Fairness and Accuracy | Is NPR Biased In Its Gaza Coverage?

Author: Edward Schumacher-Matos,
with contributions from editorial researcher Annie Johnson

Fred Rogers of Northfield, Minn, was clearly upset:

• I am appalled at the coverage NPR is providing for the current crisis in Palestine/Israel. All of the stories I have heard have origins in Israel and they all begin with a profusion of support for Israel's defending itself. None express any insight about the three weeks of warfare against the Palestinian population that led up to this conflict.

Hundreds of other listeners and Web readers who wrote in similarly agreed. Yet, even more complaints have poured in like this one from Wendy Zuckerberg of Woodcliff Lake, N.J.:

• I am fed up with NPR for its constant bias against Israel. Your news reports only talk about Palestinian casualties. What about the tragedies in Israel? Israeli civilians have lost their homes, been forced into bomb shelters and evacuated, but I've never heard about this on NPR! Also, let's remember who started this. The initial rockets were fired from Gaza!!!

It is tempting to say that if both sides are angry, then NPR must be doing something right. Sociological studies, moreover, find that we all tend to remember news we disagree with more than news we agree with. In other words, our perceptions of bias tend to be exaggerated. But while these observations suggest that we should double-check ourselves, neither proves that there is not in fact a bias in the coverage.

After reviewing, however, all of NPR's stories of the Gaza conflict since June 30, when the bodies of three kidnapped Israeli teens were found, I find that the coverage has been fair and accurate. It has not leaned toward one side or the other.

The passionate responses from listeners are understandable, given that many of them have an emotional investment in a conflict involving religion, identity, or homeland. And, of course, all of us can have strong feelings about news coverage involving life-and-death struggles, wherever they occur.

Public opinion in the United States still overwhelmingly sympathizes with the Israelis, but similar support in much of the rest of the world has eroded over the years and may be slowly tattering in the US, too. The message traffic to me and the main radio shows at NPR seems to be running roughly 60:40 pro-Israel, if you assume that criticism of the coverage for being "pro-Palestinian" reflects a pro-Israeli stance. I suspect that in previous decades, the margin would have been wider. Regardless, it is not for NPR to take sides.

Does this mean that NPR is ducking a journalistic responsibility to find truth, that it is guilty of some sort of false equivalence by not concluding who is right and wrong? Many of the opposing letter writers say yes, holding up morality as being on their side. Robert Siegel raised the question of "moral equivalence" early on in an interview with Israeli author Ari Shavit. No answers were reached, other than Shavit saying that extremists among both Palestinians and Israelis are dangerous.

I asked foreign editor Edith Chapin about how much she thought of these matters in directing NPR's coverage.

"We always think about questions of balance and moral equivalence," she replied, "but sadly there is no tape measure and absolute answer. Journalism is art, not science as many a practitioner has said over the centuries."

The issue of arriving at conclusions can be more clearly done in reporting on any one slice of the story. To their credit, the four reporters on the ground—Jerusalem bureau chief Emily Harris, visiting London bureau chief Ari Shapiro, visiting Berlin correspondent Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, and stringer Daniel Estrin—have pulled no punches in describing the horror felt by Israelis subject to the ongoing rocket attacks, and the horror felt by Palestinians in Gaza subject to Israeli bombings and ground attacks.

Who started the fighting? Listeners and readers who write in, like Rogers and Zuckerberg above, regularly come back to this critical slice. Each accuses NPR of not correctly assessing blame on the other side.

What I found was that NPR reported that Hamas in Gaza dramatically upped the ante in this latest round of violence by launching the rocket attacks. Shapiro and Estrin did most of the reporting in the early weeks. Harris was on vacation in the western United States at the time, Chapin said, but she hustled back and her return, combined with the passing of time and online explainers by NPR.org international editor Greg Myre, has led to more background analysis on the players and their motivations in the fighting. This has added nuance to the "who started it" question and what to expect next.

Harris in particular has been risking her own life to tell the human side of the story from Gaza. Some pro-Israeli listeners have complained that these Palestinian stories are tear jerk "propaganda," as David Feller-Kopman of Stevenson, Md., wrote in. But the major fighting has been in Gaza, and the unavoidable fact was that as of Thursday morning, 729 Palestinians were reported killed, most of them civilians, versus at least 35 Israelis, two of them civilians.

Many listeners and readers have protested that NPR's reporting on the disproportionate death toll is misleading because Hamas uses civilians* as so-called "human shields" by hiding its rockets in neighborhoods and even in mosques. I found that many of the stories indeed reported that many of the rockets were fired from populated urban areas. Siegel, in an on-air interview, bluntly asked a Hamas spokesperson, Ihab al-Ghussein, if Hamas wasn't using a strategy of "victimization" of civilians. Al-Ghussein evaded the answer, but the point was made.

But through the spokesperson and many of the ordinary Gazans interviewed by Harris and Shapiro, we in the audience began to learn another reality, too. In addition to Hamas religious ideology and political calculations being behind the rocket attacks, many civilian Gazans also were willing to risk the high death toll from an inevitable Israeli retaliation because of feeling enraged over what they call Israel's longtime "siege" of Gaza. Despite some relaxation of Israeli restrictions in recent years, most Gazans remain cut off by Israel from trade, business, and travel with most of the world — in large part because of Egyptian restrictions on Gaza's borders, too.

Questions of root causes are never simple in this tiny piece of the world. Each side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has its own narrative that emphasizes wrongs committed by the other side over the past 60 or even 100 years. No single story, indeed no group of stories, can possibly put all that bitter history into a context that will satisfy everyone, or anyone. The best NPR can do on this score is to show how the competing convictions about the wider blame have themselves contributed to the continuation of the conflict.

Even then, some Palestinian supporters regularly complain that NPR, and much of the Western media, is blind to a fundamental bias in their framing of stories. NPR does so, these critics claim, by accepting the legitimacy of the state of Israel as fact. There is no blindness here. The framing correctly reflects not just what have come to be bedrock American values, but also international law and a moral decision made by most of the world long ago. This does not mean, however, that the framing should adopt an attitude of Israel right or wrong, and the coverage of the Gaza conflict correctly doesn't.

Related to framing is another frequent complaint of conflicts of interest. As Robert Schaible of Buxton, Maine wrote:

• I'd like to expect better from NPR than Ari Shapiro's report yesterday. To begin, your only correspondent in the report was Jewish. What would your pro-Israel listeners say if your only correspondent was an Arab?

I have no idea what Shapiro's religious conviction is. I see nothing in his reporting that reflects a religious bias, and so see no reason to ask him. As Chapin wrote to me:

• Ari is an established journalist with a long track record of outstanding reporting at NPR. He is a former White House correspondent, considered one of the most important beats in the US. He has been subjected to spin before. He does his job with great care and attention.

Up until the 1980s, it was common for the American news media not to assign Jewish reporters to the Middle East. This has changed, as it has changed for assigning blacks to cover civil rights, women and LGBT reporters to cover gender and sexuality, Hispanics to cover Latin America, Iranian-Americans to cover Iran, and so on. While Schaible's concern is understandable, the real issue is professionalism, not the religious, racial, national or sexual background of the individual reporter.

As it was, Shapiro and NPR's Arabic translator Nuha Musleh, found themselves caught in the middle of high tensions in Jerusalem's Old City. They walked into a hail of rocks being thrown at passing Palestinian women. Shapiro reported that the police suspected that the perpetrator was an ultra-Orthodox Jew. Recently, Shapiro has rotated out to fill in as a host back in Washington, Chapin said.

But focusing on the reporters additionally misses a basic point. The most common complaints from both sides have to do with inherent weaknesses in broadcast journalism, especially as practiced by NPR. However, I think that most of us would agree that what is gained in the trade-off that NPR makes by design is more than worth it.

The complaint is that a particular story or on-air interview appears biased because it focuses mostly on one view or one side in the fighting. Pro-Palestinian listeners, for example, complained ferociously early on about the sympathetic stories about the three murdered Israeli boys. They either didn't hear or—as those sociological studies suggest—didn't particularly remember other stories about the impact on Palestinian families of mass arrests and house destructions by Israeli soldiers. Similarly, pro-Israelis have complained vociferously about stories sympathetic to Gazans suffering under Israeli bombing, but didn't hear or overlooked the many stories reporting the fear caused in Israeli towns and cities by Hamas rockets and tunnels.

Shortly before the Israeli ground invasion last week, Sumner Stone, of East Greenwich, R.I., telephoned me at around 3 in the afternoon to complain that NPR had failed to report that 13 heavily armed Palestinian infiltrators had been caught trying to sneak through a tunnel with the apparent intention of attacking the small Israeli kibbutz of Sufa near the Gaza border. The incident had been on the Israeli news for the "last 12-14 hours," he said. Yet NPR seemed only to be carrying stories about the four Palestinian children killed on the beach by Israeli fire.

"Was it INTENTIONALLY IGNORED," Stone soon wrote me of Sufa, "while the tragic story of the UNINTENTIONAL killing of the four youths was SENSATIONALIZED for two days in a row?"

Nothing of the kind, Robert Garcia, the managing editor of NPR's hourly newscasts, told me. Stringer Estrin, as part of the excellent fill-in he has been doing since the crisis broke out, reported on the Sufa incident in the lead story package of the hourly newscast at 6 a.m. Eastern time.

This is not to fault Stone; I wasn't listening at that hour, and I presume he wasn't either. NPR's newscasts, moreover, are not transcribed or stored online. Other events soon took over the hourly reports. Still, by that night the many tunnels found by Israel had become a central part of NPR's invasion coverage, and continue to be.

Interviews by the show hosts come in for particular criticism for being one-sided, or not pushing far enough.

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, or CAMERA, a pro-Israeli group, accused Siegel, for example, of conducting a "softball interview" with Gazan political scientist Mkhaimer Abu Sada on All Things Considered that "fails to challenge the professor's multiple falsehoods."

On the other side, "simply disgraceful" was how Marcus Hamilton of Tijeras, N.M., described an interview by Steve Inskeep with Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer which aired the next day. "Mr. Inskeep allowed the Israeli ambassador to further the water-thin Israeli propaganda machine and offered absolutely no counter to his ridiculous claims."

But the beauty of radio as practiced by NPR is that it is willing to devote many precious minutes to take us into one side or the other so that we hear their voices and understand their passions, either through narrative storytelling or the relatively long on-air interviews. No doubt there could be a little more push by NPR hosts here or there in some of the interviews, but generally I found that there was acceptable skepticism within the bounds of politeness and the limits of time.

Rather than get sound bites, I myself want to hear Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu talk for seven minutes on many issues as he did in response to questions from Steve Inskeep. I also want to hear something we almost never hear, a Hamas spokesperson, in this case Ihab al-Ghussein, for nearly six minutes on All Things Considered, showing me the thinking inside Hamas. We know both are spinning, but the questions by the hosts point to the indications of that, and we can discount the spinning ourselves, aided by what we learn in other stories and other interviews.

I can't accept the objections of some advocates that giving air time to views the advocates find offensive amounts to NPR endorsing those views. All of us need to be willing to listen attentively even to views we find offensive if we are to understand the world we live in.

While most of the email complaints have been about the radio coverage, NPR's online site has a wealth of additional information. For example, Myre, the online international editor, who covered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from 1999 to 2007 and is the author of a book on it, has consistently written superb analytical pieces on all of the Mideast tensions for NPR's Parallels blog.

These analytical pieces don't translate well to NPR's news-magazine shows, and the broadcaster is about to cancel the last of its own talk shows, Tell Me More, that did delve at length into one issue in one sitting. Editors and reporters are constantly struggling to get enough analysis into the balance of their on-air storytelling and one-on-one interviews, and are largely successful over the arc of their stories. But as more of us migrate online, we have the riches of a multimedia presentation that includes both the broadcast stories and the additional information on demand when we want it.

*Seems that the human shield rhetoric has been around for a while. Hamas is decried for hiding behind shields, but it nevers seems to go as far as to why the IDF is still shooting through the shields. In general, a lot of phrases that pop up in reports and statements about the war effort in Gaza seems to be repetitive when describing things about the Palestinian side, as though reading from the same manual.

The plight of Ethiopian Jews in Israel

Author: Prof. Yossi Mekelberg of Regents University and Chatham House

True to its Zionist dream of being a haven for Jews, the Jewish state embarked on risky and expensive rescue operations in the 1980s and 1990s.

These brought tens of thousands of Jews from remote parts of Ethiopia, who had suffered from religious persecution, famine and civil wars.

Yet, when they arrived in Israel, these distinctive people faced appalling discrimination, racism and a lack of empathy for their hardships in Ethiopia and during their journey to Israel.

Moreover, this was exacerbated by a mixture of bureaucratic insensitivity and incompetence.

The uncharacteristic violence, seen recently during demonstrations by members of the Ethiopian community in Israel, was a direct result of years of accumulated frustration against the state and especially the police.

The unprovoked beating up by policemen of Demas Fekadeh, an Ethiopian Israeli soldier in uniform, could well serve as a much necessary wake-up call for Israeli society to change, quickly and radically, its treatment of the 130,000 Israeli citizens and their descendants who immigrated from Ethiopia.

Who are the Ethiopian Jews?

The main challenge in tracing the origins of a Jewish presence in Ethiopia is the lack of reliable accounts.

Consequently there are several versions regarding the origins of the Ethiopian Jews or, as they are historically known, Beta Israel (House of Israel).

One school of thought claims that Ethiopian Jews are descendants of the lost Hebrew Dan tribe.

An alternative explanation asserts that the Beta Israel community may be the descendants of the entourage that accompanied Menelik I, the son of King Solomon and Queen Sheba.

Finally, leaders from within the community argue that Ethiopian Jews are descendants of Jews who left the conquered Kingdom of Judah for Egypt following the destruction of the First Temple in 586BC.

For centuries, until the 20th Century, Ethiopian Jews were completely isolated from Jewish communities in other parts of the world. Yet, they adhered to biblical Judaism for many centuries.

How did they arrive in Israel?

It was Prime Minister Menachem Begin, after he came to power in 1977, who first opened the country to Ethiopian Jews.

It was in response to the threat to the community from famine, political unrest and the hostility of the self-proclaimed Marxist-Leninist regime led by Col Mengistu Haile Mariam.

Initially the Israeli secret service Mossad organised their immigration through refugee camps in Sudan.

This resulted in the arrival of about 7,000 Ethiopian Jews in Israel.

In later years, Israeli security services embarked on even more daring operations, code-named Operation Moses (1984-1985) and Operation Solomon (1991), which rescued a further 20,000 Jews.

With the end of Mengistu's regime it became easier for Jews to emigrate from Ethiopia and, by the end of the 1990s, about 90,000 of the Beta Israel community had arrived in Israel.

What are the root causes of tensions?

Only 30 years after the arrival of the first Ethiopian Jews to Israel, and following recent violent clashes with the police, there is a broad acknowledgement that the state failed appallingly in absorbing the Jewish Ethiopian community.

To begin with, there was a lack of empathy in Israeli society for the hardships involved in leaving behind homes, relatives and friends who could not make the journey; not to mention the loss of family members and friends on the hazardous journey.

Upon their arrival in the Jewish state they met the inherent Israeli paradoxes involved in absorbing Jewish immigrants.

They were welcomed and granted the basic needs of accommodation, healthcare, education and general welfare.

However, this was done without sensitivity to their specific conditions and from the outset they faced discrimination and racism from the Israeli establishment.

Many in the religious establishment even dared to question their Judaism.

One of the early incidents that exposed this approach was the revelation in the 1990s that the Israeli national blood bank had routinely destroyed blood donated by Ethiopian Israelis for fear of HIV.

It sent a message of exclusion from the rest of the Israeli society.

The failure to absorb the Ethiopian Jews is the failure to fully and genuinely integrate them into Israeli society.

For instance, while Ethiopian Israeli schoolchildren comprise only 2% of Israeli pupils, most of them study at schools that are predominantly Ethiopian.

Worse still, their attainment in school is much poorer than the general population, which blocks their path to academic success.

Many of the Ethiopian Israelis live in the periphery of society that already grapples with issues of unemployment and scarce public resources.

This makes it more difficult for them to integrate and causes friction with the more veteran population.

Ethiopian Jews suffer from the highest poverty rate among the Jews in Israel, and suffer much higher levels of police stop-search, arrests and incarceration.

It was the cycle of discrimination, racism, poverty, hopelessness and higher levels of law breaking that led to the recent clashes in the streets of Israeli cities, between Ethiopian Israelis and the police.

This challenges Israel to look in the mirror and correct the way it treats a vulnerable segment of the population within its own society.

SIDE NOTE - I don't know what it would have been in 2015, but Israel apparently had a population of around 22,315 members of the South African diaspora back in 2021. Not as high as America, Britain, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand, but that's still a pretty decent number of people.

This article is not directly connected with any of past or current Israel-Palestine conflicts, but I think it helps illustrate that Israel, like the US and other Western Countries, can demonstrate cultural and systemic biases that begets unfair and unequal treatment of populations of certain backgrounds.

Opinion: Coverage of Ukraine has exposed long-standing racist biases in Western media

Author: H.A. Hellyer, a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace scholar and senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and Cambridge University.

“This isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades,” Charlie D’Agata, a CBS correspondent in Kyiv, told his colleagues back in the studio. “You know, this is a relatively civilized, relatively European — I have to choose those words carefully, too — city where you wouldn’t expect that or hope that it’s going to happen.”

Putin’s criminal invasion of Ukraine has generated an inspiring wave of solidarity around the world, but for many — especially non-White observers — it has been impossible to tune out the racist biases in Western media and politics.

D’Agata’s comments generated a swift backlash — and he was quick to apologize — but he was hardly the only one. A commentator on a French news program said, “We’re not talking about Syrians fleeing bombs of the Syrian regime backed by Putin; we’re talking about Europeans leaving in cars that look like ours to save their lives.” On the BBC, a former deputy prosecutor general of Ukraine declared, “It’s very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blond hair ... being killed every day.” Even an Al Jazeera anchor said, “These are not obviously refugees trying to get away from areas in the Middle East,” while an ITV News reporter said, “Now the unthinkable has happened to them, and this is not a developing, Third World nation; this is Europe.”

British pundit Daniel Hannan joined the chorus in the Telegraph. “They seem so like us. That is what makes it so shocking. War is no longer something visited upon impoverished and remote populations. It can happen to anyone,” he wrote.

The implication for anyone reading or watching — particularly anyone with ties to a nation that has also seen foreign intervention, conflict, sanctions and mass migration — is clear: It’s much worse when White Europeans suffer than when it’s Arabs or other non-White people. Yemenis, Iraqis, Nigerians, Libyans, Afghans, Palestinians, Syrians, Hondurans — well, they are used to it.

The insults went beyond media coverage. A French politician said Ukrainian refugees represent “high-quality immigration.” The Bulgarian prime minister said Ukrainian refugees are “intelligent, they are educated. ... This is not the refugee wave we have been used to, people we were not sure about their identity, people with unclear pasts, who could have been even terrorists.”

It’s as if, in our anger and horror at the scenes of Russia’s aggression, we are incapable of recognizing a simple fact: We’ve seen this before.

A Vanity Fair special correspondent denied precisely that in a tweet: “This is arguably the first war we’ve seen (actually seen in real-time) take place in the age of social media, and all of these heart-wrenching images make Russia look utterly terrible.”

The tweet was erased — like the experiences of many who have documented the horrors of war in recent decades on social media and beyond.

Putin’s military also intervened ferociously in Syria, backing a murderous regime. That war unleashed a level of mass death, suffering, destruction and displacement not yet seen in Ukraine — but the West’s response was far less empathetic. The same can be said of the U.S. invasions and military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq; the catastrophic Saudi-led war in Yemen; the Israeli occupation of the Palestinians.

This double standard is so evident in how we as Westerners engage in international relations. Far too often, we dehumanize non-White populations, diminishing their importance, and that leads to one thing: the degrading of their right to live in dignity.

Beyond the moral and ethical imperatives, there are geopolitical ones — by engaging with suffering in this myopic way, we embolden other Putins. They realize that the checks against them will be mostly weak and ineffectual, as long as the so-called civilized world is left alone.

It’s true that states often intervene to protect their own interests. For all the talk of “values,” it’s usually cold pragmatism that informs decisions. But it is also true that our “interests” are informed, tremendously, by our values. When our values stipulate that there is a civilizational ladder, where a population is on one end of it and everyone else is far below, then we lose the moral high ground.

Solidarity with the brave people of Ukraine has reminded us all what is possible when empathy is really felt, but it will be bittersweet if our solidarity is really just skin-deep. Our media has a big role to play to avoid this. Many do an excellent job, but too many need to do a lot better.

Fun-Fact: I would possibly be willing to pay for a Washington Post subscription if it was not owned by Jeff Bezos, knowledge of which makes me very suspicious of "Opinion" pieces published by the WP in recent years such as this one, this one or this one.

‘We are at war,’ Netanyahu says, after Hamas launches devastating surprise attack

PM vows to exact ‘unprecedented price’ from terror group after hundreds of gunmen cross border, attack homes and IDF bases; thousands of rockets fired; opposition backs gov’t, IDF

Author: Toi Staff

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel “is at war” after Hamas launched a devastating surprise attack on the country on Saturday, and vowed to exact an “unprecedented price” from the terror group.

“Citizens of Israel, we are at war. Not an operation, not a round [of fighting,] at war! This morning Hamas initiated a murderous surprise attack against the state of Israel and its citizens,” Netanyahu said in his filmed statement in Hebrew.

The statement, which appeared to have been filmed at the Israel Defense Forces headquarters in Tel Aviv, was posted at around 11 a.m., several hours into the fighting that erupted after Hamas fired thousands of rockets into Israel and hundreds of gunmen crossed the border with the Gaza Strip and invaded multiple Israeli towns and communities.

At least 200 Israelis were confirmed killed and over 1,400 wounded by evening. Additional casualties were reported from the Gaza border communities, where gun battles still raged between the IDF and terrorists who were seen roaming freely in several places.

“We have been in this since the early morning hours. I have convened the heads of the defense establishment. I’ve given directives, first and foremost, to clear the [affected] urban areas of the terrorists who penetrated them,” Netanyahu said. “This is happening right now.”

“In parallel, I am initiating an extensive mobilization of the reserves to fight back on a scale and intensity that the enemy has so far not experienced. The enemy will pay an unprecedented price,” Netanyahu said.

“I urge the public to follow strictly the directives of the military, the Home Front Command. We are at war and will win,” Netanyahu said.

Throughout Saturday, the IDF said it struck multiple terrorist squads in southern Israel, as well as several sites belonging to Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The sites targeted by Israeli Air Force fighter jets and drones included 17 military compounds, four headquarters, and two high-rise towers the IDF said were used to house Hamas assets.

The military said it notified residents of the two buildings before they were hit.

IAF fighter jets dropped more than 16 tons of munitions on Hamas assets in the Strip, according to a military source.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant also vowed that Israel “will win this war.”

“Hamas made a grave mistake this morning and started a war against the State of Israel. IDF soldiers are fighting the enemy at all the infiltration sites,” Gallant said in remarks provided by his office.

“The State of Israel will win this war,” he added.

A joint statement from Knesset opposition party heads gave full backing to the IDF and called on the international community to condemn the acts of terror.

Yesh Atid head Yair Lapid, National Unity head Benny Gantz, Yisrael Beitenu head Avigdor Lieberman and Labor party head Merav Michaeli said, “In days like these there is no opposition and no coalition in Israel.”

We “are united in the face of terrorism” and the need to strike with “a strong and determined fist,” said the statement, calling for retribution against Hamas and all terrorist organizations that cooperate with it.

“It is necessary to mobilize the international community against terrorism,” the statement continued, ending with strong support for the citizens of Israel, active and reserve IDF soldiers all security and emergency forces.

“We call on all citizens — obey the directives of the Home Front Command, take care of yourselves and together we will overcome terrorism,” said the statement.

Organizers of protests against the government’s judicial overhaul scheduled for Saturday night announced the cancellation of the weekly demonstrations.

