July, 07 2015, 09:00am EDT
One year after the Israeli military assault on Gaza
Available for interviews: One year after Operation Protective Edge, Israel's military assault on Gaza, Jewish Voice for Peace members reflect on Jewish opposition to the war, and the growth of the movement for Palestinian freedom and equality.
WASHINGTON
Available for interviews: One year after Operation Protective Edge, Israel's military assault on Gaza, Jewish Voice for Peace members reflect on Jewish opposition to the war, and the growth of the movement for Palestinian freedom and equality.
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) was the only major Jewish organization to unequivocally oppose the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip during the summer of 2014. Between July 7th and August 26th, 2014, Israel's vastly disproportionate military campaign in Gaza killed over 2,250 Palestinians, including over 500 children and over 1400 civilians (73 Israelis also lost their lives, including 1 child and 6 civilians). In the coming weeks, Jewish Voice for Peace chapters across the country will hold memorial events to honor all the victims of last summer's violence.
Rabbi Brant Rosen is currently the midwest regional director of the American Friends Service Committee, and the co-chair of the JVP Rabbinical Council. He is the author of Wrestling in the Daylight, a Rabbi's Path to Palestine Solidarity to and the author of the blog Shalom Rav.
"On this one year anniversary of Israel's military assault on Gaza, we honor the memory of those who lost their lives by re-dedicating ourselves to justice. Israel's crushing blockade of Gaza still continues: homes have not been rebuilt, tens of thousands remain homeless, unemployed and lacking access to basic food, water and electricity resources. This is not a humanitarian crisis - this is politically instigated collective punishment of a population. We must certainly act to help those who are suffering in Gaza - but we must do more. The best way we can observe this tragic milestone is intensify our advocacy to pressure Israel to lift the blockade and pursue diplomacy over militarism."
Ariana Katz is a rabbinical student at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, youth educator, and organizer with JVP in Philadelphia.
"After the collapse of peace talks last spring, the assault on the people of Gaza last summer, and the recent re-election of the most right-wing government in Israeli history, it is clearer than ever that outside pressure will be needed to create change in Israel. More and more students, churches and especially young Jews, are turning to the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement as a way to take action for justice."
Cecilie Surasky is the deputy director of Jewish Voice for Peace. A videomaker, former newspaper columnist and talk radio host, Cecilie's analyses of Israel-Palestine politics have appeared in numerous media outlets around the world.
"There is no question that Israel is literally dividing the Jewish community, and that more and more young US Jews are actively opposing the Israeli government. This last year, JVP experienced the biggest growth in our history as new members found a political home to oppose Israel's destructive actions and reconnect with a Jewish community that stands for justice."
Last summer, Jewish Voice for Peace collaborated with activists, artists, celebrities and thought leaders to release a video expressing support for Palestinian freedom, equality and justice. The video, which The Nation magazine named "Most Valuable Video" of 2014, featured celebrities such as Chuck D, Jonathan Demme, Gloria Steinem, Wallace Shawn, Tony Kushner, Mira Nair, Roger Waters, Brian Eno, and others holding signs with the names and ages of Palestinian civilians killed by the Israeli military in Gaza.
This week also marks the 10 year anniversary of the call from Palestinian civil society for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel until it complies with international law. Jewish Voice for Peace has fully endorsed this call, and participates in campaigns that use nonviolent tactics to pressure Israel to change its policies towards Palestinians.
Jewish Voice for Peace is a national, grassroots organization inspired by Jewish tradition to work for a just and lasting peace according to principles of human rights, equality, and international law for all the people of Israel and Palestine. JVP has over 200,000 online supporters, over 70 chapters, a youth wing, a Rabbinic Council, an Artist Council, an Academic Advisory Council, and an Advisory Board made up of leading U.S. intellectuals and artists.
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1,100+ People Sign 'Israelis Against Apartheid' Petition for Immediate Gaza Cease-Fire
"The Israeli government is using the tremendous loss of Israeli civilian lives to implement a genocidal campaign on the men, women, and children of Gaza," the group said.
