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international humanitarian law
Israeli Drone Kills Man and 12-Year-Old Daughter in 'Barbaric' Double-Tap Strike
The pair were among the at least 24 people killed by Israeli strikes on Lebanon on Saturday despite a nominal ceasefire.
May 10, 2026
An Israeli drone killed a Syrian laborer and his 12-year-old daughter in a double-tap attack in southern Lebanon on Saturday, in what the Lebanon Health Ministry described as part of a continuing pattern “of grave violations of International Humanitarian Law.”
The man was riding with his daughter on a motorcycle in Nabatiyeh when the pair were targeted by three drone strikes, according to the ministry.
The Associated Press reported:
The ministry said that after the initial strike, the man and his daughter managed to move away from the site only to be attacked again by the drone instantly killing the man. The girl then moved about 100 meters (yards) away and was hit again by the drone after she had been already wounded.
The girl was taken to the hospital, but did not survive her injuries, according to Lebanon's National News Agency.
"What does terrorism mean to you? If it’s [not] double-tap killings of paramedics, journalists, and today a 12 year old girl, then what is it?"
“The Ministry of Public Health denounces this barbaric targeting and the deliberate violence against civilians and children in Lebanon,” the ministry said, as AP reported.
The father and daughter were among a total of at least 24 people in Lebanon who were killed by Israeli strikes on Saturday, according to Al Jazeera.
One strike on the town of al-Saksakieh killed seven, among them a child. The strike also wounded 15 people including three children.
The bombings continue despite a nominal ceasefire between Lebanon and Hezbollah that went into effect April 17. However, Israel has killed almost 500 people in Lebanon since April 16, raising the death toll since its March 2 invasion to over 2,750.
War correspondent Courtney Schellekens shared the story of the 12-year-old girl and her father in a video on social media on Saturday.
What does terrorism mean to you? If it’s no double-tap killings of paramedics, journalists, and today a 12 year old girl, then what is it?
Westerners, where is your humanity?
Cameraman: @aliezzedine7 pic.twitter.com/ntXIwz4s6H
— courtneybonneauimages (@cbonneauimages) May 9, 2026
"What does terrorism mean to you? If it’s [not] double-tap killings of paramedics, journalists, and today a 12 year old girl, then what is it?" she wrote above the video.
At the conclusion of the video itself, she continued the same line of questioning.
"To my Western followers, I really want you to think critically about the definition of terrorism, to whom it gets applied and who does it benefit," she said. "Because where I've been sitting for the last 18 months, this mass murder and mass, you know, look at this," she gestured to the ruble behind her, "this mass destruction, this ethnic cleansing of south Lebanon, this looks a lot like terrorism to me."
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What to the Arab-American and the Child of Immigrants Is the Fourth of July?
For me, it is hard to separate the explosions lighting our night sky from over 600 days of explosions, also funded by our tax dollars, setting alight universities, hospitals, tents, and children in Gaza.
Jul 04, 2025
As we walked toward the park for the fireworks display, my 5-year-old held my hand excitedly. “I want to see the fireworks up close,” she said. We’ve only watched neighborhood displays through our window, in previous years. She helped me pull her younger sister in the wagon behind us.
When the first fireworks lit up the sky, both children covered their ears. “It’s too loud!” They cried, looking up at the sky in awe. “How do they shoot them up there? I want to see,” said my older child, quickening her pace. But my heart paused.
For me, it is hard to separate the explosions lighting our night sky from over 600 days of explosions, also funded by our tax dollars, setting alight universities, hospitals, tents, and children in Gaza. The daily atrocities, which include illegally blocking food and humanitarian aid and then “deliberately” shooting at unarmed Palestinian civilians waiting for aid at U.S.-funded distribution sites, have all but faded from our newspapers.
No child should have to look up at the sky in fear that the bombs bursting in air will flatten their home, school, or hospital, or separate them from their loved ones.
I immediately thought of a Palestinian-American colleague in NYC, who had recently texted, “My aunt just came for a visit from the West Bank, Palestine. When she heard fireworks in the neighborhood, she froze and asked, ‘Has the war come here?’”
On some level it has. The insistence of U.S. elected officials on continuing to send our tax dollars to Israel for its annihilation of Gaza, in spite of majority public opposition, played a decisive role in the 2024 election. The disillusionment of the American electorate, and the growing gap between policy and public opinion, has only grown. Now 3 out of 4 Americans believe that our democracy is under serious threat.
In 1852, Frederick Douglass, an American abolitionist and statesman, was invited to deliver a speech at a meeting of the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society in New York, entitled “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” He reflected on the young republic, extolled its fight for political freedom, and then asked a vital question: “Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?” Douglass urged the listener to ponder on the inequities of our 76-year-old nation, founded on universal declarations of freedom, whose economy relied on enslaving Black people, and denying them the same freedom we proudly proclaim. His question today bears repeating.
Today, as we celebrate 249 years of American democracy, the ironies of the moment could scarcely be more stark. Our president, himself the child of one immigrant and married to another, aims to end birthright citizenship. The 1800s feel closer than ever as the Executive Branch pushes our Constitution to its limits, challenging the 14th Amendment which granted birthright citizenship to the children of slaves. That same president has also brazenly endorsed evicting or eliminating 2 million Palestinians from their homeland to turn Gaza into a beach resort, although 4 out of 5 Americans oppose this flagrant violation of international humanitarian law.
