progressiveissuesblog

Where Olive Trees Weep -Documentary

Updated 2024-07-30

Where Olive Trees Weep offers a searing window into the struggles and resilience of the Palestinian people under Israeli occupation. It explores themes of loss, trauma, and the quest for justice.

We follow, among others, Palestinian journalist and therapist Ashira Darwish, grassroots activist Ahed Tamimi, and Israeli journalist Amira Hass. We also witness Dr. Gabor Maté offer trauma-healing work to a group of women who were tortured in Israeli prisons.

Ancient landscapes bear deep scars, having witnessed the brutal reality of ancestral land confiscation, expulsions, imprisonment, home demolitions, water deprivation, and denial of basic human rights. Yet, through the veil of oppression, we catch a glimpse of resilience—deep roots that have carried the Palestinian people through decades of darkness and shattered lives.

This emotional journey bares the humanity of the oppressed while grappling with the question: what makes the oppressor so ruthlessly blind to its own cruelty?   https://whereolivetreesweep.com/

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

Visa Waiver Program (VWP)

Updated 2024-07-30

2023-09-27 Joint Statement on the Designation of Israel into the Visa Waiver Program      Today, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas, in consultation with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, announced the designation of Israel into the Visa Waiver Program (VWP). By November 30, 2023, the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) will be updated to allow citizens and nationals of Israel to apply to travel to the United States for tourism or business purposes for up to 90 days without first obtaining a U.S. visa, a step which further strengthens the security, economic and people-to-people ties between the United States and Israel. Following updates in Israel’s travel policies, all U.S. citizens may request entry to Israel for up to 90 days for business, tourism, or transit without obtaining a visa. https://www.state.gov/joint-statement-on-the-designation-of-israel-into-the-visa-waiver-program/

2024-07-09 US, Israel sign final agreement needed for visa waiver, but key bills remain stuck     Israeli and US officials took another step on Thursday toward a long-awaited visa waiver deal between the two countries, signing the final bilateral agreement needed to implement the program.  Public Security Minister Omer Barlev, accompanied by Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked, signed the Preventing and Combating Serious Crime (PCSC) information-sharing agreement with US Embassy Deputy Chief of Mission Jonathan Shrier.

However, there is still a long way to go before Israel is eligible to join the Visa Waiver Program. The VWP requires additional legislation to be passed in the Knesset, which opposition parties led by Likud stymied before the Knesset was dissolved last week. https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-israel-sign-final-agreement-needed-for-visa-waiver-but-key-bills-remain-stuck/

2022-06-22 IMEU Policy Analysis #7: Biden’s Trip to Saudi, Israel Reinforces Human Rights Abuses    President Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia, Israel and the Palestinian West Bank in July undermines his administration’s professed commitment to advancing human rights in its foreign policy.

Biden’s trip could endorse Israel’s discrimination against Palestinian Americans by allowing Israel admission into the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) as it imposes new draconian restrictions on Palestinian Americans’ freedom to travel.

The VWP provides nationals of participating countries with visa-free access to the US provided that the participating countries provide reciprocal treatment to US citizens.

Israel’s decades-long pattern of discriminatory entry policies against Palestinian Americans renders it ineligible to join this program.   In July, Israel is set to implement draconian new restrictions that will severely limit the rights of Palestinian Americans to visit, live, work, study, and teach in the occupied West Bank, making Israel’s ineligibility for this program even more clear.

Members of Congress should press President Biden to respond to congressional concerns about Israel’s ineligibility to join the Visa Waiver Program and its new restrictions on the rights of Palestinian Americans to enter the West Bank.  https://imeu.org/article/imeu-policy-analysis-7-bidens-trip-to-saudi-arabia-israel-reinforces-author

2022-06-09 Progressive Lawmakers Ask Biden to Keep Israel Off Visa Waiver Program    Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib among Democrats voicing concern over ‘ethnically-based discrimination’ toward Arab and Muslim Americans, following new guidelines introduced by Israel’s Defense Ministry in the West Bank.  They are calling on the Biden administration to keep Israel out of the Visa Waiver Program due to its “disparate treatment” of Palestinians.  https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2022-06-09/ty-article/.highlight/what-progressives-want-to-get-from-israel-in-return-for-visa-waiver/00000181-43c6-ddb3-abd1-5fc7df430000

2021-11-14 Policy Analysis #3: Israel Is Not Eligible for Visa Waiver Program   After President Biden’s meeting on August 27 with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, the White House issued a readout stating the countries are “working together towards Israel’s inclusion in the Visa Waiver Program.”

