Criticize Israel? You’re Fired.

The Intercept / Global Research

A climate of fear is gripping U.S. newsrooms as a growing list of journalists have been fired, suspended, or otherwise sidelined after refusing to abide by the pro-Israel bias across the U.S. news media.

The New York Times, Associated Press, BBC, and Los Angeles Times are just a handful of the more prominent news outlets where journalists say they were sidelined after criticizing Israel or expressing sympathy for Palestinians.

Meanwhile, the death toll in the Gaza Strip now exceeds 18,000, and more than 80 percent of Palestinians there have been displaced by the war.

Since October 7, there have been numerous incidents reported in which journalists were fired, demoted, suspended, or otherwise silenced after voicing criticism of Israel, including:

Read more 

See also:  "Israel’s Genocide Has Killed More Journalists Than WWI and WWII Combined" - "As of late March [2025] at least 232 journalists have been killed in the Gaza genocide, with the vast majority being Palestinians, according to a new paper by the Costs of War project in Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. Nearly 380 journalists have been wounded in the violence as of January, per the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate". 

The head of the Committee to Protect Journalists stated in 2024, "Israel's war on Gaza is more deadly to journalists than any previous war"

The Media Loves “The Experts,” Until it’s Time to Count Gaza’s Dead

Current Affairs | Lex Syd

Public debate around Gaza fixates on a death toll that is probably half the size of the real number. 

ar from being inflated by sneaky Hamas propagandists, the commonly cited death toll of the war in Gaza is an extreme undercount. 

Virtually every news article about the Israel-Hamas war cites the death toll provided by the strip’s Ministry of Health. Currently at 60,900 (and climbing by the day), the MOH toll is widely accepted as an accurate minimum. Still, journalists and political figures aligned with Israel often call it into question in a range of ways, from attaching the label “Hamas-controlled” to the Ministry itself to outright denying its accuracy. In 2023, even former President Joe Biden invoked this idea, saying that he had “no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.”

Because the Ministry’s death toll has attracted this undeserved controversy, the standard reporting line is to explain why the MOH figures are considered reliable. For example, the Washington Post recently published a detailed accounting of the names, and in some cases the photos, of roughly 18,500 children who are counted among the dead overall.

But in defending and insisting on the MOH figures, media outlets have defended the bare minimum, and the result is a public debate that revolves around an understated count. Hence why New York Times columnist Bret Stephens can write an opinion piece arguing that 60,000 dead is tragic, but small relative to what Israel could do. Those terms of debate are accepted even by his harshest critics.

But the figure everyone knows is not an undercount of a few thousand or even ten thousand. The real toll could well be twice as high. That is according to a growing body of research that is conspicuously absent in news coverage of Gaza—despite the eagerness of newsrooms to emphasize expert opinion on other divisive topics, like COVID-19 policy or climate change.

The standard figure largely counts only those whose bodies reached health workers and those who were killed violently. But in reality, the institutions that count the dead are heavily degraded, thousands remain under rubble, and deaths due to malnutrition or easily preventable diseases are rarely included in MOH totals, if at all.

How Many Gazans Have Died According to Experts?

A reasonable, conservative estimate of the death toll in Gaza is about 100,000. And the figure may well tally to 200,000, if not now, then by the war’s end. 

Read more

Humanitarian “Aid” deathtraps: The Israeli-American horrifying new face of Israel’s Gaza genocide

Eva Bartlett

In Gaza

Israel’s relentless slaughter and brutality against civilians in the region has led to Israel’s demise: it is hated around the world and has lost its victim card permanently.

My latest, first published on RT.com, June 30, 2025
*The republished version here is longer. Warning: graphic photos & videos

For over 630 days, the world has watched the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, primarily by bombing, sniping, and starvation. Off-camera, we’ve read about the rape and torture of Palestinian hostages, including the torturing to death of three doctors from the enclave.

For the last 100 days, Israel has reinforced a full blockade on Gaza, depriving starving Palestinians of food, drinking water, medicines, and fuel – meaning ambulances cannot function. This is following prior blockades last year, and the overall blockade of the strip, which has lasted over 17 years.

