In brief: “The Keweenaw Friends of Palestine are signed up to march in the annual Parade of Nations on behalf of Palestine! The parade will be on Saturday, September 21st starting at 11am at the Rozsa Center at Michigan Technological University and marching to the Dee Stadium. Please join us and tell your friends! If you want to join the march, please be at the Rozsa Ctr. by 10:30am to get your Palestine flag and get set up. We will have several flags available but we ask if you do have your own flag that you bring it so we can have as many flags as possible. Wear a keffiyeh if you have one.”[Source]
In Brief: “How does Cop City connect to Palestine? GILEE, or the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange program, is a Georgia State University-based police exchange program between the Atlanta Police Department (APD), the Atlanta Police Foundation’s Atlanta Police Leadership Institute, and the Israeli Occupation Forces. This program was created to ensure the exchange of tactics and capital under the guise of ‘“homeland security.”’ The same corporations that are funding Cop City invest private capital into GILEE; their funding sends hundreds of APD trainees from Georgia to Israel to refine practices of urban warfare. The blueprint for Cop City was inspired by Israel’s very own Cop City called Little Gaza in an-Naqab or the so-called Negev Desert. Israel’s Cop City is built on stolen Palestinian land, and Georgia’s Cop City proposed site is the Weelaunee Forest, 381 acres of stolen Muscogee land. This relationship symbolizes the connections between the prison industrial complex, militarism, settler colonial oppression, white supremacy, and expanded state-sanctioned violence against working-class Black and Indigenous communities. […] What do we mean by ‘“Palestine is the laboratory?”’ Israel has one of the most advanced military and surveillance technologies in the world. It is one of the global leaders in the defense sector, raking in billions of dollars a year for the benefit of the settler colonial state. Their weapons have been tested on Palestinians through movement restrictions and besieging and bombing Gaza; their violence on Palestinians is used as part of their ‘“battle-tested”’ sales pitch. From Myanmar’s ethnocide against the Rohingya and the surveillance of refugees and Indigenous people at the U.S.-Mexico border to India’s campaign against Kashmir and slave markets in Libya, Israel has aided, abetted, and continues to profit off violence across the globe. For more examples, check out Antony Lowenstein’s book The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World.”[Source]
In brief: “The Al-Jaouni School in Nuseirat in central Gaza was hit by Israeli forces for the fifth time in 11 months on Wednesday night, prompting furious complaints by United Nations leaders. […] At least 17 people -- including six employees with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, known as UNRWA -- were killed in the latest strike, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Civil Defense and UNRWA. […] Al-Jaouni School -- like many others in the devastated territory -- doubles as a shelter for displaced Palestinians, and according to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres was housing around 12,000 people when it was bombed. Before Wednesday's strike, the school was last attacked on July 6.”[Source]
In brief: “… the UN reported that health workers continue efforts to vaccinate young children in northern Gaza against polio, part of a wider campaign to defeat the disease, which can cause paralysis. […] More than 81,600 boys and girls were vaccinated as of Tuesday, according to preliminary data from the World Health Organization. […] Polio was detected in Gaza in June and UN agencies and partners launched a two-round campaign this month to provide over 640,000 children with two doses of novel oral polio vaccine type 2. […] So far, nearly 528,000 children have been reached in the first round.”[Source]
In brief: Updated 10 Aug 2024 01:21 PM (GMT) “More than 100 Palestinians have been killedand dozens wounded in an Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced people in Gaza City, according to officials in the enclave. […] Three Israeli bombs hit al-Tabin school, located in the Daraj district, Gaza’s civil defense agency said of the attack on Saturday, which it described as a “horrific massacre”. […] Women, children and the elderly are reported to be among the dead and the toll was expected to rise. The attack took place while people were performing morning prayers and triggered a fire that ripped through the building. […] Ismail al-Thawabta, the head of Gaza’s Government Media Office, told Al Jazeera that the Israeli army used three bombs weighing 2,000 pounds (907kg) each in its attack.”[Source]
In brief: “Washington will provide Israel $3.5 billion to spend on US weapons and military equipment, the State Department said on Friday, with the release of the money coming months after the US Congress appropriated it during Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza. […] A State Department spokesperson said on Friday that the department notified Congress on Thursday that the government intended to release the billions of dollars worth of foreign military financing to Israel.”[Source]
