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
War & Peace
UN Peacekeepers in Lebanon Say Israeli Forces Fired on Them Again
"Yet again we see direct and apparently deliberate fire on a UNIFIL position."
Oct 16, 2024
The United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon announced Wednesday that Israel Defense Forces troops fired on one of its positions in the southern part of the country in the latest of a string of attacks that the mission said have injured five of its personnel.
"This morning, peacekeepers at a position near Kafer Kela observed an IDF Merkava tank firing at their watchtower. Two cameras were destroyed, and the tower was damaged," the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said in a statement. "Yet again we see direct and apparently deliberate fire on a UNIFIL position."
"We remind the IDF and all actors of their obligations to ensure the safety and security of U.N. personnel and property and to respect the inviolability of U.N. premises at all times," the mission added.
The IDF said Wednesday that "UNIFIL infrastructure sites and forces are not a target."
Wednesday's reported incident follows other attacks by IDF troops on UNIFIL positions in southern Lebanon. Last week, two Indonesian peacekeepers were injured when an IDF tank fired on an observation tower at UNIFIL's headquarters in Naquora. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres condemned the incident as "intolerable" and said that it "cannot be repeated."
On Sunday, two IDF tanks forced their way into a UNIFIL post in Ramyah to request personnel to turn off their lights. IDF troops reportedly remained there for 45 minutes and set off smoke bombs, sickening numerous peacekeepers. The IDF admitted to these actions, claiming they occurred during an attempt to rescue wounded Israeli soldiers under fire.
That same day, Israel asked UNIFIL to withdraw its troops from Lebanon's border with Israel in order to keep them "out of harm's way."
Stephane Dujarric, a spokesperson for Guterres, replied that "peacekeepers remain in all positions and the U.N. flag continues to fly."
Djuarric noted that UNIFIL positions have been adversely affected 20 times by Israeli forces since the start of the IDF invasion of Lebanon earlier this month.
"Five peacekeepers have been injured during these incidents, including one peacekeeper who sustained a bullet wound," he said.
These incidents come amid Israel's escalation of its yearlong war on Gaza—which has left more than 150,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing and for which it is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice—into Lebanon, where Hezbollah has been launching rockets and other projectiles at Israel since immediately after the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack.
Israel's invasion and bombardment of Lebanon—which has included the surprise detonation of thousands of pagers and other communication devices—has killed at least 2,350 people, wounded over 10,000 others, and forcibly displaced more than 1.3 million people since last October, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.
On Wednesday, an Israeli airstrike on the Lebanese city of Nabatieh's municipal headquarters killed at least 16 people, including Mayor Ahmad Kheil, who was leading a crisis response meeting, according toAl Jazeera. More than 50 others were wounded in the attack.
"The Israeli government has made it clear that it intends to expand its war across the region and resettle territories whose native populations they decimate," Council on American-Islamic Relations executive director Nihad Awad
said in response to the airstrike. "These are the actions of a rogue government that the Biden administration must stop enabling before more innocents are slaughtered and more chaos spreads."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'I Care About Little Kids Dying': Ocasio-Cortez Hits Back at Fetterman Over Gaza
"I care about human rights," said the New York congresswoman in response to her Democratic colleague in the Senate. "I care that billions of U.S. tax dollars' worth of weapons are carrying out unspeakable atrocities."
Oct 16, 2024
New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized fellow Democrat and Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman on Wednesday for failing to hold the U.S.-armed Israeli military accountable for killing and harming civilians in the Gaza Strip.
Ocasio-Cortez's remarks came in response to Fetterman's dismissal of her earlier call for an arms embargo on Israel, which has received billions of dollars worth of weapons and other military aid since the Hamas-led October 7 attack.
"The tragedy in Gaza is 100% on Hamas," Fetterman wrote on social media with a screengrab of a Hill headline outlining Ocasio-Cortez's remarks. "Stop using civilians and hospitals as shields, surrender, and release all remaining hostages—and this ends."
Ocasio-Cortez then retweeted Fetterman's words with her own rebuttal.
"I dunno man. I care about little kids dying," the New York lawmaker replied. "I care about human rights. I care that billions of U.S. tax dollars' worth of weapons are carrying out unspeakable atrocities. I care enough for us to do better."
