New Palestine Party. Visit of Menachen Begin and Aims of Political Movement Discussed

An open letter to the New York Times from 1948

Authors: Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Sidney Hooks, et. al.

This work is assumed to be released into the public domain as a public manifesto or open letter which is not known to be licensed.

TO THE EDITORS OF NEW YORK TIMES:

Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the "Freedom Party" (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine.

The current visit of Menachem Begin, leader of this party, to the United States is obviously calculated to give the impression of American support for his party in the coming Israeli elections, and to cement political ties with conservative Zionist elements in the United States. Several Americans of national repute have lent their names to welcome his visit. It is inconceivable that those who oppose fascism throughout the world, if correctly informed as to Mr. Begin's political record and perspectives, could add their names and support to the movement he represents.

Before irreparable damage is done by way of financial contributions, public manifestations in Begin's behalf, and the creation in Palestine of the impression that a large segment of America supports Fascist elements in Israel, the American public must be informed as to the record and objectives of Mr. Begin and his movement.

The public avowals of Begin's party are no guide whatever to its actual character. Today they speak of freedom, democracy and anti-imperialism, whereas until recently they openly preached the doctrine of the Fascist state. It is in its actions that the terrorist party betrays its real character; from its past actions we can judge what it may be expected to do in the future.

ATTACK ON ARAB VILLAGE

A shocking example was their behavior in the Arab village of Deir Yassin. This village, off the main roads and surrounded by Jewish lands, had taken no part in the war, and had even fought off Arab bands who wanted to use the village as their base. On April 9 (THE NEW YORK TIMES), terrorist bands attacked this peaceful village, which was not a military objective in the fighting, killed most of its inhabitants (240 men, women, and children) and kept a few of them alive to parade as captives through the streets of Jerusalem. Most of the Jewish community was horrified at the deed, and the Jewish Agency sent a telegram of apology to King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan. But the terrorists, far from being ashamed of their act, were proud of this massacre, publicized it widely, and invited all the foreign correspondents present in the country to view the heaped corpses and the general havoc at Deir Yassin.

The Deir Yassin incident exemplifies the character and actions of the Freedom Party.

Within the Jewish community they have preached an admixture of ultranationalism, religious mysticism, and racial superiority. Like other Fascist parties they have been used to break strikes, and have themselves pressed for the destruction of free trade unions. In their stead they have proposed corporate unions on the Italian Fascist model.

During the last years of sporadic anti-British violence, the IZL and Stern groups inaugurated a reign of terror in the Palestine Jewish community. Teachers were beaten up for speaking against them, adults were shot for not letting their children join them. By gangster methods, beatings, window-smashing, and wide-spread robberies, the terrorists intimidated the population and exacted a heavy tribute.

The people of the Freedom Party have had no part in the constructive achievements in Palestine. They have reclaimed no land, built no settlements, and only detracted from the Jewish defense activity. Their much-publicized immigration endeavors were minute, and devoted mainly to bringing in Fascist compatriots.

DISCREPANCIES SEEN

The discrepancies between the bold claims now being made by Begin and his party, and their record of past performance in Palestine bear the imprint of no ordinary political party. This is the unmistakable stamp of a Fascist party for whom terrorism (against Jews, Arabs, and British alike), and misrepresentation are means, and a "Leader State" is the goal.

In the light of the foregoing considerations, it is imperative that the truth about Mr. Begin and his movement be made known in this country. It is all the more tragic that the top leadership of American Zionism has refused to campaign against Begin's efforts, or even to expose to its own constituents the dangers to Israel from support to Begin.

The undersigned therefore take this means of publicly presenting a few salient facts concerning Begin and his party; and of urging all concerned not to support this latest manifestation of fascism.

ISIDORE ABRAMOWITZ,
HANNAH ARENDT,
ABRAHAM BRICK,
RABBI JESSURUN CARDOZO,
ALBERT EINSTEIN,
HERMAN EISEN, M.D.,
HAYIM FINEMAN, M. GALLEN, M.D.,
H.H. HARRIS,
ZELIG S. HARRIS,
SIDNEY HOOK,
FRED KARUSH,
BRURIA KAUFMAN,
IRMA L. LINDHEIM,
NACHMAN MAISEL,
SEYMOUR MELMAN,
MYER D. MENDELSON, M.D.,
HARRY M. OSLINSKY,
SAMUEL PITLICK,
FRITZ ROHRLICH,
LOUIS P. ROCKER,
RUTH SAGIS,
ITZHAK SANKOWSKY,
I.J. SHOENBERG,
SAMUEL SHUMAN,
M. SINGER,
IRMA WOLFE,
STEFAN WOLFE.

Including this letter for historical context. The Oct. 7th massacre did not just come out of nowhere. Unresolved issues stretching deep into the past carried on to become motivating factors in the conflicts and atrocities of today.

CNN Gaza reporter’s relatives killed and childhood home destroyed in two separate strikes

Authors: Helen Regan and Hamdi Alkshali

For weeks, CNN producer Ibrahim Dahman reported from Gaza as Israeli airstrikes brought devastation and despair to the besieged strip in the wake of the Hamas terror attacks of October 7.

Dahman, 36, escaped to Egypt with his young family after nearly a month, but on Sunday he heard news that at least nine relatives trapped in northern Gaza had been killed in a strike on his aunt’s house.

His childhood home in Gaza City was obliterated in a separate strike on an adjacent building the same day.

“I will never be able to forget every stone and corner of the house in which I was born and raised and in which my children were born,” he said.

Sunday will forever be remembered as a dark day for the Dahman family, after messages began pouring in on their messaging group that an Israeli strike had directly hit the building where his relatives were living in Beit Lahia, killing his uncle, and the uncle’s wife, daughter and two grandchildren, as well as his aunt, her husband and two children. At least two other relatives are in critical condition, and still others are still buried under the rubble.

“They were extremely peaceful and simple people, and their entire lives were devoted solely to work and raising their sons and daughters,” Dahman said. “They have no affiliation with any organization or group… Pray to God to have mercy on them all.”

Video posted on social media shows the aftermath of the blast that killed Dahman’s relatives. Smoke can be seen rising from the destroyed building, which has been reduced to a pile of concrete slabs and twisted metal. Debris is strewn across the street.

Just two days ago, Dahman’s uncle, who used to work in Israel, relocated with his family to his sister’s house from their home in the Sheik Zayed area of northern Gaza, after the bombing intensified there. Dahman’s aunt was suffering from chronic cancer at the time.

Just before learning of the devastating deaths of his family, Dahman’s brother had called to tell him that his home in Gaza City, which he was born and grew up in, was in ruins.

Dahman had finished renovating the apartment, in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City, just three months before October 7, and no one was there when the bombardment began.

He has happy memories from a life lived there, of celebrating his sons’ birthdays with cake and candles surrounded by family.

“Unfortunately, I left all my memories, my belongings, and the gifts that my bosses sent me at work in this house, all of which were lost under the rubble now.”

Dahman’s story is a reminder that no one in Gaza has been left untouched by the war.

Israel’s bombing and military campaign in Gaza came following Hamas’ deadly October 7 terror attack which killed some 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilian, and saw more than 240 hostages seized.

Since then Israeli has turned much of the strip into a wasteland. The airstrikes have reduced entire neighborhoods to rubble and about 1.8 million people – 80% of Gaza’s population – have been forced to flee their homes, according to the UN.

In almost two months of war, most people in Gaza have been just trying to survive, focusing on the basics of finding shelter, fleeing the fighting, and getting access to food and water.

Israeli attacks in Gaza have killed about 15,200 Palestinians, including 6,000 children, since October 7, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah, which draws its figures from the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in Gaza.

The seven-day pause in fighting between Israel and Hamas — which saw the release of some hostages from Hamas captivity and the release of 240 Palestinians held in Israeli jails — gave many Gazans a brief respite from the constant bombing and time to buy supplies, if any were to be found.

Almost immediately after truce broke down on Friday, the Israeli military restarted its aerial bombardment of Gaza, and on Sunday announced it was expanding its ground operations to the whole of the strip.

Renewed strikes also hit the Jabalya refugee camp, in northern Gaza on Sunday, as seen in verified videos from the scene as well as in reporting by the official Palestinian news agency, Wafa.

The Israeli military told civilians to leave large swaths of the strip, including number of neighborhoods in southern parts of the enclave, after it resumed its military offensive there.

Dahman had previously detailed his desperate flight south to Khan Younis with his wife and two young sons, from their home in Gaza City in October. He described their ordeal of waking up to the sound of explosions for days, of being forced to move from place to place to keep his family safe from the strikes, and the struggles trying to find potable water to drink and food to eat for his young children and pregnant wife.

Throughout it all he continued to report and film — to tell the world what was happening in Gaza.

He described finally being able to cross the Rafah border to Egypt last month and the relief of settling in Cairo with his family. Though anxiety and worry continue to plague him as his parents and siblings remain trapped in Gaza.

In the early days after his escape, Dahman had said he realized that “peace remains distant.”

“I’ve covered many wars through the years. Nothing compares to the current conflict. Entire quarters in Gaza have been eviscerated, thousands of women, children and elderly have perished. What have civilians done to deserve this?” he said.

“I am also haunted by our unknown fate: Where will we go from here? What is our future?”

Building the Case for US Complicity

Despite stacked odds, Palestine advocates are pursuing legal avenues to charge American officials with aiding and abetting Israeli war crimes.

Author: Alex Kane

On November 13th, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR)—a left-wing legal advocacy organization—filed a federal lawsuit alleging that United States President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had violated US and international law by abetting Israel’s “genocide of the Palestinian people” in Gaza. The suit, filed on behalf of two Palestinian human rights organizations and eight plaintiffs either located in Gaza or with family there, said that the US has enabled the genocide by “providing unconditional military and diplomatic support” to Israel, “disavowing any constraint or ‘red lines’ on Israel’s military campaign,” and refusing “to monitor how US weapons are used there.” “Blinken, Austin, and Biden have failed in their duty to prevent genocide,” Katie Gallagher, a senior staff attorney for CCR, told Jewish Currents. “Instead, they have taken affirmative steps to aid and abet [it].”

In recent years, charges of international law violations in the region have mainly focused on Israel, with human rights advocates sending numerous evidentiary submissions documenting alleged Israeli war crimes to the International Criminal Court (ICC). This process has continued in the past weeks, with three Palestinian human rights organizations filing a November 9th lawsuit at the ICC urging the court to include apartheid and genocide to the list of war crimes it is already investigating in Israel/Palestine, and to issue arrest warrants for top Israeli officials suspected of committing war crimes in Gaza. But since Israel’s 60-day assault on Gaza began on October 7th, human rights advocates have also increased their scrutiny of the US’s role in the mass killings of Palestinian civilians. “Without the unqualified support of the US, including billions of dollars in military aid, heavy weaponry and technical assistance, Israel could not commit genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity against the Palestinian people,” said Marjorie Cohn, professor emerita of international law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and the former president of the National Lawyers Guild. A December 5th report published by Amnesty International highlighted an instance of such support, showing that “US-made munitions” were used in Israel’s strikes on two separate homes in October, killing 43 civilians, including 19 children, in what Amnesty called potential war crimes. “US-made weapons facilitated the mass killings of extended families,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General.

The CCR lawsuit marks the first legal attempt to hold the US directly responsible for complicity in crimes committed during Israel’s recent bombardment. Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the human rights group Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), conceded that such efforts face long odds. “Human rights activists know that international law is aspirational. Powerful parties are virtually never held accountable,” she said. Nevertheless, she said that endeavors such as CCR’s matter because they help “the broader American public understand that what the United States is doing when it continues to provide Israel with military assistance and protection is, under any sensible reading of international law, a crime in itself.”

The airstrikes highlighted in the Amnesty report were likely not the only ones in which US-made bombs killed Palestinian civilians. Since 1950, the US has supplied over 80% of Israel’s imported weapons, which Israel has put to use during its many wars on Palestinians. The pace of these transfers has surged in the past eight weeks. A Pentagon spokesperson told reporters that the US has delivered weapons to Israel on a “near-daily” basis since Israel’s war on Gaza began following Hamas’s October 7th attacks. The arms transfers include, among other items, equipment to turn unguided bombs into “precision-guided munitions”; “bunker-buster” bombs, which can penetrate targets deep in the earth; artillery rounds; and missiles for attack helicopters. As per Defense Secretary Austin, the US military has placed “no conditions” on these weapons deliveries; conditions are also not expected to be placed on the additional $14.3 billion in military aid to Israel that the Biden administration has asked Congress for—a request that the Senate is expected to begin voting on this week.

Even before CCR filed its lawsuit, such unconditional arms transfers had generated opposition due to concerns about war crimes. “Israel is misusing US arms both in Gaza and the West Bank,” said Josh Paul, a former State Department official in the bureau that oversees arms sales who resigned in opposition to the Biden administration’s policy of sending weapons to Israel as it bombards Gaza. “The US should not be transferring those arms because they violate not only moral principles, but also international law.” Such calls have been echoed by human rights groups: On November 6th, Human Rights Watch called on the US and other allies of Israel to “suspend the transfer of arms” being used to “commit grave abuses” in Gaza, adding: “Providing weapons that knowingly and significantly would contribute to unlawful attacks can make those providing them complicit in war crimes.”

Numerous international laws prohibit third parties from “aiding and abetting” war crimes. For instance, under “customary international law”—which refers to established practices carried out by states and which was used by tribunals set up to prosecute war crimes in Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the 1990s—government officials are prohibited from sending weapons to other armies if they know that those arms would be used to commit war crimes. (US military prosecutors cited this principle in their Guantanamo Bay military commission case against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11th attacks.) Article 25 of the Rome Statute—the treaty that established the ICC in 2002—also prohibits “facilitating” the commission of a war crime, while the international treaty against genocide prohibits “complicity” in the commission of a genocide. “International law is fairly clear: Providing weapons and other material support to a party engaged in war crimes creates liability for the party providing the weapons,” said Whitson.

Despite repeated warnings from human rights groups about being in violation of these laws, however, the US has not changed course in its decision to send weapons to Israel, leading Palestine advocates to take legal action in the form of the CCR lawsuit. “If we can help save the lives of Palestinian civilians through a court order, then by all means we must try,” said Barry Trachtenberg, a history professor at Wake Forest University who submitted a declaration in support of CCR’s lawsuit. Trachtenberg added that the case is important because it will force the US “to defend its position legally against a mountain of evidence that genocide is occurring.” The Department of Justice—which is representing Blinken, Biden, and Austin—is expected to respond to the CCR suit on December 8th, and no ruling is likely to be made until at least January 26th.

While CCR attorney Gallagher told Jewish Currents that “the law is on our side in terms of the United States’ [actions] being unlawful,” there is a chance the case might fail because of the federal judiciary’s reluctance to get involved in matters of foreign policy. In 2005, for example, CCR sued Caterpillar—a US company supplying bulldozers that the Israeli army used to destroy Palestinian homes—for aiding and abetting war crimes, but the case was rejected by a federal judge who ruled that it was beyond the court’s jurisdiction. “We cannot intrude into our government’s decision to grant military assistance to Israel,” a judge wrote in 2007 on behalf of a panel of judges for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. “Because that foreign policy decision [to sell bulldozers to the Israeli army] is committed under the Constitution to the legislative and executive branches, we hold that plaintiffs’ claims are nonjusticiable.”

If the current CCR case is also dismissed, there are other options for human rights advocates who wish to hold US officials accountable for assisting Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. One such venue is the ICC, which has been investigating potential war crimes committed by Israel and Palestinian armed groups since March 2021. In October, ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan said the Hamas attack and Israel’s response fell under his ongoing investigation; he recently concluded a visit to Israel and the occupied West Bank to further his investigation. Palestine advocates may try to bring US complicity within the scope of this investigation by arguing, as some legal experts have, that US leaders’ knowledge of Israel’s war crimes is sufficient grounds for violation of the “aiding and abetting” standard under the Rome Statute. But at least one set of ICC judges has interpreted the Rome Statute’s standard for “aiding and abetting” much more narrowly. In a 2016 war crimes case against a rebel group from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, ICC judges interpreted the court’s “aiding and abetting” provision to mean that a third party “must have lent his or her assistance with the aim of facilitating the offense.” In other words, an ICC decision to prosecute US officials for “aiding and abetting” may only occur if the court determines that US officials provide Israel with weapons with the expressed aim of committing war crimes, making it difficult for a case against such leaders to succeed.

There are also particular political obstacles in pursuing accountability for the US at the ICC. The US is not party to the Rome Statute due to concerns that the court would have too much “unchecked” power and might pursue “politically-motivated prosecutions of US soldiers,” in the words of a former Bush administration official. Additionally, the US has also sought to exempt Israel from the court’s purview, with successive administrations repeatedly criticizing the ICC investigation into Israel. The Trump administration went so far as to impose asset freezes on ICC officials in part because they were exploring whether to open an investigation into Israeli war crimes. The Biden administration—which reversed Trump’s sanctions on the ICC—has continued to oppose the ICC investigation into Israel, even reportedly pressuring Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to withdraw Palestinian support for the ICC probe, which Abbas has refused to do. At the same time, the US has welcomed, and aided, the ICC’s investigation into Russian President Vladimir Putin over war crimes in Ukraine. In August, Biden ordered US agencies to share evidence of Russian war crimes with the ICC, a shift from the US’s previous policy that the court should not have jurisdiction over countries that are not party to the Rome Statute, such as the US or Russia. “If the ICC were to involve itself in the Gaza conflict, the goodwill and thaw in relations between the ICC and the US and the Biden administration would be over,” said Brian Finucane, senior adviser for the International Crisis Group’s US program and a former State Department legal adviser.