The Visa Waiver Program is administered by the State Department and provides for reciprocal, visa-free entry to the United States and participating countries by their respective nationals. The program has stringent entry and security requirements. Despite Israel’s long-standing desire to join the program, its discriminatory treatment of US citizens based on their ethnic and religious identities and their political viewpoints has led to a high rejection rate of US citizens seeking entry to Israel and to Occupied Palestinian Territory it controls, rendering it ineligible for participation in the program.    

However, President Biden’s statement that he will “direct our teams to work toward Israel fulfilling the requirements of the visa waiver program to get that done” signal that Israel’s inclusion in the program could be imminent despite its systematic discrimination against US citizens. On October 26, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas confirmed that Israel is at the top of the list of four “candidates in the pipeline” for participation in the program, and Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan stated that “very significant progress has been made toward achieving the objective.”

Members of Congress must ensure that Israel ends its discriminatory treatment of US citizens, as required by US law and Israeli treaty obligations to the United States, discussed below, prior to its admission to the Visa Waiver Program.    https://imeu.org/article/policy-analysis-3-israel-is-not-eligible-for-visa-waiver-program

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

U.S.S Liberty Ship

Updated 2024-07-30

2023-06-05 USS Liberty – When Israel attacked the U.S.A. – Forgotten History    he USS Liberty was a floating CIA intelligence gathering platform monitoring all transmissions from all sources involved in the 1967 Six Day War. Israeli progress was followed as well as the Arab coalition of Egypt, Syria and Jordan.  Hosted by Colin Heaton. Forgotten History is a 10th Legion Pictures Production. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5WUIzrCxxo

2022-01-10 My Guest: The Director of “Sacrificing Liberty” – the 1967 Attack by Israel on the USS Liberty   What are the parallels between the 9/11 attacks and the outrageous attack on a US ship in international waters off the coast of Egypt in 1967?   Why did the US send the defenseless intelligence-collecting ship into a war zone without protective accompaniment?

Why did unmarked Israeli fighters and PT boats attack a plainly marked & flagged US naval vessel?  Why did President Johnson exclaim, “I want that goddam ship sunk!”?   Why was Israel’s enemy Egypt, blamed for the attack?

​My guest is Matthew Miller Skow, an award winning director and producer, known for his powerful documentaries ‘Omo Child’ and ‘Sacrificing Liberty’. He is currently working on his new feature documentary called The Greatest Reset, which will be released soon in 2022.​  https://richardgage911.substack.com/p/my-guest-the-director-of-sacrificing

2017-06-06 FIFTY YEARS LATER, NSA KEEPS DETAILS OF ISRAEL’S USS LIBERTY ATTACK SECRET   ON JUNE 8, 1967, an Israeli torpedo tore through the side of the unarmed American naval vessel USS Liberty, approximately a dozen miles off the Sinai coast. The ship, whose crew was under command of the National Security Agency, was intercepting communications at the height of the Six-Day War when it came under direct Israeli aerial and naval assault.    an attack that would leave 34 Americans dead and 171 wounded.

This week marks the 50th anniversary of the assault on the USS Liberty, and though it was among the worst attacks in history against a noncombatant U.S. naval vessel, the tragedy remains shrouded in secrecy. The question of if and when Israeli forces became aware they were killing Americans has proved a point of particular contention in the on-again, off-again public debate that has simmered over the last half a century. The Navy Court of Inquiry’s investigation proceedings following the incident were held in closed sessions, and the survivors who had been on board received gag orders forbidding them to ever talk about what they endured that day.  https://theintercept.com/2017/06/06/fifty-years-later-nsa-keeps-details-of-israels-uss-liberty-attack-secret/

2014-11-03 The Day Israel Attacked America | Special Series   Al Jazeera investigates the shocking truth behind a deadly Israeli attack on a US naval vessel.

In 1967, at the height of the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War, the Israeli Air Force launched an unprovoked attack on the USS Liberty, a US Navy spy ship that was monitoring the conflict from the safety of international waters in the Mediterranean. Israeli jet fighters hit the vessel with rockets, cannon fire and napalm, before three Israeli torpedo boats moved in to launch a second more devastating attack. Though she did not sink, the Liberty was badly damaged. Thirty-four US servicemen and civilian analysts were killed, another 171 were wounded.

