Israeli Assurances on US Weapons and International Law Called ‘Sick Joke’

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Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (R) and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (L) visit the site of the shooting in Hebron, West Bank on August 21, 2023.  (Photo: Amos Ben-Gershom (GPO)/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

“We know Israel won’t comply so long as there are no consequences,” said one advocacy group. “The U.S. must cut off weapons now!”

In news that one policy expert said could have been ripped from the satirical newspaper The Onion, Israeli officials gave a written assurance to the Biden administration on Friday that it would use U.S. weapons in accordance with international law.

The assurance comes more than five months into Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, in which the country’s U.S.-backed military has killed at least 31,490 Palestinians, including more than 12,300 children, while claiming to be targeting Hamas members.

Assal Rad, research director at the National Iranian American Council, noted that Israel has also killed at least 95 journalists in Gaza, attacked healthcare facilities, and starved civilians by blocking humanitarian aid deliveries while explicitly calling on the Israel Defense Forces to commit genocidal acts.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant signed the letter to the Biden administration weeks after the White House released a national security memorandum (NSM-20) saying Secretary of State Antony Blinken must “obtain credible and reliable written assurances” from any country receiving U.S. weapons, stating that the country “will use any such defense articles in accordance with international humanitarian law.”

In December, an Amnesty International investigation found that U.S.-made munitions had been used by the IDF in two illegal airstrikes on residential buildings, which killed more than 43 people, including 19 children.

NSM-20 also says a country receiving U.S. arms must “facilitate and not arbitrarily deny, restrict, or otherwise impede, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance and United States government-supported international efforts to provide humanitarian assistance.”

“This is nonsense,” Rohan Talbot, director of advocacy and campaigns for Medical Aid for Palestinians, said of Gallant’s letter on Friday.

While relentlessly assaulting civilian targets in Gaza, Israel has allowed only a fraction of the humanitarian aid that’s needed into the enclave. In recent weeks, the IDF has killed an estimated 400 Palestinians who were trying to access aid, according to officials in Gaza.

According to Axios, which first reported on Israel’s communication, Blinken has until March 25 to certify that Gallant’s assurances are credible.

Gallant is among the top Israeli officials who have used genocidal rhetoric regarding Palestinians since the country began its bombardment in retaliation for the October 7 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel. He said publicly in October that the IDF was fighting “human animals” in Gaza—home to about 2.3 million people, nearly half of whom are children.

The letter from the defense minister amounted to “a sick joke,” said author and political analyst Josh Ruebner.

“Israel’s assurances to President Joe Biden that it won’t use U.S. weapons to violate international law and won’t block U.S. aid from reaching starving Palestinians are clear and blatant lies,” said the Institute for Middle East Understanding. “We know Israel won’t comply so long as there are no consequences. The U.S. must cut off weapons now!”

Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue ReadingIsraeli Assurances on US Weapons and International Law Called ‘Sick Joke’

Venezuela’s election in the crosshairs of new US regime change scheme

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Original article by Zoe AlexandraWalter Smolarek republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Nicolás Maduro received by thousands in the city of Maturín. Photo: Nicolás Maduro/ X

As Venezuela prepares to head to the polls in July, the US has already started drumming up suspicion and doubt around the electoral process.

Twenty-five years after Hugo Chávez took office and began the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela, US officials have still not tired of dreaming up new plots to overthrow the country’s government. Five years ago, following the last presidential election, they attempted to install Juan Guaidó—a politician most Venezuelans had never even heard of—as the country’s head of state. And now, with the date for the next presidential election officially set for July 28, the Biden administration is gearing up for the biggest regime-change push since the Guaidó coup attempt.

Venezuela has long been a target for US intervention because of its efforts to build an alternative model to the neoliberal capitalism pushed by institutions like the IMF and World Bank. First theorized and implemented under the leadership of Chávez, the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela puts forward a new model that emphasizes using the country’s resources, such as its oil revenue, to fund crucial missions. These then guarantee rights such as education, food, housing, transportation, culture, and sports to historically excluded majorities, to decrease longstanding socioeconomic inequality. A central part of the Bolivarian Revolution is the political and cultural transformation of the people through the promotion of Venezuelan national culture, internationalism, anti-imperialism, and the empowerment of all people as political subjects with rights and responsibilities. It is a project in direct contradiction to US interests in the oil-rich country and the region Washington considers its backyard.

The 2024 elections

President Nicolás Maduro is running for re-election as the candidate of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and the broader Great Patriotic Pole coalition. He has built his campaign around a program referred to as the “Seven Transformations,” proposing major new initiatives in the fields of economic modernization, asserting national sovereignty, safety and security, ensuring social rights, political participation, the environment, and geopolitics. These aim to maintain the pro-poor, socialist orientation of the country’s development model while enacting reforms to stimulate greater economic activity and counteract the impact of crippling US sanctions.

The opposition is divided into several different camps. The largest coalition of opposition parties is called the Unitary Platform and consists of parties or factions of parties controlled by the Venezuelan elite who were displaced from positions of power as a result of the Bolivarian Revolution. The Unitary Platform has taken part in several rounds of negotiations with the government over the past year leading up to the elections and signed an agreement last October known as the “Barbados Agreement.”

In this agreement, the opposition was granted concessions on issues related to the organization of the electoral process, and in exchange, the United States agreed to loosen some sanctions relating to Venezuela’s oil and mining industries. The Barbados Agreement stipulated that only opposition figures who are eligible according to existing laws would be permitted to run. At this stage, the Unitary Platform has not chosen a candidate.

The specifics of how the electoral process will be carried out, regulations on campaigning on media platforms, participation of electoral observers, and the updating of electoral rolls were outlined in an agreement signed on February 28. The agreement was the product of dialogue among over 150 political and social organizations and was based on over 500 proposals. Ninety-seven percent of the political parties registered with the National Electoral Council participated.

Nonetheless, US officials have presented this electoral process, subject to such extensive deliberation and approved with such wide support, as an attack on democracy.

María Corina Machado and the fraud narrative

The approach of the US government follows a familiar script—wage a campaign in the media and through international organizations to cast doubt on the integrity of the electoral process so relentlessly that the result can be presented as fraudulent no matter what the actual evidence is on election day.

The key piece of the “electoral fraud” narrative is already in place and revolves around the disqualification of the opposition figure María Corina Machado.

Machado is the oldest daughter of Henrique Machado Zuloaga, who was an executive of Sivensa. One of Venezuela’s largest steel companies, Sivensa was nationalized in 2008 under Hugo Chávez. Since the start of the Bolivarian Revolution, Machado has been active in the right-wing opposition and has gone so far as to support destabilization campaigns and attempts to overthrow Venezuela’s democratically elected governments. She served as a member of Venezuela’s National Assembly from 2011-2014.

In July 2015, the Venezuelan comptroller general’s office announced that Machado was barred from holding public office for a period of one year after neglecting to disclose the extent of her earnings while she held public office.

The investigations into Machado continued. In July 2023, opposition deputy José Brito requested an update on Machado’s eligibility for holding public office given the upcoming presidential election and her stated intention to run. The comptroller general’s office responded, confirming that the disqualification of Machado was maintained and constituted a 15-year ban due to her support of regime change plots.

Though she initially refused to participate in the process, Machado appealed her ban through the Barbados Agreement procedure, which also stated that all candidates must defend Venezuela’s independence and reject violent actions against the government. In January 2024, the Supreme Court of Venezuela issued a sentence rejecting Machado’s appeal of the ban.

The Biden administration immediately sought to use economic coercion to undermine this decision by an institution of Venezuela, a sovereign state. As part of the Barbados Agreement, the US government issued licenses to certain oil companies permitting them to resume operations in Venezuela despite the sanctions. At the end of January, the State Department announced that the sanctions waivers issued to these companies would not be renewed once they expire on April 18.

At the same time, there is endless media reinforcement of the position that an election without Machado cannot be considered legitimate. On January 30, a few days after the Supreme Court rejected her appeal, Machado went on the television network CNN and was presented to viewers as “Venezuela’s main opposition leader.” An earlier Washington Post article is also typical of this narrative, headlined, “She’s the front-runner in the race to oust Maduro. He’s out to block her.” This combination of economic and political pressure is what has led to explosions in right-wing street violence in the past, following the 2013 presidential election when Maduro was first elected.

Machado: Regime change operative?

In 2002, following the short-lived coup d’état against Chávez, Machado signed the decree which established an unelected government under chamber of commerce head Pedro Carmona. In 2005 she met with former US president George W. Bush at the White House to discuss “democracy” (i.e., the overthrow of the Venezuelan government) More recently, she has been a key supporter and leader of the numerous right-wing plots to overthrow the democratically elected President Nicolás Maduro. These include the 2014 and 2017 guarimba protests which saw extreme violence against security forces and chavista supporters, as well as the destruction of infrastructure.

In 2014, Machado was removed from her post in the National Assembly after she attended a meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) in the place of the Panamanian representative in order to testify about 2014 protests, to speak out against the government, and to call for foreign support for her cause. The move was widely condemned as a violation of both the Venezuelan constitution and Panamanian law, and in response, Panamanian civil society and movement organizations filed a lawsuit against her for usurping a public post.

Machado has also celebrated the effectiveness of the illegal sanctions regime imposed on Venezuela in applying political pressure for regime change, and on several occasions, has called for even more sanctions. The sanctions have had devastating consequences for the Venezuelan people, well documented by different UN bodies and rapporteurs, human rights organizations, and think tanks. United Nations special rapporteur Alena Douhan noted that “[t]he announced purpose of the ‘maximum pressure’ campaign—to change the Government of Venezuela—violates the principle of sovereign equality of states and constitutes an intervention in the domestic affairs of Venezuela that also affects its regional relations.”

In 2019, Machado supported the push by Juan Guaidó’s parallel, fictitious government to request that the OAS apply the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR) against Venezuela to end the “usurpation of power” by Maduro. The activation of TIAR would have provided a legal justification for foreign military intervention, (more) economic sanctions, and a commercial blockade.

Machado participated and benefitted from the looting of the state companies and assets that the Guaidó “government” had illegally seized such as Monomeros and CITGO.

US seeks to delegitimize Venezuela’s democracy

An examination of the actual facts of Machado’s political career shows how the truth is much more complicated than the mainstream narrative about a government baselessly repressing an opponent.

After years of political instability caused by right-wing plots to overthrow the democratically elected government and even assassinate the leader, the Venezuelan government has pursued a straight-forward principle: political forces of any ideological variety can participate in elections as long as they do not conspire with foreign powers to undermine the independence of Venezuela or its sovereign institutions. This is in line with practices around the world. In the United States, for instance, there has been a great deal of public attention to the clause of the 14th Amendment that bars those guilty of insurrection from public office.

As the July 28 elections approach, tensions between the disparate elements of the Venezuelan political scene are bound to intensify. But the Biden administration is bound to be guided by the same overarching goal that has animated the policy decisions of Democratic and Republican administrations alike—remove from power one of the most long-standing opponents of Washington’s dominant role in the western hemisphere.

Zoe Alexandra is the co-editor of Peoples Dispatch.

Walter Smolarek is the editor of Liberation News.

Original article by Zoe AlexandraWalter Smolarek republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Continue ReadingVenezuela’s election in the crosshairs of new US regime change scheme

25 Groups Demand Biden ‘Urgently Comply With US Law’ and End Israel Arms Sales

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Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

A U.S.-supplied guided munition is prepared to be loaded onto an American-made Israeli Air Force F-15 in this undated photo. (Photo: Israeli Air Force)

“U.S. weapons, security assistance, and blanket political support have contributed to an unparalleled humanitarian crisis and possible war crimes in Gaza,” the NGOs wrote.

More than two dozen human rights groups on Tuesday implored U.S. President Joe Biden “urgently comply” with domestic law by suspending arms sales to Israel and pressuring its far-right government to end its genocidal policy of blocking aid to starving Palestinians in Gaza.

In a joint letter to Biden, the 25 organizations asserted that his administration’s “unconditional arms transfers and other security assistance” to Israel apparently “violate Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act (22 U.S.C. § 2378-1), which prohibits the United States from providing security assistance or arms sales to any country when the president is made aware that the government ‘prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance.'”

“U.S. weapons, security assistance, and blanket political support have contributed to an unparalleled humanitarian crisis and possible war crimes in Gaza,” the groups wrote. “We demand that you urgently comply with U.S. law, end U.S. support for catastrophic human suffering in Gaza, and use your leverage to protect civilians and ensure the impartial provision of humanitarian assistance.”

The letter continues:

Gaza’s Health Ministry reports that more than 30,000 Palestinians—at least two-thirds of them women and children—have been killed in Gaza and over 70,000 wounded, with thousands more estimated to be buried under the rubble. Over 90% of people in Gaza are acutely food insecure, with a growing number of children dying of starvation and dehydration. Over 75% of Gaza’s population is already displaced, and the level of damage to shelter and infrastructure means people increasingly have nowhere safe to go nor reliable provisions if and when they move. As civilians face bombardment, disease, and starvation, lifesaving healthcare is increasingly inaccessible.

The letter acknowledges the Biden administration’s efforts at providing very limited humanitarian relief to Gazans, as well as its public admission that “Israel is obstructing the delivery of humanitarian aid to starving Palestinians.”

“But since October 7, the government of Israel has failed to facilitate the entry of sufficient humanitarian aid, including through additional border crossings into Gaza and northern Gaza in particular; blocked the entry of many humanitarian aid trucks; denied humanitarian access requests; enforced arbitrary customs restrictions on humanitarian goods; and attacked humanitarian workers and their facilities as well as civilians seeking aid,” the groups said.

The letter points out that these acts are part of a stated Israeli policy of “complete siege” on Gaza, which experts say constitutes an act of genocide. In January, the International Court of Justice issued a preliminary ruling in a South Africa-led case that found Israel was “plausibly” committing genocide. The ICJ ordered Israel to “take all measures within its power” to prevent genocidal acts, an order that rights groups say it has failed to obey.

On Tuesday, a group of U.S. senators led by Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) also wrote a letter to Biden stressing that his administration is compelled by law to end arms sales to Israel if it keeps blocking aid to Gaza.

The U.S. provides Israel with around $4 billion in annual military aid. Since October 7, the Biden administration has requested an additional $14.3 billion in assistance for Israel, while repeatedly circumventing Congress to fast-track emergency armed aid.

The groups’ letter urges Biden to “use your leverage” with Israel “to protect civilians and ensure the impartial provision of humanitarian assistance.”

Biden administration officials have dubiously insisted that they have no such leverage.

Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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Continue Reading25 Groups Demand Biden ‘Urgently Comply With US Law’ and End Israel Arms Sales

‘That’s the Law’: Senators Say Biden Must End Arms Sales If Israel Keeps Blocking Aid

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Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

U.S. President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken are pictured during a White House meeting on November 21, 2023 in Washington, D.C. 
(Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

“Federal law is clear, and, given the urgency of the crisis in Gaza, and the repeated refusal of Prime Minister Netanyahu to address U.S. concerns on this issue, immediate action is necessary.”

A group of senators said Tuesday that under U.S. law, the Biden administration must cut off American military assistance to Israel unless the Netanyahu government immediately stops impeding aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip, where children are dying of starvation after months of incessant Israeli bombing and attacks on humanitarian convoys.

“The severe humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Gaza is nearly unprecedented in modern history,” the eight senators—led by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.)—wrote in a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden. “Your administration has repeatedly stated, and the United Nations and numerous aid organizations have confirmed, that Israel’s restrictions on humanitarian access, both at the border and within Gaza, are one of the primary causes of this humanitarian catastrophe.”

The senators argued that the Israeli government’s systematic obstruction of aid deliveries violates U.S. law, pointing specifically to Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. The law states that “no assistance shall be furnished… to any country when it is made known to the president that the government of such country prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance.”

Biden administration officials have admitted that Israel is impeding aid deliveries to desperate Gazans. But when asked last week whether Israel’s actions amount to a “breach” of the Foreign Assistance Act, U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said he would “have to go back and look at the language of that text.”

“It’s not something that I’ve spent a lot of time looking at,” he added.

“The United States should not provide military assistance to any country that interferes with U.S. humanitarian assistance.”

The senators wrote to Biden on Tuesday that “according to public reporting and your own statements, the Netanyahu government is in violation of this law.”

“Given this reality, we urge you to make it clear to the Netanyahu government that failure to immediately and dramatically expand humanitarian access and facilitate safe aid deliveries throughout Gaza will lead to serious consequences, as specified under existing U.S. law,” the letter reads. “The United States should not provide military assistance to any country that interferes with U.S. humanitarian assistance.”

“Federal law is clear,” the senators added, “and, given the urgency of the crisis in Gaza, and the repeated refusal of Prime Minister Netanyahu to address U.S. concerns on this issue, immediate action is necessary to secure a change in policy by his government.”

The senators’ letter was made public hours after the head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said Israel turned away a truck “loaded” with humanitarian aid because there were scissors in children’s medical aid kits—just one of many examples of Israel blocking the delivery of badly needed assistance.

Israel has limited the flow of aid to Gaza for years, but its siege has become much more restrictive since October 7, when Israel began its latest assault on the Palestinian territory following a deadly Hamas-led attack.

The U.S., by far Israel’s biggest arms supplier, has yet to impose any substantive consequences on the Netanyahu government for its mass killing of civilians or obstruction of humanitarian aid. The Biden administration has quietly approved more than 100 separate weapons sales to Israel since October.

Instead of using its leverage to force Israel’s hand, the administration has resorted to airdropping aid into Gaza and planning the construction of a temporary port off the enclave’s coast—steps that aid groups say won’t be anywhere near enough to avert famine.

Citing four unnamed U.S. officials, Politicoreported Monday that Biden “will consider conditioning military aid to Israel” if it launches a ground invasion of Rafah, a small city near the Egyptian border where more than half of Gaza’s population is sheltering.

Brian Finucane, senior adviser for the U.S. program at the International Crisis Group, wrote in response to Politico‘s reporting that “U.S. law and policy already impose conditions on military aid to Israel as well as every other country.”

“The Biden admin has just refused to enforce those conditions so far,” he added.

Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue Reading‘That’s the Law’: Senators Say Biden Must End Arms Sales If Israel Keeps Blocking Aid

Biden delivers State of the Union speech while under fire for supporting genocide

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Original article by Natalia Marques republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Demonstrators outside of the Capitol blocked Biden’s motorcade, causing a delay in his State of the Union speech (Photo: NYC-DSA)

US President Joe Biden’s unwavering support for Israeli genocide in Gaza has earned him the nickname “Genocide Joe” and made it necessary to hide from constituents on the campaign trail, due to the frequency of pro-Palestine disruptions at his events.

Yesterday, on March 7, Biden gave the annual “State of the Union” address amid protests from lawmakers themselves on his Gaza policy. When Biden began to bring up Gaza in his speech, Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian in Congress, was joined by several other progressive representatives in holding up signs that said “lasting ceasefire now.” Biden did say in his speech that “we’ve been working non-stop to establish an immediate ceasefire that would last for at least six weeks,” however, he still does not support a permanent ceasefire. Israel seeks the ability to revisit any ceasefire after six weeks. 

Outside of the Capitol, where Biden gave his speech, hundreds of protesters gathered to hold a “People’s State of the Union” and blocked the major streets outside the building. The protest was large enough to cause Biden’s motorcade to take the “long way” to the House of Representatives chamber to give his address, delaying his speech. Protesters held banners that read “Biden’s legacy is genocide” and “The people demand: stop arming Israel”. Left-wing and Palestine solidarity organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America, Dissenters, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Adalah Justice Project participated in the demonstration.

During Biden’s speech, he claimed that he is directing the US military to build a temporary pier on the Gaza coast that would increase the amount of humanitarian aid entering the Strip. At least five people were killed on March 8 after being struck by aid dropped into Gaza via planes. The United States has been carrying out aid drops, despite posing danger, in lieu of pressuring Israel to open land routes to allow aid trucks to move into Gaza freely. 

Aid to the besieged Gaza Strip has fallen due in part to Israeli restrictions on two crossing points, according to the UN. In February, an average of just 98 trucks entered Gaza per day, in comparison to around 200 trucks per day in January. Before October 7, Israel would allow around 500 trucks a day into the besieged territory for a population of over 2.3 million.

“That’s not what Gaza needs,” said a protester outside of the Capitol. “Gaza needs liberation. They need an end to US military funding for Israel, and they need to be able to finally end… 75 plus years of ethnic cleansing.”

Biden caves to right-wing on immigration

In his speech, Biden also appeared to continue the process of caving entirely to the right-wing about tougher policies against migrants and refugees, and the further militarization of the US-Mexico border. Biden was heckled at one point during his speech by ultra-right-wing lawmaker Marjorie Taylor-Greene, who shouted about Laken Riley, a student in Georgia allegedly killed by an undocumented immigrant. 

The right-wing has been using the example of Riley to push a racist anti-migrant policy, despite many studies showing that undocumented immigrants are less likely to engage in violent crime than US residents.

Instead of challenging the right, Biden caved to Taylor-Greene’s remarks by holding a pin that allegedly she gave him, and going on an anti-migrant rant. Getting Riley’s name wrong and referring to undocumented migrants as “illegals”, Biden made a jumbled comment saying, “Lincoln Riley, an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal. That’s right. But how many of the thousands of people being killed by illegals—to her parents, I say my heart goes out to you.” 

Biden also promoted a bipartisan bill to restrict immigration at the border, which would expand the authority of the president to crack down on migrants. “It would also give me as President new emergency authority to temporarily shut down the border when the number of migrants at the border is overwhelming,” he said. 

Protest votes threaten Biden’s run

Biden has been hemorrhaging support in the statewide Democratic primaries, with large percentages of Democratic voters casting protest votes against the incumbent President. This movement began with the Michigan primary, where over 100,000 voters voted “uncommitted”, with Arab-majority city Dearborn voting 56.22% uncommitted. The recent Democratic primary in US-occupied Hawaii generated 29.1% uncommitted votes, the highest percentage of any statewide primary in this election cycle.

The growing deluge of protest votes against Biden poses a looming threat for him in the election. Anger at Biden’s support for Israel’s genocide is growing in states like Georgia, which, like Michigan, became critical for Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential election. In 2020, Biden won Georgia by only 11,779 votes.

Peoples Dispatch spoke to Edward Ahmed Mitchell, a board member with CAIR Action, the newly formed political arm of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. CAIR Action is a part of the Listen to Georgia coalition, which is encouraging Georgia voters to cast a protest vote against Biden in the March 12 Georgia Democratic primary. 

“The people of Georgia, like many people across America, do not want our tax dollars funding a genocide overseas,” Mitchell said. “That’s why Georgia voters are trying to send a message to President Biden in the Democratic primary. The message is: you risk losing the state of Georgia and the 2024 election if you continue to enable the genocide in Gaza.”

Original article by Natalia Marques republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Continue ReadingBiden delivers State of the Union speech while under fire for supporting genocide

Starving Children in Gaza ‘Cannot Wait’ Weeks for US Port, Aid Groups Say

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Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Palestinian children are pictured near makeshift tents in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on March 7, 2024.  (Photo: Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

“They are already dying from malnutrition and saving their lives is a matter of hours or days,” said Jason Lee of Save the Children.

Leading humanitarian groups said Friday that starving people in Gaza, including more than a million children, are in need of immediate aid and can’t afford to wait for the U.S. military to construct a port on the enclave’s coast, a project that’s expected to take weeks.

“Children in Gaza cannot wait to eat,” said Jason Lee, country director for Save the Children in the occupied Palestinian territory. “They are already dying from malnutrition and saving their lives is a matter of hours or days—not weeks.”

At least 17 children have starved to death in Gaza, according to Defense for Children International – Palestine, and many more are currently struggling to survive.

Condemning Israel’s obstruction of ground-based aid deliveries as “a grave violation against children” and international law, Lee stressed Friday that “there is already a tried and tested system in place to effectively coordinate aid.”

“But trucks of food and medicines that could save lives are waiting at crossings, while children are starving just miles away,” Lee continued. “Airdrops, with no on-the-ground coordination of who it reaches, and maritime corridors like the one announced yesterday, are no solutions to keep children alive. Neither are substitutes for unimpeded humanitarian assistance via the established land routes.”

U.S. President Joe Biden announced during his State of the Union address Thursday night that he has directed the nation’s military to “lead an emergency mission to establish a temporary pier in the Mediterranean on the coast of Gaza that can receive large shipments carrying food, water, medicine, and temporary shelters.”

The president also said Israel, whose military is armed to the teeth with U.S. weaponry, “must do its part” by allowing “more aid into Gaza”—but did not threaten any consequences if the Netanyahu government refuses.

“Israel needs to facilitate rather than block the flow of supplies. This is not a logistics problem; it is a political problem.”

Ground deliveries into Gaza have plummeted in recent weeks as Israeli forces have attacked aid convoys and prevented trucks from entering and moving through the territory. A World Food Program (WFP) official said earlier this week there’s enough food to feed Gaza’s “entire population” sitting just outside of the strip.

“We need land crossings, we need access to get it into Gaza, whether in the southern parts of Gaza or the northern part of Gaza because the situation is catastrophic. So having access is really our number one priority,” said Samer AbdelJaber, WFP’s director of emergency.

The WFP has said aid airdrops—which Biden authorized last week—are a “last resort” and “will not avert famine.” On Friday, aid packages dropped into Gaza by U.S. military planes killed five people and injured at least 10 others.

Avril Benoît, executive director for Doctors Without Borders, argued Friday that Biden’s plan for a temporary port “is a glaring distraction from the real problem: Israel’s indiscriminate and disproportionate military campaign and punishing siege.”

“The food, water, and medical supplies so desperately needed by people in Gaza are sitting just across the border,” said Benoît. “Israel needs to facilitate rather than block the flow of supplies. This is not a logistics problem; it is a political problem. Rather than look to the U.S. military to build a workaround, the U.S. should insist on immediate humanitarian access using the roads and entry points that already exist.”

Refugees International said in a report released Thursday that its research teams found Israel is engaged in “routine and arbitrary denial of legitimate humanitarian goods from entering Gaza,” forcing aid convoys to undergo “a highly complicated” inspection process “without clear or consistent instructions.”

“Our research makes clear that conditions inside of Gaza are apocalyptic,” the group said. “After five months of war, Palestinians are struggling to find adequate food, water, shelter, and basic medicine. Famine-level hunger is already widespread and worsening.”

Matt Duss, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy and a former foreign policy adviser to U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), wrote Friday that while “more aid for Palestinians on the brink of starvation is obviously good,” the Biden administration’s airdrops and plan for a temporary port underscore “the incoherence of U.S. policy right now, in which we’re trying to ease Palestinian suffering while continuing to unconditionally arm and support the government that is intentionally inflicting that suffering.”

“The president seems to recognize that ultimately this conflict will require a political solution, but is still unwilling to bring the full weight of America’s considerable leverage to that goal,” wrote Duss.

Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingStarving Children in Gaza ‘Cannot Wait’ Weeks for US Port, Aid Groups Say

UN Human Rights Chief Decries ‘War Crime’ of Rapidly Expanding Israeli Settlements

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Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk speaks during a press conference in Cairo, Egypt on November 8, 2023. (Photo: Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images)

“The West Bank is already in crisis. Yet, settler violence and settlement-related violations have reached shocking new levels, and risk eliminating any practical possibility of establishing a viable Palestinian state.”

The United Nations human rights chief on Friday condemned the record expansion of illegal Israeli apartheid settlements in the occupied West Bank including East Jerusalem and the “dramatic increase” in violence against Palestinians by Israeli occupation forces and settlers, developments that are occurring while the world’s attention is focused on the Gaza genocide.

“Reports this week that Israel plans to build a further 3,476 settler homes in Maale Adumim, Efrat, and Kedar fly in the face of international law,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said in a statement responding to the far-right Israeli government’s latest settlement expansion scheme.

Türk submitted a report to the U.N. Human Rights Council affirming that Israel is violating the Fourth Geneva Convention by “effectively transferring the civilian population of Israel to the occupied territory while displacing the Palestinian population from their land.”

“Such transfers amount to a war crime that may engage the individual criminal responsibility of those involved,” the report states.

Both the occupation and settlements are illegal under international law. Israel conquered the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights in Syria in 1967 and has occupied the territories ever since. Although Israeli troops withdrew from Gaza and dismantled Jewish settlements there in 2005, Israel maintains a crippling physical and economic stranglehold that has become a total siege since October 7, when the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched a genocidal war in response to Hamas-led attacks.

The U.N. report notes that approximately 24,300 new homes in existing Israeli settlements in the West Bank were advanced between November 2022 to the end of October 2023, “the highest on record since monitoring began in 2017.”

According to the publication:

The policies of the current government of Israel appear aligned, to an unprecedented extent, with the goals of the Israeli settler movement to expand long-term control over the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and to steadily integrate this occupied territory into the state of Israel…

During the reporting period, there was a dramatic increase in the intensity, severity, and regularity of Israeli settler violence against Palestinians, which is accelerating the displacement of Palestinians from their land, in circumstances that may amount to forcible transfer. This violence further spiked following the attacks on October 7, 2023.

“The West Bank is already in crisis. Yet, settler violence and settlement-related violations have reached shocking new levels, and risk eliminating any practical possibility of establishing a viable Palestinian state,” said Türk.

According to the report, Israeli occupation forces and settlers have killed at least 413 Palestinians—including 107 children—while wounding more than 4,600 others in the West Bank since October 7. Palestinians killed 15 Israelis including four soldiers in the occupied territories during the same period.

In one of the most recent incidents, Israeli troops fatally shot 10-year-old Amr Mohammad Ghaleb Najar in the head while he sat in the front seat of his father’s car with his younger brother as they drove through the village of Burin on Monday. Soldiers then opened fire on Palestinians trying to rescue the child, wounding two other people.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also heads the Civil Administration—the governing body in the occupied territories—said this week that 18,515 new housing units have been approved in the settlements over the past year.

“The enemies try to harm and weaken us, but we will continue to build and be built up in this land,” the far-right minister said on social media.

The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, which has sanctioned a handful of extremist settlers, last month reversed a Trump-era policy shift under which the United States no longer officially viewed Israeli settlements as illegal. The U.S. State Department first declared the settlements unlawful in 1978.

“Our administration maintains a firm opposition to settlement expansion,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last month. “And in our judgment, this only weakens—it doesn’t strengthen—Israel’s security.”

Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingUN Human Rights Chief Decries ‘War Crime’ of Rapidly Expanding Israeli Settlements

30+ Arrested in Chicago Protest Demanding Gaza Cease-Fire

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Original article by JESSICA CORBETT republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

More than 30 Chicago demonstrators demanding a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip were arrested on March 8, 2024.  (Photo: Benjamin Lorber)

“We can’t go on acting as if the genocide isn’t happening,” said one demonstrator who blocked traffic. “We’re raising our voices to say no genocide in our name!”

Organizers said over 30 protesters were arrested in Chicago on Friday morning for blocking rush-hour traffic to demand a cease-fire in Israel’s U.S.-backed war on the Gaza Strip.

“We can’t go on acting as if the genocide isn’t happening,” said Deborah Adelman, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Chicago who blocked traffic at W. Jackson Boulevard and S. Dearborn Street. “We’ve been out on the streets for five months and we’re not going anywhere.”

The demonstration capped off a 24-hour vigil backed by the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, Chicago Educators for Palestine, Chicago Teachers Union Caucus of Rank-and-file Educators, Dissenters, Jewish Fast for Gaza, Tzedek Chicago, U.S. Palestinian Community Network, and local chapters of American Muslims for Palestine, IfNotNow, and JVP.

“We’re raising our voices to say no genocide in our name!” Adelman declared. “We’re here risking arrest to show our solidarity with the people of Gaza who are suffering an unfathomable assault.”

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C4QY9HeL9jh/embed/?cr=1&v=14&wp=675&rd=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org&rp=%2Fnews%2Fchicago-gaza-protest#%7B%22ci%22%3A0%2C%22os%22%3A358.89999997615814%2C%22ls%22%3A74.09999996423721%2C%22le%22%3A196.30000001192093%7D

Since Israel launched its brutal retaliation for a deadly Hamas-led attack on October 7, Israeli forces have killed at least 30,878 people in Gaza, injured another 72,402, displaced most of the enclave’s 2.3 million residents, restricted humanitarian aid, and devastated civilian infrastructure including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.

For the morning action in the Illinois city—whose council called for a Gaza cease-fire in a contentious January resolution—protesters linked arms and held banners that read, “>30,000 Dead—Not One More” and “End the Siege on Gaza Now!”

Vigil participants also spent several hours reading aloud the known names of those killed. After his turn, Rabbi Aryeh Bernstein told the Chicago Tribune: “At least at the bare minimum, we will pronounce somebody’s name correctly and have a moment of dignified memorialization for blessing for people who were killed prematurely in such a grotesque way… I have to imagine they did not have proper burials according to their beliefs and traditions and customs.”

As the death toll mounts in Gaza, Israel is facing a South Africa-led genocide case at the International Court of Justice while U.S. President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin are the targets of a complicity case in federal court.

Biden has made promises to step up humanitarian efforts for Gaza in recent days, but the United States also gives Israel $3.8 billion in annual military aid and since October 7, his administration has repeatedly bypassed Congress to arm Israeli forces while seeking a package worth over $14 billion.

Since last fall, critics of the Israeli assault and U.S. complicity have taken to streetsbridgestunnelstransit hubsgovernment buildings, and the campaign headquarters of Biden—who is seeking reelection in November—to call for an end to the genocide.

“Civil disobedience is integral to what my family and my ancestors have practiced for generations,” said Nitaawe Banks, a member of the Native American and Indigenous Students Association at DePaul University who blocked traffic in Chicago. “My grandfather was kidnapped by the U.S. government and taken 2,000 miles away to a boarding school where the federal government attempted to forcibly assimilate him.”

“At that time it was illegal for him to practice his religion and traditions,” Banks noted. “He went on to participate in the occupation at Wounded Knee. I’m here today to protest in solidarity with Palestine and to illustrate the lack of legitimacy the U.S. empire has.”

In addition to the Friday morning action, the #StateOfTheGenocide vigil included an alternate State of the Union that coincided with the president’s annual address. There were prepared speeches from In These Times executive editor Ari Bloomekatz and Eman Abdelhadi, an organizer, writer, and professor at the University of Chicago, along with remarks from other attendees.

“Biden is addressing the nation without listening to his public and, as he speaks, the death toll rises in Gaza. Just last week the Israeli military opened fire on crowds of starving Palestinians waiting for aid,” said Aaron Neiderman of IfNotNow Chicago ahead of the speeches. “We demand a permanent cease-fire and an end to this genocidal war.”

Original article by JESSICA CORBETT republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue Reading30+ Arrested in Chicago Protest Demanding Gaza Cease-Fire

US Media and Factcheckers Fail to Note Israel’s Refutation of ‘Beheaded Babies’ Stories

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Original article by DAVID KNOX republished from FAIR under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The Washington Post (11/22/23) said it couldn’t make a definitive assessment of whether Biden’s atrocity claims were true. But Israel’s official casualty list (11/11/23) had already debunked them.

In late November, the Washington Post (11/22/23) factchecked President Joe Biden’s repeated claims that babies had been beheaded during Hamas’s October 7 attack in Israel.

Biden’s remarks during a November 15 news conference triggered the factcheck:

Hamas has already said publicly that they plan on attacking Israel again, like they did before, to where they were cutting babies’ heads off to burning women and children alive.

Despite acknowledging a lack of confirmation of such atrocities, the Post stopped short of branding Biden’s statements false, and declined to dole out any of its iconic Pinocchios.

“It’s too soon in the Israel/Gaza war to make a definitive assessment,” Post Factchecker Glenn Kessler wrote, noting that even the most basic facts weren’t yet known.

“The Israeli prime minister’s office has said about 1,200 people were killed on October 7, down from an initial estimate of 1,400,” he said, “but it’s unclear how many were civilians or soldiers.”

An authoritative count

That statement isn’t true. While the exact number killed amid the extreme violence and chaos of October 7 may never be finalized, an authoritative count of civilian deaths—as well as data that definitively refutes claims babies were beheaded—was available to anyone with access to the internet little more than a month after the attack.

That’s when Bituah Leumi, or National Insurance Institute, Israel’s social security agency, posted a Hebrew-language website (11/9/23) with the name, gender and age of every identified civilian victim and where each had been attacked.

Two days later Bituah Leumi (also transliterated as Bituach Leumi) posted an English-language news release (11/11/23) publicizing the website as a memorial to the civilian victims of the “Iron Swords” war—Israel’s name for Hamas’s attack and Israel Defense Forces’ response. (The news release refers to “695 identified war casualties,” but there are no wounded; all the victims are listed as “killed.”)

The journalistic importance of the memorial website was shown less than a month later, when Haaretz (12/4/23), Israel’s oldest newspaper, used the social security agency’s data to debunk some of the most sensational atrocities blamed on Hamas.

‘Proved untrue’

Haaretz (12/4/23) reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s most sensational atrocity claims were “inaccurate.”

Haaretz’s 2,000-word, English-language article was cautious, with allowances for mistaken and exaggerated reports from traumatized observers describing horrific scenes of carnage. But unlike the Washington Post’s factcheck, the Israeli newspaper didn’t pull its punches, flatly concluding that some of the claims of atrocities “have been proved untrue.”

Chief among the claims disproved was that Hamas fighters deliberately slaughtered dozens of babies—beheading some, burning and hanging others.

“According to sources including Israel’s National Insurance Institute, kibbutz leaders and the police, on October 7 one baby was murdered, 10-month-old Mila Cohen,” the Haaretz article stated. “She was killed with her father, Ohad, on Kibbutz Be’eri.” The child’s mother survived.

In addition to a single infant, the social security agency’s list of victims includes only a few other young children. Haaretz’s reporters were able to determine the circumstances of each of their deaths:

According to the National Insurance Institute, five other children aged 6 or under were murdered, including Omer Kedem Siman Tov, 2, and his 6-year-old twin sisters Arbel and Shachar, who were killed on Kibbutz Nir Oz. There was also 5-year-old Yazan Zakaria Abu Jama from Arara in the southern Negev, who was killed in a Hamas rocket strike, and 5-year-old Eitan Kapshetar, who was murdered with his parents and his 8-year-old sister, Aline, near Sderot.

Haaretz also used the social security data to refute allegations made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Biden that Hamas targeted and tortured children:

There is no evidence that children from several families were murdered together, rendering inaccurate Netanyahu’s remark to US President Joe Biden that Hamas terrorists “took dozens of children, tied them up, burned them and executed them.”

‘Details still sparse’

The Washington Post (12/4/23) acknowledged the Haaretz story the same day it was published, with a one-paragraph “update” inserted into its November 22 factcheck. While crediting Haaretz with doing a “detailed examination of unverified accounts of alleged atrocities disseminated by Israeli first-responders and army officers,” the Post downgraded the Israeli newspaper’s conclusion, saying only that “no accounts of beheaded or burned babies could be verified.”

While the Post noted that Haaretz “could document only one case of a baby being killed in the Hamas attacks,” the update did not explain that the source of that critical fact was an agency of the Israeli government. Nor did the Post alter the factcheck’s inconclusive, mishmashed “Bottom Line”:

Almost two months after the Hamas attack, details are still sparse on claims of beheading of babies. One IDF official says he found a decapitated baby; a first responder says “little kids” were beheaded, though an exact number was not provided. Forensic records that would document the cause of death have not been released. There also are reports of at least two beheadings of adults—a soldier and a Thai worker. First responders say they viewed these bodies.

There is little dispute that many of the civilians killed by militants on October 7 died in especially brutal ways. But caution is still warranted, especially at the presidential level, about statements that babies were beheaded. The available evidence does not need exaggeration.

An unnecessary retraction

PolitiFact (11/21/23) retracted this story (10/20/23) because it didn’t include Israeli claims about mutilated babies that—according to Israel’s official records—didn’t exist.

The Post wasn’t the only factchecker that wavered when judging reports of slaughtered Israeli babies. The Poynter Institute’s PolitiFact retracted its story (10/20/23), headlined “How Politicians, Media Outlets Amplified Uncorroborated Report of Beheaded Babies.”

PolitiFact took the embarrassing action after being savaged by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, better known as CAMERA.

CAMERA, which Haaretz (9/5/16) described as “a right-wing media watchdog that routinely attacks news outlets over their coverage of Israel,” blasted PolitiFact as “unethical,” “sloppy and misleading” (11/8/23) for failing to include in its story all reports of mutilated babies made by Israeli military spokespeople, government officials and emergency response workers.

PolitiFact (11/21/23) conceded “our initial story was incomplete,” and published a revised story (11/21/23) that included many of those comments. The new version also quoted an Israel Defense Forces spokesperson stating “that verified testimonies state some people were beheaded, but they could not confirm how many.”

Like the Post’s Factchecker, PolitiFact drew no conclusions about the truth or falsity of those claims, declining to issue a rating on its “Truth-O-Meter.”

‘Details still emerging’

Snopes (10/12/23) says it’s still too soon to say whether babies were beheaded on October 7, thought it promises, “We will update this story once more information comes to light.”

The factchecking website Snopes (10/12/23, last updated 12/18/23) also declined to provide a definite answer to the question posed in its headline: “Were Israeli Babies Beheaded by Hamas Militants During Attack on Kfar Aza?”

“At present, details are still emerging from communities affected in Israel, the death tolls are still being counted, and the manner of many deaths have not yet been confirmed,” Snopes stated.

In one of eight updates, Snopes cited Haaretz’s December 4 “analysis of child deaths during the October 7 attack.” But, as with the Washington Post’s update, Snopes did not mention that the newspaper had used Israeli social security data in its investigation.

FactCheck, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, (10/13/23) did find that a Facebook video was correct in saying “that ‘no evidence has been provided’ for the viral claim that ‘40 babies’ were ‘beheaded’ by Hamas.”

But a November 14 update, included in the story, quoted the head of Israel’s National Center of Forensic Medicine saying that “many bodies” of victims he had examined were “without heads.” But he couldn’t determine whether the decapitations were deliberate or the result of explosions.

FactCheck has not published any more on the issue.

The missing proof

FAIR.org (10/20/23): “The claim about beheading babies was…a shocking story that served to turn off logic and critical thinking.”

There’s a reason why the major factchecking organizations hesitate to pass judgment on the widespread claim of slaughtered babies: They rightly conclude that the lack of verifying evidence, such as photos or autopsy reports, does not conclusively prove the claims are false.

FAIR contributor Saurav Sarkar made that precise point in his report (10/20/23) lambasting “corporate media” for “their repetition of the shocking, unsubstantiated claim that Hamas had beheaded 40 babies in its violent attack on a kibbutz in southern Israel on October 7.”

“So we have a story, and that story was generated in a grossly irresponsible way, and then repeated over and over,” Sarkar stated. “But what proof do we have that the story is false? After all, even if it was reported badly, and repeated without additional substantiation, it might be true.”

Bituah Leumi, the Israeli social security agency, provided that missing proof when it posted the official list of victims that showed only one infant was killed in the attack.

The mainstream US news media ignored that authoritative evidence.

‘War on truth’

AFP (12/15/23) reported that data from Israel’s social security agency “invalidates some statements by Israeli authorities in the days following the attack.”

The first major news outlet outside of Israel to use data from the social security agency’s website was the French wire service Agence France-Presse.

The AFP’s 1,000-word, English-language dispatch, headlined “Israel Social Security Data Reveals True Picture of October 7 Deaths,” was picked up by France24 (12/15/23), the Times of India (12/15/23), the financial weekly Barron’s (12/15/23) and a scattering of small newspapers, including the Caledonian (Vermont) Record (12/15/23).

The AFP story covered much the same ground as Haaretz’s analysis, listing the same slain infant—Mila Cohen—and five other young victims under 7 years old in refuting claims of wholesale slaughter of babies.

While Google searches found no US mainstream media reporting on the Israeli social security agency’s data, several independent journalists did.

Gareth Porter, an American historian and journalist whose credentials go back to the Vietnam War, cited the social security data in an article in Consortium News (1/6/24) that argued that the Netanyahu government sought to build support for the invasion of Gaza by “inventing stories about nonexistent atrocities and planting them with credulous US news outlets.”

In February, Jeremy Scahill used that data to make the same case in a 8,000-word article, headlined “Netanyahu’s War on Truth,” in the Intercept (2/7/24), the investigative website he helped found.

Both journalists credit the December 15 AFP dispatch as the source of the Israeli social security data. (Porter’s story provides a link to the Times of India; Scahill links to France24.)

Earlier this week a third independent journalist, Glenn Greenwald (3/3/24), quoted the December 4 Haaretz report, which used the Israeli social security data, in a YouTube video, titled “October 7 Reports Implode: Beheaded Babies, NY Times Scandal & More.”

Emotion-inflaming stories

Media focus on the imaginary beheaded babies helped Israel get away with killing hundreds of actual babies (Al Jazeera1/25/24).

In the months since the Haaretz and AFP reports were published, Bituah Leumi has updated its civilian death count to 779, including 76 foreign workers, as more victims are identified (Jewish News Syndicate, 1/15/24.).

But a detailed examination this week of the 16-page list of victims on the memorial website found no additional infants or young children—only those already accounted for by Haaretz and AFP—and a total of 36 children under 18 years old.

Mila Cohen remains the only infant reported killed in the October 7 attack.

US corporate media’s failure to cite the social security agency’s data to forcefully refute claims of butchered babies and other outrages comes at a high cost. Such emotion-inflaming stories continue to foul the public debate over whether Israel’s invasion of Gaza, which has resulted in the deaths of more than 30,000 Palestinians (AP2/29/24)—two-thirds of those women and children (PBS2/19/24)—is a criminally disproportionate response to the Hamas attack.

Al Jazeera (2/29/24) broke down the Palestinian death count further, citing Gaza Health Ministry figures:

The ministry said of the 30,035 people killed so far in the conflict, more than 13,000 were children and 8,800 women. At least 70,457 people have been injured, of which more than 11,000 are in critical condition and need to be evacuated.

In January, when the Health Ministry had estimated the number of children killed at 10,000, Al Jazeera (1/25/24) published the names of more than 4,200 Palestinian dead under 18 years old. Of those children named, 502 were under 2 years old—that is, infants.

Unfounded horror stories about Hamas’s infant victims that should have been debunked were still being repeated by Biden (12/12/23) at a campaign fundraiser more than two months after Israel was attacked:

I saw some of the photographs when I was there—tying a mother and her daughter together on a rope and then pouring kerosene on them and then burning them, beheading infants, doing things that are just inhuman—totally, completely inhuman.

This time the Washington Post didn’t factcheck Biden—even though the White House stated months earlier that the president had never seen such photos (CNN, 10/12/23).

Still no Pinocchios.

Original article by DAVID KNOX republished from FAIR under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Continue ReadingUS Media and Factcheckers Fail to Note Israel’s Refutation of ‘Beheaded Babies’ Stories

Israel’s blocking of aid to Gaza is a weapon in its brutal war against Palestinians

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Original article by Abdul Rahman and Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Photo: UNRWA

Israel’s deliberate blocking of humanitarian aid to Gaza has emerged as key weapon against the people of the territory. More than 20 Palestinians have reportedly been killed due to starvation in the last few weeks and numbers are expected to explode in the coming days.

Though Israel denies it has any such policy, almost all UN agencies working to provide aid on the ground in Gaza, as well as several other groups, have termed the deliberate blocking of aid as the most important reason for an imminent famine in the besieged Palestinian territory. 

Research conducted by organizations such as Refugees International show that, “Israeli conduct has consistently impeded aid operations within Gaza, blocked legitimate relief operations, and resisted implementing measures that would genuinely enhance the flow of humanitarian aid in Gaza.”

By denying adequate aid to Gaza, Israel has been in violation of the interim order passed by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on January 26 while hearing the genocide petition filed by South Africa. The ICJ had asked Israel to facilitate “urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life.”

In its submission to the court in February, Israel claimed it had complied with the ruling. However, UN data shows that the actual number of trucks with aid reaching Gaza decreased by half in February in comparison to the previous month. International organizations still describe experiences where the Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) block their entry into Gaza, especially North Gaza, after being made to wait for hours on end.

According to Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner General of UNRWA, in February, on an average just 98 trucks entered Gaza in comparison to around 200 trucks a day in January. Before October 7, Israel used to allow around 500 trucks a day to the besieged territory for a population of over 2.3 million.

Israel’s denial of adequate aid to Gaza also violates the UN Security Council resolution adopted in December which talks about greater access to humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza. 

The US, which was the primary mover of the UN security council resolution, recently airdropped aid to Gaza. While delivering his State of the Union address on March 7, President Joe Biden also talked about opening a temporary port in Gaza to deliver faster aid. Both the moves confirm the claims that there is not enough aid reaching Gaza at the moment, despite Israeli claims.

However, the US act is widely seen as a face-saving exercise given the Biden administration’s reluctance to press Israel for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and its supply of arms and ammunition which is used by Israel to bomb Palestinians.

The Biden administration has failed to make Israel comply with its own National Security Memorandum (NSM 20) as well. It requires that countries seeking security aid from the US make arrangements for adequate humanitarian assistance.

Medea Benjamin of CODEPINK highlighted on her page on X that Biden says “Israel must allow more aid into Gaza and protect civilians. But it doesn’t. And Biden keeps sending them more weapons.”

Meanwhile “after five months of war, Palestinians are struggling to find adequate food, water, shelter and basic medicine. Famine level hunger is already widespread and worsening” in Gaza, Refugees International’s report says. The lack of adequate food has significant health implications for children in Gaza who have been the primary victims of Israel’s war since October 7.

Israel weaponized starvation against Palestinians

Israel has killed over ten thousand children in its bombings and ground offensives in Gaza since October 7. In addition to that, the health effects of Israel’s blockade on aid delivery are worsening by the day.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 1 in 6 children under 2 years of age in Gaza are acutely malnourished. The combination of food shortages, lack of clean water, and inadequate healthcare provision is having devastating effects, particularly on young children and mothers.

Many women are facing extreme difficulties in initiating and continuing breastfeeding due to their own nutritional status and stress. “People are hungry, exhausted, and traumatized,” said Adele Khodr, Regional Director of UNICEF’s Middle East and North Africa office.

The food shortage in the north is so severe that health workers report 95% of female patients are suffering from anemia. “There have been many operations performed, such as cesarean sections, to remove fetuses, [which] died of malnutrition among women,” Mohammed Salha, director of Al-Awda Hospital, told ActionAid.

Pediatricians at Kamal Adwan Hospital have reported not having the resources to treat more than half the children admitted to the hospital for malnutrition, as there is no food or medical supplement the staff can give them. “The most we can do for them is give them a saline solution or sugar solution,” physician Imad Dardonah told UN teams visiting the institution.

Israeli obstacles to aid delivery also mean that there is not enough infant formula or diapers. On the rare occasions when these essential supplies are found, their cost puts them out of reach for most of the population in Gaza.

A box of diapers in northern Gaza now costs around ILS 200 (USD 55), while monthly income before October 7, 2023, was reported around ILS 1,200 (USD 343)— not even enough to cover a newborn’s monthly supply during her first month of life, let alone food on top of that.

Restrictions are also being applied to the number of international medical teams allowed into Gaza and to field hospitals, which would allow for a partial expansion of much-needed health service capacities.

The siege is causing a devastating paradox: at the same time, there are too few health workers to respond to the needs of the population and those who have been working in Gaza’s healthcare system since October; and there are too many health workers in comparison to the operational surgery capacities—the only remaining functional operation rooms are located at the European Hospital in southern Gaza, according to surgeon Ghassan Abu Sittah.

Some countries have attempted to circumvent Israel’s aid blockade by airdropping supplies, but the amounts reaching the population in Gaza this way are nowhere near sufficient. To adequately stock hospitals and health centers, several international agencies have warned, it is paramount to ensure unimpeded passage for truck convoys carrying a wide range of supplies, not just a specific type of food or sanitary bandages.

When it comes to aid delivery, the UN humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territories, James McGoldrick, said, “There is no alternative to food trucks, to road transports.”

Original article by Abdul Rahman and Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Continue ReadingIsrael’s blocking of aid to Gaza is a weapon in its brutal war against Palestinians