In brief: September 3, 2024. “On Monday, the UK said it was suspending about 30 export licenses for military equipment to Israel for use in military operations in Gaza following a review of Israel's compliance with international humanitarian law. […] UK arms exports to Israel are relatively small compared to Israel's total, but Israel's prime minister denounced the UK's decision as ‘"shameful"’. […] The US is by far the biggest supplier of arms to Israel, having helped it build one of the most technologically sophisticated militaries in the world. […] According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (‘SIPRI’), external, the US accounted for 69% of Israel's imports of major conventional arms between 2019 and 2023. […] The US provides Israel with $3.8bn (£2.9bn) in annual military aid under a 10-year agreement that is intended to allow its ally to maintain what it calls a ‘"qualitative military edge"’ over neighboring countries.”[Source]
In brief: “Nearly 2% of the Palestinian population has been killed in Israel’s war in Gaza in the last 10 months with over a 100 dead over the weekend in major attacks. […] As of July, the U.S. has sent at least 14,000 2,000-pound bombs, 6,500 500-pound bombs, 3,000 Hellfire precisionguided air-to-ground missiles, 1,000 bunker-buster bombs, 2,600 air-dropped small-diameter bombs, and other munitions. […] The money still flows as if Israel will never have enough, and despite the warning signs that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not want to end the war, that a ceasefire is forever out of reach, and the hard line members of the ruling Likud party consider Palestinians ‘” human animals”’ that deserve collective punishment for the Oct. 7 attacks. Public comments that starvation of two million people should be morally justified, as is the gang rape of Palestinian prisoners, should be a clanging alarm bell, but all the Biden administration can muster is that there ‘”ought to be zero tolerance”’ for such behavior.”[Source]
In brief: “Israel’s Defense Ministry said Thursday it has secured its largest-ever defense deal selling a sophisticated missile defense system to Germany for $3.5 billion after the United States approved the deal. Germany will buy the advanced defense system, coined Arrow 3, which is designed to intercept long-range ballistic missiles. Israel sought approval for the deal from the U.S. State Department because the system was jointly developed by the two countries. Israeli defense officials said the system would extend Germany’s defense capability while strengthening the defense relationship between Israel and the United States.”[Source]
In brief: “Israeli soldiers shot and killed American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi on Friday (Sept. 6, 2024) while she was protesting an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank, according to local media reports. […] The killing of 26-year-old Eygi, who lived in the Seattle area, immediately prompted concerns that the United States government would not respond appropriately and seek accountability for her killing. Earlier this year, two 17-year-old Palestinian Americans were killed in the West Bank: Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, a Louisiana native who was shot in January by an off-duty Israeli officer and a settler, and Mohammad Khbour, a high school senior from Florida who was shot in the head by an Israeli gunman several weeks later. In both cases, the U.S. government decried the killings but have yet to launchinvestigations.”[Source]
In brief: “The death this weekend of three American servicemen struck by drones at a base in Jordan near the Syrian border is a tragedy. […] The U.S. has more influence with Israel, which continues to pummel Gaza in a campaign that despite its horrendous death toll and grievous impact on Palestinian infrastructure, has reportedly only destroyed a small fraction of Hamas fighters and tunnels and has actually made the terrorist … group more popular in the other Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory, the West Bank, and in the wider Muslim world. Until the war stops, the hostages are released, and the urgent humanitarian needs in Palestine begin to be met, it will be difficult if not impossible to prevent the regional conflict from escalating further or to begin to address root causes.”[Source]
In brief: “Apartheid Israel has murdered over 30,000 people between October 7th and December 31st, 2023. Most victims have been children, women and the elderly. Over 50,000 have been injured. […] Yet the US continues to back the massacres. Almost 40 years ago Joe Biden said the US backs Israel with billions of dollars for weapons annually “out of naked self-interest.” He also said, ‘“The US would have to invent an Israel if it didn’t exist.”’ […] Israel is the USA’s landed aircraft carrier in the Middle East to control the region - with its huge oil reserves - for the profits of US corporations. Those corporations and banks are at the core of an empire that inflicts mass violence to extract profit all around the globe at the expense of people and the planet. […] We must stop our government from arming and supporting this genocide!”[Source]