In the past month, plainclothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have detained U.S. citizens on their way to work, and detonated explosives to blow off the front door during a raid of a Los Angeles home, traumatizing a woman and her two children, 1- and 6-years-old, who were sleeping inside. In spite of the misgivings of a majority of Americans, Congress has forced through massive cuts to healthcare and nutrition benefits, which may push an estimated 17 million people off health insurance, threaten the closure of 300 rural hospitals, and increase food insecurity for over 40 million Americans. And thus, it should be little surprise that our same president has contracted with Palantir to create a searchable, “mega-database” of tax returns and other private data of U.S. citizens, which would enable surveillance and further erosion of our civil liberties. Our ability to tolerate the erosion of freedoms and security for some portends the erosion of freedom for all.
As we gather with our neighbors, friends, and family this weekend, let us reflect more deeply on our duty to protect the Declaration that we celebrate. For too many citizens of this republic, firework displays echo the devastating realities our loved ones face. No child should have to look up at the sky in fear that the bombs bursting in air will flatten their home, school, or hospital, or separate them from their loved ones. At a bare minimum we should have the power to ensure that our tax dollars do not fund such atrocities.
As we approach our nation’s 250th anniversary, we must urgently acknowledge that the American Revolution is not over. Let us not whitewash our history but understand that we shape it. We all have a role to play in defending its core principles, of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for all. At this moment, the most rightful way to honor our democracy is to follow Douglass’ sage exhortation to “stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.”
This piece has been updated with edits from the author.
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Rights Group Urges ICC to Probe Biden for 'Aiding and Abetting' Israeli Crimes in Gaza
A veteran war crimes lawyer argues that "there are solid grounds to investigate Joe Biden, Antony Blinken, and Lloyd Austin for complicity in Israel's crimes."
Feb 24, 2025
A human rights group revealed Monday that on the last full day of U.S. President Joe Biden's term, it encouraged the International Criminal Court to investigate him and two of his Cabinet members for "aiding and abetting" Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.
U.S.-based Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) announced that on January 19, it submitted to the ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan a 172-page communication detailing why the tribunal should probe Biden and his former secretaries of defense and state, Lloyd Austin and Anthony Blinken.
Although a fragile cease-fire took effect in Gaza last month, Israel—backed by the Biden administration and Congress—responded to the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack with a 15-month blockade and military assault that killed tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of Palestinians and left the territory in ruins.
"There are solid grounds to investigate Joe Biden, Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin for complicity in Israel's crimes," DAWN board member and veteran war crimes lawyer Reed Brody said in a Monday statement. "The bombs dropped on Palestinian hospitals, schools, and homes are American bombs, the campaign of murder and persecution has been carried out with American support. U.S. officials have been aware of exactly what Israel is doing, and yet their support never stopped."
"By investigating and prosecuting U.S. officials, the ICC can deter and discourage further international support for Israeli crimes in Gaza and demonstrate that no one is above the law."
DAWN's document lays out how the United States, under Biden, "provided unwavering direct military and political support to Israel, even after it became manifest that Israel continued to carry out severe violations of international humanitarian law and human rights." That includes at least $17.9 billion in taxpayer-funded military assistance since October 2023, a 381% increase from the around $3.8 billion a year before Hamas' attack.
"In addition to new arms transfers and sales authorizations, the U.S. used pre-existing contracts and additional emergency military aid measures to expedite the delivery of major arms," the submission continues, also noting "the deployment of U.S.-operated military intelligence and active military operations targeting groups posing threats to Israel on other fronts."
Israel—like the United States—is not a party to the Hague-based ICC, but Palestine is. The court in November issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, also known as Mohammed Deif, who is dead.
DAWN's submission makes the case that "by continuously and unconditionally providing political support and military
support to Israel while being fully aware of the specific crimes committed by Netanyahu, Gallant, and their subordinates, President Biden, Secretary Blinken, and Secretary Austin contributed intentionally to the commission of those crimes while at least knowing the intention of the group to commit the Israeli crimes, if not aiming of furthering such criminal activity."
The group's executive director, Sarah Leah Whitson, said Monday that "not only did Biden, Blinken, and Secretary Austin ignore and justify the overwhelming evidence of Israel's grotesque and deliberate crimes, overruling their own staff recommendations to halt weapons transfers to Israel, they doubled down by providing Israel with unconditional military and political support to ensure it could carry out its atrocities."
"They provided Israel with not only essential military support but equally essential political support by vetoing multiple cease-fire resolutions at the U.N. Security Council to ensure Israel could continue its crimes," Whitson highlighted. She argued that "by investigating and prosecuting U.S. officials, the ICC can deter and discourage further international support for Israeli crimes in Gaza and demonstrate that no one is above the law."
DAWN also recommended that the ICC consider looking into half a dozen other Biden officials including Jake Sullivan, national security adviser; Gina Raimondo, secretary of commerce; Bonnie Jenkins, under secretary of arms control and international security; Stanley L. Brown, acting assistant secretary for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs; Amanda Dory, acting under secretary of defense for policy; and Mike Miller, acting director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency.
"It is important for the international community, and Palestinians in particular, to know that the American people do not support the crimes their elected officials committed in Palestine and that American organizations are doing their part to hold these officials accountable," said Whitson. "We have a duty, not just a right, as American civil society, to exercise our free speech to serve truth and seek justice."
So far, efforts to hold Biden and other U.S. leaders accountable for enabling what many experts around the world have called Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza via the U.S. court system have been unsuccessful. That includes a December lawsuit against Blinken backed by DAWN—which was founded by assassinated Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
"We have tried every available avenue within the U.S. to stop our government's complicity in the outrageous crimes we've witnessed since October 2023 in Gaza," said Raed Jarrar, DAWN's advocacy director. "When domestic institutions fail to uphold black-letter laws prohibiting military support to commit war crimes, we have a particular responsibility as Americans to hold American officials accountable for their roles in those crimes."
Since Biden left office last month, U.S. President Donald Trump has already welcomed Netanyahu to the White House, responded to the warrants by targeting the ICC with sanctions, and promoted a U.S. takeover of Gaza that would involve ethnically cleansing the territory of Palestinians.