“We stand with the residents of Israel and give full support to the IDF and the security forces,” the protest organizers said in a statement.

“We call on all those who are needed to report [for duty] and play their part to safeguard the security and health of the residents of Israel.”

The Brothers and Sisters in Arms protest group also urges all those who are needed to report for duty “without hesitation.”

Hundreds of reservists had previously refused to report for duty so long as the government pursued its controversial reform.

President Isaac Herzog also called for solidarity.

“The State of Israel is at a difficult moment. I am wishing much strength to the IDF, its commanders and fighters and the entirety of the security and rescue forces,” Herzog wrote on X.

“I wish to encourage and strengthen all in Israel who are under attack. I urge everyone to follow the instructions of the Home Front Command, and demonstrate mutual solidarity and calm. Together we will triumph over those who wish to harm us.”

Been trying to go through articles published after 9/11 to see how they compare, as I imagine there to be similarities (although the greater geopolitical complex is much more frought)with those that come out of Israel in October. Website paywalls making it difficult, so mostly using the wayback machine.
Washington Post Editorial | 09-11-2001
New York Times | 09-12-2001 - link might not load

Herzog spars with foreign journalists over retaliatory Gaza strikes

Author: Amy Spiro

President Isaac Herzog has several markedly contentious exchanges with foreign journalists during a briefing at his residence in Jerusalem.

The generally mild-mannered leader reacts angrily to questions from CNN and the UK’s Channel 4 about the IDF’s ongoing bombing of the Gaza Strip.

Asked by CNN anchor Becky Anderson about Israel’s “collective punishment” of Gazan civilians, calling it a “war crime,” Herzog raises his voice in response.

“I’m quite disappointed that what’s you’re asking me instantaneously, haven’t you seen [the carnage in southern Israel]? You’ve all seen it. So now we’re starting with the rhetoric about war crimes. Really? Truly?” Herzog reiterates that “Israel abides by international law, operates by international law.”

Channel 4’s Matt Frei says he is “confused” by Herzog’s responses considering that “you seem to hold the people of Gaza responsible for Hamas.”

The president cuts off his question angrily: “With all due respect, if you have a missile in your goddamn kitchen and you want to shoot it at me, am I allowed to defend myself? That’s the situation.”

Herzog later rejects a question from Anderson about whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bears responsibility for the failure to thwart the attack, saying “we are at war, I’m not dealing with this issue at all.”

Unconfirmed ‘Beheaded Babies’ Report Helped Justify Israeli Slaughter

Author: Saurav Sarkar

There’s perhaps no more serious a time for journalists to do their jobs responsibly than during a war.

But corporate media have not been, as evidenced by their repetition of the shocking, unsubstantiated claim that Hamas had beheaded 40 babies in its violent attack on a kibbutz in southern Israel on October 7.

It all started with television reporting by journalist Nicole Zedek, who works for the 24-hour Israeli cable news channel i24, now embedded with the Israeli Defense Forces. In one October 10 report, she said, “I’m talking to some of the soldiers, and they say what they’ve witnessed…babies, their heads cut off.” In another report later that day, she says, “About 40 babies at least were taken out on gurneys,” prompting the host to interject: “Nicole, I have to cut in—that’s such a shocking, jarring statement there…. You’re saying 40 babies, dead babies?”

Zedek’s reporting was cobbled together into the viral claim that 40 babies were beheaded, despite that, by her own account, she had not seen the bodies herself, and relied solely on Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers as her sources. This might not have mattered as much if she were reporting on a less inflammatory subject, or had a more reliable source, but the IDF is known for misleading journalists.

The next day, Zedek told a podcast (Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, 10/11/23) that “it’s sickening” that people were scrutinizing her reporting of alleged baby beheadings closely: “We have these soldiers confirming what they’ve seen of the mutilation of these children.”

The claim remains up on i24’s website* as of October 18. Israel’s largest newspaper Ha’aretz (12/2/19) found in a 2019 investigation that i24 had compromised its integrity years earlier by becoming more pro-Netanyahu in order to obtain a broadcast license. It also reputedly has close ties to the Israeli military (Anadolu Ajansi, 10/11/23).

But Zedek and i24 alone could not have produced the flood of social media posts about 40 decapitated babies. That took other outlets amplifying her “reporting” within hours, lending it further credibility and helping it go viral. Some typical headlines:

• “IDF Says Hamas Fighters Killed and Decapitated Babies at One Kibbutz Near the Gaza Border” (Business Insider, 10/10/23)
• “Hamas kills 40 Babies and Children—Beheading Some of Them—at Israeli Kibbutz: Report” (New York Post, 10/10/23)
• “Israeli Forces Say They’ve Uncovered Evidence of Brutal Killings: ‘They Cut Heads of Children’” (The Hill, 10/10/23)

The British Daily Mail (10/10/23) got it all into the headline:

• Hamas Terrorists “Beheaded Babies During Kibbutz Slaughter Where 40 Young Children Were Killed”: IDF Soldiers Reveal Families Were Killed in Their Bedrooms—”Not in War, Not a Battlefield… a Massacre'”

Later in the day, a Turkish news outlet (Anadolu Ajansi, 10/10/23) did what Zedek and others should have done in the first place, reporting the story rather than just repeating the sources’ claims. It called the Israeli Defense Forces and found that the military would not confirm the account—a minimal step that Zedek and the many outlets that repeated her claims should have taken, given the gravity of the charges.

But the damage had been done; by Wednesday, nearly a dozen British newspapers ran the i24 claims on their front pages. The Israeli government picked up the story and ran with it too, even as it wouldn’t confirm it. Eventually, US President Biden was caught saying that he had seen photos of decapitated infants when he had not; the White House was forced to issue an embarrassing “clarification.”

So we have a story, and that story was generated in a grossly irresponsible way, and then repeated over and over. But what proof do we have that the story is false? After all, even if it was reported badly, and repeated without additional substantiation, it might be true.

Aside from the questionable nature of the sourcing, there is circumstantial evidence that it is false. The Israeli government released horrific images of dead infants over social media (Reuters, 10/13/23). None of the photos showed any evidence of decapitated infants. If the Israeli government had proof that such a horrifying crime had been committed, and was willing to release other traumatic photos of dead infants, surely it would have also released the ones that backed up its claims?

Even with all this said, why does it matter? After all, other horrific crimes were committed in southern Israel. It matters because the war in Gaza was already underway when i24 reported on the “decapitated babies” story—about 260 children were killed in the Gaza Strip as of October 10 (AP, 10/10/23). To maintain lockstep international support, the IDF needed to differentiate its mass slaughter from Hamas’s violence—which it could only do by painting Hamas as sadistic, savage, subhuman. The claim about beheading babies was ideal for the job: a shocking story that served to turn off logic and critical thinking. Who wouldn’t want to avenge murdered, desecrated infants?

Such stories have worked in the past; when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1991, George H.W. Bush repeated the claims of a 15-year-old Kuwaiti teen that she had seen Iraqi soldiers take babies in Kuwait out of incubators and leave them to die (Democracy Now!, 12/5/18). The teenager later turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US, and her claims to be fabrications orchestrated by a DC public relations firm hired by the Kuwaiti government.

In addition, the Israeli government explicitly attempted to draw an equation between Hamas and ISIS, noted for their use of decapitation as a tactic. This aspect of the claim evokes stereotypes of “barbaric” Muslims.

By credulously repeating the soldiers’ claims and Zedek’s reporting on them, countless outlets around the world have contributed to these harms. And the people who have suffered the most in the process are the million-plus children of Gaza.

*Article still remains up on i24 as of November 20th as well. - A.C.M.

NOTE - this article contains multiple inline citations to publications not listed on this page. These citations were hyperlinked on the original article, which can be found linked in the Citations tab.

Israel's Holocaust survivors struggle with Gaza war as trauma deepens

Authors: Jonathan Saul, Rami Amichai, and Amar Awad;
edited by Crispian Balmer and Gareth Jones

ASHDOD, Israel, Oct 24 (Reuters) - When night falls, Sarina Blumenfeld gets flashbacks from what she endured during the Holocaust and struggles to process the carnage that took place when Hamas Islamists entered Israel from Gaza and killed 1,400* people.

Blumenfeld, 89, is one of tens of thousands of elderly survivors of the Nazi Holocaust who live in Israel and are once again facing up to the reality of war, with more than 220 Israelis taken hostage in Gaza.

"This all reminds me of what we went through during the Holocaust and how much we suffered," Blumenfeld told Reuters from her home in the coastal city of Ashdod, which is 40 km (25 miles) from Gaza and frequently a target of Hamas rocket fire.

The persecution of Jews in 20th century Europe is seared into the collective memory of Israel and since Hamas' Oct. 7 assault, leaders both at home and abroad have been quick to evoke memories of the Holocaust, when the Nazis and their collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe.

"I would argue that it was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust," U.S. President Joe Biden said on Oct. 11, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that Hamas had killed children in the same way the Nazis used to.

Rivkah Har Arieh, who lives in Neot Mordechai, which is 3 km from the Lebanese border in the north of Israel, said she felt anxiety because of the loud exchanges of fire between the Israeli military and Hezbollah fighters.

"I went through the Holocaust and all the wars, but it is not like before, the noise is deafening. We will have to get used to even this," the 92-year-old said.

"I feel uneasy, and for the people who were murdered and made homeless, and all the funerals in this land."

Over 7,600 rockets have been fired towards Israel since Oct. 7 out of Gaza, according to Israeli government data, while there have been repeated clashes along the northern border as tensions rise around the region.

SUFFERING

Israel has imposed a total blockade on Gaza and launched air strikes on the territory, killing 5,791 Palestinians so far, including 2,360 children, Gaza's Health Ministry said on Tuesday.

Har Arieh, who spent part of World War Two under house arrest in Bulgaria as a young girl, with eight families forced to live in four rooms, said she was aware that Palestinians in Gaza were suffering.

"It is not good for any of this to happen. Nobody wants this, but this is the consequence of what they (Hamas) did."

According to the latest study published in April by the government's Holocaust Survivors' Rights Authority, there were 147,199 survivors in Israel, with an average age of 85, including 462 who were over 100.

Many managed to weather the difficult conditions during the COVID pandemic, but the current war in Gaza has triggered new levels of stress and anxiety, said Shelly Feigenblat, a Tel Aviv-based social worker with the Foundation for the Welfare of Holocaust Victims, a non-profit organisation.

"Some of them don't even want to go into a bomb shelter. They're so depressed, they don't care if they live or die," she said, adding that everything that had happened was "definitely a trigger for PTSD" (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder).

"To say that it's worse than the Nazis, I think that's the worst trigger for a Holocaust survivor."

*NOTE - In November, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokeperson Lior Haiat released a statement that the initial death toll of 1,400 had been revised to 1,200. The reason given was that several of the unidentifiable corpses initually assumed to be Israeli were determined to have been Hamas militants. How they would have wound up unrecognizable and why they would be assumed to be Israeli citizens, now that raises some questions...

Tens of thousands rally in D.C. for Israel-Gaza cease-fire at pro-Palestinian march

Transcript from All Things Considered

Protesters gathered at a pro-Palestinian demonstration in the nation's capital on Saturday.

Transcript:

: [POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: In the original broadcast story, we reported buses came from San Francisco to Washington. In fact there was a parallel demonstration in San Francisco.]

ADRIAN MA, HOST:

Tens of thousands of people have gathered near the White House in what is being called the Free Palestine March. It comes as President Biden has requested more than $14 billion in military aid for Israel, and marchers are protesting that funding and calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Gaza war. For more on that, we turn to NPR's Laurel Wamsley, who joins us near Freedom Plaza in D.C.

LAUREL WAMSLEY, BYLINE: Hi, Adrian.

MA: Laurel, what are you seeing out there?

WAMSLEY: Yeah. The streets here have been full of people all afternoon. Many of them have been waving Palestinian flags or wearing the kufi, the traditional black-and-white scarf of Palestine. It's just a ton of people here. It's all very peaceful. But there's also been a solid police presence. There are a range of speakers at Freedom Plaza and chants that would erupt from time to time. And then an hour - about an hour ago, the folks at the gathering started marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. This march was organized by a range of pro-Palestine groups in conjunction with a lot of peace and justice, more broadly, organizations in the U.S. And they organized buses from across the country, as far as San Francisco, Miami, Texas to be here today.

MA: So people are coming from all over. What are they telling you?

WAMSLEY: Yeah. We spoke to a lot of people, and they had a range of backgrounds. One we spoke with as is young man named Yunis Berkuch (ph). He's a 24-year-old from Jersey City. And he says his family comes from Morocco. But he says, first and foremost, he's here as an American.

YUNIS BERKUCH: Just as an American, I mean, as someone who grew up in, you know, public schools, I was raised to believe that the United States condemned - right? - atrocities, war crimes, heinous government acts wherever they saw them - right? - regardless of who committed them.

WAMSLEY: And he says, from his perspective, the response from Israel has been disproportionate. He says he's not president. He's never led a country. But he wants a cease-fire. And he wants mediators to come together to resolve this. We also spoke with Amara Rana (ph). She's a 39-year-old who lives in D.C. She said she came to the march because her neighbor is a Palestinian. And she says, as a Muslim herself, it's been emotional to be here at the march today.

AMARA RANA: No. It feels amazing. Like, I'm trying to stop myself from crying. But the unity is amazing to see so many Americans come out, and I hope Joe Biden sees what he's losing.

WAMSLEY: She says Biden voters supported Biden because they believe in equality. But what she's been seeing from the Biden administration right now, she doesn't feel like he's supporting the rights of Palestinians.

MA: So they're sending a message there. Laurel, I wonder, did you speak with any folks there that were Jewish?

WAMSLEY: Yes, we did. We spoke with a man named Pedro Kramer (ph). He grew up in Argentina, and he now lives outside D.C., and he was there holding a sign with the Star of David on it. And he was here with his baby in a stroller.

PEDRO KRAMER: You know, I was raised as a Jewish - Jewish family, Jewish school. And I was always taught that we - what we do is we seek justice. We seek justice everywhere, everywhere and for everyone. And what is happening right now is the farthest, you know, that justice can be.

WAMSLEY: He said there's no difference between his own son, who's here at the rally, and any child living in Gaza, who he said are dying as we speak. He said he's been questioning what Israel is doing and that it's led to a rift with his family and his friends, even with his best friend, who called him an anti-Semitic for questioning Israel's leadership right now.

MA: So you were speaking to people just a few blocks from the White House. When you talk to them, what are they asking from President Biden and from the U.S. government?

WAMSLEY: The word on everyone's lips here is cease-fire. Over and over again, You ask what they want, they say cease-fire. You know, they come from a range of experiences. Some grew up in the U.S. Some came from Palestine. But there seems to be a sense that nothing is going to be able to happen on this that they want to see until there's a cease in hostilities that will allow mediation to happen and for aid to reach the people.

MA: That is NPR's Laurel Wamsley at the scene of the Free Palestine protest in D.C. today. Laurel, thank you so much for your reporting.

WAMSLEY: You're welcome, Adrian.

Full audio recording of radio interview available here.

U.N. and medical agencies condemn Israel's Gaza ambulance strike

Author: Nidal Al-Mughrabi

GAZA, Nov 4 (Reuters) - The United Nations Secretary General and aid agencies working in Gaza have condemned Israel's air strike on an ambulance on Friday, which the Israeli military said, without showing evidence, was carrying Hamas militants.

The Health Ministry, a hospital director and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society in the Hamas-controlled enclave have said the Israeli strike targeted a convoy of ambulances evacuating wounded people from the besieged northern Gaza area.

Mohammad Abu Selmeyah the director of al-Shifa Hospital, where an ambulance was hit, said 15 people had been killed in the strike and 60 injured. Those killed and injured were mainly people standing by the hospital gate, rather than inside the vehicles, he said.

Israel's military said late on Friday it would present more evidence that an ambulance it struck was being used by Hamas to transport fighters and that the group used ambulances to move militants and weapons as "a method of operation". Hamas has denied both accusations.

U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in a social media post on Saturday "I am horrified by the reported attack in Gaza on an ambulance convoy".

The World Health Organisation said it condemned the strike and the medical charity Medicins Sans Frontieres described it as "horrendous", and "a new low in an endless stream of unconscionable violence".

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PCRS) said in a statement that a group of five ambulances was seeking to transport people wounded by Israeli bombardment from al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City to the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.

The journey would have required crossing from the northern half of the enclave, which has now been entirely surrounded by Israeli forces, into the southern area where Israel has not yet sent ground troops, but which it is also bombarding.

Abu Selmeyah said the wounded people being evacuated in the convoy had their names listed at Rafah for permission to enter Egypt. Egypt's Health Ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment but a statement it put out on Friday said that 28 injured people had been expected at Rafah on that day.

EVACUATION

Israel's military assault, aimed at destroying Hamas, is a response to the militant group's Oct. 7 attack on Israeli towns which Israel says killed 1,400* people. Health authorities in Hamas-run Gaza say Israeli bombardment has killed 9,488 people.

The PRCS said Friday's ambulance convoy was forced to turn back some 4 km (2.6 miles) from the hospital because the road was blocked with rubble from shelling.

As it returned through Gaza City, about 1km from the hospital, the lead ambulance was targeted by a missile that damaged it, wounding both its crew and the injured patient inside, the PCRS said.

The organisation said it was responsible for one of the five ambulances in the convoy carrying a 35-year-old woman with shrapnel injuries. It said as it was unloading the woman from the ambulance at the hospital gate, another missile struck the vehicle injuring the driver and a medic.

Videos verified by Reuters of the aftermath showed numerous people lying prone in pools of blood near ambulances.

MSF quoted one of its doctors working at al-Shifa hospital, whom it identified as Dr. Obaid, saying "We were standing inside the hospital gate when the ambulance was directly hit in front of us. There were bloody bodies everywhere".

Asked about the incident, a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva said "we are heartbroken to see medical services in Gaza put in harm's way".

The ICRC spokesperson said the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, which said it owned one of the ambulances in the convoy, has "a strong track record providing life saving services. Like all the organisations forming part of the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement they are bound by principles of neutrality and impartiality".

Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Additional reporting by Sarah El Safty in Cairo and \ Oliver Hirt in Geneva; Writing by Angus McDowall; Editing by Philippa Fletcher

*NOTE - In November, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokeperson Lior Haiat released a statement that the initial death toll of 1,400 had been revised to 1,200. The reason given was that several of the unidentifiable corpses initually assumed to be Israeli were determined to have been Hamas militants. How they would have wound up unrecognizable and why they would be assumed to be Israeli citizens, now that raises some questions...

The unsung hero: Meeting Motaz Azaiza, Gaza's window to the world

Abubaker Abed, a Palestinian journalist, writer, and translator from the Deir al-Balah Refugee Camp in Gaza

Like me, Motaz Hilal Azaiza was born and raised in Deir al-Balah Refugee Camp in Gaza.

Motaz was never intent on fame growing up. He graduated from Al-Azhar University of Gaza in 2021 with a degree in English Language and Literature; the same university that has now been reduced to rubble by Israel's current aggression.

The Palestinian photographer was one of thousands of graduates in Gaza who struggled to find inspiration after graduating, due to the high unemployment rate in Gaza.

Yet, for as long as he can remember, he loved photography so he started a page on Instagram, mainly taking pictures of everyday life in Gaza.

Gradually, his page started to gain traction, but, in Gaza, the threat of war is constant.

Motaz was compelled to cover Israel's 2014 and 2021 aggressions. However, despite his efforts to show the plight of Gaza to the world, his photos were relatively unnoticed.

On October 7, Motaz's Instagram page only had 25,000 followers. Now, Motaz Azaiza has over 13 million. But, as Motaz explains to The New Arab, these numbers mean nothing: only his family and the people of Gaza do.

The world comes to see the truth through Motaz's coverage of Gaza. He's not only a photographer but a shining light of Palestinian resilience to the world.

More than ever, he is determined to continue exposing Israel's impending genocide.

"No one is safe, nowhere is safe, and fear is everywhere. Either I stay at home or I go outside. Why should I stay at home? I have to stand up and show the world the truth through the camera lens," Motaz says.

Throughout the last month, the Israeli occupation has committed unspeakable crimes against Gaza, with the death toll from Israel's bombardment now reaching 10,328, including 4,237 children.

Every day, Motaz is left horrified. "Not everyone knows about Gaza, the Palestinian cause, the Israeli occupation, and our current plight. That's why I'm here with my camera," Motaz tells The New Arab with vigour.

The Palestinian photographer is no stranger to grief himself, having lost 15 relatives in an Israeli airstrike on his house.

"I am devastated," he tells The New Arab. "I cannot express how difficult it was to receive the news. I am mortified."

Like thousands of those killed, Motaz explains that none of his family has anything to do with Hamas — yet most mainstream Western media outlets seem to want to ask any official, activist or journalist trying to tell the world about Israel's atrocities whether they condemn Hamas, or know Hamas.

Motaz also tells us of Abu Al-Said, the beloved community nurse of Deir Al-Balah, who was killed.

"He was the heartbeat of the camp, everyone loved him... Tell me, why was he killed?" Motaz exclaimed.

Motaz also spoke of the sudden switch in his photos, from beautiful pictures of Gaza's scenery and the love-filled streets to tortured families and broken homes.

"It's so cruel to even imagine it," he said. "It was a paradise, now it is hell. I desperately dream of the days before, when I documented my people and my land. That's all I can think about at the moment.

"I miss taking photographs of children playing on the swings, the elderly smiling, families gathering, the sights of nature and the sea, my beautiful Gaza. I miss all of that, and it pains me to remember it."

Now Motaz is grief-stricken and mentally drained. "I am destroyed. I cannot talk about it. Unfortunately, Israel's aggression against Gaza has dragged me into a dark place."

Besides the safety of his family, Motaz makes sure that he can continue to work. He's keen to seize every second of Israel's genocide in Gaza. Yet he remains responsible for food, water, gas, and his family's basic needs. This drives him.

"I feel happy when people share and react to my pictures. The Palestinians are and have been oppressed for 75 years. The world must know our struggle. I am not connected with Hamas. I love life and love to live it my way. I do not want Gaza and Palestine to be a place of forever conflict."

In concluding Motaz Azaiza's interview with The New Arab, he has a message for the world: "We need someone from outside to stand, to literally stand, in the face of Israel and stop the genocide.

"We are totally burnt out. We have bled enough, more than enough. We have lost a lot. We pray for normality, that is it. That's why I'm calling for an immediate ceasefire. People in Gaza cannot bear it anymore," Motaz finishes.

Like every Palestinian in Gaza documenting Israel's atrocities, Motaz Azaiza is more than a journalist, he's an inspiration for all oppressed peoples and communities with a conscience.

In the space of a month, he's become Gaza's unsung hero and a beacon of truth in Gaza.

Through his efforts, we pray that there will be peace soon.

Hundreds of journalists sign letter protesting coverage of Israel

The letter exposes divisions and frustrations within the U.S. newsrooms about how they are covering the Gaza conflict

Authors: Laura Wagner and Will Sommer.

More than 750 journalists from dozens of news organizations have signed an open letter published Thursday condemning Israel’s killing of reporters in Gaza and criticizing Western media’s coverage of the war.

The letter — which said newsrooms are “accountable for dehumanizing rhetoric that has served to justify ethnic cleansing of Palestinians” — is the latest in a string of impassioned collective statements staking out ground in the stateside reaction to the Israel-Gaza war.

But while other writers, artists, scholars and academics have criticized media coverage of the conflict, the latest letter — which includes signatories from Reuters, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe and The Washington Post — is notable for exposing divisions and frustrations within newsrooms.

For some of the journalists, signing the letter was a daring or even risky move. Reporters have been fired from some newsrooms for espousing public political stances that could open them to accusations of bias.

But those who organized the newest letter argue that it is a call to recommit to fairness, not abandon it.

