UN
Video: Palestinian ambassador breaks down as he tells ICJ of plight of children under occupation
Court hearing evidence of effects of Israel’s illegal occupation
Palestinian ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour broke down today near the close of his presentation to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), as he spoke of the effects of Israel’s illegal occupation in Palestine on his nation’s children and on the human rights of its people. The hearing is being televised live by Al Jazeera English:
The court is hearing evidence from over fifty countries about the illegal occupation. Earlier, Mansour and others had spoke of the 1948 Nakba, in which almost 800,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes with many massacred, and the world’s decades-long indifference – and of the impacts of Israel’s current genocidal campaign in Gaza.
As Mansour spoke, UK news channels covered a variety of items but did not stream the court hearing. In January, the ICJ put Israel formally on trial for genocide and ordered the apartheid regime to protect Palestinian lives. The slaughter of civilians continues unabated.
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Israel’s UNRWA ‘tunnel’ smear collapses as ‘Hamas’ gear revealed as solar power kit
Yet another risible propaganda video falls apart almost as soon as it’s published – but ‘mainstream’ media parrot lies without checking
Israel’s appalling – and woefully inept – propaganda has been exposed again after the Israeli military showed reporters around what it claimed was a ‘Hamas tunnel’ under the Gaza HQ of UN aid agency UNRWA.
A video published by Fox News of the tour revealed green boxes on the walls of the supposed ‘tunnel’ – but as former diplomat Craig Murray pointed out, the boxes are not supposed ‘terror’ equipment. Instead, they are solar power converters kept in a cellar to keep them cool as they process energy from solar panels above – and the wires leading from them into the UNRWA building were there to send the converted electricity up into the HQ, as you’d expect:
Despite the ease of checking what the IDF claimed – and the IDF’s long record of ridiculous lies and smears – the so-called ‘mainstream’ media have tamely parroted the lie:
Israel’s attempts at propaganda have routinely been exposed almost as soon as they were uttered – from claims that five hundred refugees sheltering at the Al Ahli hospital were killed by a Hamas rocket, to lurid atrocity propaganda about beheaded babies and severed breasts, to the burned bodies supposedly murdered by Hamas in the 7 October raid that were killed by Israeli military missiles, shells and bullets, and everything in between.
Just as routinely, western governments and media continue to regurgitate the lies without fact-checking, or just as likely in full knowledge that they are lies – and stubbornly ignore even the Israeli military’s admission that it killed ‘immense’ numbers of Israelis during the Hamas raid, despite this being freely discussed by Israeli media.
Israel has long wanted the end of UNRWA for the organisation’s support for Palestinians’ right of return to lands stolen from them. The arrogance that seems to underpin the lazy shoddiness of Israel’s propaganda attempts shows no sign of abating.
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Bookies slash Galloway Rochdale odds to 2/1
Reaction against Labour candidate and warm welcome for Workers’ Party GB hopeful cuts odds from 16/1
Betting companies have slashed their odds against George Galloway winning the Rochdale by-election from 16/1 to 2/1 after the campaign saw the Workers’ Party GB candidate’s warm welcome contrast starkly with the hostile reception given to the Starmerite candidate, especially by local Muslims.
The phenomenon aligns with the catastrophic national fall in Labour Westminster voting intention among Muslims voters who voted Labour in 2019 – from 86% then to half that now – because of their outraged at Keir Starmer’s appalling support for Israel’s genocide and other war crimes in Gaza.
Not the Andrew Marr Show presenter Crispin Flintoff, who has been in Rochdale covering Galloway’s campaign, said:
I am still buzzing over what I saw around George Galloway’s campaign. There were hundreds of people at the launch and his campaign is extremely well organised. At the same time, other parties and candidates seem to be in disarray.
Starmer’s advisers have anonymously admitted that they fear the the impact of their enthusiasm for apartheid Israel, despite the ICJ’s findings against Israel for genocide, on the vote among Muslims and others horrified by the mass slaughter of Palestinians civilians in Gaza, mostly women – as well as the more general issue of the Labour right’s rampant Islamophobia and racism – and have already been proven correct in London boroughs and other areas after catastrophic local election results.
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UNRWA nominated for Nobel Peace Prize – but Israel freezes its bank accounts
Israeli move likely to mean even faster starvation for hundreds of thousands
UNRWA, the United Nations relief agency for Palestine, has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The news comes as the assault on UNRWA’s funding intensifies.