Since late May, we’ve been seeing horrific video footage of skeletal Palestinians lined up hoping for food aid being gunned down by US mercenaries and Israeli soldiers.

[...]

 Every imaginable crime, Israel has done it to Palestinians: bombed, invaded, destroyed hospitals, abducting doctors and patients; bombed churches, schools, UN centres and tents housing displaced Palestinians—in supposed “safe zones” where they were ordered by the Israeli army to flee to; killed over 200 journalists; deliberately killed medics; even decapitated babies…The list of crimes is too long to summarize here.

Read more 

Jonathan Cook: ‘Blood Libel’ Paradox & Israel’s Genocide

Consortium News

Jonathan Cook 

There’s a dangerous paradox that helps to dissuade people, especially public figures, from speaking up even as Israel’s genocide in Gaza grows more horrifying by the day. Let us call it the “blood libel” paradox.

It works like this. In Medieval times, Jews were accused of murdering non-Jews, particularly children, to use their blood in the performance of religious rituals. Every time a Jew is accused of murdering a non-Jew, so the thinking goes, this endangers Jews by fueling the very kind of antisemitism that ultimately led to the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

Responsible people, or at least those with a reputation to protect, therefore avoid making any statements that might contribute to the impression that Jews — or in this case, the soldiers of the Jewish state of Israel — are killing non-Jews.

If such criticisms are made, they must be carefully couched by Western politicians, the media and public figures in language that makes the killing of non-Jews — in this case, Muslim and Christian Palestinians — appear reasonable.

Israel is simply “defending itself” in killing and maiming 100,000s of civilians in Gaza after Hamas’ one-day attack on Oct. 7, 2023.

The enclave’s masses of dead innocents are just the unfortunate price paid to secure the “return of Israeli hostages” held by Hamas.

Israel’s active, months-long starvation of Gaza’s children is a “humanitarian crisis,” not a crime against humanity.

Anyone who dissents from this narrative is denounced as an antisemite, whether they be millions of ordinary people; every respected human rights organisation in the world, including the Israeli group B’Tselem; the World Health Organisation; the International Criminal Court; genocide scholars like Omer Bartov, himself an Israeli; and so on.

It is the perfect, self-reinforcing loop, one entirely divorced from the reality being live-streamed to us daily.

Read more 

Israel demolishes 24 Palestinian buildings in less than 2 months: UN

Press TV

The United Nations (UN) says the Israeli regime has demolished two dozen Palestinian buildings and structures across the occupied West Bank in less than two months.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a new report, excerpts of which were carried by Palestinian Information Center on Sunday, that Israeli authorities demolished 24 Palestinian buildings and structures across the occupied region between July 30 and August 19.

The OCHA said that the recent demolitions displaced nine people and affected at least 80 other Palestinians, adding that the number of people displaced by such demolitions had amounted to at least 480 people so far this year, more than the 472 Palestinians displaced in the entire 2018.

According to the report, within the reported period, 10 buildings were demolished in East Jerusalem al-Quds, and the remaining demolitions were carried out in four communities in the so-called Area C.

It said 13 of the demolished structures in Area C were being used for humanitarian purposes, including seven located in a herding community in the northern Jordan Valley.

Read more

Crypto Is Part of Free Speech, and Free Speech Is Everything

Graham Smith 
Activist Post 

 On July 23, U.S. Attorney General William Barr gave a speech demanding big players in the tech industry work with government agencies in providing backdoor entry points for encrypted devices and software. Per his reasoning, certain devices and messaging services pose a safety threat by providing a secure, third-party-inaccessible area where crime can rapidly proliferate. He didn’t note that this “warrant-proof encryption” also protects journalists, researchers, and individuals in areas of political unrest living under corrupt governments. Secure encryption also protects and verifies the financial assets and transactions of cryptocurrency holders everywhere. If strings of code — ideas, in essence — are now being made illegal, it would appear that a brand new battle for humanity’s free expression is just beginning. 

Crypto Is Free Speech

Article 19 of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Of course, governments worldwide, and the UN itself, do not abide by this proclamation, but that last point is still of critical importance. The reception, transmission, and search for information via any media “regardless of frontiers” is part of free speech. Crypto is a technology. An idea. And it’s not limited by geographical constraints or “frontiers.” It’s a means by which to impart, receive, and seek information. After all, a bitcoin transaction or encrypted message is, in essence, an expression of information. 