"Trump isn't just obstructing justice; he's trying to burn down the courthouse to prevent anyone from holding Israeli criminals accountable," said Jarrar. "His plan to forcibly displace all Palestinians from Gaza should also merit ICC investigation—not just for aiding and abetting Israeli crimes but for ordering forcible transfer, a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute."
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Biden Stands Aside as Netanyahu Incinerates Gaza, Now Lebanon
Having full U.S. government backing, including weapons and political cover to continue the carnage, Netanyahu knows he has a free hand to attack Iran and drag the U.S. into a regional war.
Oct 19, 2024
Biden’s bombs and missiles, dropped daily on Lebanon, a U.S. ally, by his puppet master Netanyahu, is wreaking havoc in this small defenseless country. The Israeli genocidal machine is waging an incinerating assault on fleeing civilians and critical facilities. The scorched-earth Israeli strategy is the same as what we have seen in Gaza. Attack in Lebanon anyone who moves or anything that stands—whether a hospital, a dense residential area, a café, a municipal building, a market, a school, or a Mosque—and allege there was a Hezbollah commander or a Hezbollah site here or there. Two recent New York Times headlines express some of the impact of this latest Israeli war: “In Just a Week, a Million People in Lebanon Have Been Displaced” and “Lebanon’s Hospitals Buckle Amid an Onslaught: ‘Indiscriminate’ Strikes Overwhelm Health System, U.N. Says.”
Historical note: Hezbollah, also a political party and social service organization, was created to defend impoverished Shiite Muslims in southern Lebanon in 1982 right after the Israeli army once again invaded Lebanon and badly mistreated the residents during an 18-year-long military occupation.
No matter what or who the Israeli Air Force’s American F-16 fighter aircraft bomb, no matter the deaths and injuries to thousands of Lebanese families, many of them children and women, Biden keeps unconditionally and savagely shipping weapons of mass destruction. He is violating six federal laws requiring conditions be met—such as not violating human rights or not obstructing U.S. humanitarian aid. Netanyahu is violating these and other conditions and mocking his major benefactor, the United States government.
Israel has long had designs on a slice of Lebanon going up to and including the Litani River area. Water is valuable. Over the years, Israel has routinely violated Lebanese air space, executed incursions into Lebanon and has used forbidden cluster bombs and white phosphorous. According to Aya Majzoub, Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, “It is beyond horrific that the Israeli army has indiscriminately used white phosphorous in violation of international humanitarian law.”
The White House knows all this. It doesn’t care. Wherever Israel invades, bombs, assassinates, or boobytraps pagers and walkie-talkies, Bibi-Biden continues his servility to the Israeli terror regime and its genocidal leader Netanyahu, who is despised by three out of four Israelis for his domestic policies and is under indictment by Israeli prosecutors for corruption.
Despite reports that Biden steams in private against Netanyahu, and considers him a liar and a supporter of Trump’s re-election, Biden knows that that this foreign authoritarian has the big card: CONGRESS. Most of the legislators who attended his noxious address to a joint congressional session last June gave him a record-breaking 52 standing ovations. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “Benjamin Netanyahu’s presentation in the House Chamber today was by far the worst presentation of any foreign dignitary invited and honored with the privilege of addressing the Congress of the United States.”
Biden, who is known to conduct foreign and military policy without any authorization by Congress, doesn’t want to offend the powerful “Israel Government Can Do No Wrong” Lobby in the U.S.—to which he has been indentured for his entire 50-year political career. This includes Israel’s current destruction of Lebanon, where tens of thousands of Americans are residing. The Washington Post reports that the Biden White House “has so far given full backing to Israel’s ground operations in Lebanon, even amid a growing international outcry over the civilian toll … and Israeli clashes with United Nations peacekeepers,” who have been assigned there for decades.
Having full U.S. government backing, and now backed by U.S. warships, Marines and logistics, plus 100 U.S. soldiers arriving this week in Israel, Netanyahu knows he has a free hand to attack Iran and drag the U.S. into a regional war.
Both Netanyahu and Bibi-Biden have been briefed about the possibilities of “blowback” (the CIA’s term) against the U.S. These concerns come from U.S. intelligence agencies who study scenarios like future 9/11s or the recent inexpensive armed drones that can be constructed and deployed anywhere. Militarists and corporatists in the U.S. aren’t that concerned because whenever “blowback” occurs they can concentrate more power, with bigger military budgets and profits, in another “war on terror,” silencing dissent and subordinating or sidelining critical domestic priorities.
That is the lethal fix and fate that America has been subjected to by its cowardly, Constitution-violating politicians from both major parties. The power structure—the corporate state—or what Franklin Delano Roosevelt once called in a 1938 message to Congress “fascism,” is telling the American people: “Heads we win, Tails you lose.”
Here is how bad Biden has gotten. Recently, two letters signed by 65 American doctors and health workers back from the horrors, the killing fields of Gaza, to President Joe Biden, have gone unanswered. (See, “65 Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics: What We Saw in Gaza” by Feroze Sidhwa, New York Times on Sunday, October 13, 2024). Their letters plead for a ceasefire and immediate humanitarian aid for the starving, dying people of Gaza. They request a meeting with President Biden, who has often met with the pro-Israeli lobby. Scranton Joe says no way.
These brave physicians and nurses also are requesting that Joe Biden demand that Netanyahu allow children in Gaza who are seriously burned or are amputees be air-lifted to America to be treated by compassionate specialists in ready American hospitals. Biden, a practicing Catholic, has no interest.
President George Washington warned his country about avoiding foreign entanglements in his farewell address. Were he possessed of more prescience; he would have added the word “surrenders.”
