murder
Starmer’s guest Herzog signs shells to fire on Gaza
Genocide-mongering Israeli president warmly welcomed and presented with gifts by right-wing Starmer and Labour Friends of Apartheid
Israeli president Isaac Herzog has been photographed signing shells to be fired upon Gazan civilians. Herzog, like other Israeli government figures, has said that there are no innocents being killed in Israel’s wanton slaughter of Palestinian civilians:
It’s an entire nation that is out there that’s responsible. It’s not true, this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true.
So closely identified is Herzog with Israel’s war crimes that his comments were cited byexpert Raz Segal, the program director of genocide studies at Stockton University, as an example of the Israeli regime’s expression of intent to commit that and other war crimes.
According to Euromed Monitor, Israel has so far killed 30,000 people in Gaza, well over half of them women and children. Approaching 60,000 more have been injured, many of them severely.
As Declassified‘s John McEvoy has pointed out, Herzog recently received a fawning welcome from ‘Labour’ ‘leader’ Keir Starmer – who left him a signed note in a copy of a book presented to him by Steve McCabe, the parliamentary chair of the so-called ‘Labour Friends of Israel’ (LFI).
Starmer and LFI are no friends of working-class people – but they can’t get enough of those eager for war crimes against the Palestinians.
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US trying to persuade Switzerland to waive Geneva Conventions for Israel in Gaza
Rules of war banning inhumane treatment of POWs and civilians should not be invoked, say US diplomats behind scenes as US complicity in Israeli war crimes becomes explicit
Image: Red Crescent Society
US diplomats are trying to persuade Switzerland – the custodians of the Geneva Conventions governing the rules of conduct during war, with the ability to decide when meetings are held to discuss non-compliance – to set aside the application of the Conventions to Israel’s genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza, according to documents seen by the HuffPost US.
The Geneva Conventions are a set of treaties and protocols known particularly for the strictures of the third and fourth conventions on how nations can treat civilians and prisoners of war:
- The First Geneva Convention “for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field” (first adopted in 1864, revised in 1906, 1929 and finally 1949);
- The Second Geneva Convention “for the Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded, Sick and Shipwrecked Members of Armed Forces at Sea” (first adopted in 1949, successor of the Hague Convention (X) 1907);
- The Third Geneva Convention “relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War” (first adopted in 1929,[35] last revision in 1949);
- The Fourth Geneva Convention “relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War” (first adopted in 1949, based on parts of the Hague Convention (II) of 1899 and Hague Convention (IV) 1907).
But Israel – whose advocates frequently complain that they want Israel to be treated like any other country – and its US backers want Israel to be exempted from these universal rules of war.
This is unsurprising, given the mass slaughter of civilians, especially children, the targeting of schools and hospitals, the alleged execution of women and children and the mass graves of victims – but it is surprising to hear this homicidal exceptionalism being so bluntly stated.
Yet according to the article:
U.S. diplomats are finalizing a démarche ― a diplomatic initiative ― to their Swiss counterparts that Washington hopes will scuttle plans for a meeting to discuss violations of the Geneva Conventions in the current war between Israel and Hamas, the Gaza-based militant group, according to State Department documents seen by HuffPost.
The revelation comes as the U.S. is simultaneously slow-rolling the most high-profile international attempt to ease suffering in Gaza: a United Nations Security Council resolution that would drastically increase the flow of humanitarian aid into the besieged strip…
Palestinian diplomats and a significant group of U.N. member states, including some European nations allied with the U.S., are preparing a call for Switzerland to launch such a conference focused on the fighting on Israel-Palestine that would cover Geneva Conventions violations by all parties, according to the State Department documents and a person familiar with the Palestinian effort.
Despite global public opinion abhorring Israel’s constant war crimes against Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the West Bank, the US is determined to keep Israel unaccountable for its actions.
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Exclusive: Greenstein arrested by anti-terror cops – for one tweet
Brighton-based Jewish human rights activist targeted for standing against genocide
Tony Greenstein in Wolverhampton
Jewish human rights – and therefore pro-Palestinian – activist Tony Greenstein has been arrested by police – for a single tweet supporting Palestinians against genocide and oppression.
In the 15 November post, Greenstein – responding to yet another right-wing attack on Black Jewish activist Jackie Walker – told the person baiting Walker that he supported Palestinians and preferred Hamas to the occupying Israeli army that is perpetrating genocide in Gaza:
The gaslighting pro-Israel troll was one of many attacking Walker for condemning Israel’s repeated bombing of hospitals in Gaza, war crimes that have taken hundreds and probably thousands of civilian lives and that Israel has invented evidence to try to justify:
Seized
Police arrived at Greenstein’s home at around 7am this morning, seized his phone and laptop and held him for around nine hours. His electronics were not returned on his release.
Greenstein was released around 4pm and has not, as yet, been charged with any crime. He was one of several Palestine Action supporters convicted of criminal damage against one of Israeli weapons-maker Elbit’s UK factories, despite no damage being done – and who received a suspended sentence at Wolverhampton Crown Court.
It seems the UK Establishment considers Greenstein to be supporting the wrong ‘terrorists’ against the ones who are actually perpetrating mass murder, including against their own Israeli citizens.
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Video: Jerusalem deputy mayor exposed claiming ‘no churches or Christians in Gaza’
Fleur Hassan-Nahoum’s denial of reality shown up live on air
No churches and no Christians?
Jerusalem’s deputy mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahoum – supposedly a ‘media expert’ – was shown up live on air on LBC when she tried to claim there are no Christians and no churches in Gaza. Israel is currently besieging one of the churches and murdering the Christians inside by sniper fire, prompting the Pope to say today that Israel is committing terrorism – and even her right-wing interviewer was unwilling to let that pass.
Caught out, Nahoum could only claim she hadn’t seen the report – but that hadn’t stopped her making the emphatic and emphatically false claim in the first place.
Gaza in fact has more than a thousand Christians – and the two thousand or so who left in the past fifteen years did so to escape the occupation and for economic reasons, not because they were driven out by Palestinian Muslims, with whom they have peacefully co-existed for millennia.
Israel’s shoddy propaganda attempts fall apart again.
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Video: designer and actor use fashion show to call for peace for all Palestinians
Emraan Rajput and Ahsan Khan demand peace ‘for every child for every home’
Fashion designer Emraan Rajput and actor Ahsan Khan have used Khan’s appearance in Rajput’s Pantene Bridal Couture Week fashion show to call for an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Khan held a placard, as he walked along the catwalk, demanding “FOR EVERY CHILD FOR EVERY HOME PEACE FOR PALESTINE:
Israel is losing the propaganda war, with its attempts to excuse its war crimes a shambles, the news that it killed hundreds of Israelis during the 7 October Hamas raid percolating globally despite the best efforts of the regime and its political and media allies, and millions marching every week around the world to demand a ceasefire, a lasting peace, and justice. Some Israeli analysts are even saying it is losing its whole assault on the innocents of Gaza, as the occupation and its armed forces try to hide the reality of their losses.
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IDF admits killing 3 escaped Israeli hostages in Gaza
Yet more Israelis killed by so-called ‘friendly fire’ after mass deaths 7 October as hostages shot dead
Yotam Haim, one of three Israeli hostages murdered ‘in error’ by Israeli forces
The Israeli army has admitted shooting dead three Israeli hostages who had escaped captivity in Gaza, claiming soldiers ‘mistook’ them for a Hamas threat, prompting a furious reaction among Israeli families against the Netanyahu regime.
IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari claimed the IDF feels ‘deep regret’ over the deaths of Yotam Haim, Samer Talalka and an as-yet unnamed Israeli.
The deaths have been reported by some UK media – unlike the hundreds of Israeli victims now known to have been killed by so-called ‘friendly fire’ from tanks, helicopters, drones and troops during the 7 October Hamas raid, as IDF forces killed indiscriminately under the ‘Hannibal doctrine‘ to prevent hostage-taking.
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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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Outrage builds over Unite’s use of Israel-linked firms as protesters occupy Axa Dublin office
Union management’s choice of firms is ‘huge embarrassment’, say insiders
A row has broken out in Unite over the union’s choice of insurer and hotel chain, after a group linked to the union occupied the European HQ of Axa insurance in Dublin.
Community Action Tenants’ Union (CATU) and the Dublin for Gaza group took over Axa’s offices and called for boycott of the company, according to Irish paper The Journal, because of the business being one of “725 European financial institutions that have subsidised apartheid Israel’s colonial settlements“. Axa told the paper that it “has no proprietary investments in any of the banks cited in recent calls for boycott”.
The action prompted growing anger among supporters of Palestinian human rights in Unite Ireland that the UK and Irish union’s official, democratic position is firm support of Palestinian freedom and right of return to lands taken from them by the Israeli settler-colonial project – and opposition to Israeli occupation, apartheid and oppression.
In fact, at its annual conference earlier this year, Unite delegates voted to formally support the ‘Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions’ (BDS) movement that represents Palestinians’ peaceful resistance to the occupation by encouraging businesses to refuse to buy from or do business with illegally-occupied territories, in a resolution saying that Unite:
[recognises that] Israel is practicing the crime of apartheid, calls for an end to the UK Government’s proposed free trade agreement with Israel, and for support for BDS campaigns against companies complicit in supporting Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land.
Yet according to union insiders, Axa is Unite’s insurer in Ireland – and Unite’s designated provider of hotel accommodation is the Leonardo hotel group, which is part-owned by the Israeli Fattal group. One outraged insider told Skwawkbox:
It’s a huge embarrassment to Unite and one that is causing a lot of anger – even more so as our Irish exec meeting next month is taking place in the Belfast Leonardo’s.
What’s worse is that this has been going on for months and the union still hasn’t done anything to change it. Businesses linked to Israel should never have been selected in the first place, let alone still be used now with everything that’s going on in Gaza.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham has already infuriated supporters of Palestinian rights by remaining silent for many weeks at the start of Israel’s latest genocidal assault on Gaza – then making a grossly asymmetrical statement appearing to treat Israeli deaths more seriously than Palestinian; and ultimately allegedly having the exec railroaded into accepting only her preferred wording when a statement was eventually issued.
Graham was also 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.
Her popularity in Ireland is already low. Irish union legend Brendan Ogle is also suing her, her ally Tony Woodhouse and the union for defamation; he also alleges that he was abused by the union after his return from treatment for serious 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.
Ms Graham is using Denton’s one of the world’s most profitable law firms to defend the defamation suit and Ogle’s the tribunal case. Denton’s was lambasted after its initial social media statement on Israel/Gaza failed even to mention the many Palestinian deaths. The statement was subsequently deleted and replaced.
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.
The Euro Med Monitor group reports that some 24,000 civilians in Gaza have been killed so far in just nine weeks by Israel’s bombing, shelling and invasion, around half of them children. Israel is also continuing to kill Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. Politicians around the world have called on the International Criminal Court to investigate and prosecute Israeli government ministers for genocide and other war crimes.
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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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