Read more

Israel’s machinery of dispossession has crushed the hopes of an inspirational family

Jonathan Cook
The National

The struggle of Jawad Siyam perfectly illustrates the relentless oppression faced by all Palestinians

Israeli police forced out the Siyam family from their home in the heart of occupied East Jerusalem last week, the final chapter in their 25-year legal battle against a powerful settler organisation.

The family’s defeat represented much more than just another eviction. It was intended to land a crushing blow against the hopes of some 20,000 Palestinians living in the shadow of the Old City walls and Al Aqsa mosque.

Dozens of families in the Silwan neighbourhood have endured the same fate as the Siyams, and the Israeli courts have approved the imminent eviction of many hundreds more Palestinians from the area.

But, unlike those families, the Siyams’ predicament briefly caught public attention. That was because one of them, Jawad Siyam, has become a figurehead of Silwan’s resistance efforts.

Mr Siyam, a social worker, has led the fight against Elad, a wealthy settler group that since the early 1990s has been slowly erasing Silwan’s Palestinian identity, in order to remake it as the City of David archeological park.

Mr Siyam has served as a spokesman, drawing attention to Silwan’s plight. He has also helped to organise the community, setting up youth and cultural centres to fortify Silwan’s identity and sense of purpose in the face of Israel’s relentless oppression.

Read more

Saudi Arabia Lifts Travel Restrictions On Women

Zero Hedge

The gradual liberalization of Saudi Arabia's repressive laws and social mores continued on Thursday with WSJ reporting that Crown Prince MBS plans to drop restrictions barring women from traveling out of the country without a male guardian's permission. Though we suspect that this time, there will be no glowing NYT op-ed praising the young crown prince - the kingdom's de facto ruler - for his reformist tendencies and his respect for human rights.

It won't happen right away: WSJ says the kingdom plans to end the ban some time this year. The plan would end guardianship laws relating to travel for men and women over 18 years old. As it stands, women of any age, and men under 21, must have a guardian's permission to travel internationally. Soon, that won't be the case.

Read more

‘Weaponizing human rights’: UN chief Bachelet’s Venezuela report follows US regime change script

Anya Parampil
The Grayzone

Former UN special rapporteur Alfred de Zayas slams UN High Commissioner Bachelet’s report on Venezuela as a politicized collection of baseless accusations by “advocates of regime change”

When United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet traveled to Venezuela earlier this year, she met with an array of citizens who lost family members to right-wing violence in the country. 

Among them was Inés Esparragoza, whose 20-year-old son, Orlando Figuera, was doused with gasoline and lit on fire by an opposition mob during violent anti-government riots, known as guarimbas, in May 2017. 

“He was stabbed, beaten and cruelly burnt alive,” Esparragoza declared before Bachelet in March. “Simply because of the color of his shirt, the color of his skin, and because he said he was Chavista.”

While Esparragoza poured her family’s torment out before the former Chilean president, Bachelet scribbled notes and glanced down at horrific photos which captured the moment masked men attacked Figuera. As the young man knelt to the ground, a gang of anti-government thugs poured petrol over his body before lighting a match.

“I call on the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to make justice,” she said. “These are not peaceful protesters, they are bloodthirsty.”

Yet shockingly, when Bachelet released her long-anticipated report on the situation in Venezuela on July 5, it was as though that meeting never took place.
 
Read more

Report: Israel committed 84 violations against Palestinian journalists in May

Comment: Business as usual for Israel...

-------------------

Press TV

The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) says the Israeli military committed 84 violations against Palestinian journalists in the month of May as the Tel Aviv regime continues its repressive measures against members of the press both in the occupied West Bank and besieged Gaza Strip.

MADA, in a report published on Sunday, announced that the number marks a sharp increase compared to the preceding month of April, when 19 violations were documented.

The report then pointed to the recent closure of Facebook accounts of at least 65 Palestinian journalists and activists in a campaign carried out on May 23 and 24.

