West Bank attacks

Witnesses told Anadolu Agency that a group of settlers have assaulted residents of the village of Tana, east of Nablus, using rifle butts.

The settlers reportedly fired into the air and prevented the villagers from accessing a spring used for drinking and watering livestock. One resident was injured during the attack, sustaining bruises, witnesses said.

In a separate incident, settlers attacked the al-Auja waterfalls area near the city of Jericho and snatched 300 sheep at gunpoint, witnesses said. The incidents come after Israeli settlers attacked the village of Jit overnight, killing a 23-year-old man and injuring several others.

Hamas supports UN request for humanitarian pause for polio vaccinations

The Palestinian armed group supports the UN request for a seven-day humanitarian pause to vaccinate children against polio, a member of the group’s political bureau, Izzat al-Rishq, says in a statement.

The World Health Organization says it needs to carry out two rounds of a polio vaccination campaign to prevent the virus from circulating rapidly.

On July 30, the Health Ministry in Gaza declared the Palestinian territory to be a “polio epidemic zone”, blaming the reappearance of the virus on Israel’s 10-month military offensive and the resulting destruction of health facilities.

UN chief says humanitarian pauses vital for polio vaccination campaign in Gaza

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that preventing and containing the spread of polio in the enclave will take a massive and urgent coordinated effort.

“Let’s be clear. The ultimate vaccine for polio is peace and an immediate humanitarian ceasefire,” Guterres told at the UN. “But in any case, a polio pause is a must. It is impossible to conduct a polio vaccination campaign with war raging all over.”

Guterres said the UN is poised to launch a polio vaccine campaign in Gaza for children under the age of 10, but said the “challenges are grave”.

At least 95 percent vaccination coverage will be needed during each of the two rounds of the campaign to prevent polio’s spread and reduce its emergence given the devastation in Gaza, Guterres said. He added that a successful campaign will require the facilitation of transport for vaccines and refrigeration equipment at every step, the entry of polio experts into Gaza, reliable internet and phone services, and other elements.

Gaza’s Health Ministry declared a polio epidemic in the Palestinian enclave last month, blaming Israel’s continuing military offensive.

Health ministry records first confirmed case of polio in Gaza

The Palestinian Health Ministry said in a statement that it has detected the first confirmed case of polio in the Gaza Strip in the city of Deir el-Balah for a 10-month-old baby who had not received any polio vaccination dose.

The United Nations says Gaza had been free from polio for 25 years. The Health Ministry has blamed the reappearance of the virus on Israel’s 10-month military offensive and the resulting destruction of health facilities.

The UN had earlier called for pauses in fighting to carry out a polio vaccination campaign as the disease was likely spreading among displaced people.

Activists prepare to defy Israeli naval blockade of Gaza

Peace activists from several countries are setting out on a converted trawler to defy an Israeli blockade and deliver humanitarian aid to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

“The purpose of this mission is to send a message that civil society is not OK with what’s happening in Gaza,” Fellipe Lopes, the Portuguese media coordinator of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition on board the ship Handala told Reuters during a stopover in Malta.

It will be a trip fraught with danger. Israeli forces killed nine activists when they stopped and boarded another coalition ship on a similar mission to Gaza in 2010.

“We expect to encounter resistance throughout our mission,” said Australian activist Michael Coleman.

“Ours is not an illegal activity in any shape or form. The International Court of Justice has asked them to grant unfettered access to aid into Gaza and I implore them to let us and other aids through immediately,” he said.

The trip along the Eastern Mediterranean to Gaza will take a week but organisers said they might stop over in another harbour on the way.

_{Activists wash the deck of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition ship Handala as they prepare to sail for Gaza}

Witnesses describe carnage of Israeli attack on Jabalia

At least 46 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in the last 24 hours, including at least seven killed by Israeli air attacks that hit residential buildings in Gaza’s largest refugee camp in Jabalia.

A medic who responded to the attacks found that his family members had been killed in their building. “I came to see the upper three floors toppled over my family. My father, mother and sister were killed; a second sister and uncle are still missing and we are still searching for them,” he told Al Jazeera Arabic’s Anas al-Sharif.

Al-Sharif reported that the attack had strewn body parts around the area and that rescuers had been unable to retrieve the body of a dead man dangling from the wreckage of the building.

