July, 15 2021, 12:32pm EDT
U.S. Forest Service Looks to Reestablish Safeguards Against Logging in Tongass National Forest
Forest service announcement is a win for climate.
WASHINGTON
According to press reports, the U.S. Forest Service today will announce its intention to fully reinstate the Roadless Rule in the Tongass National Forest, reversing a sweeping Trump-era rollback that would have allowed new logging to take place across some nine million acres of temperate rainforest in Southeast Alaska. The agency will also announce plans to stop old-growth logging beyond designated Roadless areas.
Abbie Dillen, President of Earthjustice, issued the following statement in response:
"Fully undoing Trump's attack on the Tongass and reinstating the Roadless Rule's protections is the only acceptable path forward for America's climate forest, and we are excited the Forest Service has committed to protecting these majestic trees. If press reports are accurate that all large scale old-growth logging in the Tongass will stop, the Biden Administration should be celebrated for taking a critical step in our international climate fight; the towering giant trees in the Tongass are ancient and sacred, and they are also one of the best solutions we have to climate change. In order to continue storing millions and even billions of tons of carbon and protect the biodiversity that thrives in our forests, we encourage the administration to adopt a similar policy across our National Forest and Department of Interior system to ensure all of our old growth and other critical forest stands nationwide are conserved, instead of being auctioned off to the timber industry."
Earthjustice is a non-profit public interest law firm dedicated to protecting the magnificent places, natural resources, and wildlife of this earth, and to defending the right of all people to a healthy environment. We bring about far-reaching change by enforcing and strengthening environmental laws on behalf of hundreds of organizations, coalitions and communities.
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'Not Just Gaza': IDF Killings in West Bank Surge to Unprecedented Levels
"These killings are taking place at a level without recent precedent in an environment in which Israeli forces have no need to fear that their government will hold them accountable," said a Human Rights Watch researcher.
May 08, 2024
The Israeli military is unlawfully killing civilians in the occupied West Bank at an unprecedented rate, according to a Human Rights Watch report released Wednesday as Israel moved forward with its ground assault on the overcrowded Gaza city of Rafah.
"It's not just Gaza," Omar Shakir, HRW's Israel and Palestine director, wrote on social media, pointing to the new report's finding that Israeli forces killed more than twice the number of Palestinians in the West Bank in 2023 than in any year since 2005, when the United Nations began its data collection.
Figures cited by HRW show that the rate of killings in the West Bank was even higher during the first quarter of 2024. In 2023, Israeli forces killed 492 Palestinians in the West Bank, including 120 children. During just the first three months of 2024, the Israeli military killed 131 Palestinians in the occupied territory.
HRW noted that in numerous cases since 2022, "Israeli security forces have unlawfully used lethal force in fatal shootings of Palestinians, including deliberately executing Palestinians who posed no apparent security threat."
In one incident examined by HRW, Israeli forces fatally shot 15-year-old Taha Mahamid and his father, Ibrahim, at the entrance of a West Bank refugee camp. Israel's military then impeded ambulances as they tried to reach Taha and Ibrahim.
The Israeli military did not acknowledge its killing of Taha and his father.
"Residents said that Israeli forces had a practice of taking positions in and atop buildings in the camp to provide cover for troops to enter," HRW said. "There was no apparent basis for shooting Taha and Ibrahim Mahamid, Human Rights Watch found. They posed no imminent threat to life or serious injury, making their killings unlawful."
Richard Weir, senior crisis and conflict researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement Wednesday that "Israeli security forces are not just unlawfully killing Palestinians in Gaza, but have been killing Palestinians without a legal basis in the West Bank, including deliberately executing Palestinians who posed no apparent threat."
"These killings are taking place at a level without recent precedent in an environment in which Israeli forces have no need to fear that their government will hold them accountable," said Weir. "The Israeli government's permissive and discriminatory practices on the use of force and endemic impunity are one facet of the apartheid and structural violence Palestinians face every day. The unlawful killings in the West Bank will continue so long as the Israeli authorities' systemic repression of Palestinians continues."
"Repeated unlawful killings and endemic impunity are among the inhumane acts that make up the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution."
Since Israel launched its latest assault on Gaza following a deadly Hamas-led attack in October, violence against Palestinians in the West Bank has surged, with both settlers and soldiers targeting civilians and effectively wiping entire communities "off the map."
HRW's new report observes that in recent years, Israeli officials—including some who are now key members of the far-right Netanyahu government—"have encouraged soldiers and police to kill Palestinians suspected of attacking Israelis, even when they are no longer a threat."
"In October 2022, Itamar Ben-Gvir, now the national security minister, said while running for election that it should be legal to use lethal force against anyone throwing stones," the group noted.