MADA further noted that Israeli military aircraft targeted and destroyed the office of Turkey’s official Anadolu news agency, besides the office of Palestine Liberation Organization-affiliated Abdullah al-Hourani Center for Studies and Documentation when they bombed the Gaza Strip on May 4.

The report went on to say that Palestinian photojournalist Mohammed Mahmoud Hassan suffered a gunshot wound as he was covering a weekly demonstration against the expropriation of Palestinian lands by the Israeli regime in the village of Kfar Qaddum, near Nablus in the occupied West Bank, on May 10.

Two journalists, identified as 42-year-old Abdel Rahim Mohammed Khatib and Ramzi Hatem al-Shukrit, 35, were also separately injured during their coverage of the anti-occupation Great March of Return protests east of the border city of Rafah, located 30 kilometers south of Gaza City, on the same day.

One of them was struck by a rubber-coated metal bullet, while the other was directly hit by a tear gas canister.

On May 12, Israeli military forces arrested seven journalists and human rights activists in the northern Jordan Valley area, and prevented them from covering deportations being carried out by the military against Palestinian farmers and residents living there.

Read more

Israel cuts Gaza fishing zone again after new fire balloons

RT 

 

Israel has cut the fishing zone it allows off Gaza in the third such response in a fortnight to Palestinian incendiary balloons. 

 

As of Wednesday, the fishing limit for Gaza fishermen had been reduced from a maximum of 15 nautical miles to 10, AFP reported, citing an Israeli official. 

 

Incendiary balloons from Gaza caused three blazes on Tuesday, according to a spokesperson for the Israeli fire service. They reportedly followed Israel’s move to restore the limit to 15 miles after a previous reduction in response to fire balloons last week. 

 

The limit of up to 15 nautical miles set ahead of Israel’s April general election is the largest allowed in years. Human rights activists say it falls short of the 20 nautical miles agreed under the Oslo accords of the 1990s.

 

Related Articles:

 

Tuesday, April 30, 2019 - Reduction of Gaza fishing zone an 'illegal collective punishment'

A decision by the Israeli military to scale down the permitted fishing zone in the besieged Gaza Strip comes as "no surprise" to the enclave's 4,000 fishermen. "The decision did not come as a surprise. The occupation always backs down from agreements that affect fishermen in the strip," Zakaria Bakr, head of Gaza's fishermen's union, told Al Jazeera. Citing an alleged rocket attack, the Israeli army said on Tuesday fishing in Gaza would only be permitted up to six nautical miles (11km) until further notice.

Taxpayers Shell Out Record $6.75m After Cops Deprived Man of Water for 7 Days Until He Died

Comment: Of all the many symptoms of an increase in psychopathology in law enforcement and the penal system, this is one of the worst.

---------------------- 

Matt Agorist
The Free Thought Project 

As TFTP reported in 2017, a jury found probable cause to bring criminal charges against seven jailhouse employees in the dehydration death of Terrill Thomas for cutting off the water to his cell until he died of dehydration. Since then, three of the officers were found guilty and handed down insultingly low sentences. And now, the taxpayers are taking the brunt of the responsibility as Thomas’ family receives a $6.75 million settlement.

“It reflects the callous disregard for Terrill Thomas’ life,” Ed Budge, a Seattle-based attorney who was part of the legal team representing Thomas’ estate told CNN on Wednesday. “We are satisfied that the settlement reflects the atrociousness of what happened, and it’s an appropriate result for this case.”

During an inquest in 2017, multiple inmates testified that they heard the 38-year-old beg for water—for days. After being locked in a cage with no water for seven days, Thomas finally died.

Thomas, a mentally ill inmate, had been placed in solitary confinement for seven days. Throughout his time in his jail cell, it was reported not once was he allowed the customary one hour of free time in the yard. In a seeming protest to his conditions, Thomas clogged the toilet, prompting the officers to shut all the water, not just the toilet water, off to his cell.

After hearing from nine jail employees, NBC News reported at the time that the jury deliberated for two hours before recommending charges be filed with one simple word, “Yes.” However, the jury’s decision would not lead to much accountability.

Lt. Kashka Meadors, who ordered the water to be cut off to Thomas’ cell pleaded no contest to abuse of residents in a penal facility, ending her criminal case, according to CNN affiliate WITI.