"Hope this bleak dunk attempt gets you whatever it is you're going for," she concluded.
The exchange comes as Israel has intensified its assault on northern Gaza in recent days, bombing homes and schools-turned-shelters in the Jabalia refugee camp and issuing new evacuation orders for the beleaguered region yet placing snipers on roofs and shooting people who try to flee. On Saturday, the Palestinian Deputy Observer to the United Nations Majed Bamya called Israel's escalation in the north a "genocide within the genocide" and the World Food Program said that no food had been able to reach the area since October 1, warning that the ramped up attacks were having "a disastrous impact on food security for thousands of Palestinian families." However, 50 trucks carrying aid including food were allowed to enter the north on Wednesday.
Ocasio-Cortez's remarks that prompted Fetterman's rejoinder came in response to the weekend's atrocities.
"The horrors unfolding in northern Gaza are the result of a completely unrestrained Netanyahu gov, fully armed by the Biden admin while food aid is blocked and patients are bombed in hospitals," she wrote on social media on Monday. "This is a genocide of Palestinians. The U.S. must stop enabling it. Arms embargo now."
Ocasio-Cortez has been an outspoken critic of Israel's assault on Gaza and the U.S. response. She backed a House resolution calling for a cease-fire weeks into the war, and demanded an end to the flow of weapons from the House floor in March, when she described Israel's actions in Gaza as an "unfolding genocide."
Fetterman, meanwhile, has faced protests from some of his more progressive constituents over his hardline pro-Israel stance.
On Tuesday, news broke that the Biden administration had reportedly written a letter to the Israeli government threatening to cut off the flow of weapons to the country unless it took "urgent and sustained actions" to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza within 30 days.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Starvation Has Become a Lethal Weapon': Up to 21,000 Dying Daily From War-Fueled Hunger
"Today's food crises are largely manufactured," said an Oxfam campaigner, pointing to Israel's use of starvation as a weapon of war in the Gaza Strip.
Oct 16, 2024
An Oxfam report published Wednesday estimates that war-fueled hunger is likely killing as many as 21,000 people per day in dozens of countries as parties to global conflicts weaponize starvation against children and other vulnerable people in Gaza, Sudan, Nigeria, Somalia, and elsewhere.
Food Wars, published to mark World Food Day, finds that nearly 278 million people across 54 war-torn countries faced crisis-level hunger last year. That population accounts for 99% of the people facing crisis-level hunger worldwide.
War, according to the new report, was a "major cause of food insecurity" in each of the 54 countries examined, "although in some of them, weather extremes or economic shocks may have been the principal driver."
"As conflict rages around the world, starvation has become a lethal weapon wielded by warring parties against international laws, causing an alarming rise in human deaths and suffering," said Emily Farr, Oxfam's food and economic security lead. "That civilians continue to be subjected to such slow death in the 21st Century is a collective failure."
Farr added that "today's food crises are largely manufactured," noting that "nearly half a million people in Gaza—where 83% of food aid needed is currently not reaching them—and over three-quarters of a million in Sudan are currently starving as the deadly impact of wars on food will likely be felt for generations."
Oxfam, other humanitarian groups, and United Nations experts have accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of warfare against Gaza's population, much of which is facing famine conditions as the U.S.-armed Israeli military continues to obstruct the flow of lifesaving aid and attack food distribution centers.
On Tuesday, Oxfam warned that northern Gaza "is being erased" and "civilians are being starved and bombed in their homes and their tents" by Israeli forces.
"This is not an evacuation—this is forced displacement under gunfire," Oxfam said.
Across the globe, the number of people forcibly displaced by conflict reached a record 117.3 million last year, Oxfam's new report notes, "with 77% of them in countries affected by hunger crises."
Oxfam observed that "war-displacement-hunger crises occur in countries that continue to rely heavily on primary product exports," highlighting the need for systemic changes to global food and economic systems in addition to more immediate diplomatic efforts to end military conflicts.
"Paradoxically, peacebuilding efforts have often assumed that economic liberalization offers the best or only pathway to sustainable peace," the report states. "Yet struggle for control over fungible primary commodities can fund more violence, increased inequality, continued instability, and the risk of renewed conflict."
