Please give now to allow MECA to provide medical aid, clean water, food, psychological support, and more.
Madison-Rafah Sister City Project is raising funds for the Middle East Children’s Alliance to provide urgent aid to children and families in Rafah and throughout Gaza.
Almost half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are now crowded into every available space, indoors and out, in our sister community of Rafah, suffering from hunger, cold, disease, dehydration, and the constant threat of death and injury from Israeli bombing and shelling.
Amidst the ongoing attack on Gaza, MECA’s staff and local partners have continued to provide emergency assistance to families who have fled their homes to seek shelter with relatives, as well as procuring emergency medical supplies for hospitals and clinics.
We all have to keep working, protesting, advocating for a ceasefire and aid. But right now we also have to provide food to people before they die. Your contributions now will support solar-powered kitchens, delivery of fresh produce from farmers, distribution of food parcels and anything else our staff, partners and volunteers can buy in Gaza. — Middle East Children’s Alliance
Beyond donating, we urge you to TAKE ACTION to stop the genocide in Gaza. To get involved in the Madison area please contact us: MadisonRafah.org • Facebook • Twitter • Instagram • Email
I’m not even asking [Israel] to allow full, equal citizenship to Arab Israelis, since that would require Israel no longer being a Jewish state. — Peter Beinart, Jewish American professor of journalism and political science
The occupation army has a new strategy: closing the roads that connect all of the villages and cities in Masafer Yatta.
For several months, the residents of Masafer Yatta have suffered from continuous attacks from the occupation, its soldiers, and the settlements, including, land confiscations, night raids on homes, car confiscations, violent settler attacks on residents, and frequent arrests.
While all of these methods of attack and control are already insufferable, two days ago the situation became even worse: all of the roads linking the villages of Masafer Yatta to the city of Yatta were completely closed. This is a strategy of collective punishment for all Palestinians in the region, as none of them can reach the city to retrieve medicine, food, or any other essential goods.
There are ordinarily several entrances to the city of Yatta from the surrounding villages. At the beginning of the war, the army closed all but one of those entrances, which just so happened to be the most difficult and inconvenient entrance.
These days, when we get to that entrance, sometimes our cars are sent back, sometimes cars are confiscated, and sometimes everyone inside is searched and cross-examined.
But now, there is no road at all linking the neighboring villages of Masafer Yatta. If any emergency occurs, there is no road for us to reach the city, or for an ambulance to reach us. There is no means of access between us and others, isolating us all from one another. We cannot bring medicine or food. We cannot go to the doctor, to the hospital, to the clinic, or even to the pharmacy.
We have faced countless attacks and constant harassment since the start of the war, and these problems are ongoing and increasing, with no intervention to protect us.
Humans of Masafer Yatta is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell Humans of Masafer Yatta that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won’t be charged unless they enable payments.
Washington, DC | www.adc.org | May 4, 2024 – Pro-Palestine protests are continuing to grow, and that is making lawmakers nervous. Over the last month, the unhinged leadership of both parties have capitulated to AIPAC and the ADL by introducing four (4) bills which curtail the rights of all Americans, two of which have already passed the House and are awaiting a vote in the Senate. Congress, on a bipartisan basis, has been singularly focused on attacking, criminalizing, and demonizing Palestinians and the pro-Palestine movement. Republicans and Democrats alike are willing to take away your rights in this country so they can shield and protect Israel from any criticism or accountability over the ongoing genocide.
ADC National Government Affairs and Advocacy Director Chris Habiby said, “Rather than reckoning with Israel’s genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza, the US’s complicity in the annihilation of Palestinians, or the clearly documented Israeli system of apartheid, Congress has decided to fixate on dangerous and diversionary bills. ADC is staunchly opposed to every effort which seeks to distract from the ongoing genocide and demonize those taking the principled, moral, human stance against the dispossession and destruction of Palestinians.”
The four bills that attack, criminalize, and demonize Palestinians and the movement are:
The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act – This bill passed the U.S. House of Representatives (H.R. 6090), and is now in the U.S. Senate. The bill dangerously conflates First Amendment-protected political speech critical of the Israeli government and state with antisemitism. If passed this bill will chill the free speech of all Americans. The House passed this bill and it is now awaiting a vote in the Senate.
H.R. 6408, Amends the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to terminate the tax-exempt status of “terrorist supporting organizations” – If passed this bill would give a single US official the authority to strip nonprofit organizations of their tax-exempt status with virtually no limitations or accountability, simply because the organizations have viewpoints that official or presidential administration disagrees with.
H.R. 7914, the Accountability for Terrorist Perpetrators of October 7th Act – This bill would criminalize Palestinians beyond the State Department’s already politicized Foreign Terrorist Organization process by enacting sanctions against Palestinian organizations that have not been designated a terrorist organization. It would set a precedent that will allow Congress to implement sanctions on organizations that administration officials have not found to meet the criteria for designation.
H.R. 7921, the Countering Antisemitism Act – This bill would codify and further entrench the narrative that the pro-Palestine movement is responsible for the antisemitism seen in the US. It is a continuation of Congress’s myopic focus on “combating antisemitism” at a time when Arab, and especially Palestinian, Americans are being targeted and attacked across the country.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin erred when she authorized a police raid Wednesday on a well-organized encampment by student advocates for peace and justice in Gaza on Library Mall.
The raid, which led to 34 arrests and several injuries of protesters and officers, was ill-conceived and unnecessary, as have been similar raids on a number of campuses across the country. It was also pointless, as the encampment was reestablished within minutes of the departure of the officers.
But Mnookin got things right Thursday when she met with students and faculty members who are associated with the protest. By most accounts, the meeting was productive — resulting in an agreement to meet again within 24 hours. According to participants in the session, there will be no further police action for the time being.
That should be the goal going forward.
Mnookin and the UW-Madison community should strive for a result similar to the one achieved Thursday at the University of Minnesota’s Twin Cities campus, where university officials and protest organizers agreed to disband an encampment while allowing ongoing protests that do not disrupt final exams and graduation ceremonies.
The Star-Tribune reported: “University of Minnesota Interim President Jeff Ettinger told students and faculty Thursday that a deal has been reached to disband a pro-Palestinian encampment that had set up on the Twin Cities campus for three days. The announcement came after Ettinger and others held a series of meetings with the leaders of student groups who had been calling on the U to divest from companies with ties to Israel, provide amnesty for people arrested during protests and meet other demands.”
Those are similar demands to the ones made by students who have been active in the Madison encampment, including those associated with groups such as University of Wisconsin-Madison Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Young Democratic Socialists of America. The Wisconsinites support a cease-fire in Gaza as an immediate response to the crisis that has resulted from the Israeli assault on the enclave, which has left roughly 35,000 Palestinians dead. At the same time, they are also seeking divestment by the university system from companies selling war-related products to Israel.
No one says that achieving these goals will be easy. But there should be an agreement that honest discussions about sincerely advanced demands are preferable to an ever-escalating cycle of police raids and arrests.
Abdallah Fayyad is a correspondent at Vox, where he covers the impacts of social and economic policies. He previously served on the Boston Globe editorial board.
For weeks, police have been arriving on college campuses from New York to California at the behest of university officials, sweeping pro-Palestinian protests and arresting more than 2,100 people. They’ve come in riot gear, zip-tied students and hauled them off, and in some high-profile instances, acted violently.
The aggressive crackdown started when Columbia University’s president, Nemat Shafik, summoned New York Police Department officers to campus in mid-April to bring an end to the student encampment there, one day after she promised Congress she would quash unauthorized protests and discipline students for antisemitism.
That police intervention temporarily dismantled the encampment, and resulted in the arrest of more than 100 protesters on trespassing charges.
But it was also a strategic failure on the part of the university administration. If the university was trying to avoid disruption, it has ended up inviting it instead.
In the days since, as support for the protesters has swelled both at Columbia and at hundreds of colleges across the country, students have set up encampments, organized rallies, and in a few cases escalated their protests by occupying university buildings. Similar protests even cropped up in other countries.
In response, other universities have taken Columbia’s lead and cracked down on these protests, which seek to end colleges’ investments in firms supporting Israel’s occupation and its ongoing assault on Gaza. Nearly 50 universities have called the authorities to intervene, and students and faculty have been beaten, tear gassed, and shot at with rubber bullets by police.
This week, when Columbia escalated its police response, the Columbia Daily Spectator, the student newspaper, reported that “officers threw a protester down the stairs … and slammed protesters with barricades.” A police officer also fired a gun in a campus building, and others threatened to arrest student journalists.
This can only be described as a major overreaction to student protests. But it also didn’t happen in a vacuum. The police response falls squarely in a long pattern of colleges suppressing pro-Palestinian activism and anti-Israel speech — one that dates back many decades. Currently, universities aren’t applying their rules equally, singling out only some student advocacy as unacceptable campus speech and, in some cases, even changing rules to specifically target these protests. (The Department of Education is now reportedly investigating Columbia for anti-Palestinian discrimination.)
While schools including Columbia were quick to call in law enforcement, however, a few other schools have taken an alternative approach — with vastly different outcomes. Administrators at Brown, Northwestern, and several others negotiated with students, allowed them to continue protesting, or even reached deals to end the encampments by meeting some of the protesters’ demands. As a result, they’ve avoided the kind of disruption and chaos unfolding at universities that called the police.
These divergent outcomes among schools that relied on police and those that didn’t offer an important lesson on how universities should manage campus activism, while ensuring students’ safety and protecting speech.
Israeli Military Escalates Bombing of Civilian Homes in #Rafah Amid Threats of Ground Invasion
Amid ongoing threats of a large-scale ground military assault on Rafah, Israeli forces have escalated airstrikes on the densely populated areas in the southern #Gaza Strip. The… pic.twitter.com/HAikgVe1zY
— Palestinian Centre for Human Rights – PCHR (@pchrgaza) May 2, 2024
Wednesday morning’s crackdown included brutal attacks on protestors, arrests without charges, and a dubious narrative.
Perhaps it was an example of progressive policing or Madison-centric policing or the “Madison Model.” In any case, a pro-Palestine encampment protest on UW-Madison’s Library Mall got through two overwhelmingly peaceful days and nights—full of speeches, chants, praying, reading, sharing food, card games, and studying—before police violently attempted to break it up on Wednesday morning.
A bit before 7 a.m., officers began ordering protestors to remove their tents, then began moving to tear down tents themselves, and arresting some of the protestors who refused to leave. Over the next two hours, dozens of officers from the UW-Madison Police Department, Madison Police Department, Dane County Sheriff’s Office, and Wisconsin State Patrol—many equipped with riot shields and some with tear-gas launchers—pressed in on the holdouts. At times the cops had groups of protestors more or less fully surrounded, essentially trapping the very people they were ordering to disperse.
What I witnessed on Wednesday morning was pretty unambiguous: Police manhandling community members (including UW-Madison faculty and students) who peacefully stood their ground, refusing to voluntarily break up an encampment that UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin could have allowed but chose not to. Some of those arrested had locked arms to form a protective circle around the remaining tents, a group that included faculty members who wanted to protect students from arrest and police violence.
Adnan al-Bursh, a Palestinian surgeon and professor of orthopaedic medicine, was killed by torture while in Israeli detention, according to a statement from the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society.
In what has been termed a “deliberate assassination”, Bursh, 50, died in the Israel-controlled Ofer prison in the occupied West Bank on 19 April, according to the Palestinian Civil Affairs Committee, and his body remains withheld.
Another detainee, Ismail Abdul Bari Khader, 33, also died in custody, according to the joint statement, and his body was handed over on 2 May along with 64 other prisoners.
“The two victims died of torture and crimes committed against Gazan detainees,” the statement said.
Bursh was the head of orthopaedic medicine at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City and had been arrested in December, around the same time that he had reportedly been wounded by Israeli bombardment at the Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza.
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Until his arrest, Bursh regularly travelled around to different hospitals in the Gaza Strip to tend to patients, and at the time of his arrest, he was working at al-Awda hospital. Several medical staff and patients were also arrested alongside Bursh.
Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian Territories, said today that she was “extremely alarmed” at the death of the prominent doctor.
“I urge the diplomatic community to intervene with concrete measures to protect Palestinians. No Palestinian is safe under Israel’s occupation today,” she wrote in a statement on X.
MADISON, Wis. — A group of Dane County Board Supervisors sent an open letter to Sheriff Kalvin Barrett on Thursday, asking him to not use county resources to break up ongoing protests on the UW-Madison campus.
Dane County Sheriff’s deputies worked with UW-Madison police officers and other law enforcement to disperse an encampment on Library Mall Wednesday morning. In total 34 people were arrested, though only four were taken to the Dane County Jail. UWPD officials said three deputies were injured during confrontations with protesters Wednesday morning.
Students have gathered on Library Mall since Monday morning, calling on UW-Madison to divest from groups that they say are funding genocidal actions by the Israeli government against Palestinians in Gaza. The protest comes as college students across the country gather to call for similar divestments by their respective schools.
In Thursday’s letter, Dane County Supervisors Heidi Wegleitner, Jay Brower, April Kigeya, Kierstin Huelsemann, Henry Fries, Tommy Rylander, Rick Rose Yogesh Chawla and Michele Doolan said that First Amendment rights on campuses like UW-Madison must be preserved.
“The ongoing war in Gaza has surfaced many strong feelings, which will continue to build pressure around the demonstration,” the supervisors wrote. “As public officials, acting in the public’s interest, we must not succumb to any impulse for action that will silence activists working to shape public discourse through peaceful means.”
In the first such divestment action by a major Christian denomination, the General Conference of The United Methodist Church has voted to divest from Israel bonds, and those of other countries carrying out prolonged military occupations.
On April 30, 2024, the General Conference of The United Methodist Church, being held in Charlotte, North Carolina, made a groundbreaking call for church investment managers to exclude the bonds of three countries – Israel, Turkey, and Morocco – that are holding subject populations under prolonged military occupation.
In the first such divestment action by a major Christian denomination, the church has called on all its investment managers to avoid “the governmental debt of each such country until the time when each government ends their military occupation.”
The church resolution, “Excluding Government Debt of Countries Involved in Prolonged Occupations,” makes clear the church’s desire to avoid profiting from the suffering and oppression caused by these decades-long occupations: Israel’s occupation of the West Bank including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip since 1967, Turkey’s occupation of Northern Cyprus since 1974, and Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara since 1976.
The UN has identified flagrant human rights violations in all three occupations, including: land confiscation, theft of natural resources, home demolitions and illegal colonization, deprivation of food and water, violence against civilians, mass incarceration for population control, brutality against children, and more.
“The timing of this decision is especially significant. When we see the ongoing genocide happening in Gaza, we do not want to be supporting the Israeli government with unrestricted governmental funds” said Lisa Bender, chair of United Methodists for Kairos Response (UMKR), the group that wrote and organized passage of this divestment legislation.
“You know, I’m biased. But you know, the past four, huge, top 10 matchups in the Kohl Center have gone pretty favorably,” one fan said.
Ahead of the game, fans waiting said they didn’t think it was too cold. But, as the night went on, they said they we’re just trying to stay warm.
“Just the setups that people bring up here, I’d say these are people right over here that have a ice fishing tent. I wish we had thought of that,” another fan said.
