progressiveissuesblog

Olympics Paris

Update 2024-08-28

2024-08-12 Shot Putter Paralyzed by Israeli Sniper Is Palestine’s Lone Paralympian      Following an Olympic Games that activists said was tainted by the participation Israeli athletes including a flag-bearer who signed bombs bound for Gaza, a shot putter who was disabled by an Israeli sniper and who lost at least 17 relatives to Israel’s onslaught is set to be the sole Palestinian competitor at the upcoming Paralympics in Paris.

“I want to raise my country flag here in Paris and to show the people we are still here,” 39-year-old Fadi Deeb said during a Monday interview with Democracy Now! ahead of the August 28 Paralympic Opening Ceremony. “We’re still alive—we have hopes, we have dreams, we have goals.” https://www.commondreams.org/news/palestine-olympics

2024-07-26 Paris Olympics Slammed for Mass Displacement, Militarization and Greenwashing     Just hours before Friday’s opening ceremony for the 2024 Summer Olympics, a series of apparently coordinated arson attacks were reported on France’s high-speed rail network. No one has claimed responsibility yet.

Before the games, protests highlighted the displacement of thousands of migrants, unhoused people and other vulnerable communities as “social cleansing.” We go to Paris for an update with Jules Boykoff, former professional soccer player, author and scholar focusing on the Olympic Games, and Paul Alauzy, Paris-based activist with the collective Revers de la Médaille (Other Side of the Medal). “We are not anti-Olympics,” says Alauzy. “You can support the games, but you need to know that they have a big social impact and they come with a cost. And they come with a cost of the lives of hundreds, thousands of people being mistreated.”

We also discuss how Palestinian athletes are taking part in this year’s Olympics amid the Israeli war on Gaza, the health risks of competing during rising heat and COVID, the environmental impact of major sporting events and more. https://truthout.org/video/paris-olympics-slammed-for-mass-displacement-militarization-and-greenwashing/?

2024-04-09 Why Israel Should Be Banned From the Paris Olympics    If the IOC has excluded Russia from the games for actions contrary to the Olympic ethos of peace, then consistency demands scrutiny of all participants.    Given the IOC’s stance that violators of international peace should not partake in global events like the Olympics, it begs the question: Why is Israel not subject to similar prohibitions?

Historically, even in the absence of IOC intervention, host nations have exercised their right to impose sanctions on countries compromising global peace, often supported by international allies and civil society movements. The expectation for the IOC, and other nations, to prevent Israeli participation is rooted in historical actions.

For example, Belgium, hosting the 1920 Olympics, excluded its geopolitical adversaries, including Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Turkey, with Germany’s exclusion extending until 1928. Similarly, the 1928 London Olympics did not extend invitations to Japan and Germany. These decisions were autonomously made by the host countries. However, the IOC itself has taken decisive action, such as barring South Africa from the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and maintaining this exclusion through the 1968 Mexico City games until the apartheid regime’s end in 1992. The IOC invoked a comparable rationale to exclude Afghan athletes during Taliban rule in 2000. Recent reports suggest that Israel intends to send a substantial delegation to the upcoming Olympic Games. Amid this, there is a growing discourse on the IOC’s impartiality and the potential for international advocacy to influence its policies. Questions are being raised about the IOC’s consistency in upholding its standards, particularly in light of allegations regarding the repurposing of Gaza’s Elimuk Stadium. Reports of the stadium’s conversion into a detention and interrogation center have sparked calls for accountability and action. Furthermore, the reported destruction of the Gaza Olympic Committee’s office and the killing of Palestinian athletes have intensified debates over Israel’s participation in the Paris Olympics. In light of these events, organizations like Amnesty International have highlighted the urgency of investigating alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza.  https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/israel-2024-olympics

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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

October 2000 Riot

Updated 2024-07-30

Ten Days in October – Documentary   The unfolding of Israel’s October 2000 Riots.   The ‘October events’ in 2000 saw mass civilian rioting in Israel, forever altering the relations between Israeli Arabs and the State. Interweaving news clips, footage from protesters, and other incredible source material, Ten Days in October recounts the events as they unfolded around Israel, hour by hour, culminating in a tragic death toll, and hundreds injured.     https://www.journeyman.tv/film/7970

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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

Nova Festival

Updated 2024-07-29

A grab taken from a UGC video posted on the Telegram channel “South First Responders”, Oct. 9, 2023, shows the aftermath of an attack on the Supernova music Festival by Palestinian militants, near Kibbutz Reim in the Negev desert in southern Israel on October 8.    South First Responders/AFP via Getty Images