“My hope for this letter is to push back on the culture of fear around this issue,” said Abdallah Fayyad, a 2022 Pulitzer Prize finalist and former editorial board member at the Boston Globe, who signed the letter, “and to make decision-makers and reporters and editors think twice about the language that they use.”

“What it comes down to is just asking journalists to do their jobs,” said Suhauna Hussain, a labor reporter at the Los Angeles Times who signed the letter. “To hold power to account.”

Most strikingly, the letter argues that journalists should use words like “apartheid,” “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” to describe Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

While the letter-signers maintain these are “precise terms that are well-defined by international human rights organizations,” there have historically been debates among diplomats, aid groups and participants over when a particular incident or conflict fits the definition of those terms.

Fayyad said he wasn’t calling on newsrooms to adopt those terms for their own descriptions, “but it is a relevant fact to say that leading human rights groups have called Israel an apartheid regime,” he said, just as many news stories note that the U.S. has designated Hamas as a terrorist organization. “That’s the kind of double standard I hope this letter will call out.”

Much of the text focuses on the journalists who have been killed in the month-long conflict that erupted after Hamas militants crossed the Israeli border on Oct. 7, killing more than 1,400 people and taking about 240 hostage.

So far, 39 media workers have been killed, mostly in retaliatory strikes by Israel, according to the latest tally* from the Committee to Protect Journalists.

An investigation by Reporters Without Borders determined that Israel targeted journalists in Oct. 13 airstrikes that killed Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah and wounded six others. (Israeli officials have denied that they target journalists and said they are reviewing the incident.) In late October, Israeli military officials advised Reuters and Agence France-Presse that it could not guarantee the safety of their employees operating in the Gaza Strip.

Joe Rivano Barros, an editor at San Francisco nonprofit Mission Local who signed the letter, maintained that there has not been “widespread condemnations of [the killings of journalists] from Western newsrooms.”

“This particular conflict seems to bring in a lot of prevarication in a way that other conflicts don’t,” Rivano Barros said.

The journalists’ letter follows several other open letters in recent weeks, most expressing solidarity with Palestinians. The New York Review of Books published one signed by well-known writers including Ta-Nehisi Coates calling on the “international community to commit to ending the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza.” A letter signed by hundreds of Jewish writers that was published in N+1 magazine said, “we are horrified to see the fight against antisemitism weaponized as a pretext for war crimes with stated genocidal intent.”

A letter published by Artforum and signed by thousands of artists and academics, though, led to the firing of its editor. The magazine’s publishers said in a statement that the letter was “not consistent with Artforum’s editorial process” and had been “widely misinterpreted as a statement from the magazine about highly sensitive and complex geopolitical circumstances.”

And a widely circulated letter titled “Writers Against the War on Gaza,” which has been signed by more than 8,000 writers, condemned “the silencing of dissent and … racist and revisionist media cycles.” New York Times writers, Jazmine Hughes and Jamie Lauren Keiles, signed the letter. Days later, Hughes quit under pressure from management and Keiles left the paper, writing on social media that his was “a personal decision about what kind of work I want to be able to do.”

Open letters have a long history in civil protest, playing a strategic role, said T.V. Reed, professor of English and American studies at Washington State University who has studied protest movements and wrote the book “The Art of Protest.”

“The power [of open letters] is in offering readers names they know and respect to identify with. And/or professions they respect and identify with,” he said. “In this era of social media, where individual commentary is often excessive and harsh, a collective letter thoughtfully conceived can be more powerful.”

The journalist-signed letter raised concerns for journalism scholars and veteran news editors.

Bill Grueskin, a Columbia University journalism professor, said reporters may have more latitude to weigh in on media-related matters like the killing of journalists. But he warned that journalists who sign open letters on political topics risk damaging their outlets and their own ability to gather information.

“I think it’s worth having a real honest discussion in terms of the reputation of the institution they work for,” said Grueskin, a former deputy managing editor of the Wall Street Journal.

Rivano Barros argued that journalists “can and do criticize governments when they are infringing on press freedoms,” such as the Saudi government for the murder of writer Jamal Khashoggi and the Russian government for detaining Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.

“Gazan journalists are facing an unprecedented and rising death toll, Western newsrooms are directly benefiting from their work on-the-ground, and if we cannot call for their protection — that is perverse,” he said.

Steve Coll, a former managing editor at The Post and former dean of the Columbia journalism school, said that journalists who sign open letters could face backlash from management, especially if those newsrooms have rules against activism.

He noted a recent generational split in some newsrooms, where younger employees feel empowered to speak out on political issues — putting them in conflict sometimes with the mores of older journalists, who prefer to stay quiet. “It’s a problem that has to be resolved one way or another,” he said.

*The tally on this site continues to update since then. As of December 7th, the numbers are as follows:

• 63 journalists and media workers were confirmed dead: 56 Palestinian, 4 Israeli, and 3 Lebanese.
• 11 journalists were reported injured.
• 3 journalists were reported missing.
• 19 journalists were reported arrested.
• Multiple assaults, threats, cyberattacks, censorship, and killings of family members.

Analysis: Israel presides over a new Palestinian catastrophe

Author: Ishaan Tharoor, foreign desk columnist at WP.

Indeed, as the devastating Israeli campaign against Hamas in Gaza rumbles on, the specter of a new Nakba looms. The scale and scope of Israel’s aerial bombardments of the tiny territory are unprecedented. At the beginning of the month, a Geneva-based rights group said the volume of munitions dropped by Israel on the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7 was already about the equivalent to two of the nuclear bombs deployed over Japan by the United States at the end of World War II.

The destruction and escalating ground offensive has claimed more than 11,000 Palestinian lives in Gaza, many of them children, and prompted a staggering humanitarian crisis. It has also forced about 1.7 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents to flee their homes — a displacement that may redefine the territory for years to come. The bulk of Gaza’s residents are registered refugees whose ancestors fled what is now Israel in 1948. Now, they reckon with a new tragedy.

“What do things look like behind us? Destruction and death. We left in fear,” a woman who gave her name as Um Hassan told Reuters as she crossed into southern Gaza from the north. “We are the poor Palestinian people whose houses were destroyed.”

For Israel, the onslaught is all downstream of the horror inflicted by Hamas on Oct. 7. The Islamist group’s terrorist strike on southern Israel marked the bloodiest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust and the grisly, hideous details of the massacres, as well as the ongoing plight of Israeli hostages, have stirred a widespread desire among the Israeli public for retribution. During a Sunday interview with CNN, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pinned the responsibility for Palestinian civilian harm on Hamas for provoking Israel’s ire.

In media interviews and public statements, various Hamas officials seem unrepentant. They accept their actions will lead to the death of many “martyrs” and explain away the blood on their hands as an expression of resistance to an oppressive regime. “We warned, we said something is coming, we said don’t bet on the Palestinians’ silence,” Basem Naim, a Hamas spokesman, told my colleagues. “No one listened. This operation, we consider it an act of defense. I am besieged in a prison, I tried to break out of the prison.”

They also acknowledge that they are deliberately trying to stoke an all-the-more catastrophic conflagration. “I hope that the state of war with Israel will become permanent on all the borders, and that the Arab world will stand with us,” Taher El-Nounou, a Hamas media adviser, told the New York Times.

The Arab world is hardly standing with Hamas, though it’s outraged by the disproportionate onslaught unleashed by Israel. “Israel crossed every legal, ethical & humanitarian red line in its barbaric war on Gazans,” tweeted Jordanian foreign minister Ayman Safadi, pointing to the West’s moral double standards. “Yet Int’l community & its key organizations have failed to even demand a ceasefire.”

Some Israeli officials are sanguine, if unapologetic, about what their operation is doing to Palestinians. Speaking on one of the country’s main news television channels on Saturday, Avi Dichter, Israeli agricultural minister and a former director of the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, said the nature of the fighting in northern Gaza required the mass evacuation — and potential expulsion — of Palestinians living in Gaza City.

“This is going to result in some sort of Nakba,” he responded to an interlocutor who invoked the term. “[This is] a Gaza Nakba 2023, that’s how it’ll end.”

The crisis facing Palestinians is not just in Gaza. In the West Bank, where Israeli settlements and jurisdictions carve up the land once envisioned as the site of a viable Palestinian state, settler vigilantes have stepped up their attacks on Palestinians in the aftermath of Oct. 7. “The United Nations has recorded 222 settler attacks against Palestinians over the past month,” my colleagues reported. “Eight people, including a child, have been killed. Another 64 Palestinians have been injured, more than a quarter by live ammunition.”

The violence has already forced dozens of families to flee their homes and abandon groves of olive trees tended by their families for generations. My colleagues, including Loveluck, visited the West Bank community of Zanuta, whose 150 or so Palestinian residents were leaving in fear for their lives. “Those settlers are above the law; they are the state now,” Aser al-Tal, a 59-year-old shepherd, said to my colleagues.

“Those settlers could slaughter us and no one would care. What do you want me to say?” he added, beginning to cry. “There are no words to describe the misery of this life.”

For sections of the Israeli far right, which forms a major part of Netanyahu’s government, Palestinian dispossession is the unspoken prerequisite to their aims. In a telling interview with the New Yorker, Daniella Weiss, a veteran leader of the Israeli settler movement, showed, at best, indifference to the plight of Gaza’s Palestinians, saying they should be dispersed to countries like Egypt and Turkey and that Israelis should resettle Gaza. (Netanyahu and some of his allies in government have so far resisted such calls.)

When it came to the actions of Israeli settlers in the West Bank, including attacks and intimidation that led to the eventual appropriation of Palestinian land, Weiss was blunt about their goals and unmoved by the condemnation* they have drawn from the Biden administration.

“The world, especially the United States, thinks there is an option for a Palestinian state, and, if we continue to build communities, then we block the option for a Palestinian state,” she told the New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner. “We want to close the option for a Palestinian state, and the world wants to leave the option open. It’s a very simple thing to understand.”

*I am not sure what condemnation Tharoor is referring to here. When I read the interview with Weiss, I did not see an explicit mention of condemnation from the Biden administration concerning the settler movement. The interview was edited for length and clarity, so perhaps it was left out, and Tharoor just happens to have had read the whole interview. Perhaps it is in reference to the White House's urging of Netanyahu to curtail settler retaliatory violence against Palestinians on the West Bank, as I could not find much else from before the interview's publication date of Nov. 11th that could be called a condemnation. At least, nothing that I would call or consider a condemnation. - A.C.M.

UN Palestinian agency says 'deliberate attempt to strangle' Gaza operations

Al Jazeera News

The head of the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency has warned of a “deliberate attempt to strangle” its operations in the Gaza Strip and said it risks shutting down all its humanitarian work because of a lack of fuel.

Israel has refused to allow fuel shipments to the enclave it has besieged, arguing they would be used by the Palestinian group Hamas for military purposes.

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) supports more than 800,000 displaced people in Gaza. It was at risk of having to suspend its operations entirely, according to its commissioner-general, Philippe Lazzarini.

“I do believe there is a deliberate attempt to strangle our operation and paralyse the UNRWA operation,” Lazzarini said on Thursday at a news conference in Geneva.

“For weeks on end, we have pleaded, warning about the impact of the lack of fuel,” he said, adding that in the past few weeks, the agency was able to tap into the remaining fuel reserves in the territory.

“But now we are running out,” he said. “We run the risk of having to suspend the entire humanitarian operation.”

Israel cut off fuel shipments into the Gaza Strip as part of a “complete siege” on the area after Hamas fighters from Gaza launched an attack on southern Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities.

Since the attack, Israel has bombarded the Palestinian territory, launched a ground offensive and severely restricted supplies of water, food and electricity. More than 11,600 people have been killed in the Israeli assault, according to Palestinian authorities, including more than 4,700 children.

The first fuel truck to enter Gaza since Israel imposed the siege arrived on Wednesday.

UNRWA said it had received 23,000 litres (6,075 gallons) of fuel. However, Israeli authorities have restricted its use exclusively for the transport of aid delivered from Egypt.

Lazzarini said 160,000 litres (42,000 gallons) a day are needed just to run basic humanitarian operations.

“I do believe that it is outrageous that humanitarian agencies have been reduced to begging for fuel,” he told reporters.

Lazzarini said humanitarian conditions have now severely deteriorated as 70 percent of the population in southern Gaza has no access to clean water, and raw sewage has started flowing onto the streets.

Fuel is needed to operate water desalination plants, the sewage pumping system and bakeries.

Earlier on Thursday, Palestinian telecommunications companies Jawwal and Paltel announced their network went out of service in Gaza as “all energy sources sustaining it” were depleted, plunging the enclave into a near-total communications blackout and seriously hampering the work of first responders and emergency services.

“It can provoke or accelerate [the breakdown of the] last remaining civil order we have in the Gaza Strip,” Lazzarini said of the blackout, calling the scale of loss and destruction in Gaza “just staggering”.

UNRWA said the telecommunications outage “makes it impossible to manage or coordinate humanitarian aid convoys”. It said its cross-border aid operation at the Rafah crossing with Egypt – the only one open for aid deliveries – would be suspended on Friday.

Lazzarini said fuel was being used as a “weapon of war”.

“Today what we are saying is if the fuel does not come in, people will start to die because of the lack of fuel,” he said.

Smearing Photojournalists as Hamas Collaborators Gets Them Added to a Hit List

Author: Ari Paul

During Israeli military offensives in the Occupied Territories, it is common for the Israeli government and its supporters to claim media are biased in favor the Palestinians, often by invoking that there is “no moral equivalence” between the Israeli government and Palestinian militant organizations like Hamas (American Jewish Committee, 10/17/23). Akin to Alex Jones falsely smearing grieving parents of school shooting victims as “crisis actors,” pro-Israel advocates sometimes dismiss media images of Palestinian suffering as staged fakery they call “Pallywood” (France24, 10/27/23).

Now Israeli government officials are accusing major news media of coordinating with Hamas, essentially painting Palestinian stringers as terrorist operatives. At least one Israeli official threatened to “eliminate” anyone involved in the October 7 attacks, and indicated that some journalists were included included on that list.

The pro-Israel media advocacy organization HonestReporting (11/8/23) raised questions about the presence of AP, Reuters, New York Times and CNN photographers near the sites Hamas attacked in southern Israel on October 7:

• What were they doing there so early on what would ordinarily have been a quiet Saturday morning? Was it coordinated with Hamas? Did the respectable wire services, which published their photos, approve of their presence inside enemy territory, together with the terrorist infiltrators? Did the photojournalists who freelance for other media, like CNN and the New York Times, notify these outlets?

Israeli officials are taking the group’s words seriously, going hard against these news agencies and individual Palestinian stringers. These accusations were featured throughout the corporate media.

The Financial Times (11/10/23) reported that Benny Gantz, who has held numerous Israeli military and ministerial roles, said “journalists found to have known about the massacre, and [who] still chose to stand as idle bystanders while children were slaughtered, are no different than terrorists and should be treated as such.” Knesset member Danny Danon (Twitter, 11/9/23), Israel’s former ambassador to the UN, said that Israel would “eliminate all participants of the October 7 massacre,” adding that “the ‘photojournalists’ who took part in recording the assault will be added to that list.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called these journalists “accomplices in crimes against humanity” (New York Post, 11/9/23).

Politico (11/9/23) reported that Israel’s “Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi accused the foreign media of employing contributors who were tipped off on the Hamas attacks.” It added that Nitzan Chen, director of Israel’s government press office, had asked the four media outlets “for clarifications regarding the behavior” of their photographers.

The affair was covered in many other outlets, including the New York Times (11/9/23), The Hill (11/9/23), Newsweek (11/9/23) and the Daily Beast (11/9/23). The Jerusalem Post (11/10/23) took the government and watchdog’s allegations as fact and said in an editorial:

• These so-called photojournalists made no effort to stop or distance themselves from the barbaric events. On the contrary: They were mobilized by the Hamas terrorists to glorify their acts, help promote their terrorism and spread fear among their enemies—Israel and the West. In this way, too, Hamas recalls ISIS, which deliberately recorded its beheadings and other barbaric murders.

In a statement, Reuters (11/9/23) “categorically denies that it had prior knowledge of the attack or that we embedded journalists with Hamas on October 7.” Al Jazeera (11/9/23) reported that “AP also rejected allegations that its newsroom had prior knowledge of the attacks”; the agency said in a statement that the first pictures AP received from any freelancer show they were taken more than an hour after the attacks began…. No AP staff were at the border at the time of the attacks, nor did any AP staffer cross the border at any time.

Neither HonestReporting nor Israeli officials raising a stink about this have provided any evidence of unethical behavior by these media outlets or their stringers (Reuters, 11/11/23). HonestReporting has shrouded its rhetoric with the disclaimer of “just asking questions.” The AP (11/9/23) reported that “Gil Hoffman, executive director of HonestReporting and a former reporter for the Jerusalem Post, admitted…the group had no evidence to back up” its suggestion that the photographers had “prior coordination with the terrorists.” Hoffman “said he was satisfied with subsequent explanations from several of these journalists that they did not know.”

Nevertheless, CNN and the AP stopped working with Hassan Eslaiah, one of the freelancers mentioned in the HonestReporting report, who in fact “got extra emphasis in the HonestReporting story, which resurfaced a several-years-old photo of him posing with Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar,” according to the Washington Post (11/9/23).

Any journalist who read HonestReporting’s questions had to smirk a bit. Journalists all over the world are tipped off by all sorts of sources to get somewhere at a certain time, with the undetailed promise of some hot footage. This is just the nature of the job, and doesn’t mean that a journalist’s relationship with a source is the same as working together on a common message.

I have already written at FAIR (10/19/23) that Israel’s killings of journalists in Gaza, combined with legal attempts to silence media critics within Israel, are a threat to the public’s ability to know about the nature of the ongoing violence, which is financed with US tax dollars. The Committee to Protect Journalists (11/15/23) said that 42 journalists have been killed in the month since fighting broke out, making that period “the deadliest for journalists since it began gathering data in 1992” (UPI, 11/8/23).

Now Israeli officials have insinuated that if you are too physically close to a Palestinian fighter and get a good photo in the process, their government may consider you an enemy combatant. That is another chilling escalation of a troubling trend in Israel’s relationship with the press.

It’s all part of the Israeli government’s attempt to keep a tight stranglehold on information coming out in the press. Recently, the government used the tried and true method of embedding journalists within military units; in exchange for on-the-ground access, the military gets to review the footage journalists’ obtain (New Arab, 11/8/23). Israel also moved to criminalize the “consumption of terrorist materials” (Al Jazeera, 11/8/23) and to shut down media deemed a threat to national security (International Federation of Journalists, 10/20/23). NBC (11/11/23) reported that the Israeli government has “cracked down on broadcasts, reports and social media posts that” are deemed “a threat to national security or in support of terror organizations since Hamas’ October 7 assault.”

As the Israeli publication +972 (9/18/23) pointed out, before the outbreak of the current war, Israeli government censorship had actually declined, but it still found that in 2022, the Israeli military censor blocked the publication of 159 articles across various Israeli media outlets, and censored parts of a further 990. In all, the military prevented information from being made public an average of three times a day—on top of the chilling effect that the very existence of censorship imposes on independent journalism that seeks to uncover government failings.

While Israel likes to think of itself as a bastion of Western enlightenment in a sea of backward nations, this anti-media trend in the country makes it more like its neighbors than its supporters would like to believe.

In the case of the death of famous British correspondent Marie Colvin, a judge ruled that she was intentionally targeted by the Assad regime for giving a voice to opposition factions (BBC, 1/31/19). Egypt frequently detains journalists for the supposed crime of collaboration with subversive organizations and foreign powers (Reporters Without Borders, 6/30/23). The rate of the Turkish government’s jailing of journalists has accelerated (Voice of America, 12/15/22), and last year the government “detained 11 journalists affiliated with pro-Kurdish media for their alleged links to Kurdish militants” (AP, 10/25/22).

This is the club Israel belongs to. And such hostility toward the free press makes it harder for journalists to deliver clear, fair reporting about the Middle East conflict. And that’s the point. The insinuation that media organizations who report freely on the Israel/Palestine conflict are anti-Zionist agents is meant to keep the situation shrouded in haze.

NOTE - this document contains multiple in-line citations that are hyperlinked in the original article, but which did not carry over to this one. Original article's URL can be found listed in Citation tab.

In Michigan, where every vote counts, Arab Americans are turning away from Biden

Authors: Jeongyoon Han and Don Gonyea

The chant rang out loud and clear.

"Free, free, Palestine... Long live Palestine."

And so did another.

"Biden, Biden, you can't hide. We charge you with genocide."

At a recent rally on downtown Detroit's riverfront, thousands called for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, which began after Hamas militants killed hundreds of Israelis on Oct. 7. Israel has responded by attacking the Gaza Strip, which Hamas governs. The conflict has left more than 1,200 Israelis and 11,300 Palestinians dead according to Israeli and Gaza officials.

Speaking at the event, Michigan Democratic State Rep. Abraham Aiyash said the U.S. backing Israel signals a disregard for Palestinian lives in a way that goes directly against the country's founding principles.

"America, you promised the world that all men and women are created equal. Yet somehow we find billions of dollars to dehumanize Palestinians," said Aiyash, who is the Majority Floor Leader in the Michigan House.

Rally goers expressed anger at the U.S.'s stance in the war: The Biden Administration has vowed to militarily support Israel, and vetoed a United Nations resolution that called for a ceasefire, though it has softened its stance in recent days by allowing a separate resolution to pass, asking for extended humanitarian pauses.

While advocates of a ceasefire say it would give much needed relief to civilians living in Gaza, the U.S. and Israel argue a pause in the fighting would give Hamas time to regroup and prepare more attacks.

Israel has said it won't agree to a ceasefire unless Hamas releases the more than 240 hostages it is holding in Gaza.

If you asked rally goers like Arab American business owner and civil rights activist Nasser Beydoun, President Biden has so far failed on this issue.

"Where's his humanity?" he asked. "Is he that much of a Zionist that the Palestinian lives don't matter to him?"

Beydoun is a former Republican turned Democrat who is currently running for Michigan's open U.S. Senate seat. He supported Biden in 2020. But now, he feels that the president* and Democrats are failing him and other Arab Americans, which could have a political cost.

"He lost a constituency that voted overwhelmingly for him in Michigan," he said. "And if he wants to see reelection, he needs Michigan. And right now he doesn't have it. And I don't think he'll ever come back from it."

Michigan's large Arab American and Muslim American populations turned out big for Biden in 2020, helping him clinch the battleground and solidify his win over Trump for the presidency. AP reported that 64% of Muslims nationwide supported Biden in 2020, while 35% supported Trump. And in heavily Arab American counties in Michigan, voters went for Biden by a little less than 70%.

Biden's margin of victory in Michigan was 154,000 votes. The state is home to more than 200,000 registered voters who are Muslim and 300,000 people claim ancestry from the Middle East and North Africa. Michigan's Arab American population includes Muslims and Christians, along with recent immigrants and families whose ancestors arrived in the late 1800s alike.

But the Israel-Hamas war is throwing the support of Michigan's large Arab American population into doubt for Democrats.

Because they feel the White House is disproportionately supporting Israel at the cost of the lives of Palestinians, leaders in Muslim American communities have been encouraging others to not put Biden down on their ballot in 2024.

"They are being instructed that Biden is the issue here, that he is forming the policy and that the blood is on his hands," said Nazita Lajevardi, a political scientist at Michigan State University who studies both attitudes towards Muslims in the U.S. as well as Muslim-American public opinion. They are also consuming Arab media publications and social media posts where Lajevardi says the message is "The way to end this type of atrocity is to vote him out of office."

One of those disillusioned by the Biden administration is Saba Saed, a student at Michigan State University.

"I've never really trusted the American government system, especially when it comes to Palestine, because they failed us so many times," said Saed, who was born in the West Bank and spent half of her life there. "But I never thought in my life that it would be this bad, this awful."

Lajevardi said that sentiment has rung true for Muslims across the country. She says that in her online surveys of Muslim leaders and mosques, she's seen skyrocketing disapproval of Biden since the start of the war — and at a rate higher than that of Trump, who famously called for "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States," during his first campaign for president in 2015.