In brief: “The Israeli military used U.S.-made military equipment in two airstrikes that killed dozens of civilians in Gaza and decimated two families, according to Amnesty International. Amnesty’s report is the first to tie U.S.-supplied munitions directly to strikes with extensive civilian casualties. […] ‘“U.S.-made weapons facilitated the mass killings of extended families,”’ said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General in a press release from Dec. 5. […] On Oct. 10, an air strike on the al-Najjar family home killed 24 people. On Oct. 22, an airstrike on the Abu Mu’eileq family home killed 19 people. Both strikes were in Deir al Balah. The city is south of Wadi Gaza, the area the Israeli military ordered civilians of Northern Gaza to flee to."[Source]
In brief: “The assassinations of two Hamas leaders may be a short-term setback, analysts say, not enough to prevent the group from re-emerging intact — and possibly more radicalized. […] First came the death of its (Hamas) top leader abroad, Ismail Haniyeh, by a bomb planted in Tehran. Then came Israel’s announcement that, only weeks earlier, it had killed Hamas’s most elusive and revered military leader Muhammad Deif). All of this as Israel continues to wage the deadliest war Palestinians in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip have ever faced. […] At first tally, the latest score in the 30-year struggle between Israel and Hamas looks like a devastating one for the Islamist movement, one that throws its future into question. Yet the history of Hamas, the evolution of Palestinian militant groups over the decades and the logic of insurgencies more broadly suggest that not only will Hamas survive, it may even stand to emerge politically stronger.”[Source]
In brief: “In many students’ eyes, the war in Gaza is linked to other issues, such as policing, mistreatment of Indigenous people, racism and the impact of climate change.”[Source]
In brief: “Demonstrations in solidarity with Palestinians under Israeli siege in Gaza have spread across university campuses in the United States and around the world in recent weeks. […] More than 2,000 people have been arrested at US campuses since April 18, amid polarized debates over the right to protest, the limits of free speech and accusations of antisemitism. […] But while clashes and standoffs with police at New York’s Columbia University, Portland State and UCLA have captured global attention, demonstrations and sit-ins are also being held on campuses in parts of Europe, Asia and the Middle East.”[Source]
In brief: “Organizer Hatem Abudayyeh spoke for the Coalition to March on the Democratic National Convention after a June 6 court hearing downtown in a lawsuit seeking a march route near the convention. Abudayyeh says he sees few differences between the major U.S. parties when it comes to their Gaza policies. He says if Democrats lose the upcoming presidential election it’s only on them. […] The coalition behind the march lists more than 150 groups signing on as backers. The main demand is an end to U.S. aid to Israel.”[Source]
In brief: “One of those walls, the foundations of which were laid already in 1947 and 1948, is the wall of legal exceptionalism. Before the ink was dry on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Genocide Convention, the nascent, western-controlled United Nations carved out an exception for Israel, which was to be effectively above the law. […] In Palestine, this began with the forced partition of the land, which was in direct breach of international legal prohibitions on the acquisition of territory by force and on the denial of indigenous self- determination. This was followed by the abject failure of the UN and the West to intervene to stop the genocidal ethnic cleansing of Palestine that was the Nakba of 1947-1948. While critical resolutions and symbolic gestures in the UN would follow, the West set to work in earnest at the same time on aiding and arming Israel in order to make it impervious to the external dictates of international law, and on disempowering and dehumanizing the Palestinian people, to prevent any real internal threats to the colonial project.[Source]
In brief: ‘“Death to Arabs!”’ ‘“May your village burn!”’ ‘“A second Nakba is coming!”’ […] “These were the slogans young Israeli settlers chanted as they marched through occupied East Jerusalem’s old city on June 15. […] The Zionist nationalist march, celebrating the anniversary of Israel’s 1967 occupation of East Jerusalem, had eerie similarities not only with last century’s Nazi rallies in Europe, but also with the more recent examples of racial hatred we have seen on the other side of the Atlantic, in the United States. […] For example, watching last month’s so- called ‘“March of the flags”’ in Jerusalem, it was difficult not to be reminded of the 2017 white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, where American white nationalists carrying tiki torches chanted slogans like ‘“You will not replace us”’ and ‘“The South will rise again”’. Perhaps the only difference between these two public declarations of racial hatred and the genocidal intention was the fact that, unlike their American counterparts, the Israeli racists faced no backlash or punishment. […] Indeed, as genocidal slogans filled the streets of occupied Jerusalem, the Israeli police refrained from making any attempts to control the settlers, but arrested 17 Palestinians protesting against this blatant provocation for “disturbing the peace”’.”[Source]
In brief: “Israel’s settler-colonial project stands as a peculiar instance of colonial domination in the modern era, distinguished by its ideological roots in Zionism, a potent blend of mythological narratives, militaristic nationalism, and expansionist aspirations. Unlike traditional colonial powers, Israel operates without a conventional metropole, instead leveraging strategic alliances with Western powers, particularly the United States, to sustain its colonial enterprise. The endurance of this project is inextricably linked to the subjugation and fragmentation of the Arab world, which serves as a wellspring of resistance against Israel’s colonial ambitions, as evidenced by the normalization of relations between Israel and various Arab regimes. Yet, Palestinian resistance has proven resilient and adaptive, persistently asserting its rights, identity, and connection to the land, while exposing the moral bankruptcy of Israel’s colonial dominance. To fully grasp the complexities of Palestine’s past, present, and future, it is imperative to employ a settler-colonial framework, which not only illuminates the specific dynamics at play but also sheds light on the broader implications for understanding and challenging similar structures of oppression worldwide.”[Source]
In brief: “According to Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute, settler colonialism has ‘”an additional criterion that is the complete destruction and replacement of indigenous people and their cultures by the settler’s own in order to establish themselves as the rightful inhabitants.”’ […] Settler colonialism does not have a definition under international humanitarian law (unlike many other terms used during this latest war, although Article 49 of the Geneva Convention prohibits certain actions often associated with that term; it is instead a concept that historians use to describe the system of replacing an existing population with a new one through land theft and exploitation, which is enabled by occupation, apartheid, forced assimilation, or genocide. […] Historians often apply the term to the projects that founded the United States, Canada, South Africa, and others.”[Source]
In brief: “Boeing Co. is speeding delivery to Israel of as many as 1,800 kits that convert unguided bombs into precision munitions, according to congressional aides and a U.S. official. […] The expedited deliveries of Joint Attack Direct Munition, or JDAM, kits from Boeing to the Israeli government stem from a 2021 Direct Commercial Sale valued at about $735 million. […] The sale provided for deliveries over several years, but that timetable has been accelerated since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. The kits are for bombs of 500 pounds and heavier. […] A U.S. official confirmed the transfer, adding that the Pentagon provided guidance but didn’t ship the kits on U.S. military aircraft because it’s part of a direct sale. […] Senators may ask Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for details of all munitions transfers to Israel – including the JDAM kits and 155mm artillery shells – in a classified briefing later Wednesday.”[Source]
In brief: “Israeli equipment and defense material will be resupplied based on their burn rate—the speed at which they are used in the ongoing military operations, says R. Clarke Cooper, former Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, the bureau which oversees arms transfers. The U.S. has already committed to sending Iron Dome air-defense missiles, small diameter bombs and JDAM kits (Joint Direct Attack Munition), which convert unguided bombs into GPS-guided weapons to Israel. Boeing is reportedly speeding up the delivery of as many as 1,800 JDAMs, which the company produces in St. Charles, Missouri. These replenishments will come on top of previously agreed upon deals for advanced weaponry such as F-35 fighter jets, CH-53 heavy-lift helicopters, and KC-46 aerial refueling tankers, Cooper says, currently a non- resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.”[Source]
In brief: “Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign aid since its founding (1948), receiving about $310 billion (adjusted for inflation) in total economic and military assistance. […] QME (Qualitative Military Edge) has been a conceptual backbone of U.S. military aid to Israel for decades, and it was formally enshrined in U.S. law in 2008. It requires the U.S. government to maintain Israel’s ability ‘“to defeat any credible conventional military threat from any individual state or possible coalition of states or from non-state actors, while sustaining minimal damage and casualties.”’ QME is based on NATO military planning vis-a-vis a potential conflict with the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries during the Cold War. […] Under the 2008 law, the United States must ensure that any weapons it provides to other countries in the Middle East do not compromise Israel’s QME. In several cases, this has required the United States to provide Israel with offsetting weaponry as part of larger regional arms sales. QME has also ensured that Israel is the first in the region to receive access to the most sophisticated U.S. military weapons and platforms, such as the F-35 stealth fighter, of which Israel has fifty.”[Source]
