Gaza
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Famine in Gaza is now unavoidable and will kill many civilian noncombatants even if more food aid starts getting in now.
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The responsibility for this starvation of children, women and noncombatant males lies squarely with Israel, which is obstructing food aid deliveries.
Israel Has Already Imposed Unavoidable, Exponential Famine on Gaza outpacing Somalia’s - ZNetwork
Juan Cole summarizes a story by prominent foreign policy journalist Colum Lynch:
Lynch has seen a memo entitled “Famine Inevitable, Changes Could Reduce but Not Stop Widespread Civilian Deaths,” which was produced by food security experts in US AID and the State Department, and which they sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken. These US officials gave the memo a subheading that is damning for the Israeli government of PM Benjamin Netanyahu: “Israel-imposed administrative challenges are preventing the delivery” of food.
So two things are being asserted:
That is all you need to know. These experts have never seen a situation so bad.
People are rightly disgusted by the puppy killer Kristi Noem.
But let’s keep in mind how many months Congress and the Biden administration have supported Israel in its ongoing and intentional killing of 34,000+ Palestinian civillians. A number that does not include the missing buried under rubble.
Anyone paying attention the past 7 months is not surprised and it’s taken too long to get to this point of acknowledgment.
State Department Internal memo: Israel may be violating international law in Gaza | Reuters
A joint submission from four bureaus - Democracy Human Rights & Labor; Population, Refugees and Migration; Global Criminal Justice and International Organization Affairs – raised “serious concern over non-compliance” with international humanitarian law during Israel’s prosecution of the Gaza war.
“Israel’s assurances were “neither credible nor reliable.”
Excellent commentary on recent White House statements on anti-semitism and the current protests against Israel. Just as Judaism is not Zionism, protests of Israel are not anti-semitism.
Manufactured Panic Over Peaceful Campus Protests Used To Distract From Genocide In Gaza - YouTube:
The White House Deputy press secretary putting out that particular statement once again makes it seem as though these protests are anti-semitic in nature against Jewish people broadly, it furthers a culture of violence toward Jewish people by continuing to conflate Zionism with Judaism…
Klein is lighting the way forward.
Thousands of Jewish Americans and allies gathered in Brooklyn on Tuesday for a “Seder in the Streets to Stop Arming Israel” on the second night of Passover…
“Too many of our people are worshiping a false idol, they are enraptured by it. They are drunk on it. They are profaned by it. And that false idol is called Zionism.” - Naomi Klein
Human solidarity.
“Seder in the Streets to Stop Arming Israel” | Democracy Now!
Hundreds of protesters were arrested in Brooklyn on Tuesday when Jewish New Yorkers and allies gathered for what they called a “Seder in the Streets to Stop Arming Israel” on the second night of Passover…
“At the core of the Passover story is that we cannot be free until all people are free… The Israeli government and the United States government are carrying out a genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, over 34,000 people killed in six months in the name of Jewish safety, in the false name of Jewish freedom.”
Palestinian solidarity protests and encampments are appearing on college campuses from Massachusetts to California to protest Israel’s attacks on Gaza and to call for divestment from Israeli apartheid. This week, police have raided encampments and arrested students at Yale and New York University….
Uptown in New York City, the encampment at Columbia University is entering its seventh day despite mass arrests of protesters last week.
Great to see these protests gaining momentum.
On April 22, 2024, inspired by the resilience of the Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia University and other demonstrations around the country, students at Cal Poly Humboldt campus in Arcata, California occupied a building in solidarity with Palestinians, precipitating a showdown with police from throughout the region. In the following report, participants in the occupation describe what took place and what they learned.
Most nations have resumed funding to UNRWA which is the main channel of humanitarian support to Palestinians in Gaza as well as Palestinian refugees across the region. But with no evidence the US Congress permanently banned funding to UNRWA agency.
The US and Israel: Genocide, war crimes, apartheid.
I posted earlier today that I’d seen a drop off in reporting on the famine in Gaza. The April 9 article from Human Rights Watch that I linked was reporting famine stats from April 2. I’ve not seen any more recent stats. We’re now at April 20 and articles like the following from the Guardian today continue to describe the famine as looming with little to no new information. Is this just the result of journalists being restricted from the area?
Famine looms, made worse by acute shortages of shelter, medicine and clean water. Almost everyone in the enclave now depends on donated food, after more than six months of war has destroyed homes and decimated Gaza’s economy.
