Category Archives: human rights

Gaza crisis: ‘Huge surge’ in displaced people after night of intensified violence – live | World | The Guardian

13:41 EST: 60 minutes ago: Israeli strikes on Gaza continued Tuesday evening after an all-out barrage the night before that was responsible for as many as 110 Palestinian deaths in a 24-hour period.

A strike or strikes in Jabalia camp north of Gaza City killed 10 Palestinians, medics said. Earlier strikes in Khan Younis in the south killed 15 members of three families, and 11 people were killed in a strike on a house in Bureij refugee camp in Gaza City.

The “night of intensified violence” created a “huge surge of displacement” in Gaza, the UN said, with 200,337 people now packed into 85 UNRWA shelters.

The Israeli military said it hit “over 70 terror sites throughout the Gaza Strip” overnight including a home belonging to former Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh, a finance ministry building, and the Gaza power plant.

53 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the fighting, the army said, and three civilians including a Thai national have died. 2,612 rockets have been fired from Gaza in about three weeks, the IDF said.

1,175 Gazans have died in the conflict so far and an estimated 6,900 have been wounded, health officials estimated.

via Gaza crisis: ‘Huge surge’ in displaced people after night of intensified violence – live | World | The Guardian.

Analysis: “Mercy” of Israeli occupation at work in Gaza | Maan News Agency

In the midst of the ongoing onslaught against Gaza — which has resulted in the deaths of more than 1,200 Palestinians and the wiping out of entire families — Israel has at times been accused of targeting civilians.

The Israeli armed forces, however, have made much of their “humanitarian” credentials and concern for civilian life, claims which have been most notably exemplified in the argument that they warn civilians of an impending attack through a “knock” — whether through the firing of a non-explosive projectile at the roof, or through a phone call or text message.

The notion that these warnings are somehow “humanitarian gestures” says much about the extent to which Palestinians have been subject to extensive dehumanization. On the basis of the military’s own proud proclamation of this policy you could be forgiven for forming the impression that the residents of Gaza should be grateful to Israel for giving them advance warning of the obliteration of their own homes.

But are these “warned” families even able to escape unharmed?

In order to grasp the extent to which the open celebration of this policy represents a fundamental perversion, we must engage with the most basic precondition of humanitarianism and imagine the position of Gazans.

For a minute, put

yourself in the shoes of the Gazans who receive these warnings.

You have just received notice that your home is to be obliterated in a matter of moments. Look around you — how would you react?

All around you there are things that you need and things which are essential to your life: Where can you go without a passport? What if your employer asks you for your birth certificate? And then there are things which are personal to you: your wedding photograph, a photograph from a now distant childhood, a gift from a friend, your child’s graduation pictures. How could you possibly choose? On what basis would you decide what is worth more to you?

You would want to be sure that you left nothing valuable behind, so you would run through the house, aware that you only have a few moments to find what is most valuable to you. You would perhaps tell yourself to focus on the task before you as you empty bags and hurl your clothes and personal belongings across the room; surely you will stop only to take the bare essentials?

It can all be replaced, you tell yourself.

But there is something that cannot be replaced — the personal significance of the objects which you leave behind: the small things you hoped to hand onto your own children, the heirlooms which your own parents had passed onto you. Perhaps your hands will pass over these objects in a fleeting moment, a final farewell to a past you must now leave behind. Only afterwards will you realize just how much of yourself has been left behind.

Even the closeness of the moment fails to fully concentrate your mind: who can be entirely practical at times like this? Your hands knock jars off the shelves, and stupidly clutch at useless cooking utensils. You enter the bathroom and grasp at a towel and toothbrush.

Momentarily your mind snaps back to reality: a holiday? Is that where you think you are going? Chiding yourself, you run back into the living room, stopping by a chair — again your senses snap you back, reprimanding your utter absurdity: do you really think you can take a chair with you?

Suddenly you awake, as if from a dream. Was it three minutes or 56 seconds? Who can be sure? It’s not as if you can ask the person with their finger on the trigger when you will die. You grab what is most valuable to you, what you could never imagine leaving behind.

In a split second you take your children’s hands and run from the house, leaving everything else behind you, knowing that you will never return and facing the unknown.

No wonder we hear the Gazans who survive talk about the slow death they experience.

via Analysis: Mercy of Israeli occupation at work in Gaza | Maan News Agency.

New fears about Ebola spread after plane scare | Life , Health | THE DAILY STAR

{Thankfully, more and more news outlets are covering this epidemic now, even if a bit late into the process – any number of people exposed to ebola could fly anywhere in the world within 24 hours and potentially expose thousands – for real! The only saving grace is that, the disease requires direct contact with body fluids of someone infected – so it does not spread that quickly or by air. But! Someone could be exposed and not show symptoms for up toe 21 days!}

No one knows for sure just how many people Patrick Sawyer came into contact with the day he boarded a flight in Liberia, had a stopover in Ghana, changed planes in Togo, and then arrived in Nigeria, where authorities say he died days later from Ebola, one of the deadliest diseases known to man.

Now health workers are scrambling to trace those who may have been exposed to Sawyer across West Africa, including flight attendants and fellow passengers.

Health experts say it is unlikely he could have infected others with the virus that can cause victims to bleed from the eyes, mouth and ears. Still, unsettling questions remain: How could a man whose sister recently died from Ebola manage to board a plane leaving the country? And worse: Could Ebola become the latest disease to be spread by international air travel?

Sawyer’s death on Friday has led to tighter screening of airline passengers in West Africa, where an unprecedented outbreak that emerged in March has killed more than 670 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. But some health authorities expressed little confidence in such precautions.

via New fears about Ebola spread after plane scare | Life , Health | THE DAILY STAR.

Israel orders residents of Zaytoun in central Gaza to evacuate | Maan News Agency

Israel ordered residents of Zaytoun in central Gaza to evacuate, adding to more than 400,000 people who have been issued evacuation orders in the last two days.

via Israel orders residents of Zaytoun in central Gaza to evacuate | Maan News Agency.

Just hard to believe the callousness!

David Frum (former Bush speech writer) Accuses NYT and Reuters of Staging Gaza Hospital Photos (GRAPHIC) — BagNews

Defending Israel with the objectivity and intensity of the Bush speech writer he once was, David Frum, the Senior Editor at the Atlantic, alleged to his 100k Twitter followers on Thursday (not once, but eight times) that the NYT, Reuters (and AP, apparently in collusion, too) had staged a photo in a Gaza hospital.

via David Frum Accuses NYT and Reuters of Staging Gaza Hospital Photos (GRAPHIC) — BagNews.

Cop Allegedly Puts Pregnant Woman In Chokehold Over Illegal Grilling: Gothamist

Chokeholds were prohibited as a restraint tactic by the NYPD in 1993. Nevertheless, several instances of the maneuver have been widely publicized in recent weeks, following the death of Eric Garner, a Staten Island man who perished earlier this month as police restrained him in a chokehold. Garner, who suffered from asthma, repeatedly told cops that he couldn’t breathe as they held him.

via Cop Allegedly Puts Pregnant Woman In Chokehold Over Illegal Grilling: Gothamist.

The US is locking up pregnant immigrants despite policy against it

According to official Immigration and Customs Enforcement guidelines, pregnant immigrants aren’t supposed to be detained except if they pose a public safety threat. ICE officials have claimed this is such a rare occurrence it’s not even worth asking about.

But an investigation by Fusion found that 559 pregnant women have been detained by ICE in just six facilities since 2012. Unsurprisingly, given the inhumane conditions in many ICE detention centers, activists say pregnant detainees have been underfed and denied medical care, and at least 14 women had miscarriages while locked up.

via The US is locking up pregnant immigrants despite policy against it.

Former Israeli ambassador calls for ‘crushing’ Hamas – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East

The civilian casualties in Gaza are disproportionate, with much higher fatalities and wounded among Palestinians, and Israel has violated the immunity of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) shelters in Gaza. Netanyahu is impatient to continue the project of crushing Hamas, as described by Oren. Israel’s right-wing government is returning to the impulse that led to the “crushing” of the Palestinian people in Lydda in 1948.

via Former Israeli ambassador calls for ‘crushing’ Hamas – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East.