A grab taken from a UGC video posted on the Telegram channel “South First Responders”, Oct. 9, 2023, shows the aftermath of an attack on the Supernova music Festival by Palestinian militants, near Kibbutz Reim in the Negev desert in southern Israel on October 8.   South First Responders/AFP via Getty Images

An aerial picture shows the abandoned site of the weekend attack on the Supernova desert music Festival by Palestinian militants near Kibbutz Reim in the Negev desert in southern Israel on Oct. 10, 2023.  Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images

Documentary on October 7 Supernova festival massacre makes US debuts 2024-02-23   Days after the Hamas onslaught, filmmaker Duki Dror headed to the devastated rave site near Re’im. It is now his mission to show the world ‘Supernova: The Music Festival Massacre’ https://www.timesofisrael.com/documentary-on-october-7-supernova-festival-massacre-makes-us-debut/

The Nova Music Festival Exhibition    https://www.novaexhibition.com/  

SUPERNOVA: THE MUSIC FESTIVAL MASSACRE – 24th Annual Atlanta Jewish Film Festival Official Selection   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyPp5axa570

Nova Music Festival Tel Aviv    https://www.bing.com/search?q=Nova%20Music%20Festival%20Tel%20Aviv&qs=ds&form=ATCVAJ

Re’im music festival massacre   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re%27im_music_festival_massacre

2024-06-12 Scooter Braun on His Nova Music Festival Exhibition: “We’re Not Going to Stop, and We’re Going to Los Angeles Next”   Inspired by a visit to the hallowed grounds where 360 young Israelis were murdered by Hamas on Oct. 7, the new exhibit from the music mega-manager has already hosted 100,000 visitors — despite violent protests outside.    https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/scooter-braun-nova-music-festival-exhibit-new-york-protests-1235921371/

2024-04-22 Dashcam shows Hamas gunman shooting freely during music festival attack    The Israel Defense Forces took CNN’s Anderson Cooper to the site of the Nova music festival in Israel, where 260 people were killed. https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/10/14/hamas-nova-festival-attack-site-visit-cooper-dnt-ac360-vpx.cnn

2024-06-11 Political leaders condemn protest at Nova exhibit in NYC as “repulsive and vile”    Leaders are speaking out to condemn a protest outside an exhibit commemorating the victims of the Hamas terror attack on the Nova Music Festival on Oct. 7 that sparked the current Israel-Hamas war.    On Monday night, pro-Palestinian demonstrators lit smoke canisters and flares outside The Nova Music Festival Exhibition in Lower Manhattan, which pays tribute to the victims of the terror attack.https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/political-leaders-condemn-protest-at-nova-exhibit-in-nyc-as-repulsive-and-vile/ar-BB1o30VU?ocid=BingNewsSerp

2024-04-16 Nearly 50 attendees of Israel’s Nova festival died by suicide since Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack, survivor says    Nearly 50 traumatized revelers who survived the Hamas attack on the Nova music festival in Israel have died by suicide in the last six months because they were unable to cope with the tragedy, a survivor revealed Tuesday.

“Few people know, but there have been almost 50 suicides among the Nova survivors. This number, which was true two months ago, may have increased since,” Nova festival survivor Guy Ben Shimon told a parliamentary hearing for a State Audit Commission on the treatment of the Oct. 7 survivors.   He said many of his friends who escaped the massacre could not recover from what they had witnessed, 

The hearing focused on alleged failures by state entities toward the survivors of the Hamas attack on the Jewish state.  Complaints have been made about a variety of difficulties, mostly bureaucratic, that the survivors faced in getting their post-traumatic stress disorder recognized and treated, according to the outlet. https://nypost.com/2024/04/16/world-news/nearly-50-attendees-of-israels-nova-festival-died-by-suicide-since-oct-7-hamas-terrorist-attack-survivor-says/

2024-01-04 ‘A circle of death’: Nova festival survivor recalls 15-mile barefoot escape from Hamas     Nadav Hanan describes evading seven ambushes on 7 October when hundreds of young Israelis were murdered.  Hanan’s story of escape is one of the most detailed to emerge from the festival, where as many as 360 young Israelis were murdered on 7 October.  

Nadav Hanan was at the smaller of the dance stages at the Nova dance festival in southern Israel when Hamas attacked.   It was the beginning of an extended nightmare for the 27-year-old that saw him zigzag more than 15 miles of rough ground barefoot, surviving seven ambushes by Hamas attackers along the route to safety.   “It was after 6am. It was the peak of the party,” Hanan recalled in a bar in the Israeli city of Rehovot last month. “A lot of people time their drugs to kick in for sunrise at these parties. It should be one of the best moments.   “The people at the main stage couldn’t see what was happening but we had a clear view of Gaza. We could see Iron Dome [the Israeli anti-missile defence system] working. I knew the party was over.” 

