To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.
In this world, where everything and everyone is for sale, we must sustain independent media we can trust. If you believe independent journalism is critical to protecting democracy and the common good, please support Common Dreams this Giving Tuesday! We wouldn't exist without you.
Michigan's Senate Judiciary Committee should approve four bills abolishing life sentences without parole for juveniles in the state, Human Rights Watch said today in a letter to the committee. The practice is cruel, inappropriate, discriminatory, and a violation of human rights, Human Rights Watch said.
"Michigan has 321 young offenders sentenced to die in prison," said Alison Parker, deputy director of the US Program of Human Rights Watch. "Last week, the House rejected the notion that juveniles are beyond redemption. If these bills pass the Senate, they may be able to earn a chance at freedom."
On December 4, Michigan's 110-seat House of Representatives voted to pass the bills, by margins ranging from 12 to 61 votes, and the bills now move to the Senate. Michigan joins California, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Nebraska, and the federal government in taking steps toward ending the sentence of life without parole for offenders under age 18.
In a 2008 update to a series of reports on the sentencing of youth to life without parole, Human Rights Watch reported that Michigan's population of youth serving the sentence is the third-highest in the country, just behind Louisiana and Pennsylvania. There are no youth serving the sentence in the rest of the world.
"Michigan and certain other states in the United States stand alone in locking up kids and throwing away the key," Parker said. "Not a single other country in the world incarcerates offenders under 18 for life without providing them some chance of demonstrating rehabilitation and remorse."
In its letter, Human Rights Watch noted that both brain science research and the 2005 Supreme Court case of Roper v. Simmons recognize that some child offenders have the capacity to turn their lives around even after committing a heinous crime. Acknowledging the suffering of victims and their families because of youth crime, the letter points out that many youth serving life without parole did not physically commit the crime for which they were sentenced. Nearly half of youth sentenced to life without parole surveyed in Michigan were sentenced for aiding and abetting or for an unplanned killing in the course of a felony.
Human Rights Watch also highlighted the racial disparities in sentencing. In Michigan, black youth are serving life without parole at a per capita rate 10 times higher than that of white youth.
Two UN oversight and enforcement bodies, the Human Rights Committee and the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, have found that the practice of sentencing juveniles to life without parole violates US human rights treaty obligations.
Human Rights Watch is one of the world's leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights. By focusing international attention where human rights are violated, we give voice to the oppressed and hold oppressors accountable for their crimes. Our rigorous, objective investigations and strategic, targeted advocacy build intense pressure for action and raise the cost of human rights abuse. For 30 years, Human Rights Watch has worked tenaciously to lay the legal and moral groundwork for deep-rooted change and has fought to bring greater justice and security to people around the world.
"The window of opportunity to deliver assistance is now, today, not tomorrow," said the deputy director-general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
A top official at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization said Monday that food availability across Gaza has reached "an all-time low" under Israel's suffocating blockade, which has heavily restricted the entrance of lifesaving humanitarian assistance and plunged the enclave into famine.
"Food supply has sharply deteriorated," FAO Deputy Director-General Beth Bechdol said at a conference in Cairo, Egypt. "The window of opportunity to deliver assistance is now, today, not tomorrow. Food, medicine, and fuel are self-evident priorities, but we must also prioritize the ability to grow food locally where it is needed most to ensure survival."
Bechdol's grim assessment came weeks after the Biden administration pressured Israel to improve conditions on the ground in Gaza, which has been utterly devastated by more than a year of bombing.
Aid organizations say that far from improving, Gaza's humanitarian crisis has only gotten worse since the Biden administration threatened to cut off the supply of U.S. weapons to Israel. Last month, the U.S. effectively dropped its pressure campaign by concluding that Israel was not violating international law by blocking American humanitarian assistance.
Most of Gaza's population is currently experiencing "high levels of food insecurity," according to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) figures, and the "risk of Famine persists across the whole Gaza Strip."
"The catastrophe in Gaza is nothing short of a complete breakdown of our common humanity. The nightmare must stop."
In addition to obstructing aid deliveries, Israeli forces have decimated Gaza's agricultural infrastructure and cropland, repeatedly attacked aid workers, and facilitated the looting of humanitarian supplies, fueling desperation among Gaza's starving population. Last week, as The Associated Pressreported, "two children and a woman were crushed to death... as a crowd of Palestinians pushed to get bread at a bakery in the Gaza Strip amid a worsening food crisis in the war-ravaged territory."
Amina Mohammed, the U.N.'s deputy secretary-general, said at the Cairo conference on Monday that "conditions for Palestinians in Gaza are appalling and apocalyptic," with malnutrition running "rampant" and famine "imminent."
"In the past four months alone, nearly 19,000 children were hospitalized due to acute malnutrition—nearly double the cases in the first half of the year," Mohammed said. "In the face of the gigantic needs, humanitarian aid is—outrageously—being blocked. This flies in the face of the clear requirements under international humanitarian law to respect and to protect civilians and to ensure their essential needs are met."
"It's past time for an immediate cease-fire and the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages," she added. "The catastrophe in Gaza is nothing short of a complete breakdown of our common humanity. The nightmare must stop. We cannot continue to look away."
Israeli airstrikes killed nearly a dozen people in southern Lebanon on Monday, heightening fears that a tenuous cease-fire agreement is on the verge of collapse.
The Israeli military on Monday carried out a series of airstrikes in southern Lebanon, killing nearly a dozen people and further imperiling a fragile cease-fire agreement that Israel has been accused of violating dozens of times since the deal took effect last week.