Daily aid shipments are still not even half the minimum levels the UN says are needed to keep more than two million people alive.
Israeli authorities, the US and humanitarian organisations have all said that deliveries should return to prewar levels of about 500 truckloads of aid a day. On Friday, only 250 trucks entered the enclave, UN figures showed, and that was the highest in April.
After more looking I’m still finding little in the way of recent updates. Suddenly intentional famine as a weapon doesn’t matter? Or is everyone in Gaza getting food?
Gaza: Israel’s Imposed Starvation Deadly for Children | Human Rights Watch
Gaza’s Health Ministry reported as of April 1, that 32 people, including 28 children, had died of malnutrition and dehydration at hospitals in northern Gaza. Save the Children confirmed on April 2 the deaths from starvation and disease of 27 children.
Media reports of famine in Gaza have dropped to near zero in the past 5 days. So is the food suddenly flowing in or is it just the attention span of the media shifting to the Iran story? I did find this:
Germany and Israel argued heatedly over images from Gaza during their meeting in Jerusalem earlier this week, with Germany’s Foreign Minister contending the images fail to show the reality of famine in the enclave, Israeli media reports said Friday.
We need to support social justice in tech. Solidarity. An excellent post by Ben Werdmuller: No tech for apartheid is within its rights to protest | Werd.io
There is nothing honorable about supporting your employer as it commits or facilitates human rights violations. Protesting is the ethical thing to do…
Human rights should always trump business.
The US is isolated in its support of Israel, a state actively engaged in land theft, war crimes and genocide. Shameful.
The vote in the 15-member security council was 12 in favor, the US opposed and two abstentions, the UK and Switzerland.
Before the vote, diplomats said the US mission had been trying to convince one or two other council members to abstain, to mitigate Washington’s isolation on the issue…
We could do with far more worker activism like this. Genocide in Gaza and also the climate emergency, both are crises that need more activism. Not easy to put one’s livelihood on the line in a protest.
Organized by the group No Tech for Apartheid, the protesters are demanding Google withdraw from Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract to provide cloud computing services to the Israeli military.
Democrats Question U.S. Claims That Israel Isn’t Violating International Law Using American Weapons
More than two dozen House Democrats sent a letter to the Biden administration on Tuesday questioning its assertions that the Israeli government is using American weapons in full compliance with U.S. and international law, as required by a memo President Joe Biden issued in February.
Texas Democratic Reps. Veronica Escobar and Joaquin Castro led the congressional letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines. The 26 Democrats note that for months, “elected representatives, intergovernmental bodies, international courts, Israeli and global human rights observers — along with government officials themselves — have persistently expressed grave concerns regarding the actions of the Netanyahu government.”
Documenting Six Months of Israeli War Crimes in Gaza
Over the last six months, Israel has repeatedly massacred Palestinians in Gaza, resulting in the deaths of well over thirty thousand Palestinians, some 70 percent of whom are women and children. Tens of thousands more have been injured. These numbers are probably an undercount considering Israel’s deliberate destruction of Gaza’s health care system, which is the sole independent source of these numbers (which are also used by Israel, including its prime minister and the military)
Breaking it down by the numbers. Damning but not surprising.
“One of the reasons I am hosting this new weekly show for Zeteo, is that I am fed up with media organizations failing to challenge the racism and bigotry of our leaders, and I am also fed up with media organizations themselves pushing racist, bigoted, dehumanizing coverage of minorities across the board - but especially, especially, of the Palestinians. I think the world deserves better.”
UN Report Describes Abuse and Dire Conditions in Israeli Detention - The New York Times
Gazans released from Israeli detention described graphic scenes of physical abuse in testimonies gathered by United Nations workers, according to a report released on Tuesday by UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees.
Palestinian detainees described being made to sit on their knees for hours on end with their hands tied while blindfolded, being deprived of food and water and being urinated on, among other humiliations, the report said. Others described being badly beaten with metal bars…
Protestors Against Gaza Genocide Block Roads, Commerce in 50 Cities Across the World | Truthout
Demonstrators across every inhabited continent took to the streets to block major corridors and spots of economic activity on Monday, April 15, in a coordinated economic disruption to protest Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The “A15” protests were planned across 50 cities, including 21 in the U.S., encompassing 17 countries in total. Protesters blocked shipping ports and railroads, targeted funders of arms manufacturers like Israel’s Elbit Systems, blocked factories for arms manufacturers directly, and linked arms across major roads, including highways and airport entrances.