Later Israel apologised for what it claimed to be a tragic case of mistaken identity. It said that it had believed the ship to be hostile Egyptian naval vessel. US President Lyndon Johnson was privately furious but publicly the White House chose not to challenge the word of its closest Middle East ally and accepted that the attack had been a catastrophic accident.    However, as this exclusive Al Jazeera investigation reveals, fresh evidence throws new light on exactly what happened that fateful day – and the remarkable cover up that followed.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx72tAWVcoM

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

United States Military Protest

Updated 2024-08-29

2024-08-21 Former Israeli and Palestinian Fighters Join With US GIs to Call for Peace in Gaza      A group of former fighters from Palestine and Israel plus active duty U.S. GIs announced last week why they decided to stop participating in war and urged U.S. military members to tell Congress to stop funding Israel’s genocide in Gaza via the ” Appeal for Redress v2.”

The online news conference was organized by Veterans For Peace and featured a former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) special forces member, a young Israeli who just finished 85 days in jail for refusing to join the military, a former Hamas youth activist, and three active-duty U.S. military members who are awaiting discharge as conscientious objectors.  

 Elik Elhanan is a former special forces soldier in the IDF who, from 1995-98, served in south Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza. In 1997, his 14-year old sister was killed by a suicide bomber in Jerusalem. He joined Courage to Refuse in 2002, co-founded the Israeli-Palestinian group Combatants for Peace in 2005, and now serves on the board of American Friends of Combatants for Peace. 

Sofia Orr, 19, spent 85 days in an Israeli military jail for refusing to join the Israeli Defense Force. Granted conscientious objector status and released in June, she wrote in her statement of refusal: “I refuse to enlist in order to show that change is needed and that change is possible, for the security and safety of all of us in Israel-Palestine, and in the name of empathy that is not restricted by national identity… I want to create a reality in which all children between the Jordan River and the [Mediterranean] Sea can dream without cages.” 

Ahmed Helou, now 52, lives in the West Bank and is a member of Combatants for Peace. He said: “I was born to a refugee family that was forced to flee from their home in 1948.  “At 15, I was invited to join a group called Hamas, to fight for the freedom of my people. It was 1987, the First Intifada. I threw rocks and made Palestinian flags. In 1992, I was sentenced to seven months in an Israeli military prison as a political detainee. When my parents visited, they told me about the Oslo process and I couldn’t stop thinking about how we could have another life.”

USAF Senior Airman Larry Hebert said: “As an active duty servicemember who joined believing our military was a force for good in the world, I’m horrified by the position of the United States government to fully support the genocide and occupation of civilians in Palestine.

USAF Senior Airman Juan Bettancourt said: “After 311 days, the death toll is appalling: nearly 41,000 innocent lives brutally taken, the majority women and children. Excruciating reports estimate a devastating total of 186,000 deaths, with almost 93,000 more suffering from severe injuries. Stories of widespread sexual violence, merciless executions, torture, and an endless list of war crimes flood the news, and yet our government remains apathetic to the suffering of Palestinians and the cries of millions calling for a lasting cease-fire and justice. As conscientious objectors, as advocates for peace and human rights, as service members with a shred of moral decency left in us, we adamantly refuse to be accomplices in this genocide.  

USAF Second Lt. Joy Metzler said: “As an active duty service member, I have been told repeatedly that military strength is the only way to counteract the threats we face in the world. But once again we see that violence, this time perpetrated by the Israeli government, only leads to death and destruction in an ever growing conflict.

Mike Ferner, special projects coordinator for Veterans For Peace, said: “It is highly significant that former fighters from Israel and Palestine have joined American GIs to say, ‘War is not the answer.’    https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/israeli-palestinian-fighters-peace

2024-06-23 Two US military airmen seek to become conscientious objectors over Gaza war   Two active members of the United States Air Force wish to leave military service and become conscientious objectors over Washington’s support for the Israeli military in Gaza.

Larry Hebert and Juan Bettancourt say they no longer wish to serve in the US military due to its role in the war, which has killed more than 37,400 Palestinians, mostly children and women.  They have officially requested, through an existing procedure in the military, to become conscientious objectors, people who refuse to participate in military service on ethical or moral grounds.