It is precisely because of that disapproval that crosses party lines that Lajevardi says a growing number of people feel it is not worth voting for either political party, Democratic or Republican.

"Because how are they being represented substantively? How are their interests actually being advocated for by Democrats? I think that's a very fair question that Muslims are asking right now," Lajevardi said. "Not voting for a Democrat in 2024 is not as costly as some may assume it is for Muslims."

Another student at Michigan State, Yusuf Abbas, said he's also felt "let down" by the White House and Democrats. Abbas voted for Biden in 2020, but seeing Biden's response to the war, Abbas doesn't hold out any real hope that the U.S. will help create meaningful change in the Middle East.

"It was never a priority for any American administration to, to try to solve the conflict in a long lasting manner, in a just manner that works for both Palestinians and Israelis, and Biden is effectively no different," said Abbas, whose family is Palestinian.

So, for someone who was never really eager to talk politics — let alone the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — Abbas has now taken it upon himself to be more vocal about the war. As the war has taken a toll on his and his friends' mental health, Abbas said the university's Arab cultural student groups have come together in this difficult time.

"I believe in discussing things and talking about it," he said. "We can sit down and maybe have a serious conversation about it and discuss what's going on, because it hurts both of us. If you're Jewish or you're Israeli, or if you're Palestinian or Muslim or Arab, it hurts both sides."

For Michigan House Majority Floor Leader Aiyash, he's using the skills he learned while organizing for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign to try to force Biden to act — and encourages other Arab Americans to do the same.

"We do have political power," he told attendees in closing remarks at the Detroit rally. "We do have the ability to influence an election."

And he addressed the Democratic establishment and Biden directly.

"And if you are not going to take that into consideration, and are simply using platitudes while your policies perpetuate violence and harm, we will not stand by it."

*As someone who also voted for Biden in 2020, I think my chances of supporting him again where already waning due to the the continued border crisis, the recent news that Trump's wall was starting construction again, his handling of the Railroad Workers Union dispute, Roe v. Wade being successfully overturned the same year, the fact his gun resolution didn't really solve much, and just the general lack of concrete resolution with student loan debt forgiveness. More US-funded violence in the Middle East has just cemented my growing disillusionment with the current presidency and mainstream Democratic Party as a whole.

What Israel's video of 'Hamas tunnel' under al-Shifa tell us

The structure of the tunnel raises questions about whether it is indeed a Hamas-built pathway.

Author: Sarah Shamin

The Israeli military released a statement on Sunday saying it had found a Hamas tunnel shaft under Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital. It also released footage of tunnels taken on November 17. Here is what the footage tells us:

On November 15, Israel launched an aggressive raid on Gaza’s largest medical complex, al-Shifa Hospital. Lasting for days, the raid was described by Israel as a “precise and targeted” operation to find an alleged underground tunnel system that led to a Hamas military control centre.

The allegation that Hamas was operating a control centre under the hospital was backed by Israeli and United States intelligence. Hamas and medical staff at al-Shifa have denied this allegation.

The Israeli military also released a 3D animated video on October 28, visualising an extensive network of tunnels that led to an elaborate, multi-storey control centre.

On Sunday, Israel announced that a 55-metre-long (180ft), 10-metre-deep (32ft) tunnel was found under the hospital.

The statement said that the tunnel was found “in the area of the hospital underneath a shed alongside a vehicle containing numerous weapons including RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades], explosives, and Kalashnikov rifles”.

The Israeli military also released a video that was recorded using two separate cameras on November 17. Spokesperson Daniel Hagari told reporters the entrance was uncovered when a military bulldozer knocked down the outside wall of the hospital, revealing a metallic spiral staircase that descended 10m (32ft) and led to a blast door, which is typically a metallic door with strong closures and hinges, designed to resist explosions. Such doors are usually found on facilities such as bomb shelters.

But military analyst Zoran Kusovac quoted a civil engineer from Gaza who suggested that the video is actually clips of two different tunnels spliced together.

The first section of the video shows the vertical shaft that goes down. It shows features such as load-bearing concrete columns. They seem to be built with regular civil engineering techniques, which would have required large and loud machines such as concrete mixers.

Such a construction could not have been done in secret, the way Hamas tunnels are usually built. The purpose of this construction remains unknown.

The second part of the clip shows the horizontal tunnel. This displays features characteristic of Hamas tunnels — pre-fabricated pieces connected together section by section.

A control centre has not been found so far. Israeli troops have not yet tried to open the blast door at the end of the tunnel that they claim was under al-Shifa, fearing it could be booby-trapped, said Hagari.

Kusovac said that many different types of traps can be placed to prevent tunnel interceptions. Typically, they are improvised explosive devices (IEDs) connected with detonators that can be triggered by tripwire or even light or pressure. They detect the presence of a person entering the tunnel, setting off the explosive. “IEDs are basically like toys the big boys make. The more creative you are, the more successful you are,” said Kusovac.

If armies suspect the presence of such traps, typical regulations are to call explosion experts who arrive and assess the situation. Kusovac said that this usually takes a few hours, not over a day. This time delay brings the veracity of the Israeli military’s claims into question. “You say smoking gun, you get to it and then you don’t show the smoking gun,” he said.

CNN, among other news outlets, visited the exposed tunnel shaft* and confirmed the presence of a tunnel, but could not establish whether or not the tunnel led to a command centre.

Tunnels in Gaza were first built in 1980 at a time when the enclave was under Israeli occupation, and before the formation of Hamas in 1987. They were constructed under the Egyptian border for smuggling all sorts of goods, including weapons, fuel and black market goods.

Over time, Palestinians realised that tunnels could have a military use. The first sign of the military use of tunnels was in 2001 when an Israeli military post was blown up with an explosive from underground. The tunnels entered Israeli public consciousness when Palestinian fighters emerged from a tunnel shaft and kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2006.

Israel placed a blockade on the Gaza Strip after Hamas gained control of it in 2007. Tunnels became the means to bypass the siege and to transport food, goods and weapons. Under Hamas, the tunnels expanded strategically.

The tunnels are also used by Hamas for wired communications, since Israel can intercept wireless communications.

After attacking Gaza in 2014, Israel realised the extent and sophistication of the tunnels, then believed to have surpassed 100km (62 miles).

A tunnel war would entail a whole lot of destruction. The magnitude of explosives would be larger and deadlier than usual due to the smaller area of the tunnels. For the same reason, the use of regular ammunition might be too “clumsy” and hence unviable.

Al-Shifa is not the only hospital that Israel has alleged is used by Hamas as a military base. On November 8, Al Jazeera’s verification unit Sanad disproved Israel’s claim that there was a Hamas tunnel under the Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Hospital for Rehabilitation and Prosthetics, commonly known as the Qatari Hospital.

Satellite images and archival photos showed that the hatch that Israel claimed was the tunnel entrance was actually part of a water reservoir system that was used to fill therapeutic pools for amputees, water the grounds, and also was an emergency water source.

*Apparently CNN reporters allowed into Gaza had to be accompanied by IDF protection detail, only allowed to stick to designated "safe" areas, and had to hand footage over so that IDF security could review it before went on to be broadcasted.

Palestinians Forbidden from Collecting Rainwater Because It’s Deemed ‘Israeli Property’?

Israeli authorities have heavily controlled water access in Palestinian territories for decades.

Author: Nur Ibrahim

In November 2023, as Israel continued its bombardment of Gaza amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, a number of posts drew attention to the challenges faced by Palestinians in the West Bank, in particular regarding Israeli control over water access.

A post on Reddit claimed that according to a 2011 United Nations (U.N.) report, “[A] Palestinian living in the West bank doesn't have the right to collect rainwater or build a well on HIS LAND because rain water is an 'Israeli property'.” An X post claimed, “Rainwater is the property of 'Israel'. Palestinians are forbidden from gathering rainwater” and appeared to quote a U.N. report as well.

We also received questions from readers, asking if Palestinians were indeed forbidden by Israeli authorities from gathering rainwater for “domestic and agricultural needs.”

The above claims were taken from a real report by independent human rights organizations submitted to a U.N. body in 2011, which found that Palestinians in the West Bank were not able to gather rainwater for their needs. Titled, “Israel’s violations of human rights regarding water and sanitation in the OPT [Occupied Palestinian Territories]” the report is considered a non-U.N. document, however. It was written by the Emergency Water, Sanitation and Hygiene group (EWASH), a coalition of almost 30 organizations working in the water and sanitation sector in the occupied Palestinian territory, and Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights organization in the West Bank. It was submitted in September 2011 to the U.N. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), a body of independent experts in the U.N.

The report referred to a specific Israeli military order in 2009 that stated rainwater was the property of Israel (emphasis ours):

• [...] in July 2009, Israeli military forces issued stop-work and/or demolition orders on cisterns being constructed in the village of Tuwani, even though the villagers of Tuwani faced a severe water shortage on account of the drought, increasingly stringent Israeli restrictions on movement necessary to gather tankered water, and attacks on water resources and infrastructure by Israeli settlers. If constructed, these cisterns would have significantly eased the water crisis for the people of Tuwani. However, according to Israeli military orders in effect in the area, rain is the property of the Israeli authorities and thus Palestinians are forbidden from gathering rain water for domestic or agricultural needs. In 2010, Israel approved the construction of a filling point in the village of Tuwani that alleviated the problem of water availability in the village even though the capacity of the filling point was significantly below the capacity requested by humanitarian agencies (less than 1/4th) in order to serve surrounding villages, which are considered as the cluster of communities most at risk of water scarcity in the West Bank.

The findings of the above report echo another finding from a 2017 Amnesty International report titled, “The Occupation of Water.” Per the report, in 1967 Israeli military authorities consolidated complete power over all water resources and water-related infrastructure in the occupied Palestinian territories. Military Order 158 required that all Palestinians get a permit from the Israeli military before constructing any new water installation. Since then, any extraction of water and water infrastructure development has had to go through Israel, which has resulted in “devastating” consequences for the Palestinians there, according to Amnesty.

The Amnesty report also stated (emphasis ours):

• [The Palestinians] are unable to drill new water wells, install pumps or deepen existing wells, in addition to being denied access to the Jordan River and fresh water springs. Israel even controls the collection of rain water throughout most of the West Bank, and rainwater harvesting cisterns owned by Palestinian communities are often destroyed by the Israeli army. As a result, some 180 Palestinian communities in rural areas in the occupied West Bank have no access to running water, according to [humanitarian agency] OCHA. Even in towns and villages which are connected to the water network, the taps often run dry.

A 2016 Al Jazeera English report found that Palestinian villages in the West Bank received water supplies for only two hours in a week. While Israel implemented a policy of water cuts each summer, it had reached a higher peak that year. Israeli officials, however, said the authorities provided equal amounts of water in Israel and Palestinian territories.

Deeb Abdelghafour, the Palestinian Water Authority’s (PWA) director of the water resources department, told Al Jazeera, “We have been facing shortages for decades, and the reason is not natural, but man-made – meaning the Israeli occupation and Israeli control over water resources in the Palestinian territories.”

Israeli authorities have long argued that they have fulfilled their obligations under the Oslo accords. Israel’s coordinator of government activities in the territories told Al Jazeera that it provided 64 million cubic meters of water to the Palestinians annually, even though it is only obliged to provide 30 million under the accords — referring to the landmark 1993 agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).

A 1995 Interim Agreement under the accords gave Israel continued control over water sources for Palestinian territories, but stipulated that such a status would be in effect for five years, after which the two groups would have final-status negotiations. Those talks never took place, and the agreement remains in effect, even though, as Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem pointed out in a May 2023 report: “the Palestinian population has grown by about 75%, yet the amount of water Israel allows the Palestinians to extract [remains] the same.”

B’Tselem’s report found that in order to make up for the shortage, the Palestinian Authority was forced to buy more water from Israel at several times the cost and could not transport water between regions in the Palestinian territories. The report stated (emphasis ours):

• Moreover, clauses addressing the distribution of water completely ignore the division of the West Bank into Areas A, B, and C in other articles of the Interim Agreement. Israel retained all powers in Area C, which covers about 60% of the West Bank, and Palestinians need its consent – given sparingly – for virtually anything: every new drilling, every water grid that connects neighboring Palestinian communities, and every wastewater treatment facility, which inevitably have to be built far from residential neighborhoods, must pass through Area C. This policy has led to sharp differences in daily per capita water consumption among Palestinian communities. While the agreement allows Israel to export water from inside the country to West Bank settlements, it precludes the Palestinian Authority from transporting water from one part of the West Bank to another. This creates an absurd situation, as the Palestinian Water Authority produces water at a negligible cost in the Qalqiliyah, Tulkarm and Jericho Districts but cannot deliver it to other Palestinian communities, sometimes mere miles away, due to Israel’s refusal. The resulting discrepancies in water consumption among the various Palestinian districts are staggering: in 2020, daily per capita water consumption in Bethlehem and Hebron Districts was 51 liters, while in Qalqiliyah District it was almost three times greater – 141 liters.

A 2012 paper by Haim Gvirtzman, a professor at the Institute of Earth Sciences at the Hebrew University and a member of the Israel Water Authority Council, argued that there was almost no difference between the per capita water consumption of Israelis and Palestinians. Refuting many claims from Palestinian authorities, the paper stated:

• [...] while Israel has ensured that nearly all Palestinian villages and towns are connected to running water, the Palestinians have violated their part of the agreement by refusing to build sewage treatment plants (despite available international financing). Moreover, the Palestinians have drilled hundreds of unlicensed wells and set up unauthorized connections to Israeli water supply pipelines.
• [...] the Palestinians should be working to pay individually for their water consumption, to prevent leaks in domestic pipelines, to implement conservative irrigation techniques, and to reuse sewage water for irrigation. The fact that they have taken none of these steps and have not adopted any sustainable development practices precludes their demands for additional water from Israel.

According to the United Nations humanitarian agency, OCHA, since 2021 Israel demolished nearly 160 unauthorized Palestinian reservoirs, sewage networks and wells across the West Bank and east Jerusalem, and the rate of demolitions were quickening. Local Palestinian villages have seen their farms dry up with farmers leaving for northern towns with more water supplies, or finding jobs in flourishing farms on Israeli settlements.

Israeli settlements along the West Bank — considered illegal under international law — tell a different story. An August 2023 Associated Press report found the settlements to be like “an oasis” where, “Wildflowers burst through the soil. Farmed fish swim in neat rows of ponds. Children splash in community pools.”

Journalist Amira Hass noted in Israeli publication Haaretz in 2014 that the Interim Agreement impacted water access in Gaza, arguing that it forced the region to rely only on the aquifer within its borders. The agreement did not account for population growth, resulting in overpumping from neighboring regions including Israel, leading to seawater and sewage penetrating the aquifer, making more than 90 percent of potable water there undrinkable. A Washington Post report on water supplies during the 2023 war found that there had been no natural surface water in Gaza since the early 2000s. The enclave had to depend on Israel’s National Water Carrier to supplement its groundwater sources, which the PWA purchased. In 2021, however, only 6% of Gaza's water came from Israel.

Since the outbreak of the war in 2023, Israel imposed what Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called "catastrophic" cuts to water supplies in Gaza. In late October, Israeli officials reopened a water pipeline into Gaza, arguing there was no shortage of food and water in the besieged territory.

Snopes.com is a website focused on fact-checking and verifying claims circulating the internet.

Israel–Hamas war: The hostage deal and ceasefire explained

Edited by Edmund Blair

Nov 27 (Reuters) - Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas began a four-day truce on Friday morning, with the first of four daily exchanges of hostages held in Gaza in return for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails taking place later each day.

WHAT ARE THE DETAILS OF THE DEAL?

Under the Israel-Hamas deal, the two sides agreed to a four-day truce so that 50 women, children and teenagers under the age of 19 taken hostage could be freed in return for 150 Palestinian women and teenagers in Israeli detention. The deal includes agreement to allow more emergency aid and fuel into Gaza.

The hostages, among about 240 taken by Hamas in their Oct. 7 raid on Israel, have been released in groups of a dozen or so each day in exchange for groups of Palestinian prisoners.

As of Sunday, 40 Israelis - some of them holding dual citizenship - had been released, according to an Israeli tally. In addition 17 Thai citizens and one Filipino - farm workers employed in southern Israel when they were seized - were freed under a separate agreement.

Those involved in the deal for the Israeli hostages have described the break in hostilities as "a humanitarian pause".

Qatar's chief negotiator in ceasefire talks, Minister of State at the Foreign Ministry Mohammed Al-Khulaifi, said that while the truce was in place there would be "no attack whatsoever. No military movements, no expansion, nothing."

WHEN DID THE DEAL START AND CAN IT BE EXTENDED?

The truce began at 7 a.m. (0500 GMT) on Friday. If not extended, it was due to end some time on Tuesday.

The pause can be extended by a day for each additional batch of at least 10 hostages released by Hamas.

An Israeli official would not say when precisely the truce would expire, telling Reuters that "it's a fluid situation".

To secure an extension, the official said that Hamas had to produce a new list of hostages it proposed to release and that this had to be approved by Israel. In return, Israel would free three times the number of Palestinian prisoners.

The official said the exchange process could last for a maximum of four days beyond the four days initially agreed, based on an Israeli calculation that there were 100 women and children held in Gaza. If that took place, the deal could last until Saturday, Dec. 2.

From the start, Israel provided a list of 300 Palestinians it said it was ready to release in return for a total of 100 hostages.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE TRUCE ENDS?

According to an Israeli cabinet decision, Israel is committed to resuming its offensive against Hamas in Gaza immediately once the truce expires.

Hamas said when details of the agreement were announced that its "fingers remain on the trigger" throughout the truce.

HOW IS THE DEAL BEING IMPLEMENTED?

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is working in Gaza to facilitate the release of hostages, Qatar said.

Hostages have been transported through the Rafah crossing to Egypt, the only country apart from Israel to share a border with Gaza. In return, Palestinians have been released from Israeli jails and taken to Jerusalem and Ramallah, the West Bank city which is home to the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority.

During the truce, trucks loaded with aid and fuel have crossed into Gaza, where 2.3 million people have been running out of food and many hospitals have shut down in part because they no longer have fuel for their generators.

Qatar said that an operations room in the Qatari capital would monitor the truce and the exchange and that it had direct lines of communication with Israel, the Hamas political office in Doha and the ICRC. Doha has helped iron out glitches, including working to resolve concerns raised by both sides over lists of those being freed.

WHO ARE THE HOSTAGES BEING RELEASED?

The Israeli hostages released by Hamas have included children, some of their mothers and elderly women.

As well as Israeli civilians and soldiers taken on Oct. 7, more than half the roughly 240 hostages are foreign and dual nationals from about 40 countries including Argentina, Britain, Chile, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Thailand and the U.S., Israel's government has said.

U.S. President Joe Biden said on Sunday among those freed was a 4-year-old American hostage.

Not all the hostages taken on Oct. 7 are held by Hamas fighters.

WHO ARE THE PALESTINIANS BEING FREED AND WHY WERE THEY HELD?

As part of the exchange, Israel has freed women and teenagers from Israeli jails.

The Palestinian Prisoners Society said before the exchange began that 7,200 Palestinian prisoners were being held by Israel, among them 88 women and 250 children 17 and under.

Most on Israel's list of those to be freed are from the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Jerusalem and were held for incidents such as attempted stabbings, hurling stones at Israeli soldiers, making explosives, damaging property and having contacts with hostile organisations. None are accused of murder.

Many were held under Israeli administrative detention, meaning they were detained without trial.

WHO NEGOTIATED THE DEAL?

Qatar played a major mediation role. Hamas has a political office in Doha and the Qatari government has kept channels of communication open with Israel, even though unlike some other Gulf Arab states it has not normalised ties with Israel.

The U.S. also played a crucial role, with the U.S. president holding calls with Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the weeks leading up to the deal.

Egypt, the first Arab state to sign a peace deal with Israel and which has long played a mediation role over the decades of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has also been involved.

WHY HAS IT TAKEN SO LONG TO NEGOTIATE?

The deal was announced 46 days after the start of the war, one of the most fierce conflicts to erupt between the two sides. Hamas fighters killed 1,200 people when they launched their raid on Israel, the biggest single-day toll on Israeli soil since its creation in 1948. As of Sunday, about 14,800 people in Gaza had been killed in the Israeli offensive, the most by far of any recent war.

Amid such ferocious fighting, the large number of hostages and Israel's stated determination to wipe out Hamas in Gaza, mediating even a temporary deal, like this one, proved far more challenging than in previous conflicts.

The initial negotiations for a deal between Israel and Hamas, both sworn enemies, began within days of the Oct. 7 attack but progress was slow. This was partly because communications had to go via Doha or Cairo on every detail.

In 2014, when Israel last launched a major land invasion in Gaza, it took 49 days for both sides to implement a ceasefire deal, but that ended major fighting for several years.

Netanyahu's two-front war against Hamas and for his own political survival

Author: Howard Goller; editing by Diane Craft

JERUSALEM, Nov 27 (Reuters) - Inside Israeli defence headquarters, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu monitored the first release of Hamas-held hostages while outside, their families in a Tel Aviv square gathered around Benny Gantz, his leading challenger for the top job.

On camera Gantz, a former army chief and opposition leader who joined Netanyahu's war cabinet last month, pointedly asked a TV crew to leave him alone with the families. Photos published later showed him hugging individuals in the crowd.

Facing a huge wave of criticism over his failure to prevent the shock Hamas infiltration of Israel on Oct. 7, Netanyahu has largely avoided the limelight while conducting a two-front war, one against Hamas and the other for his own political survival.

Netanyahu, 74, has long maintained an image as a security hawk, tough on Iran and backed by an army that ensured Jews would never again suffer a Holocaust - only to experience on his watch the deadliest single incident in Israel's 75-year-old history.

Israelis have shunned some of Netanyahu's fellow cabinet ministers, blaming them for failing to prevent the Palestinian Hamas gunmen from entering from Gaza, killing 1,200 people, abducting 240 more and engulfing the country in war.

In separate incidents, at least three of his ministers were subjected to derision and abuse when they appeared in public, underscoring the scale of public fury over the failures that paved the way for Hamas to carry out the attack.

Over the weekend, his office issued videos showing him in the Defence Ministry situation room. On Sunday, Netanyahu visited Gaza. His office issued photos afterwards showing him in a helmet and flak jacket meeting soldiers and commanders.

Known by his nickname "Bibi," Netanyahu stands to gain from a war that further delays his 3-1/2 year-old corruption trial and puts off an expected state inquiry into why Israel under his leadership was caught off guard.

Huddling with generals, he may also hope to salvage his reputation through his conduct of the war and the return of hostages while refusing to accept responsibility and dismissing a question at a rare press conference asking if he would resign.

But his biographer Anshel Pfeffer said: "No matter how long Netanyahu manages to hold on to power, he won’t salvage his reputation.

"He is now tainted irretrievably by the failure to prevent the Oct. 7 massacre, by his own strategy of allowing Hamas to remain in control, with its military arsenal, in Gaza and by the utterly inept civil relief efforts of his government since the Oct. 7 attack."

The author of the 2018 book "Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu," Pfeffer said surveys in recent weeks showed Israelis trusting the security establishment to lead the war effort, but not Netanyahu.

NETANYAHU VOWS TO CONTROL SECURITY IN GAZA INDEFINITELY

Netanyahu has vowed to control security in Gaza indefinitely, adding uncertainty to the fate of an enclave where for seven weeks Israel was on the attack before forging a temporary truce with Hamas and the freeing of hostages in exchange for the release of Palestinian detainees from Israel.

Some 14,800 Palestinians have been killed in the war, Gaza health authorities say, and hundreds of thousands displaced.

Israel's longest-serving prime minister, Netanyahu has survived many a political crisis, staged several comebacks, and need not face another election for three years if his coalition remains in tact.

"I know him very well and he concentrates on what he is doing, he is really a very hard-working person and now he is running a war and he is holding, like a juggler, half-a-dozen balls in the air - and to keep them only in the air he must concentrate," said Abraham Diskin, professor emeritus of political science at Jerusalem's Hebrew University.