Beyond the ICC, another way human rights advocates could hold US officials accountable is through what is known as a “universal jurisdiction” case, a principle in international law affirming that certain crimes are so grave any state has the duty to hold perpetrators accountable, regardless of borders. “I anticipate that we will be seeing universal jurisdiction cases against Israeli officials, or potentially even US officials for their complicity,” said Gallagher. The principle has been repeatedly tested in European courts in attempts to bring cases against Israeli officials for war crimes committed in Gaza. But these cases have also faced formidable obstacles. In 2011, for instance, following a British lawyer’s attempts to apply for an arrest warrant against former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni for war crimes in Gaza, the United Kingdom amended its universal jurisdiction law to prevent private citizens from initiating criminal proceedings against foreign officials for war crimes, an important recourse for human rights advocates initiating actions that their governments will not take. “Efforts at international justice and accountability are diminished and withheld from everyone in the world merely in order to protect Israel from being held accountable to those standards,” said DAWN’s Whitson. On the other hand, Finucane said that, “as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the horrific war in Syria, there is a growing appetite, particularly in Europe, to prosecute individuals on the basis of universal jurisdiction. Ten or twenty years down the line, could Israeli or US officials potentially find themselves facing charges as they go on vacation to Germany or France or Italy? Chances are not zero.”

Despite the presence of these different avenues, some international law experts say that justice is likely to remain elusive for the victims of Western states and their allies. So far, all of the officials who have ever been put on trial by the ICC are African. “If you look at the International Criminal Court, and if you look at the actual people that were ever punished, it’s never the strong,” said Neve Gordon, a professor of human rights law at Queen Mary University of London. “The West can punish African leaders or African warlords; the victors can punish the losers.”

However, human rights advocates say the attempts to prosecute US officials for aiding and abetting war crimes should continue despite the unlikelihood of their success. Gordon said such efforts are useful ways to make “a political statement about the ethics of violence” and to influence public opinion. CCR’s Gallagher, meanwhile, sees the lawsuit against US officials for complicity in genocide as a potential way to shift US policy. “It’s not an option to say, ‘this is a moment we sit it out because it’s a tough legal case,’” she said. “It’s a necessity for trying to bring some kind of change in policy, some kind of protection for civilians—to make governments, including the United States, think twice before they send another set of weapons to Israel to be used to bomb and kill Palestinian children.”

NOTE - as of the latest update (January 2nd, 2024) that I've seen, the US government had filed a motion to dismiss the case on December 8th, and the CCR filed their opposition and preliminary injunction motion reply on Decemeber 22nd. Briefs of amici curiae were later filed in support of plaintiffs on the 29th.

Palestinian Journalists Offer a Rare Glimpse Into Life in Gaza. But for How Long?

Author: Yasmeen Serhan

For weeks, Motaz Azaiza’s Instagram feed has exclusively borne witness to the horrors unfolding in Gaza. Since Oct. 7, the 24-year-old photojournalist has dedicated his days to capturing the scenes of death, destruction, and anguish that have come to be associated with the besieged enclave.

But as Israel’s punishing military campaign to root out Hamas from the Strip enters its third month, and as its ground invasion pushes further south to where millions of civilians are currently sheltering, Azaiza has warned that he may not be able to continue his work for much longer. “The phase of risking your life to show what is happening is now over,” he told his followers in a statement over the weekend, “and the phase of trying to survive has started.”

The fate of journalists like Azaiza matters—not only for Gaza’s Palestinians, many of whom have come to rely on their local press to report what is happening to a world that increasingly feels out of reach, but for the wider international press, which has no means of independently reporting what is happening on the ground in Gaza themselves. For both, they have become a vital source of first-hand information amid what is the worst war to befall the Strip in living memory. Raw and unfiltered, their coverage offers a rare glimpse into life in Gaza that numbers alone— 17,000 dead, 100,000 buildings destroyed, 1.9 million displaced—simply can’t capture.

None of these journalists are neutral* observers, nor do they claim to be. Each and every one of them is simultaneously covering and living the war. Many of them have been displaced from their homes and cities; many have lost colleagues, friends, and family members to airstrikes. Like everyone in Gaza, they have to deal with shortages of food, clean water, shelter, and electricity.

“To be honest, I never imagined I would ever report on all of this violence,” Hind Khoudary, a 28-year-old freelance reporter for Turkey’s Anadolu news agency and other outlets, told TIME last month over WhatsApp, one of the few reliable forms of communication amid regular electricity cuts and internet blackouts. Much like Azaiza and others, Khoudary regularly shares photos and videos of her experience amid the war: of the empty supermarket shelves, overwhelmed hospitals, and neighborhoods reduced to rubble. Over the course of the war, Khoudary has seen her home destroyed, her friends killed, and her family separated. She says she is drained and dehydrated. “To report and live the same exact thing is very overwhelming.”

If there’s one thing that keeps her going, Khoudary says, it’s “the fact that people are listening and seeing and interacting and this is the best thing that’s making me continue.”

The question is how long they can continue like this. “I no longer have any hope of survival,” Bisan Owda, a 25-year-old Gazan filmmaker, told her more than 3 million followers in a recent post. Since Oct. 7, Owda has dedicated her time to chronicling the war through a series of video diaries. Often in English and always filmed selfie-style, her dispatches offer an unvarnished look at the reality of life under bombardment. In one video, she walks viewers through her nighttime routine, which involves gathering her essentials in a bag and keeping her shoes by the door in case her neighborhood comes under bombardment. In another, she captures the resilience of those who, despite being displaced in shelters, still manage to make falafel, a Palestinian staple, over woodfire.

Some of the most prominent Palestinian journalists to have emerged from the war have been forced to step back from their work. Plestia Alaqad, a 22-year-old freelance journalist who regularly shared testimonials from ordinary Palestinians about the war, made the decision to flee Gaza last month due to fears that her reporting could put her family’s life in danger. One day prior, she said she would forgo wearing her press vest and helmet, noting that despite being meant to protect her, they no longer made her feel safe. “I hope this nightmare ends soon,” she wrote. “I hope we don’t lose any more journalists.”

Her fears are not unfounded. At least 63 journalists have been killed covering the war, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, in what has been the deadliest month for journalists since the NGO began tracking journalist casualties in 1992. The vast majority have been Palestinian journalists, with four Israeli journalists and three Lebanese journalists also killed. (Investigations by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse into the Oct. 13 killing of Issam Abdallah, a Lebanese journalist for Reuters, determined that his death was likely the result of a deliberate assault by the Israel Defense Forces on civilians, which constitutes a war crime.) “What are Palestinian journalists supposed to report more than they already reported?” Alaqed wrote to her Instagram followers on Tuesday. “How many more Palestinians are supposed to die for this to end?”

Sherif Mansour, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa program coordinator, tells TIME that although this is hardly the first time Palestinian journalists have been killed as a result of Israeli military action—a “ deadly pattern” that was most prominently highlighted by the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh last year—those working in Gaza now face an exponential risk.

“What we’re seeing in this war is that this deadly pattern is becoming more deadly,” Mansour says, noting that some Palestinian journalists have reported receiving threats from the Israeli military to cease their work. (An Israeli military spokesperson tells TIME that the military urges all civilians to evacuate active combat areas, which is “falsely mischaracterized” as threats. “The IDF has never, and will never, deliberately target journalists,” the spokesperson added.) “That’s why many of them feel there is no more time for them to continue reporting,” Mansour says.

Protections are unlikely to be forthcoming. Israel and Egypt have prevented most international journalists from entering Gaza, and the Israeli military warned international news organizations in October that they could not guarantee the safety of their journalists operating in Gaza. Those who have been able to enter the Strip since Oct. 7 have primarily done so by embedding with the Israeli military—a process that comes with certain conditions, including a requirement that the military be allowed to review all materials and footage prior to publication.

As for Gaza’s Palestinian journalists, they have largely been left to fend for themselves. For them, “infrastructure and protection and safety does not exist,” says Mansour. Absent greater efforts to allow international media to access Gaza and to protect journalists already there, Gaza’s journalists will continue to bear the burden of reporting on what is happening there until the point that they no longer can.

“They are on the frontlines and in many ways they are the most needed,” says Mansour. “But they are also the most vulnerable.”

*At this point I welcome lack of objectivity, especially when it's people discussing their lived experience. As useful as practiced objectivity is in conducting experiments and research, the language of "fairness" and "hearing from both sides" has started to stink of disingenuity, trying to show a balance when one party already has a first-class military, nuclear power, and the financial/political backing of Imperialist America.

NOTE - At the time I was reading the original article on the TIMES website, the recommended list of "Must Reads" at the bottom was topped by mention of Taylor Swift being selected for 2023's person of the year. Given that President Zelensky was named person of the year for 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine, seeing just another milquetoast celebrity being selected for this year just made me roll my eyes. You can argue that it's a small, irrelevent thing in the grand scheme of things, but the dissonance between the turmoil of ongoing crises and ongoing push of society and media to promote normalcy at the same time is driving me insane.

Tens of thousands have joined pro-Palestinian protests across the United States. Experts say they are growing

Author: Kenichi Serino

This week, dozens of protesters unfurled banners that read “Aid to Israel = Bombing Palestinians” in the Hart Senate Office Building at the Capitol while chanting “cease-fire now.” Police soon arrested them.

Not far away at the White House, a group of 18 elder Jewish protestors wearing t-shirts that read “not in our name” chained themselves to the fence.

Across the country in Los Angeles, a group of protesters blocked a downtown freeway while wielding a banner calling for a “permanent cease-fire.”

These were only some of the most recent of hundreds of pro-Palestinian and anti-war protests across the United States since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

This current wave of protests on behalf of Palestinians represents some of the largest on this issue in the United States, where, historically, most Palestinian solidarity activism has existed among some minority communities, university campuses and the political fringe. According to experts who spoke to the PBS NewsHour, this swell of protest is the result of a number of factors, including growing pro-Palestinian sentiment among younger people, the mounting civilian toll in Gaza from Israel’s military response, and more people being drawn into activism through issues like reproductive rights, Black Lives Matter and concerns about democracy.

The protests, and their messages, have also been criticized by pro-Israel organizations and politicians, some of whom claim the protests are antisemitic. Some in the U.S. have seen the protests as threatening and argue they will contribute to rising anti-Jewish hatred, including on university campuses. Last week, during a Congressional committee hearing, the presidents of three ivy league universities were ensnarled in controversy when they gave “legalistic” answers to a question about whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” violated their policies. One has so far resigned, university donors have threatened to withhold funding and the Republican-led House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning their testimony.

In the first few days after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and ensuing Israeli military retaliation in Gaza, most protests opposed Hamas and supported Israel, according to the Crowd Counting Consortium, a public service project that tracks nonviolent protest using news reports, social media posts and, as the name suggests, crowd estimates, among other sources. These rallies and vigils were held in tribute of the more than 1,200 people killed in the Hamas attack and the more than 200 taken hostage — the worst attack on Israel’s civilians in its history.

As the war intensified, that emphasis shifted, according to the CCC, with fewer demonstrations focused on Israel and a growing number in support of Palestinians.

According to the latest CCC update on Nov. 28, there have been more than 1,869 Palestinian solidarity protests in the U.S. since Oct. 7, involving — by its count — hundreds of thousands of people. “While nearly all of the early actions were demonstrations, rallies, marches, or protests on public sidewalks and streets, we’ve also seen a significant increase since mid-October of acts of civil disobedience and other deliberately disruptive actions,” Jay Ulfelder, a research director at Harvard’s Nonviolent Action Lab, wrote on the CCC blog Counting Crowds.

Demands for a cease-fire in the fighting over Gaza have become a rallying cry at the protests, as have as accusations of genocide against the Palestinian people and anger at the U.S. and President Joe Biden for their support of Israel, according to CCC’s tracking.

Protests can be important to understanding shifts in public opinion, or how willing members of the public are to mobilize for a cause. In this case, these U.S. protests come as Congress deliberates over $14 billion in funding to Israel, including for military uses, in addition to the $3.8 billion in U.S. aid the country already receives annually.

Though larger than past Palestinian solidarity protests, they still do not necessarily reflect the views of most Americans on Israel. According to a PBS NewsHour/Marist poll conducted Nov. 6 to Nov. 9, most Americans, about six in 10, said they sympathize with Israel, compared to three in 10 who are sympathetic toward Palestinians. At the same time, 38 percent of U.S. adults said Israel’s military response to Hamas has been “too much” — a 12 percentage point jump since October.

That was particularly true of Gen Z and millennial voters in the poll, 48 percent of whom said the military response was too much.

“I think the big story here is that there’s been a rupture between liberals and progressives,” New York Times columnist David Brooks told the PBS NewsHour’s Amna Nawaz on Nov. 17.

“It’s not only on the Middle East. On a bunch of other issues, you’re seeing this beginning — this rupture between progressives, who tend to be younger, and liberals, who tend to be older,” he added.

Gen Z and millennials are more Democratic than older generations, said Stephanie Calvano, director for data science and technology for the Marist Poll, but young people have increasingly shared this sentiment in recent weeks. At the same time, there is more willingness to protest against Israel’s bombardment of Gaza than there has been in the past, said Corey Robin, a political scientist at Brooklyn College.

“I would say that, until recently, pro-Palestine protests have definitely been confined to college campuses and Arab and Muslim communities. Most leftists I know, unless they were Jewish or Arab, tended to shy away from the issue, feeling like it was either too complicated or too controversial to take a public stand on. All that has changed,” Robin said.

The Palestinian solidarity protests have not been supported publicly by the vast majority of politicians, including from the Democratic Party, the CCC noted — writing that elected officials had only appeared at about 1 percent of Palestinian protests. By contrast, the March for Israel on Nov. 17 drew politicians from both parties, including top Congressional Democrats such as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, both of New York, along with Republicans like House Speaker Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana and Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa. The CCC said that about one in four pro-Israel demonstrations were attended by an elected official. The protests are unlikely to influence politicians in the short-term, Robin said. But there may be longer term legacies.

“The thing that’s interesting about these younger voters, this constituency on the left, is they do not seem to be evanescent, that just sort of emerges for one thing and goes away and doesn’t come back. They seem to be progressively getting stronger and more organized and more institutional in figuring out how to leverage power,” Robin said.

How protests over this war compare to those in the past

While protests over the Israel-Hamas war have grown, they are still dwarfed by 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests, the 2017 Women’s March, and the last major anti-war protest in the U.S. against the invasion of Iraq, which on a single day in 2003 turned out several hundred thousand protesters in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco alone. Those protests, however, built up over months and years of mobilization.

“Not remotely comparable,” said David S. Meyer, a professor of sociology and political science at the University of California, Irvine. He noted that anti-war protests are usually largest in the countries that are participants. “People were trying to restrain their own governments.”

If the Palestinian solidarity demonstrations have seemed “relatively modest” so far, University of Notre Dame professor David Cortright said that it also took time for the Iraq War “protests to emerge on a large scale in the U.S.”

Cortright, a peace activist and author of “A Peaceful Superpower: Lessons from the World’s Largest Antiwar Movement,” said that the resistance to the Iraq War built up as the nation recovered from the shock of the 9/11 attacks and as President George W. Bush’s administration made its case for war.

“The [early] protests were not huge,” Cortright said, “but a huge trigger was that people realized that Bush was actually going to do this.”

Cortright said the reaction time is sped up in the case of Israel, Hamas and Gaza. He added that conditions in which today’s protests exist are different than they were during the Vietnam War. Hamas is a stronger presence in the current conflict’s politics than the Vietcong were in Vietnam, for instance. With social media, more people are seeing dramatic images of the violence caused by Israel’s strikes. “I expect the protests to grow as the images continue,” Cortright said.

At the same time, social media can be a hurdle to broadening these types of social movements. Images or statements that come out of protests and travel across platforms can push the message beyond its original context, statements that might have been on the fringe of a protest become emblematic of the demonstration.

“At every protest you have someone making an extreme statement,” Cortright said. “What’s different is, social media can elevate these statements.”

Palestinian solidarity protests are not new in the United States, but they have been relatively small. Meyer said this is in contrast to other countries in Europe, where “Palestinian independence activists have been more successful at making in-roads.”

During an outbreak of violence between Israel and Hamas in May 2021, Ufelder said that a wave of pro-Palestinian protests in the U.S. began to expand to include the support of Indigenous activists, labor groups and organizations such as Black Lives Matter. This round of protests have drawn an even wider coalition.

Ufleder said this cause has started to pull in a wider swath of people from across the political spectrum — more centrist supporters along with the more liberal people and groups who have already shown support for Palestine, he said.

A similar shift was seen in 2020, when the protests over George Floyd’s murder broadened the group mobilizing around police brutality against Black people, Ufleder said.