“We were thinking about going right, which takes you south, when we saw another car approaching from that direction on the wrong side of the road,” he said. “There were two guys, really frightened. They told us they had got as far as a gas station where they were shot at. It was hard to believe. I served as a combat soldier in this area. If terrorists had come through, I was thinking, it would be half an hour then it would be over.” 

At this point in Hanan’s escape his phone rang. His reserve commander was calling him up for duty. Explaining he was already in the area, Hanan asked for help. The commander said he could not help and wished him luck.   The pickups took the festivalgoers to safety. It was four in the afternoon. They had been running for almost 10 hours.

Three months on, Hanan said his ordeal was far from over. If he allows his gaze to settle for too long, he experiences flashbacks. Noises as simple as the thrumming of fingers on a table sound like gunfire. “Whenever I am in traffic now I find myself calculating how many cars are ahead of me and asking why are they stopping,” he said. “[I wonder] is it an attack?”  Therapy that began two days after 7 October had helped, he said, as had the provision of retreats for the Nova survivors at a hotel in Cyprus.  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/04/nadav-hanan-nova-festival-survivor-recalls-25km-barefoot-escape-from-hamas

2023-12-23 Israel’s Yes says Nova documentary is most viewed film in company’s history   https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/israels-yes-says-nova-documentary-is-most-viewed-film-in-companys-history/

2023-12-19 Noa Argamani became the face of the Nova music festival hostages    BE’ER SHEVA, Israel — The video of her kidnapping has been seen around the world.   A hand outstretched, terror etched on her face, screaming as she is carried away on the back of a motorcycle, the roughly 10-second clip became an instant symbol of Israel’s hostage crisis.

But more than two months after Noa Argamani was abducted from the Supernova, or Nova, music festival during the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, she remains a captive in Gaza. Even as other young civilian women were released during a weeklong ceasefire in November, there has been no sign of Argamani.

BC News has uncovered information indicating she may not have been kidnapped by Hamas, but was instead most likely abducted by a mob of Gazans that swept into Israel hours after the initial attack. That may explain why she was not released during the November cease-fire: Hamas may not be holding her, or even know where she is.     Argamani is among 14 female civilians who have yet to be released by their captors. More than two months after she was taken hostage, friends and family are growing more desperate to know her fate, and why she hasn’t been freed alongside about 100 others. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/noa-argamani-israel-hamas-hostages-nova-music-festival-rcna129792

2023-12-06 Bringing broken survivors of the Israel Nova festival attack back from darkness   More than 360 young partygoers were shot, beaten or burnt to death by Hamas attackers, who stormed the festival site near the Israel-Gaza perimeter fence early that morning. Another 40 were taken hostage.

First, social media posts showed panicked crowds fleeing from rockets fired from Gaza and gunmen on the ground. Later, distressing videos from first responders began to confirm the scale of the massacre, as they filmed scores of murdered partygoers.  In the following days, Dr Lia Naor realised that – unlike those who’d been evacuated from their nearby kibbutzim – the young people from the festival who lived through the ordeal didn’t have a community already around them to give support.  So she built one.  “I just wanted them to be held,” Dr Naor explains.

“They were so fragmented and so frozen. Then there was the brokenness of faith that they that had felt – there’d been nobody there for them, not their parents, not the army, not the police. Nobody was there to save them. So the first thing was just getting them to feel secure and in a healing space.” https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67636785

****2023-12-05 Their bodies tell their stories. They’re not alive to speak for themselves.   n one photo, a burned body appears to project anguish. In another, a woman lies naked from the waist down, her underwear hanging from her leg. In interviews, first responders haltingly describe finding naked female corpses tied to beds and survivors recount witnessing a gang rape at the music festival.  All of this is part of a mounting body of evidence of the gender-based crimes carried out by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7.

Over the last several weeks, NBC News has reviewed five interrogations of captured Hamas fighters, an Arabic-language document that instructed Hamas how to pronounce “Take off your pants” in Hebrew, six images of naked or partially naked deceased female bodies, seven eyewitness accounts of sexual violence including both rape and mutilation, 11 testimonies of first responders, and two accounts from workers in morgues who handled the bodies of women after they were recovered from the massacre.