Officers from a variety of state and local departments – including UW-Madison Police, the Madison Police Department, the Dane County Sheriff, and the State Patrol – marched onto the encampment at Library Mall early Wednesday morning just after 7am.
That ended what has so far been a peaceful demonstration in the so-called “Liberated Zone,” where demonstrators have been distributing food, playing music, disseminating information, and of course- much to the chagrin of UW Madison administration- camping out. Protestors have a variety of demands that range from cutting UW-Madison ties with Israeli institutions to disclosing UW Foundation investments.
“We were sitting. We weren’t doing anything wrong, we weren’t blocking anything, we weren’t causing any disruptions. We were peaceful,” says demonstrator Mia Kurzer.
“And the police just came in here with riot gear and they started just going at the crowd. And people got hurt, people got arrested for just being in a public space, being on public property.”
Washington, D.C. | www.adc.org | May 1, 2024 — In response to the student-led, pro-Palestinian movement, the US House of Representatives today passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act, a bill which is steeped in anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab racism and dangerously conflates concern for Palestinian human rights with danger and hate. It stifles legitimate criticism of the apartheid state of Israel and that of the Biden administration’s complicity in the ongoing genocide. ADC firmly rejects this disingenuous attempt to paint pro-Palestinian and anti-war protesters as any sort of threat, particularly as these students and faculty are the ones facing a very real risk of being attacked by both police and pro-genocide agitators. We stand in solidarity with those facing violence and suppression for their courageous stance against genocide.
Organizers are calling on everyone to rally on Library Mall today at 5 pm.
SJP UW-Madison is also asking everyone to make these four phone calls in protest of the police action. Please insist that all charges against those arrested be dropped and that no further police action against peaceful protestors be taken.
Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin (608) 262-9946 Option 4
Published: Apr. 30, 2024 at 6:41 PM CDT|Updated: 17 hours ago
MADISON, Wis. (WMTV) – As a ‘Free Palestine’ protest continues on UW Madison’s campus, a small group of elderly women joined in to show their support.
82-year-old Bonnie Block is a Wisconsin native who lives in Madison and is a part of a group called the Raging Grannies, who encourages people to speak out.
“We wanted to come and tell these students thank you for being here because I think it’s really important,” Block said. “All my life I’ve been heartened by groups of people who are saying no to what they see is wrong. I think that that’s critical.”
Block said the war in Gaza should end.
“We need to end the genocide,” she said. “I’ve seen the occupation up close and it’s awful.”
She said it’s important for students in Wisconsin to speak out against the war and approved the encampment setup.
“I’m so proud of these students all over the country,” she said. “I just say, ‘Go for it!’’’
University of Wisconsin Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin and other faculty put out a statement on Monday night and encouraged protesters to take down their tents.
Neither Mnookin nor UW Police would speak on-camera on Tuesday.
MADISON, Wis. — Police removed nearly all of the tents from Library Mall at 8:21 a.m. Just before 7 a.m., police had given protesters 15 minutes to remove their tents.
Students locked arms and have started chanting as officers attempted to take down the last of the tents. They could be heard shouting “Free Palestine,” “Shame,” and “MPD stand down – students, students hold your ground.”
By 8:15 a.m. law enforcement officers had removed multiple people from the encampment with their hands behind their backs. News 3 Now’s crew said they saw some in zip-ties. It was not immediately clear where law enforcement was taking those individuals.
Yesterday hundreds of students and faculty at UW Madison and UW-Milwaukee joined the growing campus protests around the US. against the slaughter in Gaza. (Directory of protests here)
In Madison, a 24-hour protest encampment was established on Library Mall. The protest continued overnight last night and is going on today, in spite of police preparations to force the protestors to disband. (Check the Daily Cardinal’s blog for updates.)
If you are able to attend the protest at any time please do so. Community support will be the key to keeping these students safe and protecting their free speech rights. Feel free to bring food, tents, sleeping bags, pads, tarps and other things that could be useful to this encampment.
You can help today by making phone calls to these University officials insisting that they NOT use police force against the peaceful protesters and that they listen to the students’ justified demands rather than punishing them for trying to stop a genocide.
Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin (608) 262-9946 Option 4
Pro-Palestine demonstrators who organized an encampment Monday at the University of Wisconsin-Madison remained on Library Mall despite warnings from university officials that the event violated state law.
UW-Madison Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), in collaboration with a local Young Democratic Socialists of America chapter, organized Monday’s protest calling for the university’s “financial and social” divestment from Israel, mirroring similar pro-Palestine demonstrations on college campuses across the country.
The tents, which accumulated to more than two dozen in number over the course of the demonstration, first popped up early Monday morning ahead of a mostly sunny day of peaceful marches and chants.
Overcast skies and ominous unease of a nighttime police crackdown took hold Monday evening as police officers from multiple departments set up a temporary command center at the Fluno Center approximately two blocks from the protest. But no arrests were made, and police presence on Library Mall remained limited.
Protesters continue to advocate for a list of six demands related to investment transparency, campus safety and divestment and disinvolvement with Israeli companies and programs.
University officials said Monday evening they will meet with student groups once tents are taken down and protesters comply with state laws banning camping on university grounds
The following blog recorded The Daily Cardinal’s live reporting as events unfolded Monday. You can find live updates for day two of the protest here.
The western media is pretending the West’s efforts to secure a ceasefire are serious. But a different script has clearly been written in advance
One does not need to be a fortune-teller to understand that the Israel-US game plan for Gaza runs something like this:
1. In public, Biden appears “tough” on Netanyahu, urging him not to “invade” Rafah and pressuring him to allow more “humanitarian aid” into Gaza.
2. But already the White House is preparing the ground to subvert its own messaging. It insists that Israel has offered an “extraordinarily generous” deal to Hamas – one that, Washington suggests, amounts to a ceasefire. It doesn’t. According to reports, the best Israel has offered is an undefined “period of sustained calm”. Even that promise can’t be trusted.
3. If Hamas accepts the “deal” and agrees to return some of the hostages, the bombing eases for a short while but the famine intensifies, justified by Israel’s determination for “total victory” against Hamas – something that is impossible to achieve. This will simply delay, for a matter of days or weeks, Israel’s move to step 5 below.
4. If, as seems more likely, Hamas rejects the “deal”, it will be painted as the intransigent party and blamed for seeking to continue the “war”. (Note: This was never a war. Only the West pretends either that you can be at war with a territory you’ve been occupying for decades, or that Hamas “started the war” with its October 7 attack when Israel has been blockading the enclave, creating despair and incremental malnutrition there, for 17 years.)
Last night US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken moved this script on by stating Hamas was “the only thing standing between the people of Gaza and a ceasefire… They have to decide and they have to decide quickly”.
This map shows a small snapshot of the US-based encampments. With such a large distribution of encampments, its not difficult to find a location near you and offer material support to the frontline organizers. Head over to https://students4gaza.directory/ for the updated list.
Dear friends,
Over the last weeks, students and organizers across all seven continents set up at least 113 encampments, with the primary goal of forcing universities to divest from genocide. These brave and beloved organizers are demanding that universities retract their financial investments from the institutions animating—as well as financially benefitting from—the zionist genocide of the Palestinian people. Student formations have been the face of the movement, particularly Students for Justice in Palestine and other Palestinian groups, but support for the encampment movement is diverse and representative of the broader solidarity movement. Over the last week, police forces from New York to France have beaten and arrested thousands of these courageous organizers, among them professors, clergy people, and people with disabilities. Students engaged in the encampment movements on their college campuses have not only faced arrests, but also suspension and displacement from their homes on campus. Through these encampments, all of those involved are illustrating the power and importance of sacrifice in solidarity. They are putting their safety and future on the line to get in the way of genocide, to not only throw sand in the machine, but remove its gears.
We love them for their unwavering commitment to their goals despite the daily threats and state violence they are facing.
The progressive Democrat from a rural, mostly white Wisconsin district is highlighting that it is not just young people of color who are concerned about the war.
Reported from Madison, Dodgeville and Reedsburg, Wis.
During a town hall-style meeting a short drive from her home in rural southwestern Wisconsin, Elizabeth Humphries asked her congressman how a 66-year-old woman like her could get the message to President Biden that she and her peers are deeply dissatisfied with his administration’s approach to Israel’s war in Gaza.
Representative Mark Pocan, the Democrat who has held the district’s seat in Congress since 2013, assured her that he was working to pass along those very concerns.
“We’re videotaping this to share with the White House,” he said, gesturing to the iPhone set up on a nearby tripod to capture the event with two dozen or so voters seated in a room in Dodgeville’s City Hall. “They can hear me say this ad nauseam, but you all saying this is, I think, very helpful.”
Days after Congress gave overwhelming bipartisan approval to a $95.3 billion aid package that includes $26 billion in security assistance to Israel, Mr. Pocan — one of 37 House Democrats to vote “no” on the money for Israel — returned to his home district this week to field questions from constituents like Ms. Humphries who share his reservations about American involvement in the conflict.
💚🖤💔 Hello all, I am heartbroken to pass on the news that our Flotilla will be unable to sail for Gaza at this time due to Israel’s intense pressure to prevent the breaking of the siege on Gaza and the delivery of the flotilla’s 5500 tons of desperately needed aid.
We are returning to our home countries while the Freedom Flotilla Coalition works to find another way for us to sail.
Here is a statement by the coalition, and yesterday’s statement of support from UN experts who had hoped to see the flotilla depart for Gaza.
On Thursday afternoon, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition was contacted by the Guinea Bissau International Ships Registry, requesting an inspection of our lead ship – Akdenez. This was a highly unusual request as our ship had already passed all required inspections; nevertheless, we agreed. The inspector arrived on Thursday. On Friday afternoon, before the inspection was completed, the Guinea-Bissau International Ships Registry (GBISR), in a blatantly political move, informed the Freedom Flotilla Coalition that it had withdrawn the Guinea Bissau flag from two of the Freedom Flotilla’s ships, one of which is our cargo ship, already loaded with over 5000 tons of life-saving aid for the Palestinians of Gaza.
The Palestinian Christian Alliance for Peace (PCAP), Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA) and a broad coalition of Christian Voices for Palestine invite you to “Challenging Christian Silence Regarding the Gaza Genocide” with Munther Isaac and Shane Claiborne. The moral courage and consistent prophetic witness displayed by Munther and Shane during these past months has put the western church to shame. May we learn from and follow their example.
Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac is the pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, academic dean at Bethlehem Bible College, and the director of the Christ at the Checkpoint conferences. His latest book is The Other Side of the Wall: A Palestinian Christian Narrative of Lament and Hope. Last December, Rev. Isaac’s delivered a passionate Christmas sermon, “Christ in the Rubble,” in which he bitterly decried the failure of Christian leaders, especially in the West, to stand with the Palestinians against the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Shane Claiborne is a prominent speaker, activist, and best-selling author. Shane worked with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, and founded The Simple Way in Philadelphia. He heads up Red Letter Christians, a movement of folks who are committed to living “as if Jesus meant the things he said.” Shane is a champion for grace which has led him to jail advocating for the homeless, and to places like Iraq and Afghanistan to stand against war. Now grace fuels his passion to end the death penalty and help stop gun violence.
5-6 pm CT Join ADC for an Arab-American Heritage Month conversation on how our community relates to life’s joy and struggles through language and art. You’ll hear from award-winning Arab American artists Naomi Shihab Nye and Heather Raffo about their chosen forms of expression, the role their art plays in providing hope, and their response to the crisis of worldwide injustice and inequity.
Goodman Community Center
Hicks Room
149 Waubesa St, Madison
4-5:30 pm
Israel’s genocidal invasion of Gaza has continued for over six months, with full backing from the Biden administration, and is now threatening to spiral into a wider regional conflict. Why does the US government care so little for Palestinian lives, what strategy lies behind its support for Israel, and what can we do in this country to alter the balance of forces, end the carnage, and support justice for Palestine? Come to this meeting, organized by the Tempest Collective in Madison, to discuss these issues.
Speakers:
Brian Ward is an educator, socialist and activist who lives in Madison (occupied Ho-Chunk Land), and has lived and worked on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, home of the Oglala Lakota Nation. His writing, primarily on Indigenous liberation and environmentalism, has appeared in numerous publications.
brian bean is a socialist organizer and writer based in Chicago. He is a member of the Tempest Collective, a part of the Rampant Magazine editorial collective, and an editor and contributor to the book Palestine: A Socialist Introduction from Haymarket Books.
Tuesday, April 23, 2024, marked the 200th consecutive day of Israel’s large-scale military offensive on the Gaza Strip. Nearly 90 percent of the population is displaced, with many living in dire conditions in tents, and the few remaining schools used as shelters. Despite the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures orders to prevent genocide, Israel persists in threatening a large-scale ground invasion of Rafah, home to over 1.2 million residents and displaced persons—a threat that has loomed over the Palestinian people there for several weeks.
Our organizations — the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), Al Mezan, and Al-Haq — are closely monitoring and deeply concerned about the escalation of Israeli airstrikeson Rafah. The tactics of intensified bombing of homes using heavy artillery and carpet bombing are alarming and have resulted in significant civilian casualties over the last six months.
Furthermore, concerns are growing as reports from Israeli media indicate that the Israeli army is purchasing thousands of tents to accommodate displaced individuals from Rafah. The Israeli plan to expand the so-called safe zone in the Al-Mawasi area, despite its limited capacity and current overcrowding with displaced persons, is also troubling. This expansion is purportedly capable of housing up to a million people, but the reality of its size (extending about a kilometer deep from the borders of Khan Younis to the borders of Rafah) raises doubts about its feasibility and effectiveness in addressing the humanitarian crisis.
Our organizations have repeatedly warned and expressed serious concerns about the potential consequences of a large-scale ground invasion on Rafah, similar to what has occurred in most governorates of the Gaza Strip. Such an invasion could lead to horrific massacres and raise scenarios of a second Nakba. The densely populated city, with hundreds of thousands of displaced individuals residing in tents and heavily relying on aid from the Rafah and Kerem Abu Salem Crossings, exacerbates the vulnerability of its population. The closure of these vital crossings during a potential Israeli attack would leave no suitable alternatives for the evacuation of Rafah residents and those already displaced within the city. This concern is compounded by the continued attacks and destruction that have altered the landscape of the Gaza Strip.
Meet at UW-Madison Library Mall at 9 am. Wear a mask and bring a friend!
Support Students at UW Madison
On Monday, April 29 starting at 9 am there will be a demonstration on Library Mall at UW-Madison protesting UW complicity in war crimes in Gaza and against the repression of student protests around the country.
MRSCP will be there and we urge everyone to turn out. Follow YDSA and SJP on Instagram for updates.
The University administration has been issuing press statements and students report receiving emails threatening potential “consequences” for student protests. Community support is crucial to protect students from targeted retaliation and to prevent the police violence we are seeing. Try to attend, and if you can’t, please spread the word.
US President Joe Biden signs into law a $95bn aid measure that includes $26bn for Israel and $1bn in humanitarian assistance to Gaza.
Israeli government spokesman David Mencer says it is “moving ahead” with its planned military operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
Gaza medics continue to unearth bodies in mass graves at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis with international demands rising for an independent investigation into Israel’s raid on the facility.
Fears for the safety of tens of thousands of civilians in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahiya surge as Israeli troops attack the city “with extreme force” and order Palestinians to immediately flee.
At least 34,262 Palestinians have been killed and 77,229 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7. The death toll in Israel from Hamas’s October 7 attacks stands at 1,139 with dozens still held captive in Gaza.
Istanbul , MINA – The Freedom Flotilla Coalition ( FFC ) was forced to postpone its sailing schedule to penetrate the Gaza blockade until Friday (26/4), due to permits that have not yet been issued by the Turkiye authorities .
MINA journalist Nurhadis from Istanbul reported that on Wednesday (26/4), the FFC Steering Committee, Ann Wright , announced the postponement of the departure schedule again at a meeting in front of FFC participants on Tuesday evening Istanbul time.
The atmosphere at the meeting became tense when one of the participants from England pounded the table and shouted asking the committee to immediately announce the exact schedule for the three ships that would sail across the Mediterranean Sea.
“In the history of our Flotillas we have never departed on time, some of the Flotillas we have held have always been like this. Any anger or annoyance will not affect the person or departure of this Flotilla. “Please don’t be frustrated, we need high morale and hope,” said Ann.
Ann further said that in 2011 she had carried out a similar mission, overland through Jordan. “When we were in Aqabah we were detained for two weeks, then we went to Amman towards Damascus and were detained for three weeks in Lattakia, until finally we were able to negotiate and enter Gaza . “Be as patient as possible,” he said.
Ann further said that the FFC High Committee is making maximum efforts so that this ship can sail. “Currently there are discussions from the FFC High Committee both in Ankara and Istanbul and until now there has been no decision from the authorities to allow the ship to depart. “Because of that, we can’t leave tomorrow,” he said.
After receiving information via telephone from the FFC Supreme Committee, Ann said that the ship, loaded with 5,500 tons of aid, together with more than 1,000 volunteers, would depart on Friday (26/4).
Mi’raj News Agency (MINA), Journalist: hadith, Editor: Rudi Hendrik
Türkiye is under significant pressure from the US and Israel to block the flotilla from setting sail and achieving its objective of delivering aid and breaking the blockade
The flotilla waits to sail from Istanbul. Photo: Medea Benjamin
The non-violence training to join the Freedom Flotilla Coalition’s ships to Gaza has been intense. As hundreds of us from 32 countries gathered in Istanbul, we were briefed about what we might encounter on this voyage. “We have to be ready for every possibility,” our trainers insisted.
The best scenario, they said, is that our three ships–one carrying 5,500 tons of humanitarian aid and two carrying the passengers–will reach Gaza and accomplish our mission. Another scenario would be that the Turkish government might cave to pressure from Israel, the United States and Germany, and prevent the boats from even leaving Istanbul. This happened in 2011, when the Greek government buckled under pressure and ten boats were stalled in Greece. With our boats docked in Istanbul today, we fear that Turkish President Erdogan, who recently suffered a crushing blow in local elections, is vulnerable to any economic blackmail the Western powers might be threatening.
Another possibility is that the ships take off but the Israelis illegally hijack us in international waters, confiscate our boats and supplies, arrest and imprison us, and eventually deport us.
This happened on several other voyages to Gaza, one of them with deadly consequences. In 2010, a flotilla of six boats was stopped by the Israeli military in international waters. They boarded the biggest boat, the Mavi Marmara. According to a UN report, the Israelis opened fire with live rounds from a helicopter hovering above the ship and from commando boats along the side of the ship. In a horrific display of force, nine passengers were killed, and one more later succumbed to his wounds.
To try to prevent another nightmare like that, potential passengers on this flotilla have to undergo rigorous training. We watched a video of what we might face—from extremely potent tear gas to ear-splitting concussion grenades—and we were told that the Israeli commandos will be armed with weapons with live rounds. Then we divided up into small groups to discuss how best to react, non-violently, to such an attack. Do we sit, stand, or lie down? Do we link arms? Do we put our hands up in the air to show we are unarmed?
The U.S. House on Saturday passed a bill including a prohibition on funding the agency, due to Israel’s unsubstantiated claims that UNRWA employees have terrorism links.
Countries that have continued to suspend their funding of the United Nations’ top relief agency in the occupied Palestinian territories were left with “no room” to justify their decision, said critics on Monday as an independent investigation into Israel’s allegations against the organization revealed Israeli officials have ignored requests to provide evidence to support their claims.
Catherine Colonna, the former foreign minister of France, released her findings in a probe regarding Israel’s claims that a significant number of employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) were members of terrorist groups.
Nearly three months after U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres commissioned the report, Colonna said Israel “has yet to provide supporting evidence” of its allegation that “a significant number of UNRWA employees are members of terrorist organizations.”
Colonna’s findings were bolstered by an investigation led by the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Sweden, the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Norway, and the Danish Institute for Human Rights, which separately sought evidence from Israel.
“Israeli authorities have to date not provided any supporting evidence nor responded to letters from UNRWA in March, and again in April, requesting the names and supporting evidence that would enable UNRWA to open an investigation,” said the Nordic groups.
The reports come nearly three months after Israel made its initial allegation that 12 UNRWA employees took part in the October 7 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, a claim that prompted the United States—the largest international funder of the agency, which subsists mainly on donations—to swiftly halt its funding. Israel also claimed that as many as 12% of UNRWA’s employees were members of terrorist organizations.
Palestinian civil defense discovered hundreds of bodies buried by Israeli forces in a mass grave inside the complex of Khan Younis’ Nasser Medical Complex on Saturday.
Rescue workers said they had removed at least 200 bodies as of 12:00 pm local time on Sunday, and they estimated that at least another 200 remained, Middle East Eye reported.
“We found corpses without heads, bodies without skins, and some had their organs stolen,” the director-general of the Government Media Office said in a statement shared by Quds News Network.
“Following the mass graves at Al-Shifa hospital, it looks like Israel is a voracious death machine turning hospitals in Gaza into graveyards.”
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) withdrew from Khan Younis on April 7. While they occupied the city, they stormed the Nasser Medical Complex in February, arresting several doctors, damaging the structure with shelling, and rendering it unable to function as a hospital.
Al Jazeera reporter Hani Mahmoud said the bodies found in the Nasser grave included children, young men, and older women. Rescues said that some of the bodies they found had been buried with their hands tied behind their backs, according to Middle East Eye.
“Our teams continue their search and retrieval operations for the remaining martyrs in the coming days as there are still a significant number of them,” Palestinian emergency services said in a statement shared with Al Jazeera.
Medical crews evacuate the bodies of dozens of Palestinians who were found in a mass grave in the courtyards of Naser hospital in Khan Younis city. pic.twitter.com/q6Jt3dKr0v
The news came as the U.S. House of Representatives voted on Saturday to send another $26 billion to Israel, including for military aid.
“These mass graves are obvious evidence of genocide and the most unthinkable war crimes. And yet, the House just signed off on $26 billion in weapons to fuel the genocidal Israeli military, while Israel threatens a full scale ground invasion to massacre Palestinians in Rafah,” the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights said on social media.
This is not the first mass grave that has been discovered near a Gaza Strip hospital since Israel began its devastating bombardment and invasion following Hamas’ deadly October 7 attack on southern Israel. When the IDF withdrew from the al-Shifa hospital earlier this month, Palestinian journalist Hossam Shabat reported seeing hundreds of dead bodies outside the hospital, many that had had their hands and legs bound and their bodies run-over by bulldozers. Al Jazeera reported that several mass graves were found near al-Shifa.
“Following the mass graves at Al-Shifa hospital, it looks like Israel is a voracious death machine turning hospitals in Gaza into graveyards. Wake up world!” Palestinian politician and activist Hanan Ashrawi wrote on social media.
Muhammad Shehada, the communications chief for Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, expressed shock that there was not more media coverage of the Nasser grave.
“I CANNOT find a single headline in any mainstream media about this!” Shehada wrote on social media. “Imagine it was Ukraine? or Israel?”
Over the weekend, the the Gaza Health Ministry reported that the death toll from Israel’s war on Gaza surpassed 34,000, though this is likely an undercount since several people remain trapped beneath rubble.
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We have completed all technical and crewing requirements in order to launch the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza on Friday April 26, 2024. Our final group of participants are undergoing the required nonviolent direct-action training today. Our Flotilla will carry over 5000 tons of life-saving aid and hundreds of human rights observers to ensure the aid gets promptly to Palestinians in Gaza without interference. We are working diligently to move our boats to a port in Istanbul where the paperwork procedures for hundreds of participants can be completed, to allow for boarding beginning on Friday morning.
“The Freedom Flotilla has the support of millions around the world who are outraged at the failure of our governments to protect the Palestinians people from Israel’s genocidal actions, including the deliberate starvation of over two million people,” said Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) Steering Committee member Zohar Chamberlain-Regev.
Huwaida Arraf, U.S. human rights attorney and FFC Steering Committee member added, “Governments must refuse to collaborate in maintaining Israel’s illegal siege on Gaza by obstructing the flotilla in any way. We call on the governments of the 40 countries represented on the Freedom Flotilla to uphold their obligations under international law and demand that Israel guarantee the flotilla safe passage to Gaza.”
The US government has been putting heavy pressure on Turkey to stop the Flotilla from sailing. Please call Sen. Tammy Baldwin, Sen. Ron Johnson and Rep. Mark Pocan to demand that Congress ensure the safety of the flotilla and prompt delivery of its life-saving cargo.
Posted 26 Apr 2024 Originally published 26 Apr 2024 Origin View original
GENEVA (26 April 2024) – UN experts today demanded safe passage for the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, whose ships departing Türkiye will be carrying 5,500 tonnes of humanitarian aid and hundreds of international humanitarian observers to the besieged Gaza Strip. “As the Freedom Flotilla approaches Palestinian territorial waters off Gaza, Israel must adhere to international law, including recent orders from the International Court of Justice to ensure unimpeded access for humanitarian aid,” the experts said.
We often feel helpless, so little we can do. But we are the majority, the people on the side of life, of freedom, against colonialism, apartheid, racism. We must organise better to match the colonial powers with all their money, arms, profits, lies and media. When we organise better – with more people – we force our leaders to change their politics. Small groups of committed citizens can change the world, we know that!
Don’t be alone. Organise, be active!
We are the stronger part. Palestine is winning, ISrael is losing. Truth is winning, lies are losing. Our solidarity is winning.
Google fired 28 employees on Wednesday after sit-ins at the company’s offices in protest of its cloud computing contract with the Israeli government.
Why it matters: The protests stemmed from long-brewing discontent among a group of Google and Amazon workers over claims that Israel is using the companies’ services to harm Palestinians.
Context: The group of workers, called No Tech For Apartheid, organized sit-in demonstrations earlier this week at Google locations in New York City, Seattle and Sunnyvale, California to protest Project Nimbus.
Nimbus, which went into effect in July 2021, is a $1.2 billion artificial intelligence and computing services agreement between Google, Amazon Web Services and the Israeli government.
What they’re saying: Google said in a statement Thursday that the Nimbus contract “is not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services.”
Israeli government ministries that use its commercial cloud must agree to its terms of services and other policies, the company’s statement said.
The protests stemmed from “a longstanding campaign by a group of organizations and people who largely don’t work at Google,” according to the statement.
“Physically impeding other employees’ work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and completely unacceptable behavior,” the company said, adding that law enforcement removed the protesters from the offices.
The other side: No Tech For Apartheid said the firings were a “flagrant act of retaliation” and claimed that Google workers “have the right to peacefully protest about terms and conditions of our labor.”
It said some of the employees who were fired did not directly participate in the demonstrations and that a total of nine Google employees were arrested.
“These mass, illegal firings will not stop us. On the contrary, they only serve as further fuel for the growth of this movement,” the group said.
Zoom in: An internal memo sent by Chris Rackow, Google’s head of global security, and seen by The Verge said the company will continue to investigate the demonstrations and will “take action as needed.”
“If you’re one of the few who are tempted to think we’re going to overlook conduct that violates our policies, think again. The company takes this extremely seriously, and we will continue to apply our longstanding policies to take action against disruptive behavior — up to and including termination,” the memo reads.
Flashback: Google fired an employee in March who publicly protested the contract during a company presentation at a tech conference.
In recent years, the company has firedseveralresearchers who had raised concerns about potential biases built into its AI systems.
According to the World Food Programme, malnutrition among children in Gaza is spreading at a record pace. Hunger has claimed at least 27 young lives, and thousands more are at risk.
Nuzha Awad told the Guardian her triplets, who were born two months before the war, are severely underweight. Awad fled Gaza City once food and formula milk ran out.
Almost half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million is under 18, and the effects of starvation may follow those who survive for the rest of their lives. Lack of nutrition can lead to heath problems such as poor eyesight later in life.
Gaza’s healthcare system has collapsed and a lack of food and water has made it nearly impossible for medical staff to treat those suffering from malnutrition. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has promised the US there will be a surge in aid, but this has yet to materialise.
ISTANBUL — A flotilla of ships bound for the Gaza Strip is preparing to sail from Turkey in the coming days, organizers say, on a mission aimed at breaching Israel’s naval blockade and highlighting the lack of aid reaching Palestinians in the besieged enclave.
The organizers, gathered under the banner of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, have participated in similar missions for years, an effort that gained worldwide attention in 2010 after an Israeli raid on a flotilla that included a Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, killed 10 people and sparked a diplomatic crisis between Turkey and Israel.
But the flotilla’s well-traveled route — the Mediterranean — has gained new relevance during the current conflict as governments and relief organizations alike turn to sea deliveries to circumvent what aid groups say is Israel’s persistent obstruction of deliveries to Gaza over land.
The latest flotilla mission, which will include a cargo ship carrying more than 5,000 tons of aid, comes as global attention on Gaza’s worsening humanitarian crisis has waned, shifting to the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran. Apparent Turkish sensitivities over whether to allow the ships to depart has caused organizers to hedge on when exactly the voyage, which was scheduled to begin Sunday, would get underway.
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What is the aid flotilla preparing to sail for Gaza?
A group of human rights organizations are preparing to send ships stocked with aid to Gaza despite the enclave blockaded by Israel. (Video: Joe Snell/The Washington Post)
The regional dynamics were “challenging,” Ann Wright, one of the flotilla organizers, said in a phone interview from Istanbul last week, where activists planning to join the maritime convoy were gathering. The mission was also at the “mercy of the port authorities” in Turkey, said Wright, a retired U.S. diplomat and former Army colonel who resigned her State Department position in opposition to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
“The ships are ready,” she said.
At a news conference Friday aboard one of the ships, Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian American human rights attorney who has joined previous flotillas to Gaza, said “our governments have thus far done nothing but we call on them to start now, to uphold their own obligations under international law, to demand that Israel allow the flotilla safe passage to Gaza.”
“We expect that Turkey will not be bought off and we will indeed sail,” she said. “Anything less than this is collaborating with the illegal siege on Gaza, and we don’t think that is what the Turkish government will do.”
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request to comment on the flotilla’s mission. Israeli channel N12 reported Saturday that “security preparations” had begun, including for taking over the flotilla. One of the groups participating in the voyage — a Turkish Islamic charity organization, IHH — is designated as a terrorist group by Israel. The group has denied links to terrorism.
Israel has argued for years that the naval blockade is justified to prevent weapons from reaching Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza — a policy that Arraf said was part of Israel’s “hermetic closure” of the territory that amounted to collective punishment of its population, and a war crime.
A report by a U.N. panel on the May 2010 Israeli raid called the naval blockade a “legitimate security measure,” but said that Israel’s boarding of the vessels “with such substantial force at a great distance from the blockade zone” was “excessive and unreasonable.”
Since October, Israel’s hindrance of aid deliveries by land, as well its attacks on relief organizations, have helped fuel a humanitarian crisis that has caused northern Gaza to slide into famine, according to aid officials and human rights groups.
The killing of seven World Central Kitchen workers by Israeli forces on April 1 highlighted the dangerous environment in which relief agencies operate. In the aftermath, the Biden administration warned Israel to swiftly address civilian suffering in Gaza or risk future U.S. support.
“This is a completely man-made and preventable situation,” Andrea de Domenico, the head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the occupied Palestinian territory, said during a press briefing last week. “I think there has been a lot of effort from our side and the Israeli side to some extent to increase the volume of aid that is going to the north,” he said, while adding that significant obstacles remained.
In a six-day period this month, “41 percent of our requests for operations in the north have been denied,” he said. For Gaza’s residents, “every day is literally a struggle to survive.”
In March, President Biden announced a plan to establish a maritime aid corridor to Gaza, shortly after the United States joined other countries in dropping relief supplies by air on the enclave. Humanitarian officials said that while any additional deliveries were welcome, they were no substitute for aid delivered by trucks.
Wright said the flotilla would include a cargo ship carrying food packages, water, ambulances and medical supplies including anesthesia. “We are trying to stop the starvation,” she said. “It’s not nearly enough. It will make a dent,” she said.
Flotilla participants were conducting nonviolence training last week, in advance of the scheduled departure, she said. “We hope that we can get into Gaza,” Wright said. But they were preparing for the myriad ways they could be turned back.
Many of the governments in the region had participated in stymieing previous Gaza missions, including Greece, which stopped boats from departing in 2011. The United States had warned its citizens not to participate in the missions, and offered “very little assistance” when American activists on the flotillas were detained and then deported by Israel, she said.
If the current mission got underway, they were possibly facing an “armada,” she said, with U.S. warships stationed in the waters off Israel.
Mustafa Ozbek, the media coordinator for IHH, said the organizers had notified the Turkish government, the United Nations and other international institutions about the mission.
Dylan Saba, a 31-year old writer and attorney who was planning to travel with the flotilla, said he was joining in part because “there is an obligation for citizens of the world to act, where governments have failed, and to act in the spirit of international law.”
As a Palestinian, whose father was born in Gaza, there was a “lot of symbolic value in being able to accompany this aid that we are attempting to deliver, not just to my distant family members who are living there, but all of the Palestinians of Gaza,” he said.
“I feel very confident that this is the right thing for me to do,” he said. “But I would be lying to you if I said that I was not scared.”
Israel strikes Iran, Gaza health ministry says Israel destroyed the Strip’s health system
Israel targets Iranian bases in Isfahan with drones, while Iranian sources say air defenses intercepted the attack. Meanwhile, Gaza’s health ministry says the northern Gaza Strip is left without any health services.
PALESTINIANS GATHER TO BUY BREAD FROM A BAKERY THAT RECENTLY WENT BACK INTO SERVICE AFTER BEING SHUT DOWN FOR SEVERAL MONTHS DURING THE GENOCIDAL WAR ON GAZA, APRIL 19, 2024. (PHOTO: KHALED DAOUD/APA IMAGES)
Casualties
34,012 + killed* and at least 76,833 wounded in the Gaza Strip.*
468+ Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.**
Israel revises its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,139.
604 Israeli soldiers have been killed since October 7, and at least 6,800 injured.***
*Gaza’s Ministry of Health confirmed this figure on its Telegram channel on April 19, 2024. Some rights groups estimate the death toll to be much higher when accounting for those presumed dead.
** The death toll in the West Bank and Jerusalem is not updated regularly. According to the PA’s Ministry of Health on April 5, this is the latest figure.
*** This figure is released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.” The number of Israeli soldiers wounded is according to Israeli media reports.
Key Developments
Israel kills 42 Palestinians, wounds 63 in the past 24 hours across Gaza, raising the death toll since October 7 to 34,012 and the number of wounded to 76,833, according to the Gaza health ministry.
Gaza’s health ministry says that Israel intentionally destroyed the health system in the northern Gaza Strip.
Gaza’s health ministry: more than 600,000 Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip are left without medical or health services.
Iranian Faris news agency: Explosions were heard in the Isfahan airport and an Iranian army military base.
Israeli public broadcasting says Israel is behind attacks on Iran.
Reuters, quoting U.S. official sources, confirms Israeli attack on Iran.
CNN quoting U.S. officials: Israel told the U.S. that it won’t attack Iranian nuclear facilities.
Iranian television says that Iran’s air defenses intercepted several small drones in Iran’s airspace.
Iranian Tasnim news agency: Isfahan province is completely safe.
Iranian television says that Iranian nuclear facilities were not exposed to danger.
NBC, quoting from U.S. sources, says that the U.S. did not take part in Israel’s attack on Iran.
Reuters quoting Iranian officials: There was not a missile attack on Iran.
Russia’s embassy in Tehran: We notice calm in Tehran after a drone attack on Isfahan at night.
Israel’s Channel 12: Israel’s attack on Iran is over
Israel’s security minister Ben-Gvir calls Israeli strike on Iran “a joke”.
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Israel kills 42 Palestinians in the past 24 hours
The Gaza-based Palestinian health ministry announced that 42 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes in the past 24 hours, while 63 others were wounded.
Meanwhile, in the northern Gaza Strip, Israeli forces renewed airstrikes on different parts of the northern area. In the Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City, Israeli strikes killed four Palestinians and wounded several others. Another Palestinian was killed in an Israeli strike on a provisions center in the same refugee camp.
Other strikes targeted the southern part of Gaza City and the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in the city, where five Palestinians were killed. Israeli artillery also shelled Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia. Three Palestinians were also killed in Jabalia by Israeli troops’ gunfire, local sources reported.
In the central Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical teams recovered nine dead bodies in the Nuseirat refugee camp, a day after Israel’s withdrawal from the camp. In the Mighraqa village, Israeli strikes wounded a number of Palestinians, and one Palestinian was killed by Israeli sniper fire in the center of Deir al-Balah.
In the southern Gaza Strip, the number of Palestinians killed in an Israeli strike on a family’s shelter in Rafah on Thursday rose to 11, including the two parents, five children, and the grandmother. In Khan Younis, Palestinian medical teams recovered four dead bodies from across the city 11 days after Israel’s withdrawal from the area.
Gaza’s health ministry says that Israel intentionally destroyed Gaza’s health system
More than 600,000 Palestinians in Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip are left without health services after Israel “intentionally destroyed” the health system in the north, the Gaza-based Palestinian health ministry said on Friday.
In a statement, the ministry said that Israeli forces committed direct killings of medical personnel and patients in al-Shifa hospital and other hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip.
According to the ministry, among those killed by Israeli forces were specialized medics who “represented the backbone of medical services,” including specialists in tumor samples testing and kidney transplants.
The ministry made a call to provide northern Gaza with field hospitals with a 200-bed capacity, equipped for surgical interventions and specialized medical teams.
In late March, the Israeli army withdrew from al-Shifa Hospital, the largest hospital in all Palestinian territories, after a two-week raid. Israeli forces destroyed all sections of al-Shifa, including setting entire floors on fire and destroying equipment. The World Health Organization described the destruction as “al-Shifa not functioning as a hospital after today.”
Currently, only four hospitals are partially functional in the Gaza Strip out of a total of 30 hospitals that used to operate in the besieged enclave before October 7. These hospitals served the two million people in the Gaza Strip.
Israel strikes Iran with drones
Iranian media sources reported early on Friday that several explosions were heard in the Isfahan province in Iran. The Israeli public broadcasting corporation later said that Israel conducted an air attack on Iran.
Sources indicated that the attack targeted a military base at an airport in Isfahan, while Iranian sources said that Iran’s nuclear facilities were not attacked and are completely safe.
U.S. media quoted U.S. officials saying that Israel had informed Washington two days ago that it would attack Iran. The officials were quoted to affirm that the U.S. did not take part in the attack.
Meanwhile, Iran suspended air flights in the country during the morning before announcing the release of restrictions. Iranian television said that the country’s air defenses intercepted three “small drones” in the airspace of Isfahan. The Iranian army also said that the explosions were heard as a result of air defense activity.
Friday’s attack comes a week after Iran launched a drone and missile attack on Israel, which targeted military bases and airports. Iran said that the attack was a response to Israel’s bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus on April 1, which killed seven Iranian officials.
Iran’s attack in early April and Israel’s attack on Friday are the first-ever direct attacks between the two states on each others’ territory.
We are also looking for volunteers to help us make this auction a success, especially by contacting potential donors/producers active in the local arts & crafts scenes. If this interests you contact RafahSisterCity@yahoo.com.
The Freedom Flotilla is an emergency civilian aid mission, in which multiple ships are sailing to Gaza with more than 5000 tons of life-saving aid. Hundreds of people, including many Americans, are on board in order to defy Israel’s genocidal campaign against Palestinians.
This is a humanitarian mission and in normal circumstances aid should be able to be delivered. Given the way Israel has acted, they could act in a grossly inhumane way, which can harm the flotilla participants or its content. Past missions challenging the illegal blockade on Gaza suffered violence by Israeli forces; in the worst incident, ten of the civilian participants were murdered. Pressure from the U.S. may be the only way to prevent Israel from killing these aid workers like many others – most recently in the targeted attack on World Central Kitchen.
We need to act now to demand that Congress ensures the safety of the flotilla and prompt delivery of its life-saving cargo. Israel’s deadly campaign has been possible thanks to years of unconditional funding from the U.S. The least our elected officials can do now is exert American influence to insist on safe passage for this humanitarian mission.
The Freedom Flotilla Coalition is an international nonviolent coalition working to break the blockade of Gaza. FFC action is guided by Palestinian civil society rather than any party, faction or government.
Good people of Madison, are you ready to raise funds for those who are trapped in the devastating conflict in the Middle East? Let’s come together and generate some crucial assistance for this cause, and enjoy some live entertainment while doing so!
On April 25th at The Bur Oak, we’re uniting for an evening of rock, Americana, R&B, punk, progressive hip hop and funk from Wisconsin artists donating their time and talent in solidarity with Palestine. There will also be a raffle with great prizes donated by local businesses. All net proceeds from the event will be donated directly to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund, which provides aid to civilians on the ground in the areas affected by the conflict.
The Bur Oak Presents:
A Concert for Palestinian Relief: Art & Action for Our Human Family Thursday, April 25th The Bur Oak Madison, WI
Featuring performances by: Alex White with Ashish Pradhan & Dave Wyatt You First (Me First and the Gimmie Gimmies Tribute Band) Raquel Aleman feat. Captain Smooth Dan Plourde (Gin Mill Hollow) Kevin Willmott (Don’t Mess With Cupid) Brighter Daze (Progressive Hip Hop)
Doors: 6:30pm / Show: 7:30pm $10 donation at the door
Students for Justice in Palestine — UW-Madison will present a panel of university students and community members who have family living in Gaza. They will be sharing the current lived experiences of their families, and ways to help: RSVP Stories of Palestine: Stories of Gaza Panel.
Students for Justice in Palestine — UW-Madison will hold an event of action for the Holy Land Foundation Five who were imprisoned over a decade ago for sending aid to Palestinian orphans: RSVP Stories of Palestine: Prisoners’ Event.
In December, Palestinian poet and professor Refaat Alareer was killed in a targeted Israeli airstrike in Gaza. In this special event, authors, editors, and the publisher of the anthology “Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire” will come together to honor Refaat’s life, memory, and legacy. Livestreamed on You Tube.
Sponsored by Haymarket Books and American Friends Service Committee (AFSC).
Students for Justice in Palestine — UW-Madison will present an apartheid panel of university professors and students to discuss their life growing up under apartheid: RSVP Stories of Palestine: Living Under Apartheid Panel.
Students for Justice in Palestine — UW-Madison is holding its annual Palestine Solidarity Week on the theme “Stories of Palestine.” We would love to see you there!
4/25: A panel of university students and community members who have family living in Gaza. They will be sharing the current lived experiences of their families, and ways to help: RSVP Stories of Palestine: Stories of Gaza Panel.
I would like to invite you to join us, on short notice, to listen to our comrades in Istanbul who are about to board the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza in order to bring humanitarian aid and break the siege.
We will gather Saturday, April 20, 2024, at 2pm ET (9pm Istanbul) for a short 1 hour update led by Medea Benjamin and Ann Wright and others we are inviting.
Hundreds of civilians from more than thirty countries will be sailing into the Israeli Navy’s blockade in a show of defiance and solidarity with the people of Gaza. Dubbed the Freedom Flotilla, this latest effort to break the Israeli siege of Gaza and will carry 5,500 tons of humanitarian aid for the victims of famine, which the organizers label as ongoing state terrorism.
“We can’t sit by and not do anything, which our governments continue to do. And therefore in February, we took the decision to organize an emergency flotilla to Gaza,” says Huwaida Arraf, a U.S.-based organizer with the Freedom Flotilla Coalition.
With more than six months having passed since Israel began its assault on Gaza following the October 7 attacks by Hamas, several ships will set sail across the Mediterranean Sea carrying “food, medical supplies, and other goods urgently needed for survival,” according to the coalition’s website. According to Arraf, the vessels will be leaving from at least two ports, one of which will be in Turkey.
Israel has killed more than 33,000 Gazans as well as nearly 500 people in the West Bank since October 7, 2023. Parts of Gaza are already experiencing famine, more than 70 percent of housing has been destroyed, and basic goods like hygiene products and fuel are in extremely short supply, all collectively heightening the risk of disease and death for Gazans.
Cassandra Dixon, a carpenter from Wisconsin who will be aboard the flotilla, says that she’s participating “because I find it so appalling that in 2024, we’re facing a situation where children are enduring famine, children are dying of starvation. I mean, I can barely stand to say the words.”
A State Department panel told Secretary of State Antony Blinken that the U.S. should restrict arms sales to Israeli military units credibly accused of human rights abuses. He has not taken any action.
A special State Department panel recommended months ago that Secretary of State Antony Blinken disqualify multiple Israeli military and police units from receiving U.S. aid after reviewing allegations that they committed serious human rights abuses.
But Blinken has failed to act on the proposal in the face of growing international criticism of the Israeli military’s conduct in Gaza, according to current and former State Department officials.
The incidents under review mostly took place in the West Bank and occurred before Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. They include reports of extrajudicial killings by the Israeli Border Police; an incident in which a battalion gagged, handcuffed and left an elderly Palestinian American man for dead; and an allegation that interrogators tortured and raped a teenager who had been accused of throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails.
Recommendations for action against Israeli units were sent to Blinken in December, according to one person familiar with the memo. “They’ve been sitting in his briefcase since then,” another official said.
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A State Department spokesperson told ProPublica the agency takes its commitment to uphold U.S. human rights laws seriously. “This process is one that demands a careful and full review,” the spokesperson said, “and the department undergoes a fact-specific investigation applying the same standards and procedures regardless of the country in question.”
The revelations about Blinken’s failure to act on the recommendations come at a delicate moment in U.S.-Israel relations. Six months into its war against Hamas, whose militants massacred 1,200 Israeli civilians and kidnapped 240 more on Oct. 7, the Israeli military has killed more than 33,000 Palestinians, according to local authorities. Recently, President Joe Biden has signaled increased frustration with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the widespread civilian casualties.
Multiple State Department officials who have worked on Israeli relations said that Blinken’s inaction has undermined Biden’s public criticism, sending a message to the Israelis that the administration was not willing to take serious steps.
The recommendations came from a special committee of State Department officials known as the Israel Leahy Vetting Forum. The panel, made up of Middle East and human rights experts, is named for former Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the chief author of 1997 laws that requires the U.S. to cut off assistance to any foreign military or law enforcement units — from battalions of soldiers to police stations — that are credibly accused of flagrant human rights violations.
The Guardian reported this year that the State Department was reviewingseveral of the incidents but had not imposed sanctions because the U.S. government treats Israel with unusual deference. Officials told ProPublica that the panel ultimately recommended that the secretary of state take action.
This story is drawn from interviews with present and former State Department officials as well as government documents and emails obtained by ProPublica. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal deliberations.
The Israeli government did not respond to a request for comment.
Over the years, hundreds of foreign units, including from Mexico, Colombia and Cambodia, have been blocked from receiving any new aid. Officials say enforcing the Leahy Laws can be a strong deterrent against human rights abuses.
Human rights organizations tracking Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attacks have collected eyewitness testimony and videos posted by Israeli soldiers that point to widespread abuses in Gaza and the West Bank.
“If we had been applying Leahy effectively in Israel like we do in other countries, maybe you wouldn’t have the IDF filming TikToks of their war crimes now because we have contributed to a culture of impunity,” said Josh Paul, a former director in the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs and a member of the vetting forum. Paul resigned in protest shortly after Israel began its bombing campaign of Gaza in October.
The Leahy Laws apply to countries that receive American-funded training or arms. In the decades after the passage of those laws, the State Department, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, followed a de facto policy of exempting billions of dollars of foreign military financing to Israel from their strictures, according to multiple experts on the region.
In 2020, Leahy and others in Congress passed a law to tighten the oversight. The State Department set up the vetting forum to identify Israeli security force units that shouldn’t be receiving American assistance. Until now, it has been paralyzed by its bureaucracy, failing to fulfill the hopes of its sponsors.
Critics have long assailed what they view as Israel’s special treatment. Incidents that would have disqualified units in other countries did not have the same result in Israel, according to Charles Blaha, the former director of the State Department’s Office of Security and Human Rights and a former participant in the Israeli vetting forum. “There is no political will,” he said.
Typically, the reports of wrongdoing come from nongovernment organizations like Human Rights Watch or from press accounts. The State Department officials determining whether to recommend sanctions generally do not draw on the vast array of classified material gathered by America’s intelligence agencies.
Actions against an Israeli unit are subject to additional layers of scrutiny. The forum is required to consult the government of Israel. Then, if the forum agrees that there is credible evidence of a human rights violation, the issue goes to more senior officials, including some of the department’s top diplomats who oversee the Middle East and arms transfers. Then the recommendations can be sent to the secretary of state for final approval, either with consensus or as split decisions.
Even if Blinken were to approve the sanctions, officials said, Israel could blunt their impact. One approach would be for the country to buy American arms with its own funds and give them to the units that had been sanctioned. Officials said the symbolism of calling out Israeli units for misconduct would nonetheless be potent, marking a sign of disapproval of the civilian toll the war is taking.
Since it was formed in 2020, the forum has reviewed reports of multiple cases of rape and extrajudicial killings, according to the documents ProPublica obtained. Those cases also included several incidents where teenagers were reportedly beaten in custody before being released without charges. The State Department records obtained by ProPublica do not clearly indicate which cases the experts ultimately recommended for sanctions, and several have been tabled pending more information from the Israelis.
Israel generally argues it has addressed allegations of misconduct and human rights abuses through its own military discipline and legal systems. In some of the cases, the forum was satisfied that Israel had taken serious steps to punish the perpetrators.
But officials agreed on a number of human rights violations, including some that the Israeli government had not appeared to adequately address.
Among the allegations reviewed by the committee was the January 2021 arrest of a 15-year old boy by Israeli Border Police. The teen was held for five days at the Al-Mascobiyya detention center on charges that he had thrown stones and Molotov cocktails at security forces. Citing an allegation shared by a Palestinian child welfare nonprofit, forum officials said there was credible information the teen had been forced to confess after he was “subjected to both physical and sexual torture, including rape by an object.”
Two days after the State Department asked the Israeli government for information about what steps it had taken to hold the perpetrators accountable, Israeli police raided the nonprofit that had originally shared the allegation and later designated it a terrorist organization. The Israelis told State Department officials they had found no evidence of sexual assault or torture but reprimanded one of the teen’s interrogators for kicking a chair.
Do you have any information about American arms shipments to countries accused of human rights violations? Contact Brett Murphy at brett.murphy@propublica.org or by Signal at 508-523-5195.
Today the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project delivered postcards written during the recent Rachel Corrie commemoration, along with an event flier, to Senator Tammy Baldwin’s office in Madison.
The cards called for an immediate and permanent Gaza ceasefire, the opening of Gaza to unlimited humanitarian aid, and an end to US support of the Israeli military.
Rachel Corrie was killed in 2003 by an Israeli army bulldozer while protesting the demolition of a Palestinian home in Rafah.
In 2012 an Israeli court ruled that Corrie’s death was an accident for which she was responsible, and absolved the Israel Defense Forces of any wrongdoing. The judge ruled that the soldiers in the bulldozer could not possibly have seen her.
Former UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian Territories Richard Falk said it was “a sad outcome” for “the rule of law and the hope that an Israeli court would place limits on the violence of the state.”
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said that the “court’s decision confirms a climate of impunity, which facilitates Israeli human rights violations against Palestinian civilians in the Occupied Territory.” (Wikipedia)
On April 27, members of the U.S. media, celebrities, and politicians will wine and dine with President Biden and members of his administration at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Since October 7, Israeli forces have killed at least 125 journalists in Gaza – more journalists than have ever been killed in a single country over the course of an entire year. But you wouldn’t know this shameful statistic by reading or watching U.S. mainstream media.
At a time when there are so few journalists left in Gaza, the U.S. media industry has chosen to sit and laugh with President Biden, ignoring his complicity in the assassination, torture, abduction and detention of their colleagues in Gaza by Israel.
Palestinian journalists in Gaza, including Bisan Owda and Mohammed Zaanoun, recently published a letter asking their colleagues to boycott the event. We need your help to pressure U.S. media companies to meet their demands and show Biden that there is a cost to aiding and abetting war crimes.
We’ve collected a list of individual work emails for 12 executives from major media companies, including the New York Times, CNN Worldwide and the Associated Press, who recently signed a letter committing to “championing the safety of journalists in Gaza.”
Together, we can push them to act on their commitment and stand up for the rights of all journalists everywhere.
Palestinian journalist Mohamed Balousha was stationed in northern Gaza on Dec. 16, 2023 when Israeli snipers targeted and shot him. Balousha lay in the street for over six hours as Israeli forces prevented ambulances from reaching him. A few weeks before he was targeted, Balousha was the first to report on the killing of four premature babies in al-Nasr hospital when Israeli forces forced hospital personnel to leave or be killed.
This will only work if we can demonstrate mass support for Palestinian journalists and major pressure to boycott the event.
You can make a powerful statement that killing and starving journalists (or anyone) will not be tolerated and the Biden administration must be held accountable for its role.
In Solidarity, Alia El-Assar Director of Media Organizing Adalah Justice Project
As a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project cannot support or oppose specific political parties or candidates.
In one week, Democratic Congresswoman Summer Lee is up for re-election in her Pittsburgh area district. This is the first primary where a Congressperson who has openly called for a ceasefire in Gaza will face opponents backed by the retaliatory $100 million pledged by the pro-Israel Super PAC AIPAC and other conservative funders.
To win, we’re harnessing people power to support Rep. Summer Lee’s social justice-aligned agenda and to ensure that our elections can’t be bought and sold by billionaires.
For three-and-a-half long hours on Jan. 29, the cellphone in 6-year old Hind Rajab’s hands was the closest thing she had to a lifeline. Alone in the back seat of a car outside a Gaza City gas station, she was drifting in and out of consciousness, surrounded by bodies, as she told emergency dispatchers that Israeli tanks were rumbling closer.
From the operations room of the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), roughly 50 miles away in the city of Ramallah, the team on duty had done their best to save the child. Paramedics were on their way, the dispatchers kept telling her: Hold on.
The paramedics were driving to their deaths.
Twelve days later, when a Palestinian civil defense crew finally reached the area, they found Hind’s body in a car riddled with bullets, according to her uncle, Samir Hamada, who also arrived at the scene early that morning. The ambulance lay charredroughly 50 meters away (about 164 feet) from the car, its destruction consistent with the use of a round fired by Israeli tanks, according to six munitions experts.
In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces said they conducted a preliminary investigation and that its forces were “not present near the vehicle or within the firing range” of the Hamada family car. Nor, they said, had they been required to provide the ambulance permission to enter the area. The State Department said it has raised the case repeatedly with the Israelis. “The Israelis told us there had, in fact, been IDF units in the area, but the IDF had no knowledge of or involvement in the type of strike described,” said spokesman Matt Miller.
A Washington Post investigation found that Israeli armored vehicles were present in the area in the afternoon, and that gunfire audible as Hind and her cousin Layan begged for help, as well as extensive damage caused to the ambulance, are consistent with Israeli weapons. The analysis is based on satellite imagery, contemporaneous dispatcher recordings, photos and videos of the aftermath, interviews with 13 dispatchers, family members and rescue workers, and more than a dozen military, satellite, munitions and audio experts who reviewed the evidence, as well as the IDF’s own statements.
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PRCS as well as representatives from Euro-Med Monitor and the Civil Defense who visited the scene on Feb. 10 provided visuals to The Post, which it verified by independently confirming the location using satellite imagery, open-source maps and eyewitness interviews.(Euro-Med Monitor)
The Post’s review also found that the ambulance was discovered along a route provided by COGAT, an arm of the Israeli Defense Ministry that generally coordinates safe passage for medical vehicles with the IDF. COGAT initially referred specific questions about the ambulance to the IDF. In mid-March, Elad Goren, head of Coordination and Liaison Administration at COGAT, told The Post that the agency “coordinated everything … including the ambulance that wanted to go and find Hind,” but said he was “not aware” of the specifics. COGAT did not respond to repeated requests to clarify.
The IDF denied that any coordination had taken place, repeating its assertion that its forces were not in the area. It did not comment on two detailed timelines of the incident, or on the expert findings, provided by The Washington Post.
It was not possible to reach Hamas’s military wing for comment on the incident.
Humanitarian officials have warned that a system of coordination with Israel’s military, designed to protect their aid deliveries and lifesaving ambulance maneuvers, is broken. Israeli strikes on a World Central Kitchen convoy that killed seven aid workers in Gaza on April 1 and stirred global outrage came after failed deconfliction efforts.
More than 33,000 Palestinians have been killed during Israeli military operations in Gaza, according to local health authorities. Amid a war of unyielding horror, Hind’s case touched a nerve around the world, in large part because her recorded cries for help offered a glimpse into the terrors faced by civilians.
9:32 a.m.
Generations of the Hamada family had lived on al-Wahda Street in the northern part of Gaza City for decades. Everything changed on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas militants stormed border communities in southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, including civilians in their homes and young people at a concert, and taking about 240 hostages back to Gaza. The assault drew a punishing response from Israel which insists its campaign is necessary to destroy Hamas’s military capabilities.
More than 75 percent of Gaza’s 2.2 million population has been displaced by the fighting, many of them multiple times, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The Hamada family fled their houses; some went south, while others sheltered closer to home, in the nearby Tel al-Hawa neighborhood in western Gaza City.
But late on Jan. 28, Israeli forces returned to western Gaza City in numbers. Posts on social media show heavy gunfire and airstrikes in that part of the city just after midnight local time. At 9:32 a.m., the IDF issued a call in Arabic on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, asking residents in the west of Gaza City — including the Tel al-Hawa area — to evacuate immediately.
Hind’s uncle, Bashar, and his wife packed her into the car along with her four cousins, Bashar’s brother Samir said. They planned to drive north, out of the evacuation zone and back toward the family home in northern Gaza City.
The family stopped less than a quarter of a mile from where they started.
Around 1 p.m., Hind’s cousin, 15-year-old Layan, called Samir. She told him they were surrounded and the Israeli army had opened fire on their car.
Everyone in the vehicle, except for Hind and Layan, were dead, she said. Samir called another uncle, Mohammed, who eventually reached the PRCS.
A dispatcher, Omar al-Qam, first reached Layan around 2:30 p.m.
The girl screamed, and the call dropped. “Hello,” Qam shouted. “Hello?”
While Qam spoke to Layan, 62 gunshots are audible over six seconds in two bursts of fire on a recording of the call, according to Earshot, a nonprofit that conducts investigations using audio evidence.
Steven Beck, an acoustic analyst who consulted with the FBI for more than a decade, examined the recording at the request of The Post, and found the number of rounds per minute fired was faster than an automatic AK-patterned rifle, which Hamas fighters often use. The rate, he said, was more akin to weapons commonly issued to Israeli forces. Earshot also found the rate of fire to be faster than an AK-patterned rifle.
The call, which began around 2:30 p.m., ended in less than a minute.
A satellite image captured by Planet Labs roughly an hour later, at 3:31 p.m., shows at least four Israeli armored vehicles around 300 meters up the road from the girls.
Hind Map
3:31 pm: Israeli military vehicles pictured Hind’s family car stop point 350 FEET N
Will Goodhind, an imagery analyst with Contested Ground — an open-access satellite research group focused on military, humanitarian and international affairs — who examined the satellite imagery at the request of The Post, said the armored vehicles at the intersection closest to Hind are “tactically placed” and appear to provide a “prominent, visible presence to deter (and respond to) enemy attacks,” amid ongoing ground operations.
More than a dozen other Israeli armored vehicles are visible within a quarter-mile of the Hamada family car, the image shows.
The vehicles match the approximate size and have turret-like structures similar to at least four Israeli tracked vehicles, according to Goodhind. Of those, only the Merkava tank has been seen in action in Gaza, according to Sonny Butterworth, senior analyst with the defense intelligence firm Janes. The similarly sized Namer armored personnel carrier and Puma combat engineering vehicle have also been seen in action in Gaza, but lack the turret-like structure.
The Merkava, the Namer and the Puma all have 7.62 caliber machine guns, Butterworth said. The guns can fire at a rate consistent with what Beck and Earshot concluded was heard in the audio of Layan’s last call.
After Qam’s call with Layan ended, the PRCS operations room called back immediately and Hind answered. Layan was dead and tanks were moving toward the car, she told another dispatcher, Rana Faqih. Hind described the presence of tanks at least five more times throughout the call.
Hind describes the tanks moving closer.
5:40 p.m.
The Palestine Red Crescent routinely coordinates the passage of its ambulances with Israeli authorities, in the hope of securing safe access to areas where the situation on the ground is potentially dangerous.
Fathi Abu Warda — a liaison between the Palestinian Authority’s health ministry in Ramallah and COGAT, an arm of the Israeli Defense Ministry that oversees the Palestinian territories — said that permission for an ambulance to proceed to Hind arrived in the form of a route map from COGAT. Abu Warda sent the map to the PRCS dispatch team on WhatsApp at 5:40 p.m., according to messages reviewed by The Post.
The map, reviewed by The Post, appears to have been made in Google Maps and has a clear blue line, instructing the ambulance drivers to follow an indirect route that avoided much of the evacuation area.
Ismail Al-Ghoul, a correspondent with the Al Jazeera news agency, said he was sitting with the paramedics, Yousef Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoun, at Al-Ahli hospital, when they received the map. The paramedics headed out quickly to the location where Hind was trapped. It was roughly two miles away — down Beirut street, then right, and onto Al Majdal Street.
“The details were completely clear,” Ghoul said.
The paramedics had just turned onto Al Majdal Street, the lights of the ambulance flashing, when Zeino reported that a green laser was hovering just in front of them.
The dispatcher told the ambulance to keep moving, slowly. Seconds later, the line drops.
The ambulance was later found roughly 50 meters south of Hind’s family car and about 350 meters south of where military vehicles had been captured in satellite imagery just over two hours earlier.
In a statement posted at 9:02 p.m. local time, the IDF said their forces had “cut off Gaza City, with one force arriving from the north towards the south, while a second force arrived from the south to the north.” They traveled “through the city center to Shifa hospital” the statement said.
Al-Shifa, which Israel has repeatedly targeted, alleging that Hamas fighters are regrouping there, is roughly three-quarters of a mile from where the Hamada family car stopped.
The green laser — known as a dazzler — would normally suggest that the ambulance was identified but not necessarily targeted by a ground unit operating ahead of the armed vehicles, according to Avihai Stollar, a researcher with Breaking the Silence, an advocacy group composed of Israeli army veterans that oppose the occupation that compiled testimonies from former soldiers.
The IDF, in response to questions from The Post, did not clarify if the green dazzler belonged to its forces and what signal it may have been intended to send.
Social media postsfrom 2018 suggest that Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups have also used green dazzlers to obscure Israeli soldiers’ eyesight. Ashka Jhaveri, a researcher at the Institute for the Study of War, a group that closely monitors conflicts, said she had not observed the use of green dazzlersby either side in this conflict.
6 p.m.
As the call with the paramedics drops at 6 p.m., a bang is audible on the call with Hind.
But the call with the girl continued, suggesting that cellphone service was not cut.
Red Crescent dispatchers had managed to patch Hind’s mother, Wesam, into the call in the hope that it might calm the child.
When the bang echoed out through the phone line, Wesam cried out: “Hanood, are you okay?”
A moment later, Hind replied.
“Yes,” she said.
By this point, everyone on the call with Hind — her family, the dispatchers — were praying they would not lose her too. She was falling silent for long periods. The team did what they could to keep her talking, but it was clear that the child’s thoughts had begun to loop. She just kept saying, “Come get me, quickly.”
If the phone ran out of battery, Faqih told her, she was to stay in the car, where they could still find her. “If night comes and we don’t come, close your eyes so that you don’t see the tanks.”
They lost contact with her soon after 6 p.m., spokeswoman Nebal Farsakh recalled.
No one spoke much after that. The room felt muffled with shock. They tried to call Hind again and again, Farsakh said, but no one answered.
Twelve days later
The ambulance had come to a stop where a dark spot resembling a scorch mark first appeared in satellite imagery taken at 10:21 a.m. on Jan. 30 — the morning after contact with the paramedics and Hind were lost.
When the IDF withdrew from the area nearly two weeks later on Feb. 10, Palestinian residents, including Samir, Hind’s uncle, and a civil defense crew found a haunting scene.
The door and pieces of the hood of the family car had been torn off. Samir described his brother’s body as “dangling” from the driver’s seat. The stench of decomposing corpses clung to the vehicle. He struggled to look at the bodies of the five children sandwiched on the back seat. Hind sat to the right of Layan, who was behind the driver. A page from what looks like a coloring book was crumpled where their feet would have rested. The bodies were so decomposed that it was not possible immediately see where the gunshots had hit them, Samir said. “We were only able to deduce their identities,” he recalled.
Holes in the Hamada family car were probably made by a 7.62 caliber machine gun, a weapon fixed to the Merkava, Namer and Puma, saidAndrew Galer, head of the land platform and weapons team at defense intelligence firm Janes, who examined photos and video of the aftermath.
Armored vehicles, including some that roughly match the size of those seen in the Jan. 29 satellite imagery, were also present in the same location multiple times in the following 12 days.
A fragment of a U.S.-made 120mm round, which can be fired by the Merkava, was visible in video and images after rescue crews searched the scenes.
The Post was not able to determine exactly where just north of the ambulance the fragment was originally found or if it was directly connected to the ambulance strike given the time elapsed and the ongoing fighting.
The ambulance was a burned out shell, video shows, and almost nothing remained of the paramedics’s bodies. There was a hole approximately 300 millimeters in diameter adjacent to where the license plate would have been.
“The damage to the rear does look like the exit of a projectile,” Chris Cobb-Smith, a security consultant and former artillery officer in the British army, wrote in a message, noting that it appeared to be “targeted with a direct fire munition” and was “approximately the size of a tank shell.”
N.R. Jenzen-Jones, the director of Armament Research Services, added it appeared to exit “the vehicle relatively level to the ground,” which suggests it was “fired from ground level on a fairly flat trajectory, rather than an air-delivered or indirect-fire munition.”
A round fired by a tank is just one possibility, Jenzen-Jones and multiple other experts cautioned, noting that there is little data on craft-produced Hamas munitions and few tests have been done to predict what would happen if other munitions were used against a thin-skinned vehicle. Common rocket launchers used by Hamas are able to fire different antitank rounds, including the standard PG-7, which could not create the observed damage, according to munitions experts.(Palestine Red Crescent Society)
None of the six munitions experts interviewed by The Post could say definitively what munition caused the damage or killed the paramedics based on the ambulance alone because of the time elapsed and the complexity of urban combat. They agreed, however, the damage to the ambulance was consistent with the potential use of a round fired from Israeli tanks that match the vehicles captured in satellite imagery in the area that day.
The seven bodies of the Hamada family were buried at al-Shifa Hospital. There was no medical report, Samir said.
“All that mattered to us at that moment was to retrieve them and bury them in a decent way.”
About this story
John Hudson in Washington, Hazem Balousha in Amman, Sarah Dadouch in Beirut, Jarrett Ley in New York and Imogen Piper in London contributed to this report.
Satellite imagery provided by Planet Labs. Graphics by Jarrett Ley. Design and development by Irfan Uraizee.
Retired U.S. Army Colonel & former U.S. diplomat Ann Wright introduces our upcoming Freedom Flotilla Coalition emergency mission to #BreakTheSiege and #EndTheBlockade of Gaza.
The images of Palestinian children’s bodies hanging from the sides of bombed buildings or the cries of mothers holding their lifeless babies will never be forgotten. Witnessing the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza has changed us all.
With U.S. diplomatic and financial support, as well as U.S. weapons, Israel’s government has displaced 2 million Palestinians and killed at least 29,000, including at least 12,000 children.
The UN’s International Court of Justice just ruled that Israel’s government is plausibly committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
The Court ordered Israel’s government to act immediately to prevent further harm to the Palestinian people, including by:
Stopping “acts of genocide” such as killing Palestinians and “causing serious bodily or mental harm” to Palestinians.
Preventing and punishing incitement to genocide
Immediately ensuring “the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance” to Gaza
The only way to implement the Court’s orders is by facilitating a lasting ceasefire.
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As signers of the Genocide Convention, the U.S. is also legally obligated to prevent genocide, so this ruling puts U.S. leaders on notice for enabling violations of the Genocide Convention.
President Biden has sent thousands of bombs to Israel’s military, while blocking international efforts to stop the violence and watering down attempts to secure sufficient humanitarian aid.
Meanwhile, Israel’s government is still starving Palestinians in Gaza and depriving the trapped population of other basic needs for survival such as water, shelter, and medical assistance.
U.S. leaders have leverage to stop this now, as primary funders of Israel’s military. Millions of lives still hang in the balance.
Please sign if you agree: The Biden administration must not only affirm the legitimacy of the ICJ’s ruling and facilitate an immediate ceasefire—it must comply with federal and international law by suspending military assistance to the Israeli government.
Thank you so much for your support of the Middle East Children’s Alliance. At this devastating time, we want to share an online version of the most recent MECA newsletter to tell you about our emergency aid response in Gaza, and to provide some other news.
Since this newsletter went out in the mail, the suffering in Gaza has intensified. Despite the difficulty, danger, and scarcity, MECA staff, partners and volunteers continue to go out every day to deliver meals and food parcels. You can read the newsletter articles and see the photos on MECA’s website (see links below), browse a digital version or download a PDF file.
IMPORTANT!Do you want to get MECA materials in the mail? We still print and mail newsletters, Annual Reports, and occasional letters. Please go to this page , scroll down to the bottom, and check the box that indicates your mail preference.
Join host Esty Dinur as she talks with Palestinian-American & Freedom Flotilla veteran Huwaida Arraf and local activist Cassandra Dixon about the latest plans of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla to sail to Gaza.
The flotilla will include a large cargo ship carrying thousands of tons of humanitarian aid, as well as passenger ships, carrying civilians from around the world—journalists, doctors, aid workers, and more—straight to Gaza. Besides carrying much needed aid, the message and mission is one of solidarity and support for Palestinian freedom by breaking the illegal Israeli siege of Gaza. Dixon will also discuss the situation in the West Bank.
In acknowledgement of Tax Day on April 15, the second half of the show will discuss tax resistance, especially in light of the US’s active support for the genocide in Gaza. The guest is Madison’s Paula Rogge, a recently retired physician and long-time war tax resister.
As worldwide protest escalates over Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, academic freedom and free speech are under all-out attack on university campuses in the United States, not just from university administrations and pro-Israeli groups, but now directly from the highest levels of the Israeli state. In a story that has been largely ignored in the Western press, the Israeli news website Ynetnews, one of the largest media outlets in the country, reported that the Israeli government has launched what appears to be a wide-ranging covert campaign to harass and intimidate students, faculty, and administrators into silence.
According to the report, the Foreign Affairs and the Diaspora Affairs ministries have established a task force to carry out “shaming and pressuring” operations at U.S. universities. The task force, chaired by Foreign Minister Eli Cohen and led by senior government officials, drew up a multifaceted “action plan,” according to Ynetnews, involving political and psychological operations against its critics. The plan aims at “inflicting economic and employment consequences on antisemitic [read: pro-Palestinian/anti-genocide] students and compelling universities to distance them from their campuses.” The plan specifies that actions taken “should not have the signature of the State of Israel on it.”
The first plank in the plan is described as the “consciousness axis.” It calls for “personal, economic and employment repercussions for the distributors of antisemitism.” According to the plan, the inter-ministerial task force will carry out “naming and shaming” by “publicizing the names of those generating antisemitism on campuses — both students and faculty and impacting the employment of those identified as the perpetrators of antisemitism.” Those targeted “will struggle to find employment in the U.S. and will pay a significant economic price for their conduct.”
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The plan specifies that “the Foreign Ministry and [Israeli] representatives in the U.S. are in contact with professional unions to recruit them to act against antisemitism and exert pressure on university heads.” It notes that pressuring employers to blacklist pro-Palestinian students “has already happened in major law firms in the U.S.,” and that “if a university knows that the chances of its students finding employment have decreased, the university administration will act against those antisemitic students to avoid harming the university’s ranking.”
CODEPINK is hosting an interest meeting for people in the Madison area who may have been inspired to act by recent events in Palestine and want to get involved, but don’t know how.
April 16 at 6 PM interested people in the Madison, WI area are invited to join a short Zoom call to get to know each other and discuss next steps to build CODEPINK in Madison.
Music by Ensemble Shamaali, featuring Oud, Drum and Flute
Join us for Madison’s annual event honoring the life of Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old peace activist from Olympia, WA. She was crushed to death in Rafah on March 16, 2003 while standing against the demolition of a Palestinian home by an Israeli soldier driving a US-made Caterpillar bulldozer.
As Israel crushes the lives of millions in Gaza, we believe that Rachel’s wish now would be that we do all in our power to end the genocide in Palestine. The event will include readings from Rachel’s writings, a video message from her parents Craig and Cindy, poetry, an update on the latest news from Palestine, and time to write and call congress and the White House to demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire, opening of Gaza to unlimited humanitarian aid, and an end to US support of the Israeli military.
Desserts and beverages will be served. We will be selling Palestinian crafts, olive oil, olive oil soap, children’s books about Palestine, and books by and about Rachel Corrie.
In the days following the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel, numerous reports of horrifying atrocities perpetrated on civilians of all ages rapidly appeared across the media sphere. While some of the key accounts eventually came to be refuted by respected Israeli sources, the initial stories had already acquired a life of their own within Israel and internationally. By playing an important role in shaping opinion in Israel, the US and elsewhere, those stories helped to legitimize Israel’s all out war by dehumanizing the Palestinians.
Joining us will be investigative journalist ARUN GUPTA, author of several articles appearing in The Intercept and more recently Yes! Magazine that explore the complex ways in which several of the most repeated but now debunked atrocity stories came about, and what their impact has been. Show will be archived at: https://www.wortfm.org/news-talk/talk/public-affair/
More than 100 people planted flags Sunday on Marquette University’s campus for Palestinians killed in Gaza since Oct. 7.Marquette University students arrived on campus yesterday to a sea of 41,000 green, red and white flags, each honoring a Palestinian life lost in Gaza since Israel began a military bombardment Oct. 8.
MU students from Students for Justice in Palestine and the Muslim Student Association, and others from the Marquette and Greater Milwaukee communities planted the flags Sunday on MU’s mall, a large green space in the center of campus.
“We’re so used to hearing the numbers (of people killed in Gaza). We hope by making it visual, by placing a flag for each person martyred in Gaza, by people seeing how much it takes of our campus, it will make a difference to people,” SJP president Amani Dalieh told the Wisconsin Muslim Journal as she distributed flags Sunday afternoon.
The importance of raising awareness about what is happening in Gaza is urgent, Dalieh said. “I cannot help but cry for the children of Gaza … With each passing day, I see … a future snatched away before they even had a chance to blossom.”
Some Marquette University students who helped with the flag-planting for Palestine event posed for a group shot. Front row, left to right: Zena Khatib, Students for Justice in Palestine vice president; Yazeed Abushanab, Muslim Student Association president; and Yousef Almousa, MSA event coordinator of MSA. Back row, left to right: Usman Waheeduddin, Labeeb Awan, Anas Alzamli, Elliot Russell, Luqman Waheeduddin and Emad Khaja.
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Standing up for Palestinians “can feel very lonely,” said Anas Alzamli, a Palestinian American from Glendale Heights, Illinois, whose family is from Gaza. Choking back tears, he said, “But today we are not alone. We are blessed with a large community from different backgrounds who are here to honor the innocent lives lost.”
Israel’s retaliation for Hamas’ Oct. 7 surprise attack “is one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history,” said University of Chicago political science professor Robert Pape, quoted by the Association Press. The Palestinian death toll in Gaza from Oct. 7 – April 3 stands at 41,000, according to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. It includes 15,370 children, 9,671 women and 37,676 civilians.
(Gaza’s Health Ministry puts the official numbers at more than 33,200 killed and 76,000 wounded, with two-thirds being women and children. That number is widely viewed as incomplete. “Thousands remain unaccounted for — either missing under the rubble, buried hastily in side streets or decomposing in areas that can’t be safely reached,” NPR reported. Also, it “relies on a combination of accurate death counts from hospitals that are still partially operating, and on estimates from media reports to assess deaths in the north of Gaza, where Israeli forces control access.”
People of all ages and diverse backgrounds joined the Marquette University students to honor Palestinians who were killed in Gaza.
Yet, as the international community calls for a ceasefire, in a video statement yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu escalated his pledge to invade the southern Gaza city of Rafah, which is filled with around 1.4 million Palestinians, most of whom are displaced from other parts of the Gaza Strip, AP reported. The Israeli government says it aims to destroy Hamas following its Oct. 7 attack, in which 1,200 people were killed and 240 others were taken hostage.
Students and community members planted flags Sunday in cold, wet weather to honor Palestinians who lost their lives in Gaza since Oct. 7.
Planning for this day has been months in the works. SJP dedicates a week in April annually to remember Palestinians living in an injust situation, former SPJ president Leen Mortada said. This year the students wanted to use the week to raise awareness of the killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. As commemorations related to Gaza on university campuses across the country became a very sensitive issue, many discussions took place before plans moved forward.
“We hit a few bumps, Dalieh said. “But it all worked out.”
“Earlier this semester, several student organizations discussed a potential flag display as a multi-organization memorial to memorialize and mourn those who lost their lives in the Israel-Hamas war. In recent weeks, Students for Justice in Palestine elected to proceed as the sole student organization sponsoring a memorial and followed the student organization event process for approval,” explained MU Chief Marketing and Communication Officer Lynn C. Griffith. “During the process, university leaders engaged with the Jewish-affiliated minister and the Muslim chaplain.”
The flag-planting event Sunday launched “All Eyes on Gaza,” a week of activities organized by MU’s SJP. SJP board members held a poetry reading on the mall yesterday, reading poems by Palestinian authors. Upcoming events, all held at MU’s Central Mall and open to the general public, include:
Making and flying kites: Tuesday, 11 a.m. – 4 p.m. Inspired by the Afghan movement “Fly Kites, Not Drones”
“The significance of this activity is to bring back a time where children were not afraid of the skies, as they would look up and enjoy their youth, and understand how this has been ruined by the bombs dropped by planes in Gaza,” explained Mortada, currently SJP outreach coordinator.
Visitation to honor the memory of lives lost; Wednesday, all day People are invited to visit the flag display to honor and make prayers for the lives lost in Gaza.
Rock piling and letter writing: Thursday, 3 – 5 p.m. The rock-piling activity “is a way to honor those still under rubble in Gaza,” Mortada said. The letter writing “is a way for people to grieve and write something they wished to say to those in Palestine.”
Bake sale and Gaza Before/After Event, 2 p.m.
WMJ attended the flag-planting ceremony Sunday—observing, interviewing participants and listening to speeches made by student leaders. The rest of this story reports on what we heard and saw.
Raising awareness
Amani Dalieh, a junior, shivered early Sunday afternoon as she showed each newcomer where they could pick up flags. Rain drizzled under gray skies; the temperature did not yet reach 40 degrees.
Many of the students were fasting for Ramadan, a holy month in the Islam when Muslims do not eat or drink anything from pre-dawn until after sunset. Dalieh’s teeth chattered with cold.
Amani Dalieh, president of Marquette University’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, said MU’s Muslim Student Association collaborated in planning the flag-planting event.
SJP president, and newly elected executive vice president of MU’s Student Government, Dalieh had arrived on campus at 10:30 a.m. to set up the mall for flag planting, along with 15 other students from SJP and MSA. They lined the green space with yarn mounted on small sticks and marked off rectangles for an orderly placement of flags. Some students unwrapped boxes of red, green and white flags.
“Black flags weren’t available; otherwise, we would have made a Palestinian flag,” Anas Alzamli explained. He carried a bullhorn to direct participants to areas that needed more flags. Alzami is a Palestinian American student from Glendale Heights, Illinois, whose family is from Gaza.
“The biggest value of doing this is honoring the innocent lives lost in Palestine – the dreams, aspirations, everything that was in their lives, everything they wanted to do with their lives, all taken away in the blink of an eye for no good reason,” he said. “We are putting a flag for each martyr so when students walk by they are always aware that just because we are privileged enough to walk around in safety and eat or drink whenever we want, people in Gaza are not.
“This is an ongoing situation. This memorial is not is not for an anniversary of anything. This isn’t a two-year mark. People are starving as we speak. People are under rubble.”
“I want everyone to never forget talking about Palestine,” said Yazeed Abushanab, an MU junior from Brookfield and president of the MSA. “This is something we have to talk about in order for change to happen.
“It is heartwarming to see students who are not direct members of the Muslim or Arab community showing their support. They wear keffiyehs (Palestinian scarves) and Palestinian bracelets and show up to events. At the end of the day, they are human beings. They have a heart and want to stand up and say something about what is going on.”
Honoring the dead
Mohammad Hamad and Heather Gilvary-Hamad of Brookfield honored specific people as they planted flags. Hamad made a list that includes 24 close relatives, including his sister, uncle and cousins, who have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7.
“The list goes on,” Hamad said. “Friends, neighbors, teachers. It has been 184 days of grieving. We are a very small community (in Gaza). Everyone knows everyone. Every day brings news of more who have died.
“We are frustrated and angry,” he added. “We hope these events bring attention to what is happening. Hopefully, we will see changes in U.S. policies (that support the Israeli military).”
Mohammad Hamad of Brookfield planted flags to honor 24 close relatives, including his sister, who were killed in Gaza since Oct. 7.
Farouq Abukhamireh of Greendale heard about the event from his children who are MU students. “I’m here to express my solidarity with the people of Gaza and to protest the genocide that is going on there. I am also protesting the use of American taxpayers’ money to send weapons and high-tech machinery to Israel to be used to kill innocent people and children.”
Zeina Sahraoui of South Milwaukee and Serena Bekteshib of Chicago, both Marquette juniors, said what is happening in Gaza feels personal.
“I’m Tunisian, an Arab Muslim country,” Sahraoui explained. “Ever since I was young, I always heard about the Palestinian and Israeli conflict. My parents have been super vocal about it.”
“I came here to support my Palestinian friends and family,” said Bekteshib, who is from an Albanian family. “I say ‘family’ meaning that I consider them my friends, my sisters and my brothers. I want to bring awareness to all the martyrs in Gaza and to teach others about Palestine.”
Both young women agreed that most of the support for the Palestinians they see comes from Muslim and Arab students. “I do see other American students sharing posts on social media about Palestine. I’d like to see them take it a step further and show up for events.”
Elliot Russell, a sophomore from Chicago and a recent Muslim convert, said he was there “to support the community that’s had my back through everything. It’s not that it’s all Muslims that are being murdered in Gaza, though the majority are. My Palestinian friends have treated me like family. I feel it is only right for me to step forward for them.”
Justin Gronbach of Milwaukee learned about the event on social media. “I follow local groups (supporting Palestine) and journalists on the ground,” he said. “I’m a pacifist Orthodox Christian and I support humanity.” Gronbach visited the West Bank five years ago with a group from church that wanted to learn more about the situation, he said. Although they didn’t go to Gaza, they saw the discrimination Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank face, he said.
Demanding change
Islamic Society of Milwaukee president Salah Sarsour participated because “we need to do whatever it takes to stand with the families of Gaza and stop the genocide,” he said. The display of flags gives him hope, he added. “This young generation of students sympathize with the people of Gaza. They want the killing to stop and they want to give this message to the world.”
Janan Najeeb, executive director of the Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition and convener of the Wisconsin Coalition for Justice in Palestine, a coalition of 64 diverse organizations, brought a message from WCJP, sent as press release before the planting. MU’s SJP is a member of the coalition.
Leen Mortada and Anas Alzamli
“The WCJP supports the event: All Eyes on Gaza,” the press release states. “In spite of the genocide, death and destruction, Israel and our complicit government have imposed on civilians trapped for decades in the Gaza concentration camp, the Palestinians of Gaza have opened the eyes of the world to the injustices they have faced for 76 years …
“Of particular concern is the complicity and support the Biden administration has had in this genocide. In total disregard of the UN Security Council demand of a ceasefire and “the urgent need to expand the flow” of aid to the Palestinian civilians, the Biden administration is sending additional 2,000-pound bombs to be used on civilians.”
41,000 flags planted on the campus of Marquette University represent the lives lost in Gaza.
Sandra Whitehead is an educator, nationally award-winning journalist and author of Lebanese Americans, published by Marshall Cavendish. She is blessed with a loving family–her husband Abdulaziz Aleiou and three children, Ali, Aisha and Adam.
Peter Maass is the author of “Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War.” He covered the Bosnia war for The Post, and the invasion of Iraq for the New York Times Magazine.
How does it feel to be a war-crimes reporter whose family bankrolled a nation that’s committing war crimes?
I can tell you.
I covered the genocide in Bosnia for The Post, wrote a book about it, and reported from Iraq and Afghanistan, among other conflict-ridden countries. Also, my ancestors were key funders of Jewish emigration to British-controlled Palestine. The Warburgs and Schiffs donated millions of dollars to that cause, and during the warbetween Jews and Arabs that started in 1948, they helped raise vast sums for the new state of Israel. When Golda Meir made an emergency fundraising visit to the United States, one of the philanthropists she met with was an uncle of mine who led the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
As Israeli forces grind through Gaza in what the International Court of Justice defines as a “plausible” case of genocide, my family’s history of philanthropy runs into my familiarity with war crimes. When Israel bombs and shoots civilians, blocks food aid, attacks hospitals and cuts off water supplies, I remember the same outrages in Bosnia. When people in a Gaza flour line were attacked, I thought of the Sarajevans killed waiting in line for bread, and the perpetrators who in each case insisted the victims were slaughtered by their own side.
Atrocities tend to rhyme.
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When I reported from besieged Sarajevo, I stayed in a hotel that was smack on the front line, with Serbian snipers routinely firing at civilians walking under my window. While exiting or entering the Holiday Inn, sometimes I was the one getting shot at. On a spring day in 1993, I heard the familiar crack and whistle of a sniper’s bullet, followed by an awful scream. I went to my window and saw a wounded civilian trying to crawl to safety. Writing in The Post more than three decades ago, I described the man’s desperate shouts as “a mad howl of a person pushed over the edge. It came from the lungs, from the heart, from the mind.”
I was thinking of Haris Bahtanovic — I tracked him to a nearby hospitalthe next day — as I watched an agonizing video from Gaza not long ago. The video shows a grandmother, Hala Khreis, trying to leave a neighborhood that Israeli forces are surrounding. Walking tentatively, she holds the hand of her grandson, who is five years old and carries a white flag. Suddenly, a shot rings out and she crumples to the ground dead. Sniper rifles have high-powered scopes — the shooters can see who they are shooting. The attacks on Khreis in 2024 and Bahtanovic in 1993 occurred in daytime and were not accidental.
Millions of Jews in America feel connected to Israel’s creation. Maybe our ancestors gave or raised money, maybe they went and fought, maybe they donated to Zionist organizations. What’s a Jew to do now? Everyone makes their own choices, but my experience of war crimes taught me that being Jewish means standing against any nation that commits war crimes.
Any.
noted in my Bosnia book how being a Jew and seeing an actual genocide made me understand, more than before, the precariousnessof minorities and the necessity of speaking out as atrocities emerge. That imperative strengthens if your government abets the crimes or your tribe commits them.
Israel and its supporters contend that what’s happening in Gaza is a legal and righteous response to the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas fighters. It’s evident that war crimes were committed by Hamas: Israelis were shot in their homes at kibbutzim, and concertgoers at the Nova music festival were massacred. We’ve seen the pictures and videos, and while some allegations have turned out to be false, the evidence of brutal crimes is solid. Hamas is still holding more than 100 hostages.
That does not give Israel a pass to respond as it pleases. An eye for an eye — or a hundred eyes for one eye — is not a thing in international law. A key tenet of the laws of warfare is that an attack that endangers civilians must be militarily necessary, and any civilian casualties that occur must be proportional to the military gain. What that means, in plainer language, is that you cannot slaughter a lot of civilians for a minor battlefield gain, and you certainly cannot target civilians, as appears to have happened in the killing of Hala Khreis and many other Palestinians. So far, more than 30,000 people have been reported killed in Gaza, most of them civilians, including more than 13,000 children.
The victims of genocide — which Jews were in the Holocaust — are not gifted with the right to perpetrate one. Of course, a war-crimes court should be the arbiter of whether Israel’s actions in Gaza qualify as genocide, but sufficient evidence for indictments appears to exist because the legal definition of genocide is “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole orin part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” The key words are “in part.” Holocaust levels of killing are not required to reach the legal standard.
This puts all Americans, not just American Jews, on the spot. The U.S. government is Israel’s principal supporter, by virtue of the bombs and other weapons that continue to be provided to the extremist government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. We are all implicated.
The idea of Jews protecting the rights of Palestinians is not as new as you might think. Before the Holocaust, my ancestors were part of the “non-Zionist” movement that supported Jewish emigration to Palestine but opposed the creation of a Jewish state. The non-Zionist position was based on the concern that a Jewish state would result in violence and reinforce accusations that Jews were not loyal to America.
For example, in the May 21, 1917, edition of the New York Times, a headline reads: “Mr. Schiff Not for Zionism: He Would Establish Jewish Population, Not a Nation, in Palestine.” The story is about my great-great-grandfather, Jacob Schiff, the Gilded Age financier who bankrolled efforts to help persecuted Jews flee Europe. Theidealistic non-Zionist goal was for the Jews who were settling in Palestine to make a deal with the Arabs already living there that would not give either side complete government control. Two decades later, in 1936, my great-grandfather, Felix Warburg, who had married Schiff’s daughter, accurately warned that establishing a Jewish state would lead to “bloody heads and misfortune.”
Jewish settlement continued in Palestine, of course, and the Holocaust accelerated momentum for creating a national homeland there — for which my ancestors dutifully opened their wallets. But there is a largely forgotten history of what then happened in a dissenting corner of America’s Jewish community. As Geoffrey Levin writes in his relevant new book, “Our Palestine Question,” since the founding of Israel “there have been American Jews deeply unsettled by Israeli policies toward both the Palestinian refugees and Arabs living under Israeli rule,” who are fiercely dedicated to the issue.
These dissenting Jews were unsettled by, among other things, the exodus of more than 700,000 Arabs when Israel was established; it’s what Arabs refer to as the Nakba, or “catastrophe.” Israel refused to let these Arabs return to their homes and, over the decades, constructed a repressive apparatus of military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza. While Levin’s book was published just before the latest convulsion, he astutely noted that “some American Jews today see their support for Palestinian rights as a meaningful expression of their Jewish identity.”
My Jewish identity was always a bit vague because my ancestors were German Jews who assimilated at the speed of cultural sound; when I was growing up, we even had a Christmas tree. (They donated and spent their money at the same pace; the fortune was mostly gone by the time I came of age.)I began to feel more Jewish while covering the genocide of Bosnia’s Muslims. What Levin points to — the defense of Palestinians increasingly being an act of Jewish identity, particularly for younger Jews — feels right for me, too.
It was near Sen. Charles E. Schumer’s home in Brooklyn that I recently saw how this long-ignored movement has found new propulsion. I live a 10-minute walk from the Democratic majority leader’s apartment building, which the New York Police Department barricades whenever a protest approaches. Though Schumer now calls for early elections that might unseat Netanyahu, he supports military aid to Israel and is the highest-ranking elected Jewish official in the United States. Protesters are shunted a few hundred yards away to Prospect Park, and about 100 of them happened to be there when I walked by last month.
Some waved professionally printed, multicolored placards that said “Hands Off Rafah — Stop the Genocide,” and “Ceasefire Now — Let Gaza Live.” But there was also a woman wearing a kaffiyeh around her waist, who held a piece of cardboard with a handwritten message: “Jewish Nurse Against Occupation.” She was protesting not just the killing of civilians but the decades-long military occupation of Palestinian territory, which is the underlying problem.
These protesters are part of a movement that includes Jewish demonstrators who wear T-shirts that say “Not In Our Name.” Their potent voices undermine the argument thatall protests against Israeli violence are antisemitic. They help legitimize global opposition to what’s being done in Gaza, and they defend not only Palestinian lives but Jewish lives, too, because they contradict the misbegotten idea that Jews as a whole are to blame for what Israel is doing.
I did not take the activist route after graduating from college. I chose journalism, then wars chose me. Through the years, I realized that exposing war crimes — wherever they occur — is central to my identity as an American, a journalist and a Jew.
Any new assistance for Israel has to have conditions. We can’t allow them to continue to bomb people who don’t even have food and water. We need to be able to protect aid workers. We’re providing aid but we have to do it by air and water rather than through our friends. That’s not acceptable. We need to get aid to people. We need to make sure it’s delivered safely. Over 200 aid workers have been killed not just the most recent seven that’s gotten a lot of attention. A whole lot more has to be done. They should not be invading Rafah and certainly not doing it with the weaponry that the United States is providing. We’re hoping to talk to the administration about conditions on that funding for offensive weapons.
We’re a purple state. Joe Biden won it by under 21,000 votes last time. We have a tendency to have those really close statewide elections, sometimes under a 1% difference, and it means a number of things. One showing up. For Joe Biden, this is his ninth or 10th trip. In fact, he’s been here so often, I’m gonna ask the governor if he’s eligible for residency requirements to pay state income taxes. He has done so much to deliver for the American people. Investing in infrastructure. Rebuilding things in this country. Creating good paying jobs. Reducing costs for Americans in healthcare and energy through the inflation Reduction Act. And today, he’s announcing saving millions more people money on their student debt. That’s the sort of stuff people want from a president. So he’s actually showing he’s taking that age and experience he brings to actually deliver things and get things done. At the end of the day, people in Wisconsin, that’s what they’re gonna look at you look at. Clearly, Joe Biden has been very good for families in Wisconsin, and I think that’s going to pay off. If the election was decided just on the merits what I just explained what the president’s doing for people he should win, no problem.
It has been six months since Israel launched its brutal assault on the Gaza Strip on October 7.
Israel shows no sign of stopping, as its allies continue to provide it with more weapons to use on Palestinians along with political support, and mediated talks have not led to a ceasefire.
The war on Gaza, Israel says, is in retaliation for attacks on Israeli territory by armed groups, led by Hamas’s Qassam Brigades, from Gaza which killed 1,139 people and took about 250 captive.
Let’s take a look at the toll the Israeli attacks have taken on Gaza.
How many people have been killed or injured?
At least 33,137 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army in Gaza since the start of the war on October 7, the Ministry of Health in Gaza says.
Thousands more are missing under the rubble of collapsed buildings and infrastructure, and are presumed dead.
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Children and women comprise the overwhelming majority of those killed, with Save the Children saying more than 13,800 children have been killed.
UNICEF, the United Nations fund for children, estimated that at least 17,000 Palestinian children are currently unaccompanied or separated from their parents in Gaza.
At least 75,815 people have been injured in Israeli attacks since the start of the war – about four out of every 100 people in Gaza.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said this week that some 1,000 children in Gaza have lost one or both of their legs.
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Dozens of people are still killed and injured every day amid relentless Israeli attacks.
Are people starving?
The humanitarian situation in Gaza has grown significantly worse in 2024 as the Israeli army blocks the arrival of aid and has effectively imposed starvation as a weapon of war.
Nearly all 2.3 million people trapped in Gaza now face starvation, with the UN saying famine will take hold in various parts of Gaza by May.
Northern Gaza, which was the first to be decimated by an Israeli ground invasion, is the worst-hit – Israel continues to severely restrict access to the north, blocking routes and subjecting aid convoys to delays or cancellations.
Babies and young children have died from dehydration and malnutrition in northern Gaza, but Israel is still blocking many humanitarian missions.
Last week, Israeli forces deliberately killed seven foreign aid workers in three targeted, consecutive strikes on a convoy of cars over a stretch of 2.3km (1.4 miles), prompting some aid organisations to suspend services.
How many people have been displaced?
The Israeli military ordered Palestinians to “go south” from the start of the war as its ground forces invaded Gaza from the north.
Nobody has been able to return to their homes in northern Gaza since then as Israel has established a military corridor cutting the Strip in half.
Some 1.9 million people, or more than 80 percent of Gaza’s population, have been internally displaced. Most are sheltering in UN installations such as schools and hospitals, nevertheless, more than 400 have been killed and at least 1,400 injured in those places.
More than 1.5 million people are now crammed into Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city on the border with Egypt. Many have been forced to stay in makeshift camps or the streets, exposed to Israeli air attacks.
Israel has insisted it will invade Rafah by land as well.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) says more than 350 Israeli military attacks have targeted its buildings, with 161 installations damaged. The highest number of UN staff in history – 176 – have been killed in Gaza since October 7.
How much of Gaza is in ruins?
The war has damaged or destroyed approximately 62 percent of all homes in Gaza – 290,820 housing units – leaving more than a million people without homes.
The $18.5bn in damage estimated by the World Bank and the UN has also been to public service infrastructure, with 26 million tonnes of debris and rubble left by the destruction.
Damage has been most extensive in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, where Israeli ground and air attacks destroyed thousands of homes and infrastructure in a stated effort to combat “terrorists”.
Eight of every 10 schools in Gaza are damaged or destroyed, according to UNICEF. As many as 625,000 students have no access to education.
Are hospitals functioning?
The Israeli army has focused its attacks on hospitals across Gaza despite their protection under international law, claiming Hamas is operating within and underneath them.
All hospitals have suffered critical damage, with only 10 out of 36 able to function partially but they are increasingly overburdened.
A two-week-long siege in and around al-Shifa Hospital, the largest in Gaza, left it heavily damaged and burned by last week. The Israeli army killed at least 400 people at the compound during its siege and arrested hundreds more.
An acute shortage of medicine, along with exhausted and starving healthcare professionals, means most patients are unable to receive treatment in Gaza. Many operations and amputations have had to be performed without anaesthetic.
How many journalists have been killed?
The Israeli army has killed the largest number of journalists of any modern conflict and detained more than 24.
On March 18, Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul was arrested for 12 hours and beaten by Israeli forces in al-Shifa Hospital.
Before that, on January 7, Al Jazeera journalist Hamza Dahdouh, son of Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh, was killed by an Israeli missile in Khan Younis. Hamza was in a vehicle near al-Mawasi with another journalist, Mustafa Thuraya, who was also killed in the attack.
On December 15, 2023, Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abudaqa was hit in an Israeli drone attack that also injured Wael Dahdouh, in Khan Younis, Gaza.
Abudaqa bled to death over four hours as emergency workers were unable to reach him because the Israeli army would not let them.
The Committee to Protect Journalists puts the number of journalists killed at 90, with the Government Media Office in Gaza saying some 140 have been killed.
Last week, an Israeli strike targeted a journalists’ tent in the courtyard of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, killing at least four people and wounding multiple journalists.
I remember how our Israeli Prime Minster, Benjamin Netanyahu, toldHolocaust survivors at an elderly home, “The Holocaust happened because there was no State of Israel. If there had been a Jewish state before, there would have been no Holocaust.”
Later, he would tell the whole world while speaking from the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum that “the Jewish state has learned the lessons of the Holocaust. Has the world learned the lessons of the Holocaust?”
What lesson has the Jewish state learned?
That we, ourselves, can commit a Holocaust in Gaza in 2024, and then deny that it exists. Indeed, we have even decried sober UN appraisals of our genocide as an “obscene inversion of reality.”
We haven’t even seen the worst of it. As Palestinian-American author Susan Abulhawa reports from her visit to Gaza, “the reality on the ground is infinitely worse than the worst videos and photos that we’re seeing in the West.” Israelis generally avoid seeing any of it — what do we care?
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“People first resorted to eating horse and donkey feed, but that’s gone. Now they’re eating the donkeys and horses,” Abulhawa writes. “Some are eating stray cats and dogs, which are themselves starving and sometimes feeding on human remains that litter streets where Israeli snipers picked off people who dared to venture within the sight of their scopes. The old and weak have already died of hunger and thirst.”
“What I see is a holocaust.” she summarizes. “The incomprehensible culmination of 75 years of Israeli impunity for persistent war crimes.”
I second that.
But most Israelis are holocaust deniers. Oh, how we hate the Holocaust deniers, so oblivious to the total destruction of European Jewry. How could they be so utterly callous in questioning the numbers, saying that it was “just a war?”
That’s what we do. We downplay it, call it a war of self-defense, and erase history — it all started on October 7. Over 13,000 dead children, some starved to death, do not seem to alter our perception. It’s just collateral damage.
This is possible because the Palestinians are Nazis now. If you ask about “civilians,” Israelis will, in the words of former Prime Minister Naftali Bennet, say: “What is wrong with you?!” Or, like Israeli President Isaac Herzog, they would assert that there are no “uninvolved” in Gaza.
They’re all Nazis.
But you know what? We are the Judeo-Nazis now. It’s never been so clear. Oh, yes, there are right-wing Judeo-Nazis, who have spoken of “wiping out” Huwwara before October 7, but now there are the many kibbutznikswho openly speak of wiping out Gaza. Two-thirds of us, including nearly 40% of the “left wing,” literally want to deprive Gazans of the most basic humanitarian aid (it’s 80% on the right wing, by the way, and they constitute about two-thirds of Israeli voters).
In other words, most of us literally want to starve Palestinians.
Others opt for a more “proportionate” genocide, simply bombing them by the hundreds, ostensibly for the purpose of killing one Hamas leader.
We have learned nothing. Our morality is dust.
Should I be more nuanced? Yes, perhaps there were some more sensible Nazis. I hear Hitler was generally quite polite in his familiar circles. But not to the human animals. They could be exterminated, and the world would be a better place without such vermin.
Now the Palestinians are the “human animals,” in the words of our Defense Minister, Yoav Galant. I haven’t heard many Israelis rebuff his words. After all, he’s been critical of Netanyahu from inside the government — he’s nuanced!
The depths to which we have sunk leave me wondering how there still are countries on our side. What the hell is wrong with them? Don’t they see that, by supporting Israel economically and militarily, they are abetting a genocide?
Clearly, Israelis aren’t the only ones who haven’t learned the lessons of the Holocaust.
26:15 Kim Severson, a food correspondent for The New York Times:
I’m curious how you think about the speed with which Israel came out and said it was in the wrong here because as you said that’s not how Israel typically reacts to many of these situations and that makes me think that it might have something to do with the nature of the aid group that was the target of these air strikes the world Central Kitchen and its story.
26:46 Adam Rasgon, an Israel correspondent for The New York Times:
I think it does have to do with this particular group. This is a group that’s led by a celebrity chef, very high-profile, who has gone run around the world to conflict zones disaster areas to provide food Aid, and I also think it has to do with the people who were killed, most of whom were Western foreign aid workers. Frankly I don’t think we would be having this conversation if a group of Palestinian Aid workers had been killed.
27:23 Severson:
Nor perhaps would you be having the reaction that we have had so far from the Israeli government.
27:28 Rasgon:
I would agree with that.
The Intercept commented on the comments:
“In a New York Times podcast episode yesterday about Israel’s killing of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers, an Israel correspondent made this stunning admission about how little the paper values Palestinian lives:
‘Frankly, I don’t think we would be having this conversation if a group of Palestinian aid workers had been killed.’
For months, The Intercept has documented how Palestinian lives are routinely devalued in major U.S. news outlets. Nevertheless, it was chilling to hear two Times journalists in a heavily produced and edited piece flatly state that Palestinian deaths aren’t newsworthy.”
In a letter to the president, the lawmakers expressed their “outrage regarding the recent Israeli airstrike which killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers”
FOLLOWING THE KILLING of seven World Central Kitchen workers by an Israeli strike while delivering food to Gaza earlier this week, House Democrats wrote a letter on Friday to U.S. President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken urging them to halt the the transfer of weapons to Israel until a full investigation into the airstrike was completed.
The letter, spearheaded by Reps. Mark Pocan, Jim McGovern and Jan Schakowsky, was signed by 40 lawmakers including Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“In light of this incident, we strongly urge you to reconsider your recent decision to authorize the transfer of a new arms package to Israel, and to withhold this and any future offensive arms transfers until a full investigation into the airstrike is completed,” wrote the representatives. “If this strike is found to have violated U.S. or international law, we urge you to continue withholding these transfers until those responsible are held accountable. We also urge you to withhold these transfers if Israel fails to sufficiently mitigate harm to innocent civilians in Gaza, including aid workers, and if it fails to facilitate – or arbitrarily denies or restricts – the transport and delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza.”
In a statement to Rolling Stone, a spokesperson for Pelosi said she is “sympathetic to some of the thoughts in the letter, and she feels very strongly that there must be a comprehensive, independent investigation into the horrific killing of the World Central Kitchen heroes,” adding, “Speaker Pelosi knows President Biden’s support for Israel and empathy with the innocent civilians in Gaza, and she respects his judgment in how to proceed.”
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The letter also addressed reports that an estimated 32,000 people have been killed in Gaza since October 7, and that the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification initiative (IPC) recently warned that widespread famine is imminent and “expected to occur anytime between now and the next month if there is not an immediate cessation of hostilities.”
“In light of the recent strike against aid workers and the ever-worsening humanitarian crisis, we believe it is unjustifiable to approve these weapons transfers. We again strongly urge you to withhold any offensive weapons transfers until the investigation into the airstrike is concluded and, if it is found this strike violated U.S. or international law, those responsible are held accountable,” the lawmakers emphasized. “And we again urge you to ensure that any future military assistance to Israel, including already authorized transfers, is subject to conditions to ensure it is used in compliance with U.S. and international law.”
While earlier this week, Biden warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate actions” regarding U.S. demands for Israel to take concrete steps to address the humanitarian crisis in the besieged region — his administration has been criticized for not supporting his condemnation of the killings with actionable policy.
This article was updated on April 5 at 10:04 p.m. E.T. to included a statement from Nancy Pelosi’s spokesperson.