“This is a residential building, as you can see. It was hit by missiles without any warning. Dozens were killed and injured. We hurriedly came over to see those appalling images,” one man told Al Jazeera. “Look at that body hanging from the wall. This defies humanity. May God punish all those responsible.”

A member of Gaza’s civil defence told Al Jazeera that Israeli forces hit residential buildings with a wave of missiles. “As a result, large numbers of women and children were killed or injured. Many are still buried under the debris,” he said.

“Our teams are finding it difficult to recover the dead; as you can see some of the victims’ bodies are stuck and remain hanging on the walls.”

Several killed in Israeli attack on northern Gaza: Civil defence

At least three people have been killed as a result of an Israeli raid the in Tal al-Hawa neighbourhood, south of Gaza City, Gaza’s civil defence has said. Moreover, the group said several people were injured as a result of an Israeli bombing of a home in the al-Farouq Square area in the Zeitoun neighbourhood in the south of Gaza City.

#Gaza:
170,000+ people are estimated to be sheltering at 122 IDP sites, shelters and centres affected by the evacuation order on 16 August.
Stock reserves necessary for disinfecting water reportedly suffice only for one month.
More here 👇https://t.co/kr7exdNM3N pic.twitter.com/HRHLOE24Fg

— OCHA OPT (Palestine) (@ochaopt) August 16, 2024

US confirms Blinken to visit Israel this weekend

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Israel this weekend to seek to “conclude the agreement for a ceasefire and release of hostages and detainees through the bridging proposal” presented on Friday during talks in Doha by the United States, a State Department statement said.

The White House said earlier that diplomats will keep working on the details, hoping to conclude the accord later next week in Cairo.

“This proposal would achieve a ceasefire in Gaza, secure the release of all hostages, ensure humanitarian assistance is distributed throughout Gaza and create the conditions for broader regional stability,” the statement said.

“Secretary Blinken will underscore the critical need for all parties in the region to avoid escalation or any other actions that could undermine the ability to finalise an agreement,” it said.

The real reason for the current ceasefire push. The US doesn't want to be drawn into a war with Iran.

Senior US official says only Iranian retaliation would likely derail ceasefire deal now

An embargo has just lifted on a senior White House official briefing to reporters, and I can now tell you a call has just wrapped up with the leaders of the United States, Qatar and Egypt. And what they discussed is what the senior administration official is calling the momentum to get this done.

When asked by one reporter what makes this different from every time before, he said that in every single instance, what makes this different is that where there were gaps, there is now a final “bridging proposal” on every outstanding issue and proposal.

In other words, there’s no longer any [major] obstacles to seeing this over the finish line. They’ve got a solution, they’re now just working out the final details.

So the bottom line, he says, is that there’s a strong desire by every one of participants [for] “a new spirit to drive this to conclusion” and the only obstacles that remains could be some sort of retaliatory attack by Iran; something that administration officials are working on over the weekend, to make sure there is no retaliation over the weekend.

He says the US is sending a message to Iran right now: “Do not do such a thing. Don’t. We mean it. The consequences for such a thing would be cataclysmic”. And if Iran should do something like that, they’re prepared for all contingencies.

Desperate Biden

Biden warns all sides not to ‘undermine’ Gaza truce push

US President Joe Biden has warned all sides not to undermine efforts for a ceasefire in Gaza, as he said that a deal was nearing.

Biden said in a statement that Secretary of State Antony Blinken was travelling to the Middle East in part “to underscore that with the comprehensive ceasefire and hostage release deal now in sight, no one in the region should take actions to undermine this process”.

Later on, he told reporters that although he’s “optimistic” about the prospect of a deal being agreed on, nothing is guaranteed.

“As of an hour ago, it’s still in play. I’m optimistic. It’s far from over,” he said on Friday night. “There’s a couple more issues. I think we’ve got a shot.” When asked when the truce would start if agreed to, Biden said: “That remains to be seen.”

The sudden condemnation of the Settler attack on Jit does give a little hope the message is getting through in Israel.

Or not

Israeli official says expectations over ceasefire deal should be lower

We do have anonymous sources speaking to Israeli media who have said that, yes, progress has been made towards reaching a ceasefire deal but Netanyahu’s stance is still quite tough.

And one Israeli official speaking, anonymously of course, to the state public broadcaster has said that the progress that was made was only on the Israeli side and Israel should be lowering expectations amid all of this US optimism because, while there has been momentum, and progress has been made towards reaching a deal, it’s still not quite clear if that’s going to happen.

The same Israeli official has said that a smaller, technical Israeli team will remain in Doha until Sunday, while another Israeli delegation will be dispatched to Cairo for the continuation of the talks.

Key stumbling blocks preventing ceasefire have ‘not been bridged at all’

Omar Rahman, a fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, told Al Jazeera he is sceptical that a ceasefire deal is close to being agreed upon as the details have not been released and it is hard to see how the key stumbling blocks could have been overcome.

“But the stumbling blocks in the past have not been over the details; they haven’t been over how many prisoners were released and on what day etc. It’s been over fundamentals, and the very fundamental divide is that Netanyahu has said he has no plans to end the war any time soon and that as soon as the hostages are released, he’ll go back to fighting,” Rahman said, speaking from New York.

“[However] Hamas wants a permanent end to the hostilities and an end to the Israeli presence in the Gaza Strip. So that is a very fundamental [divide] that has not been bridged at all and we don’t know how that is going to be overcome in this new deal.”

Rahman said there is no guarantee that a deal will progress from stage one, in which the hostages are released, to stage two, which would mean a permanent end to the fighting.

“The problem is, the only one pushing Israel or having leverage over Israel – the United States – has been unwilling to use that leverage to make those types of guarantees,” he said.

“And so there’s no trust from the other parties, from Hamas, on what the Israelis are going to commit to and if the United States is going to be there to make Israel commit to the full terms of the agreement or go from stage one to stage two.”

Omar Assad’s family says ‘unjust’ US decision will not end push for justice

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/16/omar-assads-family-says-unjust-us-decision-will-not-end-push-for-justice


_{Palestinian American Omar Assad, far left, with his nephew Assad Assad, second from left, and other relatives in 2018 in the West Bank village of Jiljilya}

Assad Assad says he and his family feel betrayed.

But more than that, the Palestinian American said his first reaction to the United States government’s decision to continue funding an Israeli army unit that bound his elderly uncle and left him for dead could be summed up in a single word: “devastation”.

“We see this [as] hypocrisy — a US government that allows a foreign entity to have this opportunity to kill,” Assad, 36, told Al Jazeera in a phone interview from his home in the state of Wisconsin.

“They murdered my uncle in cold blood. My uncle was not armed, was not,” he continued, his voice trailing off. “He was just going home from a night with his friends, his cousins, playing a card game.”

Israeli forces raid occupied West Bank city of Tulkarem: Report

Israeli soldiers have stormed the city of Tulkarem, Wafa news agency has reported. According to Wafa, two Israeli military vehicles were seen on Nablus Street near the Tulkarem camp and the as-Salam neighbourhood.


More ‘tangible’ options needed to halt Israeli settler violence

There is an urgent need to address Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank, which is emboldened by the Israeli military, Eli Clifton of the Quincy Institute says. “The one-off sanctions that have been put on individual settler leaders were often walked back later and seen as often just a badge of honour for some of these people. It has not seemed to shape Israeli behaviour,” he told Al Jazeera.

“There is growing pressure here in the United States that something more can be done, something more tangible.”

Moreover, Clifton says the broader conflict, including the status of the occupied West Bank, would have to be addressed to allow for peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians. “Unfortunately, it seems as if this [Biden] administration, as well as the previous one, tried to sidestep these important issues by instead going all in on the pursuit of normalisation agreements between Israel and other countries in the region,” he added.

“All of these seem to be efforts to sort of kick these bigger issues down the road, but these issues, just like this attack … are not going to go away,” he said.

Samples from more possible polio cases in Gaza sent to Jordan for testing

While the World Health Organization did not confirm any polio cases in Gaza on Friday, it said that three children in Gaza were found with acute flaccid paralysis – the onset of weakness or paralysis with reduced muscle tone, a common symptom of polio.

The children’s stool samples have been sent for testing to the Jordan National Polio Laboratory, it said.

The potentially fatal, paralysing disease mostly strikes children under the age of five and typically spreads through contaminated water. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only countries where the spread of polio has never been stopped.

In July, the WHO said a variant of poliovirus type 2 was discovered in wastewater samples from southern Khan Younis and central Deir el-Balah, and linked to a variant of the poliovirus last detected in Egypt in 2023.

On Friday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said that a 10-month-old baby has been diagnosed with polio in Gaza, which the United Nations says had been free of the disease for 25 years.