The evidence, primarily from the Israel Defense Forces and Israeli officials, suggests that dozens of Israeli women were raped or sexually abused or mutilated during the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks. According to first responders, one was mutilated with a pair of scissors and another stabbed with a knife. The genitals of some men who had been killed were mutilated as well.

Israeli officials say that Hamas militants were instructed to systematically carry out sexual violence on women and children. “This was systematic gender-based violence that was so horrific it’s hard for me to find the words,” said Cochav Elkayam-Levy, the chair of a newly created Civil Commission on Oct. 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children.

Hamas has denied its militants committed sexual crimes against women.   Two Israeli investigators cautioned against the use of precise numbers of rape victims at this stage. They told NBC News that evidence continues to come in and that the investigation is likely to go on for months.  https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/hamas-rape-israeli-women-oct-7-rcna128221

2023-11-18 Israeli Security Establishment: Hamas Likely Didn’t Have Advance Knowledge of Nova Festival   Senior Israeli security officials estimate that Hamas found out about the Nova music festival through drones or from those flying in parachutes, and directed the terrorists to the location using their comms system    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-18/ty-article/.premium/israeli-security-establishment-hamas-likely-didnt-have-prior-knowledge-of-nova-festival/0000018b-e2ee-d168-a3ef-f7fe8ca20000

2023-10-12 Timeline: How a night of dancing turned into the worst civilian massacre in Israel’s history   ABC News verified witness videos from the Supernova music festival.   Plotting the routes of the survivors — some escaped through fields, while others hid in bushes for hours before reaching safety — their powerful testimonies show the depths of their desperation.

ZAKA, a volunteer emergency group in Israel, has said 260 bodies have been recovered from the concert site. As more families of the missing receive the news they feared, grim details continue to emerge. 

Rudaeff told ABC News that during his escape, he learned his father had been kidnapped while defending the family’s kibbutz from militants. “This nightmare doesn’t stop at that party,” he said.   Echoing many other survivors who wanted their videos to be seen, Rudaeff wants the world to know what they went through and are still going through.  https://abcnews.go.com/International/timeline-israel-supernova-music-festival-civilian-massacre/story?

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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

Netanyahu Congressional Address

Updated 2024-08-28

2024-08-02 Rashida Tlaib: A Profile in Courage    During the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., famously said, “The time is always right to do what is right.”  While she may have been a lone protest voice during Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech to a joint session of Congress last week, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) did what is right.

Most mainstream news reporting either ridiculed her or only briefly mentioned her silent protest displaying a sign with “War Criminal” printed on one side and “Guilty of Genocide” on the other. Missing was any analysis as to whether she was right. Let’s look at the facts.    https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/rashida-tlaib-courage

2024-07-27 In US, Netanyahu Spoke of “Democracy” But Offers Indefinite Apartheid     Speaking before a joint session of Congress this week in an attempt to justify the mass destruction and death wrought by Israel’s war on Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu preached about his country’s “powerful and vibrant democracy” to applause from an audience dominated by Republicans as protests raged outside the Capitol.

Issa Amro, a Palestinian activist living under Israeli occupation in Hebron in the West Bank, said Americans should not be fooled. Military occupation and democracy are contradictory, Amro argued, and alleged war criminals such as Netanyahu have no right to talk about “democracy” when Palestinians living under illegal occupation face state-backed violence and displacement.

“For sure I live under Israeli apartheid and Israeli occupation and Israeli supremacy,” Amro told Truthout after the speech. “Netanyahu can’t talk about democracy when his government is occupying the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem and not allowing us to practice our own freedoms.”  https://truthout.org/articles/in-us-netanyahu-spoke-of-democracy-but-offers-indefinite-apartheid/

2024-07-25 Netanyahu Vows to “Finish the Job Faster” in Gaza If US Gives Him More Weapons    n his speech to Congress on Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a direct appeal to U.S. lawmakers to send Israel more weapons, vowing, chillingly, that the weapons shipments would enable Israel to “finish the job faster” in Gaza.

Netanyahu drew one of the clearest lines yet between the supply of U.S. weapons and Israel’s genocidal assault of Gaza, essentially straight out saying that the slaughter has been made possible by U.S. assistance — and that the speed of Israel’s genocide is scaled to how many U.S. weapons they receive.