In brief: “Along with the United States, Israel provided weapons and training to Guatemala’s military and their campaign against Indigenous Maya civilians from 1974-1996. […] As testimonies unroll, it is germane to point out that Benedicto Lucas Garcia (accused retired Guatemalan General) did not commit mass murder by himself, but rather with help from the United States and Israel. […] From the time of the 1954 CIA-orchestrated coup against the progressive, democratically elected president, Jacobo Árbenz, Guatemala was led by military autocrats supported by the United States, or civilians answerable to the military.”[Source]
In brief: “'Archaeological sites are tangible, physical evidence attesting to the right of Palestinians to the land of Palestine and their historic existence on it, from the Stone Ages to the present day,' ... 'The destruction of these sites in the Gaza Strip in such a brutal and systematic manner is a desperate attempt by the occupation army (IDF) to erase the evidence of the Palestinian people’s right to their land.'”[Source]
In brief: “Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has suggested that pro-Palestinian protesters at college campuses across the nation are uneducated about the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. […] During a Thursday appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Clinton suggested to host Joe Scarborough that the ongoing demonstrations have been fueled by an ignorance of ‘the history of the Middle East,’ while arguing young people are also lacking knowledge about U.S. history. […] ‘I have had many conversations, as you have had, with a lot of young people over the last many months now,’ Clinton said. ‘They don't know very much at all about the history of the Middle East. Or, frankly, about history in many areas of the world, including in our own country.’"[Source]
In brief: “A U.S. Army officer working at the Defense Intelligence Agency has resigned from the military, citing his objection to Israel’s war in Gaza, according to an open letter he published online Monday saying he is distressed that his work has contributed to the deaths of Palestinian civilians. […] Maj. Harrison Mann posted his letter on the social networking site LinkedIn, where his work history shows experience as an analyst focused on the Middle East and Africa. His time at the Defense Intelligence Agency (‘DIA’) coincided with the Hamas attack on Israel last year and the subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza, where local health authorities say more than 35,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed since the fighting began in early October and officials have warned of spreading famine.”[Source]
In brief: “From May 13 to May 15, members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 4811 will be holding a strike authorization vote for a potential strike, in response to the University of California’s crackdown on peaceful pro-Palestine student protesters. […] Last week, administration at the University of Los Angeles- California sent in the Los Angeles Police Department to clear out the Gaza Solidarity encampment staged by student protesters, peacefully demanding that their university divest from Israel. The encampment had been under several rounds of attack from violent Zionist counter protesters, who released bags of mice and cockroaches near the encampment and deployed fireworks and pepper spray against students. University officials did not respond to these attacks, instead, in the pre-dawn hours of Thursday morning, LAPD armed with riot gear swept into the camp, deploying rubber bullets and flashbang grenades against the pro-Palestine student protesters.”[Source]
In brief: “‘… using accusations of widespread antisemitism to take eyes off the astronomical death toll in Gaza — more than 34,000 reportedly dead as I write this (May 2, 2024), more than 14,500 of them children — while fretting about the safety of Jewish students instead. […] The faculty of Columbia takes antisemitism seriously and we have methods in place to deal with it. We also recognize that some of the chants of the protesters do make certain Jewish students and faculty uncomfortable. But as a group of Jewish faculty pointed out in an op-ed for the student newspaper, the Columbia Daily Spectator, it’s absurd to claim that antisemitism, which is defined by the Jerusalem Declaration as ‘discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews,’ is rampant on our campus. ‘To argue that taking a stand against Israel’s war on Gaza is antisemitic is to pervert the meaning of the term,’ we wrote. ‘Labeling pro-Palestinian expression as anti-Jewish hate speech requires a dangerous and false conflation of Zionism with Jewishness.’”[Source]