"To go out and face people who shout at you and really hate you, there is no benefit of doing that, so he decided to give it up," Diskin said.

GANTZ IN CABINET OFFERS NETANYAHU STABILITY

Slim, tall and blue-eyed with an easy way about him, Gantz, 64, joined an Israeli war cabinet that Netanyahu formed days after the Hamas attack to unite the country behind a campaign to destroy Hamas and retrieve the hostages.

With nearly 40 years in the military, the centrist Gantz offers Netanyahu and his rightist Likud party a more stable government that reduces the influence of the far-right and religious coalition partners on the fringes of Israeli society.

United in war perhaps, they are at odds politically.

He, Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant of Likud have together held press conferences. A photo of one such event that went viral on social media captured Netanyahu alone, and Gallant and Gantz standing together off to the side.

A Nov. 16 opinion poll found the Netanyahu-led coalition that won 64 seats in a November 2022 election would garner 45 in the 120-member Knesset today compared with 70 seats of parties led by Gantz's National Unity Party, enough to assume power.

The survey for Israel's Channel 12 took place a week before Qatar announced the hostage deal and was conducted among 502 respondents by pollster Mano Geva and the company Midgam and had a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.

Gantz has little of Netanyahu's experience or flair on the world stage, and critics say his laid-back manner shows indecisiveness and a lack of principles. Gantz has described himself as having more grit than varnish.

Often perceived as being every bit as hawkish on Palestinians as Netanyahu, Gantz has stopped short of any commitment to the statehood they seek, but in the past backed efforts to restart peace talks with them.

Israelis have gone to the polls five times in the last five years. No single party has ever won a simple parliamentary majority, and a coalition of parties has always been required. With a war on, no one is suggesting holding elections again.

But two weeks ago centrist opposition leader Yair Lapid said it was time to replace Netanyahu without going to elections.

He suggested there would be broad support for a unity government led by Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party, but no one within Likud has emerged to challenge Netanyahu.

"We can't afford another election cycle in the coming year in which we continue to fight and explain why the other side is a disaster," Lapid wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Freed Israeli hostage describes deteriorating conditions while being held by Hamas

Author: Tia Goldenberg

AP journalist Melanie Lidman contributed to this report.

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — An Israeli hostage freed by Hamas said in an interview that she was initially fed well in captivity until conditions worsened and people became hungry. She was kept in a “suffocating” room and slept on plastic chairs with a sheet for nearly 50 days.

In one of the first interviews with a freed hostage, 78-year-old Ruti Munder told Israel’s Channel 13 television that she spent the entirety of her time with her daughter, Keren, and grandson, Ohad Munder-Zichri, who celebrated his ninth birthday in captivity. Her account, broadcast Monday, adds to the trickle of information about the experience of captives held in Gaza.

Munder was snatched Oct. 7 from her home in Nir Oz, a kibbutz in southern Israel. Her husband, Avraham, also 78, was taken hostage too and remains in Gaza. Her son was killed in the attack.

Initially, they ate “chicken with rice, all sorts of canned food and cheese,” Munder told Channel 13* in an audio interview. “We were OK.”

They were given tea in the morning and evening, and the children were given sweets. But the menu changed when “the economic situation was not good, and people were hungry.”

Israel has maintained a tight siege on Gaza since the war erupted, leading to shortages of food, fuel and other basic items.

Munder, who was freed Friday, returned in good physical condition, like most other captives. But one of the released hostages, an 84-year-old woman, has been hospitalized in life-threatening condition after not receiving proper care in captivity, doctors said. Another freed captive needed surgery.

Freed hostages have mostly kept out of the public eye since their return. Most details about their ordeal have come through relatives who have visited them.

Munder, confirming accounts from relatives of other freed captives, said they slept on plastic chairs. She said she covered herself with a sheet but that not all captives had one.

Boys who were there would stay up late chatting, while some of the girls would cry, she said. Some boys slept on the floor.

She said she would wake up late to help pass the time. The room where she was held was “suffocating,” and the captives were prevented from opening the blinds, but she managed to crack open a window.

“It was very difficult,” she said.

Munder’s account emerged as Israel and Hamas agreed to extend their truce. The two sides have been exchanging Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners under a cease-fire deal that has paused the fighting. The deal also includes an increase in aid to Gaza.

Israel declared war after the Islamic militant group’s cross-border attack Oct. 7 in which 1,200 people were killed and 240 others taken hostage. An Israeli offensive has left over 13,000 Palestinians dead, according to health authorities in the Hamas-run territory.

Munder said that on Oct. 7, she was put on a vehicle with her family and driven into Gaza. A militant draped over them a blanket her grandson had carried from home, which she said was meant to prevent them from seeing the militants around them. While in captivity, she learned from a Hamas militant who listened to the radio that her son was killed, according to the Channel 13 report.

Still, she said, she held out hope that she would be freed.

“I was optimistic. I understood that if we came here, then we would be released. I understood that if we were alive — they killed whoever they wanted to in Nir Oz.”

Two Israeli TV stations, Channels 12 and 13, reported that Hamas’ top leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, visited the hostages in a tunnel and assured them they would not be harmed.

“You are safest here. Nothing will happen to you,” he was quoted as saying in the identical reports, which did not reveal the source of the account.

This round of releases has seen mostly women and children freed. They have been undergoing physical and psychological tests at Israeli hospitals before returning home.

Mirit Regev, whose 21-year-old daughter, Maya, was freed Sunday, told Israeli public broadcaster Kan that the family has been counseled to “return the power to her” in their interactions by always asking her for permission before things occur, such as leaving the room. Regev’s 18-year-old son, Itai, is still being held by Hamas.

Itai Pessach, director of the Edmond and Lily Safra Children’s Hospital at Sheba Medical Center, where many of the released children have been treated, said he felt some optimism because the hostages were physically recovering. But he said medical staff had heard “very difficult and complex stories from their time in Hamas captivity,” without elaborating.

“We understand that despite the fact that they might seem physically improving, there’s a very, very long way to go before they are healed,” he said.

In a separate interview, the aunt of a 25-year-old Israeli-Russian hostage who was released Sunday from Gaza said her nephew fled his captors and hid within Gaza for a few days before being recaptured.

“He said he was taken by terrorists, and they brought him into a building. But the building was destroyed (by Israeli bombing), and he was able to flee,” Yelena Magid, the aunt of Roni Krivoi, told Kan radio on Monday. “He was trying to get to the border, but I think because he didn’t have the resources to know where he was and which direction to flee, he had some trouble.”

He told her in a phone conversation he was able to hide himself for around four days before Palestinians in Gaza discovered him, she added.

“One thing that gave us hope from the start is that he’s a boy who’s always smiling, and he can figure things out in any situation,” Magid said.

Shoshan Haran, who was released from Hamas captivity on Saturday night, met with Israel’s President Isaac Herzog on Tuesday at the president’s office in Jerusalem. “I’m here but there’s so many left behind,” Haran said. “I still don’t have the full picture of what was here, but I know what was there, and you have to do the maximum (to get them home).”

Eitan Yahalomi’s aunt, Devorah Cohen, told French media that her 12-year-old nephew was sometimes kept alone, but when he was with others, his captors threatened him with a gun whenever the children cried in order to keep them quiet.

“The Hamas terrorists forced him to watch films of the horrors, the kind that no one wants to see, they forced him to watch them,” Cohen said.

Relatives of Yaffa Adar, 85, who was released on Friday night, told Channel 12 that they did not shower or change clothes for the entire period of their captivity, and only the day before they were released they were given a new set of clothes.

Israeli media aired video Monday of Ori Megidish, an Israeli soldier who was taken captive, then freed by the military late last month. She said she was happy and doing well and wished all the captives would return home.

“I’m glad to have my life back,” she said.

*presumably referring to this channel

Release of Palestinian prisoners sheds light on controversial Israeli justice system in the occupied West Bank

Authors: Ivana Kottasova, Barbara Arvanitidis, Nima Elbagir, Abeer Salman and Alex Platt

CNN - Fatima Shahin spent seven months in an Israeli prison. Authorities initially accused her of attempted murder of an Israeli in the occupied West Bank, but she was never charged with any crime.

On Friday, the 33-year-old from the West Bank city of Bethlehem was freed, one of the 39 Palestinians released that day in exchange for Israeli hostages as part of the truce between Israel and Hamas.

As of Wednesday, Israel had released 180 Palestinian prisoners and detainees and Hamas had released 81 hostages.

Like Shahin, the majority of those released so far – 128 of the 180 – were detained and hadn’t been charged, put on trial or given an opportunity to defend themselves. Some say they weren’t even told why they were being detained.

Some of the Palestinians were held under a murky military justice system that theoretically allows Israel to hold people for indefinite periods without trial or a charge.

Israel has been operating two distinct justice systems in the West Bank since it captured the area in 1967. Palestinians living there fall under the jurisdiction of Israel’s military court system, where judges and prosecutors are uniformed Israeli soldiers. Meanwhile, Jewish settlers there are subject to civilian courts.

A legal adviser at the Israel Defense Forces’ International Law Department told CNN on Wednesday that the different systems were in place because under international law, Israel is not allowed to “export” its own legal system to the West Bank.

B’Tselem, The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, a non-governmental organization, says the courts “serve as one of the central systems maintaining Israel’s control over the Palestinian people.”

Shahin said that while in detention, she was denied access to a lawyer and was barred from speaking to her family, as she recovered from life-changing injuries that she suffered during her arrest.

“They accused me of carrying out a stabbing. It’s not true. They opened fire (at) me. I was hit in the spine with two bullets… I have partial paralysis. I cannot feel my legs or stand up,” she told CNN.

The Israel Prison Service told CNN that the prisoners who were released as part of the deal “were serving time for serious crimes, such as attempted murder, assault, and throwing explosives.” But information provided by the Israeli authorities reveals that most hadn’t been charged or convicted.

Administrative Detention

Before the truce came into effect last week, the Israeli Ministry of Justice published a list of 300 Palestinian prisoners and detainees eligible for release under the exchange agreement.

A majority of people on the list hadn’t been charged or sentenced for any crime.

Instead, according to the document, some were either detained or held under administrative detention, a controversial procedure that allows Israeli authorities to hold people indefinitely on security grounds without trial or charge, sometimes based on evidence that isn’t made public.

It is also used by Israel as a preventative measure: people are detained not for what they have done, but for future offenses they allegedly planned to commit.

Many of the detainees held under the policy have no idea why they are being imprisoned, because evidence against them is classified.

“This leaves the detainees helpless – facing unknown allegations with no way to disprove them, not knowing when they will be released, and without being charged, tried or convicted,” according to B’Tselem.

Under Israeli law, people can be held in administrative detention for up to six months, but the term can be renewed indefinitely.

According to data obtained from the Israel Prison Service (IPS) by B’Tselem, of the more than 1,300 Palestinians that were held in administrative detention as of September, about half had been detained for more than six months.

The IDF legal adviser said that the administrative detention law is in line with international law frameworks and complies with the Geneva Convention. However, asked by CNN about the widespread international criticism of the way Israel uses the administrative detention law, the official, who was speaking in general terms and is not involved with the implementation of the law, admitted it was possible that in some cases it was used in a “heavy-handed” way.

Israel has been widely criticized for its use of the policy. When prominent Palestinian activist and former Islamic Jihad spokesperson Khader Adnan died in Israeli prison after an 87-day hunger strike in May, UN experts called on Israel to end the practice, calling it “cruel” and “inhumane.”

Adnan became a symbol of Palestinian resistance to Israeli detention policies after spending a total of eight years in Israeli jails, mostly under administrative detention. He was never sentenced.

Despite the criticism, the number of administrative detainees held in Israeli facilities has been rising steadily.

As of September, the number was at its highest in more than three decades, surpassing the previous record set at the height of the Second Palestinian Intifada (uprising) in 2003, according to data obtained by B’Tselem and HaMoked, an Israeli NGO that focuses on human rights law and provides free legal aid to Palestinians.

Children in Detention

The events of recent days have also put the spotlight on another issue that Israel has been criticized for: the detention of children aged 18 or younger.

According to B’Tselem, the Israel Prison Service was holding 146 Palestinian minors on what it defined as security grounds as of September.

Under Israeli law, children as young as 12 can be imprisoned for up to six months. Minors are sent to military prisons alongside adults.

A majority of those released so far through the exchange deal are teenagers between the ages of 16 and 18, but Israel’s list of people eligible for release also includes five 14-year-olds and seven 15-year-olds.

Malak Salman was 16 when she was arrested in 2016 for an alleged attempted stabbing of an Israeli police officer in Jerusalem. Israeli authorities said no one was injured, but she was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 10 years in a military prison. After an appeal, the sentence was reduced to nine years.

Salman was one of the prisoners released on Friday, after serving almost eight of those nine years. She was finally reunited with her family in Jerusalem, but her family wasn’t allowed to celebrate.

“The Israeli authorities were with us from 2 p.m. They surrounded the house and ripped down the decorations of any display of celebration. They stole the joy of my daughter’s release,” Fatima Salman, Malak’s mother, told CNN.

Israeli authorities have banned celebrations surrounding the releases of the Palestinian prisoners after Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said that “expressions of joy are a support for terrorism” and that “celebrations of victory give strength to those same human scum.” Ben Gvir was previously convicted of inciting racism against Arabs and supporting a terrorist organization.

Since the deadly October 7 terror attacks by Hamas on Israel, Israel Police have used the Counter Terrorism Law to widen a crackdown on Palestinians.

Article 24 of this legislation states that anyone who does anything to “empathize with a terror group” whether that is by “publishing praises, support or encouraging, waving a flag, showing or publishing a symbol” can be arrested and jailed for up to three years.

After the Hamas attacks last month, Palestinians have been arrested after expressing solidarity with civilians in Gaza and sharing verses from Quran on social media, among other reasons.

Responding to a question from CNN on the increase in arrests over social media posts, Israel Police said last month that while it “firmly upholds the fundamental right to freedom of speech, it is imperative to address those who exploit this right to perilously incite violence.”

Referring to celebrations by the families of freed detainees, Ben Gvir said on Thursday that “the policy here is very, very, very clear – not to allow these expressions of joy, and resolutely strive to make contact and stop any support for these Nazis.”

Like the rest of the Palestinians held by Israel, children are put through the Israeli military court system, which means their rights are limited and not in line with international juvenile justice system standards.

According to a report by Save the Children earlier this year, between an estimated 500 and 1,000 children are held in Israeli military detention each year.

Many of the children are held for stone throwing, it said, an offense that carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison under Israeli law.

Earlier this year, the organization said that its survey of Palestinian children detained by the Israeli military showed that 86% reported being beaten, 70% said they were threatened with harm and 69% reported being strip searched during interrogation.

Some Israeli hostages are coming home. What will their road to recovery look like?

Author: Rachel Treisman

Hamas has released over 100 of the more than 240 people it kidnapped from Israel on Oct. 7 as part of a hostage and prisoner exchange enabled by the weeklong cease-fire that ended on Friday. Those freed in Gaza were mostly women and children, including some foreign nationals.

At the same time, hundreds of Arab residents of the West Bank who had been held in prisons by Israel have been freed. This has created two sets of populations, including many children, in need of psychological support as they return to freedom.

In Israel, as the freed hostages return home, Israeli and U.S. media have been awash with photos and videos of their emotional reunions with surviving loved ones (including some pets) as well as emerging details about their nearly two months in captivity.

Most hostages have not spoken with the media directly, though accounts from family members suggest at least some were given limited access to food, beds, bathrooms and medications. One 84-year-old woman was returned to Israel over the weekend in critical condition.

Some families say their relatives lost weight and came home with head lice. One man said his aunt had to readjust to sunlight after spending so much time in a tunnel. The families of two young girls said they only spoke in whispers upon their arrival because they had been told not to make noise in captivity.

Family members of several hostages of all ages described them as physically but not mentally OK in interviews with NPR. Many are returning home to learn that their loved ones were killed on Oct. 7 or are still being held in Gaza.

For many, feelings of relief are mixed with those of guilt and exhaustion. And relatives and experts have voiced concern about the potential long-term effects of the ordeal on hostages, particularly young children.

That's what the family of four-year-old Abigail Idan — a dual American-Israeli citizen whose parents were among the some 1,200 people killed on Oct. 7 — told NPR. Her great-aunt Liz Hirsh Naftali said Idan is "overjoyed" to be back with her siblings, but declined to elaborate on her condition.

"I think that we will only learn as the days go on, and for a long time, what really effectively will be the results of having been a hostage and having been in her father's arms when he was murdered," Hirsh Naftali said.

Experts told NPR that the road to recovery from such an experience can be long, but there are steps that caregivers, loved ones and professionals can take to help children who were held hostage navigate a path forward.

In anticipation of the release of hostages, Israel's health ministry worked with child trauma specialists to come up with a handbook for how people should interact with them.

Ayelet Noam-Rosenthal, a social worker at the Haruv Institute in Jerusalem and one of the authors of the guide, says it includes protocols for "everyone that will meet the child," from parents to pediatricians to teachers.

"Here in Israel after the horrific events of Oct. 7, where children were kidnapped after witnessing massacre and severe violence, we actually understood that we have to focus also on the day after," she told NPR. "That means the day after they return, and address both their immediate and long-term needs."

The Times of Israel reports that the new protocols cover best practices for both the hours and weeks after hostages are released.

It has instructions for the Israeli soldiers accompanying children on their way to the hospital, including how to introduce themselves and how to answer (or deflect) their questions, CNN reported.

Hostages are to be brought to one of six Israeli hospitals, where they can reunite with family members and receive a suitcase with some of their clothing, medications and personal items. They also receive a thorough medical exam, which the Times reports must be performed by female doctors.

The guide says those exams should check for evidence of rape or torture, and that if any is found, "appropriate professionals" should be consulted on whether it would be possible collect the evidence or interview the patient without re-traumatizing them.

There is also guidance on proper nutrition and avoiding potentially-fatal refeeding syndrome, which can happen when food is reintroduced to a malnourished person.

Liz Cathcart, the executive director of the nonprofit Hostage U.S. (which supports families of Americans taken hostage but cannot comment on which cases it is working on) says malnutrition is common among hostages.

That could be due to a lack of nutritious food and food in general or the inability to keep food down because of stress.

Other potential issues include vitamin deficiencies, diseases contracted in captivity and sleep disturbances, according to Hostage U.S.

The physical health of the hostages is the immediate priority, Cathcart tells NPR.

"Without the physical health checks and making sure that your physical health is up to par, you're not able to then take the next steps to recovery and reintegration," she says.

Noam-Rosenthal says parents and professionals should take every precaution to avoid re-traumatizing children who were held captive.

"We must all work together to strengthen the child's resilience and work toward his or her adjustment to the new circumstances," she says.

For instance, the Times reports that while doctors can evaluate whether adults are healthy enough to recount their experience to law enforcement, the "debriefing of children will be delayed for some time."

Noam-Rosenthal says it's crucial to rebuild trust "because that's one of the things these children lost along the way."

One of the first things her team tells family members is that they need to give children their autonomy back — for example, letting them set the pace for physical touch, even if the parents are desperate to hug them immediately.

Longer-term, she says it's important for parents and professionals to work together in support of the child's well-being. She called for full coordination of "the military, the health and the social services as one system driven by the same goal."

Building resilience and coping skills are key to helping former captives adjust to their new normal, Cathcart says.

And it's not just the hostages themselves who need help. Families of hostages are coming off a "two-month marathon" of worrying about and fighting for their loved ones' release, Cathcart says.

Before they can shift their focus to that person's recovery, she says, they need to take care of themselves too.

"What I always encourage families to do when their loved one gets home is to focus on yourself, too, because it's so important that the families are mentally healthy, that they're fed, that they have energy," she adds. "Because if they don't, they're not going to be able to support their family member."

Hostage U.S. recommends that hostages and their families work to "establish a routine without being regimented," think through potential triggers (like loud noises or dark rooms), communicate openly and be patient throughout the reintegration process.

"The use of simple words and short sentences is important," the ministry advises, according to CNN. "It is important to convey that we are open and able to hear and talk about difficult things."

As part of the temporary truce, Israel released 240 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom are minors.

Prior to Oct. 7, some 500-700 Palestinian children were subjected to Israeli military detention every year, in some cases without charge, trial or due process guarantees, according to Save the Children.

The organization welcomed the release of both Israeli and Palestinian children as part of the deal.

But Jason Lee, Save the Children's country director in the Palestinian Territories, called it "just the first step needed" in addressing a decades-old crisis affecting children in the region.

"A lasting ceasefire must be agreed immediately, all hostages in Gaza must be released, and the appalling emotional and physical abuse of Palestinian children in detention must end," he added.

More than 13,300 Palestinians — roughly two-thirds of them women and minors — have been killed since the war began, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza. The count does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

The United Nations has warned that Gaza is becoming a "graveyard for children," while the World Health Organization has raised alarms about the spread of infectious diseases in the territory.

And researchers are worried about the toll the war will take on the mental health and development* of the children who do survive.

Studies conducted before the current conflict documented especially high rates of mental and behavioral health issues among Gaza's youth, who make up nearly half of its population.

*Fun-fact: Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin was a child when his family relocated to al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza after their home village of al-Jura was ethnically cleansed in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War as part of Operation Yo'av. The responsibility for violent acts of course falls on the actor, but radicalization towards violence does not just occur in a vacuum.

Were Israeli Babies Beheaded by Hamas Militants During Attack on Kfar Aza?

Here's what we know about the viral rumor spread by news media, the U.S president, and so on.

Author: Nur Ibrahim | published Oct. 12 2023, updated Dec. 4 2023

As violence escalated in Israel and Palestine in early October 2023, politicians, news media, and activists in the U.S. and U.K. spread a rumor about Hamas fighters supposedly beheading as many as 40 Israeli infants. As we looked into the claim, we found contradictory reports from journalists and Israeli army officials, and almost no independent corroborations of the alleged war crime, leading to concerns among fact-checkers that such a claim may be premature or unsubstantiated.

U.S. President Joe Biden was among those who claimed "terrorists [were] beheading children," while speaking at a meeting of Jewish leaders at the White House. His office later clarified that he had not actually seen evidence of such beheadings. Meanwhile, mainstream news outlets, from Metro News in the U.K. to Sky News Australia, also reported on the alleged atrocity, with Fox News in an Oct. 10 headline claiming, “At least 40 babies, some beheaded, found by Israel soldiers in Hamas-attacked village.”

The conflict began on Oct. 7, 2023, when the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel from Gaza followed by Israel attacking and blockading Gaza, actions that resulted in the deaths of thousands of Israelis and Palestinians. Hamas' attacks came after months of surges in violence against Palestinians by the Israeli military.

Unverified reports about the escalating violence spread with incredible speed online, sometimes even with the unwitting help of journalists. The rumor about Israeli infants being beheaded was chief among such viral claims, considering its lack of evidence for independent verification.

The story appeared to stem from alleged observations by Israeli soldiers after a massacre in the village of Kfar Aza. For example, an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson told Insider that "soldiers on the ground who are there" told him that soldiers found the decapitated corpses of babies at Kfar Aza. The spokesperson said he had not seen photos or videos of the alleged deaths himself, and no further details about that alleged visual evidence were available.

A few journalists claimed to have obtained, or at least seen, visual proof (photos or video) of the deaths, though that evidence also was not publicly accessible, nor available to Snopes as of this writing.

When Snopes reached out to the IDF to comment on the underlying rumor — namely that Israeli babies were beheaded by Hamas — the military did not confirm that the purported beheadings happened. However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's spokesperson Tal Heinrich stated to media that babies and toddlers had been found with their “heads decapitated” in Kfar Aza.

That said, Israeli authorities told other journalists they had not shared photographic evidence of the killings to preserve the privacy of victims and their families. “It’s a dead baby," an IDF spokesperson said to CNN. "Does it matter if it’s burning or decapitation?”

