August, 29 2017, 11:00am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Lindsay Meiman,Senior U.S. Communications Specialist,lindsay@350.org,us-comms@350.org,+1 347 460 9082,New York, USA
350.org On Trump's Hurricane Harvey Response
Today, Donald Trump goes to Corpus Christi, Texas to inspect damage caused by Hurricane Harvey, a climate change-fueled storm. In a press conference on late Monday, the President claimed that "protecting the lives of our people" is his highest priority and promised to "come out bigger, better, stronger than before."
BROOKLYN, NY
Today, Donald Trump goes to Corpus Christi, Texas to inspect damage caused by Hurricane Harvey, a climate change-fueled storm. In a press conference on late Monday, the President claimed that "protecting the lives of our people" is his highest priority and promised to "come out bigger, better, stronger than before."
As expected, his remarks made no mention of the root causes of the Hurricane, a storm worsened by warmer oceans and higher sea levels. Climate scientists have stated that climate change, exacerbated by fossil fuel use, leads to more catastrophic weather events, among other impacts.
In response, 350.org's executive director May Boeve issued the following statement:
"While Donald Trump claims that "protecting lives" is his highest priority, it is his own policies that will make recovery from superstorms like Hurricane Harvey much worse. This is an unnatural disaster fueled by the reckless climate denial that is a hallmark of this administration. Just a week before the storm made landfall, Trump signed an executive order rolling back safety standards for flood protection. The Administration has prioritized fossil fuel projects, slashed environmental reviews, and rolled back critical climate protections. In early June, Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, clearly siding with fossil fuel billionaires over the millions of Americans who want climate action.
"The situation unfolding on Texas' Gulf Coast is unlike anything else in history, and it is the product of both a hotter planet and this Administration's climate denial, racism and callousness. With over six million people affected by Hurricane Harvey, the recovery process will be long and arduous, with the people hit the hardest often poor, people of color, or otherwise vulnerable communities. The flooding is expected to get worse, more people are in need of shelter and services, damaged oil refineries are spewing toxic fumes into communities, and public health is at risk. While Trump assures swift rebuilding, we know that his short-sighted and destructive policies ensures that if another extreme weather disaster occurs, coastal cities and towns like Houston and Corpus Christi will continue to suffer the consequences of the recklessness of fossil fuel billionaires and the politicians they employ.
"As Hurricane Harvey continues to wreak havoc, it is imperative the elected officials across the country stand up against climate denial and demand that the Administration and Congress commit to long term climate action. This is the only way to build a world where families can live free from the fear of climate chaos."
350 is building a future that's just, prosperous, equitable and safe from the effects of the climate crisis. We're an international movement of ordinary people working to end the age of fossil fuels and build a world of community-led renewable energy for all.
LATEST NEWS
'This Is Who They Are Targeting': Israeli Bombs Kill At Least 5 Children In Rafah
"This is their objective. This is the generation they're looking for. This is the safe Rafah they talk about," one surviving family member said.
Apr 29, 2024
Israeli airstrikes killed between 20 and 30 people in Rafah Sunday night, including at least five children.
Among the slain children was a one-year-old boy whose parents had been trying to have a child for 10 years before he was finally born.
"This is who they are targeting," the boy's uncle, Mahmoud Abu Taha, said in a video shot by CNN in the courtyard of Rafah's Abu Youssef al-Najjar Hospital. "This is their objective. This is the generation they're looking for. This is the safe Rafah they talk about."
"Nowhere is safe. The entire Gaza Strip is a target."
As Abu Taha spoke, he lifted the lifeless body of his nephew toward the camera.
"His name is Deif-Allah (meaning guest in Arabic) and he was indeed a guest," Abu Taha further toldReuters. "He came as a guest after (his parents) longed for (him) for so long, after 10 years."
"Ten people (were killed), the mother, her daughter, her granddaughters, her grandson, her son-in-law, their daughters and relatives, everyone. They're all gone, all 10 of them," Abu Taha added.
As the threat of a full-scale ground invasion of Rafah still looms, the Israeli Defense Forces have continued to regularly bomb Gaza's southernmost city, where more than 1.5 million Gazans have fled seeking relative safety from Israel's lethal assault on the enclave.
Airstrikes late Sunday into early Monday struck three homes, The Associated Press reported:
The first killed 11 people, including four siblings aged 9 to 27, according to records at the Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital, where the bodies were taken. The second strike killed eight people, including a 33-year-old father and his 5-day-old boy, according to hospital records. The third strike killed three siblings, aged 23, 19, and 12. An Associated Press reporter saw the bodies at the hospital.
According to the video shot by CNN, the name of the five-day-old boy was Ghaith Abu Rayya.
"We are all alone. Nobody cares about us," a man cried out in the video as he opened a small body bag show Abu Rayya's head. He said the rest of the infant's body had been destroyed by the bomb.
Another mourner at the hospital told CNN, "Nowhere is safe. The entire Gaza Strip is a target."
The AP calculated the final death toll from the Rafah bombings at 22, including five children and six women. Reuters reported that 30 were killed.
Israel also carried out deadly airstrikes in other parts of Gaza Sunday night. The IDF killed five people, including women and children, when it fired a missile at the Tartouri family home west of Gaza City, the International Middle East Media Center reported. Another missile hit the home of the Hijazi family south of Gaza City, killing two women.
Another person was killed by an IDF missile that hit a car in central Gaza, while the Palestinian Civil Defense teams discovered 13 bodies amid the ruins of bombed homes in Khan Younis' Al-Amal neighborhood.
All told, the Gaza Health Ministry announced Monday that Israel had carried out three massacres against Gazan families in the last 24 hours, killing 34 and wounding 68. This brings the total death toll from Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip to at least 34,488, though that is likely an undercount as many remain buried beneath rubble and Israel has besieged and bombarded several hospitals, damaging or destroying nearly 84% of the strip's healthcare facilities and making record keeping more difficult.
Israel's devastating campaign in the Gaza Strip began in October 7 in response to Hamas' deadly attack on Southern Israel that killed approximately 1,100 and saw around 240 taken hostage. Prior to October 7, Israel had blockaded Gaza for 16 years and occupied the Palestinian West Bank for 56 years.
Sunday's bombings came as cease-fire talks between Israel and Hamas are set to restart Monday, with Egypt hosting Hamas leaders to facilitate the discussion.
"We are hopeful the proposal has taken into account the positions of both sides, has tried to extract moderation from both sides, and we are waiting to have a final decision," Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said at a World Economic Forum meeting on Monday.
In a recent piece published online, Hebrew University Holocaust and genocide scholar Amos Goldberg added his voice to the growing number of human rights and international law experts who have labeled Israel's actions in Gaza a genocide.
"What is happening in Gaza is genocide because the level and pace of indiscriminate killing, destruction, mass expulsions, displacement, famine, executions, the wiping out of cultural and religious institutions, the crushing of elites (including the killing of journalists), and the sweeping dehumanization of the Palestinians—create an overall picture of genocide, of a deliberate conscious crushing of Palestinian existence in Gaza," Goldberg wrote in the essay published in translation on Medium.
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People of Gaza Thank US Students Demanding End to Israeli Bombardment
"We hope they add pressure on Israel and the U.S. to stop the bloodbath that is taking place in the Gaza Strip and to prevent the invasion of Rafah," said one university student.
Apr 29, 2024
Spotlighting the decimation of their own education system by the U.S.-backed Israeli bombardment of Gaza over the past six months, dozens of Palestinian children and young adults held a rally in Rafah on Sunday to thank U.S. college students for dissenting against their government at mass protests in recent weeks.
The children held signs reading, in English, "Rebuild our schools and universities" and thanking students and faculty at schools including Ohio State, Harvard, and George Washington University for their expressions of solidarity since April 17, when an encampment was set up on the grounds of Columbia University in New York City.
"We hope they add pressure on Israel and the U.S. to stop the bloodbath that is taking place in the Gaza Strip and to prevent the invasion of Rafah," said Bayan Al-Fiqhi, a university student who had to stop attending school when Israel began its bombardment of civilian infrastructure across Gaza in October, in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack.
Supporters of the U.S. protests also wrote messages of thanks on their tents in Rafah, where about 1.4 million Palestinian civilians have been forcibly displaced since Israel began its attacks.
"There is no way to express our gratitude to the student protesters in America other than writing a letter of thanks to them [on] the displacement tents," one man told the Turkish outlet Anadolu Agency. "We thank all the students who stood with us and expressed their solidarity as a result of the genocidal war taking place in Gaza."
On social media, Lebanese diplomat Mohamad Safa on Sunday also expressed thanks to demonstrators in Spain and Iceland for marching in solidarity with Gaza, where at least 34,488 Palestinians have been killed since October, two-thirds of whom were women and children.
Nonviolent protests by students at Columbia and others across the U.S. have been met with major shows of force by local and state police, with violent arrests caught on video at institutions including Emory University, University of Texas at Austin, and Indiana University.
As Columbia administrators suspended more than 100 students and summoned the police to arrest them on April 18, the United Nations issued a report saying that "with more than 80% of schools in Gaza damaged or destroyed, it may be reasonable to ask if there is an intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system, an action known as 'scholasticide.'"
Along with residential buildings and hospitals, Israel has included in its bombardment of Gaza more than 200 schools, with the enclave's last remaining university demolished in January when more than 300 mines planted by the Israel Defense Forces were detonated—prompting accusations that the attack was part of an ethnic cleansing campaign rather than self-defense.
"When schools are destroyed, so too are hopes and dreams," said the U.N. special rapporteurs on the right to education and on the situation in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967. "These attacks are not isolated incidents. They present a systematic pattern of violence aimed at dismantling the very foundation of Palestinian society."
The protests at U.S. schools have escalated and spread across the country as Israel has indicated it plans to move ahead with a ground offensive in Rafah, where six women and five children were among nearly two dozen people killed in an airstrike on Sunday night.
Israel's near-total blockade on humanitarian aid has also left parts of the enclave already facing famine and about 70% of the population of northern Gaza "experiencing catastrophic hunger," according to Human Rights Watch.
By continuing to permit police crackdowns on nonviolent protesters on campus as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza spirals, said former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis last week, "U.S. university administrators [are] committing moral suicide in public."
On Monday, Columbia University officials set a 2:00 pm deadline for students to disperse from the encampment set up on the school grounds after talks between student organizers and the administration failed to reach an agreement. Students have called on Columbia to divest from all financial holdings in companies that support the IDF—a condition president Minouche Shafik said the school would not meet—and have said they won't end the protest until it does.
Organizers at the Ivy League school called on students to help "protect the encampment" ahead of the deadline.
Over the weekend, hundreds of arrests were reported at Northeastern University, Arizona State University, and Washington University.
According to The New York Times, more than 800 people have been arrested at campus protests since April 18.
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US Reportedly Working to Stop ICC From Issuing Arrest Warrant for Netanyahu
"There is absolutely no reason for Biden to be involved in this," said one analyst. "But once again, Biden steps in to protect Netanyahu from the consequences of the war crimes he commits."
Apr 28, 2024
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly growing increasingly concerned that the International Criminal Court is preparing to issue arrest warrants for him and other top government officials for committing war crimes in the Gaza Strip.
The Times of Israelreported Sunday that the Israeli government, in partnership with the U.S., is "making a concerted effort to head off" possible arrest warrants from the ICC, which first launched its war crimes investigation in the occupied Palestinian territories in 2021.
Israel does not recognize the ICC's jurisdiction and has refused to cooperate with the probe. The ICC says it has jurisdiction over Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem.
Citing an unnamed Israeli government source, The Times of Israel reported that "a major focus of the ICC allegations will be that Israel 'deliberately starved Palestinians in Gaza.'" Other officials who could face arrest warrants are Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi.
The Times of Israel's reporting came shortly after Israeli journalist Ben Caspit wrote that Netanyahu is "under unusual stress" over the possibility of arrest warrants and is leading a "nonstop push over the telephone" to forestall ICC action.
Like Israel, the U.S. is not a party to the Rome Statute, which established the ICC in 2002. The legal body is tasked with investigating individuals, not governments.
The U.S., Israel's leading arms supplier, has opposed the ICC's Palestine investigation from the start, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying in a 2021 statement that the court "has no jurisdiction over this matter" because "Israel is not a party to the ICC."
But the Biden administration vocally supported the ICC's decision to issue an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin over war crimes committed in Ukraine, even though neither Russia nor Ukraine are parties to the Rome Statute.
Seeing commentary that ICC arrest warrants against Israeli officials would create a dangerous precedent because Israel isn’t a party to the Rome Statute.
Guess who else isn’t a party to the Rome Statute?
Russia.
ICC already crossed that bridge with warrant for Putin.
— Brian Finucane (@BCFinucane) April 28, 2024
The Israeli government has been accused of committing numerous war crimes in Gaza since the October 7 Hamas-led attack, including genocide, ethnic cleansing, and using starvation as a weapon of war. Late last year, the human rights group Democracy for the Arab World Now submitted to the ICC the names of dozens of Israeli military commanders who are believed to have been directly involved in violations of international law.
Reports of potentially imminent ICC action have sparked alarm among conservatives in the United States.
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) wrote on social media Friday that the court should "should stand down on this immediately."
In an
editorial published that same day, The Wall Street Journal suggested the U.S. and United Kingdom could "risk finding Americans and Britons under the gun" next if they don't warn ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan against issuing arrest warrants for Israeli officials. Human rights organizations and legal experts have said Biden and other U.S. officials could be held liable under international law if they continue supporting Israel's war on Gaza.
"Mr. Khan's candidacy was championed by his native Britain and supported by the U.S.," continues the Journal editorial, "so both countries may have influence if they warn Mr. Khan of what will happen if he proceeds."
The Times of Israelnoted Sunday that according to reports in several Israeli media outlets, the U.S. is "part of a last-ditch diplomatic effort to prevent the International Criminal Court from issuing arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials."
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, argued Sunday that "there is absolutely no reason for Biden to be involved in this."
"But once again," Parsi added, "Biden steps in to protect Netanyahu from the consequences of the war crimes he commits, which Biden claims he privately is frustrated about."
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