Officer James Ramsey-Guy, who obeyed the order to shut off the water to Thomas’ cell, took a similar plea deal.

Meadors received just 60 days of work release while Ramsey-Guy received only 30.

“I wouldn’t wish this upon my worst enemy…it’ll take you away. I feel like I passed away, losing my father. I don’t have him anymore. I’m not going to be who I used to be,” said Terrill Barns, Thomas’ son.

Read more

View the Frontline Documentary on Gaza that PBS pulled

  Palestinians in Gaza carry an injured girl on March 31, 2018.
 

Alison Weir
If Americans Knew 

PBS stations around the U.S. were scheduled to show a riveting new Frontline documentary, "One Day in Gaza," but at the last minute PBS pulled it. 

The film is missing important context about the issue, but it includes footage that Americans, as Israel's top funders, should see – including a young, unarmed teen being shot in her head. 

BBC, the coproducer of the film, broadcast it to British viewers. We are posting it below so that Americans can also view it. 

Recently, hundreds of PBS stations around the United States were scheduled to broadcast a powerful new Frontline documentary: One Day in Gaza. But viewers tuning in found that it had been replaced by a slightly updated Frontline report on Robert Mueller that had been broadcast two months before and had been streaming online ever since.

PBS no longer has the Gaza film listed on its schedule.

The documentary was to be aired on the one-year anniversary of events that took place on May 14, 2018, when tens of thousands of men, women, and children in Gaza gathered with the intention of deploying the tactics Gandhi had used in freeing India from British control.

The demonstration that day was the 8th march in what Gazans named the Great March of Return.

Palestinians months earlier had announced their plan for a mass, peaceful demonstration in which Gazans would march for an end to Israel's crippling 12-year blockade and, especially, for  their right to return to homes stolen by Israel in order to create a Jewish state. Palestinians' right to return to their homes and ancestral land is well established in international law. This fundamental right, affirmed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is at the center of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Israel had responded by immediately deploying a hundred snipers.

In the first seven weekly marches, Israeli forces killed about 50 of the marchers and injured over 7,000.

During the 8th march on May 14, the day depicted in the film, Israeli forces killed 60 more and shot 1,000 – an average of one person every 30 seconds.

While this was going on, a glittering Israeli celebration was taking place as a new, transplanted U.S. Embassy opened in Jerusalem, a city that Israel illegally annexed following the Six-Day War that Israel launched in 1967. 

Read more + Video

Big brother Britain: Facial recognition cameras deployed in London, man fined for covering his face

Mark Duell
Daily Mail

Police fined a pedestrian £90 for disorderly behaviour after he tried to cover his face when he saw a controversial facial recognition camera on a street in London.

Officers set up the camera on a van in Romford, East London, which then cross-checked photos of faces of passers-by against a database of wanted criminals.

But one man was unimpressed about being filmed and covered his face with his hat and jacket, before being stopped by officers who took his picture anyway.  


After being pulled aside, the man told police: 'If I want to cover me face, I'll cover me face. Don't push me over when I'm walking down the street.'

It comes just weeks after it was claimed the new technology incorrectly identified members of the public in 96 per cent of matches made between 2016 and 2018.

The cameras have been rolled out in a trial in parts of Britain, with the Met making its first arrest last December when shoppers in London's West End were scanned.

But their use has sparked a privacy debate, with civil liberties group Big Brother Watch branding the move a 'breach of fundamental rights to privacy and freedom of assembly'. Police argue they are necessary to crack down on spiralling crime.

Officers previously insisted people could decline to be scanned, before later clarifying that anyone trying to avoid scanners may be stopped and searched.

It was first deployed by South Wales Police ahead of the Champions League final in Cardiff in 2007, but wrongly matched more than 2,000 people to possible criminals.

Police and security services worldwide are keen to use facial recognition technology to bolster their efforts to fight crime and identify suspects.

But they have been hampered by the unreliability of the software, with some trials failing to correctly identify a single person.

The technology made incorrect matches in every case during two deployments at Westfield shopping centre in Stratford last year, according to Big Brother Watch. It was also reportedly 96 per cent accurate in eight uses by the Met from 2016 to 2018. 