“Fast tracking U.S. military aid can dramatically expedite an end to the war in Gaza and help prevent a broader war in the Middle East,” said Netanyahu, who tried to stoke war with Iran later in the speech. https://truthout.org/articles/netanyahu-vows-to-finish-the-job-faster-in-gaza-if-us-gives-him-more-weapons/  

2024-07-25 Palestinian Human Rights Lawyer Slams Lawmakers Who Cheered Netanyahu’s Speech   We speak with Palestinian human rights lawyer Noura Erakat about Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress, in which he defended Israel’s brutal war on Gaza, lied repeatedly about the dire humanitarian conditions on the ground and refused to talk about how to reach a ceasefire to end the bloodshed. Although more than 100 Democrats skipped the speech, Erakat says the jubilant reaction from lawmakers in attendance showed U.S. leaders cheering “for what is essentially a war on children.”https://truthout.org/video/palestinian-human-rights-lawyer-slams-lawmakers-who-cheered-netanyahus-speech/

2024-07-24 Not Welcome: Jewish & Palestinian Activists Protest Netanyahu’s Address to Congress, 400 Arrested     Some 400 Jewish activists, including over a dozen rabbis, were arrested Tuesday during a sit-in inside the Capitol to protest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress and demand an immediate U.S. weapons embargo on Israel. “It is absolutely shameful that congressional leadership has invited a war criminal, who is currently leading a genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, to address a joint session of Congress,” says Beth Miller, political director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action. Lawmakers have rolled out a “blood-soaked red carpet to a war criminal” by inviting Benjamin Netanyahu, adds Palestinian American organizer Linda Sarsour, co-founder of the Muslim advocacy group MPower Action. Tuesday’s civil disobedience protest was organized by Jewish Voice for Peace. We are also joined by Noa Grayevsky, member of Jewish Voice for Peace-Portland, who joined the protest and whose cousin’s close friend was taken hostage on October 7.   Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPTuJw4lDhs

2024-07-24 Bay Area ER Doc Returns from Gaza; Netanyahu Faces Genocide Complaint to DOJ as Protests Mar his DC Visit      We spend the rest of our live show in Washington DC, where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is visiting for a series of diplomatic meetings starting Wednesday, with an address to congress, a meeting scheduled with President Joe Biden on Thursday, and then with former president Donald Trump this Friday in Mar-a-Lago. He’s also expected to meet with Vice President Kamala Harris during his trip. We’re first joined by Maria LaHood, the Deputy Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights who has worked on legal projects related to justice in Palestine for decades, including on the Rachel Corrie legal case nearly 20 years ago. The Center for Constitutional Rights has urged the US Department of Justice to open a federal criminal investigation into the Israeli Prime Minister during his visit to the US, for his responsibility for genocide, war crimes, and torture, saying there is “overwhelming evidence” that, under Netanyahu, Israeli forces have committed these crimes against Palestinians during the nearly 10-month assault on Gaza.

Read CCR’s complaint: https://ccrjustice.org/home/press-center/press-releases/ahead-netanyahu-visit-dc-center-constitutional-rights-calls-doj     https://kpfa.org/episode/law-disorder-july-24-2024/

2024-07-24 “Not in Our Name”: 400 Jewish Activists Arrested Protesting Netanyahu Address     Hundreds of Jewish activists were arrested in the U.S. Capitol complex on Tuesday after staging a sit-in to protest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the U.S. and address to Congress this week, carrying signs and wearing shirts with slogans like “Not in Our Name” as they demanded an end to Israel’s U.S.-backed genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

Protesters with Jewish Voice for Peace called for Biden to stop sending weapons to Israel and to push for an immediate ceasefire, occupying the Cannon House Office building rotunda — the same place protesters occupied in October to demand a ceasefire as Israel was first embarking on its genocide.

“No one is free until everyone is free,” “Jews say stop arming Israel” and “Jews say: stop the genocide,” read some of the banners hoisted by the crowd, who were clad in matching red shirts with a demand for an arms embargo .https://truthout.org/articles/not-in-our-name-400-jewish-activists-arrested-protesting-netanyahu-address/

2024-07-24 Tlaib: Netanyahu Should Be Sent to The Hague, Not Addressing Congress   Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) has said that it is “utterly disgraceful” that Congress has invited “war criminal” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address the chamber as he continues committing genocide in Gaza.

In a fiery statement on Tuesday, Tlaib said that Netanyahu should be arrested and sent to the Hague to be tried for war crimes — far from being given the distinction of speaking to Congress, which he is slated to do Wednesday evening.

“Netanyahu is a war criminal committing genocide against the Palestinian people. It is utterly disgraceful that leaders from both parties have invited him to address Congress. He should be arrested and sent to the International Criminal Court,” said Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress.https://truthout.org/articles/tlaib-netanyahu-should-be-sent-to-the-hague-not-addressing-congress/

2024-07-24 Netanyahu’s Visit to Congress Underscores US Contempt for International Law      The U.S. has long ignored many commands of international law, but its casual disregard of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has come into sharp focus this week as the U.S. Congress extends a warm welcome to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, just five days after the ICJ notified all UN member states that they have a legal “obligation not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel’s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

The World Court’s historic 83-page advisory opinion, which was issued on July 19 and held that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory is illegal, was quickly hailed by Middle East political expert Nomi Bar-Yaacov as a “legal earthquake” and the strongest decision that the court had ever issued.

Unsurprisingly, however, both the Israeli and U.S. governments denounced the ICJ’s ruling and proceeded with their plans — including Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, D.C. — as if it had never occurred. https://truthout.org/articles/netanyahus-visit-to-congress-underscores-us-contempt-for-international-law/

2024-07-23 Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress Is a Desperate Ploy to Rally Support for Genocide        https://truthout.org/articles/netanyahus-speech-to-congress-is-a-desperate-ploy-to-rally-support-for-genocide/

2024-07-20 Rights Group Urges DOJ to Investigate Netanyahu for Genocide  As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepares to visit Washington, D.C. next week, an American legal group on Friday pressured the U.S. Department of Justice to open a criminal investigation into him and other officials for committing or authorizing genocide, war crimes, and torture targeting Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Since Israel launched its retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on October 7, Israeli forces partly armed by the U.S. government have killed at least 38,848 people and wounded another 89,459 — according to Gaza officials — while destroying civilian infrastructure and restricting the flow of humanitarian aid into the Palestinian enclave.

“We believe ample credible evidence exists to sufficiently establish that serious crimes falling within U.S. criminal jurisdiction are systematically being perpetrated in Gaza,” says the Center for Constitutional Rights’ (CCR) 23-page letter to Hope Olds, who leads the Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section (HRSP) of the DOJ’s Criminal Division.   https://truthout.org/articles/rights-group-urges-doj-to-investigate-netanyahu-for-genocide/  

2024-07-18 230 Congressional Staffers Urge Lawmakers to Boycott Netanyahu Speech  An anonymous letter supported by 230 staffers in the House of Representatives and the Senate is urging lawmakers to boycott a speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is scheduled to address Congress later this month as Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza rages on.

The letter, organized by members of the Congressional Progressive Staff Association and endorsed by staffers representing the offices of 122 Democratic and Republican lawmakers, describes the demand for a boycott of Netanyahu’s speech as an “issue of morality” that transcends politics, and notes that “citizens, students, and lawmakers across the country and the world have spoken out against the actions of Mr. Netanyahu,” including Israeli citizens.

Several staffers (and some lawmakers) plan to skip the speech in protest of Israel’s relentless bombing and starvation campaign in Gaza. In their letter, the staffers urge their bosses to do the same.https://truthout.org/articles/230-congressional-staffers-urge-lawmakers-to-boycott-netanyahu-speech/

2024-07-18 Israeli Lawmakers Vote Against Palestinian Statehood Before Netanyahu’s US Trip     While Israel’s troops wage what has been widely decried as genocide on the Gaza Strip, Israeli lawmakers on Wednesday overwhelmingly passed a resolution opposing “the establishment of a Palestinian state” west of the Jordan River.

The measure passed Israel’s legislature, the Knesset, 68-9. It was spearheaded by Knesset Member Zeev Elkin of New Hope – The United Right, who shared the key messages from the resolution on social media along with a photo of the final tally.

According to Religious Zionism-affiliated Israel National News:    The proposal says, “The Israeli Knesset firmly opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan. The establishment of a Palestinian state in the heart of the land of Israel will pose an existential threat to the state of Israel and its citizens, perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and destabilize the region.”   “It will only be a matter of a short time until Hamas takes over the Palestinian state and turns it into a base of radical Islamic terrorism, working in coordination with the axis led by Iran, to eliminate the state of Israel.”    https://truthout.org/articles/israeli-lawmakers-vote-against-palestinian-statehood-before-netanyahus-us-trip/

2024-06-23 Should Biden worry about Netanyahu’s address to Congress? | Inside Story    Israel’s prime minister is set to address a joint session of the US Congress next month.  It’s Benjamin Netanyahu’s first trip to Washington since he launched his devastating war on Gaza.   His speech could have big political implications for President Joe Biden and Israel.   So, what might happen?

Presenter: Elizabeth Puranam   Guests:

Akbar Shahid Ahmed – Senior Diplomatic Correspondent at HuffPost.

Yossi Mekelberg – Associate Fellow at the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House.