Israel's latest strikes came after Hezbollah fired a pair of projectiles in the direction of Israeli-occupied territory known as Shebaa Farms. Israel's military, which condemned the Hezbollah attack as a violation of the cease-fire deal, said the projectiles did not cause any casualties, as they fell in open areas.
The Israeli outlet Ynetreported that Israel "acted against alleged Hezbollah violations without consulting the international committee tasked with monitoring compliance under the agreement."
CNNnoted Monday that Hezbollah's projectile fire was a response to "repeated Israeli strikes that have hit Lebanon daily since Thursday, the day after the cease-fire came into force." A United Nations peacekeeping source told the outlet that Israel has violated the cease-fire deal "about 100 times."
About the Lebanon ceasefire Biden is so proud of — CNN just reported that "Israel has violated that ceasefire about 100 times." pic.twitter.com/w172R5VrQM
— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) December 2, 2024
In a statement, Hezbollah accused Israel of "firing on civilians" and launching "airstrikes in different parts of Lebanon, which led to the death of citizens and the injury of others, in addition to the continued violation of Lebanese airspace by hostile Israeli aircraft reaching the capital Beirut."
The cease-fire deal brokered by France and the United States includes a 60-day period during which Israel must halt "offensive military operations against Lebanese targets" and withdraw its forces from southern Lebanon. The agreement was announced after weeks of relentless Israeli bombings and ground attacks in Lebanon that killed thousands of people and displaced more than a million.
The U.S., Israel's main ally and weapons supplier, assured Israel that a cease-fire agreement would not limit its ability to attack Lebanon whenever it perceives a threat, calling into question the deal's legitimacy.
Asked about alleged violations of the cease-fire agreement, U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters Monday that "the cease-fire is holding" and the Biden administration is examining potential violations in partnership with the government of France.
"Ultimately, what we don't want to see is the cease-fire break down, and we have not seen the cease-fire break down," Miller said.
But the Biden administration has reportedly told Israel privately that it is "concerned" the cease-fire deal could collapse.
"The Israelis have been playing a dangerous game in recent days," an unnamed U.S. official told Axios.
One Israeli official, according toAxios, "admitted that the current situation could lead to the collapse of the cease-fire but stressed it will depend on how Hezbollah responds" to Israel's latest round of airstrikes.
"Someone tell Trump that Israel already unleashed hell on Gaza, and hostages were not released."
In an early signal of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's foreign policy plans for when he returns to office next month, the Republican said Monday "there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East" if Hamas does not release hostages taken from Israel, the occupying military force in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Trump demanded hostages seized during the October 7 attack of last year be released or his promised retribution would follow. Nearly 45,000 Palestinians have already been killed—mostly civilian men, women, and children—since Israel launched a full-scale invasion of Gaza in the wake of the Hamas-led operation.
Of the 251 people taken captive last year, 63 are believed to be still alive in Gaza, according toThe Washington Post's tracker, which was updated last week. So far, 117 others have been freed or rescued and 71 have been confirmed killed.
After dining with Sara Netanyahu, the wife of Israel's prime minister, at the Trump International Golf Club in Florida Sunday night, the U.S. president-elect made his threat about the hostages on his Truth Social platform Monday afternoon.
"Everybody is talking about the hostages who are being held so violently, inhumanely, and against the will of the entire World, in the Middle East," Trump wrote. "But it's all talk, and no action! Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that if the hostages are not released prior to January 20, 2025, the date that I proudly assume Office as President of the United States, there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against Humanity."
"Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America," Trump added. "RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!"
Stephen Pollard, editor-at-large The Jewish Chronicle, responded that "this is the message the president of the USA should have sent on October 8, 2023."
Noting Pollard's comments, Rohan Talbot, director of advocacy and campaigns at the U.K.-based Medical Aid for Palestinians, said: "Genuinely interested to know what Stephen thinks the U.S. could have supported Israel to do in Gaza beyond what it currently has. Nukes?"
"This statement is unhinged—'there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East,'" Talbot added.
Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer in the School of Security Studies at King's College London, said, "Someone tell Trump that Israel already unleashed hell on Gaza, and hostages were not released."
Drop Site Newshighlighted that "Trump's statement—which follows a video released over the weekend by Hamas' armed wing featuring U.S.-Israeli captive Edan Alexander and explicitly addressing Trump—does not acknowledge that Netanyahu has repeatedly sabotaged cease-fire deals that could have freed Israeli hostages. It also appears timed to position himself to claim credit for any progress in cease-fire talks, as negotiations between Hamas and Egyptian mediators are already underway."
As the American Jewish outlet Forwardreported Monday:
The White House is attempting a final push to get... a deal done. President Joe Biden said last week that the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon had created an opportunity to reignite stalled negotiations for a similar deal in Gaza. "We will use every day we have in office to try to generate as much progress towards that end as possible," Jake Sullivan, Biden's national security adviser, said Sunday morning on ABC's "This Week."
Given the failed efforts in the past, the families of the American hostages are hoping Trump could leverage his popularity in Israel and his relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take immediate action during the transition period. "Trump must not wait until he is inaugurated to help reach a deal that secures the freedom for Edan, six other Americans, and the rest of the hostages," Adi and Yael Alexander, the parents of Edan, said on Saturday.
Despite an abundance of evidence showing how Israel is using U.S. weapons to slaughter civilians in Gaza and severely restricting the flow of humanitarian aid while claiming to target Hamas, Biden and Congress have refused to cut off arms to Netanyahu's government. In fact, just hours after the cease-fire between the Israeli government and Hezbollah took effect—a deal that Israel has since violated approximately 100 times—the Financial Times reported last week that "Biden has provisionally approved a $680 million weapons sale to Israel."