The U.S., Israel's top ally and arms supplier, has done little in response to deadly violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. In March, the Biden administration sanctioned a handful of extremist settlers.
The Biden State Department recently concluded that at least five Israeli military units are responsible for gross human rights violations but has thus far declined to sanction them, allowing the units to continue receiving U.S. aid.
"Repeated unlawful killings and endemic impunity are among the inhumane acts that make up the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution that Israeli authorities commit against Palestinians," HRW said Wednesday. "Governments should suspend arms and other military support to Israel because of the risk of complicity in grave abuses in Palestine, take action to ensure accountability including supporting the International Criminal Court's probe into serious crimes committed in Palestine, and impose targeted sanctions against those responsible for grave abuses."
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Bernie Sanders Condemns Israel's Destruction of Gaza Universities
"There are no protests on the college campuses in Gaza," said the Vermont senator. "You know why? Because every one of the 12 universities in Gaza has been bombed and destroyed."
May 08, 2024
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday denounced the Israeli military's total decimation of Gaza's universities during floor remarks on protests that have broken out on American college campuses over the past several weeks.
"There are no protests on the college campuses in Gaza," said Sanders (I-Vt.), chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. "You know why? Because every one of the 12 universities in Gaza has been bombed and destroyed."
Sanders' remarks came during a floor debate over a Republican resolution ostensibly aimed at condemning antisemitism on college campuses. GOP lawmakers and President Joe Biden have repeatedly smeared campus protests against Israel's assault on Gaza as antisemitic and ignored the prominent role Jewish students have played in the nationwide demonstrations.
After Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) attempted to pass the GOP antisemitism resolution via unanimous consent, Sanders—who is Jewish—rose to block the measure, criticizing it as insufficient and proposing an alternative that condemns antisemitism as well as all other "forms of bigotry in this country, whether on college campuses or elsewhere, including Islamophobia, homophobia, racism, and the growing attacks against the Asian American community."
Sanders' proposed resolution also expresses support for "the right of students and all Americans to peacefully protest," whereas Scott's measure attacks recent campus protests as "hotbed[s] of blatantly antisemitic rhetoric and action."
"The fact of the matter is that 67% of Americans, according to recent polls, support the United States calling for a cease-fire, and 60% oppose sending more weapons to Israel," Sanders said. "And that's what the protesters are talking about: They are asking why it is we are complicit in the humanitarian disaster taking place in Gaza."
Watch Sanders' remarks:
LIVE: Today I offer a simple resolution:
NO to antisemitism.
NO to Islamophobia.
NO to racism and bigotry in all its forms.
YES to free speech and protest under the 1st Amendment, whether on a college campus or across our nation. https://t.co/czTwnQnz6b
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) May 7, 2024
According to the United Nations, more than 80% of the Gaza Strip's schools have been damaged or reduced to ruins by Israeli forces since October, including all of the enclave's universities.
Last month, a group of U.N. experts said that "it may be reasonable to ask if there is an intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system, an action known as 'scholasticide.'"
"The persistent, callous attacks on educational infrastructure in Gaza have a devastating long-term impact on the fundamental rights of people to learn and freely express themselves, depriving yet another generation of Palestinians of their future," the experts added. "Students with international scholarships are being prevented from attending university abroad."
American campus protests against Israel's assault on Gaza have offered some measure of hope to Palestinian students whose lives have been thrown into chaos by the U.S.-backed war.
Hala Sharaf, a second-year medical student who moved to Cairo to resume her studies amid Israel's assault, toldAl Jazeera that the U.S. student campus demonstrations "have made us feel so hopeful for rejecting what America and Israel are doing to us."
"The student protests in America make me feel like I'm not alone," said Sharaf. "My message to them is to keep the focus on Gaza. Don't forget about Gaza."
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Rights Groups Urge Biden to Make Delayed Report on Israel's Use of US Arms Public
The report—due Wednesday under the terms of a White House directive—has been indefinitely postponed, according to congressional aides.
May 07, 2024
Before Tuesday's reporting that the Biden administration will delay a highly anticipated report on whether Israel is using U.S. military aid in compliance with international law, a coalition of advocacy groups circulated a letter urging the White House to share the document with the public once it's published.
In February, President Joe Biden issued National Security Memorandum (NSM)-20, which requires Secretary of State Antony Blinken "to obtain certain credible and reliable written assurances from foreign governments" receiving U.S. arms "that the recipient country will use any such defense articles in accordance with international humanitarian law" and then provide Congress with periodic reports "to enable meaningful oversight."
The first report is due by Wednesday. However, four congressional aides
toldPolitico Tuesday that publication would be postponed indefinitely.