Read more

Fallujah Forgotten

David Swanson

I don’t know if most people in the United States ever knew what Fallujah meant. It’s hard to believe the U.S. military would still exist if they did. But certainly it has been largely forgotten — a problem that could be remedied if everyone picks up a copy of The Sacking of Fallujah: A People’s History, by Ross Caputi (a U.S. veteran of one of the sieges of Fallujah), Richard Hill, and Donna Mulhearn.

Fallujah was the “city of mosques,” made up of some 300,000 to 435,000 people. It had a tradition of resisting foreign — including British — invasions. It suffered, as did all of Iraq, from the brutal sanctions imposed by the United States in the years leading up to the 2003 attack. During that attack, Fallujah saw crowded markets bombed. Upon the collapse of the Iraqi government in Baghdad, Fallujah established its own government, avoiding the looting and chaos seen elsewhere. In April, 2003, the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division moved into Fallujah and met no resistance.

Immediately the occupation began to produce the sort of problems seen by every occupation everywhere ever. People complained of Humvees speeding on the streets, of being humiliated at checkpoints, of women being treated inappropriately, of soldier urinating in the streets, and of soldiers standing on rooftops with binoculars in violation of residents’ privacy. Within days, the people of Fallujah wanted to be liberated from their “liberators.” So, the people tried nonviolent demonstrations. And the U.S. military fired on the protesters. But eventually, the occupiers agreed to be stationed outside the city, limit their patrols, and allow Fallujah a degree of self-governance beyond what the rest of Iraq was permitted. The result was a success: Fallujah was kept safer than the rest of Iraq by keeping the occupiers out of it.

That example, of course, needed to be crushed. The United States was claiming a moral obligation to liberate the hell out of Iraq to “maintain security” and “assist in transition to democracy.” Viceroy Paul Bremer decided to “clean out Fallujah.” In came the “coalition” troops, with their usual inability (mocked quite effectively in the Netflix Brad Pitt movie War Machine) to distinguish the people they were bestowing liberty and justice upon from the people they were killing. U.S. officials described the people they wanted to kill as “cancer,” and went about killing them with raids and firefights that killed a great many of the non-cancer people. How many people the United States was actually giving cancer to was unknown at the time.

Read more

Student slated to attend Western Michigan University beheaded in Saudi Arabia

David Jesse
Detroit Free Press
via sott.net

A Saudi Arabian man who was arrested as a teenager as he was getting ready to fly to America to begin his studies at Western Michigan University was beheaded by the government Tuesday, according to a report from an official press agency.

Mujtaba al-Sweikat was 17 when he was detained at King Fahd International Airport in 2012. Earlier that year, Al-Sweikat allegedly attended a pro-democracy rally in the midst of the Arab Spring, which led to his arrest. He was intending to visit Western Michigan, where he had been accepted as a student, the university confirmed to the Free Press in 2017.

More than 35 people, including al-Sweikat, were listed on a release from the Saudi Press Agency, announcing the killings.

Sweikat was charged with armed disobedience against the king, as well as attacking, shooting and injuring security forces, civilians and passersby. He was also accused of destroying public property, causing chaos and disrupting the peace, by participating in a terrorist cell, to make and deliver Molotov cocktails.      

During his time in custody, Sweikat was severely beaten all over his body, including the soles of his feet, and convicted on the basis of a confession extracted through torture, according to Reprieve, an international human rights group that has offices in New York and London and operates with partners around the world.

After his arrest, he was not allowed to contact anybody for three days, and his family were not allowed to visit him for three months, during which time he was kept in solitary confinement, according to Reprieve.

Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, D-Dearborn, expressed her concern over the killing.

Read more 

See also: UK slams Saudi beheadings, but arms sales for Riyadh's Yemen war still go on

Thought Police: US, Israel Increasingly Banning & Deporting Ideological Enemies

Alexander Rubenstein
Mint Press News

Israel and the US are simultaneously stepping up repression in the form of travel restrictions against critics of Israel’s human rights violations

 

TEL AVIV/WASHINGTON — Israel and the U.S. are simultaneously stepping up repression in the form of travel restrictions against critics of the apartheid state.

A Palestinian activist has been barred from entering the U.S. while an advocate with a leading human rights NGO – Human Rights Watch (HRW) – faced a ruling on Tuesday in Israeli courts which upheld the government’s deportation order against him.

Last week, the U.S. banned a founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, one Omar Barghouti, from entering its soil. Though the government’s official explanation was “immigration reasons,” there is plentiful evidence to suspect the ban was meant as a reprisal for his non-violent advocacy.

The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or popularly, BDS, is a campaign to economically pressure apartheid Israel into compliance with international law through boycotts of the government and Israeli companies.

Ariel Gold, national co-director of the anti-war women’s group Codepink, was deported last year from Israel after landing at Ben Gurion Airport. She told MintPress News:

I was denied entry and deported from Israel–even despite my being Jewish–solely for my political positions and peaceful BDS work for Palestinian rights. Last week the Trump administration partnered with Israel in the destruction of free speech when they denied BDS movement founder Omar Barghouti entry to the U.S”
Now Israel is deporting Omar Shakir, a human rights researcher from one of the world most credible human rights organizations–Human Rights Watch–for his and HRW’s peaceful advocacy to call on Israel should abide by international law and end its human rights abuses. This is shameful!”

Read more

American Jewish Council misrepresents facts about Gaza

If Americans Knew

The latest United Nations report on Israeli violence at the Gaza border, was vehemently rebutted by the American Jewish Committee; however the AJC defense came up very short on facts.

by Kathryn Shihadah, reposted from Palestine Home

AJC, the American Jewish Committee, released a statement last Friday rejecting the recent report from the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). The AJC statement includes decontextualizations and inaccuracies that deserve to be addressed. Below is their statement in italics, with responses.

“AJC denounces the latest UN Human Rights Council report singling out Israel for condemnation. The report was prepared by an “independent international commission of inquiry” established by the Council to investigate the violence that took place along the Gaza-Israel border from March 30 to December 31, 2018.”

Note: the “violence that took place along the Gaza-Israel border” is essentially one-sided: a nonviolent protest by Palestinians has been met week after week for almost a year by Israeli sniper fire, resulting in the deaths of at least 250 Palestinians. One Israeli soldier and zero Israeli civilians have been killed.

 

Read more

US Killing Civilians With 'Impunity' in Hidden War on Somalia: Report

Common Dreams 

"The attacks appear to have violated international humanitarian law."

A human rights group is accusing the United States of waging a shadow air war in Somalia that is killing civilians with abandon. 

Amnesty International issued its findings on the African war Tuesday evening in a report titled The Hidden US War in Somalia (pdf).

The U.S. has been covertly engaging in conflicts in Somalia for decades, but in April 2017, the Donald Trump administration upped airstrikes and attacks targeted at the rebel group Al-Shabaab.

The human rights advocacy group studied five of more than 100 strikes on Somalia over the past two years and found that 14 civilians were killed in the attacks. Eight others were injured, the report says.

"These five incidents were carried out with Reaper drones and manned aircraft in Lower Shabelle," Amnesty said in a press release, "a region largely under Al-Shabaab control outside the Somali capital Mogadishu."

The U.S. military denied to Amnesty that any civilians have been killed as a result of American operations in Somalia.

However, Amnesty's report claims its methodology is sound and that the evidence is overwhelming. 

Read more

Palestinian human rights observers in Hebron under attack following Israel's expulson of TIPH group

Yumna Patel
Mondoweisse

Following Israel's expulsion of the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) observer group from Hebron last month, a group of Palestinian activists from the city formed their own team of observers to fill in the gaps. Issa Amro and his team of observers head out every morning to the Tel Rumeida neighborhood in Hebron's Old City and stand watch as children make their way to school. The kids must pass through several checkpoints monitored by armed soldiers, and streets that are patrolled by notoriously violent settlers.

In the month since they began their work, Amro's team have been given more than 10 military orders to stop work, and have been attacked by settlers several times. Amro told Mondoweiss that since TIPH was expelled, the situation in Hebron has gotten a lot worse. 

Mondoweiss followed the team around one morning, and in the span of half an hour, the group, including our cameraman, were attacked and harassed by Israeli settlers, while one international activist who was filming the altercation was arrested by police.  

Read more