Oct 17, 2023
More than 1,100 people have signed an open letter by Israelis Against Apartheid urging the international community "to intervene immediately to stop the indiscriminate bombing of 2.3 million people living in the Gaza strip," the U.S-based group Jewish Voice for Peace said Tuesday.
"We, Israeli citizens, are watching with grave concern the ongoing massive Israeli military assault on the people of Gaza," states the letter, which is hosted by Jewish Voice for Peace. The signers noted that the besieged coastal enclave "has been bombed day and night by land, air, and sea since October 7."
That was the day Hamas-led militants launched a surprise infiltration attack on Israel, killing more than 1,400 Israeli civilians and soldiers. Since then, Israel's relentless bombardment of Gaza has killed over 3,500 Palestinians, including more than 1,000 children, while Israel has cut off food, fuel, and electricity to the densely populated strip—an apparent war crime.
"The horrors and atrocities starting October 7 are indescribable. Thousands of civilians—Israelis and Palestinians—are paying the price of apartheid."
"We fear that in the coming hours, Gaza's hospitals will turn into graveyards," continues the letter, which was written before an attack on the al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City killed hundreds of civilians on Tuesday. "With fuel reserves for electricity generators all used up, there will be no more power for operation rooms, vital monitors, ventilators, ICU drips, newborn incubators, or even lights. Communication networks are failing and people can no longer call for ambulances."
The letter also urges the international community to "prevent the imminent and disastrous ground military invasion into Gaza."
"In the face of an unprecedented huge-scale humanitarian disaster, the Israeli government should be pressured to desist immediately, before more lives are wasted on top of the thousands already lost," the signers asserted. "We call on the Israeli government to agree to a prisoner and hostage exchange immediately, and for a safe humanitarian corridor to be created for civilians and supplies, electricity, and fuel to the medical facilities."
"The horrors and atrocities starting October 7 are indescribable. Thousands of civilians—Israelis and Palestinians—are paying the price of apartheid," the letter concludes. "We are calling you to intervene immediately to stop the war crimes that are still happening."
Israelis Against Apartheid was formed in 2021 during Israel's last major assault on Gaza.
"As we watch now hundreds killed in an Israeli airstrike on a Gaza hospital, we implore the international community to stop its cooperation and support for any further killing and displacement of civilians," the group said in a statement.
"The Israeli government is using the tremendous loss of Israeli civilian lives to implement a genocidal campaign on the men, women, and children of Gaza, ignoring calls of Israelis, including those who just lost their loved ones, to stop," the organization added.
The open letter follows Jewish-led protests across the U.S., with scores of demonstrators arrested in cities including New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. Another major Jewish-led protest is planned for Wednesday in Washington, D.C.
While many Israelis bristle at the assertion that their country is perpetrating apartheid, a growing number of prominent Israelis including former Attorney General Michael Ben-Yair, former Deputy Attorney General Yehudit Karp, and former ambassadors to South Africa Alon Liel and Ilan Baruch, endorse the description. So do more and more Israeli journalists, artists, veterans, and human rights groups, including Yesh Din and B'Tselem.
A growing number of Israelis are also accusing their country of genocide, pointing to Israel's indiscriminate killing of thousands of Palestinians, the order for 1.1 million Gazans to flee for their lives ahead of an expected ground invasion, and incendiary statements made by Israeli leaders.
For example, far-right Israeli parliamentarian Ariel Kallner last week called for a new Nakba—the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Arabs from Palestine by militant Zionists establishing the modern state of Israel—while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week described Gazan civilians as "children of darkness" and Israeli President Isaac Herzog said there were no innocent civilians in Gaza.
"When we look at the actions taken, the dropping of thousands and thousands of bombs in a couple of days, including phosphorus bombs, as we heard, on one of the most densely populated areas around the world, together with these proclamations of intent, this indeed constitutes genocidal killing, which is the first act, according to the convention, of genocide," Israeli Holocaust scholar Raz Segal toldDemocracy Now! on Monday, referring to provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
"And Israel, I must say, is also perpetrating act number two and three—that is, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and creating conditions designed to bring about the destruction of the group by cutting off water, food, supply of energy, bombing hospitals, ordering the fast evictions of hospitals, which the World Health Organization has declared to be, quote, 'a death sentence,'" he continued.