Lauren Burgas and Jenna Bonarigu caravaned from Youngstown, Ohio, to participate in the Free Palestine march in Washington, D.C., in early November. They held homemade placards that called for a cease-fire and compared Israel’s actions in Gaza to the subjugation of Native Americans. “Colonizers are the real terrorists, this is native land,” it reads.

Burgas, a college student, said she got involved in the issue while she was dating a Palestinian man.

She said she began doing her own research, and while the relationship didn’t last, her interest in activism remained. She attended her first protest last year after the killing of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.

“In the past, there wasn’t really an influx or like a huge crowd gathering for Palestinian protest and I think that we see this turning point in our generation,” Burgas said.

Bonarigu began protesting for women’s issues during college, and has since participated in demonstrations for Black Lives Matter, Native American issues and now Palestinian solidarity, all of which are connected in her view by power dynamics of who is in charge.

“It’s the imperialists. It’s all the people that are running the country for millions of people that think humanely and morally,” Bonarigu said.

Some Palestinian solidarity protests have featured speakers who celebrated the violence perpetrated by Hamas, used violent imagery or, in some cases, made antisemitic statements. At a Times Square rally in the days immediately after the attack, one protester was photographed flaunting a swastika on his phone in front of pro-Israel counterprotesters. Another was a speaker who mocked the deaths of people who were attending a dance festival in the desert when Hamas attacked.

But generalizing that all of the protests are anti-Israeli or anti-Jewish is “a cheap shot,” Cortright said. “One can demonstrate against a violent attack against civilians by Israel while also condemning Hamas. Movements will have trouble getting broader support if they’re not able to articulate, ‘We are patriotic Americans, we agree to counter terrorism, but war is the wrong way to do it.’”

Cortright, who began his career in activism against the Vietnam War while he was still an active duty member of the military, said protests of that era also dealt with images and controversy, including the carrying of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, whose armed wing was the Vietcong.

“But it wasn’t enough to discredit the overall movement. It was a tiny faction in the overall movement,” Cortright said.

Deeper political effects

Some Democratic state and local leaders have criticized the pro-Palestinian protests. In San Francisco, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins referred to one as a “pro-Hamas rally” in a post on X, after vandals wrote “Death 2 Israel” in graffiti on a downtown building. She later deleted her post after outcry from the local Arab American and Muslim community. In New York City, Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams* condemned the protest held in Times Square as antisemitic.1

Robin said Democratic politicians have attempted to “create a unity” around support for Israel but “the opposition and discontent is just that much greater” than in the past.

“Mainstream politicians in the Democratic party are kind of nervous and they don’t have the certainty they once possessed [about Israel]. It’s a lot more mixed,” Robin said. “There’s no doubt that there’s a rising constituency who are electorally active on the left and are in key battleground states.”

According to the PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, while 79 percent of Democrats approve of the job Biden is doing as president in general, that number drops to 60 percent when asked about his role in the war between Israel and Hamas. Recent polls have raised the possibility that Biden’s stance on Israel could cost him voters important to his 2020 victory, in particular Arab American voters in Michigan and young people.

His support of Israel as it lays siege to Gaza is costing him support among Arab Americans, an important part of his victory in Michigan – a swing state that had previously been won in 2016 by Donald Trump.

The discontent has not been limited to Democratic politicians – disagreements within left-wing organizations have also been played out in public. A member of the Democratic Socialists of America for 40 years, and a former member of the radical Students for a Democratic Society, announced he was leaving the organization in protest of what he described as its “politically and morally bankrupt response” to the Hamas attack in Israel. Others have defended the organization’s response and vowed to continue solidarity with Palestinians.

“I think Israel has always created conflict on the American left. I think people who are very tuned in to what’s going on now are very divided,” Meyer said.

“I think support for the Palestinians has grown, maybe faster than I anticipated,” Meyer added.

Meyer said the views of Americans may also be influenced by antipathy to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, some members of his government and the likelihood that they’ll control Gaza after the dust settles.

“Netanyahu has announced that Israel may have to run Gaza for the foreseeable future, and rightwing members of his government have announced plans that sure sound like ethnic cleansing,” Meyer said. “Many Americans who want to support Israel don’t want to support all this government does.”

Cortright said protests often struggle to appeal to and gain support among the broader public. But on this war, protests coupled with broader shifts in public sentiment seem to be making a difference.

“The administration has been moving slowly and cautiously for political reasons, but they are edging in the direction of favoring a cessation of hostilities, even if they don’t use the word cease-fire,” he said.

*Adams decrying protestors as antisemitic when Proudboys and Oathkeepers can walk around New York City with a protective police escort that is happy to hold the subway gates open for them is almost as funny to me as notable past spreaders of antisemitic nonsense such as Marjorie "space-lasers" Taylor Green supporting the in-House Resolution from Nov. 2023 to censure Representative Rashida Tlaib.

Israel's military says hostages waved a white flag before being killed by a soldier

Authors: Scott Neuman, Kat Lonsdorf

TEL AVIV, Israel — An investigation into the killing of three hostages held by Hamas in Gaza has found that the captives were shirtless and waving a white flag as Israeli soldiers fired on them.

The preliminary report Saturday by the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, said the hostages had managed to evade their captors in the northern Gaza neighborhood of Shijaiyah before they were "mistakenly identified" as they exited a building on Friday. They were then shot by an Israeli soldier.

Two were killed immediately and another was wounded and ran back into the building, an Israeli official said in a briefing on Saturday. Soldiers then heard a cry for help in Hebrew. The soldier's battalion commander ordered the firing to stop. The third hostage later died of his wounds.

Last month, Hamas released more than 100 hostages in a seven-day truce in exchange for about 300 Palestinian prisoners and detainees held by Israel. The three captives killed on Friday were among the more than 100 hostages believed still held by the Palestinian militant group.

The preliminary report concluded that the soldiers involved in the accidental shooting did not follow the IDF's own rules of engagement. The hostages had been dressed in civilian clothes and waving a white flag before they were shot by a soldier who felt* under threat, the military official said.

Hamas militants wear civilian clothes to deceive the military, the official said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the deaths of the three captives — Yotam Haim, Samer Fuad El-Talalka and Alon Shamriz, all in their 20s — an "unbearable tragedy."

Families of the hostages have kept up public pressure on Netanyahu's government, calling for Israel's first priority to be their safe return, and not the military operation to eradicate Hamas. Adding to that pressure in recent weeks, captives who were released during last month's cease-fire have been speaking publicly about their time in captivity.

On Saturday afternoon at "hostages square" in central Tel Aviv, people gathered to hear from families of the captives. Ruby Chen, the father of hostage Itay Chen, 19, said he met last week with President Biden, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other senior U.S. officials.

"We wanted to give them the gratitude of all the Jewish people [for] all they've done for us," Chen said. "I don't think there was any other president who was so willing to do anything possible, 24/7, on behalf of his administration to help us see our loved ones."

But he criticized Netanyahu's government, who he said was not interested in meeting with families of the hostages. "The Israeli government needs to be active," Chen said. "They need to put an offer on the table, including prisoners with blood on their hands," he said, referring to the release of Palestinians held in Israeli jails, "... to get the hostages back alive."

Hadas Pilowsky-Ron echoed that sentiment, saying releasing the hostages "must be the most important goal of the war."

"There is no choice ... bring the hostages [home] first," she said. The Israeli military can always go back and get Hamas later, but "every day that goes by, another hostage dies and this is the most important issue now."

Earlier, on Friday evening after the news of the accidental shootings broke, a group of people gathered in central Tel Aviv and marched through the city's streets at night, calling out to others to wake up and join them.

Among them was Adam Yekutieli, 37, an artist, who said the deaths of the three hostages reinforced for him that Israel needs to negotiate another cease-fire to free more of the captives.

"There's no military solution to this situation," he said. "Israel is bombing its way into a corner that it won't be able to get out of."

Meanwhile, on Friday, veteran Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa was killed in Gaza by fire from an Israeli drone at a school in the city of Khan Younis, the Foreign Press Association said.

The FPA said Daqqa's colleague, Wael Al-Dahdouh, was wounded in the incident.

"We consider this a grave blow to the already limited freedom of the press in Gaza and call on the army for a prompt investigation and explanation," the FPA said.

Israel's military said in a statement that it "takes all operationally feasible measures to protect both civilians and journalists."

"The IDF has never, and will never, deliberately target** journalists," it said, adding that "Given the ongoing exchanges of fire, remaining in an active combat zone has inherent risks."

*Just to be clear, these three individuals were unarmed, shirtless, and waving the internationally recognized white flag of truce/surrender. Given the general disregard the IDF has demonstrated in utilizing air strikes in in areas in densely populated areas (e.g., Jabalia refugee camp, the Al-Shaboura Camp...), writing off civilian casualties in taking out alleged Hamas members as being "collateral damage," I suspect the only actual "mistake" here was shooting Israeli citizens instead of Palestinians. Also, who's to say that hostages haven't died in airstrikes on Hamas bases, assuming that such strikes have accurately targeted such bases?

**63 journalists are known to have died or gone missing during the entire 2 decades of the Vietnam War, which Operation Iraqi Freedom superseded within 3 years (around 74 correspondants and media assistants dead by 2006, at least 150 journalists and 54 media staff by 2011). As of Jan. 2 2024, three months after Oct. 7 2023, The Committee to Protect Journalists reported that 77 Journalists were confirmed dead, with 16 reported injured, 21 arrested and 3 missing. Back in early November, the Israeli government had issued a statement calling journalists who had photographed the Oct 7th attacks as being complicit in crimes against humanity, after media watchdog "HonestReporting" had questioned if journalists operating in the area had possessed "inside knowledge" of Hamas' plan prior to the attack. Surviving Gaza-based photojournalists such as Motaz Azaiza (who incidently lost 15 relatives in the air-strike of Deir al-Balah Camp in October) have purportedly experienced instances of possible military targetting.

The Problem With the US Media’s Coverage of Gaza

Assuming there are only two sides to every story misses the reality that most stories have many sides.

Author: Nan Levinson

What a world! For eight weeks now, events in Israel and Gaza have been the story of the hour, day, week. And what exactly are we to make of that?

Let’s start with the obvious: American media coverage of the horrors there has been nonstop since the Hamas slaughter of October 7. In fact, it’s knocked Russia’s war in Ukraine, the one we were told was so essential to the future of democracy, off front pages (and their media equivalents) everywhere. And the coverage of recent protests has strikingly outpaced those of any other anti-war protests in this century. What the American news media do is, of course, only part of any story, but their recent protest focus contrasts vividly with how they’ve typically covered anti-war and peace actions and so reveals something about how we Americans are thinking about war and peace right now.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, American journalists did report on the outrage over that country’s actions and the outpouring of support for Ukraine, but in the endless months of conflict since then, they’ve paid almost no attention to actions calling for a negotiated settlement there, even as that war goes bloodily on and on. Neither was there much coverage of anti-war protests against Washington’s endless conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan after February 15, 2003, when (depending on whom you read) six to 15 million people took to the streets of 600 to 800 cities around the world in the largest one-day anti-war protest in history. There, too, even though anti-war veterans and peace groups continued to stage actions, the interest of American news outlets soon evaporated.

Admittedly, Camp Casey, a sprawling encampment of relatives and supporters of soldiers and veterans who wanted to stop the war in Iraq, which sprang up near a vacationing President George W. Bush in August 2005, temporarily caught the attention of a bored press corps idling in the heat. By spring 2008, however, when I was trying to drum up interest in Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan, a sizeable gathering of Americans who had fought in those two wars and were publicly testifying about their misguided actions there, I was dismissively told by a New York Times reporter, “If you read The New York Times, you would know that it doesn’t cover rallies.”

A couple of summers ago, The Boston Globe and other local news outlets showed no interest in talking to anyone boarding buses in that city for the Poor People’s Campaign’s Moral March on Washington, which included antimilitarism in its platform. In contrast, when about 100 locals boarded buses for a pro-Israel rally in Washington this November, the Globe devoted 24 paragraphs to the story. (Granted, the pro-Israel-march buses loaded at Gillette Stadium, home to the Patriots football team, which is always news in these parts.) It’s common to gripe about insufficient reporting on a cause you care about, but for me—and I’ve covered anti-war actions since 2001—it’s striking that the media, in their gatekeeper and agenda-setting roles, have been so eager to cover protests about Israel’s war in Gaza in ways they seldom did when it came to US anti-war actions earlier in the century.

Does it matter if you throw a protest march and reporters don’t come? Yes, because the very point is to be noticed. The news media are a sphere where competing ideologies and aims play out in the open. So, the way marches and other actions are or aren’t covered helps shape public opinion, affirms or challenges received wisdom, creates a historical record, and—fingers crossed—helps define future political practices.

In this case, with the United States in a powerful position to influence the course of the war on Gaza, continued reporting on anti-war protests could help pressure President Biden to stop embracing (could there have been a worse optic?) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and demand a permanent cease-fire instead.

Why This Story Now?

Amid competing narratives, unverifiable information, intense emotions, and everything we still don’t know, it’s important to keep all the often-contradictory realities we do know in mind—and be suitably alarmed.

We know that the United States lavishes at least $3.8 billion yearly in military aid to Israel, along with Get Out of Jail Free cards when it comes to human-rights abuses. Josh Paul, a State Department official who resigned in protest over the way our weaponry was killing Gazans, reminded us of just that recently. (The United States has also given money to the Palestinian Authority Security Forces, but vastly less of it.)

We also know that 1,200 Israelis were slaughtered in the October 7th raids by the armed wing of Hamas, the most Jews killed at one time in that country’s history. And we know that about 240 others of all ages were kidnapped in those raids and held hostage.

We know that nearly 16,000 Palestinian civilians have now been killed in Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza and that about 1.7 million Gazans, three-quarters of the population there, have been forced to flee their homes in search of ever more elusive safety. We know that, of about 2,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons without charge or trial, 240 were released in exchange for 105 Israeli hostages and that, in the same period, about 244 Palestinians and four Israelis were killed in clashes on the West Bank.

We’ve gotten little information on combatant casualties in Gaza, save occasional announcements from the Israeli military and a rare statement from Hamas, but that’s not unusual. In recent American wars, only independent organizations like icasualties and the Costs of War Project have tried to offer comprehensive reckonings of the damage done.

“Far too many” Palestinians have been killed, said Secretary of State Antony Blinken* in early November, but how many is the right number when civilian deaths of any sort should be unacceptable? In the face of so much slaughter, destruction, and upheaval, the urge to choose sides, take a stand, make a statement, or man the barricades was compelling. And so it was hardly surprising, after the barbarity of October 7, that rallies in sympathy with the Israeli hostages, against antisemitism, and even calling for revenge sprang up around the world. As many as 290,000 protestors gathered in solidarity with Israel on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on November 14. But as the Israeli assault on Gaza escalated and civilian deaths soared, sympathies began to shift and protests here and elsewhere calling for a cease-fire and an end to the occupation of Gaza grew rapidly.

Meanwhile, staff and political appointees at the State Department, the US Agency for International Development, and at least 40 other government agencies signed letters or memos calling for a cease-fire, as did at least 100 congressional staff members, who staged a walkout. People put up posters of Israeli hostages. Others tore them down. Businesses and institutions issued position papers and those that didn’t were pressured to do so. Even restaurants got into the act.

On university campuses, those sympathizing with various positions sprang into action and began to duke it out. Students for Justice in Palestine was kicked off certain campuses; some student protesters were vilified and doxxed, even losing future job offers; and alumni weighed in, threatening to withhold donations. All of this was heavily covered by news outlets, which thrive on stories about extreme positions staked out early, along with in-your-face actions, heavy-handed responses, the selective suppression of speech, and the influence of money on all of that.

So, obviously one explanation for the coverage is that the protests, marches, demonstrations, rallies, and disputes have been too big, widespread, and persistent to ignore, but it’s not that simple. (It never is, is it?)

We in the United States are, in some sense, close enough to the war in Gaza to make protest a reasonable response—thanks to the military funding provided to Israel, the historical relationship between the two countries, blood ties and friendships between many Americans and Israelis and/or Palestinians, and vivid parallels between the mistreatment of people of color in the US and of Palestinians in Israel, Gaza, and on the West Bank. Yet the US is also nearly 7,000 miles away and none of our own military is (at least as yet) on the ground there. Even with alarming upsurges in antisemitism and Islamophobia, life in America is, for most of us, still comparatively safe. So is most political action.

Over the past decade or so, we’ve also become increasingly accustomed to such concerted political actions—Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, March for Our Lives, student walkouts for climate change, and picket lines for industrial strikes (often led by young activists). And despite the difficulties and dangers of reporting from Gaza—at least 63 journalists and media workers have been killed in the war so far—an established press corps in Israel and surrounding countries has made both the nightmare of the October 7 attacks and the increasingly horrific war conditions in Gaza all too vivid to Americans.

Inside/Outside the Frame

There’s a journalistic adage that goes: If your mother says she loves you, check it out. A corollary might be: If your mother says you’re perfect, consider the source. Good journalism, in other words, involves constant verification and an instinct for skepticism.

But journalism isn’t stenography and journalists tip their hands all the time. They make choices about what’s news and how to frame it; what to include, emphasize, or omit; who gets quoted and who’s considered a reliable source or expert. It’s clearly their job to inform us as fully, honestly, and fairly as possible so we can make our own moral decisions, including about whether and what to protest.