A number of nations have, inexcusably, used Israel’s claims – that twelve of the agency’s more than 13,000 employees in Gaza took part in the 7 October raid – as a pretext for cutting off funding to UNRWA despite its central role in providing relief for the two million Palestinians in Gaza who are in starvation because of Israel’s blockade.
And Israeli bank Leumi has today locked all of UNRWA’s accounts, claiming UNRWA is unable to provide sufficient receipts to be able to prove no funds are going to ‘terrorists’. The UN has said it has no alternative mechanism to fund UNRWA if international donations are cut off and a number of nations – including Norway, home of the Nobel Peace Prize – have said they will continue to provide funds. But if UNRWA is unable to access them where it needs them, it will be even more severely hampered.
Norwegian Labour MP Asmund Aukrust told Dagbladet that he had nominated UNRWA,
for its long-term work to provide vital support to Palestine and the region in general.
Israel bombed the relief offices last week of Belgium, another country whose government has committed to funding UNRWA.
The nomination is an apt response to Israel’s smears against UNRWA and the collusion of some western nations, including the US and UK, in the genocide in Gaza. But it will not feed the starving – and despite being officially on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and ordered by the ICJ to protect Palestinian lives, the Israeli apartheid regime’s murderousness toward the millions of civilian Palestinians in Gaza appears to know no bounds.
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800+ US/EU officials sign statement that governments ‘risk complicity’ in Gaza genocide
Over 800 US and EU officials have signed a statement warning their governments that they are likely to be guilty of complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza and that their advice of the danger of “grave violations of international law” in Israel’s bombing and shelling of Gaza and its “deliberate blocking of aid” to create “one of the worst human catastrophes of this century” has been ignored. The statement comes from officials in twelve countries, including the US, UK, Germany and France.
The statement comes as a growing coalition of nations has committed to continuing to fund UNRWA, the UN aid agency providing desperately-needed humanitarian relief in Gaza, despite the collusion of the UK, US and other governments in defunding the agency after Israel claimed twelve of its 13,000 employees in Gaza participated in the 7 October raid. Ireland, Spain, Scotland, Norway, Belgium, Portugal, Slovenia and Luxembourg have all committed to providing continued funds.
Israel bombed Belgium’s aid agency office on Thursday night, shortly after Belgium’s announcement.
The International Centre for Justice for Palestinians has warned UK and US politicians it will bring prosecutions against those who collude in Israel’s slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, in Gaza.
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Israel bombs Belgium’s offices in Gaza – UK media ignore
Belgium commits to funding UNRWA and has previously called for sanctions against Israel. Israel bombs Belgium’s representatives and ‘completely destroys’ office
Before and after: Belgium’s representative office in Gaza
Belgium has summoned Israel’s ambassador to give account to Belgium’s prime minister after an Israeli bombing ‘completely destroyed’ the country’s official representative office in Gaza. Despite the attack happening last night – and being freely covered by Israeli papers – the UK’s ‘mainstream’ media appear to have completely ignored the crime and Belgium’s response:
Earlier this week, Belgium committed to continuing to provide funding to UNRWA, the vital UN agency providing desperately-needed aid to Gaza’s two million starving and suffering people. The UK, US and several other nations have cut off funding to UNRWA, despite what appears to be a complete lack of evidence, after Israel claimed twelve of UNRWA’s 13,000 employees participated in the 7 October raid. Israel has for decades wanted an end to the agency because it maintains Palestinians’ hopes of exercising their right of return to land and homes from which they were driven at gunpoint.
Last November, Belgium’s deputy prime minister also called for sanctions against Israel for its war crimes against Palestinians, including frequent and deliberate bombing of refugee camps, hospitals and schools.
Israel has been ordered by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in a binding legal ruling, to stop and prevent the killing of Gaza’s people. If anything, it has accelerated the slaughter and continues to display its contempt for decency and international law.
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Ireland leading EU coalition to recognise Palestine, review EU-Israel relationship over human rights
Irish PM Varadkar says ‘a lot’ of EU countries moving toward Palestinian statehood and potential severance or downgrade of Israel accord
Leo Varadkar (image: Houses of the Oireachtas, Creative Commons)
Irish PM Leo Varadkar is leading a coalition of EU countries toward formal recognition of Palestinian statehood – and a review of the EU’s relationship with Israel, over Israel’s war crimes in Gaza.
The EU-Israel Association Agreement contains conditions on human rights, and Varadkar told reporters he believed Israel ‘may’ be in breach of those provisions – and that ‘a lot’ of other EU nations were of like mind:
EU-Israeli relations are founded on an agreement which has a human rights clause, and a lot of us believe that Israel may be in breach of it. That’s something we’re talking about.
Irish MPs, MEPs and public have been outspoken in support of Palestinian human rights and in condemnation of Israel’s genocidal assault in Gaza, which has killed and maimed more than 100,000 civilians, mostly women and children, according to human rights watchdog Euro-Med Monitor.
Varadkar’s announcement will infuriate Israel’s extremist regime, which has been frothing since the International Court of Justice put it on trial for genocide last week and ordered Israel to protect Palestinian lives, a legally-binding instruction that the Netanyahu regime has flouted. Norway’s foreign minister has warned the leaders of states supporting Israel’s mass slaughter that they face potential prosecution for complicity in genocide.
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Norwegian Foreign Minister warns weapons-exporting states of complicity in Israeli genocide
UK, US and other supporters of Israeli apartheid and oppression are enabling slaughter of Palestinians
Espen Barth Eide, the Foreign Minister of Norway, has warned the UK, US and other states exporting weapons to Israel that they risk prosecution for participating in Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza.
Eide said:
States exporting weapons to Israel should reassess whether they are effective partners in the genocide in Gaza Strip or not.
The news was reported by the Syrian Arab News Agency but has, as usual, been ignored by the UK ‘mainstream’ media – just as most ignored or minimised the International Court of Justice (ICJ) finding last week putting Israel on trial for genocide – or even helped Israel’s attempts to spin it away – and the court’s order to prevent the killing of any more Palestinians, an order that the apartheid state has already flouted.
Eide has also announced that Norway will continue to fund UNRWA, after the UK, US and others cut funding because of unsubstantiated allegations by Israel that twelve UNRWA employees participated in the 7 October kibbutz raid:
The Agency represents the lifeblood of millions of people suffering from tragic conditions, both in Gaza Strip and in the region as a whole.
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Video: Webbe challenges govt over support for Israel already flouting ICJ ruling. Meaningless reply
Leicester East MP continues strong record on Gaza and Palestinians, challenging government to say what it is doing to obey ICJ when Israel is already murdering hundreds more civilians – and government continues abject collusion
Leicester East MP Claudia Webbe has been one of the few MPs to stand up strongly for Palestinians and to challenge the government over its complicity in Israel’s genocide and other war crimes in Gaza. In Parliament today, during urgent questions, she asked the Tories what they are doing to protect Palestinians when Israel is already killing hundreds of Palestinians a day and intensifying its genocidal incitement despite the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) explicit order to take every measure to prevent them being killed.
The answer was utter, meaningless platitudes:
In fact, the UK continues to aid and abet Israel in its wanton slaughter of innocent Palestinians and to impede the arrival of desperately needed food, fuel and medical supplies – while attempting to accelerate then death rate from hunger and disease still further by smearing the UN relief agency UNRWA. The UK, like the US, has cut off its funding to the vital relief organisation on which millions of desperate Palestinians are relying, despite Israel’s long record of blatant and already-discredited lies to excuse its actions – and the prospect of a change of government sometime this year promises more of the same, as so-called ‘Labour leader’ Keir Starmer is just Pavlovian in his support for the apartheid colonisers.
Few MPs bothered even to turn up to the ‘urgent question’ session.
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Starmer STILL silent on ICJ genocide judgment against Israel
Friend of war crimes just ignoring damning order against murderous regime
‘What judgment?’: Keir Starmer
Keir Starmer’s reaction to the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) damning judgment yesterday, which put Israel formally on trial for genocide – with even the Israeli judge agreeing on two of the points – and ordered the occupier regime to stop killing Palestinians in Gaza and take a list of measures to protect them, has been deafening silence.
Starmer, who has previously declared himself an unconditional Zionist, has supported Israel’s ‘right’ to commit war crimes and has helped the Tories (blue version) to defeat parliamentary efforts to call for a ceasefire. And as Israel ranted and raved and most of the world applauded South Africa’s stand for humanity and against mass murder, Starmer’s social media account hasn’t even acknowledged the existence of the court’s findings, some thirty hours after they were announced.
But he has found time, as Israel continued to slaughter and maim hundreds of civilian women and children, to tweet about Holocaust Memorial Day and blether repeatedly about anti-social behaviour (especially in ‘hotpots’):
Starmer’s latest nauseating post is a claim that it is a ‘privilege to reaffirm Labour’s commitment to “Never Again”’ – clearly that should end with ‘unless you’re Palestinian’. Coward and genocide enabler.
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