Rami Khouri – Distinguished Public Policy Fellow at the American University of Beirut. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbTSxCTtkPA

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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

Namibia

Updated 2024-07-29

2024-04-21 From Namibia to Gaza With Love   The Israeli brutality in Gaza, but also the Palestinian sumud, resilience and resistance, are inspiring the Global South to reclaim its centrality in anti-colonial liberation struggles.

The distance between Gaza and Namibia is measured in the thousands of kilometers. But the historical distance is much closer. This is precisely why Namibia was one of the first countries to take a strong stance against the Israeli genocide in Gaza.  Namibia was colonized by the Germans in 1884, while the British colonized Palestine in the 1920s, handing the territory to the Zionist colonizers in 1948.  

It is easy, however, to assume that the history which unifies many countries in the Global South is only that of Western exploitation and victimization. It is also a history of collective struggle and resistance.   Namibia has been inhabited since prehistoric times. This long-rooted history has allowed Namibians, over the course of thousands of years, to establish a sense of belonging to the land and to one another, something that the Germans did not understand or appreciate. 

When the Germans colonized Namibia, giving it the name of “German Southwest Africa,” they did what all other Western colonialists have done, from Palestine to South Africa to Algeria, to virtually all Global South countries. They attempted to divide the people, exploited their resources, and butchered those who resisted.   Although a country with a small population, Namibians resisted their colonizers, resulting in the German decision to simplyexterminate the natives, literally killing the majority of the population.  https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/namibia-gaza-solidarity

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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

Medical Personnel in Gaza

Updated 2024-07-29

2024-04-11 As Surgeons, We Have Never Seen Cruelty Like Israel’s Genocide in Gaza     On March 25 the two of us, an orthopedic surgeon and a trauma surgeon, traveled to the Gaza Strip to work at Gaza European Hospital in Khan Younis. We were immediately overwhelmed by the overflown sewage and the distinct smell of gunpowder in the air. We made the short journey from the Rafah crossing to Khan Younis, where Gaza European Hospital stands as one of the last remaining semi-functional hospitals for the 2.5 million human beings—half of them children—in the Gaza Strip. As humanitarian surgeons we thought we had seen all manner of cruelty in the world, but neither one of us has ever experienced anything like what we found when we arrived in Gaza.    

Our limited sleep was constantly interrupted by explosions that shook the hospital’s walls and popped our ears, even well after the United Nations Security Council declared a cease-fire must be implemented. When warplanes screamed overhead, everyone braced for a particularly loud and powerful explosion. The timing of these attacks always coincided with “iftar,” when families in this overwhelmingly Muslim county broke the daily fast of Ramadan and were most vulnerable. We walked through the wards and immediately found evidence of horrifying violence deliberately directed at civilians and even children.  https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/surgeons-cruelty-israel-gaza

2024-03-01 Double Standards Mousa al-Buhaisi is a Palestinian doctor who served in Ukraine during the war and is now working to save lives in Gaza. He calls out the double standards and “continuous support” in Ukraine compared to the genocide in Gaza.  https://www.tiktok.com/@ajplus/video/7341414292102712606 2024-03-02 Palestine Talks | Dr. Mads Gilbert on Israel’s “systematic strategy” to destroy Palestinians    Norwegian physician and professor emeritus Mads Gilbert opens up about his decades-long experience working in the occupied Palestinian territories and how the current situation is — in terms of Israeli brutality against Palestinians — unlike any other he’s witnessed in an exclusive interview with TRT World Digital.   He also reflects on his activist side, inviting viewers to consider our shared humanity and what is required on the part of the international community, however challenging, to end Israel’s genocidal assault against Gaza. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fzBf7Omllk&list=PLUW304lJeu3Vg_nM0WQfWDZTDyu6h6PlD&index=10

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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

Mearsheimer, John

Updated 2024-07-29

2024-05-18 Palestine Talks | John Mearsheimer discusses Gaza  Professor John Mearsheimer joins TRT World to discuss the Israeli lobby and provide a realist theoretical perspective on Israel’s assault on Palestine’s Gaza.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqPQ5dUfSTw

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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

Blue Leaks (see United States Police – IDF)

Updated 2024-07-25

BlueLeaks – Wikipedia   [MEK Note:  Exposes the active tool of a police state in process]

Internal U.S. law enforcement data obtained by the hacker collective Anonymous and released on June 19, 2020, by the activist group Distributed Denial of Secrets, which called it the “largest published hack of American law enforcement agencies” 

The Blue Leaks data comes largely from the intelligence gathered by fusion centers. After the September 11 attacks, the United States government sought to improve communication between different levels of law enforcement to better discover and prevent terrorist attacks. They encouraged state and local governments to create fusion centers: physical locations where representatives of different law enforcement agencies share and collectively analyze intelligence before distributing reports back to their respective agencies. Fusion centers have since begun working with private data brokers with little public oversight.

In leaked documents, officers track individual, group, and event pages with protest or anti-law enforcement rhetoric. Some of the documents contain material related to the attitudes of law enforcement and their response to the Black Lives Matter movement, George Floyd protests, and COVID-19 pandemic.

The documents also show a much broader trend of surveillance. They show details about the data that police can obtain from social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Reddit and Tumblr, among others. Fusion centers also collect and distribute detailed data from automatic license plate readers.   Surveys from law enforcement training programs reveal that some instructors were prejudiced and unprofessional. Classes taught biased, outdated, and incorrect content.

Documents also contain reports about other countries from the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Department of State and other agencies. Officials discussed cyber attacks from Iran and concerns about further attacks in early 2020.  Another report discusses possible Chinese espionage at natural gas facilities. Homeland Security also discussed Russian interference with American elections, attempts to hack the 2020 census, and manipulation of social media discussion.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlueLeaks

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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

Leahy Law

Updated 2024-07-25

2024-05-20 I created the Leahy law. It should be applied to Israel      Requiring Israel to respect human rights does not imply “moral equivalence” with Hamas.

In the 1980s and ’90s, the United States gave training, weapons and ammunition to Latin American security forces with a long history of violating human rights. In Guatemala and El Salvador, soldiers trained and equipped by the United States killed hundreds of thousands of civilians with near-total impunity. I conceived and introduced the Leahy law in 1997 because our Latin partners, and security forces in many other countries, were violating the basic principles that the United States stands for, and we were complicit.

Today, people are asking whether the law should apply to Israel.   The law prohibits U.S. aid to any unit of a foreign security force if the secretary of state has “credible information” the unit has committed a gross violation of human rights: murder, rape, torture, forced disappearance or other flagrant denials of the right to life, liberty and personal security. Aid can resume if the foreign government is taking “effective steps” to bring the responsible members of the unit to justice. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/05/20/israel-leahy-human-rights-aid/

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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

Lavender – AI Killing Program (also see AI in War)

Updated 2024-07-25

2024-04-27 Will AI Fight Wars Autonomously in the Future? Or Are We Already There?     rtificial intelligence is expected to impact human life in every aspect of its existence, but the most concerning one that experts fear the most is its application in warfare, and they are not wrong here. The US military has conducted the first dogfight between a human controlled aircraft and an AI controlled jet fighter.

On the other hand, AI is already deciding who to target in the real war zones, like Gaza and Ukraine. Where Israel is being said to have deployed an AI algorithm called Lavender to identify potential targets by an Israeli publication +972 Magazine research and is said to have minimal human decision application, which resulted in a huge number of civilian casualties. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/will-ai-fight-wars-autonomously-in-the-future-or-are-we-already-there/ar-AA1nM0cE?

2024-04-09 Israel’s AI Targeting System Reflects the Inhumanity It Was Programmed With      The rise of AI belies the fantasy that we can escape moral culpability by assigning life-or-death decisions to a machine.  

The war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas marked its grim six-month anniversary on Sunday, and one of the most jarring things about this very 21st-century conflict has been the almost daily headlines about Israeli airstrikes obliterating the homes of notable Palestinians—sometimes known Hamas operatives, but often journalists or physicians or aid workers. In many of these attacks, large numbers of family members, including young children, die under the rubble.

In one of the war’s most notorious incidents, the prominent Palestinian poet and professor Refaat Alareer—so haunted by the daily devastation and the likelihood he and his own family would be targeted that in his final weeks he wrote a poem called “If I Must Die”—had sought refuge at a family home when an Israeli airstrike killed not only him but his brother, sister, and four children.  It’s a similar story for journalists in Gaza, whose death toll—at least 90 Palestinians, according to the conservative tally of the Committee to Protect Journalists—has exceeded any other modern conflict, in just half a year.

The +972 Magazine report, which it confirmed in interviews with six Israeli intelligence officers, said an AI program known as “Lavender” has been used by the Israeli Defense Force to identify targets in Gaza since the start of the war on October 7. The IDF has confirmed that AI is used by its intelligence officers in guiding its tactics in Gaza, but the military and the magazine differed sharply on the issue of human involvement. IDF claims the computer-driven data is only advisory and that humans are still making the key decisions for targeting bombs, but the +972 report said human reviews of the AI targets were often “a rubber stamp” as brief as 20 seconds.  https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/israel-lavender-ai-inhumane

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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