“The Abraham Accords, which were spearheaded by Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, are commonly described as normalizing relations and establishing formal diplomatic ties between the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Israel. At its heart a business deal, the Abraham Accords facilitated financial investment between the countries, as well as military and surveillance cooperation. But in order to accomplish what had previously been considered nearly impossible, Kushner’s deal carved out the major question at issue: Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestinian territories. […] The intelligence report’s warnings have renewed significance in light of President Joe Biden’s push for a version of the Abraham Accords on steroids — in which Israel would ‘normalize’ relations with Saudi Arabia, home to Mecca, the holiest site in Islam, as well as a far larger Arab population than that of the UAE or Bahrain. Like Trump, the Biden administration has sought to portray this as a peace agreement. But it is, again, essentially a financial deal in which Israel and its Gulf neighbors are choosing economic benefits and shared security concerns about Iran over their moral responsibility to the Palestinian people. Experts warn that normalizing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia without addressing the ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories will worsen regional tensions.”[Source]
In brief: “Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders told NBC News' Meet the Press on Sunday morning that ‘”Israel should not be receiving another nickel in U.S. military aid”’ amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. […] The senator's comments come at a time when Israel is preparing to launch a ground invasion into the densely-populated southern Gazan city of Rafah where more than 1.3 million displaced Palestinians are sheltering, according to the Associated Press. […] As Israel's biggest ally, the U.S. has provided the country with around $300 billion in economic and military assistance since its founding, according to the Council on Foreign Relations (‘CFR’) think tank. On Friday, the Biden administration said Israel’s use of U.S.-supplied weapons in Gaza may have violated international humanitarian law.”[Source]
In brief: “The Biden administration informally notified congressional committees Tuesday that it planned to move forward with more than $1 billion in weapons deals for Israel, said U.S. officials familiar with the matter, a major transfer of lethal aid that comes a week after the White House paused a single shipment of bombs because of concerns that a planned assault in southern Gaza could cause immense civilian casualties. The arms deals allow for the potential transfer of $700 million in tank ammunition, $500 million in tactical vehicles and $60 million in mortar rounds, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. […] The decision underscores the administration’s reluctance to defy pro-Israel donors in the Democratic Party who criticized Biden’s decision last week to withhold the shipment, which included controversial 2,000-pound bombs that have been involved in mass casualty events in Gaza.”[Source]
In brief: "The baby girl who was brough into the world thanks to an emergency cesarean delivery died from injuries inflicted by Israeli bombs, has herself died. About 15,000 children have died in Israel's attacks on the Gaza Strip.”[Source]
In brief: “There had been a glimmer of hope in Rafah this past weekend, when medics were able to rescue a baby girl from her mother's womb after (Israeli) airstrikes Saturday night killed her entire family. […] Her mother was dead by the time she was brought to the field hospital, but doctors were able to operate on her outside its main structure quickly, performing an emergency cesarean section to pull her baby out. […] The baby's mother, her father Shukri Jouda, and toddler sister Malak — Arabic for angel — were also killed in the Israeli airstrike that hit the family's home in Rafah, according to information from the hospital morgue and extended family. […] The U.N. children's fund, UNICEF, says more than 13,000 children have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, with thousands more orphaned and wounded. U.N. Women says, on average, two mothers have been killed per hour in Gaza since the start of the war.”[Source]
In brief: “The UN human rights chief, Volker Türk, has said he was ‘horrified’ by reports of mass graves containing hundreds of bodies at two of Gaza’s largest hospitals. […] Palestinian civil defense teams began exhuming bodies from a mass grave outside the Nasser hospital complex in Khan Younis last week after Israeli troops withdrew. A total of 310 bodies have been found in the last week, including 35 in the past day, Palestinian officials have said. […] Palestinian rescue teams and several observation missions from the UN also reported the discovery of multiple mass grave sites in the Shifa hospital compound, in Gaza City, earlier this month, after Israeli ground troops withdrew after a prolonged siege.”[Source]
In brief: “The International Court of Justice (‘ICJ’) hearings on January 11 and 12, 2024, on genocide in Gaza will include the first formal response by Israel before an independent and impartial court to allegations of atrocities against the Palestinian people since October 7, 2023, Human Rights Watch said today. On December 29, South Africa filed a case with the court alleging that Israel is violating the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.”[Source]
In brief: “Hundreds of law enforcement officers in riot gear moved into a pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA early Thursday, firing flash bangs and dismantling barriers. […] Amir Mertaban, the executive director of Islamic Society of Orange County […] ‘I saw was something that I never thought I would ever see in L.A. and that was students getting attacked, and at night, with the lights on, masked students with pepper spray, bear spray, mace, pipes, bats,’ Mertaban said. ‘I never thought I would see this level of violent attacks on students at UCLA, while UCPD (UC Police Department), the LAPD (L.A. Police Department), the (L.A. County) Sheriffs, (California) Highway Patrol, all had their backs turned while this was happening right behind them. […] Many of the students, he said, had to be transported to hospital by car.”[Source]
In brief: “It is a wonderful thing that you have decided not to be silent and decided to speak out against the repression that you see with your own eyes,” Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther, said while calling from Pennsylvania’s Mahanoy state prison. “You are part of something massive, and you are part of something that is on the right side of history. […] “You’re against a colonial regime that steals the land from the people who are Indigenous to that area. I urge you to speak out against the terrorism that is afflicted upon Gaza with all of your might, all of your will and all of your strength. Do not bow to those who want you to be silent.”[Source]
In brief: “One way that university administrators enact this repression is by ideologically isolating the pro-Palestinian position and endorsing narratives that depict pro-Palestinian speech as hateful and violent. At Harvard, for example, now-ousted President Gay condemned student activists’ use of the common slogan ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’—a demand for equal rights for all people in historic Palestine—as a call for the ‘eradication of Jews from Israel.’ At Syracuse University, an administrator threatened students with disciplinary action over a sign that read ‘Globalize the Intifada’ under a similar misrepresentation, arguing that the slogan amounted to discrimination in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Mostrecently, the University of Southers California canceled valedictorian Asna Tabassum’s commencement speech due to ‘substantial risks relating to security and disruption’ after proIsrael groups criticized Tabassum for a pro-Palestine link on her Instagram profile.”[Source]
In brief: “They don't care a hoot about the ‘safety’ of students, or about the rise of antisemitism nationally, or about hurtful rhetoric emanating from the tent colonies on campus, which they claim to be their concerns. Instead, they're trying to exploit what appears to be a violent situation to pursue their larger campaign to demonize higher education — in fact, education generally —by softening it up for the imposition of right-wing, reactionary ideologies.”[Source]
In brief: “The states that have passed legislation making it illegal for state agencies to work with companies that boycott Israel include Texas, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Florida, Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arkansas, Minnesota, Nevada, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Kansas, North Carolina, Utah, Missouri, Idaho, West Virginia, Colorado, Mississippi and New Hampshire.”[Source]
In brief: “Not one (U.S.) university president has denounced Israel’s destruction of every university in Gaza. Not one (U.S.) university president has called for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire. Not one (U.S.) university president has used the words “apartheid” or “genocide.” Not one (U.S.) university president has called for sanctions and divestment from Israel. […] Instead, heads of these academic institutions grovel supinely before wealthy donors, corporations — including weapons manufacturers — and rabid right-wing politicians. They reframe the debate around harm to Jews rather than the daily slaughter of Palestinians, including thousands of children. They have allowed the abusers — the Zionist state and its supporters — to paint themselves as victims. This false narrative, which focuses on anti-Semitism, allows the centers of power, including the media, to block out the real issue — genocide. It contaminates the debate. It is a classic case of ‘reactive abuse.’ Raise your voice to decry injustice, react to prolonged abuse, attempt to resist, and the abuser suddenly transforms themself into the aggrieved. […] There are many shameful periods in American history. The genocide we carried out against indigenous peoples. Slavery. The violent suppression of the labor movement that saw hundreds of workers killed. Lynching. Jim and Jane Crow. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. Libya. […] The genocide in Gaza, which we fund and support, is of such monstrous proportions that it will achieve a prominent place in this pantheon of crimes. […] History will not be kind to most of us. But it will bless and revere these students.”[Source]
