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Forums - Politics - Israel-Hamas war, Gaza genocide

SvennoJ on 13 November 2024

EU’s Borell proposes suspending political dialogue with Israel

Reuters news agency is reporting that the European Union’s top diplomat made the proposal ahead of a meeting of the bloc’s foreign ministers scheduled for next week.

In a letter, he pointed to “serious concerns about possible breaches of international humanitarian law in Gaza” adding that “thus far, these concerns have not been sufficiently addressed by Israel”.

“In light of the above considerations, I will be tabling a proposal that the EU should invoke the human rights clause to suspend the political dialogue with Israel,” Josep Borrell is reported to have written.

Political dialogue between the EU and Israel is enshrined in a broader agreement reached between the two parties in June 2000. The suspension likely faces steep odds, as it would require approval from all 27 EU countries. Reuters reported that several countries are in opposition to such a move. Still, the proposal is likely meant to send a strong message about how Israel continues to conduct the war.

Even though the UK threw themselves out of the EU in 2016, Germany would never approve.



Trump nominates staunch-pro Israel lawmaker Rubio as top diplomt

The announcement comes after days of speculation that Senator Marco Rubio would be Trump’s pick for Secretary of State.

Rubio has taken a hawkish foreign policy approach in the past, particularly towards Iran and in his support for Israel. He is considered one of Israel’s staunchest supporters within the Republican party.

While running for president in 2016, Rubio even accused Trump of not being a true ally to Israel.

Speaking to an activist in 2023, Rubio said that Hamas was “100 percent to blame” for the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza.


The rest of the world will have to step up to end the genocide. Trump will do nothing to stop Netanyahu, rather the opposite.

Boycott the USA as well as Israel.



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SvennoJ on 13 November 2024

Israeli strike on Gaza ‘safe-zone’ damages MSF clinic

Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym, MSF, says an Israeli air attack that hit the Israeli-designated “safe zone” of al-Mawasi damaged the group’s medical clinic in the area.

“The blast was huge. We didn’t receive an official evacuation order from Israeli forces, we were notified by the residents,” Myriam, an MSF coordinator, said in a post on X.

“Both staff and patients fled the clinic. We later found the facility with equipment destroyed, and shrapnel damaged the desalination plant,” she added.

MSF condemned Israel’s use of heavy weapons in zones it had designed safe, saying the attack is “further proof of the blatant disregard for Palestinian lives and humanitarian law”.



Israeli bomb leaves large crater in Gaza’s al-Mawasi ‘safe zone’


Palestinians gather around a crater, formed following an Israeli attack on the al-Mawasi area, where thousands of Palestinians are living in makeshift tents, in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza on Wednesday


A number of Israeli attacks have been reported in the so-called safe zone in the past 48-hours, including an attack that killed eight people


Al Jazeera Arabic’s correspondent reported that people were injured in an attack on a tent, while Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, said its clinic in the encampment was damaged by a huge ‘blast’


Israeli forces killed 20 aid workers in Gaza in the past month

Israeli air attacks on Gaza have killed at least 20 aid workers in the period between October 10 and November 13, according to charity organisations working in the enclave.

“Staff were killed in their homes, in displacement camps and while delivering life-saving aid,” the groups said in a new report. “Many aid workers lost close family members and relatives.”

These include four engineers and workers with an Oxfam partner, who were killed on October 19 while on their way to repair water infrastructure in Khuza’a, east of Khan Younis. “Despite prior coordination with Israeli authorities, their clearly-marked vehicle was attacked,” the report said.

More than 300 aid workers have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its war in October of last year. This is the highest number ever recorded in any single crisis in the world.



SvennoJ on 13 November 2024

Main points for November 13th

  • At least 33 people were killed by Israeli attacks across Gaza on Wednesday, including five in a strike on the Maghazi camp in central Gaza and two in an attack on a tented camp west of Nuseirat.
  • The UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, said Israel’s military has used “starvation as a tool to kill people and to forcibly displace people” in north Gaza, which has been under a deadly weeks-long siege.
  • Israel’s military continued to bombard Beirut’s southern suburbs, where several residential buildings have been levelled over repeated attacks since Wednesday morning.
  • Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem promised to defeat Israel after the group claimed a drone attack, for the first time, on Israel’s military headquarters and the Defence Ministry in Tel Aviv.
  • White House special envoy Amos Hochstein said he thinks “there is a shot” at a truce in Lebanon soon, despite Israel’s new Defence Minister Israel Katz again ruling out a ceasefire.
  • EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, proposed the bloc suspend political dialogue with Israel, citing “serious concerns about possible breaches of international humanitarian law in Gaza”, Reuters reported.




