Al Jazeera
Breaking: UN Special Rapporteur confirms Israel committing genocide (video)
Report to go before UN’s human rights commission against backdrop of starving Palestinian children and continued murder of innocents
The United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, international lawyer Francesca Albanese, has told Al Jazeera this morning that she will present her expert findings confirming Israel’s genocide to the UN’s human rights commission next week.
In January, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that there is a ‘plausible’ case that Israel is committing genocide, but Albanese – like hundreds of millions of people around the world – knows that the case is far more than merely ‘plausible’, even more so after Israel ignored the ICJ’s instructions to stop bombing, shooting and starving the Palestinians of Gaza:
Albanese’s interview took place against a backdrop of another confirmation of the obvious – that Gaza is now officially in famine and approaching a point where starvation and disease caused by Israel’s continued will kill more than Israel’s bombs and bullets. The harrowing footage of emaciated, dying children shown on Al Jazeera shows that Palestinian children are Israel’s main targets in the starvation campaign, just as they have been in the mass murder of civilians through bombs and missiles.
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Well over 100 civilians murdered as Israeli tanks, gunboats fire on crowd waiting for aid delivery
Terror and chaos in Gaza City after IDF ‘trap’
Injured wait on lorries and a donkey cart (social media image)
More than a hundred Palestinian civilians have been slaughtered and many more injured, after Israeli tanks, gunboats and armoured vehicles opened fire on a crowd of people waiting for a scheduled aid delivery to arrive. The Israeli military has admitted opening fire, claiming that troops felt ‘endangered’. The IDF also tried to blame the civilians for their own deaths, saying some were trampled – presumably as terrified people tried to escape the fire zone.
Some reports have put the death toll at 170, with more than a thousand wounded. Social media posts show the carnage and the attempts to evacuate the injured. The Al Jazeera news service reported that the victims had fallen into a ‘trap’ set by the Israeli military:
Palestinians who witnessed the Israeli attack on aid seekers in Gaza city say it was a trap.
According to human rights group Euro-Med Monitor, Israeli forces have killed almost 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza since 7 October last year, the vast majority of them civilians and a large majority women and children, and have wounded more than 70,000 others, many of them severely. The World Health Organization and others have reported that more than a million people are in, or at imminent risk of, starvation because of Israel’s blockade and military assault, and victims of starvation have already died.
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Skwawkbox is in Dublin to cover Ogle vs Unite discrimination tribunal
Irish union legend claiming discrimination by Graham-run union after return from cancer treatment. Skwawkbox will report from Irish Workplace Relations Commission
From Tuesday, the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) in Dublin will hear the discrimination case brought by Irish union legend Brendan Ogle against Sharon Graham’s Unite, for abuse Ogle – who supported Howard Beckett during the 2021 Unite general secretary election – says he suffered at the hands of the union management after his return from a successful battle against life-threatening cancer.
Ogle, who is also separately suing Graham, her ally Tony Woodhouse and the union for defamation, has alleged that he was abused by the union after his return from treatment for cancer – and after he made ‘protected disclosures’ to the union about its failures to adhere to covid protocols during the pandemic.
Graham and her representatives have been accused of ‘disgusting’ behaviour toward Ogle – and anger in Ireland at the situation became so great that an entire sector branch threatened to disaffiliate entirely from Unite, the well-known ‘Right2Water’ campaign said it will no longer work with Unite, Unite’s Community section in Ireland condemned the ‘injustice inflicted’ on him and members picketed general secretary Sharon Graham’s long-delayed visit to Dublin.
Skwawkbox is in Dublin to cover the proceedings, including Tuesday’s session where Graham’s predecessor as general secretary, Jeremy Corbyn ally Len McCluskey, is expected to take the stand to testify. Graham herself has been subpoenaed by Ogle’s legal team to give evidence, despite allegedly trying to get out of appearing.
Graham is using one of the world’s most profitable law firms to defend the defamation suit – and also, as Skwawkbox revealed, in the tribunal case. Her tenure as Unite boss has been marked by a string of other allegations – which neither she nor the union has denied – including alleged destruction of evidence against her husband in misogyny and bullying complaints. She is currently being sued, along with an ally and the union, by Irish union legend Brendan Ogle for defamation.
She has been exposed using proxies to order the cancellation of showings of the film ‘Oh Jeremy Corbyn/The Big Lie’, which exposes the political abuse of antisemitism accusations against left-wingers in the Labour party, and discussion of Asa Winstanley’s forensic book Weaponising Antisemitism: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn. Proxies were similarly despatched to try, unsuccessfully, to cancel a Unite ‘fringe’ event at Labour’s conference earlier this month in support of Palestinians.
Ogle’s barrister told the Workplace Relations Commission adjudicator last November that she expected the union would be required to ‘produce’ Sharon Graham to testify, along with a string of current and former senior Unite officials and employees.
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New ‘Lab’ MP Egan married to former 8200 Unit Israeli ‘spy’ recruiter
Right-wing MP’s partner spoke of his ‘great experience’ on pro-Israel propaganda programme, to which he recruited former spies from unit that marks its headsets for every Palestinian it kills
New right-wing Labour MP Damien Egan is married to a former IDF soldier who recruited former members of the IDF’s ‘Unit 8200’ spy unit to the ‘Excel’ propaganda programme run by the ultra-Zionist ‘Birthright Israel’ group (BI).
In a 2017 Facebook post, BI boasted of Felberbaum’s ‘important role’ in recruiting ex-8200 supervisors for ‘Excel’ interns, which Felberbaum said was ‘a great experience for me’, before talking of the ‘technological world I come from’. The article does not say that Felberbaum was a Unit 8200 member during his service, although his role recruiting former members raises the question:
Unit 8200 is the IDF’s ‘cyber-spy’ unit. Whistleblowers from the unit have revealed that members sometimes wear ‘X’s on their headsets to mark assassinations their information has facilitated – and that it targeted Palestinians for extortion and blackmail to further the government’s aims.
‘Excel’ is BI’s vehicle for taking US Jews on trips to Israel to reinforce their commitment to the occupying regime. In 2006, BI’s director of marketing said that:
[Israel] should be an integral part of every Jew’s identity
and criticised left-wing Jews who used the programme’s funding to go to help in Palestine, whom he said were weeded out if their ‘hidden agenda’ identified before going:
It is taking advantage of the Jewish money that sends people to Israel, exploiting this money to promote an agenda which is not the agenda of the people who funded Taglit
Felberbaum is not the only connection between Unit 8200 and Keir Starmer’s Labour. Starmer employs former member Assaf Kaplan as his ‘Social Listening and Organising Manager’, believed to be involved in monitoring members’ and others’ ‘online conversations’ about the party – and potentially finding information that can be used to expel anyone at odds with the regime. Kaplan removed mentions of the unit from his online profiles. He was also a ‘Facebook friend’ of disgraced Israeli embassy employee Shai Masot, who was sent home from the UK after being exposed organising campaigns against MPs Israel considered troublesome.
Egan himself is a member of the right-wing so-called ‘Jewish Labour Movement’. Unit 8200 has reportedly targeted gay Palestinians for blackmail and coercion.
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Video: Israeli police kick journalist repeatedly in head – now hospitalised with ‘serious’ injuries
Yet more brutality from apartheid regime
Turkish photojournalist Mustafa Haruf has been kicked repeatedly in the head, without provocation, by Israeli police in occupied East Jerusalem, leaving him hospitalised in a serious and not yet stabilised condition.
Haruf, who works for Turkish news agency Anadolu, was first struck in the head with a rifle then yanked to the ground and set on by two uniformed thugs as others looked on and others tried to prevent filming:
Mr Haruf was subsequently able to speak to colleagues from his hospital bed. In Gaza, an Israeli airstrike killed Al Jazeera journalist Samer Abu Daqqa today and wounded Wael Al-Dahdouh, the Al Jazeera reporter whose family was killed in a targeted airstrike early in Israel’s genocidal assault, as they reported on yet another UN school being bombed.
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Al Jazeera news crew hit by Israeli missile as they reported on bombed South Gaza UN school
Wael Al-Dadouh’s family was killed in earlier Israeli airstrike targeting journalists’ homes
Al-Dahdouh receiving treatment after the missile strike
At least two Al Jazeera journalists have been hit by an Israeli missile as they reported on Israel’s overnight strike on a UN relief agency (UNRWA) school in southern Gaza that killed twelve people and seriously wounded at least twenty-five others. The victims were mainly women and children sheltering in the school after being driven from northern Gaza to the supposedly ‘safer’ south.
Wael Al-Dahdouh, whose family was killed in an earlier strike, was wounded but able to walk clear of the attack zone, while his cameraman was severely wounded and could not be reached by ambulances as the vehicles came under attack from Israeli forces. Al Jazeera showed footage of Mr Al-Dahdouh, bloodied and shaken, receiving treatment for shrapnel wounds:
Israel has been accused of targeting the homes and families of journalists and of Palestinian academics and artists, including poet and professor Refaat Alareer last week. The apartheid regime has also hit Al Ahli hospital in northern Gaza, which it bombed early in its genocidal assault killing more than five hundred people, with multiple strikes from drones and jets overnight.
The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that at least sixty-three journalists in Gaza have been killed by Israel since 7 October: fifty-six Palestinians, four Israelis and three Lebanese, plus another fourteen missing and nineteen arrested, with more deaths reported but still to be confirmed. At least one more has been murdered in southern Lebanon and another lost her leg in a tank shelling.
Update: camera operator Samer Abu Daqqa has died of his wounds, the 64th journalist (some calculate 78th) confirmed murdered by the genocidal apartheid Israeli regime.
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Video: IDF driver ‘slowed down to murder two children’ during West Bank refugee camp raid
Raid supposedly in pursuit of ‘terrorist’ pauses to shoot dead two young boys aged 15 and 8 in cold blood
Israeli soldiers slowed down their convoy so the driver of the lead vehicle could murder two young boys in cold blood as they played in the street after an IDF raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, according to witnesses. The clip was played today on Al Jazeera’s English broadcast:
Basil Abu al-Waf, 15, and 8-year-old Adam Samer al-Ghoul, were playing outside after the IDF raid finished, believing it was now safe – but were killed by a convoy of troops returning from the camp.
Basil’s father told Al Jazeera that the Al-Basateen neighbourhood where they were playing is ‘known as a very quiet area’. A horrific video of Adam’s shooting as he tried to run away, which took place at the end of November, went viral. Hamas does not operate in West Bank, but Israel has intensified its attacks on the Jenin refugee camp regardless.
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Video: IDF ‘executes’ Palestinian women, children, babies in school
CONTENT WARNING: harrowing Al Jazeera video exposes horrific scene of slaughter
A video released by Al Jazeera shows the bodies of women and children ‘piled up’ in a school near Jabalia in northern Gaza, where they had been shot at point blank range by Israeli soldiers who witnesses say had already executed the men sheltering with them.
Human rights watchdog Euro Med Monitor has also reported ‘executions’ by occupation troops:
Well over 66,000 parliamentarians, civil society figures and others from around the world have today called on the International Criminal Court to launch a formal war crimes prosecution against Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, his cabinet and others responsible for the growing list of murders and atrocities in Gaza.
In case the Al Jazeera YouTube video is deleted, it is accessible here.
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Video: Amnesty shows Israel killed journalist, maimed another, in Lebanon
Warning: distressing footage – forensic examination of footage from 13 October attack, on Lebanese territory, on clearly marked journalists, shows Israeli tank fired once, then again less than a minute later; Amnesty calls for war crime investigation
Detailed analysis by Amnesty International of footage surrounding a 13 October attack on a group of clearly marked journalists shows Israeli tank crew knowingly fired two shells, less than a minute apart, at the group as they filmed in southern Lebanon. One journalist was killed and the other lost her leg in the needless and deliberate assault.
Amnesty has now published its findings under the title “Deadly Israeli Attack on Journalists In Lebanon Must be Investigated as a War Crime”:
Israel has relentlessly bombed schools, hospitals, news offices and homes in Gaza, killing thousands of civilians, mostly women and children – and at least sixty-eight journalists, more than were killed in any other conflict since 1990. Now it has been shown to have committed another wanton Lebanon attack on journalists doing their job, taking another life and wrecking more. The far-right Israeli regime is out of control and flouting international law, while lying wildly and incompetently to try to salvage its public image.
The same story has been seen time and again, including the murder of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, targeted last year as she covered an Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp in West Bank.
Despite this, western politicians continue to cover for Netanyahu and his fellow war criminals – and UK journalists appear to be ignoring the murder of their colleagues.
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Liverpool Independents announce they will stand against Labour MP Maria Eagle
MP’s collusion with Keir Starmer to defeat ceasefire motion triggers challenge in seat where independents trounced Labour in May
The Liverpool Community Independents (LCI) group has today announced that it will stand a candidate to challenge incumbent MP Maria Eagle in the Liverpool Garston constituency – currently Garston and Halewood – at the next general election.
In May, working-class south Liverpool community Garston saw Labour lose both its council seats heavily to the LCI’s Lucy Williams and Sam Gorst, despite a disgusting Labour smear campaign in the election, so Eagle has cause to worry, although the resources and volunteers needed for a constituency wide fight will be considerably greater.
LCI leader Alan Gibbons – who trounced Labour in May in Orrell Park in the north of the city – has said that the decision to fight Eagle for the seat is a ‘historical necessity’ after she abstained last week on a parliamentary amendment demanding a ceasefire in Israel’s slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, including at least five thousand children.
Garston LCI councillor Sam Gorst added that Ms Eagle had committed ‘dereliction of duty’ in supporting the Gaza genocide as well as interventionist UK military action elsewhere. Colleague Lucy Williams has said she would be willing to stand as the group’s candidate if selected.
On the other side of the Mersey Jo Bird, a popular Jewish Birkenhead councillor hounded out of Labour by the Starmer regime, has been selected by the Greens to fight for the Birkenhead seat in which Labour is ousting left-winger Mick Whitley to stand right-winger Alison McGovern.
An earlier version of this article stated incorrectly that Jo Bird is contesting the Wallasey seat.
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