Hebert, a senior airman on active duty in the US Air Force, told Al Jazeera there is a long history of conscientious objectors from the US, including in protest against the wars in Vietnam and Iraq.  He said he hopes to highlight that becoming a conscientious objector is an option for other active-duty US soldiers.   He says he’s speaking for himself – not the military – and could not see what is happening in Gaza without protesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHfkzWdid20

2024-04-11 Veterans for Peace with Larry Hebert, Active Duty Airman on Hunger Strike for Palestine   Larry Hebert was able to join the show for this in-depth discussion of his hunger strike in support of Palestine and against the Biden foreign policy of Biden’s unconditional support of Israel’s genocide on Gaza. We missed our initially established interview time because Larry was directed to go to Walter Reed Army Hospital for blood work and a mental evaluation. After being cleared, he talked to us from the grounds of the US capital. We talked about his hunger strike, his protest, his frustration that Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation generated more of a response in the Middle East than it did in the US, and his disillusionment about the US Military. We finish with Eddie Mack and The Sound of War https://soundcloud.com/user-55976759/41124-veterans-for-peace-with-larry-hebert-active-duty-airman-on-hunger-strike-for-palestine

2024-04-04 Palestinian Writer Susan Abulhawa, Journalist Prem Thakker + Larry Hebert & Ann Wright    Palestinian novelist, poet and activist Susan Abulhawa reports back from her recent trip to Gaza where she observed the fallout of Israel’s genocidal war first hand. After that, journalist Prem Thakker talks about the attacks on Al Shifa and his interactions with the State Department’s spokesperson Matthew Miller. Then active duty Senior Airman Larry Hebert and Anne Wright join to talk about Larry’s hunger strike for Gaza which was inspired by Aaron Bushnell.

Susan Abulhawa is a Palestinian American writer and human rights activist. She is the author of Mornings in Jenin, which was translated into 32 languages and sold more than a million copies, The Blue Between Sky And Water and Against the Loveless World. She is the founder of Playgrounds for Palestine and the executive director of Palestine Writes (palestinewrites.org/).

Prem Thakker is a politics reporter at The Intercept, and is a former reporter at The New Republic. His work has also appeared in The American Prospect, Washington Monthly, CNN podcasts, and his newsletter Better World. You can find him on Twitter ( twitter.com/prem_thakker ), Instagram, and TikTok.

Air Force Active Duty Air Force Larry Hebert  Stationed at Naval Station Rota, Spain   Larry Hebert is a 26-year-old active duty senior airman in the United States air force stationed at Naval Station Rota, Spain. He is on hunger strike calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. His actions were inspired by Aaron Bushnell.

Ann Wright is a 29 year US Army/Army Reserves veteran who retired as a Colonel and a former US diplomat who resigned in March 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq. She served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. In December 2001 she was on the small team that reopened the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. She is the co-author of the book “Dissent: Voices of Conscience.”https://soundcloud.com/katie-halper/gaza-is-a-horror-film-palestinian-writer-susan-abulhawa-journalist-prem-thakker-on-al-shifa-hunger-strike-with-larry-hebert-ann-wright

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

United States Policy

Updated 2024-07-30

2022-11-30 FAQ #2: What Is US Policy Toward the Palestinian People and Israel?   The United States provides more taxpayer-funded weapons to Israel than any other country in the world. In fact, in most years, the US gives more weapons to Israel than all other countries in the world combined. Since World War II, Israel also has been the largest cumulative recipient of US funding. Giving these weapons to Israel, especially on such a large scale, makes the US directly complicit in Israel’s daily and systematic violation of Palestinians’ human rights. 

The Biden administration has committed rhetorically to centering human rights in US foreign policy. But when it comes to Palestine/Israel, the Biden administration has continued long-standing policies of enabling Israeli human rights abuses against Palestinians by failing to apply relevant US laws and enabling Israel’s abuses through diplomatic protection at the UN.   

 Under the Biden administration, the US resumed its long-standing bipartisan policy of humanitarian support for the Palestinian people, which was mostly ended during the Trump administration. The US provides budgetary assistance to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which provides social services, such as education and health care, to Palestinian refugees. The US also provides bilateral economic aid to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip through USAID-contracted projects.     

https://imeu.org/article/faq-2-what-is-us-policy-toward-the-palestinian-people-and-israel

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

United State Military Bases in Middle East

Updated 2024-07-30

2017-07-11 Satellites Reveal Secret U.S. Bases Emerging in the Desert   In 2013, when the United States first considered intervening in the Syria war, teams of U.S. Air Force commandos scouted out, across the Middle East, no fewer than 300 potential sites for new bases to support a possible intervention force.   Since then, the Pentagon has established or expanded scores of bases in Syria, Jordan, and Iraq, among many other countries.

