Israel Bookmarks
#Israel #Palestine #Gaza #Bookmarks
Airstrikes killed at least 704 people in the past day, bringing Gaza’s total death toll after 18 days of bombing to 5,791, including 2,360 children, the Hamas-run health ministry said. – UN calls for immediate ceasefire to end ‘epic suffering’ in Gaza
UN calls for immediate ceasefire to end ‘epic suffering’ in Gaza
António Guterres, secretary-general:
Excellencies, it is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing. But the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas. And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people. Excellencies, even war has rules. We must demand that all parties uphold and respect their obligations under international humanitarian law; take constant care in the conduct of military operations to spare civilians; and respect and protect hospitals and respect the inviolability of UN facilities which today are sheltering more than 600,000 Palestinians. The relentless bombardment of Gaza by Israeli forces, the level of civilian casualties, and the wholesale destruction of neighbourhoods continue to mount and are deeply alarming. … The protection of civilians is paramount in any armed conflict. Protecting civilians can never mean using them as human shields. Protecting civilians does not mean ordering more than one million people to evacuate to the south, where there is no shelter, no food, no water, no medicine and no fuel, and then continuing to bomb the south itself. I am deeply concerned about the clear violations of international humanitarian law that we are witnessing in Gaza. Let me be clear: No party to an armed conflict is above international humanitarian law. – Secretary-General's remarks to the Security Council - on the Middle East , 24 October 2023
Secretary-General's remarks to the Security Council - on the Middle East
WhatsApp, Facebook, Meta:
A little-discussed detail in the Lavender AI article is that Israel is killing people based on being in the same Whatsapp group as a suspected militant. Where are they getting this data? Is WhatsApp sharing it? … Why is Meta doing this? … Their Chief Information Security Officer, Guy Rosen, is their most senior policy decision maker. He … was in the Israeli military in Unit 8200. Unit 8200 is the Israeli NSA and is the department that built and runs Lavender. … Mark Zuckerberg, Meta founder and CEO has also been a significant supporter of Israel's propaganda. Zuckerberg gave $125k to Zaka, one of the groups that created and continues to spread much of the original Oct 7 false atrocity propaganda, including the discredited "Oct 7 mass rape" hoax. Meanwhile former COO and current Meta board member, Sheryl Sandberg, has been on tour spreading the same discredited propaganda. – Meta and Lavender, by Paul Biggar
Destruction:
As Israel prepares for its Rafah offensive, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza continues to deteriorate. But the lack of media access inside the Gaza Strip means the full extent of worsening conditions are not always seen. Using open source imagery Bellingcat and our partners Scripps News examined widespread destruction of property inside the Gaza Strip and looked at deteriorating conditions there. – The Hidden War in Gaza and the West Bank
Systematic and widespread attacks on civilian housing and infrastructure in Gaza has been described as “domicide” by Professor Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing. He told us “Even with attacks against individual buildings, every building which is bombed or destroyed has got to be evaluated legally. Whether a building on this or that corner of a road needed to be destroyed or not...the burden is on the IDF to show that they have evidence, that they have proof and that the attack is proportionate and necessary”. It’s estimated that more than 50% of Gaza’s buildings have been destroyed or damaged and approximately 1.7 million people have been displaced since the offensive began. – “We’ve Become Addicted to Explosions” The IDF Unit Responsible for Demolishing Homes Across Gaza
According to Yehuda Shaul, a co-director of the Ofek think tank in Jerusalem who has been documenting statements that have a potential to incite hate, Halevi said in a Knesset hearing in October that a goal for the IDF in Gaza should be that there is no more Muslim in the land of Israel. – In Real Life: A Hidden War
The Hidden War in Gaza and the West Bank
“We’ve Become Addicted to Explosions” The IDF Unit Responsible for Demolishing Homes Across Gaza
Torture. I can’t even quote from that article because what little I read already makes me sick.
Sde Teiman, Israel (CNN) — At a military base that now doubles as a detention center in Israel’s Negev desert, … – Strapped down, blindfolded, held in diapers: Israeli whistleblowers detail abuse of Palestinians in shadowy detention center
Counting the dead:
Armed conflicts have indirect health implications beyond the direct harm from violence. Even if the conflict ends immediately, there will continue to be many indirect deaths in the coming months and years from causes such as reproductive, communicable, and non-communicable diseases. The total death toll is expected to be large given the intensity of this conflict; destroyed health-care infrastructure; severe shortages of food, water, and shelter; the population's inability to flee to safe places; and the loss of funding to UNRWA, one of the very few humanitarian organisations still active in the Gaza Strip.
In recent conflicts, such indirect deaths range from three to 15 times the number of direct deaths. Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death
to the 37 396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza. Using the 2022 Gaza Strip population estimate of 2 375 259, this would translate to 7·9% of the total population in the Gaza Strip. A report from Feb 7, 2024, at the time when the direct death toll was 28 000, estimated that without a ceasefire there would be between 58 260 deaths (without an epidemic or escalation) and 85 750 deaths (if both occurred) by Aug 6, 2024. – Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential, by Rasha Khatib, Martin McKee, Salim Yusuf, in The Lancet (2024)
Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential
@pluralistic@mamot.fr linked this article:
When I asked Klein why Germany had decided to develop its antisemitism system so aggressively in recent years, he invoked the 2015–16 refugee crisis, which led to a sharp increase in the number of people from the Middle East in Germany, implying a connection with anti-Jewish sentiment. – The Strange Logic of Germany’s Antisemitism Bureaucrats
The Strange Logic of Germany’s Antisemitism Bureaucrats
One of the New Historians:
With exactitude and ethical clarity, he records the many war crimes, including genocide, that Israel has perpetrated and normalised against the Palestinian people, whose right to self-determination and basic humanity have been relentlessly assaulted and died, in full view of the world. In doing so, the book offers an unflinching dissection of the racist and settler-colonial logic that frames Israeli political and military practices. -- ‘We’re Witnessing the Last Gasp of Israeli Violence’: In Conversation With Avi Shlaim, by Sebastian Shehadi, for Novara Media
‘We’re Witnessing the Last Gasp of Israeli Violence’: In Conversation With Avi Shlaim
Keep the blockade in the news:
Before the launch, Ms. Thunberg addressed a press conference, saying that the aid ship sought to break the blockade of Gaza symbolically. … Thousands of cases of severe malnutrition has been found in the Palestinian population of Gaza by health workers. -- Greta Thunberg and 11 other Volunteers set out on Mercy Mission to Gaza
Greta Thunberg and 11 other Volunteers set out on Mercy Mission to Gaza
The Humanitarian Situation Update #292 | Gaza Strip is a long list of terrible things, one more nightmarish than the next… I can't pull a quote because everything is terrible. Let nobody say that they didn't know because it's out there for the world to see. My suspicion is that a population on the brink of starvation will die of "other causes" so that the genocide seems more palatable to the rest of the world.
Humanitarian Situation Update #292 | Gaza Strip
Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report:
Integrated Food Security Phase Classification
About 2.1 million people across the Gaza Strip will likely experience high levels of acute food insecurity, classified in IPC Phase 3 or above (Crisis or worse) between May and September 2025, including nearly 469,500 people who will likely experience catastrophic food insecurity (IPC Phase 5). -- GAZA STRIP: IPC Acute Food Insecurity and Acute Malnutrition Special Snapshot | April - September 2025
From the live ticker:
Al Jazeera spoke to Freedom Flotilla organiser Huwaida Arraf shortly after she and the rest of the ship’s support crew lost contact with the Madleen. “All those on board have been abducted. They have been taken against their will while they were sailing peacefully and lawfully in international waters,” said Arraf. “They were in international waters, sailing towards Palestinian territorial waters, not getting near Israeli waters,” she added. “It needs to be made very clear that Israel has absolutely no jurisdiction, no lawful authority, to take over this vessel.” – Madleen Gaza flotilla live tracker, on Al Jazeera
Madleen Gaza flotilla live tracker
Francesca Albanese keeps delivering.
Q. Can we talk about genocide without a ruling from an international court? A. Was the Armenian genocide not a genocide because no court declared it to be so? No court established the Guatemalan genocide or that of Sabra and Chatila [Lebanon]. The genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina was recognized this way only with respect to Srebrenica. Would we then say it wasn’t a genocide? And what about the Native Americans, the Inuit, the Aborigines in Australia, or the Nama and Herero in Namibia? Are they not genocides because there is no court ruling? Regarding Gaza, within 15 days, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued provisional measures recognizing the possibility of genocide, which should trigger the responsibility to prevent it. These are excuses for not assuming responsibility. -- Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories: ‘Israel commits crimes like it breathes. It must be stopped’, Trinidad Deiros Bronte interviewing Francesca Albanese, for El Pais
Q: Do movements like BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) have a real impact? A: BDS is an ethical way of behaving, one that has articulated its demands based on human rights and international law, and it should be our default option. But I don’t want to burden individuals with responsibilities that really belong to governments. -- Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories: ‘Israel commits crimes like it breathes. It must be stopped’, Trinidad Deiros Bronte interviewing Francesca Albanese, for El Pais
Genocide support:
In the representative sample of Jewish Israelis who were polled from March 10-11, 2025, 82% supported the forced expulsion of Gaza’s population to other countries, while 56% endorsed the expulsion of Israel’s Arab citizens. -- In Israel, calls for genocide have migrated from the margins to the mainstream
In Israel, calls for genocide have migrated from the margins to the mainstream
No words.
Israel’s war in Gaza combines a staggeringly high death rate, shocking violence toward children, unparalleled physical destruction, and now a world-historical famine. The world has, by objective measure, never seen anything like this. … What we have watched, what we are continuing to watch, is the obliteration of a society of two million people. Every facet of modern civilization, as well as the most elementary things needed for even a state of basic subsistence for a human community, has been deliberately and almost completely destroyed by the Israeli military in Gaza. And now we are watching the gradual but accelerating mass die-off of the people who once lived there, through a combination of starvation, disease, and murder. -- Israel’s Gaza War Is One of History’s Worst Crimes Ever, by Branko Marcetic, for Jacobin
Israel’s Gaza War Is One of History’s Worst Crimes Ever
Ukraine and Palestine:
But here is the truth: Palestine has no army, no jets, no ships, no nuclear weapons. What we have is resistance. Hamas is not a state military. It is the outcome of decades of siege, occupation, apartheid, and abandonment. And while European leaders rush to condemn Hamas at every opportunity they get, they refuse to condemn the occupation that birthed it. They erase our right to resist, while glorifying the Ukrainian resistance, heaping on it weapons and praise. – I survived the Gaza genocide only to witness firsthand Western complicity, by Nour Elassy, for Al-Jazeera
I survived the Gaza genocide only to witness firsthand Western complicity
The ones that profit from genocide:
The United Nations has released a report, revealing that more than 150 companies, including Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia and TripAdvisor, are profiting from Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise in the occupied West Bank. The UN human rights office on Friday updated its database, listing 158 firms operating inside settlements deemed unlawful by the International Court of Justice (ICJ). While most of the companies are Israeli, the list also includes multinationals registered in the United States, Canada, China, France, and Germany. -- UN lists 150 firms tied to illegal Israeli settlements, by Elis Gjevori and Reuters, for Al-Jazeera
UN lists 150 firms tied to illegal Israeli settlements
War crimes are the new normal for the US and Israel:
There is strong evidence that at least part of the reason for the indiscriminate and lawless carnage is the reliance on artificial intelligence for targeting, while Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced the US military, running low on precision munitions, would start using massive five-hundred-, one-thousand-, and two-thousand-pound bombs that do more indiscriminate damage. … Bombing with no regard for danger to civilians, the use of AI and massive bombs in densely populated places, the seemingly casual slaughter of children, the use of chemical warfare and hunger as weapons of war, attacks on civilian infrastructure crucial to the basic functioning of society, including energy production, health care facilities, and heritage sites — these were all the hallmarks of Israel’s war on Gaza. … The point of international law is that everyone tacitly agrees on certain ground rules, as a way of ensuring certain behavior in warfare is off limits no matter who is involved. But once you start making exceptions for yourself, your adversaries can do it too … -- The US and Israel Are Making Gaza-Style War the New Normal, by Branko Marcetic, for Jacobin
The US and Israel Are Making Gaza-Style War the New Normal
Trying to make sense of the war in Gaza, Zionism, anti-semitism – as a descendant of Germans and Austrians, decades after the Second World War and the holocaust, having been accused of being a nazi as a child for the mere fact of speaking German in a foreign land, struggling with the idea if responsibility for the crimes committed by my ancestors and their friends and their relatives and their government, I read this article with great interest: When Jewishness Means Genocide, an interview of Elad Lapidot by Arielle Angel and Daniel May, in Jewish Currents.