“The only way to tell this story is to tell it truthfully,” wrote David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, as he began his multifaceted report on a trip to Israel shortly after October 7, “and to know that you will fail.” You can watch journalists trying to get it right—the protests, the war, the horrors, the consequences—to do justice to the story and the people at its heart. And yet they fail for many reasons. (How could they not?)

Sometimes, it’s the pressure of social media and the 24/7 news cycle, which promotes a rush to publish before necessary information is in. Sometimes, it’s because the topic is complex and requires a backstory and context most Americans (even journalists) don’t already know. Worse yet, it’s hard to fit such complexity into short paragraphs, concise lead sentences, and even more concise headlines, which are often all the news that its consumers have the time to take in.

Sometimes it’s that word-packages—displaced, surgical strikes, humanitarian crisis—become so routine we essentially stop noticing. The camera, too, can be an aid or a weapon, and even grammar comes into play, as in the difference between Israeli civilians were killed (by stated or implied actors), while Palestinians civilians died, as if by some unknown force or their folly in being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I’ve been hung up lately on the word horrors and its variations: horrible, horrific, horrifying. Examples of their use in such media coverage are legion. The writer in me wants to come up with a fresh word that would really allow us to absorb and truly consider the—yes!—horrors of what’s now happening in Gaza. Then I recall these two lines from Pablo Neruda’s searing poem about the Spanish civil war:

and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children’s blood.

This war, like all war, is indeed horrible.

Sometimes the coverage problem is what’s pejoratively called bothsideism or, more generously, balance. But assuming there are only two sides to every story misses the reality that most stories have many sides. The protesters in recent demonstrations, for instance, embraced a remarkable range of demands, intentions, and sympathies, but reporting was so much easier if positions were clear-cut and uniform. So, coverage has tended toward a Manichaean view of the hostilities and those demonstrating about them: pro or con, allies or enemies, Zionist or antisemite, good for America and Joe Biden or a blow to democracy everywhere and the Democratic Party in particular. Such a way of reporting, however, closes down so many other possibilities.

This is particularly apparent when political demonstrations against atrocities like those committed in Israel on October 7th and in Gaza (and the West Bank) thereafter are seen mainly as a spectacle in which reporters count the numbers, repeat the slogans, and focus on a random few who supposedly represent the whole. Individual stories may humanize an issue and draw eyes to an article. Such reporting, however, can also play into a particularly American version of dissent in which the individual resister becomes the story, not the resistance movement. Such a skew can make political protests seem more like a series of individual temper tantrums, at best tolerable outlets for sometimes justified anger, and not much more.

What doesn’t make it inside such a news-media framework is revealing. In this country, as an issue, peace itself has been ceded to the left, which effectively means banished. But imagine, for a moment, what a different world we might be in if our news platforms were to set up peace beats alongside their war beats. What if the opinions of peace workers were as routinely sought out as retired generals and politicians in the pockets of arms manufacturers? What if it was considered a crucial part of the news to explore the complexities of, possible conditions for, and likelihood of peace, rather than presenting it as just the absence of war or a zero-sum game? What if our reporting explored moral issues along with economic and political ones and maybe even figured out how to make peace seem as exciting and newsworthy as war?

I’m not so naïve as to think that a shift in the business of news coverage here in America would end years of animosity and violence** in the Middle East. Still, over time it could reorient our thinking about militarism and, given this embattled and battered planet of ours, that doesn’t seem—to me, as least—like such a bad idea.

*Blinken's helped facilitate transfers of military aid to Israel, including the emergency ones that bypass congress. His department also includes the UN ambassador who vetoed various UN resolutions calling for ceasefire or aid in Gaza.

**Yeah, you'd probably need to tear down resource exploitation, dismantle all US military bases, and reform/abolish the CIA to accomplish that.

Under the rubble: The missing in Gaza

Finding the 7,000 Palestinians believed buried under collapsed buildings is becoming increasingly difficult.

Authors: Mohammad Abu Shahma, Shakeeb Asrar, Konstantinos Antonopoulos

Every morning, 51-year-old Yasser Abu Shamala goes to the place where his family’s house once stood in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. He starts digging through the rubble with his bare hands, lifting pieces of concrete to try to find members of his family buried under the debris.

Abu Shamala’s family house was bombed by Israeli forces on October 26, demolishing the building and killing his parents, brothers and cousins. The strike killed 22 people with many more trapped under the rubble.

Abu Shamala’s family members are among the more than 7,000 people who are reported missing in Gaza, including 4,900 children and women. The missing are believed to be trapped under bombed buildings, according to Hamas officials in Gaza.

Despite multiple failed attempts, Abu Shamala refuses to quit and has pledged to continue searching for his relatives and recover their bodies from under the ruins of the house. He hopes he can bury them in a cemetery with proper Islamic rituals.

Israel has dropped thousands of bombs on Gaza since October 7, the day the war started with Hamas attacks on southern Israel. The war is believed to be one of the most destructive and fatal in recent times, having killed nearly 21,000 people in Gaza and 1,139 in Israel, wounding nearly 55,000 Palestinians and at least 8,730 in Israel, and destroying or damaging at least 60 percent of Gaza’s residential units.

As the war continues, finding and rescuing those trapped under the rubble is becoming increasingly difficult.

Primitive tools: The struggle to get trapped people out

The Gaza Civil Defence is tasked with rescuing people every time a bomb is dropped, but its ability to mount rescues is restricted by a lack of advanced equipment.

“The equipment we use is very outdated, and the Civil Defence hasn’t received any new equipment since 2006. The Civil Defence is working with the least minimum of equipment,” said Captain Raed Saqr from the Fire and Rescue Department in the Gaza Civil Defence.

Saqr showed Al Jazeera the tools his team uses for rescue missions. They included a shovel to remove debris, a sledgehammer to break pieces of concrete, a manual cutter to sever metal rods and crowbars to access confined places where hands can’t reach.

“They are simple tools that could be found anywhere or at any craftsman’s shop,” he said.

According to Captain Anes Wafi, head of the Fire and Rescue Department in Khan Younis, the Gaza Civil Defence has a limited number of machines but is unable to use them due to a shortage of fuel.

“If we had fuel, we would have used a concrete crusher and cutting discs. We would have been more productive. They are completely out of service now because of the fuel crisis,” Wafi said.

Wafi added that no aid has been provided to the Gaza Civil Defence through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt despite the agency’s need for special machinery and heavy cranes to break down buildings and concrete and remove debris.

“We do not have any capabilities. We need tractors, claw machines and huge cranes to lift the rubble of the buildings.”

This month, Gaza’s media office said in a statement that 80 percent of rescue vehicles and equipment had been destroyed in Israeli attacks on the enclave.

No respite for rescue missions

Israel’s assault on Gaza has continued for almost three months with bombs dropping nearly every day. The ongoing attacks make it difficult for rescue teams to reach the thousands of people who remain buried under the rubble, especially if those areas have been evacuated and blocked off by Israeli forces.

“Sometimes our teams were targeted while they were searching for people under the rubble, or sometimes they [Israeli forces] would fire warning missiles to force us to evacuate the area,” Wafi said.

“Our teams were targeted in Gaza City and in Rafah. Our ambulance car was damaged because of a missile attack nearby. We are always expecting to be targeted in any rescue mission.”

Wafi said that sometimes the team has to make the difficult decision to leave someone trapped under the rubble if they determine the rescue mission cannot continue without proper equipment or machinery.

“We had to leave them there since it would take about 10 hours of work, and we would move on to another place that would be recently targeted and needs less time to dig under the rubble.”

Widespread destruction: How Gaza turned into rubble

The Israeli bombardment has levelled entire neighbourhoods in Gaza from the north to the south.

Some international officials have called the destruction more “catastrophic, apocalyptic“ than that experienced by German cities during World War II while others say Gaza is “fast becoming unlivable”.

According to the latest data from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Palestinian government, as of Sunday, Israeli attacks have resulted in:

• More than half of Gaza’s homes - 313,000 residential units - destroyed or damaged
• 352 educational facilities damaged
• 26 of 35 hospitals not functioning
• 102 ambulances damaged
• 203 places of worship damaged

With nearly two million people - about 85 percent of the population - internally displaced within the tiny enclave, some Palestinians have resorted to staying in their demolished homes rather than being homeless.

No end to the war is in sight, but experts are already worried that it could take years to clear the rubble and find those trapped underneath.

The Mines Advisory Group, which works to clear landmines in conflict zones, said unexploded ammunition in Gaza will make it particularly difficult to clear the debris and would require unprecedented efforts.

The Biden administration once again bypasses Congress on an emergency weapons sale to Israel

Author: Matthew Lee, AP diplomatic writer

WASHINGTON - For the second time this month the Biden administration is bypassing Congress to approve an emergency weapons sale to Israel as Israel continues to prosecute its war against Hamas in Gaza under increasing international criticism.

The State Department said Friday that Secretary of State Antony Blinken had told Congress that he had made a second emergency determination covering a $147.5 million* sale for equipment, including fuses, charges and primers, that is needed to make the 155 mm shells that Israel has already purchased function.

“Given the urgency of Israel’s defensive needs, the secretary notified Congress that he had exercised his delegated authority to determine an emergency existed necessitating the immediate approval of the transfer,” the department said.

“The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to U.S. national interests to ensure Israel is able to defend itself against the threats it faces,” it said.

The emergency determination means the purchase will bypass the congressional review requirement for foreign military sales. Such determinations are rare, but not unprecedented, when administrations see an urgent need for weapons to be delivered without waiting for lawmakers’ approval.

Blinken made a similar decision on Dec. 9, to approve the sale to Israel of nearly 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition worth more than $106 million.

Both moves have come as President Joe Biden’s request for a nearly $106 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and other national security needs remains stalled in Congress, caught up in a debate over U.S. immigration policy and border security. Some Democratic lawmakers have spoken of making the proposed $14.3 billion in American assistance to its Mideast ally contingent on concrete steps by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to reduce civilian casualties in Gaza during the war with Hamas.

The State Department sought to counter potential criticism of the sale on human rights grounds by saying it was in constant touch with Israel to emphasize the importance of minimizing civilian casualties, which have soared since Israel began its response to the Hamas attacks in Israel on Oct. 7.

“We continue to strongly emphasize to the government of Israel that they must not only comply with international humanitarian law, but also take every feasible step to prevent harm to civilians,” it said.

“Hamas hides behind civilians and has embedded itself among the civilian population, but that does not lessen Israel’s responsibility and strategic imperative to distinguish between civilians and Hamas terrorists as it conducts its military operations,” the department said. “This type of campaign can only be won by protecting civilians.”

Bypassing Congress with emergency determinations for arms sales is an unusual step that has in the past met resistance from lawmakers, who normally have a period of time to weigh in on proposed weapons transfers and, in some cases, block them.

In May 2019, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made an emergency determination for an $8.1 billion sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan after it became clear that the Trump administration would have trouble overcoming lawmakers’ concerns about the Saudi and UAE-led war in Yemen.

Pompeo came under heavy criticism for the move, which some believed may have violated the law because many of the weapons involved had yet to be built and could not be delivered urgently. But he was cleared of any wrongdoing after an internal investigation.

At least four administrations have used the authority since 1979. President George H.W. Bush’s administration used it during the Gulf War to get arms quickly to Saudi Arabia.

*When it comes to canceling the recently-restarted construction of the Border Wall, his hands are tied because it was pre-approved. When it comes to forgiving student loan, it dies in Congress. When it comes to the rampant price-gouging and worker-exploitation that begets inflation, we get a tweet that basically says "Hey guys, don't do that." When it comes to firing DeJoy as a precaution against future meddling in the general elections, goose eggs. But When it comes to gun-running for Israel, suddenly the Biden administration has the power to bypass Congress.

Israeli airstrikes kill scores in Gaza as war enters a new year

Author: Bethan McKernan, correspondant in Jerusalem

At least 100 people have been killed in Gaza in the past 24 hours, as the three-month-old conflict between Israel and Hamas rolls into the new year with no end in sight and only tentative Israeli government plans for discussing the day after the war is over.

The Hamas-run territory’s health authority said about 48 people were killed overnight on Sunday in heavy Israeli bombing of Gaza City, where pockets of fierce fighting are ongoing despite claims by the Israel Defense Forces that the north of the blockaded exclave is largely under Israeli operational control.

Another strike killed 20 people sheltering at al-Aqsa University in the west of Gaza City, witnesses said.

In the southern half of Gaza, areas previously identified as evacuation zones for the strip’s population of 2.3 million, about 85% of whom have fled their homes, have been heavily attacked with airstrikes and artillery over the past week as Israel broadens its ground operation.

Israel is now targeting Nuseirat, Maghazi and Bureij, a belt of overcrowded and poorly serviced camps in the centre of the strip built to house Palestinian refugees who fled their homes during the 1948 war over Israel’s creation. About 35 people were killed by bombardment of the area on Sunday.

“They were innocent people,” Hussein Siam, whose relatives were among the dead in a strike on the central neighbourhood of Zawayda, told the Associated Press. “Israeli warplanes bombarded the whole family.”

The camps’ populations have swelled with hundreds of thousands of newly displaced people since the war broke out after Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel, in which the militant group killed 1,140 people and seized up to another 250 as hostages.

Rear Adm Daniel Hagari, the chief military spokesperson, said late on Sunday that Israel was withdrawing some forces from Gaza as part of its “smart management” of the war. He did not say how many, and held out the possibility they would return at a later point in the war.

Israeli media said up to five brigades, numbering thousands of soldiers, would be withdrawn, but it was not immediately clear if it represented a normal troop rotation or a new phase in the fighting. Hagari also said some reservists would return to civilian life to bolster Israel’s wartime economy.

Israel’s retaliatory war has killed about 21,800 people, injured another 55,000 and left approximately half of Gaza’s housing stock in ruins from bombings and ground fighting.

New estimates suggest that a quarter of Gaza’s population could die within a year from preventable diseases owing to a lack of sanitation, the collapse of the health system and hunger as desperate families weather the winter conditions in tents and makeshift shelters.

On Sunday, the Israeli foreign minister said the country was prepared to let ships deliver aid to the Gaza Strip immediately as part of a proposed sea corridor from Cyprus, a plan first proposed in November.

The Israeli military said on Sunday it had killed around a dozen enemy fighters in multiple ground battles across Gaza and it was homing in on the southern town of Khan Younis, where it believes senior Hamas officials are hiding.

Israel has vowed to continue the war effort until “total victory” over Hamas, despite the growing casualty toll and international pressure for a ceasefire, including from the country’s most important ally, the US. Its war goals seem to be slipping away: troops are bogged down in ground fighting, senior Hamas leadership figures have not been killed, and Hamas has retained its ability to fire rockets at Israel.

On Sunday the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said Israel had displayed unparalleled “morality” in its conduct in Gaza. He rejected a case filed by South Africa at the international court of justice on Friday alleging that Israel was committing genocidal acts in Gaza.

The threat of a wider war looms large over the region, as skirmishes with the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah intensify on Israel’s northern boundary with Lebanon.

The US military said on Sunday that its forces had shot and killed several Iran-backed Houthi rebels from Yemen when they tried to attack a cargo ship in the Red Sea, a serious escalation in Houthi attacks on international shipping lanes that the fundamentalist group says are in solidarity with Palestine. Washington has assembled a multinational naval taskforce to deter such attacks.

For now there seems little hope of even a temporary break in the fighting in Gaza, even after Egypt hosted Hamas leaders for talks last week and pushed plans for a staged break in the war involving a second release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners before an eventual ceasefire.

The US news outlet Axios and the Israeli website Ynet, both citing unnamed Israeli officials, reported that Qatari mediators had told Israel that Hamas was prepared to resume talks on new hostage releases in exchange for a ceasefire.

Netanyahu, when asked about the process on Saturday, said Hamas had been “giving all kinds of ultimatums that we didn’t accept”. “We are seeing a certain shift [but] I don’t want to create an expectation,” he said, without elaborating.

Since 7 October, the normally fractious country has somewhat united, but that solidarity is showing signs of waning. Saturday night’s weekly protests in Tel Aviv aimed at putting pressure on the government to prioritise the release of the estimated 129 hostages still in Hamas captivity were joined this week by thousands of people protesting against Netanyahu and his government.

Israel is deeply divided over the longtime leader’s suitability for high office, as well as by this year’s controversial judicial overhaul, which could help him evade corruption charges he denies.

What happens to Gaza when Israel declares that the war is over is still unclear. Netanyahu has reportedly repeatedly refused to hold meetings, or has cancelled scheduled meetings, with security officials on discussing the “day after”, which are now set for Tuesday.*

*Given how rhetoric about expulsion of the Gazan population has shifted further into Israel's political and academic mainstream, I wonder if they are hoping for something at least akin to the exodus of Armenians from their enclave in the Nagorno-Karabakh region that happened in September of 2023 , after Azerbaijan's renewed military offensives to enforce their claim to the territory. Azerbaijan has denied accusations of ethnic cleansing and assured that they would help the Armenian population to reintergrate, but their track record of authoritarinism and oppression of Armenians begets skepticism. Incidentally, a significant chunk of Azerbaijan's military imports apparently came from Israel.

Opinion: We all see the horrific videos of suffering in Gaza. We must not look away

Author: V (formerly Eve Ensler), a playwright and activist and the founder of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls

Over these last horrific months, Instagram has exploded with catastrophic images and videos of the genocide taking place in Gaza. We have seen formerly incubated babies found abandoned on hospital beds, huge craters where apartment buildings and neighborhoods once stood, bones emerging from rubble. One particular video haunts me. I watch it on my phone. I watch it again. A dust covered, anguished father crawls towards his limp, gray, dead 10 month old baby. He covers him with his body. He holds the baby rocking and rocking him as if to say, “gone, gone, gone.” He slaps the floor with his hand. He cries out over and over. Then the energy changes, suddenly terrifying, suddenly shocking. I have never seen a man’s body go mad from the inside. I have never seen legs scream – their movements convulsive, spasmodic, as if taken, charged by electrocuting grief.

And I realize there must be a person filming this and I wonder if the father is aware or if he is so far gone into the horror that he is no longer in that room or in this realm at all. And I ask myself what does it mean to be recording the mad vulnerability of grief in real time? And I worry that watching this is somehow invasive, entering an intimacy I have not earned. This father, a stranger and this probably the most catastrophic moment of his life. But the video is on Instagram. I assume that the father must have agreed to be filmed, agreed for the video to be posted here. And this reminds me of the mothers of the Say Her Name campaign, the extraordinary mothers of the daughters, sisters, granddaughters who were murdered by the police. I remember a particular event a few years ago where they were being honored after a play. I was on stage with several of them who were sharing their stories. One of the mothers began to cry as she spoke, which grew into a loud wail. I could tell she was losing control. So I gently took her arm and asked if she might want to walk off stage for a minute. She froze, looked at me with total clarity and said, “No, no, let them see us. Let them know our pain.”

I have been trying to come up with a word or a way to accurately describe what we are doing as we press the “sensitive material” buttons on our IG Reels to release the most painful atrocities and images. What is this ritual? I know I cannot ever feel or know what that father is feeling. I pace my bedroom. I feel nauseous. I feel grotesque and privileged and disgusted to live in America, an empire that spends billions supporting this violent and violating enterprise. I feel a sickening disappointment in myself, a sinking awareness of a malignant lack of courage. I have been to Israel and Palestine multiple times. I have seen with my own eyes the hundreds of checkpoints and walls. I have heard and experienced firsthand the cruelty of Israeli soldiers towards Palestinians, the degradation, the sadism, the apartheid structure. And yes, for almost 20 years since the first visit, I have gone to demonstrations, signed letters and petitions to end the occupation, the siege on Gaza, the stolen settlements. I have joined Israeli and Palestinian women peace activists on the ground in Israel and here in US, supported the Freedom Theatre in Jenin, hosted educational speakers and events.

But, here now, watching this father I realize, I have not given myself fully. Not really. There has always been a reservation in me, a fear, a real fear of being excommunicated from a tribe that I deeply admire and know, a tribe who’s suffering I have studied and visited and memorized and learned in my body since I first inhaled The Diary of Anne Frank at nine, and although I know I can never comprehend the magnitude of such suffering, I have tried to get as close to it as possible as a way of honoring, remembering and cherishing those that suffered and those that were born out of that suffering. And that journey of loving the Jewish people and attempting to touch our agony, changed and determined my existence. That holocaust brought me to the world, brought me to war zones and the far reaches of human suffering, catalyzed with the mantra and directive “never again”. And I took that imperative very seriously. I took it to mean that never again for the Jewish people meant never again for anyone, the Congolese people or the Bosnians or the Sudanese or the Palestinians. I took this vow as a political and spiritual mandate to expand the boundaries of my own concerns and connect to the greater tribe of humanity.

In the video the father clutches his dead child. I feel the agonizing failure of language to meet this moment. I feel the smoldering shame and rage of living in a world that for 80 days has allowed the full-scale destruction of a people and their place, (over 21,000 dead, over 56,000 injured, 90% of Gaza destroyed)* in broad daylight, where babies’ brains are exploded and people are being starved and bombed in their dreams and hunted with rifles and gunned down in wheelchairs and where, with each passing hour the precious poets, journalists, doctors and nurses are being erased into eternity. Where hospitals, schools, mosques, art centers, everything that makes a life and holds a culture is turned to dust. I watch the video again. Some might call this a form of self-harm. Some might call it obsession. But that is not it at all. I am watching as a way of seeing, as a way of paying attention, as a way of knowing and in that knowing allowing the pain of that father into my body, my heart and my memory as a way of not letting him go, as a way of saying you are not alone, you are not forgotten.

We are watching now, millions of us and we must keep watching. They know how powerful our watching is and that is why they are doing everything they can to censor what we are watching. They want us to turn away. They are betting that they will outlast us and exhaust our attention with their atrocities. We must keep watching because it is only in this pain and through this pain that we will charge our resolve and our power and force America and Israel to end this bloody war. We can and we must.

*death toll and injury rate per this update from Reuters (accessed Jan 3rd 2024)

Second administration official resigns in protest of Biden’s support for Israeli war in Gaza

Authors: Ellen Knickmeyer, Collin Binkley

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Department of Education policy adviser appointed by the Biden administration quit Wednesday to protest the administration’s crucial military support of Israel’s war in Gaza and its handling of the conflict’s repercussions at home and abroad.

Tariq Habash, a Biden administration appointee who had worked in the education department to help overhaul the student loan system and address inequities in higher education, told The Associated Press he submitted his resignation Wednesday. That was after he and others had “done everything imaginable” to work within the system to try to register their objections to administration leaders, he said.

Habash becomes at least the second official, and the first known official of Palestinian origin, to resign from the administration in protest of President Joe Biden’s actions regarding the war. State Department veteran Josh Paul stepped down in October as the administration accelerated arms transfers to Israel.

Habash had been among the administration staffers of Middle East, Muslim and Jewish background taking part in meetings with senior White House officials and others in the administration in response to staffers’ concerns on the U.S. role in the war. Habash on Wednesday described the sessions as more briefings from higher-ups than opportunity for staffers to be heard.

The White House referred questions about Habash to the Department of Education and a department spokesperson said “we wish him the best in his future endeavors.”

Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks killed 1,200 people in Israel. More than 22,000 people have died* since Israel launched its offensive in Gaza.

Biden and his top officials have defended Israel’s devastating air and ground campaign in Gaza as Israel’s rightful self-defense against Hamas. They point to their repeated urging** to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to change how it is fighting the war so as to lessen deaths among Palestinian civilians.

Fallout from the Israel-Hamas war has roiled campuses across the U.S. and reignited a debate over free speech. College leaders have struggled to define the line where political speech crosses into harassment and discrimination, with Jewish and Arab students raising concerns that their schools are doing too little to protect them.

vThe issue came to a boil in December when the presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT were asked to testify at a congressional hearing on campus antisemitism. Asked by Republican lawmakers whether calls for the genocide of Jews would violate campus policies, the presidents offered lawyerly answers and declined to say unequivocally that it was prohibited speech.

Their answers sparked weeks of backlash from donors and alumni, ultimately leading to the resignation of Liz Magill at Penn and Claudine Gay at Harvard.

The Education Department has warned colleges that they’re required to fight antisemitism and Islamophobia on their campuses or risk a loss of federal money. The agency has opened civil rights inquiries at dozens of schools and colleges in response to complaints of antisemitism and Islamophobia in the wake of Oct. 7, including at Harvard, Stanford and MIT.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona met with Jewish students from Baltimore-area colleges in November and vowed to take action to keep them safe. He later met with the leaders of national Muslim, Arab, and Sikh organizations to discuss the rise of Islamophobia on college campuses.

In his resignation letter, Habash wrote, “The Department of Education must play an active role in supporting institutions as they respond to the needs of students, faculty, and staff. This includes protecting all students who choose to exercise their first amendment right to engage in nonviolent actions, including expressing solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.”

Earlier months of the war saw some administration staffers sign petitions and open letters urging Biden to call for a cease-fire.

*It is interesting to me how major news outlets continue to use the active verb "killed" with Israeli victims, but Palestinians receive the somewhat more passive "have died." The former has the implicit association of a deliberate act, whereas the later implies someone just "happened" to experience something, possibly by total accident.

**Urgings that so far have seem to have gone ignored, and without any noticeable repercussions from an administration that just a week prior had used emergency powers to bypassed congress to send Israel about 147 million dollars worth of military aid.

Who was Saleh al-Arouri, the Hamas leader killed in Beirut?

Killing of the deputy chief of Hamas’s political bureau could spark retaliation from Hamas and Hezbollah.

News | Israel War on Gaza

A drone strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs of Dahiyeh, a Hezbollah stronghold, killed senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri on Tuesday.

The drone hit a Hamas office, leaving six people dead, Lebanon’s state news agency reported.

Hamas confirmed the death of al-Arouri and called it a “cowardly assassination” by Israel, adding that attacks on Palestinians “inside and outside Palestine will not succeed in breaking the will and steadfastness of our people, or undermining the continuation of their valiant resistance”.

“It proves once again the abject failure of this enemy to achieve any of its aggressive goals in the Gaza Strip,” the group said.

Following the news of the death of al-Arouri, mosques in Arura, the occupied West Bank town of north Ramallah, are mourning his death and a general strike has been called in Ramallah for Wednesday.

Here is what to know about the Hamas official killed in Lebanon.

Who was Saleh al-Arouri?

Al-Arouri, 57, was the deputy chief of Hamas’s political bureau and one of the founders of the group’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades.

He had been living in exile in Lebanon after spending 15 years in an Israeli jail. Before the war began on October 7, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had threatened to kill him.

In recent weeks, al-Arouri took on the role of spokesperson for the group and told Al Jazeera last month that Hamas would not discuss an exchange deal for the captives the group is holding before the war ends in Gaza.

The United States labelled al-Arouri as a “global terrorist” in 2015 and issued a $5m reward for any information on him.

What has Israel said about al-Arouri’s death?

While there has been no official response from Israel about the death of the Hamas official, Mark Regev, an adviser to Netanyahu, told the US outlet MSNBC that Israel does not take responsibility for this attack. But, added, “Whoever did it, it must be clear: this was not an attack on the Lebanese state.”

“Whoever did this did a surgical strike against the Hamas leadership,” he said.

However, Danny Danon, a former Israeli envoy to the United Nations, hailed the attack and congratulated the Israeli army, Shin Bet, the security service and Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, for killing al-Arouri.

“Anyone who was involved in the 7/10 massacre should know that we will reach out to them and close an account with them,” he said on X* in Hebrew, referring to the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel that killed nearly 1,200 people.

Israel’s relentless bombing and artillery shelling of Gaza since then has killed more than 22,000 Palestinians, including more than 8,000 children.

According to Israeli media, the government has ordered cabinet ministers not to give any interviews about al-Arouri’s death after Danon’s tweet.

*formally known as 'Twitter'

What has been the response from Lebanon?

Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned the attack on the Beruit suburb and said it was a “new Israeli crime” as well as an attempt to pull Lebanon into the war.

Mikati also warned against the “Israeli political upper echelon resorting to exporting its failures in Gaza to the southern border to impose new facts on the ground and change the rules of engagement”.

Hezbollah said that the attack on Lebanon’s capital “will not pass without punishment”.

NOTE - There have consistently been heated tensions along the Israel/Lebanon border during the attacks on Gaza. We already had multiple reports last year of IDF and Hezbollah trading fire, not to mention their bitter enmity forged in decades prior. The fact that a drone targeted a Hamas leader in Beirut instead of the ones in Egypt or Qatar - nations that seem less likely to retaliate against strike attacks of that nature - makes me wonder if there's more afoot. Both Lebanon and South Syria supposedly fall at least partially within the bounds of the biblical Land of Israel. Certain factions of Zionism certainly support expanding into Lebonese territory... If Hezbollah declares war against Israel after the past few skirmishes, then Israel would just be defending itself from an aggressive entity, would it not?

Likud minister slams Smotrich, Ben Gvir’s ‘unrealistic’ call for Gazan emigration

‘It’s clear that the international community won’t accept it,’ argues Miki Zohar in response to calls for ‘voluntary’ resettlement of Palestinians; Shasha-Biton also condemns plan

Sam Sokol

Two members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet, including one from his own party, came out swinging Thursday against the support voiced by two of their fellow ministers for the resettlement of Gazans abroad, describing such a policy as unrealistic and detrimental to Israel’s international standing.

Culture and Sports Minister Miki Zohar and minister without portfolio Yifat Shasha-Biton both voiced criticism of Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir’s calls for “voluntary emigration” in separate interviews with the Ynet news site on Thursday morning — after international actors including the United States, the European Union, France and Germany panned the “expulsion” of Palestinians as a violation of international law.

Doubling down on his support for encouraging “voluntary emigration” of the Strip’s population to other countries as part of his postwar vision, Finance Minister Smotrich on Wednesday claimed that “more than 70 percent of the Israeli public today supports” such “a humanitarian solution,” but did not provide a source for this statistic.

A resettlement policy is necessary, he said, because “a small country like ours cannot afford a reality where four minutes away from our communities there is a hotbed of hatred and terrorism, where two million people wake up every morning with aspiration for the destruction of the State of Israel and with a desire to slaughter and rape and murder Jews* wherever they are.”

Zohar, a member of Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, was unconvinced.

“It’s not realistic, and it’s clear that the international community will not accept it… with things like this, even if you have a belief or a goal like this, it can be discussed and debated behind closed doors,” he told Ynet.

“It’s clear that there is nobody in Israel who wouldn’t be happy if Gazans decided to emigrate voluntarily if they were happy to leave,” but this is not remotely realistic and a public discussion of the issue is unhelpful, he declared, adding that “we see the repercussions, we see what happened with the Americans.”

The US State Department on Tuesday called out Smotrich and Ben Gvir’s rhetoric as “inflammatory and irresponsible,” amid growing frustration in Washington with Netanyahu’s hard-right government.

For months, Netanyahu has bucked US requests to begin planning for who will govern the Gaza Strip after the war, ostensibly recognizing that his far-right coalition partners would reject proposals that do not include Israel’s reoccupation and resettlement of Gaza — which the security establishment and Washington oppose. A cabinet meeting on the matter was planned for Thursday.

Ben Gvir hit back at Washington shortly after it aired its criticism Tuesday, tweeting that “the emigration of hundreds of thousands from Gaza will allow the residents of the [Gaza] envelope to return home and live in security and will protect the IDF soldiers.”

“I really admire the United States of America but with all due respect, we are not another star** in the American flag,” he averred.

Asked if she believed that the growing discourse on transferring Gaza’s Palestinian population was detrimental to Israel’s international standing, Shasha-Biton — who entered the coalition as part of Gantz’s National Unity party following Hamas’s October 7 onslaught in southern Israel — told Ynet that Smotrich and Ben Gvir were “causing damage, period, on any level at which it can be considered.”

“I think that everyone who sits around the government table and around the cabinet table should remember that we have a heavy responsibility to the citizens of the State of Israel. If there is nothing wise to say or something useful — then it is better to simply not say it,” she said.

“I think that Smotrich and Ben Gvir do not understand the magnitude of the responsibility that rests on their shoulders.”

While he has issued statements insisting that Smotrich and Ben Gvir do not represent government policy, Netanyahu himself has given the go-ahead for government members to support the plan to encourage Palestinians to leave the enclave.

Last Monday, he told a Likud faction meeting that he was working to facilitate the voluntary migration of Gazans to other countries. “Our problem is [finding] countries that are willing to absorb Gazans, and we are working on it,” he said.

The prime minister was responding to Likud MK Danny Danon, who claimed that “the world is already discussing the possibilities of voluntary immigration.”

The “voluntary” resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza is slowly becoming a key official policy of the government, Zman Israel, The Times of Israel’s Hebrew sister site, reported on Wednesday, citing a senior official as saying that Israel has held talks with several countries for their potential absorption.

Netanyahu’s coalition is reportedly conducting secret contacts for accepting thousands of immigrants from Gaza with Congo, in addition to other nations.

However, a senior Israeli official disputed this report yesterday, declaring that the idea that Gazans would voluntarily leave the coastal enclave is “a baseless illusion” and asserting that Jerusalem is “not conducting any talks with any country on this issue.”

“Let’s say Smotrich wanted to do it, what can he do? We’re not part of this. We are not in a position where we can bring people from here to Congo***…we’re not in the loop,” he said. “No one will absorb 2 million people, or 1 million, or 100,000, or 5,000.”

*Ah yes, the savage arab terrorist who plans to rape, murder, and desecrate all the good citizens of the nation. I think I met him after 9/11 in the US. Meanwhile, the Israeli government has continuously maintained an Apartheid system under which palestinians in occupied or blockaded regions have few freedoms or protections, where individuals are frequently detained on arbitrary charges (or even no legal charges at all, in the case of administrative detention) and often experience inhuman and degrading conditions (denial of family and legal visits, destruction of personal property, frequent strip-searches, threat of sexual violence, etc.), even if they are children. Say what you will about how you can't fight hate with hate, but as far as I'm concerned, you cannot condemn Hamas while at the same time actively supporting or passively allowing a system such as this to continue functioning.

**A significant chunk of Israelis have immigrated from or have dual-citizenship with the US, and a significant percentage of Israel's excellent social wellfare system is bulstured by funds from the US government. We certainly treat Israel a lot better than we do any of our actual territories (Puerto Rico, etc.)

***The fact that Congo is the example given of a destination, raises my eyebrows. The region's been going through a decades-long conflict and humanitarian crisis. When it was a colony of Belgium, its native peoples were brutally exploited. After the assissination of Patrice Lumumba, the nation's first democratically-elected Prime Minister in a coup backed by Belgium, the Democratic Republic of Congo's peoples have continued to be exploited and degraded by the Western corporations that harvest the region's vast mineral resources, and the multitudes of armed militias at home and from abroad, who also exploit locals to mine minerals to fund their wars. The DRC is a leading expert in cobalt, diamonds, coltan (a tantalum-niobium ore), and other resources. Usage of child-labor in "artisanal" mines run by occupying militias is well documented.

Gaza women and the isdal robes that shield them as war strips their privacy

Palestinian women and girls are relying on this cover-up garment to help them face the most difficult moments of Israel’s war on Gaza.

Author: Ruwaida Amer

It’s a garment that the world may have grown accustomed to seeing Palestinian women in Gaza wearing as they flee for their lives, hold their murdered children or loved ones close for one final goodbye, or run frantically through hospital corridors hoping to find their loved ones injured, not dead.

Muslim women will recognise it as a prayer cover-up, known as an “isdal” or “toub salah”, and it is what women and girls have pulled around them at the most difficult moments that the current Israeli war on Gaza has wrought.

An isdal can be one piece that covers the whole body except for the face or two pieces with a skirt and a veil that covers the wearer past the hips. Every practising Muslim woman’s home has at least one, an essential item at all times.

In addition to prayer time, a veiled woman may pull this on to answer the door when male guests arrive with no advance notice – or even if they’re just running around the corner to buy something or stepping out to chat with a neighbour.

A wartime companion

The isdal is a comfortable item to throw on top of whatever a woman is wearing if she has to leave the house in a hurry and remain modest.

But during the war, Palestinian women are wearing it around the clock, at home or out, asleep or awake, because they have no idea when a bomb will strike their house and they will have to run, or worse.

“If we die when our house is bombed, we want to have our dignity and modesty. If we’re bombed and have to be rescued from the rubble, we don’t want to be rescued wearing nothing,” Sarah Assaad, 44, says.

Sarah lived in Zeitoun in eastern Gaza City and has been displaced to the school in al-Fukhari with her three daughters and two sons, all of whom are teenagers.

She adds that the isdal is worn around the clock by the terrified women and girls in the school, which is crammed with displaced people.

“I have three of them, my daughters each have at least one. We’ve gotten used to this in the past 17 years of different Israeli assaults. When the first missile falls on Gaza, we put our isdals on.”

Fifty-six-year-old Raeda Hassan, from east of Khan Younis, says she has kept her isdal close throughout the many wars Gaza suffered, to the point where, she adds, she does not like the sight of it sometimes because it reminds her of violence.

“The first thing I’m going to do after the war is to get rid of this and buy a different one so I’m not reminded of the suffering of war,” Raeda says, gesturing down at her isdal.

She is also at the school with her daughters and daughters-in-law, who are all wearing their isdals as well.

In fact, Sarah says, the isdal is so ubiquitous that girls who are too young to pray or take the veil have been demanding that their mothers buy them isdals anyway.

Sahar Akar’s daughters are only four and five years old, but wanted isdals so they could be like their cousins and the older girls they saw around them.

Sahar, 28, fled to the south of the Gaza Strip with her family from Gaza City.

‘You never know what might happen’

Raeda muses for a moment then exclaims: “I don’t know where everyone gets this idea that we’re somehow prepared to be bombed.

“First of all, what does that mean? To be prepared to have your home, history, memories destroyed? Who on earth can say that’s something you should be prepared for?

“Anyway, we don’t know where the bombs are going to fall, or which home will be obliterated. We keep this isdal on so we can run out and look for our kids if they wander too far. We wear it when we run to our neighbours’ places to see if they’re OK after a bombing.

“If I see my daughters or any of the family’s women without their isdal, I tell them to put it on, you never know what might happen.”

Raeda’s 16-year-old daughter Salma sits nearby, nodding vigorously and dressed in her isdal. She remembers the day in early September when she and her mother went out to the Shujayea market and she spotted a “cute” isdal she just had to have, and Raeda bought it for her.

“I love it very much and like wearing it because it reminds me of that day when we wandered in the market and had so much fun,” she adds.

“When we fled, I was wearing trousers and a shirt but I took my isdal with me so I could pray. Once we got here and I saw how crowded it was and how every single woman was wearing an isdal, I figured I should keep mine on all the time.

“It’s sad because prayer covers have happy associations also, a crisp, new, colourful veil for Eid prayers, even an isdal pulled on in a hurry to wait for your kids to jump off the school bus and tell you about their day. That’s all been ruined,” Salma continues.

For many other women who spoke to Al Jazeera, the isdal carries mixed feelings as a symbol of panic in the street as well as the quiet moments of prayer and reflection.

In wartime, the simple act of covering their heads has become loaded with a deep weight of sadness.

Albany Common Council approves Israel-Gaza ceasefire declaration amid protests

Author: Dave Lucas

Wading into international affairs, the Albany Common Council has passed a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

The resolution had been under discussion since November, weeks after Hamas’ October 7th attack on Israel. Some councilors had hoped it would go to committee weeks ago, which it never did. Large public demonstrations held outside city hall pressured councilors to take action, and they did Thursday night, passing a modified version of the measure.

After a lengthy public comment period, resolution co-sponsor Gabriella Romero of the 6th ward read the resolution prior to the vote.

"I think it's important for purpose of the public and for full transparency that this document is read, because there were modifications that were made to the document and it is not what is actually being noted on Facebook," said Romero.

Romero stressed that the resolution is an effort to try to end the war.

"I think it's extremely important that we're passing this and I want the city of Albany to know that this document is a ceasefire document, that this document is supporting peace and that this document is trying to end the war and end the violence ceasefire now, Romero said."

14th Ward Councilor Deb Zamer says 500 people signed a petition asking the council not to pass the resolution. Zamer voted "No."

"I represent a large Jewish community here in Albany, many who have family and friends in Israel," said Zamer. "Even some who know hostages currently being held in Gaza. Countless numbers of them have written us emails, and 500 people signed a petition asking us not to pass this resolution. Not because they support in any way the horrors befalling the Palestinian people. But because Israel was brutally attacked by the terrorist group Hamas, because they like I believe unequivocally that Israel has a right to exist, needs to exist for the Jewish people and has a right to defend itself. Because I feel, because I feel this resolution is motivated by an underlying belief that Israel does not have a right to exist, and even a hatred of Israel. I cannot support it."

The vote tally: 10 in favor, two against, one present, and two abstentions.

8th ward councilor Jack Flynn voted "no" with Zamer. Joyce Love of the 3rd ward voted "present." 12th ward councilor E. Hyde Clarke and the 15th ward's Tom Hoey were absent for the vote.

10th ward councilor Owusu Anane says the resolution was largely symbolic, meant to send a message to the local community that the council supports peace.

"People ask why don't we pass a resolution on a ceasefire regarding gun violence in Albany," Anane said. "My thing is this, we're already addressing it by providing our police department with the necessary resources that they need. You know, since I've been on the council, I have really advocated for more police funding year in and year out. And our mayor has really understood that then every year, we have increased the police budget by 8 to 12%. So we are providing the police department with every resource that we can provide to a police department. We also supported community organizations in trying to prevent gun violence in our city. And I think ultimately working with state and federal partners on ways to address gun violence directly."

A spokesman for Mayor Kathy Sheehan says the Democrat has no comment regarding the cease-fire resolution and will not be signing it.

I knew of this beforehand due to leaving in the Albany area, and even then I'm not sure I would have seen or heard any news of it if I hadn't known to look. I wonder what other resolutions in cities and towns in the US are getting passed or rejected that I don't know about?

British lawyer to defend Israel from Gaza genocide claims in The Hague

Territorial disputes expert Professor Malcolm Shaw will present Israel’s defense against South African war crimes accusations at International Court of Justice on January 12

Authors: Toi Staff, Jeremy Sharon

A British lawyer will defend Israel at the International Court of Justice in the Hague next week against South Africa’s accusation that the Jewish state is perpetrating genocide against the Palestinians in its ongoing war with Hamas in Gaza.

Professor Malcolm Shaw KC, who will present Israel’s defense against the charges next week, is a leading expert on territorial disputes and a published author on the law of genocide.

Shaw’s appointment was confirmed by an Israeli official on X. Ynet reported that he is one of four lawyers chosen to represent Jerusalem at the hearings.

A hearing set for January 11 is expected to see South African representatives lay out their case against Israel, while Israel will present its defense against the charges on the following day.

Shaw, 76, is also a human rights expert, who has represented countries including United Arab Emirates, Serbia and Cameroon at the international court.

In its application filed last week, South Africa accused Israel of actions during its war against Hamas in Gaza that are “genocidal in character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent… to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group.”

Israel is a signatory to the Genocide Convention adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948 and is therefore subject to the jurisdiction of the ICJ, a UN organ, and its rulings.

Under the terms of the convention, Israel is obligated to send representatives to the court following the submission of a filing against it.

Israel declared war on Hamas after the terror group burst across its southern border from Gaza on October 7, slaughtering some 1,200 people — mostly civilians who were massacred amid horrific acts of brutality — and kidnapping more than 240 others.

It rejects any assertion that it is targeting civilians or engaged in anything other than a campaign for its security. Israel says it is making an effort to avoid harm to civilians while fighting a terror group embedded within the civilian population. It has also long accused Gaza-based terror groups of using Palestinians in the Strip as human shields, operating from sites, including schools and hospitals, which are supposed* to be protected.

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza has claimed that since the start of the war, more than 22,000 people have been killed, mostly civilians. These figures cannot be independently verified** and are believed by Israel to include some 8,500 Hamas fighters, as well as civilians killed by misfired Palestinian rockets. Another estimated 1,000 terrorists were killed in Israel during the October 7 onslaught.

Cases in the ICJ are heard by a panel of all 15 judges of the court, but both parties to a case may themselves nominate a judge to the panel. Decisions are made by a simple majority of the presiding judges.

A government official said that Israel will certainly nominate a judge on its behalf and that prominent US lawyer Alan Dershowitz has been one of several names floated who might be picked for this role.

Officials from several government ministries and agencies are involved in dealing with the ICJ case, including the Justice Ministry, the Foreign Ministry and the Prime Minister’s Office, among others.

Proceedings in the ICJ are not criminal in nature and the defendant is the State of Israel and no individual governmental or military official.

As such, there would be no criminal implications for Israeli officials if the ICJ ruled against Israel, although it could lead to severe diplomatic repercussions, in terms of possible sanctions and other measures the UN and other international bodies could take against the country, according to Prof. Amichai Cohen, an expert in the international law of armed conflict at the Israel Democracy Institute.

One of the concerns for Israel is South Africa’s request for the ICJ to apply “provisional measures” against Israel that might include an order to halt combat operations. South Africa said it was requesting such measures “to ensure Israel’s compliance with its obligations under the Genocide Convention not to engage in genocide, and to prevent and to punish genocide.” Cohen said he did not believe the court would issue an outright order for Israel to halt its military operation, but said that it could order Israel to increase the supply of humanitarian aid, fuel and medical supplies.

*The forcing of protected persons is a war crime as recognized by the Geneva Conventions and Rome Statute. However, the usage of human shields by one's adversary does not entirely absolve one of responsibility for harm done to the protected person. This post from 2021 discusses the research of humanitarian law exports on how classifying civilian populations in urban combat zones as "proximate human shields" has been potentially used by States and their militaries to justify the civilian deaths in asymmetric conflicts, accusing the adversary of using "Tens of thousands" of shields while downplaying their own willingness to shoot through the goddamn shield anyways. Also, if being embedded in an urban environment qualifies Hamas as using Gaza's citizens as shields, then has Israel not done the same by virtue of IDF headquarters Camp Rabin being located in HaKirya, a central area of the densely populated urban metropolis that is the city of Tel Aviv-Yafo?

**A ceasefire agreement could facilitate that. Get the hostages out, allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, verify deaths that have occurred and who's responsible...

The numbers that reveal the extent of the destruction in Gaza

Author: Archie Bland

The situation in Gaza over the last three months has been so chaotic that much of the data available comes with some sort of asterisk: it might be incomplete, or out of date, or drawn from a source that is claimed to be unreliable.

But on even the most frequently disputed point – casualty figures from Gaza’s Hamas-run ministry of health* – there are few plausible critiques of the broad scale of what is being shown. And in many cases, the numbers published by the UN, independent aid agencies and others are likely to be at the low end of the possible range. So it is reasonable to view the picture presented by these sources as a conservative account of the situation, rather than conclude that the reality is hopelessly occluded by the fog of war.

Here are some details on specific aspects of the crisis.

DEATHS

Gaza’s ministry of health says that at least 22,835 Palestinians had been killed by yesterday, with another 58,416 reportedly injured. That figure does not distinguish between combatants and civilians, but an estimated 70% are women and children. About 7,000 more are reportedly missing and most are likely dead.

Israel’s final count for Hamas’s 7 October massacre is 1,139: 685 Israeli civilians, 373 members of the security forces, and 71 foreigners. Deaths in Israel since then bring the total to about 1,200. Thirty-six of the victims were children. The Israeli military says 174 soldiers have been killed in Gaza, and 1,023 injured.

Because Gaza’s ministry of health (MoH) is run by Hamas, the tally it provides has been repeatedly questioned by Israel. But last month, when the MoH figure was 15,899, a senior Israeli official confirmed a reported Israeli estimate of 5,000 dead Hamas militants and roughly twice as many civilians, giving a similar total of 15,000. (An IDF spokesperson called that ratio of two civilians to one combatant “tremendously positive”.) The MoH’s track record across multiple conflicts is broadly consistent with other sources: for example, after a short war between Israel and Hamas in 2014, it gave a figure of 2,310 dead, while the UN later arrived at an estimate of 2,251 and Israel put it at 2,125.

The 22,835 dead represent about one in a hundred of Gaza’s total population. They have been killed at a rate of just under 250 a day (an average that has come down a bit in the last few weeks). It is not known exactly how many of those killed were combatants, but Israel’s own ratio would suggest that on average, more than 160 civilians have died each day.

That is a much faster rate than in other broadly comparable recent conflicts. The US-led coalition fighting Islamic State in Raqqa killed 20 civilians a day during a four-month offensive, the BBC reported, while the nine-month battle for Mosul between US-backed Iraqi forces and IS killed fewer than 40 civilians a day.

INTERNAL DISPLACEMENT

Because of the scale of the crisis, it is hard to maintain precise figures. But by the end of the year, the UN Palestinian relief agency, UNRWA, estimated that 1.9 million people had been internally displaced by the war in Gaza – nearly 85% of the population.

Many have been forced to move multiple times as the focus of the IDF campaign shifts. About 1.4 million people are sheltering in UNRWA facilities, with most of the rest staying with friends, family, or strangers, or sleeping rough. About 1 million people – half of Gaza’s population – are now living in and around the southern border settlement of Rafah. About 280,000 lived there before the war began. The Council on Foreign Relations estimated that by early December, only about 1,100 people had been allowed to leave Gaza via the Rafah crossing to Egypt.

To rank the situation in Gaza among the world’s most pressing refugee crises may be moot – but the numbers do suggest that the crisis there bears comparison to those in Sudan and Syria. In Sudan, the International Organisation for Migration says that just under 6 million of a population of 48 million have been displaced by the war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces, which started in April – a much lower percentage of the whole population, but a much higher raw number. The biggest refugee crisis of recent years is the one that unfolded during Syria’s civil war: of a prewar population of 22 million, 14 million have been forced to flee their homes over 12 years, and 6.8 million remain internally displaced with millions more abroad.

DESTRUCTION

Figures from the government media office in Gaza cited by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimate that about 65,000 residential units have been destroyed or rendered uninhabitable. Another 290,000 have been damaged. That means that about half a million people have no home to return to.

Analysis of satellite data cited by the Associated Press suggests that about two-thirds of all structures in the north of Gaza have been destroyed, and about a quarter in the southern Khan Younis area. Across the whole territory, about 33% of buildings have been destroyed. The AP said that the rate of devastation was worse than either the razing of Aleppo in Syria or Russia’s bombing of Mariupol.

That is a reflection of the intensity of the IDF campaign. Data from conflict-tracking group Airwars suggests that the US-led coalition against IS in Iraq carried out 15,000 strikes between 2014 and 2017; the Israeli military has carried out 22,000 in Gaza in less than three months.

CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE

While 500,000 people have no home to return to, many more will remain displaced because of the scale of the devastation of Gaza’s crucial public facilities. The World Health Organization (WHO) says that 23 of 36 hospitals had been rendered completely inoperable by 3 January, with a previous count of 3,500 beds down to 1,400 by 10 December amid vastly increased need.

Gaza’s education system has also been severely compromised: 104 schools have either been destroyed or sustained major damage. In total, about 70% of school buildings have been damaged – and those still standing are largely being used to shelter internally displaced people.

Meanwhile, water production stood at 7% of the prewar supply on 30 December, and there is only one shower for every 4,500 people and one toilet for every 220. Those conditions make the spread of disease a very urgent problem: for example, the WHO said on 21 December that more than 100,000 cases of diarrhoea had been reported since mid-October, half of them among children under the age of five. That is 25 times the pre-conflict rate. The WHO says that it expects the number of deaths from disease to eventually outstrip those killed directly by military action.

HUMANITARIAN AID

For two weeks at the beginning of the war, no humanitarian assistance – including food – was allowed into Gaza at all. The flow of aid has gradually increased as the war has gone on, according to figures shared by UNRWA: there were 20 trucks a day in the last 10 days of October, 85 a day in November, and 104 a day in December. But that is still way down** on the pre-conflict level of 500 trucks a day.

Humanitarian aid is meanwhile far harder to distribute because of the damage caused by Israel’s bombardment – and 142 UNRWA workers have been killed, while 128 of the organisation’s buildings have been damaged. The World Food Programme (WFP) says that about one in four households are already at risk of starvation, and the entire population is facing food shortages that could lead to malnutrition.

Arif Husain, the WFP’s chief economist, told the New Yorker that famine would follow within six months unless conditions changed. “I’ve been to all kinds of conflicts and all kinds of crises,” he said. “And, for me, this is unprecedented.” There are about 700,000 people in the world currently facing catastrophic hunger, he added; 577,000 of them are in Gaza.

*Something that has oft been repeated in these articles when discussing casaulties in Gaza, the "Hamas-Run" Health Ministry.

**Hypothesis - In a situation where social infrastructure has been blown to smithereens and people are struggling to survive, a situation where military forces are bombing the roads and enforcing strict blockades, often with demonstrative disregard to the wellbeing of civilians in designated combat zones, allowing in a trickle of humanitarian aid that is far below the calculated amount needed to help everyone in need is something that allows them to look benevolant before the news cameras while at the same time accelerating societal collapse as desperate starving refugees find themselves competing against each other to acquire just enough clean water and flour for them and their families. Something that would undermine community bonds of potential opposition to Israel's occupation, as well as invoking behavior the visually aligns with how Israeli officials have described Palestinians as "human animals."

As Israel proclaims 'targeted' phase of war, Gazans find little change

Author: Arafat Barbakh

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza, Jan 9 (Reuters) - Palestinians see little respite from Israeli bombardment that has shattered Gaza despite Israel's announcement of a new " more targeted" phase of its war and the top U.S. diplomat's renewed push for protection of civilians during a visit.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant had said on Thursday that the military "will transition to a new combat approach" with a less intensive air campaign, after saying earlier it would start pulling some troops out of the Gaza Strip.

However, families continue to rush into Gaza's hospitals each morning, carrying relatives injured during overnight bombardment, and finding crammed, sometimes bloodstained wards and corridors. Rescue workers arrive to offload corpses pulled from pancaked buildings.

"Any moving thing is targeted in Palestine, and in Gaza especially," Shehada Tabash said as he arrived at the European Hospital in Khan Younis after losing his niece and cousin to an air strike.

Health authorities in Hamas-run Gaza said early on Tuesday that 126 people were killed over the previous 24 hours, bringing the toll since Oct. 7 to 23,210, with thousands more bodies feared still lying, uncounted, under the rubble.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said there was an " absolute imperative" for Israel to do more to protect civilians before he arrived in Tel Aviv on Tuesday to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, part of a regional tour.

In a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Blinken "stressed the importance of avoiding further civilian harm and protecting civilian infrastructure in Gaza", State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement.

But for many Gazans, most of whom are now homeless after three months of bombing that has smashed apartment blocks, schools, hospital buildings and even graveyards, those words ring hollow.

"We are being bombed by American(-made) planes, blown up by American weapons so let Blinken stop this nonsense," said Shaban Abad, 45, an IT specialist from Gaza City who was displaced first to Khan Younis and then to Rafah with his five children.

"Since he arrived in the region the bombing in Gaza, in Rafah, which is supposed to be a safe place, has not stopped. Doesn't he see it?" Abad added.

Israel's stated objective is to destroy Hamas, which killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and seized 240 hostages when its fighters rampaged across the border on Oct. 7, triggering the war.

However, while much of the tiny, densely populated coastal enclave has been pummelled to rubble, the Islamist militant group is still fighting and its top leaders remain at large.*

Israel's military, which says Palestinian civilians should not try returning to their homes in the north of Gaza, where it began its offensive in October, has meanwhile expanded its operations in Khan Younis in the south, it said on Tuesday.

'WE DON'T SEE ANY GLIMMER OF HOPE'

After Israel ordered all civilians to leave northern Gaza, many took refuge in the south, though it continued to shell that area too. Its ground troops have since invaded the south, pushing displaced Palestinians into ever more crowded shanties on the enclave's southern edge bordering Egypt.

In Khan Younis, 8-year-old Abdel Jaber Mohammed al-Farra said he and his father and younger brother had fled their home with nothing, fired upon by Israeli forces as they sought shelter at the European Hospital.

"We heard the sound of tanks in the street. We ran. We saw forces on foot. We hid behind a wall. The soldier started firing at the wall. We left with nothing," he said.

The Farra family is joining a huge mass of displaced people unable to return home, entirely reliant on inadequate aid supplies and seeing no end to the war.

At a makeshift camp near the hospital where the Farra family is now looking for shelter, Youssef Salem Hijazi said his family's house in the north had been destroyed. Even so, they want to go back there to put up a tent in the rubble and start piecing their life back together, he said.

Blinken's comments urging Israel to ease its offensive and allow civilians to go back home were welcome, Hijazi said. "But we hear his words in vain. We see nothing. We follow the news but see nothing to build any hope on in reality. We don't see any glimmer of home."

Reporting by Arafat Barbakh in Khan Younis; additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi; writing by Angus McDowall; editing by Mark Heinrich

* For various reasons, I can't find reliable numbers on the number of Hamas militants killed. Also, I find it "interesting" that Israel was able to execute a targeted strike on a Hamas leader in Lebanon, but in the Gaza Strip they continuesly engage in widespread carpet bombardments, much of which does not even involve usage of guided missiles. Eliminating Hamas is the stated objective, but how they're going about looks more like wiping out the entire Palestinian enclave. Frankly, I do not take any of these people at their word when it comes to claims about doing everything they can to ensure the safety of civilians.

South Africa’s genocide case against Israel: expert sets out what to expect from the International Court of Justice

Author: Magnus Killander, Professor, Centre for Human Rights in the Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) will be holding public hearings on 11-12 January at the Peace Palace in The Hague, the seat of the court, in a case brought by South Africa against Israel. South Africa has accused Israel of violating the 1948 Genocide Convention in its military bombardment and siege of Gaza, which started after the deadly 7 October Hamas attack on Israel. Both Israel and South Africa have ratified the genocide convention. We asked human rights and international law expert Magnus Killander for his insights.

What is the International Court of Justice?

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is one of many international courts. It is the most prominent and widely regarded as the most authoritative as it is the only judicial body set out in the Charter of the United Nations. It has general jurisdiction rather than being limited to specific areas of law such as the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea or regional human rights courts such as the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

The ICJ should be distinguished from the International Criminal Court (ICC), which also has its seat in The Hague, in the Netherlands. The ICC can convict and sentence individual perpetrators for violations such as genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. In contrast the ICJ deals only with the responsibility of states for violations of international law, not with accountability of individuals.

Parallel to the process at the ICJ, the prosecutor of the ICC has been investigating “the situation” in Palestine for some time, and may prosecute those allegedly responsible for atrocities committed by all parties to the conflict.

What is the International Court of Justice’s jurisdiction?

It can hear cases brought by states (“contentious cases”) and requests by United Nations bodies, such as the General Assembly, for advisory opinions. The ICJ has delivered judgments in close to 150 “contentious cases” since its first judgment in 1949, and 27 advisory opinions since its first advisory opinion in 1948.

The first time a case was brought to the ICJ alleging violation of the Genocide Convention was in 1993 by Bosnia against Yugoslavia. The second case was in 2019 by The Gambia against Myanmar. The third case was by Ukraine against Russia following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Of these cases the ICJ has so far only handed down a final judgment in the 2007 Bosnian judgment, 14 years after the case was initiated.

However, the ICJ has issued provisional measures in all the Genocide Convention cases, within a few months after the cases were brought to the court. Provisional measures are orders of the court to prevent irreparable harm. They bind the respondent state to refrain from certain actions until the court has delivered final judgment. The provisional measures in the Myanmar case adopted by the court in January 2020 prohibited the state from, among other things, taking action against the minority Rohingya group by

• (a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to the members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.

While there have been fewer killings of Rohingya since the provisional measures, their situation remains precarious both in Myanmar and in Bangladesh, where many of them have taken refuge.

In the provisional measures order in Ukraine v Russia in 2022 the ICJ ordered Russia to immediately cease its military operations in Ukraine and ensure that any military units or irregular armed units conduct military operations. However, Russia’s war on Ukraine continues.

What are the conditions for having a case heard by the ICJ?

1) There must be a substantive jurisdictional basis for bringing the case. This can be, for example, by agreement by the parties or, as in the case under discussion, that both states are parties to a multilateral treaty that provides for disputes between state parties to be heard by the ICJ. Article IX of the Genocide Convention is a case in point.

Israel ratified the Genocide Convention in 1950 and South Africa in 1998. Palestine has been a party to the Genocide Convention since 2014 and may bring cases before the ICJ, but hasn’t done so.

2) The state bringing the case must normally have an interest in the case. However, this does not apply to certain types of violations where all states in the world are considered to have an interest. Examples include alleged violations of the Genocide Convention and the Convention against Torture. In its judgment in the 2022 case against Myanmar on preliminary objections, the ICJ stated that any state can bring a case to it in relation to a suspected violation by another state that is party to the Genocide Convention.

The process

The first step in the case is the public hearing on provisional measures. South Africa and Israel are allocated two hours each to present their arguments on provisional measures. A decision on provisional measures is usually taken within one or two months after the public hearing.

The ICJ only makes a provisional assessment of the case to issue provisional measures. Thus even if the ICJ issues provisional measures against Israel, it does not necessarily follow that the court will – in its final judgment – find that Israel has violated the Genocide Convention.

After a provisional measures decision, the ICJ will proceed to determine any preliminary objections raised by Israel, such as whether the court has jurisdiction to hear the case on the merits, and whether South Africa has standing to bring the case.

If the preliminary objections are unsuccessful, the ICJ will make a judgment on the merits of the case in which it determines whether Israel has violated the Genocide Convention. The process until a final judgment takes several years. In many cases final judgment has taken a decade or more.

Other states may intervene in a case, as many have done, for example, in the Ukraine v Russia case.

What action can the court take?

The ICJ provides declaratory orders. In its 2007 final judgment in the Bosnia v Serbia and Montenegro case, the ICJ found that Serbia had violated the Genocide Convention by not taking action to prevent the genocide in Srebrenica, and by having failed to transfer Ratko Mladic, who commanded the Bosnian Serb army that massacred Bosnian civilians, to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

Other claims of genocide were dismissed by a majority of the court. The court held that the declaration of a violation was a sufficient remedy, and that the court should not provide any other remedies in the case such as compensation.

The orders of the ICJ are binding on states. Nevertheless, they are often ignored. This is in line with the general difficulty of enforcing international law, in particular international human rights law and international humanitarian law.

The provisional measures requested by South Africa include that Israel should suspend military activities in Gaza, stop killing Palestinians and prevent forced displacement and deprivation of access to adequate food, water, fuel, shelter and sanitation.

The ICJ can grant provisional measures different from those requested. While it is clear that the prevention of humanitarian assistance leading to starvation, forced displacement and indiscriminate bombings, taken together with statements by Israeli officials (see paragraphs 101-107 of South Africa’s submission to the ICJ), could constitute violations of the Genocide Convention, it is less clear that this means no military action whatsoever may be taken by Israel against Hamas.

Following its own precedent in earlier cases under the Genocide Convention, it seems clear that the ICJ should issue provisional measures. What such measures the court will order remains to be seen.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s moral stance against the Vietnam War offers lessons on how to fight for peace in the Middle East

Author: Hajar Yazdiha, assist. professor at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Since the onset of Israel’s deadly assault on Gaza and the West Bank after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack, debates have arisen among historians and media pundits about Martin Luther King Jr.’s stance on Israel and its conflicts with Palestinians.

Some claim King was a fierce Zionist and point to his speech on Mar. 25, 1968, before the annual convention of the Rabbinical Assembly.

“Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all of our might to protect its right to exist, its territorial integrity,” King said. “I see Israel as one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land almost can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy.”

Others, like American-Israeli scholar Martin Kramer, have pointed to King’s views on Palestinian rights to their homeland. During a 1967 interview with ABC News, shortly after Israel launched the Six-Day War against Egypt, Syria and Jordan and seized control of land in Gaza and the West Bank, King said that Israel should return Palestinian lands.

“I think for the ultimate peace and security of the situation it will probably be necessary for Israel to give up this conquered territory, because to hold on to it will only exacerbate the tensions and deepen the bitterness of the Arabs,” he said.

As a scholar who researches social movements, racial politics and democracy, I believe there is a larger story beyond King’s stance on Israel and Palestinians. That story is on King’s views of war – and his courage to stand for peace.

This is the story of the anti-war King who understood that violence begets violence and that the political courage to speak for peace is essential to democracy.

Breaking his silence

For King, joining the peace movement was tantamount to walking a political tightrope. On one hand, the Civil Rights Movement had a great supporter in U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, who signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

But LBJ was also at the heart of the escalation of the war in Vietnam, and many believed King’s anti-war statements could and would be used against him.

The U.S. government’s hypocrisy in supporting the Vietnam War was not lost on King.

In 1965, 61% of Americans supported U.S. military involvement.

At the same time, King was asking hard questions about Johnson’s wartime decision-making and unmet promises of social uplift through his Great Society programs. King wondered how a nation could drop tons of bombs and napalm on civilians in the name of peace and freedom while violently subjugating its own Black citizens.

How could a nation spend so much money on a war, King asked, when it could not feed or protect its own people?

“The promises of the Great Society have been shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam,” King said in a speech in Beverly Hills on Feb. 25, 1967. “Billions are liberally expended for this ill-considered war. … The security we profess to seek in foreign adventures we will lose in our decaying cities. The bombs in Vietnam explode at home. They destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America.”

The Johnson administration argued that military force was essential to protect South Vietnam from the encroachment of communism from the north. As Johnson saw it, North Vietnam and its National Liberation Front were a threat to democracy in Southeast Asia.

King’s advisers pleaded with him not to speak out and argued that the political costs would be too high. Most importantly, they reminded King that there was more than enough work to do in the U.S. to end poverty and secure equal rights for Black citizens.

But King ultimately broke with his advisers and President Johnson.

By 1967, King followed the lead of his wife – and anti-war activist – Coretta Scott King and began speaking out.

In March 1967, King led his first anti-war march in Chicago. At the rally, he called on peace activists to organize “as effectively as the war hawks.”

A month later, on April 4, 1967, King gave the speech at the Riverside Church in New York City that changed the course of the last year of his life – “Beyond Vietnam − A Time to Break the Silence.” In that revolutionary speech, King described how he was morally compelled to speak out against the war.

In the days and weeks after, he would lose masses of supporters, Black and white alike. He lost hard-earned political allies, including President Johnson.

King was also shunned and denounced by 168 newspapers that questioned King’s failure to condemn the enemy, fueling long-standing rumors about communist ties.

Saving the soul of America

King had no regrets.

He understood the difficulty of speaking out against the war. “Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war,” he said.

For King, a preacher at heart, silence had become betrayal.

Calling the U.S “the greatest purveyor of violence today,” King said the soul of America “can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over.” He warned that America had lost moral authority abroad and derided “the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long.”

King pointed to the role of the U.S. in prohibiting the realization of “a revolutionary government seeking self-determination” in Vietnam.

Most poignantly in that 1967 speech at Riverside Church, King detailed the devastating costs of the Vietnam War and described the millions of children and women who were killed by American bombs and bullets and the poor masses who were spared slaughter only to face a slow, painful death by disease and starvation.

Then King turned to the so-called “enemy,” the North Vietnamese. “Even if we do not condone their actions,” King said in the speech, “surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.”

Then King called for a cease-fire.

The fight for justice and humanity

King’s words resonate today.

Unlike in King’s time, 61% of potential voters support a permanent cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. Anti-war protests abound across the nation and around the world.

How can the U.S., as King would ask the nation, move forward from here?

In the 1960s, King grappled with this very question. On the one hand, he felt a deep solidarity with the Jewish struggle against persecution, and on the other hand, he rejected the violent occupation of Palestinian lands that would run counter to the noble cause.

He saw resolution through a commitment to breaking cycles of violence and practicing radical peace, “a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation.”

Nearly 60 years later, the fight for King’s “radical revolution of values,” where human life and dignity were the most valued, still rages. But as the life of King reminds us, speaking out for justice can be costly. Yet he would also say that the cost of remaining silent is far greater.

Saving this article because on January 15 I kept seeing fluff-pieces claiming to celebrate MLK published by entities that he would likely have opposed. Martin Luther King Jr. was a very political figure, and while alive was at one point considered the "most hated man in America" per his daughter.

There's plenty of documation (video, audio, textual) of MLK speaking clearly in his own words about his belief, not much of which seems to get taught besides the "I have a dream" speech. Below is a letter he wrote that I find particularly relevant:

Around the same time that I was reading this on 01.16.2023, my regular newsfeed was filled with updates on the Mississippi Paupers Field (family tries to find missing boy, turns out a policeman ran him over and then buried him in a secret gravesite behind a prison that around had several hundred bodies that included other missing persons) and info concerning the Cop City project in Georgia (future training center for fostering a more militant police force, slated to replace a forest preserve surrounded predominantly by poor POC communities, and is apparently tied to the purported "deadly exchange" between Israeli and US law enforcement).

South Africa outlines genocide case against Israel at International Court of Justice

Transcript from All Things Considered

Author: Rob Schmitz

At The Hague, proceedings began on South Africa's accusation of genocide by Israel in Gaza. Health officials in Gaza say more than 23,000 people have died in the war.

Transcript

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Today at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, South Africa outlined its case against Israel for committing genocide against the Palestinian people. It was the first day of a two-day hearing at the court. NPR Berlin correspondent Rob Schmitz reports.

ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: In nearly three hours of testimony, lawyers and experts on behalf of South Africa started by condemning the Hamas attack, which, according to Israel, killed 1,200 and then presented evidence that Israel's three-month-long military campaign in Gaza has gone beyond a war with Hamas and now includes all 2 million-plus Palestinians who reside in Gaza.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

ADILA HASSIM: The level of Israel's killing is so extensive that nowhere is safe in Gaza.

SCHMITZ: South African lawyer Adila Hassim.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

HASSIM: As I stand before you today, 23,210 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, at least 70% of whom are believed to be women and children.

SCHMITZ: Addressing the 17 judges that make up the United Nations court, Hassim seemed said more than 1,800 families in Gaza have lost multiple family members, and 85% of all Gazans have been forced to flee their homes.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

HASSIM: This killing is nothing short of destruction of Palestinian life. It is inflicted deliberately. No one is spared, not even newborn babies.

SCHMITZ: South Africa's delegation insisted that genocidal intent is shown not only by the way Israel has launched its military campaign but by comments from leaders like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In late October, in an address to Israeli forces, Netanyahu invoked the story of Amalek, a figure in the Hebrew Bible who tried to destroy the Jewish people. South African legal scholar Tembeka Ngcukaitobi said this reference was meant to justify genocide.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

TEMBEKA NGCUKAITOBI: This refers to the biblical command by God to Saul for the retaliatory destruction of an entire group of people.

SCHMITZ: Before the hearing, Israel's President Isaac Herzog dismissed South Africa's case.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PRESIDENT ISAAC HERZOG: There's nothing more atrocious and preposterous than this claim. Actually, our enemies, the Hamas, in the charter call for the destruction and annihilation of the State of Israel, the only nation-state of the Jewish people.

SCHMITZ: A ruling in this case may take years. In the interim, South Africa has asked the court for a provisional ruling, similar to an emergency injunction, that would force Israel to stop its military campaign in Gaza immediately. Israel will defend itself in The Hague tomorrow. Rob Schmitz, NPR News, Berlin.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

NOTE - The hearing was broadcasted live by the UN streaming channel from the Hague at 10am CET (4am EST), and the following oral argument from Israel was livestreamed the day after at 10am CET as well. Playback is available for anyone who missed the live broadcast.

Qatar-based news source Al Jazeera livestreamed the hearings from their YouTube channel as well. So far, it seems like a lot of major American news channels (NBC, CNN, Fox, etc.) did NOT livestream the broadcast. The UK-based Guardian News apparantly broadcasted it, so there's that for the West, but it doesn't seem like many American networks were getting in on the livestream. Seems weird to me, considering how the US is constantly backing Israel, the hearing is definitely of great relevance to America's international affairs.

‘This is no genocide’: Israel says International Court of Justice lacks jurisdiction over Gaza conflict

Israel is calling on the ICJ to reject the demands of South Africa for an immediate end to its military campaign in the Gaza Strip.

Source: Reuters

Israel has rejected claims of genocide in Gaza, put forward by South Africa, during its submission to the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

Israel said on Friday the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has no jurisdiction under the Genocide Convention to order it to halt its military actions in the Gaza Strip.

It asked judges at the World Court to throw out the genocide case brought by South Africa, which had asked the UN’s top court to order an immediate end to Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip.

In its response to accusations made before the court by South Africa on Thursday, Israel said the demands to stop its offensive against Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in Gaza lacked any merit.

Israel did not have the needed “special intent” to commit crimes under the Genocide Convention, its lawyer said at the second day of hearings of a case in which South Africa has demanded an immediate end of Israel’s offensive against the Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas that runs Gaza.

“This is no genocide. South Africa tells us only half the story,” lawyer Malcolm Shaw said.

[ Who is the Irish lawyer arguing for South Africa’s genocide case against Israel? ]

Israel is calling on the ICJ to reject the demands of South Africa for an immediate end to its military campaign in the Gaza Strip.

“The application and request should be rejected for what they are - a libel,” Israel’s foreign ministry legal adviser, Tal Becker, told the ICJ on the second day of hearings on a case brought by South Africa accusing Israel of “genocidal acts” in its offensive against Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in Gaza.

The UN’s top court is expected to rule on the emergency measures demanded later this month.

South Africa, which filed the lawsuit at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in December, asked judges on Thursday to impose emergency measures ordering Israel to immediately halt the offensive.

It said Israel’s aerial and ground offensive – which has laid waste to much of the narrow coastal enclave and killed more than 23,000 people according to Gaza health authorities – aimed to bring about “the destruction of the population” of Gaza.

Israel rejected the accusations of genocide as baseless and said South Africa was acting as a mouthpiece for Hamas, which it views as a terrorist organisation seeking to eliminate the Jewish state. Its military was targeting Hamas militants, not Palestinian civilians, it said.

Israel began its all-out war in Gaza after a cross-border rampage on October 7th by Hamas militants in which Israeli officials said 1,200 people were killed, mainly civilians, and 240 taken hostage back to Gaza.

The 1948 Genocide Convention, enacted in the wake of the mass murder of Jews in the Nazi Holocaust, defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

Since Israeli forces launched their offensive, nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes at least once, causing a humanitarian catastrophe.

Post-apartheid South Africa has long advocated the Palestinian cause, a relationship forged when the African National Congress’s struggle against white-minority rule was cheered on by Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organisation.

The court is expected to rule on possible emergency measures later this month, but will not rule at that time on the genocide allegations - those proceedings could take years.

The ICJ’s decisions are final and without appeal - but the court has no way to enforce them. – Reuters

Saved this recap article from the Irish Times because Reuters itself doesn't seem to allow web crawlers to archive its webpages too often.

I have been perusing broadcast schedules of major Western News sources like NBC, Fox, CNN, and the BBC, and it looks like most (if not all) of them did not do a live broadcast South Africa's oral argument but they did broadcast Israel's responding oral argument the following day.

Global day of protests draws thousands to D.C., other cities in pro-Palestinian marches

Authors: Danica Kirka (AP), Fatima Hussein (AP), Menelaos Hadjicostis(AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Thousands of demonstrators converged opposite the White House on Saturday to call for an end to Israeli military action in Gaza, while children joined a pro-Palestinian march through central London as part of a global day of action against the longest and deadliest war between Israel and Palestinians in 75 years.

People in the U.S. capital held aloft signs questioning President Joe Biden’s viability as a presidential candidate because of his staunch support for Israel in the nearly 100-day war against Hamas. Some of the signs read: “No votes for Genocide Joe,” “Biden has blood on his hands” and “Let Gaza live.”

Vendors were also selling South African flags as protesters chanted slogans in support of the country whose accusations of genocide against Israel prompted the International Court of Justice in the Hague, Netherlands, to take up the case.

Dan Devries, a New York resident said he attended the protest because he wants to see a free Gaza, but that he wouldn’t vote for either Biden or possible Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

“I see this war as part of the U.S.’s drive to offset its economic decline by engaging in continual war,” said Devries.

Washington resident Phil Kline held up a sign calling for Pope Francis to excommunicate Biden.

“I know he’s a devout Catholic. Maybe he will take this issue seriously when the pope removes him from the church. There’s no justification for bombing civilians,” Kline said, though he added he still intends to vote for Biden in the November elections.

Medea Benjamin, a co-founder of anti-war group CodePink, told The Associated Press that the moniker “Genocide Joe” will stick with Biden for a certain segment of the community because of his handling of the war in Gaza.

“I think the Democrats are playing with fire in many ways — playing with fire in that they’re supporting a genocide in Gaza but also playing with fire in terms of their own future,” Benjamin said.

Jake and Ida Braford, a young couple from Richmond, Virginia, who brought their two small children to the protest, said they were unsure of whether to vote for Biden in November.

“We’re pretty disheartened,” Ida Braford said. “Seeing what is happening in Gaza, and the government’s actions makes me wonder what is our vote worth?”

The plight of children in the Gaza Strip was the focus of the latest London march, symbolized by the appearance of Little Amal, a 3.5-meter (11.5-foot) puppet originally meant to highlight the suffering of Syrian refugees.

The puppet had become a human rights emblem during an 8,000-kilometer (4,970-mile) journey from the Turkish-Syrian border to Manchester in July 2001.

Nearly two-thirds of the 23,843 people killed during Israel’s campaign in Gaza have been women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

Israel declared war in response to Hamas’ unprecedented cross-border attack on Oct. 7 in which the Islamic militant group killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 250 others hostage. It was the deadliest attack in Israel’s history and the deadliest for Jews since the Holocaust.

March organizers had said the Palestinian children would accompany Little Amal through the streets of central London.

“On Saturday Amal walks for those most vulnerable and for their bravery and resilience,“ said Amir Nizar Zuabi, artistic director of The Walk Productions. “Amal is a child and a refugee and today in Gaza childhood is under attack, with an unfathomable number of children killed. Childhood itself is being targeted. That’s why we walk.”

London’s Metropolitan Police force said some 1,700 officers would be on duty for the march, including many from outside the capital.

Home Secretary James Cleverly said he had been briefed by police commissioner Sir Mark Rowley on plans to “ensure order and safety” during the protest.

“I back them to use their powers to manage the protest and crack down on any criminality,” Cleverly said.

A number of conditions were placed for the march, including a directive that no participant in the protest shall venture near the Israeli Embassy.

A pro-Israel rally was set to take place in London on Sunday.

The London march was one of several others being held in European cities including Paris, Rome, Milan and Dublin, where thousands also marched along the Irish capital’s main thoroughfare to protest Israel’s military operations in the Palestinian enclave.

Protesters waved Palestinian flags, held placards critical of the Irish, U.S. and Israeli governments and chanted, “Free, free Palestine.″

In Rome, hundreds of demonstrators descended on a boulevard near the famous Colosseum, with some carrying signs reading, “Stop Genocide.”

At one point during the protest, amid the din of sound effects mimicking exploding bombs, a number of demonstrators lied down in the street and pulled white sheets over themselves as if they were corpses, while others knelt beside them, their palms daubed in red paint.

Many hundreds of demonstrators gathered in Paris’ Republic square to set off on a march calling for an immediate cease-fire, an end to the war, a lifting of the blockade on Gaza and to impose sanctions on Israel. Marching protesters waved the Palestinian flag and held aloft placards and banners reading, “From Gaza to Paris. Resistance.”

Kirka and Hadjicostis reported from London. Associated Press TV producer Francesco Sportelli in Rome and AP writer John Leicester in Paris contributed to this report.

IDF: Hamas launched a rocket at troops from a Khan Younis hospital

Live Update

Author: Emanuel Fabian

Hamas launched a rocket from Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis at Israeli troops operating in the Gaza Strip earlier this week, the IDF says.

The IDF says that it investigated a rocket fired at troops in the northern part of Khan Younis this week, and the military’s systems revealed that it was launched from Nasser Hospital.

“Hamas operates systematically in the hospitals in the Gaza Strip and in the areas adjacent to them, using the civilian population as a human shield and exploiting the hospital infrastructure,” the IDF says in a statement.

Back in November 2023, the IDF raided on al-Shifa hospital on the stated reasoning of there being a Hamas base within or beneath it. Upon captureing the hospital, little to no concrete evidence of a command base was provided. Footage of "evidence" released by the IDF has so far proven dubious (alleged tunnel entrances, weapons allegedly stored in a cache, a calendar that had the days of the week written in Arabic...). Per an IDF spokesperson, they were certain Hamas had been there and just been able to evacuate.

Israeli forces have raided several other hospitals during the past couple months. No functioning hospitals remained in Northern Gaza by the end of 2023. Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis has already been shelled multiple times. Displaced civilians from the north have been sheltering best they can in the ever-crowding district of Khan Yunis.

As with al-Shifa and other raided hospitals, it seems the IDF will use the threat of a Hamas base to sidestep international humanitarian laws against the targetting of medical centers during wartime. Refugees have already been fleeing in anticipation of another such raid.

War on Gaza: Israel pummels Khan Younis, damaging field hospital and razing cemetery

Israeli jets and tanks kill several Palestinians near Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza after night of 'terrifying' attacks

Authors: Lubna masarwa, Rayhan Uddin

The Jordanian army on Wednesday accused Israel of a "flagrant breach of international law" after its field hospital in southern Gaza's Khan Younis was badly damaged by Israeli overnight shelling.

This came after Israeli forces heavily shelled and bombed the vicinity of Nasser Hospital, the main medical facility* in Khan Younis, on Tuesday night, killing at least 23 people.

A Palestinian taking shelter with his family in the hospital described a night of terror and chaos, as Israeli jets and tanks pummelled areas nearby.

Mohammad Rami, a father of three, said many families taking shelter in tents in the hospital's yards and the nearby Austrian district were forced to flee late at night, fearing the hospital would be raided or bombed.

"It was very cold and the bombing was terrifying," Rami told Middle East Eye. "Some went to schools but many spent the night on the streets."

Israeli tanks, which came within metres of the Jordanian military field hospital near Nasser Hospital, retreated on Wednesday morning, according to eyewitnesses.

Despite the Israeli retreat, artillery shelling and gunfire continued to be heard in Al-Manara and Batn Al-Sameen neighbourhoods of Khan Younis, Rami said.

Several children were among those killed, as dozens of homes were levelled by Israel's multi-pronged attack from air and land.

Cemetery razed

Residents say Israeli forces razed a cemetery in the Austrian district and stole several bodies. MEE has reached out to the Israeli military for comment.

Palestinians in southern Gaza fear the attacks around Nasser Hospital were a prelude to a wider assault on the facility, similar to the targeting of al-Shifa hospital to the north last year.

Elsewhere over the past 24 hours, Israeli bombardment killed Palestinians in Jabalia and Beit Hanoun in the north, according to Wafa news agency.

Dozens were killed and wounded after air strikes targeted homes in the An-Nafaq area of Gaza City, too, it added.

Israeli forces killed at least 163 Palestinians and wounded 350 more across the Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours, the Palestinian health ministry said.

That brought the death toll of Palestinians killed in Gaza since war broke out on 7 October to 24,448.

At least 61,504 people have been wounded in the besieged territory over that period, while more than 7,000 others are missing and likely to be dead under the rubble.

Two Israeli soldiers were killed during fighting in the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday, bringing the death toll among Israeli forces to over 600 since 7 October. Nearly 200 of them have been killed since the start of the ground operation in the enclave.

In the occupied West Bank, Israeli drone strikes killed at least seven Palestinians on Wednesday morning.

Air strikes during a raid on Tulkarm refugee camp killed four Palestinians, according to the health ministry, houes after another air attack killed three people near Balata refugee camp in Nablus.

US relists Houthis as terrorist organisation

Elsewhere, the US on Wednesday relisted the Houthis as a terrorist group, US officials announced.

Officials said the "Specially Designated Global Terrorist" (SDGT) designation, which targets the group with harsh sanctions, was aimed at cutting off funding and weapons the Houthis have used to attack or hijack ships in vital Red Sea shipping lanes, as a response to Israel’s war on Gaza.

The White House’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the designation, which comes into effect in 30 days, could be reevaluated if the Houthis stop their attacks in the Red Sea.

Iran's foreign minister said that attacks against Israel and its interests by the "Axis of Resistance" would only stop if the Gaza war ends.

"An end to the genocide in Gaza will lead to an end of military actions and crises in the region," Hossein Amir-Amirabdollahian said at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday.

"The security of the Red Sea is tied to the developments in Gaza, and everyone will suffer if Israel's crimes in Gaza do not stop ... All the (resistance) fronts will remain active."

*Practically, if not literally, the only functioning hospital left in all of Gaza.

SIDENOTE - Bisan Owda (former travel-vlogger turned war journalist and refugee) was sheltering at al-Nasser on the night of the 16th, as she had been for a while since being displaced from the North. Per her update on social media (posted between intermittent internet blackouts), she described how the hospital was being evacuated, how the injured and ill were left behind, and how she feared that this would be her final update. Owda survived the night and soon after called for her followers to observe a gobal strike starting on Sunday the 21st.