"It is not clear if your administration intends to... make this report available to the public," coalition members Amnesty International USA, Defending Rights & Dissent, Freedom of the Press Foundation, National Press Photographers Association, Radio Television Digital News Association, and Reporters Without Borders said in a letter to Biden drafted ahead of Politico's reporting.
"We strongly urge you to make the report available to the public and the press to the greatest extent possible," the groups added.
Access to the document, the coalition argued, "will allow the press to more fully and accurately report on how elected leaders are making decisions about military aid to foreign countries" and "will help Americans make informed judgments about our leaders' decisions on foreign military aid."
"We strongly urge you to make the report available to the public and the press to the greatest extent possible."
The letter comes as Israel uses U.S.-supplied arms and ammunition to wage what hundreds of international legal experts and others say is a genocidal war on Gaza. These include 155-millimeter artillery shells and 2,000-pound guided "bunker-buster" bombs, which Israel says are necessary to target Hamas' underground tunnels.
Aided by artificial intelligence-based target selection systems, Israel Defense Forces commanders are ordering strikes they know will cause large numbers of civilian casualties. In a bid to assassinate a single Hamas commander, the IDF dropped at least two 2,000-pound bombs on the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp on October 31, killing more than 120 civilians.
Even the U.S. military—which since 2001 has killed hundreds of thousands of people during the open-ended so-called War on Terror—avoids using 2,000-pound bombs in densely populated areas due to the tremendous damage they cause.
One prominent U.S. military historian called Israel's Gaza onslaught "one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history," comparing it to the Allied firebombing of Dresden during World War II, which also killed tens of thousands of civilians.
The letter also comes as the Biden administration reportedly believes that Israel's nascent ground invasion of Rafah does not cross the president's "red line" warning that any "major operation" in the southern city—where more than 1 million Palestinians forcibly displaced from other parts of Gaza are sheltering alongside around 280,000 local residents—would damage U.S.-Israeli relations.
The International Court of Justice found in January that Israel is "plausibly" perpetrating genocide in Gaza, where Israeli bombs, bullets, and blockades have left more than 123,000 Palestinians—most of them women and children—dead, injured, or missing since October 7, and hundreds of thousands more suffering full-blown famine.
While the Biden administration has accepted the Israeli government's claims that it is not breaking international law when using American weapons, a number of House Democrats have challenged Israel's assurance, citing "mounting credible and deeply troubling reports and allegations" of human rights crimes committed by IDF troops in Gaza, and by soldiers and settlers in the illegally occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Officials at the United States Agency for International Development also concluded in a confidential April memo to Blinken that Israel is violating NSM-20 by blocking humanitarian aid from entering the besieged Gaza Strip as children there starve to death.
Furthermore, a leaked State Department memo revealed last month that officials at four of the agency's bureaus concluded that Israel's assurances of legal arms use are "neither credible nor reliable."
In addition to NSM-20, federal legislation including the Arms Control Export Act and Leahy Laws also proscribe U.S. arms transfers to human rights violators—although there are many examples of these statutes being ignored for the benefit of key allies including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other nations.
"The public has a profound interest in understanding how the U.S. ensures that its military aid doesn't go to human rights abusers," Caitlin Vogus, deputy advocacy director at Freedom of the Press Foundation, said in a statement Tuesday.
"If the Biden administration can stand behind its decisions about defense assistance, it should have no reason to withhold the report that members of Congress will see from the press and the public," Vogus added.
While Biden has criticized Israel's "indiscriminate bombing" of Gaza and is reportedly holding up two shipments of precision-guided bombs to send a message to Israeli leaders, the president continues to affirm his steadfast support for Israel and has recently approved the transfer of more warplanes, 2,000-pound bombs, and other arms to its key Middle Eastern ally. The administration is also pushing Congress to approve the sale of $18 billion worth of F-15 fighter jets to Israel.
Earlier this year, a group of mostly Democratic members of Congress asked Blinken to explain what they called "highly unusual" moves by the Biden administration to bypass lawmakers in order to fast-track emergency military aid to Israel. Biden—who recently signed off on $14.3 billion in new armed aid to Israel atop the $4 billion it already gets from Washington each year—has also come under fire for approving more than 100 weapons sales to Israel since October.
Human rights defenders slammed Biden's reported decision to postpone publication of the report due on Wednesday.
"It's obvious why Biden is burying the NSM-20 report on Israel: He won't hold Israel accountable," Georgetown University adjunct professor Josh Reubner asserted on social media. "There's no way to conclude that Israel hasn't violated assurances it won't use U.S. weapons to break international law or block aid. Of course it's doing both."
Palestinian American author and political analyst Yousef Munayyer asked: "Hey, Joe Biden, what are you hidin'?"
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