On Oct. 12, 2023, Israel released images of slain children and civilians, showing them to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and NATO defence ministers. Blinken told reporters he saw photographs and videos of a baby riddled with bullets, young people burned alive and beheaded soldiers. Netanyahu's office also posted online photographs of a dead infant in a pool of blood and the charred body of a child. Reuters noted that none of the released images indicated evidence that militants had beheaded babies.

On Oct. 20, 2023, forensic experts told reporters they had seen evidence of beheaded babies but could not confirm if knives or rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) caused the decapitations. We should note: Early iterations of the claim about Hamas fighters beheading infants argued the fighters themselves "cut off" children's heads, presumably intentionally, with the implication that they were targeting a large number of children this way. A different scenario would be if RPGs, or explosions, caused decapitations.

We should note, Jewish burial rites may complicate the search for answers, given the emphasis on the dignity of the dead and the requirement for burials to take place within 24 hours if possible. Viewing and exposing the body is also considered objectionable and disrespectful.

Hamas representatives have denied the allegations involving the beheading of children.

Below is everything we know about the claim, including its origin story and how mainstream media outlets played a role in its spread.

Infants Died. Does It Matter if They Were Beheaded or Not, as an IDF Spokesperson Asked CNN?

When Kfar Aza, just 3 kilometers from the Gaza Strip, was attacked on Oct. 7, 2023, men, women and children were brutally killed by Hamas fighters. The massacre was documented in photos and videos by reputable news outlets, including the Wall Street Journal and BBC. A Reuters report from Oct. 10, 2023, said the attackers “laid waste” to the village: “A baby's crushed crib lying outside a burnt-out home. Corpses strewn on streets. Body bags lined up on an outdoor basketball court. The stench of death everywhere.”

So, given that infants were indeed among victims killed in the violent attack, why does it matter if they died by beheadings or another way? The alleged beheadings have been a focus of media attention, appearing in headlines and viral posts, and have been repeated by politicians at the highest levels of government. When Biden made the claim, he called in the same statement for additional military support for Israel, aiding an army that has already carried out retaliatory attacks against civilians in Gaza—a region that faces a humanitarian crisis after relentless bombardment from Israel.

People should be wary of claims that echo Islamophobic rhetoric, or statements that compare the violence in Kfar Aza to “ISIS-style” killings — i.e., beheadings that have taken place in a different context and were committed by a different group. Such rumors that emphasize specific, unverified acts of brutality against infants and that attempt to connect them to patterns of violence carried out by unconnected Islamist groups have the potential to become dangerous propaganda.

The facts, when confirmed, should be revealed, whatever they may be. As of this writing, there is not enough evidence to verify that infants were beheaded.

From Where Did the 'Beheaded Babies' Rumor Originate?

In the early hours of the rumor's life, many news outlets cited reporting by the Israeli news channel i24News, which published a YouTube livestream titled, “Beheaded Babies and Women Found in Kfar Aza," featuring correspondent Nicole Zedeck. In the video, Zedeck walked through an area with body bags, and, at one point stated, “One of the commanders here said at least 40 babies were killed — some of them, their heads cut off.”

Let us note here: In 2019 i24News was described by Israeli news outlet Haaretz as pushing narratives in favor of Netanyahu.

In another video, Zedeck interviewed Israeli commander David Ben Zion, who stated, "They [Hamas] chopped heads of children and women."

It was unknown whether the unnamed "commander" she referenced in the livestream who supposedly said "at least 40 babies were killed — some of them, their heads cut off" was Zion. No further information about the people with whom Zedeck supposedly spoke was known.

Zedeck also tweeted about what she had allegedly heard, without referencing beheadings: “Soldiers told me they believe 40 babies/children were killed [...].”

What Are Journalists Saying About Alleged Beheadings?

Many verified news reports documented the deaths of innocent civilians killed by Hamas militants in Kfar Aza. However, the circumstances under which those deaths occurred, and whether any of them included "beheaded babies," were unclear.

As of this writing, no firsthand source outside of IDF appears to have gone on the record to address whether any of the confirmed deaths involved beheadings of infants or children. (A firsthand source would be someone who directly witnessed the purported beheadings or was affected by them, like a parent.) Rather, news reports appeared to rely on alleged observations by Israeli soldiers, similarly to Zedeck's reporting.

That said, a few journalists did claim to have seen photographs of the bodies of beheaded infants and children. Snopes reached out to those reporters to independently verify the existence of such evidence and will update this story if we hear back.

In addition to Fox News, Business Insider, and Metro News (mentioned and linked above), here's how some news outlets reported on the alleged beheadings, whether of adults or infants, as of this writing:

• The Media Line. On Oct. 20, 2023, the American outlet that focuses on Middle East coverage detailed a visit to Israel’s National Center of Forensic Medicine to review evidence of the atrocities. Photographs revealed by the forensics team showed charred flesh of victims. Dr. Chen Kugel, the head of the center, said the victims ranged from 3 months to 80 or 90 years old. He said many bodies, including those of babies, were without heads. When asked if they were decapitated, he said yes. But, under the circumstances, he said, it was difficult to ascertain whether they were decapitated before or after death, as well as how they were beheaded, “whether cut off by knife or blown off by RPG [Rocket Propelled Grenade]." Additionally, an Oct. 24, 2023, report by The Media Line detailed how journalists were invited by the Israeli military to screen videos consisting of home surveillance footage, Hamas' GoPro bodycams, dashcams, cellphone footage, and more. At the screening, Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said, "Saying [Hamas] is ISIS is not some branding trick. Hamas is a sovereign entity that decided to commit this crime against humanity … to rape, to kill indiscriminately, to behead people. And yes … also babies. And they did this with complete understanding of what they were doing and what will happen afterward in Gaza as a consequence." The report detailed horrific acts of violence displayed in the footage, but it did not say the videos confirmed babies were decapitated by Hamas militants. The footage did, however, show a fighter beheading an agricultural worker and the corpses of decapitated soldiers.
• Reuters. In an Oct. 15, 2023, report on Reuters, Israeli forensic teams found evidence of torture, rape, and abuse on bodies, according to Israeli military officers. "We've seen dismembered bodies with their arms and feet chopped off, people that were beheaded, a child that was beheaded," a reserve warrant officer identified only by her first name of Avigayil told Reuters. We have no independent corroboration of this account yet.
• Haaretz. The independent Israeli news outlet visited the center for the identification of the dead, in what used to be the army's Rabbinate. While an IDF spokesperson wanted to reveal the extent of the crimes, they urged reporters not to give too much detail that would become "death porn." Citing unnamed people involved in the handling of the bodies, Haaretz reported that they confirmed Netanyahu's descriptions of beheaded babies.
• CBS. Norah O’Donnell of CBS News posted about the alleged discovery of “beheaded babies and children" in southern Israel without detailing her sources. We have reached out to her on social media to learn more. A CBS News report from Oct. 11, 2023, cited Yossi Landau, head of operations for the southern region of ZAKA (Israel's volunteer civilian emergency response organization), who said he saw with his own eyes children and babies who had been beheaded — the first non-military source to say this that we've found in a news story. We have reached out to ZAKA in order to speak with Landau and will update this story if we receive more information.
• BBC. The news outlet also spoke to Zion — the same soldier Zedeck interviewed — who described how Hamas gunmen killed families, women and children. Some of them were decapitated, he said.
• CNN. Correspondent Nic Robertson was recorded on Oct. 10, 2023, sitting in front of Israeli soldiers who appear to be moving body bags at Kfar Aza. He described scenes of “bodies everywhere, murdered members of this kibbutz.” He stated, “men, women, children, hands bound, shot, executed, heads cut," without elaborating further. In other words, it was unknown whether infants were among the group he said were decapitated, nor whether he had seen those bodies himself. A day later, another CNN report from Kfar Aza detailed the massacre, adding the IDF could not confirm a death toll nor give details on the killings. That CNN report said it could not verify the IDF's claim that children were among those killed. Also on Oct. 11, 2023, an IDF spokesperson told the news outlet in another report later in the day that terrorists had likely decapitated babies in a different location, outside of Kfar Aza — another kibbutz in Be’eri. We have followed up with the IDF to learn more about that assertion, and we'll update this report when, or if, we receive more info. On Oct. 12, 2023, CNN anchor Sara Sidner apologized on X for repeating the claim after hearing it from Israeli officials who then retracted the story of the beheadings. She wrote: "Yesterday the Israeli Prime Minister's office said that it had confirmed Hamas beheaded babies & children while we were live on the air. The Israeli government now says today it CANNOT confirm babies were beheaded. I needed to be more careful with my words and I am sorry."
• LCI in France. Margot Haddad, a journalist with French outlet LCI, wrote on X (via Google translate), that "infants and children under 2 years old were beheaded by Hamas." She cited, "the Israeli army, internal intelligence service and atrocious images, which reached me and which I was able to cross-check," as well as "courageous journalists from the foreign press who were able to see/agreed to see with their own eyes the bodies in Kfar Aza.” Snopes reached out to Haddad to learn more about her sources, and to gain firsthand access to them for its own independent verification.
• GB News in Britain. Charlie Peters of GB News claimed to have seen proof of "innocents beheaded and burned — murdered babies." When asked by another user on X if he had seen evidence of the allegedly beheaded infants, he said, "I said murdered babies. Infants have been killed and we have seen footage." It was unclear what video to which he was referring, and whether it was publicly accessible. When we reached out to Peters, he directed us to The Media Line's reporting on footage released by the Israeli military and review of forensic evidence, as mentioned above.
• Sky News. Anna Botting of Sky News noted the main source of the claim appeared to be Zedeck. Botting added that Sky News "[has] not seen the evidence” to prove infants were beheaded and asked the IDF multiple times to confirm those numbers [involving 40 babies]. "That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen," Botting said.
• The Independent. Bel Trew, a reporter with The Independent, posted clarifications about her old, since-deleted tweets (we were unable to find those old tweets) after she was accused of reporting unverified information about beheaded babies. Trew noted that she meant to say toddlers were killed and it was unknown whether beheadings were the cause of those deaths.

On Dec. 4, 2023, Haaretz published a report it claimed detailed the circumstances of "most" child deaths at the hands of Hamas militants on Oct. 7, 2023. None of those child deaths explicitly mentioned beheadings, though the report said of all killings: "Hamas terrorists did desecrate corpses during the massacre, especially the bodies of soldiers. There were also beheadings and cases of dismemberment."

What Did IDF Tell Snopes?

While Zedeck, Haddad and others claimed to have heard about the beheaded infants from Israeli soldiers, when Snopes reached out to the IDF about the stories, spokespeople did not confirm in so many words that the purported beheadings happened.

We asked multiple times if any children or infants were beheaded, and, if so, how many. We received the following response: “We cannot confirm any numbers. What happened in Kibbutz 'Kfar Azza' is a massacre in which women, children, toddlers and elderly were brutally butchered in an ISIS way of action," referring to the Islamic State militant group. "We are aware of the heinous acts Hamas is capable of.”

Like Snopes, other media outlets received the same statement from IDF comparing Hamas' killings to those of ISIS.

Hearing from a Journalist in Kfar Aza

In part, many questions about the violence remain unanswered because journalists have limited access to many parts of Israel and Palestine due to safety threats and military brigades.

Among the few who have gotten access, however, was Oren Ziv, a reporter with the left-leaning Israeli news organization +972 Magazine. Compared to Zedeck, he shared on X a different account of what he heard from soldiers. Of the reports about decapitated infants, he said, "we didn't see any evidence of this, and the army spokesperson or commanders also didn't mention any such incidents."

• I'm getting a lot of question [sic] about the reports of "Hamas beheaded babies” that were published after the media tour in the village. During the tour we didn’t see any evidence of this, and the army spokesperson or commanders also didn’t mention any such incidents. During the tour, journalists were allowed to speak to the hundreds of soldiers on site, without the supervision of the army's spokesperson team. [...] Soldiers I spoke with in Kfar Aza yesterday didn't mention "beheaded babies”. [...]
  This doesn't mean that war crimes were not committed. The scene in Kfar Aza was horrific, with dozens of bodies of Israelis murdered in their homes.

At the end of the thread he noted, “This story is still unfolding and information is still coming in that needs to be verified.”

Snopes reached out to Ziv, and he said he was permitted to walk around Kfar Aza after Israeli soldiers had evacuated civilians following Hamas' attack on Oct. 7. He said he saw the aftermath of brutal killings, including evidence that indicated people had been murdered in their beds while sleeping. He said he did not see evidence of decapitated infants, though he stressed his one tour of an isolated area was not broad enough to say whether that had happened anywhere.

In Sum

While we can confirm killings of innocent civilians in Kfar Aza and other parts of Israel at the hands of Hamas fighters, as of this writing we simply cannot confirm that such deliberate beheadings occurred, given the IDF’s unwillingness to address our specific questions and the lack of substantiation from independent news organizations.

Citing footage compiled by the Israeli military and interviews with forensic experts, The Media Line's reporting stated at least one adult was decapitated by a Hamas fighter (video footage showed the act, according to The Media Line) and soldiers' decapitated corpses were displayed in Gaza, though it did not say infants, specifically, were decapitated at the hands of Hamas fighters. Additionally, in a December 2023 report, Haaretz concluded "there were [...] beheadings and cases of dismemberment" on Oct. 7, though that report did not say such killings involved infants or children.

At present, details are still emerging from communities affected in Israel, the death tolls are still being counted, and the manner of many deaths have not yet been confirmed. We will update this story once more information comes to light.

We also reached out to Israeli human-rights organization B'Tselem to ask whether it's investigating the alleged beheadings. We'll post updates when, or if, we receive them.

Snopes.com is a site focused on fact-checking and verifying claims circulating the internet. As the war in Gaza continues, articles such as this one will continue to be updated on the original site.

Israel’s push into south Gaza sees a school bombed, a hospital overwhelmed

Authors: Loay Ayyoub, Hajar Harb, Loveday Morris, and Hazem Balousha

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — The injured were brought to the doors of southern Gaza’s al-Nasser Hospital inprivate cars, trucks and on carts.

They had thought the school in the city of Khan Younis would provide some safety. But, like so often in Gaza, in themidst of a war, it did not.

More than a dozen bodies of those killed in a strike were lined up in white sheets in the yard outside the hospitalmorgue Tuesday morning. Relatives shouted and wept.

Israeli forces pushed into the biggest city in southern Gaza on Tuesday as Israel expanded its war on multiple fronts, bringing fresh terror to civilians who say they have nowhere to run for safety.

Although Israel is still fighting in the northern half of the densely populated Gaza Strip, in the past two days, its forces have moved toward the southern city of Khan Younis, which is filled with those who fled the earlier fighting.

More than 80 percent of Gaza’s population of more than 2 million has been displaced, according to the United Nations, with many people gathering in schools and hospitals in the hope that they will be safe.

“The situation is truly catastrophic,” said Hamad Abu Sarhan, 51, who was sheltering in the school in the Maan neighborhood of Khan Younis when it was bombed overnight. His 28-year-old nephew is among the dead. His family had been sheltering there for only two days after the Israeli military ordered civilians to evacuate other areas of the south that had been declared military zones.

Khan Younis, the home city of the Hamas military chief in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar — who is at the top of Israel’s target list — had a population of around 400,000 before the war, but the count has ballooned amid the fighting, and the city now is in the crosshairs of the Israeli military.

With fighting still raging in the north, people can only keep heading farther south into the overcrowded south. The United Nations says it is running out of tents to give to the displaced.

Israel said Tuesday that it was intensifying its military efforts to destroy Hamas after the militant group’s Oct. 7 assault inside southern Israel that killed more than 1,200 people. In addition to moving south into Khan Younis, Israeli forces also entered the dense Gaza City neighborhoods of Jabalya and Shejaiya in the north, where Hamas is thought to be deeply dug in.

Israel has issued repeated assurances that it is abiding by international law and seeking to minimize civilian casualties, but aid agencies say the situation for civilians is rapidly deteriorating.

“The situation is getting worse by the hour,” Richard Peeperkorn, the World Health Organization’s representative in Gaza, told reporters via video link Tuesday. “There’s intensified bombing going on all around, including here in the southern areas, Khan Younis and even in Rafah” on the Gaza-Egypt border.

Abu Sarhan said the bombing overnight had been intense. “It was the hardest night of my life,” he said. “We were surrounded by belts of fire from everywhere. The attacks by planes and tanks did not stop throughout the hours of the night.”

The school was struck in the early hours Tuesday, injuring Sarhan’s brother and his 15-year-old niece and 7-year-old-nephew. Ambulances could not reach the area, he said, and the injured had to be taken out in private vehicles. Later, buses arrived to transport the survivors out of the area.

“When we left the place, there were corpses everywhere and in the streets,” he said. “There were screams from people trapped in their homes.”

The Israel Defense Forces has said it is moving toward a new phase, urban fighting. “We’re moving ahead with the second stage now,” Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy said, “a second stage that is going to be difficult militarily.”

“We are talking about close-quarter fighting that engages terrorists emerging from tunnels and buildings,” he added.

“Sixty days after the war began, our forces are now encircling the Khan Younis area in the southern Gaza Strip,” said IDF Chief of the General Staff Herzi Halevi. “Simultaneously, we continue to secure our accomplishments in the northern Gaza Strip.”

“Those who thought that the IDF would not know how to renew the fighting after the pause were mistaken, and Hamas is already feeling this,” he said, referring to a week-long break in fighting when Hamas released more than 100 of the hostages it was holding in Gaza and humanitarian aid was allowed into the territory.

After a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council in Doha, Qatar, that country’s emir, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, called on the U.N. Security Council to force Israel to return to the negotiating table over the war in Gaza. He said it was “shameful” that the international community was not doing more to stop the war.

With the resumption of combat Friday, the collapse of Gaza’s health-care facilities has continued apace. In Beit Lahia, on the northern edge of Gaza, those who had been sheltering at Kamal Adwan Hospital said they were surrounded by Israeli tanks and unable to leave. “Anyone who tries to go out gets shot,” said Anas Sharief, ajournalist with Al Jazeera, in a video message. “We ask God for safety.”

Mohamed Qandeel, the head of the emergency department at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, said he and three other doctors had treated 80 severely injured patients, with much of the staff unable to reach the hospital because of heavy fighting. Twenty of the injured needed surgery and 10 needed intensive care, he said. “These days we cannot forget; they are catastrophic days,” Qandeel said.

On Lebanon-Israel border, exchanges of fire were reported. A Lebanese soldier was killed Tuesday and three others were injured by Israeli shelling near the border, the Lebanese army said in a statement posted on X (formally known as Twitter).

Harb reported from London, Morris from Jerusalem and Balousha from Amman, Jordan. Miriam Berger and Cate Brown contributed to this report.

Analysis | The White House is changing its tune on Israel – but does it matter in practice?

Author: Robert Tait

Biden’s rhetoric toward the Netanyahu government is toughening. But critics say his words aren’t backed up by the threat of action

A soaring civilian death toll and a deepening humanitarian crisis in Gaza has jolted the Biden administration into a stark change of rhetoric towards the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu.

Out has gone cavalier White House disavowals against “drawing red lines” for Israel in Gaza; in have come blunt invocations of international law and the need to limit civilian casualties to a minimum.

The shift has occurred against the backdrop of an expanded list of non-military targets in Israel’s offensive in the crowded coastal strip, along with a death toll exceeding 16,000 Palestinians, according to figures from the Gaza media office.

The altered tone, however, has not been accompanied by a substantive policy shift – raising doubts among critics about the credibility of official US pronouncements on the unfolding carnage.

Officials around Joe Biden smothered Israel with empathy in the weeks after Hamas’s 7 October rampage that resulted in 1,200 killed and another 240 taken hostage, but mounting concern over the human costs of the Israeli response – along with political fallout at home – have prompted them to change tack.

About two-thirds of the Palestinians killed in Gaza are women and children. An estimated 80% of the population of the territory has been displaced in Israel’s retaliatory offensive, launched with the stated goal of permanently destroying Hamas.

Those figures, and the grim prospect of many more deaths to come as Israel embarks on fresh military action in an area of southern Gaza where up to 2 million displaced people are estimated to have gathered, have spurred a procession of senior administration officials to publicly caution Israel.

The defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, warned that Israel risked replacing “a tactical victory with a strategic defeat” if it failed to protect civilians, thus “driving them into the arms of the enemy”.

Striking a still tougher pose, Vice-President Kamala Harris, speaking at the Cop28 climate summit in Dubai, said “too many innocent Palestinians have been killed” and added: “International humanitarian law must be respected.”

Later, in a meeting with Egypt’s president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, she went further, saying: “Under no circumstances will the United States permit the forced relocation of Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank, the besiegement of Gaza, or the redrawing of the borders of Gaza.”

So far, so tough. It all seems a far cry from the administration’s tone in the immediate aftermath of 7 October, when a soothing approach – labelled “big hug, quiet punches” by one veteran analyst – was deployed, aimed at winning Israeli hearts and minds to better enable the US to play an influential behind-the-scenes restraining role.

The changed posture is an admission of that approach’s failure, according to Joe Cirincione, a Washington national security analyst. Yet it is unlikely to yield better results, he warned, since it is not backed up by a threat of real consequences.

“They have changed their rhetoric but not their policy,” said Cirincione, who initially praised Biden’s handling of the crisis. “They’re emphasising that Israel must reduce civilian casualties, but when Israel doesn’t reduce civilian casualties they don’t do anything about it. It’s not real – it’s messaging.

“They are just providing cover for Netanyahu. They aren’t changing his policy. I have great admiration for [Antony] Blinken [the US secretary of state], but he looks pathetic at this point.”

Blinken reportedly told Israeli officials who showed him plans for extensive fighting in southern Gaza that would last several more months that “you don’t have that much credit”.

Yet to the administration’s critics, it is the White House which is losing credit.

“There’s something called revealed preference,” Peter Beinart, editor-at-large of Jewish Currents, said in a commentary on his Substack column. “Revealed preference is not what you say, but what you do. And the Biden administration’s revealed preference is Israel can do whatever it wants without consequence.

“What does it do to American credibility, including Biden’s credibility, to be continually saying you want Israel to do things, and then when Israel doesn’t do them, you just basically shrug?”

The only way to render its influence credible with Netanyahu, Cirincione argued, is to make continued US aid conditional – a “worthwhile thought”, Biden said late last month before administration officials shut down the idea days later.

“You could stop supplying Israel with 1,000- and 2,000-pound bombs and stop sending them artillery shells,” Cirincione said. “If you want Israel to stop mass slaughter of civilians, don’t send them the weapons they are using to commit mass slaughter.”

He believes there is increasing support among Democrats for conditioning aid, a position once considerably outside the party’s mainstream. “I would say at least one-third of the Democratic caucus support conditioning aid and I believe you could bring [Chuck] Schumer [the Democratic Senate majority leader] along. Condition aid so that it is to defend Israel, but not to destroy Gaza.”

The idea has been championed most actively in recent weeks by the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who on Tuesday wrote a letter to colleagues urging them to oppose aid to Israel requested by the Biden administration unless it comes with strings attached. “No, I do not think we should be appropriating $10.1 billion for the right-wing, extremist Netanyahu government to continue its current military strategy. What the Netanyahu government is doing is immoral, it is in violation of international law, and the United States should not be complicit in those actions,” Sanders wrote.

The biggest obstacle to such an approach may be Biden himself, who is believed to harbour a deep conviction that no daylight should appear in the longstanding ties between the US and Israel.

Yet Biden – facing what increasingly looks like an uphill re-election battle in 2024 – may find his hand forced by domestic politics and alarming poll numbers.

A survey this week from Gallup showed 63% of Democrats opposing Israel’s actions in Gaza, with the figures climbing to 67% for adults under the age of 35 and 64% for voters of colour.

Meanwhile, Democratic donors are said to be alarmed at the potential electoral effects of the war in battleground states like Michigan and Georgia, where significant Arab American voting blocs reside.

Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a seasoned US Middle East peace negotiator, warned that the election cycle meant “tougher times are coming” to Washington’s relationship with Israel.

“You have two clocks and they’re ticking at different speeds,” he told MSNBC. “The Israeli operational clock, the destruction of Hamas, is ticking very slowly. They think they’ll need months. The American political clock, Joe Biden’s clock, is ticking much faster. These clocks are increasingly out of sync.”

Yet the Biden administration’s ability to persuade Israel to spare civilian lives might founder on an inability to offer an alternative military course that would satisfy the goal of destroying Hamas.

“If Joe Biden had better alternatives to solve Israel’s problem, on how to spare innocent Palestinians while carrying out their campaign against Hamas, I think he would have offered them,” Miller said.

“But the reality is I don’t think the Biden administration has any better ideas. I just don’t think it is possible for the Israelis to operate and achieve their objectives without putting thousands of Palestinians at risk.”

NOTE - as the second 11/27/23 Reuters article suggests, Netanyahu is also facing internal pressure to deliver results of his own. Internal political pressures that don't necessarily align with external, foreign pressures. I've seen news footage of Israeli citizens protesting outside his house back in November, and his corruption trial (for allegedly receiving foreign bribes) that was put on hold due to the war might be scheduled to resume.

Gaza: Guterres invokes 'most powerful tool' Article 99, in bid for humanitarian ceasefire

Source: UN News

Invoking a rarely used article of the UN Charter, Secretary-General António Guterres on Wednesday called on the Security Council to “press to avert a humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza and unite in a call for a full humanitarian ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants.

In a letter to the Council, Mr. Guterres invoked Article 99, contained in Chapter XV of the Charter.

This says that the UN chief “may bring to attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion, may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security.”

In a statement to journalists along with the letter, UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said that this was the first time Mr. Guterres had felt compelled to invoke Chapter 99, since taking office in 2017.

Mr. Dujarric explained that the UN chief was taking the step “given the scale of the loss of human life in Gaza and Israel, in such a short amount of time”.

He described the use of Article 99 as a "dramatic constitutional move" that Mr. Guterres hoped would put more pressure on the Council - and the international community at large - to demand a ceasefire between the warring parties.

"I think it's arguably the most important invocation", Mr. Dujarric told reporters at UN Headquarters, "in my opinion, the most powerful tool that he [the Secretary-General] has."

The letter was sent to the President of the Security Council in New York late on Wednesday morning.

Since the 7 October terror attacks by Hamas militants in southern Israel and the ongoing bombardment and ground operation by Israeli forces into the Gaza Strip, the Security Council passed one resolution in mid-November, after four failed attempts to find consensus previously, calling for “urgent and extended humanitarian pauses”.

Following a week-long pause in hostilities during which some of the 240 hostages being held by militants in Gaza were exchanged for Palestinian prisoners, fighting began again on 1 December, leading the Secretary-General to register his deep regret.

In his letter to the Council president, Mr. Guterres said the more than eight weeks of fighting overall had “created appalling human suffering, physical destruction and collective trauma across Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

He highlighted the more than 1,200 “brutally killed” by militants on 7 October, including 33 children, and the 130 people still being held captive.

“They must be immediately and unconditionally released. Accounts of sexual violence during these attacks are appalling”, the UN chief added.

As Israel continues to target Hamas fighters, he said civilians throughout the Strip face grave danger, with over 15,000 reportedly killed, over 40 per cent of them children.

Around 80 per cent of Gazans are displaced, over 1.1 million seeking refuge in UN Palestine refugee agency (UNRWA) shelters.

Mr. Guterres said there is simply no effective protection for civilians and nowhere is safe.

“Hospitals have turned into battlegrounds”, he added, saying that amid the constant bombardment of all parts of Gaza “and without shelter or the essentials to survive, I expect public order to completely break down soon”.

Turning to the 15 November Council Resolution 2712, he said the current conditions were making it impossible to scale up humanitarian supplies, to meet the huge needs of civilians – as the resolution demands.

“We are simply unable to meet those in need inside Gaza”, he wrote, and facing “a severe risk of collapse of the humanitarian system.”

The consequences of that have irreversible implications for Palestinians and the peace and security of the entire region, he argued.

“Such an outcome must be avoided at all cost." The international community has a responsibility to use all its influence to prevent further escalation and end this crisis.

“I reiterate my appeal for a humanitarian ceasefire to be declared. This is urgent. The civilian population must be spared from greater harm.”

He stressed that with a ceasefire, there was hope “and humanitarian assistance can be delivered in a safe and timely manner”.

Israel presses U.N. to investigate charges of sexual violence by Hamas fighters

Authors: Becky Sullivan, Michele Kelemen

Originally Heard on All Things Considered

Editor's Note: This story contains descriptions of graphic violence and sexual assault.

The evidence of sexual violence on Oct. 7, Israel says, is overwhelming: Witness accounts of militants raping women; bodies of women discovered with their clothes removed; others shot through the head and the breast.

For two months, Israeli officials have shared what they say proves Hamas fighters committed rape and other sexual assaults during the militant group's attack on Israel on Oct. 7 that left 1,200 Israelis dead, including more than 300 women.

In recent weeks, Israel has accused major international groups, including the United Nations, of being slow to acknowledge and condemn the sexual violence, which Hamas has denied.

"I say to the women's rights organizations, to the human rights organizations, you've heard of the rape of Israeli women, horrible atrocities, sexual mutilation: Where the hell are you?" said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a press conference on Tuesday.

This week, the pressure on United Nations officials rose after a remarkable session on Monday that included firsthand accounts from Israeli responders of injuries they saw on the bodies of victims.

In response, U.N. officials have defended themselves and called for investigations into the allegations.

In total, Israel says it has collected more than 1,500 eyewitness accounts of rape or evidence of sexual violence on Oct. 7.

At the U.N. on Monday, testimony from three Israelis — a police officer, a first responder and a member of a morgue team that processed bodies — described and listed details of Israel's case.

Simcha Greiniman, a volunteer rescue worker who helped collect bodies on Oct. 7, recounted discovering the body of a woman laying on the floor of her home.

"She was naked. She had nails and different objects in her female organs," he said, visibly emotional and hesitating between words. "She was abused in a way we could not understand and could not deal with."

In another home, Greiniman encountered the body of a woman leaning on a bed, naked from the waist down, shot through the back of her head, he said.

"I'm standing in front of you to make sure that you hear the voices of those women that cannot stand next to us now and be here to scream out what happened to them," Greiniman said.

Yael Reichert, a superintendent of an Israeli national police unit, recounted testimony from survivors of the attacks and first responders who witnessed the immediate aftermath.

A survivor from the Nova rave, a music festival where hundreds of young people were killed, told responders that "everything was an apocalypse of corpses," with dead women who were missing clothes, Reichert said.

A first responder at a kibbutz told Israeli officials that they encountered the body of a woman in the shower of a home with her hands tied, Reichert said. In a video played before the U.N. audience, another first responder described seeing gunshot wounds to women's breasts and the genitals of men and women alike. In another video, a woman described as a survivor of the rave attack said she witnessed multiple men rape the same woman, then mutilate her.

At the base where the bodies of victims were taken for identification, staff were shocked by "the extent of the cruelty, the atrocities we witnessed," said Shari Mendes, a member of an Israeli reserve unit charged with preparing bodies of female soldiers for burial.

For weeks after Oct. 7, staff members worked through hundreds of bodies, many of them charred, injured or mutilated \ beyond recognition, she said. Some arrived at the base with limbs removed.

"Many young women arrived in bloody, shredded rags, or just in underwear, and their underwear was often very bloody," Mendes recalled. A leader of her unit "saw several female soldiers who were shot in the crotch, intimate parts, vagina, or shot in the breast" in what "seemed to be a systematic genital mutilation of a group of victims," Mendes added.

Israeli officials have also circulated videos of what they say are interrogations of Hamas fighters captured on Oct. 7. In brief video clips played at the U.N. on Monday, two men said they witnessed sexual violence during the attacks.

"These were not merely sick, spur-of-the-moment decisions to defile and mutilate Israeli women and girls," said Gilad Erdan, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations. "This was premeditated. This was planned. This was instructed."

NPR cannot independently verify allegations of sexual violence. Hamas denies that its fighters committed sexual assault and rape.*

The U.N. has been a focus of Israel's criticism over this issue.

"To these organizations, Israeli women are not women. The rape of Israelis is not an act of rape. Their silence has been deafening," Erdan said Monday. Erdan sent photo evidence of the Hamas assaults to UN Women, the U.N. agency dedicated to women's issues and gender equality, to which the agency did not respond, he said.

In a statement, UN Women responded that United Nations procedures "can appear to be slow-moving" and said it has been closely following reports of "brutal acts of gender-based violence against women in Israel" since the allegations first came to light.

Asked about the allegations at a press conference Wednesday, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said he supported an investigation.

"Atrocious forms of sexual violence need to be thoroughly investigated. We need to make sure that justice is served because that's what we owe the victims," Türk said.

And in a Wednesday letter to the U.N. Security Council about the dangers faced by civilians in Gaza, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres acknowledged the Oct. 7 allegations. "Accounts of sexual violence during the attacks are appalling," he wrote.

Health officials in the Hamas-run** Gaza Strip say that about 16,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli airstrikes since Oct. 7. They don't break out the numbers of Hamas fighters that includes but say most of the dead are women and children.

A week-long cease-fire between Israel and Hamas last month allowed for the release of more than 100 hostages, all of them women and children, in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli detention.

But 138 hostages remain in captivity, including 15 additional women, Israeli officials say.

Negotiations to extend the cease-fire to free all the remaining hostages broke down last week.

"It seems one of the reasons they don't want to turn women over that they've been holding hostage, and the reason this pause fell apart, is they don't want those women to be able to talk about what happened to them during their time in custody," said State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller at a press briefing Monday.

*As of November, the UN has opened up a commission to investigate sexual violence committed by Hamas ( Reuters, 11/30/23)) Understandibly, many have criticised them for taking two months to get to this point. Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan has stated that Israel will not be cooperating with the commission due to the chairperson's apparent history of anti-Israel stances (). As far as warcrimes go, rape is currently and historically the most prevalent, and any allegations should be taken seriously. This isn't a zero-sum game, empathy for Palestinian victims of Israeli occupation should not cancel out empathy for Israeli assault victims( The Guardian, 12/01/2023). That said, Erdan's response does not fill me with much confidence of anything happening immediately.

**Mainstream news reports seems to always highlight that the Gaza Health Authority is a "Hamas-run" institution. Since Hamas was elected into leadership of Gaza, that is of course technically true. What seems to get mentioned less often is that, while current numbers cannot be easily verified, past reports from the Health ministry have been verified by the UN and other groups to line up with reality.

Reuters releases investigation finding Israeli tank fire killed 1 of its journalists

Author: Jane Arraf

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Investigations conducted by two news organizations and two human rights groups have concluded an Israeli tank round killed a Reuters video journalist near the Lebanese border in October and that Israeli forces either knew or should have known they were targeting journalists.

The reports are the first public investigative findings of any killing of a journalist in the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas — a conflict that has been one of the deadliest for media in recent history. The Committee to Protect Journalists has confirmed the death of at least 63 journalists and media workers since the Gaza war began. They include 56 Palestinians, four Israelis and three Lebanese journalists.

The Israeli military said after the attack that it was investigating the incident. It has not yet issued any findings. Israeli military officials have said repeatedly that they do not target journalists.

Lebanese video journalist Issam Abdallah, 37, was killed and a photographer for Agence France-Presse, Christina Assi, 28, was severely wounded in the Oct. 13 attack. At least five others were also wounded.

The news teams were covering clashes along the border where Israel and the militia Hezbollah were trading fire. All were wearing protective vests and helmets — most clearly marked "PRESS" — during more than an hour in which they reported from the same location, according to the Reuters investigation.

"The Israeli military knew or should have known that they were civilians yet attacked them anyway in two separate strikes 37 seconds apart," Amnesty International said in a report released Thursday. A separate report released by Human Rights Watch echoed the findings by Amnesty, Reuters and AFP.

Reuters said an Israeli helicopter had hovered overhead before the first strike. At least one of the press vehicles had tape spelling out "TV" on the roof. The reports released Thursday found no evidence of military targets near the journalists. Reuters said evidence of Israeli tank round shrapnel was found embedded in a vehicle and in body armor.

Abdallah was killed instantly while Assi, who can be heard in a video screaming as a camera continued to roll after the attack, had her leg severed and is still in hospital.

Reuters said it spoke to more than 30 government and security officials, forensics and weapons experts and others for its investigation.

Reuters said the journalists were over half a mile from the border with Israel when they were attacked. Its report included a timeline including an image of live video of smoke rising from behind a hill being filmed by Abdallah.

After 45 minutes of filming the camera focused on an Israeli outpost and tank firing into Lebanon. Less than 90 seconds later the first of two tank rounds fired from another hill hit the team, killing Abdullah. A second round 37 seconds later set a car used by Al Jazeera on fire.

Two journalists from the Lebanese network Al Mayadeen were killed in another attack in Lebanon on Nov. 21 as they filmed near the border.

Human rights officials said the multiple sources of video and other images from the attack on Abdallah and the other journalists made it possible to carry out unusually detailed analysis. That is not the case with most of the other attacks, either in Lebanon or in Gaza.

Palestinians detained by Israel in Gaza blindfolded, stripped to underwear

Authors: Al Jazeer staff

At least 100 Palestinian men detained by Israeli forces have been stripped to their underwear, blindfolded and made to kneel on a street in northern Gaza, according to images and videos widely circulated on social media and confirmed by the Israeli army.

The men were shown with their heads bowed as they were guarded by Israeli troops in the undated video that first surfaced on Thursday, which has drawn condemnation.

Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher, reporting from occupied East Jerusalem, said on Friday that the images echoed the history of the region, where stripped men are taken to unknown locations.

Many of the detainees were recognised by members of the community and family.

“Some say one was a student, one ran the local store and another one had no connection with ‘terrorism’ as he lived in an apartment block. … A number of people identified a well-known local journalist among those who were arrested,” according to Fisher, who added that one man was with his two children and all three of them were rounded up.

Shawan Jabarin, director of the Al-Haq human rights organisation, said he was “shocked” to see images that reminded him of the treatment of detainees and prisoners of war during World War II.

“This [is] inhuman, it amounts to torture and more than that, it’s a war crime and a crime against humanity,” he told Al Jazeera.

Israeli media reported that some of the images appeared to show suspected Hamas fighters who had surrendered to Israeli forces.

Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan, reporting from Tel Aviv, said later on Friday that some of the Palestinians detained in the incident were released.

Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan, reporting from Tel Aviv, said later on Friday that some of the Palestinians detained in the incident were released.

According to family members, one of the released detainees was a shopkeeper with no ties to Hamas, he said.

About the Israeli response on the images, Khan said that the army statement was unapologetic.

“This is simply a tactic that they are going to use. They don’t care about the criticism from the international community or the human rights groups,” he added.

Daniel Hagari, the Israeli army spokesperson, said earlier: “During this fighting, those who stay in the area, come out of tunnels and some out of houses, we investigate and check who is linked to Hamas and who is not, we detain and interrogate all of them.”

He did not speak directly about the images but said that hundreds of suspects have been interrogated so far and that many have surrendered in the past 24 hours.

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said the men were “arbitrarily arrested” in the northern Gaza Strip after Israeli forces surrounded two shelters in the town of Beit Lahiya for days.

They were taken from the Khalifa bin Zayed and New Aleppo schools, both of which are affiliated with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the rights group said in a statement.

Ahmed Bedier, president of the United Voices for America civic engagement group, called the images “horrific”.

“This is a way to humiliate, this is a psychological warfare, designed to break the Palestinian people and tell them no place is safe, including shelters,” he told Al Jazeera.

The Al-Araby Al-Jadeed news outlet, also known as The New Arab, said its correspondent Diaa al-Kahlout was among those detained and had been taken to an unknown location.

He, his brothers and other relatives were among dozens of men arrested, The New Arab said in a statement on its website, adding that the detainees were forced to strip and were searched before being taken to an unknown destination.

The outlet called on “the international community, journalists’ rights defenders and watchdogs, and human rights bodies to denounce this ongoing assault committed by the Israeli occupation army against journalists since [October 7] and exert efforts to ensure they are released from detention and protected”.

On Friday, the Palestinian armed group Hamas condemned the stripping of the men and called on international human rights groups to investigate the incident.

“Stripping them of their clothes in a humiliating manner is a blatant Zionist crime to take revenge on our defenceless civilians as a result of the blows suffered by its soldiers and officers at the hands of Palestinian resistance men,” Izzat al-Risheq, a Hamas official, said in a statement.

“We hold the occupation responsible for their lives and safety, and we call on all human rights and humanitarian institutions and organizations to intervene,” the statement read.

Fisher said: “Of course, it would be a violation of international law for prisoners of war to be treated this way and for pictures to be taken of them and then published.”

He added that more concerning for international aid groups and human rights organisations was that “it is entirely unclear where these men have been taken or what may actually happen to them”.

The images and videos were taken from the vantage point of Israeli troops, and one clip shows dozens of men sitting cross-legged in rows of three and four with their heads bowed in the middle of a wide street.

One photo shows soldiers with assault rifles guarding dozens of men kneeling in a line alongside the wall of a building. Another photo shows detainees being lined up in an empty field.

The last video appears to show detainees packed into the back of moving army trucks.

Israel said it has detained and interrogated hundreds of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank since Hamas’s October 7 attacks in southern Israel.

Following those attacks, Israel started a massive air and ground offensive on the enclave.

More than 17,100 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 7, according to the authorities in the enclave.

Israel said its death toll stands at about 1,150.

UN General Assembly votes by large majority for immediate humanitarian ceasefire during emergency session

Source: UN News

The UN General Assembly met on Tuesday afternoon in Emergency Special Session on the decades long Israel-Palestine conflict and as the ongoing crisis in Gaza shows no signs of abating.

Member States adopted a resolution, demanding an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire”, the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages and well as “ensuring humanitarian access”.

• It passed with a large majority of 153 in favour and 10 against, with 23 abstentions
• The resolution also reiterated the General Assembly’s demand that all parties comply with their obligations under international law, including international humanitarian law, “notably with regard to the protection of civilians”
• Prior to the resolution, two amendments making specific reference to extremist group Hamas were voted down by members
• The General Assembly will resume the emergency session on Friday afternoon in New York starting at 3pm
• At the start of the session, Assembly President Dennis Francis underscored the urgency of ending the suffering of innocent civilians in Gaza. “We have one singular priority – only one – to save lives,” he stressed
• Check out this explainer on what an emergency special session of the Assembly is and how it works

6:16 PM - The acting President of the General Assembly adjourned the meeting. The session will reconvene at 3 PM (New York time) on Friday, 15 December, with the Assembly resuming its debate.

4:30 PM - Delegations are now speaking in explanation of their votes, after the vote.

4:26 PM - Resolution adopted
The vote on the main resolution is as follows:
For: 153
Against: 10
Abstaining: 23
The resolution has passed by a large majority, securing the needed two-thirds of members. Widespread applause rings out around the General Assembly Hall.
Those voting against were the US, Israel, Austria, Czechia, Guatemala, Liberia, Micronesia, Nauru, Papua New Guinea and Paraguay.
Among those abstaining were the UK, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Argentina, Malawi, the Netherlands, Ukraine, South Sudan, and Uruguay.

Text of the adopted resolution:

Protection of civilians and upholding legal and humanitarian obligations
The General Assembly,
Guided by the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations,
Recalling its resolutions regarding the question of Palestine,
Recalling also all relevant Security Council resolutions,
Taking note of the letter dated 6 December 2023 from the Secretary-General, under Article 99 of the Charter of the United Nations, addressed to the President of the Security Council,
Taking note also of the letter dated 7 December 2023 from the CommissionerGeneral of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East addressed to the President of the General Assembly,
Expressing grave concern over the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip and the suffering of the Palestinian civilian population, and emphasizing that the Palestinian and Israeli civilian populations must be protected in accordance with international humanitarian law,

1. Demands an immediate humanitarian ceasefire;
2. Reiterates its demand that all parties comply with their obligations under international law, including international humanitarian law, notably with regard to the protection of civilians;
3. Demands the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, as well as ensuring humanitarian access;
4. Decides to adjourn the tenth emergency special session temporarily and to authorize the President of the General Assembly at its most recent session to resume its meeting upon request from Member States.

The resolution does not condemn Hamas or make any specific reference to the extremist group.

4:24 PM - Amendments fail to pass
The second draft amendment from the US sees 84 in favour, 62 against and 25 abstaining. Again, the amendment fails.

4:22 PM - The first draft amendment has secured 89 for, 61 against and 20 abstentions. This means the Austrian amendment fails under the two-thirds rule.

4:20 PM - A two-thirds majority is required for an adoption of the resolution. The voting process is about to begin, and that rule applies to the amendments as well, explains General Assembly President Francis.

4:08 PM - Israel’s Permanent Representative, Gilad Erdan, said that the General Assembly finds itself “about to vote on another hypocritical resolution."
“Not only does this resolution fail to condemn Hamas for crimes against humanity, it does not mention Hamas at all. This will only prolong the death and destruction in the region, that is precisely what a ceasefire means,” he said.
He added that the only intention of Hamas is to destroy Israel and that the group has declared that it will repeat its atrocities again and again until Israel ceases to exist.
“So why would anyone want to aid Hamas in continuing their rule of terror and actualizing their satanic agenda?”, he asked.
“We all know that the so call humanitarian ceasefire in this resolution has nothing to do with humanity. Israel is already taking every measure to facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza,” he added.
He underscored the need to hold Hamas accountable. He said a ceasefire means one thing only - "the survival of Hamas."
“I honestly don’t know how can someone look in the mirror and support a resolution that does not condemn Hamas and does not even mention Hamas by name,” he said, urging all Member States to vote against the resolution.

3:55 PM - Munir Akram, Pakistan’s ambassador, explaining his country's position before the votes, said he was confident the “vast majority” of the UN membership would vote for the resolution.
He said it was a matter of “deep regret, that some friends of Israel have introduced amendments to once again condemn only one side but exonerate the other.”
He said he was confident that most Members will not agree to place blame only on Hamas, but blame Israel for their role in the bombardment of the “open air prison” that is Gaza.
Following the pause, projectiles of death have rained down on Gaza from Israel’s war machine he said.
“This is a war against the Palestinian people”, he said. “Israel's goal is to erase not only a people but the entire idea of Palestine. It’s campaign is a carbon copy of the massive campaigns of racial slaughter by other settler colonial regimes in history”, he added.

3:43 PM - US ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, introducing the US amendment, said that it was yet another resolution that failed to condemn Hamas.
"Our goal must be to stop the death the devastation and the destruction for the long-term and that is simply not a future Hamas wants to see", she said.
Ms. Thomas-Greenfield said the US is working towards a “sustainable peace,” and that the country agrees with some aspects of the resolution. “We agree that the humanitarian situation is dire, that it requires urgent and sustained attention…that civilians must be protected, consistent with international humanitarian law.”
The ambassador urged all states to support the Austrian amendment, and to “speak with one voice” to condemn Hamas for its terrorist actions on 7 October: “why is that so hard?” she asked. On the subject of reported sexual violence committed by Hamas during and after the attacks, Ms. Thomas-Greenfield said that the US supports an immediate investigation into the allegations.
She went to declare that US diplomacy had made the recent, week-long humanitarian pause possible, and that the country’s engagement with Egypt and Qatar had made hostage release possible.

3: 34 PM - Austria’s ambassador Alexander Marshik said his country "has thoroughly considered the draft resolution before us today,” welcoming the text explicitly demanding the release of all hostages and demanding humanitarian access.
He called on delegates to accept their short amendment, which cites the role of Hamas in instigating the latest escalation of violence.
“This resolution falls short in many ways, including the right of Israel to ensure its citizens are safe and naming the terrorist group in taking of hostages,” he said.
He said that if the UN Security Council was able to name the extremist group Hamas in a resolution that was adopted, the UN General Assembly "should also have the courage to do the same. We therefore ask all of you to support the amendment.

3:22 PM - Egypt’s ambassador Osama Mahmoud Abdelkhalek Mahmoud, said the resolution was "very simple, clear and explicit", and long overdue.
“It only includes four operational paragraphs …however, the implementation of these paragraphs are yet to happen, even though the tragic humanitarian situation is unbearable for the Palestinians,” he said.
He noted the destruction of the health and humanitarian support system in Gaza, and recalled the letter by the UNRWA Commissioner-General highlighting the dire situation in the enclave.
“The adoption and implementation of [this resolution] which is specifically calling for a ceasefire is the only guarantee for saving innocent civilians,” the Ambassador said.
"The Arab group stresses that the efforts by a minority of States standing against international public opinion" were based on the concept that Israel has a right to defend itself, But he added that as the occupying power, Israel does not have that right, under international law, claiming a "despicable" case of "double standards", related to Palestinians.
War crimes against Palestinians needed to be addressed, he said.
He said genocide was being used as a tool of war in the case of Palestine, and it left unchecked it would damage the credibility of the whole UN.

3:10 PM - ‘One singular priority’: Assembly President
Declaring the 10th Emergency Special Session open once more, Assembly President Dennis Francis highlighted the new request to meet once again in light of the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Mr. Francis opened his statement, saying there was now “an onslaught on civilians, the breakdown of humanitarian systems and profound disrespect for international law and international humanitarian law” being shown by combatants.
Even war has rules and we must not deviate from core principles and values, he said.
Almost 70 per cent of the dead are women and children, he said.
He said the world was witnessing an “unprecedented collapse” of a humanitarian system “in real time”. The UN must bring an immediate end to the suffering of civilians, he insisted.
It is high time for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, he said.
Assembly President Francis underscored the urgency to bring to an end the suffering of innocent civilians.
He reiterated the demand for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.
“We have one singular priority – only one – to save lives,” he stressed.
“Stop this violence now”, he said.

3:07 PM - Meeting called to order
The President of the General Assembly Dennis Francis is in his seat just above the iconic podium and has just gavelled the meeting to order.

3:05 PM - The UN General Assembly Hall is filling up with delegates, eagerly anticipating this latest emergency meeting of the world body in New York on the Gaza crisis.

1:40 PM - So far there are 21 co-sponsors of the resolution and two amendments tabled.
Some 79 speakers are scheduled to address the Assembly so far and the session is expected to continue beyond this evening.
The General Assembly meeting comes on the heels of the latest Security Council meeting on Friday which failed to adopt a similar resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and unconditional release of hostages as well as humanitarian access.
That resolution was not adopted owing to a negative vote by a permanent member – United States, 13 Council members voted in favour and the United Kingdom abstained.
The Security Council’s emergency meeting was convened followed the Secretary-General’s invocation of Article 99 of the UN Charter – one of the most powerful tools at his disposal – urging the body to help end carnage in the war-battered enclave.

Check out our explainer on what a UN General Assembly emergency special session is and why it matters

The draft resolution is due to be voted on by the 193-member body, as well as amendments proposed by Austria and the US, respectively.
According to latest information, Egypt is slated to introduce the draft, which has been sponsored by Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, and State of Palestine.

The draft resolution in front of the Assembly this afternoon has some notable differences from the one vetoed by the US in the Council on Friday.
The draft takes note of a 7 December letter from the UNRWA Commissioner General addressed to the President of the General Assembly. In that letter, Philippe Lazzarini warned that the agency’s ability to implement its mandate in Gaza is “severely limited” and that the primary platform for humanitarian assistance to over 2.2 million people in the enclave is “on the verge of collapse”.
The draft also refers to previous resolutions regarding the Question of Palestine as well as the relevant Security Council resolutions on the topic.
It also authorizes the President of the General Assembly to resume the emergency special session, after its temporary adjournment at the end of the latest deliberations.
The key points in common, include an immediate humanitarian ceasefire; demanding that all parties comply with their obligations under international law, notably regarding protection of civilians; and a demand for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, as well as ensuring humanitarian access.

Austria has proposed an amendment, that inserts the phrase, “held by Hamas and other groups” in relation to the hostages still being held by Palestinian militants in Gaza, as well as inserting the word “immediate” in reference to ensuring humanitarian access.
The US amendment reflects its continued point of contention regarding Hamas, which it designates as a terrorist group, calling for wording to be inserted “unequivocally” rejecting and condemning “the heinous terrorist attacks by Hamas that took place in Israel starting 7 October 2023 and the taking of hostages” as the first operative paragraph.

Resolutions by the General Assembly, though not legally binding on nations, do carry immense moral weight, representing the collective resolve of the UN membership on a matter of grave importance.
These resolutions also lead to key legal frameworks and standards, such as the over 60 human rights instruments underpinning the international rights regime, which emanate from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Declaration was proclaimed by the General Assembly in 1948, and by itself is not binding.

Emergency session - The session today is a continuation of the tenth emergency special session of the General Assembly that last met on 26 October amid the present crisis in Gaza, during which it adopted a resolution on the crisis, calling for an “immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities.”>br> At the end of that meeting, the Assembly decided to adjourn the session temporarily and to authorize the President of the General Assembly to resume its meeting upon request from Member States.
The emergency special session is convened pursuant to the Assembly’s 1950 landmark “Uniting for Peace” resolution, under which the body can convene an “emergency special session” within 24 hours, should the Security Council “fail to exercise its primary responsibility” for the maintenance of international peace and security.
The session convened for the first time in April 1997, following a request from Qatar. It followed a series of Security Council and General Assembly meetings regarding the Israeli decision to build a large housing project in an area of East Jerusalem.

NOTE - The US vetoed a call for humanitarian pause by the UN Security Council back in October as well. In general, it seems that the US ambassador's default response in these sorts of negotiations regarding ceasefire or aid to Palestine is to vote against it.

Israel’s “Humanitarian” Expulsion

The Israeli right is capitalizing on the aftermath of October 7th to build support for a permanent transfer of Palestinians out of Gaza.

Author: Jonathan Shamir

ON NOVEMBER 13TH, Israeli lawmaker Danny Danon from the ruling right-wing Likud party joined his colleague Ram Ben-Barak from the liberal opposition Yesh Atid party to co-author a Wall Street Journal op-ed ostensibly concerned with “help[ing] civilians caught in the crisis” in the Gaza Strip. When the article was published, Israel’s total siege and massive bombardment campaign had already claimed more than 11,000 Palestinian lives in Gaza; at least 6,700 more have been killed since. But the op-ed made no mention of the Israeli actions behind the catastrophic conditions in Gaza and did not call for them to stop. Instead, Danon and Ben-Barak prescribed a different, ostensibly humanitarian solution for Palestinians’ plight: their permanent relocation from Gaza. “The international community has a moral imperative—and an opportunity—to demonstrate compassion,” the lawmakers wrote, calling on “countries across the world to accept limited numbers of Gazan families who have expressed a desire to relocate.”

The op-ed testifies to the growing prominence of what was once an extremist position within Israel: the call to push the remaining Palestinians out of historic Palestine. In the 1980s and ’90s, the idea of total Palestinian expulsion—prohibited under international law—was the sole bailiwick of extremist politicians such as Rehavam Ze’evi and Rabbi Meir Kahane. The proposal was largely absent from mainstream Israeli public discourse in the subsequent decades, but has experienced a quiet resurgence that has paralleled the recent political ascendance of the Israeli far right. In 2016, a Pew survey found that almost half of Israeli Jews supported the idea that Arabs should be “expelled or transferred from Israel.” According to Jewish studies scholar Shaul Magid, the far right’s success in the November 2022 election further “revived the idea of transfer.” As Israelis “increasingly feel that it’s either us or them” in the aftermath of Hamas’s October 7th attacks, Magid said, forced transfer out of Gaza, in particular, has become a live political option.

Once discussed plainly as a demographic and security strategy, the idea of expulsion is now being presented as a humanitarian response to the devastation in Gaza. Danon and Ben-Barak’s Wall Street Journal op-ed, which was accompanied with a publicity tour of TV studios in Israel and abroad, has been a prominent staging ground for this reframe. So far, the lawmakers’ call for a “moral” expulsion has been met with minimal pushback. Indeed, Danon’s claim in an MSNBC interview that the proposal would “help many families in Gaza” went completely unchallenged. Ben-Barak found similar success on Israel’s Channel 12—the country’s most watched TV station—where journalist Ohad Hamo responded to his proposal by saying that “it is the dream of every young Gazan to emigrate.” According to Magid, this repackaging of expulsion as humanitarianism has allowed the idea to take root among mainstream Israelis. Oren Persico, a journalist at the independent Israeli media watchdog The Seventh Eye, told Jewish Currents that “transfer is a prelude for the repopulation of Gaza by Jews,” and the popularity of both ideas is rising simultaneously: According to a recent Channel 12 poll, 44% of Israelis are now supportive of reestablishing Jewish settlements in Gaza. “While Kahane is still a persona non- grata,” Magid told Jewish Currents, his “ideas have become normalized, even taking on a semblance of liberalism. This allows people to feel a sense of moral comfort with the destruction [of Gaza].”

Calls to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from the Gaza Strip began soon after Hamas’s attack. On October 13th, four small Shabbat bulletins (local newsletters)—Olam Katan, Matzav Ruach, Shvi’i, and Shabbaton—published a joint supplement calling for the mass expulsion of Palestinians and the resettlement of Gaza by Jews. The idea soon broke into mainstream Israeli press, with right-wing journalist Erel Segal arguing in Israel Hayom, the country’s most widely distributed newspaper, that Palestinians from Gaza must be pushed into the Sinai. “On the ruins of Gaza and Rafah . . . neighborhoods, streets and squares named after the martyrs will be established. This is Jewish morality,” he wrote. But even as some on the Israeli right called for expulsion in unapologetic terms, other opinion makers began to rebrand the idea as a humanitarian stance. On November 22nd, for instance, the Shabbat supplement of the religious Zionist weekly Makor Rishon published a discussion between three thinkers on how the expulsion of Palestinians was the only “moral” response to October 7th, with one contributor going so far so to say that “transferring [Gazans] to other countries is no less than humanitarian rescue from a murderous regime.”

Influential conservative think tanks such as the Misgav Institute and the Tikvah Fund have also contributed to recasting the idea of Palestinian expulsion as Israeli munificence. Since October 7th, such groups have released numerous policy papers that, in the words of Haaretz’s Nettanel Slyomovics, “redefin[e] a population transfer as a ‘moral’ act.” In his policy paper for the Misgav Institute, Likud activist and businessman Amir Weitmann argues that Israel should push for the “resettlement and humanitarian rehabilitation of the entire Arab population of the Gaza Strip” in Egypt in exchange for billions of dollars in compensation. In an article in the Tikvah Fund periodical Hashiloach entitled “The Necessary, Moral, and Possible Solution to the Palestinian Refugee Crisis: Don’t Let Them Back Into Gaza,” editor-in-chief Yoav Sorek similarly reasoned that expulsion is the only way, short of “mass killings,” to ensure that a hostile regime does not continue to exist on Israel’s border. These think tanks are closely connected to lawmakers in the Knesset; the Tikvah Fund in particular played a major role in pushing Israel’s controversial judicial overhaul. Their influence was made explicit by Weitmann, who told the Israeli business newspaper Calcalist that he had passed his Misgav Institute policy paper on expulsion to the Intelligence Ministry. Immediately after, a leaked document revealed that the Ministry was starting to consider the expulsion of Gaza’s Palestinian population to the northern Sinai as one of three potential postwar scenarios.

In the last month, a striking number of Israeli officials have endorsed the idea of expulsion, now on humanitarian grounds. On November 19th, Israel’s intelligence minister Gila Gamliel wrote a Jerusalem Post op-ed calling for “the voluntary resettlement of Palestinians in Gaza, for humanitarian reasons, outside* of the Strip.” Simcha Rothman—one of the far-right ringleaders of Israel’s judicial overhaul and a close ally of the Tikvah Fund—similarly told the BBC that “any refugee in Gaza that wants a solution shouldn’t be held there . . . for political reasons.” On November 28th, Nissim Vaturi, the deputy speaker of the Knesset from the ruling Likud party, joined calls for the “voluntary transfer of the residents of Gaza and Judea and Samaria [the biblical name for the West Bank] . . . for their own good.” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has also begun using the language of “humanitarianism” to describe the expulsion proposal, which he had previously included as part of his 2017 plan to “end this conflict decisively once and for all in our favor.” These statements seem to be informing government policy. On November 30th, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered Ron Dermer—a close ally in the war cabinet—to work on a proposal to relocate Palestinians to other countries. While Israel has since denied that Dermer is working on such a plan, Netanyahu has pursued the same goal independently, lobbying the European Union to demand that Egypt take in Gazan refugees. His government has also discreetly circulated a plan to condition US aid to Arab states on their acceptance of Palestinian refugees.

According to Magid, Israeli history suggests that a return to the idea of expulsion has always been “on the table as a foolproof alternative to the Arab question.” In 1948 and 1967, Israel cumulatively displaced over a million Palestinians and seized their lands. This history is particularly salient in the Gaza Strip, where 81% of residents are Palestinian refugees from within Israel. “The Gaza Strip itself is a product of Palestinian expulsion,” Anne Irfan, a historian of migration in the Middle East, told Jewish Currents. Additionally, as a focal point for Palestinian militancy, the enclave has seen repeated displacement attempts in the name of “security and self-defense.” After Israel took over the Gaza Strip in 1967, for instance, the authorities tried to deport its residents to Jordan and then to the Sinai and even the occupied West Bank. According to Irfan, then-Prime Minister Levi Eshkol set up “emigration offices” in the enclave’s refugee camps and took steps to push down the standard of living in an explicit attempt to “thin out” Gaza’s population. Within just one year of these attempts, the population of the Gaza Strip fell by 13%, before Palestinian civil disobedience and militant attacks slowly ground these policies to a halt.

Despite its resurgent popularity, Persico said that the idea of expulsion “still hasn’t penetrated the heart of the mainstream.” So far, neither Israel’s international allies nor its own security establishment have officially announced the permanent expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called the proposal a “non-starter,” adding that it was opposed by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and “virtually every other leader,” while Egypt President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has expressed fears that such a move would turn the Sinai into “a base for launching operations against Israel” and would end up “liquidat[ing] the Palestinian cause.” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and army chief-of-staff Herzi Halevi, as well war cabinet ministers Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, reportedly view the proposal as “an unrealistic fantasy” as well as “a despicable and immoral plan.” Even Netanyahu has publicly stated that he has no intention to construct settlements in Gaza, likely due to his wariness of the costs of reoccupying the enclave. And on December 11th, after two months of pressure from Western diplomats, an Israeli government spokesperson dismissed the expulsion plans as an “outrageous and false allegation.” But according to Said Arikat, the Washington correspondent for the Palestinian newspaper Al-Quds, such stated reservations are coming up against mounting pressure to devise postwar plans. The US’s preferred solution, Arikat said, would be the return of a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority to Gaza, something Netanyahu adamantly opposes; the prime minister has also flatly ruled out any comprehensive political solution that would involve ending the occupation of Palestinian territories. Other options—such as bringing in the United Nations or a coalition of Arab states to administer the enclave—also have limited buy-in. According to Arikat, this lack of tenable options has created a vacuum within which expulsion advocates are able to maneuver.

While expulsion has yet to become Israel’s stated goal, however, it is already becoming a reality on the ground. In the past two months, the majority of people in Gaza—1.8 million out of a population of 2.3 million—have already been displaced, some of them multiple times, and Israel’s brutal bombardment campaign is leaving them little to return to. In over two months of airstrikes, deploying 25,000 tonnes of bombs, Israel has completely destroyed Gaza City—the largest Palestinian urban center. The bombings have left over half of the housing units across the Gaza Strip uninhabitable and caused the widespread ruination of civilian infrastructure, decommissioning half of the enclave’s hospitals and destroying a fifth of its bakeries. Such moves, which inhibit any prospect of ordinary life after the war, function as a de-facto expulsion of Palestinians out of Gaza. This is the explicit military goal of expulsion advocates like Raphael Ben Levi, the head of the Tikvah Fund’s Churchill Program for Strategy, Statecraft and Security (with which Dermer is also affiliated). On October 17th, Ben Levi wrote in a position paper that “it is incumbent upon Israel to act decisively to create an unbearable situation in the Gaza Strip, such that would force other countries to help with the departure of the population—and for the US to exert heavy pressure for this end.” Persico said that the Israeli army appears to be advancing just such a strategy: “There appears to be a connection between the [expulsion] plans and the army’s operational tactics.”

For Palestinians in Gaza, Irfan says, these unlivable conditions constitute an impossible bind: While many might want to temporarily flee Gaza to seek asylum from the bombings, leaving could mean they are never allowed to return. “The people who are trapped in Gaza have the right to seek asylum elsewhere, and that right has to be protected,” Irfan said. “At the same time, we have to ensure that such a move doesn’t just facilitate another round of expulsions.” Absent such a guarantee, however, Palestinians are left in the familiar predicament of choosing between death and displacement. “We have seen this history of war being used as a cover for ethnic cleansing time and again,” Palestinian American writer and political analyst Yousef Munayyer told Time. “It’s more than just rhetoric; it’s actual history repeating** itself.”

*Per this 2019 report from the UNCTAD, there exists resevoirs of oil and natural gas beneath the West Bank and Gaza strip that remained untapped due to prohibitions against Palestinian exploiting natural resources within their territories. It wouldn't surprise me if Israel's western backers are in part motivated by having access to these resources without having to purchase it from Arabs. - A.C.M.

**I have recently started reading about California's Kuupangaxwichem people (aka "Cupeño" or "Cupa people") and how they were relocated in the early 20th Century from their home it what is now Warner Springs to the Pala Indian Reservation, originally established for the larger Luiseño tribe. Not the most henious crime against natives committed by the Californian government, but definitely one of the most recent. The Cupa people had previously been denied rights to their land in 1901 by the Supreme Court in BARKER v. HARVEY , 181 U.S. 481 due to land being part of territory legally ceded by Mexico to the US.
The small tribe with a population of about 500 maintained strong religious connections with the hot springs and various geographical features of their homeland, so the forced relocation to unfamiliar land was more tramautic than this footnote can probably do justice. A resort was reportedly built on the site of one of their villages, and googling "Warner Springs California" does show ads for hot spring and ranch resorts.
I bring up the example of the Cupa people because, while I can find plenty of articles reflecting on their displacement, and I can find sites that display acknowledgements to the Cupa as the original inhabitants of Warner Springs, I cannot find much (if anything) concerning whether or not modern day members of the Kuupangxwichem are seeking to get their land back. At best I can find quotes from past members of the tribe expressing hope of returning someday. I hope their's some modern movement I just haven't learned about yet.
At the end of the day, I think most horrible crimes in history were not done by evil people, just carried out by regular people doing their jobs, following laws written by similarly regular people to whom indigeonous suffering was a distint hypothetical. In the end, the people who wonder how events like the Shoah and institutionalized slavery could have been allowed to happen are the exact same sort of people who would have been too scare or uncertain to stand against it. Even if Israel's government has not officialized it yet, the IDF is still basically carrying out a new Nakba on residents of Gaza, many of whom where already displaced in the first one in 1948. - A.C.M.

3 hostages killed by Israeli soldier in Gaza were waving a white flag, Israel says

Authors: Becky Sullivan, Kat Lonsdorf
published Dec. 15, updated Dec. 16

The Israeli soldier who shot and killed three Israeli hostages in Gaza City after mistakenly identifying them as a threat did not follow Israel's rules of engagement, an Israeli military official said Saturday.

A preliminary report on the incident also found that the hostages had been dressed in civilian clothes and waving a white flag before they were shot, the official said in a press briefing. Israel says Hamas wears civilian clothes to deceive the military.

Initially it was unclear how many Israeli soldiers were involved in the incident.

The incident took place Friday in the Shijaiyah neighborhood of eastern Gaza City, an area that has seen intense ground fighting between Israeli forces and the militant group Hamas since Israel launched its invasion in response to the Oct. 7 attacks.

"During the fighting in Shijaiyah, the IDF inadvertently identified three kidnapped Israelis as a threat. As a result, the IDF fired at them and they were killed," said Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, a spokesperson for the Israeli military, also known as the Israel Defense Forces, said Friday.

"This is a sad and painful event for all of us, and the IDF bears responsibility for everything that happened," he told reporters.

The circumstances in which the Israeli soldier encountered the hostages, and why the soldier believed the hostages were a threat, remain unclear.

An initial assessment suggested the hostages either "fled or were abandoned" by their captors during a skirmish, Hagari said. Asked whether the abductees had their hands up or spoke in Hebrew, Hagari responded only that the military's investigation was still underway.

The issue of the hostages has roiled Israel since Oct. 7. Families of the hostages and missing have mounted major pressure on Israel's political elite — pressure that has only grown in recent weeks as more hostages have spoken out about the conditions they experienced in captivity.

On Friday, news that three had been killed at the hands of an Israeli soldier prompted grief and outrage in Israel.

Soon after the announcement, which came after sundown on the Jewish Sabbath, thousands of Israelis flocked to the military's headquarters in Tel Aviv to protest the hostages' deaths.

Protester Ella Vinokur, 30, said she felt "rage" at the news. The military operation to eliminate threats to Israel must come "second to people dying," she said, her voice shaking as she called for more negotiations to free the remaining hostages.

"The grief and the pain, it just keeps accumulating," said Addam Yekutieli, 37. "It's even more of a tragic sign that the trajectory that we're on — it's not the right one."

In a statement, Israel's military expressed "deep remorse" over the incident.

"The IDF emphasizes that this is an active combat zone in which ongoing fighting over the last few days has occurred. Immediate lessons from the event have been learned, which have been passed on to all IDF troops in the field," the military said.

The Israeli military identified the three victims as Yotam Haim, 28, Samer Talalka, 25, and Alon Shamriz, 26.

Talalka, an Israeli Bedouin, was working with his father at a poultry hatchery in Kibbutz Nir Am on Oct. 7 when militants attacked, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement. Haim, a musician, and Shamriz, a computer engineering student, were at their homes in Kibbutz Kfar Aza when they were abducted, the group said.

Friday was the hostages' 70th day in captivity.

Militants kidnapped more than 240 Israelis and other foreign nationals during the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7. Some 110 have been freed, most of them during a seven-day ceasefire late last month in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners and detainees held by Israel.

At least 110 others are thought to remain alive in captivity in Gaza, according to the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Around 20 others are believed to be dead with their remains held by Hamas, according to Israeli officials.

"Together with the entire people of Israel, I bow my head in deep sorrow and mourn the fall of three of our dear sons who were kidnapped," said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a statement. "My heart goes out to the grieving families in their difficult time."

OPINION - The Israeli Defense Force has repeatedly bombarded civilian dwellings and refugee camps. They have repeatedly referred to civilian deaths as "collaterial damage" in strikes against Hamas targets. No matter what the official policy may be, in practice the Israeli military does not demonstrate regard the citizens of Gaza as worth protecting, and therefore trigger-happy soldiers are not held accountable for the deaths of noncombatents.

As stated in the article from Jewish Currents, there have previously been plans circulated to fully displace Palestinians in the warzone, plans that have drifted further into mainstream discussion from their roots in the right-wing fringes. Further more, a real estate company called Harai Zahav (already known for constructing illegal settlements along the West Bank), has allegedly begun advertising plans for new houses on the beaches of Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip. IDF soldiers have also made posts on social media bragging about "retaking" Gaza beaches, as though they are conquering it to resettle, and not just to free the hostages from Hamas (keep in mind, Israel was settling Gaza like they still are in the West Bank up until the mid 2000s, and it's not unlikely a fair number of people would be interested in moving back in after the Gazans are fully displaced.

Given all that, plus the apparent existence of untapped natural gas and oil reserves beneath Gaza, I have no doubt that between all the suffering and revenge-mongering and religious rhetoric, the end goal of this catastrophe is the same as many others like it; to eliminate an undesirable population and seize their land.