Now we’ve located what appear to be another two new bases—one in Jordan near the border with Syria, and another a short distance across the same border in southern Syria. The two airstrips could support drones, helicopters, and special operations airplanes.

 In May 2017, DigitalGlobe released the first public images of H4. The site appears to support Air Force or CIA Reaper drones plus Jordanian military helicopters.

Among other facilities, Jordan is known to host a second U.S. drone base at Muwaffaq Salti, 33 miles south of the border with Syria. In November 2016, three U.S. Special Forces soldiers died when a Jordanian guard opened fire on their convoy at King Faisal Air Base in central Jordan.

The expansion of American base infrastructure makes possible the Pentagon’s escalating support for Iraqi military forces and pro-U.S. Syrian rebel groups battling the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. America’s anti-ISIS war plan builds upon initial planning that U.S. Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, completed more than three years ago.  https://www.thedailybeast.com/satellites-reveal-us-military-bases-emerging-in-the-desert

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

United States Jerusalem Embassy

Updated 2024-07-30

2022-12-08 IMEU Policy Analysis #8: US Plans to Build Jerusalem Embassy on Stolen Palestinian Land     The United States is moving forward with plans to build a new embassy in Jerusalem on land which Israel stole from Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons, including from Palestinian Americans.

1. Building an embassy in Jerusalem on land stolen by Israel from Palestinian refugees violates the private property rights of US citizens and other Palestinians. Palestinians have clear titles to this land, which was illegally expropriated by Israel.

2. This plan undermines the stated position of the US opposing Israel’s ongoing theft of Palestinian land for illegal colonization. The Biden administration cannot credibly oppose Israel’s expropriation of Palestinian land while doing the same thing to build a diplomatic compound in Jerusalem.

3. This plan reinforces the Trump administration’s reckless policy moves to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem and move the US embassy there. The Biden administration should not be taking further steps to consolidate the Trump administration’s dangerous reversal of 70 years of bipartisan US policy of not recognizing sovereign claims to Jerusalem.

4. In addition, President Biden has still failed to make good on a campaign pledge to reopen the US Consulate in Jerusalem, which served as an important diplomatic link between the US and the Palestinian people for more than 150 years before the Trump administration shut it down. https://imeu.org/article/us-plans-to-build-jerusalem-embassy-on-stolen-palestinian-land-imeu-policy

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

United States Intergenerational Split

Updated 2024-07-30

2024-05-25 Watching the watchdogs: The US media and intergenerational fault lines      As Israel continues to wage its genocidal war on Gaza, a fault line in American society is becoming increasingly more pronounced. University students are challenging the political establishment on university campuses across the country.  One side opposes US backing for Israel and profiteering from investments in arms industries, while the other supports the Israeli offensive and has urged police action to break up the student protest encampments.   https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/5/25/watching-the-watchdogs-the-us-media-and-intergenerational-fault-lines

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

United Nations Partition Plan of Palestine

Updated 2024-07-30

2022-05-05 The Nakba and Palestine Refugees | IMEU Questions and Answers   From an original estimated population of 750,000 in 1948, today there are more than 7 million Palestinian refugees worldwide, 5.7 million of whom are refugees registered with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), a specialized UN agency established in 1949 to provide social services to refugees.

Nakba is an Arabic word meaning “catastrophe” and refers to Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine, its exiling of Palestinians and making them into refugees, its dispossession of Palestinian property, its destruction of Palestinian cities, towns, and villages, and its attempt to erase the existence of the Palestinian people from its homeland in 1948.

Why Did Palestinians Not Accept the UN Partition Plan? 

At the time of the UN Partition Plan, which was recommended by the General Assembly in November 1947, the Zionist movement owned just 7 percent of the land of Palestine and Jewish people constituted only one-third of the total population. Despite this, the partition plan called for the establishment of a Jewish State in more than 55 percent of Palestine. Even within the proposed borders of the Jewish State, there would have been only a tiny majority of Jewish residents (498,000 to 497,000 Palestinians).

Palestinian political bodies, led by the Arab Higher Committee (AHC), rejected the partition plan as a violation of the principle of self-determination and majority rights. Instead, the AHC proposed that Palestine remain a unitary, democratic state with strong minority rights, including proportional representation for Palestine’s Jewish citizens in the legislature, and Jewish communal autonomy in some spheres.

Even though the United States voted in support of the partition plan, the Truman administration quickly realized that the partition plan could not be implemented and instead threw itself behind a proposal to place Palestine under a UN trusteeship until a political resolution could be found. The Truman administration reversed itself again by recognizing Israel.  https://imeu.org/article/the-nakba-and-palestine-refugees-imeu-questions-and-answers

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

United Nations – List of Shame

Updated 2024-08-29

2024-07-31 UN Probe Finds ‘Appalling Acts’ of Torture Against Palestinians Detained by Israel   The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on Wednesday released a report detailing torture and abuse of Palestinians at Israeli detention centers, including sexual violence, waterboarding, and the use of dogs.

Israeli security forces have also used electric shocks, burned detainees with cigarettes, and deprived them of food, water, sleep, and toilet access, according to the 23-page OHCHR report, based largely on interviews with released detainees. Some detainees said they were held with their arms suspended from the ceiling; were forced to be naked for prolonged periods, wearing only diapers; and were blindfolded for extended periods.

Israel security forces have arrested thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza since October, many of them arbitrarily; they held more than 9,400 “security detainees” as of the end of June, often in secret and incommunicado, without providing a reason for the detainment, the report says.

“The testimonies gathered by my office and other entities indicate a range of appalling acts, such as waterboarding and the release of dogs on detainees, amongst other acts, in flagrant violation of international human rights law and international humanitarian law,” U.N. Human Rights chief Volker Türk said in a statement accompanying the report. https://www.commondreams.org/news/israeli-detention-un-report

2024-07-31 UN Report Details Vast, Systemic Torture of Palestinians in Israeli Detention   Israeli forces are arbitrarily imprisoning at least 9,400 Palestinians, including children, the UN found.   The UN has released a report detailing the many instances of systemic torture and abuse that Israeli soldiers and police have performed on Palestinians they are imprisoning arbitrarily just in the last 10 months of Israel’s genocide.

The 23-page report by the UN Human Rights Office finds that Israeli forces are holding at least 9,400 Palestinians, including many children, in prisons and military facilities, with conditions in military facilities like the infamous Sde Teiman being particularly brutal. Israeli officers relentlessly torture detainees, using all variety of methods, encompassing humiliation, deprivation of basic needs, and physical abuse. The report also includes numerous testimonies from survivors of rape by Israeli guards. https://truthout.org/articles/un-report-details-vast-systemic-torture-of-palestinians-in-israeli-detention/

2024-07-24 Israeli Forces Have Killed 366 UN Workers and Their Family Members in Gaza   A leaked report obtained by Drop Site estimates that Israeli forces have killed at least 366 United Nations staffers and their family members in the Gaza Strip since October, an indication of the grave threat Israel’s ongoing assault poses to humanitarian relief workers and the enclave’s broader civilian population.

Drop Site’s Ryan Grim reported Wednesday that the confidential figures, assembled by the U.N.’s Crisis Coordination Center, show that three family members of World Food Program staffers and four dependents of U.N. Children’s Fund workers were among those killed by Israeli forces. The total number of U.N. staffers killed so far is 195, according to the data.

The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the primary aid agency operating in Gaza, has seen the largest impact on staffers and their family members. The leaked report estimates that Israeli forces have killed 158 dependents of UNRWA staffers since October.    https://truthout.org/articles/israeli-forces-have-killed-366-un-workers-and-their-family-members-in-gaza/

2024-06-07 ‘Historic, But So, So Late’: Israel Added to UN’s Child-Killing ‘List of Shame’      “It took a genocide that killed 15,000 children and maimed and scarred thousands more but the U.N. has finally and rightly added Israel to its List of Shame,” said one Palestinian observer.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres informed Israel on Friday that, for the first time, it is being added to the so-called “List of Shame” of countries that kill and injure children during wars and other armed conflicts, a decision that infuriated Israeli officials but was welcomed by human rights defenders as long overdue.

The Secretary-General Office’s annual Children and Armed Conflict report—which is likely to be released publicly later this month—has included countries and militant groups such as Afghanistan, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, Iraq, Islamic State, Myanmar, Russia, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. This is believed to be the first time the list has included a nation hailed by Western governments as a democracy.  https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-killing-children-2668478068

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World