In brief: “Hundreds of Jewish anti-war demonstrators have been arrested during a Passover seder that doubled as a protest in New York, as they shut down a major thoroughfare to pray for a ceasefire and urge the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, to end US military aid to Israel. […] The 300 or so arrests took place on Tuesday night on the doorstep of Schumer’s Brooklyn residence, where thousands of mostly Jewish New Yorkers gathered for the seder, a ritual that marked the second night of the holiday celebrated as a festival of freedom by Jews worldwide. […] The seder came just before the US Senate resoundingly passed a military package that includes $26bn for Israel.”[Source]
In brief: “Police arrested about 150 protesters at pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Yale and New York University on Monday night, while Columbia University announced that classes would be taught remotely for the rest of the semester, as anger boiled over following more than 100 arrests there last week. […] On the Yale campus in New Haven, Connecticut, authorities arrested at least 47 protesters on Monday evening. […] Several hundred people had been protesting at Yale, including hunger strikers, demanding the university divest from military weapons manufacturers and other companies with ties to Israel. […] And in downtown Manhattan, police clashed with protesters at New York University. There were reports of officers using pepper spray as demonstrators tried to block a police bus from leaving the scene with detained students. More than 100 people were arrested. […] The police crackdowns came after Columbia witnessed a huge walkout by faculty on Monday in solidarity with students who were arrested last week after setting up a protest camp.”[Source]
In brief: “Protesters were arrested at schools including Ohio State University, the University of Minnesota and Indiana University on Thursday, joining the fast-growing list of demonstrators who have been detained by police nationwide. That same day, two graduate students were arrested at Princeton University for setting up encampments in violation of school policy, while more than two dozen people were arrested at Emory University in Atlanta, where participants were also protesting a police training facility nicknamed ‘Cop City.’ […] Police officers arrest a protester as pro-Palestinian students demonstrate at Emory University on Thursday. At Emory University in Atlanta, protesters — including students from other Atlanta universities and area activists — clashed with state, city and university law enforcement on campus. Videos on social media show officers using tear gas, tasers and handcuffs to detain protesters, including faculty members.”[Source]
In brief: “For the Israeli settler movement, Hamas’s bloody October 7 incursion presented an opportunity. Barely two months into the Israel Defense Forces’ scouring of the Gaza Strip, the inner core of the movement gathered in a hall in the port town of Ashdod. They did not wear yellow ribbons, the color of solidarity with the hostages, and did not devote themselves to prayers for the hostages’ return. They wore orange and prayed for a different restoration: a reconquest of Gaza, the expansion of the Greater Land of Israel, and the dispossession of an entire people.”[Source]
In brief: “During the war in 1967, Israel captured a wide swath of Palestinian land that included the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. […] Almost immediately, Jewish settlers began establishing communities in each of them, displacing Palestinians who lived there. […] While the settler movement isn’t composed just of religious people, and over the years it has received backing from both right- and left-wing Israeli governments, it is ideologically driven by practitioners of Orthodox Judaism who believe God gave what they call the Land of Israel exclusively to the Jews. […] Reuven Gal, former chief psychologist for the military (IDF) and a researcher at the Israel Institute of Technology, says that for many soldiers, the Gaza conflict that has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians is ‘not just a military operation.’ […] ‘For them,’ he said, ‘it’s a holy war.’”[Source]
In brief: “Things have changed. The organized Jewish community has weaponized conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism; colleges and universities are banning chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine from campuses. Congressional demagogues are forcing university presidents to resign. State and local governments, foreign governments, U.S. cabinet departments, and even Congress are adopting a definition of antisemitism that includes anti-Zionism. […] Our primary role now is to demonstrate that there are Jewish values and traditions that go back thousands of years and do not depend upon a Euro-centric political ideology born less than 150 years ago. In other words, we must demonstrate that one can leave Zionism and still be part of a Jewish community that lives its traditions, its values, and – if so inclined – its spiritual life with vitality and integrity.”[Source]