"So, we're seeing the combination of genocidal acts with special intent," Segal added. "This is indeed a textbook case of genocide."
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Protests Erupt as Israel, Palestinians Trade Blame After Gaza Hospital Strike Kills Hundreds
"The death toll right now is more than 500, but we believe that number will reach more than 1,000," said one Gaza medical doctor.
Oct 17, 2023
Authorities in Gaza said Tuesday night that an Israel Defense Forces airstrike on a hospital holding thousands of patients, staff, and people seeking shelter from Israel's relentless bombardment killed at least 500 civilians, while IDF officials blamed the deaths on a botched Islamic Jihad rocket attack.
Photos and videos from al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City posted on social media showed bodies and body parts scattered about in the fiery aftermath of the blast. One video shared by senior Al Jazeera journalist Ali Hashem reportedly shows the moment when a rocket or missile strikes the Anglican-run hospital, causing a massive, earth-shaking explosion.
"The death toll right now is more than 500, but we believe that number will reach more than 1000," Ziad Shehadah, a medical doctor and resident of Gaza, told Al Jazeera. "It is a massacre."
Ghassan Abu Sittah, a physician with the international charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF), said on social media: "We were operating in the hospital, there was a strong explosion, and the ceiling fell on the operating room. This is a massacre."
MSF said that "nothing justifies this shocking attack on a hospital and its many patients and health workers, as well as the people who sought shelter there."
"Hospitals are not a target. This bloodshed must stop. Enough is enough," the group added.
Many Gazans had fled to the hospital after Israeli authorities ordered 1.1 million Palestinians to flee for their lives—an alleged war crime compared to the Nakba ethnic cleansing of Arabs from Palestine during the establishment of the modern state of Israel—amid a bombing campaign that has killed more than 3,500 people, including over 1,000 children, since October 7.
"What's s happened is terrible because those people, all of them are civilians. They fled their homes and reached a place that they believed was safe—a hospital, which according to international law, is a safe place," Shehadah said. "People left their homes thinking they were more dangerous and they move to our schools and hospitals to be safe. And in one minute, all of them have been killed at a hospital."
Referring to the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mustafa Barghouti, head of the Palestinian National Initiative party, told Al Jazeera that "what happened is nothing but a deliberate war crime by the war criminal Netanyahu and his war cabinet."
"These people have committed another massacre against the Palestinian people," he continued. "They attacked a hospital. This is not only unacceptable, it's so savage.. attacking a hospital where people are taking refuge from the places that were bombarded by Israelis and forced to leave, trying to find some safe passage in the hospital or near the hospital. This means there are no safe places for Palestinians."
"This was a genocide committed in front of the whole world in a place that should be safe," he added.
On Monday, Netanyahu called Palestinian civilians "the children of darkness," while calling Israel's war on Gaza "a struggle between humanity and the law of the jungle."
IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari declared last week that in this war, "the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy."
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus tweeted that the WHO "strongly condemns the attack on al-Alhi Arab Hospital in north Gaza."
"Early reports indicate hundreds of deaths and injuries," he added. "We call for the immediate protection of civilians and health care, and for the evacuation orders to be reversed."
Hamas—which governs Gaza and whose fighters led the surprise attack on Israel that killed more than 1,400 civilians and soldiers—called the hospital attack "a crime of genocide."
"The hospital massacre confirms the enemy's brutality and the extent of his feeling of defeat," said Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who called the attack "a new turning point."
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) blamed "a failed Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket" for the blast.
"From an analysis of the IDF's operational systems, an enemy rocket barrage was carried out towards Israel, which passed in the vicinity of the hospital, when it was hit," the IDF claimed.
However, critics noted that the IDF is known to deny and deflect responsibility for its deadly attacks on Palestinian civilians, including Palestinian American Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.
Others pointed out that Israeli forces have already bombed al-Ahli Hospital during the current war on Gaza.
On Sunday, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said that four al-Ahli staff members were injured "by Israeli rocket fire" during a Saturday night attack.