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Biden (Finally) Threatens to Halt Arms to Israel Over Gaza Carnage
"We should not wait 30 days," one group argued. "U.S. law requires ending the weapons NOW."
Oct 15, 2024
After a year of outrage over U.S. support for Israel's devastating assault on the Gaza Strip, multiple media outlets reported Tuesday that the Biden administration threatened to cut off U.S. weapons if the Israeli government does not take "urgent and sustained actions" to improve humanitarian conditions in the Palestinian territory within 30 days.
The October 13 letter from U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is addressed to Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant and Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer. Axios reporter Barak Ravid published images of the letter on social media and The Washington Post reported that its "authenticity was confirmed by U.S. and Israeli officials."
Blinken and Austin noted requirements under federal law—which critics of the war have often cited in arguments that continuing to provide Israel with weapons is illegal—and National Security Memorandum 20, which President Joe Biden issued in February. NSM-20 directs the secretary of state "to obtain certain credible and reliable written assurances from foreign governments" that they use U.S. arms in line with international humanitarian law and will not "arbitrarily deny, restrict, or otherwise impede, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance."
The U.S. secretaries wrote that "to reverse the downward humanitarian trajectory and consistent with its assurances to us, Israel must, starting now and within 30 days, act on the following concrete measures. Failure to demonstrate a sustained commitment to implementing and maintaining these measures may have implications for U.S. policy under NSM-20 and relevant U.S. law."
The letter calls on the Israeli government to "surge all forms of humanitarian assistance throughout Gaza," with a list of specific actions. It also demands that Israel "ensure that the commercial and Jordan Armed Forces (JAF) corridors are functioning at full and continuous capacity" and "end the isolation in northern Gaza."
While acknowledging concerns about Israel's unverified allegations that a small number of staff from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East were involved in the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack, Blinken and Austin also expressed alarm about the Knesset's potential adoption of UNRWA legislation that "would devastate the Gaza humanitarian response at this critical moment and deny vital educational and social services to tens of thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which could have implications under relevant U.S. law and policy."
As CNN reported Tuesday:
Israel appears to already be responding to the letter, at least indirectly. Just one day after the letter was sent, COGAT, the Israeli agency that manages policy for the Palestinian territories and the flow of aid into the strip, tweeted photos of aid going into Gaza.
"30 trucks entered northern Gaza through the Erez Crossing earlier today. Israel is not preventing the entry of humanitarian aid, with an emphasis on food, into Gaza," COGAT said in a post on X. "Israel will continue to allow the entry of humanitarian aid to the residents of Gaza, while simultaneously destroying Hamas’ military and governance infrastructures."
However, since Sunday, Israel has also continued killing civilians in Gaza, bombing a hospital complex and refugee camps—actions that have led progressive U.S. lawmakers to call on Biden to stop "this evil genocide."
Israel faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice over its yearlong assault on Gaza—which, according to local officials in the Hamas-governed enclave, has killed at least 42,344 Palestinians and wounded another 99,013, with thousands more missing.
Responding to the new letter in a Tuesday statement, Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now, said that "however long overdue, this official warning that Israel must stop blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza or face a suspension of U.S. military aid is an important and unprecedented signal that Israel has crossed even the Biden administration's permissive red lines."
"We now need the Biden administration to show action, not just words, in enforcing U.S. laws, which prohibit aid to Israel given not only its relentless obstruction of humanitarian relief but deliberate starvation and incessant bombardment of Gaza's civilians," she added.
The Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project noted on social media that the United States Agency for International Development and the State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration "recommended ending weapons to Israel months ago for these violations."
"Blinken ignored them and lied to Congress about their findings," the group said. "We should not wait 30 days. U.S. law requires ending the weapons NOW."
Georgia state Rep. Ruwa Romman (D-97), who is Palestinian American, agreed. She declared: "Do it now! There's 370 days of evidence. The hundreds of thousands of people being starved in Gaza won't survive 30 more days."
Outgoing Congressman Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.)—who lost his June primary to a pro-Israel candidate backed by lobbyist money—also argued Tuesday that "30 days is too long to wait and see if we will impose an arms embargo."
"How many more Palestinians are we going to allow Israel to murder in 30 days?" he asked. "How many more children and families and generations? We need an arms embargo NOW!"
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Experts Say Israel's 'Booby-Trap' Attacks in Lebanon Violate International Law
"These attacks violate the human right to life, absent any indication that the victims posed an imminent lethal threat to anyone else at the time."
Sep 19, 2024
Experts from the United Nations and human rights groups said that the device attacks in Lebanon, which killed at least 37 people Tuesday and Wednesday while injuring 2,900, violated international law due to their indiscriminate nature and could constitute a war crime.
The surprise attacks have been widely attributed to Israel, including by unnamed U.S. officials. They came in two waves. On Tuesday afternoon local time, thousands of pagers exploded, killing 12 people, including four children, and injuring 2,300. On Wednesday, another 25 people were killed and 600 injured by the explosion of other communications devices, including walkie-talkies and smartphones. Many of the explosions occurred in supermarkets and other public spaces around Lebanon, leaving civilians maimed.
"These attacks violate the human right to life, absent any indication that the victims posed an imminent lethal threat to anyone else at the time," a group of more than a dozen U.N. legal experts said in a statement on Thursday, including Ben Saul, the U.N.'s special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism.
The U.N. experts called the attacks "a terrifying violation of international law."
Volker Türk, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, also denounced the attacks in a statement on Wednesday, calling them "shocking, and their impact on civilians unacceptable," and saying that "the fear and terror unleashed" was "profound."
"Simultaneous targeting of thousands of individuals, whether civilians or members of armed groups, without knowledge as to who was in possession of the targeted devices, their location, and their surroundings at the time of the attack, violates international human rights law and, to the extent applicable, international humanitarian law," Türk added.
Widespread pager explosions across #Lebanon & in #Syria yesterday are shocking and their impact on civilians unacceptable.
@volker_turk urges against further widening of current conflicts & calls for those responsible for such an attack to be held to account.
— UN Human Rights (@UNHumanRights) September 18, 2024
Israel hasn't confirmed or denied responsibility for the device attacks but has indicated that it's shifting its military focus to the north as tensions mount with Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group and political party in Lebanon.
Israel and Hezbollah have traded airstrikes and rocket fire for the last 11 months, leaving many hundreds dead, mostly on the Lebanese side, but until now both sides have avoided an escalation that led to full-scale war. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Thursday that the attacks were a "declaration of war" and Israel had crossed "all red lines."
Al Jazeera reported Wednesday that "Israel's supporters have celebrated the explosions in Lebanon, describing them as 'precise,' but the blasts went off around civilians—at funerals and in residential buildings, grocery stores, and barber shops, among other places."
The attacks' victims included a 9-year-old girl who had just that day finished her first day of fourth grade, as well as an 11-year-old boy and at least two other children. Some of the Wednesday explosions took place at funerals for those killed in the first wave. The explosions have led to panic regarding devices in the country.
Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the rights group Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), told Al Jazeera "this is exactly why booby-traps of ordinary civilian objects are illegal—because not only do they cause physical harm and injury, they cause psychological and emotional harm."
Whitson, who previously worked at Human Rights Watch, called the attacks "inherently indiscriminate"—violating international humanitarian law designed to protect civilians—and a "deliberate decision on the part of Israel" to create chaos.
Huwaida Arraf, a U.S.-based human rights lawyer, agreed with Whitson, telling Al Jazeera that the coordinated attack "meets the textbook definition of state terrorism."
The experts cited a 1996 U.N. treaty that forbids the use of "booby-traps" on devices associated with civilian use.
Experts said that even if Israel sought to kill Hezbollah military operatives—the devices that exploded had been ordered by Hezbollah—there was no way it could have precisely targeted them with such attacks. Many Lebanese work for Hezbollah in non-combatant roles.
Luigi Daniele, an expert in international humanitarian law at Nottingham Trent University, told Anadolu Agency that targeting non-combatants is a violation of international humanitarian law, as written in Article 8(2)(b)(i) of the Rome Statute. Like other experts, Daniele also cited the more general issue of detonating explosives in public places, which carries foreseeable impact on civilians that can violate Article 8(2)(b)(iv) of the statute.
Saul, the U.N. rapporteur, said that being a Hezbollah accountant shouldn't make someone a target for assassination.
"The crux of the problem is it is absolutely impossible to know who would be in possession of so many pagers at the time they were detonated," he said, adding that the devices could have been passed on to loved ones.
Lama Fakih, the Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, agreed that the attacks were "unlawfully indiscriminate" and called for an independent investigation, in a statement issued Wednesday.
U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) herself called for a congressional investigation, including into whether U.S. played a role in the attack. Members of the Biden administration have so far said relatively little publicly about the attacks.
The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention issued a sharply-worded condemnation of the attacks on Thursday.
"What we see is a genocidal state that is completely out of control and supported by a Western world that is, in large measure, too racist and Islamophobic to care," the nonprofit group wrote on social media.
The Tuesday pager attacks also extended into Syria, where 14 people were injured.
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Investigation Details IDF Use of Gaza Civilians as Booby Trap Detectors
"It's not a one-time incident of a young and stupid company commander who decides on his own to take somebody," said one IDF soldier who admitted to using Palestinians as human shields.
Aug 13, 2024
Believing that "our lives are more important than their lives," Israel Defense Forces soldiers have widely used Palestinians including civilians as booby trap detectors in Gaza, according to a new Haaretz investigation, the latest of numerous reports detailing IDF use of kidnapped Gazans as human shields.
The report, published Tuesday, features testimonies of IDF soldiers, who said commanders are fully aware of the practice of using captured Palestinians as human shields. One soldier said "there is pride in it," referring to acts considered war crimes under Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law.
"When I saw the report from Al Jazeera, I said, 'Ah, yes, it's true.'"
The IDF's use of human shields in the current Gaza war first drew widespread international attention following a May report from Defense for Children International-Palestine detailing how minors are forced to walk ahead of Israeli soldiers during dangerous raids.
Subsequent Al Jazeera reports of a Palestinian strapped to the hood of an Israeli combat vehicle to deter attack and Gazans being sent into buildings and tunnels to ensure the locations weren't rigged with explosives sparked international outrage and initial IDF denials.
"When I saw the report from Al Jazeera, I said, 'Ah, yes, it's true,'" one IDF conscript who helped use Gazans as human shields told Haaretz. "And then I saw the IDF's response, which totally doesn't reflect reality. It's done with the knowledge of the brigade commander, at the least."
The soldier added that IDF commanders "know that it's not a one-time incident of a young and stupid company commander who decides on his own to take somebody."
Another IDF soldier said that "there were times when really old people were made to go into houses."
Yet another soldier said that Palestinian captives are told that if they do one tunnel mission, they'll be set free.
"People began to ask questions, very quickly a mess began about this procedure," one soldier recalled. "Some argued that they weren't willing to carry out operations if it included a Gazan who was forced to sacrifice himself."
"Of course, there were those who supported it, but at least with us there were just a few of them, mostly the commanders who were afraid to deal with the more senior commanders," they added.
Responding to the new report, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit said that "IDF instructions and orders prohibit the use of Gazan civilians caught in the field for military missions that pose a deliberate risk to their lives."
"The IDF's instructions and orders on the subject have been made clear to the forces," the unit's statement added. "Upon receipt of the request, the allegations were forwarded to the relevant authorities for review."
Israel has been accused of using human shields in wars going back to the founding of the nation in 1948.
In 2002, the Israeli High Court of Justice issued a temporary injunction prohibiting the use of human shields in operations to quash the Second Intifada, or general uprising. Some IDF soldiers ignored the injunction,
according to the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem.
In 2010, two staff sergeants in the Givati Brigade were convicted of forcing a 9-year-old Palestinian boy to open bags they thought might contain explosives during the 2008-09 Operation Cast Lead invasion of Gaza. The staff sergeants were slapped on the wrists with suspended sentences and demotions. Neither went to prison.
Numerous subsequent instances of IDF soldiers' use of human shields have gone unpunished.
Palestinian militants including members of Hamas have also been accused of using Palestinians as human shields.
As is the case with the IDF reservists currently accused of gang-raping a Palestinian detainee at the notorious Sde Teiman torture prison, many Israeli government and military officials, as well as journalists and others, have defended the "right" of IDF soldiers to do what they want to Palestinians.
Haaretz explained that "the thinking is that it's better for the Israeli soldiers to remain alive and for the [Palestinians] to be the ones blown up by an explosive device."
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Israel's Relentless, Cruel, and Grotesque Assault on the People of Gaza Must End—Now
Not only do they refuse to intervene to stop this genocide, but the U.S., U.K., and much of Europe are actively supporting it.
Jul 12, 2024
When darkness falls in Gaza, no one can be certain if they will live out the night.
If they do survive this collective punishment, Palestinians also risk being abducted and disappeared from their homes during the night.
As the world marked the UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture on 26 June, reports of widespread torture and abuse were emerging from all corners of Gaza and Israeli detention and torture centres in the desert.
In observance of the occasion, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stated: "Torturers must never be allowed to get away with their crimes, and systems that enable torture should be dismantled or transformed."
Yet the institutions meant to prevent such crimes against humanity are either feckless or indifferent. Thirty-seven years after the Convention Against Torture came into effect, violations of human dignity not only persist but have escalated.
In Gaza today, Palestinians are subjected to two types of mass torture: the first is the abduction from their homes by Israeli soldiers during night-time military raids - stripping them down of "anything that resembles human beings" in Israeli torture camps. The second is the infliction of such horrific levels of violence on the entire civilian population that it constitutes torture.
'Free-for-all'
It was early February when Israel launched an incursion into the southern city of Khan Younis. The Abu Sultan family tried to flee their home during the day but were not fast enough. Israeli tanks had encircled their neighbourhood of al-Amal, sealing off any chance of escape.
A group of soldiers and their menacing dog stormed the home of Saada Abu Sultan, an elderly woman who stood frozen in fear in the hallway alongside her brother, Mohammed, and husband, Abdel Karim.
Israel's 'free-for-all' directive allowed soldiers to open fire and commit summary executions of civilians - a clear violation of the laws of war
In what appears to have become a trend, the dog pounced on 72-year-old Saada, savagely mauling her as her brother tried to intervene. Mohammed was shot in the chest and left bleeding on the floor.
As confirmed this week in +972 Magazine, Israel's "free-for-all" directive allowed soldiers to open fire and commit summary executions of civilians - a clear violation of the laws of war.
In the Abu Sultan home, the soldiers applied their "freedom" with vigour, spraying bullets indiscriminately and injuring several family members, including young children, who were taking cover on the ground floor.
Amid the pandemonium and terrified screams of women and children, the soldiers ordered the family to lie down on the ground.
The room erupted in gunfire, and the soldiers detained three of Saada's adult children: her eldest daughter, Nisreen, 52, and her two sons, Husam, 50, and Mohammed, 45, who was named after his uncle.
After an hour of horror, the soldiers left the house.
Bleeding profusely and unable to move, Saada's brother, Mohammed, who had been sheltering at his sister's home since December 2023, pleaded for medical help.
Saada did not want to leave her brother behind but reluctantly agreed to get him emergency care.
In a journey that would have normally taken 20 minutes on foot but extended to an agonising four hours - as they dodged bullets and hid from relentless shelling - Saada, her sister-in-law and their children finally reached Nasser Hospital.
Fuelled by adrenaline and the urgency to save her brother's life, Saada couldn't think of the severity of her own injuries. The dog attack had torn the flesh and smashed the bones in her arm, requiring extensive medical treatment, including platinum implants.
Torture compounded
Although Saada immediately notified aid workers from the Red Crescent of Mohammed's dire situation, they were unable to access the area until months later when the Israeli military withdrew from Khan Younis. By then, Mohammed's body had decomposed in a city left in total ruins.
After spending a week in a hospital that was also besieged and violently attacked by Israeli forces, Saada was discharged from the Nasser Medical Complex. Weeks later, rescuers would unearth hundreds of bodies, including those of children, women, and the elderly, from the courtyard of the Khan Younis hospital.
Saada and her surviving family members relocated to Rafah, where her youngest son, Ali, 42, had been sheltering with his in-laws.
Her detained children, Nisreen and Mohammed, had endured three days of torture and deprivation in an unknown location before being released and joining their family in Rafah.
Husam, however, remained in detention.
Overwhelmed with grief over her brother being left to bleed out and ultimately killed for simply trying to protect her and for her abducted son held hostage by Israel, Saada's health rapidly declined.
On 23 February, after the family concluded their Friday prayers, her son Mohammed decided to take her to the hospital along with some of the children with him to help find transportation.
When they returned, the house in which they were sheltering in the so-called "safe zone" of Rafah was targeted in an air strike, killing Saada, her husband, Abdel Karim, and her daughter, Nisreen. Three members of the host family, including two women and a child, were also killed, while many others were wounded and rushed to the hospital.
'Unimaginable' conditions
Months later, Husam remains in Israeli captivity with no news of his fate or location. His wife and children are imagining the unimaginable.
The stories emerging from Israeli prisons have been grim.
CNN exposed Israel's harrowing treatment of dozens of Palestinian prisoners from Gaza held hostage in the Sde Teiman desert camp-turned-detention centre.
In the report, which sparked widespread condemnation, Israeli whistleblowers who worked at the Sde Teiman desert camp revealed that Palestinian hostages were subjected to "revenge" beatings, amputation of limbs due to injuries sustained from "constant handcuffing", and "extreme physical restraint" in an environment overwhelmed by the "smell of neglected wounds left to rot".
While disturbing, in Israel, such methods and abuse are not an aberration but were, in fact, devised and codified as standard legal practice 37 years ago.
In 1987, just months after ratifying the Convention Against Torture among 174 countries, Israel became the first - and, at the time, only - country in the world to legalise torture.
Following the death of two Palestinian prisoners, the government-sponsored Landau Commission, tasked with inquiring into the investigation methods of Israeli interrogators, issued a report that sanctioned the use of "moderate physical and psychological pressure" against Palestinian "suspects".
Just months after ratifying the Convention Against Torture, Israel became the first - and, at the time, only - country in the world to legalise torture
The commission was headed by former Israeli Supreme Court Justice Moshe Landau, whose interrogation guidelines were endorsed by the Israeli cabinet in 1987 and upheld by Israel's top court in 1999 and as recently as 2024.
In practice, it meant that Palestinian detainees could be "lawfully" subjected to extreme physical contortions and sleep deprivation - and coerced into false confessions - as standard procedure.
Detainees may also be shackled to a wall or pipes with their arms extended above their heads for days on end; each time they fell asleep, a bucket of ice-cold water would be thrown on top of them.
Alternatively, prisoners may be bent backwards sideways across a chair with their arms and legs handcuffed to the legs of the chair, prohibiting movement for extended periods. This brutal practice came to be known as the "Palestinian chair" and was adopted by the US military during the Iraq war.
In 1994, the UN Committee Against Torture condemned the Landau Report and its authorisation of torture practices as "completely unacceptable to this Committee".
Disrespecting laws
Torture is prohibited in both international humanitarian and human rights law through the Geneva Conventions, especially Article 27 of Geneva IV, and the Convention Against Torture, which reinforced prior international agreements prohibiting torture, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights.
In the absence of any enforcement of international laws and conventions, Israel has become emboldened to escalate its mass torture and abuse of Palestinians.
Following his release from detention, the head of Gaza's largest hospital described the "almost daily torture" to which he and others were subjected.
Dr Mohammed Abu Salmiya, who was held for seven months without charge after his arrest at al-Shifa Hospital last November, reported extensive and repeated "assaults with batons and dogs, deprivation of food and medicine, as well as physical and psychological humiliation".
Even after nine months, Palestinians in Gaza ask themselves every day how the world can witness the constant torture, abuse, mass killing, maiming, and starvation and refuse to hold Israel accountable.
And not only do they refuse to intervene to stop a genocide, but the US, UK and much of Europe are actively supporting it.
As Craig Mokhiber, a former UN human rights official who resigned from his job in protest of the organisation's inaction and complicity, observed, not only are these countries "refusing to meet their treaty obligations" under the Geneva Conventions, but they are also arming Israel's genocide while providing political and diplomatic cover for it.
The Geneva Conventions mandate that all states "have an obligation to respect and ensure respect for international humanitarian law (IHL) in all circumstances".
But in the case of Israel's genocide, torture, and humiliation of Palestinians, the reverse has been true: western countries are disrespecting and actively undermining IHL and the institutions designed to defend it.
We are witnessing an era of ineffectual, if not hypocritical and immoral, global leadership that allows the savage slaughter and oppression of a people to continue when it must end now.
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World Leaders Blasted Over 'Grave' Violations of International Law by Israel
"The first step for Third States in upholding their own legal obligations to ensure [international humanitarian law] is respected is to stop the Rafah invasion, open all land crossings and lift internal barriers for humanitarian access," said an international coalition.
May 15, 2024
While ordinary citizens from across the globe have expressed their condemnation of the ongoing carnage and suffering in Gaza, a coalition of 20 international human rights groups on Wednesday excoriated world leaders for standing idly by as Israel carries out "a grave violation of international humanitarian law" with its military assault on Rafah.
With the United Nations agencies reporting that as many as 450,000 people have already attempted to flee the encircled southern city where more than 1.4 million had sought refuge, a joint statement by the groups—including Amnesty International, Oxfam, Médecins du Monde International Network, and Mercy Corps—rebuked Israel's evacuation orders as "unlawful" and chided third-party countries for violating their own obligations under international humanitarian law (IHL) by refusing to intervene.
"Third States have the responsibility to urgently act in bringing to an end, and pursue accountability for, the Grave Breaches of IHL taking place in Gaza," said the groups. "The first step for Third States in upholding their own legal obligations to ensure IHL is respected is to stop the Rafah invasion, open all land crossings and lift internal barriers for humanitarian access."
According to the statement, Israel's ongoing violations are clear and obvious:
The Israeli military's "evacuation orders" are unlawful and amount to forcible transfer, a grave violation of international humanitarian law (IHL). Israel has ordered hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to flee, without providing civilians and humanitarian actors clear information nor timeframe. IHL sets clear conditions for an evacuation to be lawful: the occupying power must ensure that these displacements are temporary and that displaced persons are provided with satisfactory conditions of hygiene, health, safety and nutrition, and members of the same family must not be separated. Israeli authorities have failed to meet any of these requirements.
With Wednesday marking the 76th anniversary of the Nakba, when Palestinians were forced to leave their homes en masse following the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948, a new wave of forced displacement is now upon the people of Gaza only served to heighten the harsh reality for those with nowhere safe to go.
Ilan Pappe, an Israeli scholar of Palestinian history at the University of Exeter, explained to Al-Jazeera that while some comparisons with the original Nakba make sense, what is happening now to the people of Gaza is "even worse" in many ways.
"What we see now are massacres which are part of the genocidal impulse, namely to kill people in order to downsize the number of people living in Gaza," Pappe said. On Tuesday, a group of ultra-nationalist Israelis, including members of the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Cabinet, marched in the city of Sderot near the Gaza border as they called for resettlement of the enclave.
" Ethnic cleansing is a terrible crime against humanity but genocide is even worse," said Pappe. "So I think we are seeing a transition from using ethnic cleansing as the main method of taking as much of Palestine as possible, with as few Palestinians in it as possible—we are moving into a far more lethal method, that of genocide."
According to the joint declaration by rights groups on Wednesday, Israel's military assault in Rafah is "disrupting the humanitarian response" of relief organizations and the United Nations, amounting to a "breach of the U.N. Security Council resolutions 2720 and 2728 as well as the International Court of Justice's provisional measures ordering Israel to enable the provision of basic services and humanitarian assistance."
In remarks Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said Israel's escalating military operations and evacuation orders in Rafah "are further impeding humanitarian access and worsening an already dire situation."
"For people in Gaza," said Guterres, "nowhere is safe now."
Despite the concerns from U.N. agencies and international relief groups, the U.S. government under President Joe Biden on Tuesday said it was preparing a $1 billion weapons shipment for Israel to bolster its military capabilities.
Because of such military support, the human rights coalition argued in its Wednesday declaration that the U.S. "bears a significant responsibility" for Israel's violations of international humanitarian law. "In addition to halting the transfer of high payload bombs, the U.S. should also use all its leverage to halt the ongoing military operation in Rafah," the groups said.
Those in the human rights coalition said it is the Palestinian people paying the price for the failure of world leaders to meet their obligations to put a stop to the forced displacement of civilians in Gaza.
"We have been warning for months that Israel must be stopped from entering Rafah or Gaza would face an even greater humanitarian catastrophe" than it already has, said Florence Rigal, president of Médecins du Monde France. "The inaction of third countries is seen as a lack of concern for the consequences for the exhausted civilian population. It is unacceptable and immediate action must be taken to prevent further suffering."
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In Yemen, a Humanitarian Pause is Urgently Needed
Mar 01, 2016
As war continues to rage uninterrupted in Yemen, a humanitarian pause is badly needed as the country spirals down to chaos, leaving the majority of the population in urgent need of medical care. Restrictions on access to medical supplies and care are key impediments to improving the situation of people in need. A five-day humanitarian pause would allow supplies and care to reach those people and relieve their dire health situation.
At the same time, attacks on health facilities continue. Last October, the World Health Organization (WHO) condemned the bombing of a Medecins Sans Frontieres' (MSF) supported hospital in Saada province in northern Yemen. MSF believes that, as a consequence, 200,000 people were left without medical care. That attack, which violated International Humanitarian Law, was the second one on an MSF-run facility in a month.
Since the beginning of Saudi Arabia's attacks on Yemen, conducted with U.S. support, more than 5,700 have died (almost half of them civilians) -including hundreds of women and children- and 28,753 injuries have been reported. Several health workers have also been killed, and 47 health facilities in 11 governorates have been damaged or closed as a result of the continuous violence.
Healthcare services in all public hospitals have been reduced, especially operating theaters and intensive care units. At the same time, disrupted immunization activities have increased the risks for measles and poliomyelitis, even though Yemen is presently free of polio. The breakdown of the water supply and sanitation systems has facilitated the spread of diseases such as malaria and dengue fever, as well as acute diarrheal diseases, particularly affecting children. Also, the early warning alert system for diseases has been seriously affected because of limited communication possibilities.
The country has one of the highest rates of chronic malnutrition in the world. According to UNICEF, 1.3 million Yemeni children younger than five years now suffer from acute malnutrition, compared to 850.000 before the war started. 320.000 are severely malnourished, twice the amount before the crisis. The little cash people have is to pay for food and gas -at greatly increased prices- leaving no money to afford health care.
The Lancet reports that approximately a quarter of the country's healthcare facilities are no longer functional. To make matters worse, Ronald Kremer from MSF says, "People do not dare to go to hospitals because they are afraid that they are targeted, and even if they want to go,, they may not have the means—even where public transport does exist, it is very expensive because of the fuel problems."
Fuel problems have increased the difficulty of obtaining clean water. The lack of a proper water supply and dire sanitation and hygiene have led to outbreaks of dengue and malaria. Many Yemenis store water in open containers, which becomes an ideal breeding ground for disease-transmitting mosquitoes.
So far, there are more than 2.5 million people who have become internally displaced persons (IDPs). To compound an already difficult situation, disrupted immunization campaigns have led to an increasing number of children affected with measles and rubella, particularly among IDPs living in overcrowded conditions. As a result of the conflict, many hospitals, laboratories, health warehouses, and administrative offices have closed. Primary care facilities have minimum access to medicines, supplies, and equipment. The fuel shortage has affected the proper operations of ambulances.
In this situation, a humanitarian pause is urgently needed. As proposed by the World Health Organization, a five-day pause would allow humanitarian organizations to respond to some of the most life-threatening needs of the people, particularly women and children caught in the middle of the conflict. An MSF doctor taking care of a badly hurt child in Syria realized that the child was desperately trying to tell him something. When he asked his translator what the child was saying, the translator responded, "Don't they realize that we are children?" A similar question could be asked in Yemen today.
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