SvennoJ on 13 November 2024

Germans REVOLT Against Complicity In Israel's Genocide


Over 1,000 German academics, civil servants and intellectuals - and international figures - have condemned Germany for its complicity in genocide.


Why did Sky News delete factual Amsterdam report?


The Grayzone's Wyatt Reed and Max Blumenthal discuss Sky News' deletion of one of the few accurate reports on Israeli hooligans instigating violence in Amsterdam, and how it replaced it with a piece jam-packed with propaganda.

 

Surgeon breaks down in parliament explaining how IDF drones target children

Ex-NHS surgeon Nizam Mamode broke down as he told the international development committee what he witnessed when working as a surgeon in Gaza.



Beating a dead horse

Blinken caught lying, left red-faced by contradiction from own department | Janta Ka Reporter

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday healed more embarrassment on himself by blatantly lying on Israel. Little did he realise that his utterances were sharply contradicted by his own department.



SvennoJ on 13 November 2024

Bernie Sanders announces vote to block US arms sales to Israel

The US senator said he plans to bring to the floor of the Senate next week a number of resolutions to “block certain offensive weapons sales to Israel”.

“There is no longer any doubt that Netanyahu’s extremist government is in clear violation of US and international law as it wages a barbaric war against the Palestinian people in Gaza,” Sanders said in a statement on X.

“This war has been conducted almost entirely with American weapons and $18 billion in US taxpayer dollars. Israel has dropped US-provided 2,000 pound bombs into crowded neighbourhoods, killed hundreds of civilians to take out a handful of Hamas fighters, and made little effort to distinguish between civilians and combatants. These actions are immoral and illegal, he wrote.

Hopefully Bernie can get something through, come Januari chances are zero. Biden also better hurry up getting Ukraine stocked up and remove restrictions so they can actually properly defend themselves.


For Januari it's looking very grim

Where do Trump’s picks stand on Israel?

The President-elect has been announcing the names of people he plans to nominate for key positions in his administration and cabinet.

Here’s a look at where some of them stand on Israel:

  • Marco Rubio, Trump’s pick for Secretary of State, has had a hawkish stance on Israel’s war on Gaza, telling an activist in 2023 that Hamas was “100 percent to blame” for the deaths of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
  • Trump’s nominee for US Ambassador to the United Nations, Elise Stefanik, told Israel’s parliament in May US military aid to Israel should be unrestricted and has threatened to cut university funding over anti-war protests.
  • Mike Huckabee, who Trump want as US ambassador to Israel, is an evangelical Christian who has called himself an “unapologetic, unreformed Zionist” and said “there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian.”
  • Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s choice for director of national intelligence, has long railed against what she terms “radical Islam” and been associated with right-wing Hindu groups and pro-Israeli positions.

 



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JuliusHackebeil on 14 November 2024

A brilliant talk.

Andrew Gold's Heretics with Natasha Hausdorff

I especially want to point to how Hamas breaks international human rights in armed conflict with how they hide, how they target and so on, while Israel is doing more than any warring nation before to uphold it.



SvennoJ on 14 November 2024

Israeli army issues new evacuation orders for Beirut

Avichay Adraee, the army’s Arabic language spokesman, has published the details of its latest orders for the people of Beirut’s southern suburbs to flee their homes. As is typical, he published a map that highlights buildings the army has deemed “Hezbollah infrastructure”, saying the Chouaifet el-Aamroussieh and Ghobeiry areas will be targeted.

Israel attacks Beirut

Nearly an hour after the Israeli army published new evacuation orders for the southern suburbs of Lebanon’s capital, our correspondent on the ground reports an Israeli drone strike in the area.

State-run National News Agency reported Israel launched a “violent” attack on the Ghoibery area, which came under the latest evacuation orders, hitting near Rawadat al-Shahedain.


The destruction following an Israeli air raid on the al-Ghobeir neighbourhood


Israel claims to have killed 200 Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon in the past week

The Israeli army also claims to have destroyed more than 140 rocket launchers belonging to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon during the past week.

It said in a statement on Telegram that the latest attacks on Hezbollah’s offensive capabilities, which had been targeting Israel’s western Galilee area and the centre of the country, came yesterday and on Tuesday.

Also on Tuesday, Israeli warplanes killed the head of a battalion’s operations, the head of a battalion anti-aircraft unit and a company commander in Hezbollah’s Radwan force, the army claimed.

Hezbollah has not announced any deaths in the past week.


Hezbollah maintains military capability Israel claims to have destroyed

The recent Israeli activity in Lebanon’s Beirut southern suburbs is perhaps unsurprising given Hezbollah’s attack on Tel Aviv yesterday. Hezbollah still has that military capability that Israel says it has destroyed.

We have been speaking to people in Beirut’s targeted suburbs. They are telling us there is severe damage as a result of the Israeli air raids. Many homes and businesses are simply gone.

When Israel puts these forced evacuation orders on a particular building, it is not just that building – it’s all of the buildings around it that also get emptied out and hit in the air raids.


Footage shows moment Israeli missile falls on Beirut’s southern suburb

Lebanese platforms and activists have shared footage of the moment a building was bombed by Israel in the Choueifat area in the southern suburbs of Lebanon’s capital, Beirut. The video below, showing the huge explosion, was verified by Al Jazeera’s fact-checking agency, Sanad.






SvennoJ on 14 November 2024

Israel issues more evacuation orders for southern Beirut suburbs

The army, via its Arabic-language spokesperson, says residents of Haret Hreik and Burj al-Brajneh in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital should flee their homes.

As usual, the spokesperson published a map of these neighbourhoods with buildings he claimed are Hezbollah infrastructure and told residents to stay back “at least 500 metres” (550 yards).

This is the second round of these evacuation orders issued by the Israeli army since daylight today. The orders are almost always followed by air strikes.


Smoke rises from a building hit by an Israeli air strike in Dahiyeh in the southern suburbs of Beirut


Israeli army claims to have hit more than 30 Hezbollah sites in Beirut

Weapons depots, military headquarters and other Hezbollah infrastructure were attacked in the Lebanese capital overnight and this morning, according to the Israeli military’s spokesman.

The statement published on Telegram said that in the past 48 hours, more than 30 Hezbollah targets were hit in several waves of attacks carried out in the Beirut area alone. The Hezbollah sites were located “in the heart of a civilian population”, the army claimed without providing evidence, accusing the group once again of using human shields.

Israeli attacks have been pounding the southern suburbs of Beirut since last night. The raids, once common to the overnight hours, have in recent days and weeks continued into the daytime. Displaced residents, who number in the tens of thousands, are unable to predict when it will be safe for them to return to their homes and tend to their properties.


Israeli, Hezbollah forces clash on outskirts of Lebanon’s Aitaroun village: Report

Israeli ground troops and Hezbollah fighters have been engaged in violent confrontations on the outskirts of the Aitaroun village towards the Ainata village in southern Lebanon’s Bint Jbeil district, according to the country’s National News Agency (NNA).

The agency said there were confirmed casualties among Israeli soldiers. Elsewhere in southern Lebanon, a farmer identified as Yassin Abdullah Abu Qais was killed in Israeli bombing of the Habbariyeh village.


Israel threatens residents of Beirut suburb Ghobeiry again

Avichay Adraee, the Israeli army’s Arabic language spokesman, has published details of its latest orders for the people of  Ghobeiry, a southern Beirut suburb, for the second time today.

“To all residents in the southern suburb area, specifically in the buildings specified in the attached maps and the buildings adjacent to them in the Ghobeiry area. You are located near Hezbollah facilities and interests, against which the [Israeli army] will act forcefully in the near future,” he said on X.

The attached maps marked two buildings in red.


At least 9 killed in Israeli attack on building in Lebanon’s Baalbek city: Report

Israeli warplanes have bombed a two-storey building in the Al-Shaab neighbourhood of Baalbek city in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, killing nine people and injuring five others, according to the country’s National News Agency (NNA).

The agency said the rescue teams were still removing the rubble and trying to find more people.

Lebanon’s health ministry said on X that at least three people were killed in an Israeli strike in Baalbek, adding that “body parts were recovered from the site and their identities are being verified”.



SvennoJ on 14 November 2024

World Bank announces ’emergency response’ for Lebanon

The World Bank says that it is activating an “emergency response” to move resources to support the “urgent needs” of residents in Lebanon resulting from Israeli attacks. In a report, the World Bank said physical damages and economic loses due to the conflict total an estimated $8.5bn.

“There are over 875,000 internally displaced persons in Lebanon, with women, children, the elderly, persons with disabilities, and refugees at highest risk,” the report said. “An estimated 166,000 individuals have lost their jobs, corresponding to a loss of US$168 million in earnings.”

The Bank added that Lebanon’s housing sector has been hit the hardest, with $3.2bn in damages resulting from nearly 100,000 housing units being partially or fully damaged.

“Disruptions to commerce are amounting to close to US$2 billion, driven in part by the displacement of employees and business owners,” the report said, adding that distruction of crops, livestock and displaced famers has put agricultural damages at about $1.2bn.

“To respond to the current crisis facing the country, the World Bank is activating emergency response plans to re-direct existing resources to support the urgent needs of people in Lebanon.”


Lebanon army redeployment in south crucial to war solution: UN peacekeeping chief

The United Nations intends to bolster its peacekeeping mission in Lebanon to better support the Lebanese army once a truce is agreed, but would not directly enforce a ceasefire, UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix has said.

The UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is deployed in southern Lebanon to monitor the demarcation line with Israel, an area that has seen more than a year of hostilities between Israeli troops and Iran-backed Hezbollah fighters.

Diplomatic efforts to end the fighting have centred on UN Resolution 1701, which ended the last round of conflict between the two heavily-armed foes in 2006 and requires Hezbollah to remove fighters and weapons from areas between the border and the Litani River, which runs about 30km (around 20 miles) from Lebanon’s southern border.

“I think that has to be very clear. Implementing the 1701 is the responsibility of the parties,” said Lacroix, speaking to reporters on a three-day visit to Lebanon. “UNIFIL has a supportive role, and there is a lot of substance in that supporting role.”

Lacroix added that redeploying Lebanese troops there is crucial for any solution to more than a year of Israel-Hezbollah clashes.

“The redeployment of the Lebanese armed forces is an absolutely central element to any durable settlement,” he said.


ICRC delivers humanitarian aid including medical supplies to Lebanese capital

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says 51 tonnes of humanitarian aid has arrived in Beirut from the organisation’s regional hub in Jordan. It includes 36 tonnes of household items such as blankets, hygiene kits and solar lamps, along with 15 tonnes of surgical material and medical supplies.



SvennoJ on 14 November 2024

Israel strikes suburbs of Syria’s Damascus

Syrian state news agency SANA has initial reports of an Israeli strike on the Damascus suburb of Mazzeh. It coincided with another attack on Qudsaya city, 10km (6 miles) from Mazzeh, SANA reported.


Several people killed in Israeli attacks on Syria’s Damascus: Report

Several people have been killed and others injured in Israeli attacks that targeted two residential buildings in suburbs of the Syrian capital Damascus, according to Syrian state news agency SANA.

One building was located in Damascus suburb of Mazzeh and the other in Qudsaya, west of the capital. Israeli Army Radio said the targets of the attack in Damascus were assets and the headquarters of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) armed group.

Israel has been carrying out strikes against Iran-linked targets in Syria for years, but has ramped up such raids since the Gaza war erupted on October 7 last year.


At least 15 people killed in Israeli attack on Syria’s Damascus

At least 15 people have been killed and 16 injured in Israeli attacks on suburbs of the Syrian capital, according to a Syrian military source cited by the SANA news agency.


Israeli army claims to have hit Palestinian Islamic Jihad targets in Syria

The Israeli military says it has carried out air strikes in Syria’s capital Damascus, targeting several buildings and command centres belonging to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad armed group.

The strikes are a “significant blow” to the Gaza Strip-based group and its operatives, the army statement says on Telegram.