#Israel #Palestine #Gaza #Bookmarks
Airstrikes killed at least 704 people in the past day, bringing Gaza’s total death toll after 18 days of bombing to 5,791, including 2,360 children, the Hamas-run health ministry said. – UN calls for immediate ceasefire to end ‘epic suffering’ in Gaza
UN calls for immediate ceasefire to end ‘epic suffering’ in Gaza
António Guterres, secretary-general:
Excellencies, it is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing. But the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas. And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people. Excellencies, even war has rules. We must demand that all parties uphold and respect their obligations under international humanitarian law; take constant care in the conduct of military operations to spare civilians; and respect and protect hospitals and respect the inviolability of UN facilities which today are sheltering more than 600,000 Palestinians. The relentless bombardment of Gaza by Israeli forces, the level of civilian casualties, and the wholesale destruction of neighbourhoods continue to mount and are deeply alarming. … The protection of civilians is paramount in any armed conflict. Protecting civilians can never mean using them as human shields. Protecting civilians does not mean ordering more than one million people to evacuate to the south, where there is no shelter, no food, no water, no medicine and no fuel, and then continuing to bomb the south itself. I am deeply concerned about the clear violations of international humanitarian law that we are witnessing in Gaza. Let me be clear: No party to an armed conflict is above international humanitarian law. – Secretary-General's remarks to the Security Council - on the Middle East , 24 October 2023
Secretary-General's remarks to the Security Council - on the Middle East
WhatsApp, Facebook, Meta:
A little-discussed detail in the Lavender AI article is that Israel is killing people based on being in the same Whatsapp group as a suspected militant. Where are they getting this data? Is WhatsApp sharing it? … Why is Meta doing this? … Their Chief Information Security Officer, Guy Rosen, is their most senior policy decision maker. He … was in the Israeli military in Unit 8200. Unit 8200 is the Israeli NSA and is the department that built and runs Lavender. … Mark Zuckerberg, Meta founder and CEO has also been a significant supporter of Israel's propaganda. Zuckerberg gave $125k to Zaka, one of the groups that created and continues to spread much of the original Oct 7 false atrocity propaganda, including the discredited "Oct 7 mass rape" hoax. Meanwhile former COO and current Meta board member, Sheryl Sandberg, has been on tour spreading the same discredited propaganda. – Meta and Lavender, by Paul Biggar
Destruction:
As Israel prepares for its Rafah offensive, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza continues to deteriorate. But the lack of media access inside the Gaza Strip means the full extent of worsening conditions are not always seen. Using open source imagery Bellingcat and our partners Scripps News examined widespread destruction of property inside the Gaza Strip and looked at deteriorating conditions there. – The Hidden War in Gaza and the West Bank
Systematic and widespread attacks on civilian housing and infrastructure in Gaza has been described as “domicide” by Professor Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing. He told us “Even with attacks against individual buildings, every building which is bombed or destroyed has got to be evaluated legally. Whether a building on this or that corner of a road needed to be destroyed or not...the burden is on the IDF to show that they have evidence, that they have proof and that the attack is proportionate and necessary”. It’s estimated that more than 50% of Gaza’s buildings have been destroyed or damaged and approximately 1.7 million people have been displaced since the offensive began. – “We’ve Become Addicted to Explosions” The IDF Unit Responsible for Demolishing Homes Across Gaza
According to Yehuda Shaul, a co-director of the Ofek think tank in Jerusalem who has been documenting statements that have a potential to incite hate, Halevi said in a Knesset hearing in October that a goal for the IDF in Gaza should be that there is no more Muslim in the land of Israel. – In Real Life: A Hidden War
The Hidden War in Gaza and the West Bank
“We’ve Become Addicted to Explosions” The IDF Unit Responsible for Demolishing Homes Across Gaza
Torture. I can’t even quote from that article because what little I read already makes me sick.
Sde Teiman, Israel (CNN) — At a military base that now doubles as a detention center in Israel’s Negev desert, … – Strapped down, blindfolded, held in diapers: Israeli whistleblowers detail abuse of Palestinians in shadowy detention center
Counting the dead:
Armed conflicts have indirect health implications beyond the direct harm from violence. Even if the conflict ends immediately, there will continue to be many indirect deaths in the coming months and years from causes such as reproductive, communicable, and non-communicable diseases. The total death toll is expected to be large given the intensity of this conflict; destroyed health-care infrastructure; severe shortages of food, water, and shelter; the population's inability to flee to safe places; and the loss of funding to UNRWA, one of the very few humanitarian organisations still active in the Gaza Strip.
In recent conflicts, such indirect deaths range from three to 15 times the number of direct deaths. Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death
to the 37 396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza. Using the 2022 Gaza Strip population estimate of 2 375 259, this would translate to 7·9% of the total population in the Gaza Strip. A report from Feb 7, 2024, at the time when the direct death toll was 28 000, estimated that without a ceasefire there would be between 58 260 deaths (without an epidemic or escalation) and 85 750 deaths (if both occurred) by Aug 6, 2024. – Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential, by Rasha Khatib, Martin McKee, Salim Yusuf, in The Lancet (2024)
Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential
@pluralistic@mamot.fr linked this article:
When I asked Klein why Germany had decided to develop its antisemitism system so aggressively in recent years, he invoked the 2015–16 refugee crisis, which led to a sharp increase in the number of people from the Middle East in Germany, implying a connection with anti-Jewish sentiment. – The Strange Logic of Germany’s Antisemitism Bureaucrats