"The evil and barbaric terror attacks on Israelis by Hamas were a blasphemous outrage," Welby said. "But the civilians of Gaza are not responsible for the crimes of Hamas."
The hospital attack sparked large protests in the illegally occupied West Bank, as well as in cities throughout the Middle East and around the world. Demonstrations took place in Tuesday night in Iran, Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco, Turkey, Syria, Tunisia, and elsewhere.
Meanwhile, Philippe Lazzarini, head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), said at least six civilians were killed Monday afternoon when one of the agency's schools being used as a shelter in the al-Maghazi refugee camp was bombed.
"Dozens were injured, including UNRWA staff, and severe structural damage was caused to the school," Lazzarini said. "The numbers are likely to be higher. This is outrageous, and it again shows a flagrant disregard for the lives of civilians."
"At least 4,000 people have taken refuge in this UNRWA school-turned-shelter," he added. "They had and still have nowhere else to go. No place is safe in Gaza anymore, not even UNRWA facilities."
Israeli has attacked U.N. schools in previous assaults on Gaza and blamed it on Palestinian militants.
The hospital and school attacks occurred on the eve of a trip to Israel by U.S. President Joe Biden. The president has declared his "rock-solid and unwavering support" for Israel, which receives nearly $4 billion in annual U.S. military aid.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called for three days of mourning for victims of the hospital attack and canceled a meeting with Biden planned for Wednesday, according toNPR.
In the wake of the hospital attack, Russia and the United Arab Emirates called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on Wednesday morning.
On Tuesday, the Security Council rejected a Russian draft resolution calling for a humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza. The U.S., United Kingdom, France, and Japan voted against the resolution.
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'A Wake-Up Call': 21 Species Declared Extinct by US
"It's a wake-up call on the importance of conserving imperiled species before it's too late," said the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Oct 17, 2023
"My heart breaks," one biodiversity advocate said Monday as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that 21 species would be removed from the endangered species list due to their extinction.
The agency said it had conducted "rigorous reviews of the best available science" and determined that the animal species are no longer in existence, having been protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) starting in the 1970s and '80s, when they were already in very low numbers—or potentially already extinct in some cases.
"These plants and animals can never be brought back," said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD). "We absolutely must do everything we can to avert the loss of even more threads in our web of life."
CBD noted that human exploitation of wildlife and the resulting spread of invasive species was directly linked to at least one of the species losses.
Eight types of the Hawaiian honeycreeper bird species are among the extinct animals, after "their forest habitats were razed by development and agriculture," said CBD.
"The introduction to the islands of mosquitoes, which are not native and carry both avian pox and avian malaria, provided the nail in the coffin," said the group. "Now several other native Hawaiian birds are on the brink, including the 'akikiki, which is down to as few as five pairs in the wild because climate change is allowing mosquitoes to reach further up into their mountain habitat."
Martha Williams, director of the FWS, said federal protections "came too late to reverse these species' decline."
"It's a wake-up call on the importance of conserving imperiled species before it's too late," said Williams. "As we commemorate 50 years of the Endangered Species Act this year, we are reminded of the Act's purpose to be a safety net that stops the journey toward extinction. The ultimate goal is to recover these species."
Other bird species that the FWS confirmed as extinct include the Bachman's warbler and the bridled white-eye. The Little Mariana fruit bat was also delisted as well as at least two fish species—the San Marcos gambusia and the Scioto madtom—and eight freshwater mussel species.
"It's not too late to stop more plants and animals from going extinct, but we have to act fast," said Greenwald.
The FWS noted that the ESA has been credited with saving 99% of listed species from becoming extinct, with more than 100 plant and animal species being delisted and reclassified due to recovery and improved conservation status.
"Extinction is a very real and permanent consequence of leaving the joint biodiversity and climate crises unhindered," said Lindsay Rosa, vice president of conservation research and innovation at Defenders of Wildlife. "It is also a reminder to support the greatest tool we have in the fight against species loss—the Endangered Species Act. Many of these species were added to the Endangered Species Act when they were too far gone to truly benefit from its life-saving protections."
"This announcement reinforces the need for fully funding the Act so that future species listings aren't delayed or falling through the cracks."
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