"Large-scale private investment—whether foreign or domestic in origin—adds to political economic instabilities where investors seize control over land and water resources and displace local peoples," the report continues. "Markets for high-value primary commodities need to be more carefully vetted and regulated, so they do not fund and fuel conflict."
Oxfam's report calls on governments to "make human rights, including the right to food, central to food system planning and transformation" and to "strengthen international accountability mechanisms to combat impunity and deter the use of starvation as a weapon of war," among other recommendations.
"To break the vicious cycle of food insecurity and conflict, global leaders must tackle head-on the conditions that breed conflict: the colonial legacies, injustices, human rights violations, and inequalities—rather than offering quick band-aid solutions," Farr said Wednesday.
"We cannot end conflict by simply injecting foreign investments in conflict-torn countries, without uprooting the deep inequalities, generational grievances, and human rights violations that fuel those conflicts," Farr added. "Peace efforts must be coupled with investment in social protection, and social cohesion building. Economic solutions must prioritize fair trade and sustainable food systems."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Israel Reportedly Massacres Family of Virginia Man in Gaza, Including US Permanent Resident
"This is a documented Israeli war crime of the execution of a U.S. resident and her extended family in Gaza," said one campaigner, urging the Biden administration to "stop supplying Israel with American weapons."
Oct 15, 2024
The Muslim advocacy group Council on American-Islamic Relations on Tuesday led condemnation of Israeli airstrikes on the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza that killed at least 14 Palestinians—including the mother of an American citizen who was a permanent U.S. resident—and demanded that the Biden administration stop supplying Israel with arms.
In a statement Tuesday, CAIR "called on the Biden administration, the U.S. State Department, and elected officials in Virginia to demand that the Israeli government cease its attacks on the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza after the mother of an American citizen, a U.S. resident, and other family members were reportedly executed in a repeat Israeli attack on their family residence, despite the family's pleas to Israeli authorities to stop the bombing and allow the evacuation of surviving family members."
This, after "an American citizen and Virginia man of Palestinian descent informed CAIR that his family home in Gaza was bombed in an Israeli attack on the Jabalia refugee camp."
"There were reportedly 15 people in the house, seven of them children, including the man's mother, a lawful permanent resident of the United States," said CAIR, which did not identify any of the individuals described.
CAIR continued:
After the initial Israeli military strike on the family residence, the U.S. resident mother and an unknown number of relatives were reportedly injured but alive, trapped under the rubble. In an effort to rescue the survivors, the family contacted Israeli authorities, providing them with the residential address and GPS coordinates of their home to arrange for the safe passage of an ambulance. However, the Israeli military apparently used that information to bomb the house a second time and then targeted the ambulance as it attempted to rescue the survivors, killing the doctor and several children. Only a 7-year-old boy survived the incident.
The attacks came amid intensified Israeli bombardment of Jabalia and other parts of Gaza that killed 50 Palestinians on Tuesday, according toReuters. Israel—which receives tens of billions of dollars in U.S. military aid and diplomatic support including vetoes of multiple United Nations Security Council cease-fire resolutions—is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice.
According to the Gaza Ministry of Health and international agencies, Israel's 375-day assault on Gaza has killed or wounded more than 150,000 Palestinians, including at least 10,000 people who are missing and believed to be dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed-out buildings. Millions more Palestinians have been forced from their homes—often several times—starved, and sickened.
"This is a documented Israeli war crime of the execution of a U.S. resident and her extended family in Gaza," CAIR national executive director Nihad Awad said in a statement. "The only option the Biden administration has is to stop supplying Israel with American weapons, funded by our nation's taxpayers, which are being used to kill our citizens, legal permanent residents, and their families."
"The Biden administration has shown little concern for the mass killing of Palestinians, but perhaps it can be moved to recover the body of a U.S. resident who is also the mother of an American citizen," Awad added. "There must be an immediate cease-fire to end Israel's genocide."
While President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris—the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee—have repeatedly affirmed their unwavering support for Israel, multiple media outlets reported Tuesday that the Biden administration recently threatened to cut off U.S. arms shipments if the Israeli government does not take "urgent and sustained actions" to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza within 30 days.
"No need to wait 30 days," CAIR said in a separate statement earlier Tuesday.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular