SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
jeremy scahill
Not Held Accountable for Gaza, IDF Launches Largest Attack on West Bank in Decades
"This is the predictable culmination of the actions of an Israeli regime that has been fully empowered, armed, supported, and encouraged by the Biden-Harris administration in its genocidal war," Jeremy Scahill said.
Aug 28, 2024
Israeli forces on Wednesday conducted a series of deadly raids in the West Bank, killing at least 10 Palestinians in the largest assault on the occupied territory in over two decades.
In coordinated raids on four cities in the northern West Bank, Israel employed hundreds of ground troops as well as fighter aircraft, drones, and bulldozers. Israel Katz, Israel's foreign minister, indicated that this was a planned escalation, saying the military was operating in "full force." He called for evacuations in the West Bank, as in Gaza, and "whatever steps are required," explaining that "this is a war for everything and we must win it."
The incursion follows a recent uptick in Israeli violence in the West Bank—5 Palestinians, including two children, were killed in an airstrike there on Monday—and came on the same day that the United Nations Human Rights Office released a statement condemning it.
Humanitarian and pro-Palestinian voices denounced Wednesday's offensive. Aida Touma-Suleiman, an Israeli-Arab member of the Knesset, called it the "Gazafication of all Palestinian land" and part of a plan to "ethnically cleanse the West Bank."
Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian physician and politician, toldDemocracy Now! that Israeli leaders, some of whom he named as "fascist," are "trying to repeat the Nakba."
"They are trying to repeat the same ethnic cleansing, the same genocide that is committed in Gaza," he added.
Progressives in the U.S., Israel's primary diplomatic ally and arms supplier, argued that Wednesday's incursion was the direct result of American foreign policy choices.
"This is the predictable culmination of the actions of an Israeli regime that has been fully empowered, armed, supported, and encouraged by the Biden-Harris administration in its genocidal war," Jeremy Scahill, a co-founder of The Intercept who recently formed a new investigative outlet called Drop Site News, wrote on social media.
"Israel has received the message from Biden and Harris loud and clear for almost 11 months: There is no scale of war crimes too great for the administration to take any meaningful steps to stop Israel’s mass slaughter operations," Scahill added, referring to U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who is the Democratic presidential nominee.
🚑Since dawn today, Palestine Red Crescent crews have transported 10 martyrs and 22 injured due to the Israeli occupation's raids in the #WestBank governorates. pic.twitter.com/AJ3VzHy29E
— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) August 28, 2024
Israeli raids on the cities of Jenin, Nablus, Tubas, and Tulkarem began early Wednesday. Al Jazeerareported that it was the largest Israeli incursion into the West Bank since 2002.
The Israeli military said that the Palestinians who were killed in the West Bank were "armed terrorists who posed a threat to security forces." Israeli media reports indicated that the raids are expected to continue for several days.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said in a statement relayed to Al Jazeera on Wednesday that Israeli forces had disrupted medical and emergency services at several locations in the West Bank. Israeli forces stormed the Al-Far'a refugee camp, detained the PRCS team there, and cut off their communications, according to PRCS.
Israel has occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza since 1967. The International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion last month declaring the occupation of these Palestinian territories unlawful, saying it must end "as rapidly as possible."
Most of the world's nations have long declared Israeli settlements in the West Bank to be illegal under international law, a position that Israel disputes. Settler violence has increased markedly since October 7 under cover of the even greater carnage in Gaza, where Israeli forces have killed more than 40,000 Palestinians. Hamas and allied militant groups killed more than 1,100 Israelis in a brutal massacre on October 7.
In the West Bank, where nightly raids have become commonplace, Israeli forces and settlers have killed 646 people over the last 11 months, including 148 children, according to Palestinian health officials.
In addition to the military raid that killed five on Monday, an Israeli settler or reservist attack in Wadi Rahal village reportedly led to a Palestinian man being shot in the back, according to the United Nations' news service.
Omar Baddar, a Middle East political analyst, argued that Wednesday's incursion was part of a longstanding Israeli plan.
"I think the context of it is worth noting, which is the fact that Israel has been intending to annex and ethnically cleanse huge parts of the West Bank for a very, very long time," Baddar told Al Jazeera.
In its condemnation of Israeli aggression in the West Bank, the U.N. Human Rights Office wrote that the situation "could worsen dramatically if [Israeli security forces] continue to systematically use unlawful lethal force and ignore violence perpetrated by settlers."
The agency warned of "extrajudicial executions and other unlawful killings and destruction of Palestinian homes and infrastructure," and said that the settler violence was made possible by political support from Israel's leadership.
"The U.N. Human Rights Office has reported for years on settlers attacking Palestinian communities in their land in the West Bank with impunity," the statement says. "This longstanding trend has dramatically escalated since October 7, as the settler movement, with political backing at the highest levels of Israeli government, has seized the opportunity to escalate attacks against Palestinians, forcing them to leave their lands, and expand settlements and Israel's control over the West Bank."
The assault on the West Bank has not stopped Israel from continuing its assault on Gaza. Israeli forces killed eight Gazans in a strike on a school-turned-shelter in eastern Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeerareported.
Keep ReadingShow Less
As US Aid Shipments Begin, Gaza Pier Denounced as 'PR Move'
"It's completely absurd," said one humanitarian worker. "The solution to the problem here is obvious."
May 17, 2024
As humanitarian shipments began trickling into Gaza via a U.S.-built temporary floating pier, Palestinians and aid workers on Friday renewed criticism of what they called an expensive and largely ineffectual publicity stunt that is no substitute for a cease-fire and opening of more land crossings into the besieged coastal enclave.
U.S. Army Central Command said that "trucks carrying humanitarian assistance began moving ashore" at around 9:00 am local time Friday as part of "an ongoing, multinational effort to deliver additional aid to Palestinian civilians in Gaza via a maritime corridor."
The $320 million Trident Pier—which consists of a floating offshore barge and 1,800-foot causeway to the shore—is expected to eventually accommodate up to 150 trucks per day. According to United Nations agencies, an average of 200 trucks entered Gaza each day last month, far fewer than the prewar daily mean of more than 500 truckloads that U.S. and U.N. officials say are required to meet the needs of a population facing critical shortages of food, water, medicine, and other lifesaving supplies.
"We don't want ships. We want the border crossing to open for people to come and go. We want safety."
However, as famine grips northern Gaza—with malnutrition and dehydration killing dozens of people, mostly children—and at least hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians starve, Israel has been accused of blocking aid from those who desperately need it and using starvation as a weapon of war.
"We don't want ships. We want the border crossing to open for people to come and go. We want safety. We want official borders," Hassan Abu Al-Kass, a forcibly displaced Palestinian man, toldThe New York Times on Thursday.
Al-Kass compared the pier to the humanitarian aid airdropped by U.S. and other troops over Gaza, whose officials
say that more than 20 people have been killed by the parachuting parcels, either by crushing or drowning while trying to reach offshore drops.
"Those planes, as well, that they bring here with the parachutes, and they throw food at us like dogs, like beggars, that does not work," he said. "It falls on houses. It falls on people. It brings us problems."
One unnamed humanitarian aid worker
told U.S. investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill: "It's completely absurd. The solution to the problem here is obvious and we need to end the occupation... Once the siege is lifted, humanitarian aid can roll in. A pier is a PR move."
Farhan Haq, deputy spokesperson for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, said Thursday that "to stave off the horrors of famine, we must use the fastest and most obvious route to reach the people of Gaza—and for that, we need access by land now."
Washington Post columnist Ishaan Tharoor noted on social media Thursday that "no major humanitarian organization has asked for this pier, and most see it as a costly distraction that will do little to make a dent in meeting Gaza's overwhelming humanitarian needs."
"For that," he added, "you need a cease-fire and open border crossings and less military obstruction."
According to a report published last month, officials at the United States Agency for International Development concluded in a confidential memo to Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Israel is violating a White House directive by blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza. Critics pointed to the leaked memo as more evidence that the Biden administration is breaking the law by supporting Israel's assault on Gaza—which Palestinian and international officials say has killed, wounded, or left missing more than 125,000 people—with arms and diplomatic cover.
Parties to the South African-led genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, as well as human rights groups, accuse Israel of flouting the ICJ's January 26 preliminary ruling ordering the Israeli government to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza and ensure immediate delivery of humanitarian aid. Israel rejects charges of genocide and blocking aid.
Hundreds of U.N. and other aid workers—overwhelmingly Palestinians—have also been killed or wounded by Israeli forces in Gaza since October 7. Israeli troops have been accused of deliberately attacking both humanitarian workers and Palestinians trying to receive aid, including in the February 29 "Flour Massacre," in which nearly 900 starving Gazans were killed or wounded while waiting for food distribution south of Gaza City.
Critics have slammed U.S. President Joe Biden for offering token aid to Gazans with one hand while lavishing Israel with billions of dollars of weaponry used to kill Palestinians with the other.
Earlier this month, Biden said he would stop sending bombs, artillery shells, and other arms to Israel in the event of a major invasion of Rafah, where more than a million Palestinians forcibly displaced from other parts of the embattled Gaza Strip are sheltering alongside around 280,000 local residents.
However, as Israeli air and ground attacks pound the southern city, killing civilians including 22 members of one family in a single strike, Biden—who previously implored Israel to stop its "indiscriminate bombing" of Palestinian noncombatants—informed Congress this week that his administration will soon send another $1 billion in arms and ammunition, including tank and mortar rounds, to the Israel Defense Forces.
This, despite the Biden administration last week
acknowledging "reasonable" evidence that Israel is using U.S.-supplied weapons in the commission of war crimes in Gaza, with the caveat that "we are not able to reach definitive conclusions" on the matter.
Keep ReadingShow Less
South Africa's Genocide Presentation Against Israel Called 'Overwhelming and Devastating'
"Whatever the outcome, we are witnessing an amazing moment of rule of international law history," said Amnesty International secretary general Agnès Callamard.
Jan 11, 2024
Human rights defenders and legal experts on Thursday lauded what many called South Africa's "compelling" opening presentation at the International Court of Justice in The Hague in a case accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians in the embattled Gaza Strip.
In a bid to obtain an ICJ emergency order for the suspension of Israel's relentless 97-day assault on Gaza, South African jurists including Justice Minister Ronald Lamola argued that Israel is violating four articles of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, commonly called the Genocide Convention. The landmark 1948 treaty—enacted, ironically, the same year as the modern state of Israel was born, largely through the ethnic cleansing of Palestine's Arabs—defines genocide as acts intended "to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group."
South African lawyers detailed Israel's conduct in the war, including the killing and wounding of more than 80,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, forcibly displacing over 85% of the besieged enclave's 2.3 million people, and inflicting conditions leading to widespread starvation and disease. They also cited at length statements by Israeli officials calling for the destruction and even nuclear annihilation of Gaza in their presentations, which eschewed graphic imagery in favor of arguing "clear legal rights."
"In its opening argument thus far, South Africa has made a compelling case showing how the genocidal statements by [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and other senior officials were interpreted as official orders by Israeli forces in their attacks against Gaza," U.S. investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill said on social media.
"Beyond the citations of the vast civilian deaths and injuries caused by Israel in Gaza, [South Africa's] lawyers argued effectively that Israel's 'evacuation' orders were in and of themselves genocidal, demanding the immediate flight of a million people, including patients in hospitals," Scahill continued.
"What becomes crystal clear listening to the openly genocidal words of Netanyahu and other Israeli officials is that they know exactly what they are saying," he added. "And they are comfortable saying these things publicly because they know the U.S. will shield them from accountability."
Left-wing author and activist and former South African parliamentarian Andrew Feinstein said that "South Africa's presentation to the ICJ thus far has been exceptional, overwhelming, and devastating," opining that "the only way the ICJ doesn't impose interim measures is if the judges are open to pressure from 'the West.'"
"South Africa's lawyers have done the nonracial, post-apartheid country proud," he added.
Legal scholar Nimer Sultany, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, called South Africa's presentation "compellingly argued and powerfully presented."
"Given the court's case law, and given the lower threshold required for issuing provisional measures, it will be very surprising if the court does not issue provisional measures against Israel," Sultany asserted.
"This also should prompt reflection amongst all those governments and media outlets who supported [Israel's war,] because they have been supporting a genocide," he added.
Sultany and numerous other observers said the most powerful presentation of the day was made by Irish lawyer and case adviser Blinne Nà Ghrálaigh, who delivered South Africa's closing statement.
Israel—some of whose officials have condemned South Africa's case as a meritless "blood libel"—is scheduled to present its defense on Friday. Israeli jurists are expected to focus heavily on the atrocities committed by Hamas-led attackers who killed more than 1,100 Israelis and took around 240 others hostage on October 7. They will likely argue that the country has a right to defend itself, and that it is seeking to eliminate Hamas, not the Palestinian people.
While an emergency order from the World Court would not be enforceable, it would represent a major international embarrassment for Israel, which is increasingly isolated on the world stage. A growing number of nations including Brazil, Pakistan, Turkey, Malaysia, Venezuela, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, Bolivia, Jordan, and Bangladesh are supporting South Africa's case, as are the Arab League, more than 1,250 international human rights and civil society group, and progressive U.S. Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.).
"Whatever the outcome, we are witnessing an amazing moment of rule of international law history," said Amnesty International secretary general Agnès Callamard.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular