YouTube erases hundreds of videos of alleged Israeli war crimes

RT 

The hosting platform has cited US sanctions against NGOs that investigated the abuses as the reason.

YouTube has removed hundreds of videos documenting alleged human rights violations by Israel in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, including eyewitness accounts, investigative reports, and humanitarian footage, according to the American non-profit news outlet The Intercept.

Since October, the video hosting platform has reportedly deleted more than 700 videos and suspended the accounts of prominent Palestinian human-rights groups Al-Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. The deleted materials reportedly included an investigation into the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli forces, footage of home demolitions in the West Bank, and a documentary about mothers who survived Israeli attacks in Gaza.

The Intercept described the removals as part of a broader US-backed effort to suppress documentation of alleged Israeli war crimes. The same Palestinian organizations targeted by YouTube were sanctioned by Washington in September for submitting evidence to the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The ICC issued arrest warrants for both officials in 2024 over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

A YouTube spokesperson, Boot Bullwinkle, told The Intercept that the platform's owner Google "is committed to compliance with applicable sanctions."

Washington's influence over tech companies became a national controversy during the Joe Biden presidency. In the Murthy v. Missouri case, federal agencies were accused of pressuring Meta, Twitter, and YouTube to suppress disfavored opinions under the pretext of combating misinformation. The Supreme Court dismissed the case in 2024 on procedural grounds, leaving unresolved whether such government-platform coordination violates the constitutional right to freedom of speech.

The removals come amid Washington's military and diplomatic support for Israel during the Gaza conflict. The US has provided additional arms to Israel and repeatedly blocked UN resolutions calling for ceasefires and condemning civilian casualties. Critics argue that such moves shielded Israel from accountability and weakened international efforts to end the violence.

The latest violence started when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages. According to the Hamas-controlled Gaza health authorities, over 68,000 Palestinians have been killed since.

Comment: It's more probably hundreds of thousands. And no mention of how many Silicon Valley companies are controlled by the Zionist Establishment.

Israeli Soldiers Torched Food, Homes, and a Critical Sewage Treatment Plant in the Wake of Ceasefire Announcement

Younis Tirawi and Yaniv Cogan | Drop Site News

In the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump's announcement on Thursday that both Hamas and Israel had signed off on an agreement to stop the fighting, the Israeli military launched an arson spree, setting fire to civilian infrastructure, including the destruction of an essential sanitation plant in Gaza City.

The destruction of Palestinian structures following the departure of soldiers who had used them as temporary bases has been a hallmark of Israel's approach to Gaza for two years. In July, Israeli reporter Yuval Abraham collected testimonies from soldiers describing a myriad of arson methods. "Every Arab house we entered had olive oil [...] We poured the oil on the sofas, on anything flammable in the apartment, and then we ignited [it] or threw in a smoke grenade. This was a common practice," one of them described.

The agreement came after months of a concerted effort to render Gaza uninhabitable by destroying residences and civilian infrastructure, culminating in the ground invasion of Gaza City and the leveling of several high rises in Gaza City. In September, Israeli government minister Gila Gamliel told Channel 7 News, "We have already completely annihilated 75% of the entire [Gaza] Strip. There remains 25%, which, as you know, it too...we are now taking over [the city of] Gaza — there will be nothing left there that would really [have] the potential to be habitable."

The scope of the arson perpetrated in Gaza City on the night of October 9th and early morning of October 10 — Thursday night into Friday, just after the ceasefire was agreed to but before Israel's cabinet approved it — was broader than at any other time Drop Site has tracked during the assault on the strip. Its perpetrators were not confined to a single unit, nor was the burning confined to a specific neighborhood. Drop Site News identified members of the Israeli army originating from several different brigades, including the Golani, Givati, Nahal Brigades, and the newly formed ultra-orthodox Hashmonaim Brigade who posted dozens of photos and videos of buildings engulfed in flames during their withdrawal from Gaza City to the "yellow line" defined in the Trump agreement, still deep within Gaza's territory.

On Sunday, an Israeli soldier from the Kfir Brigade posted a photo showing himself standing in front of a set of burning wooden pallets. "On Friday, just before departure. Burning food so that it won't reach the Gazans, may their names be erased," the caption reads. The post also includes a song called, "L'Chaim!" (Cheers!), whose music video uses footage from Gaza. 

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Why Tony Blair governing Gaza would result in more war crimes

Irfan Chowdrey | Declassified UK

Soldiers who served under his command in Iraq got away with sexually assaulting prisoners, in scenes similar to Israel’s torture of Palestinians. 

Under US president Donald Trump’s new plan for Gaza, former British prime minister Tony Blair has been touted as having a senior role in governing Gaza, acting as a deputy to Trump himself. 

Aside from the obvious neo-colonial implications of this – Western Viceroys ruling over occupied Arabs, as opposed to those occupied Arabs being granted self-determination – Blair’s track record of human rights violations makes him deeply unsuitable for the job.

Blair made the decision in 2003 to join with the US in invading and occupying Iraq. Human Rights Watch has noted that “UK nationals committed abuses in Iraq after 2003 on a significant scale”.

Many of these abuses stemmed from policies that were implemented by Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) under Blair’s leadership, wherein abusive interrogation techniques were authorised from above.

Under Blair’s MoD, ‘harshing’ was authorised – this constitutes a technique of psychological abuse wherein an interrogator screams into a detainee’s face, making implicit threats of violence and engaging in personal insults and vitriol. 

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“October 7 was a false flag,” Testified an Israeli Soldier Under Oath

Adame Media 

An Israeli soldier testifies UNDER OATH that October 7th was a FALSE FLAG, and that he was ordered to STAND DOWN from 5:20am to 9am the day of the attack.

You could face up to five years in prison for sharing this video in Israel.

British citizens serving in the IDF can now be tried for war crimes in the UK

Joe Glenton | Canary 

The legal landscape around UK citizens serving in the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) has shifted, lawyers say. Palestinian statehood means that Brits who served in Israel’s genocide can be tried and jailed.

Paul Heron of Public Interest Law Centre told Novara Media:

The legal landscape has shifted.

Now that Palestine has been recognised as a state, the legal and moral excuses for inaction have fallen away.

For the first time, it is now arguable that British dual nationals serving in the Israeli military in Gaza or the West Bank could fall foul of the Foreign Enlistment Act, a law that makes it an offence for a British subject to fight for a foreign state at war with another state with which the UK is at peace.

Foreign enlistment act: applicable to the IDF?

Technically the Foreign Enlistment Act of 1870 means Brits who served in foreign armies can be jailed or fined. But the act is very old and poorly enforced. Heron said may not serve as a basis for prosecution.

In April 2010, Public Law Interest Centre and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights submitted evidence to British police regarding ten individuals who’d served in the Israeli military:

Our 240-page submission to the Metropolitan police highlights that the UK cannot turn a blind eye.

The police have the power, the resources and the responsibility to investigate British nationals alleged to have taken part in war crimes, wherever they occur.

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Imagine There Was A Violent Cult Committing Atrocities with Impunity

Caitlin Johnstone

Imagine there was a violent cult that used scriptures from an ancient religion to convince its followers to do evil things.

Imagine the cult was given its own state.

Imagine the cult was given machine guns, tanks and war planes.

Imagine the cult obtained nuclear weapons.

Imagine the cult started committing genocide against the indigenous people who’d been living in the area where the cult’s state was established.

Imagine the cult had huge branches in the most powerful nation on earth, and the powerful nation defended the cult no matter what it did.

Imagine the cult flipped out and started relentlessly attacking and invading the surrounding nations.

Imagine the cult had so much influence and support in western society that western governments and institutions would censor, silence, fire, marginalize and deport anyone who criticized the cult’s actions.

Imagine the western media sympathized highly with the cult and spent the entire time framing its atrocities as entirely reasonable defensive actions, and framing critics of the cult as malicious bigots.

Imagine the cult kept getting crazier and crazier and more and more violent, but nobody could find a way to stop it because its actions were backed by this giant western power structure.

That’d suck, huh? 

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Airstrikes, explosive vehicles, and bulldozers cause 'insane' destruction in Gaza City, eyewitnesses and civil defense say

Mondoweiss | Tareq S. Hajjaj

The Israeli army is using airstrikes, rigged explosive APCs, and bulldozing operations to level neighborhoods and displacement centers in Gaza City. Eyewitnesses and local officials say it is to cause mass flight and prevent residents from returning.

Ahead of its planned full-scale invasion of Gaza City, the Israeli army is causing widespread destruction in the Strip's largest urban center, forcing residents to evacuate ahead of its publicly declared start date: October 7.

Recent reports from eyewitnesses and the Gaza Civil Defense show that the Israeli army has been using retrofitted armored personnel carriers (APCs) that are sent into dense population centers, including neighborhoods and displacement centers, before they are remotely detonated.

The attacks continue alongside an extensive bulldozing operation in the city and constant aerial bombardment. Between August 12 and August 18, the Israeli army destroyed over 400 buildings in the Zaytoun neighborhood and launched a limited ground incursion at its edges. The army also launched a similar operation in the Sabra neighborhood, west of Gaza City.

Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Basal told Mondoweiss that the Israeli army destroyed over 1,500 buildings in Gaza City in aerial strikes alone since August 6, largely in Zaytoun and Sabra.

Basal explained that the Civil Defense continues to receive calls from trapped civilians in the two neighborhoods, but that there is no way to reach them due to heavy shelling and bombardment.

"We're afraid that the Israeli invasion will get even deeper into Gaza City and that Civil Defense crews will be unable to reach the places they bomb. Nowhere in Gaza is safe, whether north or south. Bombs chase residents from their homes, from their displacement centers, and even from their tents."

Abdulwahhab Ismail, a resident of the Saftawi area in northwestern Gaza, evacuated his neighborhood on Tuesday after several buildings on his street were detonated by what he described as explosive "robots."  

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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:

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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"

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.

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The Yemen Tragedy Further Fueled by the West and Its Allies

Viktor Mikhin
New Eastern Outlook

A most sophisticated demagogy, blatant falsifying of facts, impudent interpretation of events with everything going upside down, these are the thoughts that come to one’s mind when one reads another forgery concocted in the West. We mean the statement addressed to Iran calling for the termination of the actions which are allegedly destabilizing the situation in the Persian Gulf. The statement was made by the governments of the US, the UK and their satellites: the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia, on June 24, as reported by the US Department of State press service. In this manifesto, contrary to the obvious facts, the signatories held Iran responsible for the escalation of the situation in Yemen and the attacks on the oil tankers on May 12 and June 13, urging the Islamic Republic to start searching for a diplomatic solution. The intensity of this demagogy, as the saying goes, is beyond the scale.

Let us however, in a quiet fashion and on the basis of the obvious facts, consider the situation in the Persian Gulf area and ask several questions. Did Iran or the poor Yemen suffering a score of internal problems, indeed attack Saudi Arabia? Did the Houthis indeed create a so-called Arab coalition which has consistently bombed the Saudi cities and villages killing the civilians? By no means. It was the Saudis, namely the Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud who took up the foreign policy responsibilities due to the old age and numerous diseases of his father, the King, and who gave the order sanctioning the rough intervention of Riyadh in internal affairs of the neighboring state of Yemen and the total bombing of the Yemen cities.

The leader of the Houthis and the President of the Supreme Revolutionary Committee (SRC) Mohammed Ali al-Houthi demanded the UN Secretary General to condemn the war crimes committed in Yemen. Among the crimes perpetrated by the coalition of the Arab countries (led by Saudi Arabia and supported by the countries of the West), the Houthi leader named the ruthless blockade of the Yemen people, the famine in the country, the ongoing air embargo, the blockade of the Red Sea ports, the mass murders (including those of children), the destruction of civil facilities targeted during the military attacks.

The UN strongly condemned the following Saudi air raid on the Yemen capital city of Sanaa which resulted in the death of many civilians, including five children; dozens of people were wounded. The head of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Henrietta Holsman Fore, speaking at the UN Security Council session, urged the international community to save the lives of the millions of Yemenite children. She emphasized that, since the beginning of the conflict in the country, according to official figures only, up to 10,000 children had been killed or wounded. According to the UN, the Saudi Air Force “aimed at the civilians systematically,” dropping bombs on hospitals, schools, weddings, funeral processions and even on the camps for the displaced persons escaping from bombing.

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Will the US ever be held accountable for its war crimes?

Jean Perier
New Eastern Outlook

For more than a decade, the United States has been steadily increasing the scale of its illegal military operations across the Middle East, resulting in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths.

Eighteen years ago, the US invaded Afghanistan under the pretext of ousting the Taliban who allegedly granted sanctuary to Al-Qaeda. According to a study released by Brown University, more than 140,000 Afghan militants and civilians have died in the fight.

Since December 2001, the United States has been conducting various operations in Somali, and even today the Pentagon carries out both air strikes and ground operations, accompanied by a constant toll of civilian lives.

Back in 2003, Washington launched Operation Iraq Freedom to strip Saddam Hussein of WMDs he didn't even have and to convert Iraq into a «democracy», plunging this country into a state of perpetual chaos guaranteeing that it will remain a Western bastion in the Arab and Islamic World for years to come.

Eight years ago, the US succeeded in destabilizing Libya, when US warplanes attacked the troops of Libya's most successful ruler to date - Muammar Gaddafi. Back then, Washington took every step to ensure his government would be ousted and and its key leaders murdered. The Libyan conflict has since produced tens of thousands of dead. In 2016, Barack Obama said that Libya was probably the "worst mistake" of his presidency.

The seven years of war in Syria resulted in a death toll of half a million Syrian nationals. Here, American troops are stationed illegally to fight ISIS and "indigenous ground forces." The strange wording that Washington uses in its official rhetoric is no coincidence, since more than on one occasion US armed forces have opened fire on both Syrian government troops and civilians, with no official rationale ever being given to explain this brutality.

In Yemen, the United States has been backing Saudi Arabia's efforts to put an end to the Houthi rebellion for three years. Washington carries on supplying Saudi authorities with high-precision weapons, combat aircraft and intelligence. This war has already triggered the largest humanitarian catastrophe of the 21st century, with 20 million people finding themselves on the brink of starvation. 

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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.

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After Israel slaughtered Gaza during 'Cast Lead', Obama admin met with Israeli generals to counteract damning Goldstone Report and get Israel's story out

Philip Weiss
Mondoweiss

This is the tenth anniversary of "Cast Lead," Israel's three-week-long onslaught on Gaza that took nearly 1,400 lives, 318 of them children, and that as much as anything helped shift the American view of the conflict, causing young progressives to side with Palestinians.

During those three weeks of horrifying images, President-elect Obama had nothing critical to say and Israel did him a favor in return: it ended the bombing/invasion two days before he was inaugurated.

Then in September the UN Human Rights Council issued a bombshell of its own, the Goldstone Report, which documented what it called war crimes and possible crimes against humanity during the onslaught, chiefly the Israeli pattern of deliberately striking civilian targets, including schools, mosques, homes, and a flour mill and a chicken farm.

The Obama administration worked to stymie the report at international bodies, and in the end the report went nowhere (defused by its author, Judge Richard Goldstone, who under huge pressure from his own community retracted the allegation that civilians were intentionally targeted).  

The greatest impact the Goldstone report had was on international opinion. Now a State Department cable has been leaked in which US diplomatic officials are shown to have met with seven Israeli generals over two days in January 2010 to discuss ways to counter the "poisonous" Goldstone Report's influence over Israel's reputation.

The cable is remarkable because it shows how closely Obama officials were working with alleged war criminals to counter Israel's bad press and help Israel "tell its story" and show the "lessons learned" from the massacre. Also because the cable reveals what a crisis the Goldstone Report was to Israel's reputation.

"It shows how vulnerable Israel can be to public opinion," Norman Finkelstein, the author of Gaza: An Inquest into its Martyrdom, writes to me. "It's not been noticed that Israel ceased using white phosphorus after Cast Lead because of the bad p.r... They do worry about public opinion. That's why I'm skeptical when people say, 'Israel can do whatever it wants.' Not true."

Finkelstein also notes the role of an Obama aide as a general-whisperer: Michael Posner, then assistant secretary for democracy, human rights, and labor. "[I]t's telling that instead of advocating the indictment of Israel for its war crimes, as one might expect of the founder and president of Lawyers Committee for Human Rights [later Human Rights First], Posner counsels Israel how to evade prosecution."

Indeed, throughout the cable, Israeli generals admit that mistakes were made and promise that there will be consequences. And the Israeli air force general even says bluntly that the artillery and tank units were careless when it came to hurting Palestinian civilians. The American officials urge the Israelis to do independent investigations so as to salvage the country's reputation. But there is nothing to show for that. Israel indicted three soldiers in connection with the massacre. And the longest sentence was for a soldier who stole a Palestinian's credit card.

The Goldstone Report was in the news for two full years. But apart from a storm of fury against the report, Israeli officials never had to account. The cable shows that this meeting was as much of a trial as the top Israeli brass ever got: discussions with a handful of American State Department officials who were concerned about the report's conclusions, including Posner who had met with Goldstone. That was all. And they got off the hook!

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See also:  Why Did Richard Goldstone Throw the Goldstone Report Under the Bus?

Mattis: Putin Is Trying To “Undermine America’s Moral Authority”

Caitline Johnstone
caitlinejohnstone.com

At a graduation ceremony for the US Naval War College (barf), US Secretary of Defense James Mattis asserted that Russian President Vladimir Putin “aims to diminish the appeal of the western democratic model and attempts to undermine America’s moral authority,” and that “his actions are designed not to challenge our arms at this point but to undercut and compromise our belief in our ideals.”

This would be the same James Mattis who’s been overseeing the war crimes committed by America’s armed forces during their illegal occupation of Syria. This would be the same United States of America that was born of the genocide of indigenous tribes and the labor of African slaves, which slaughtered millions in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Libya and Syria for no legitimate reason, which is partnered with Ukrainian Nazis, jihadist factions in Syria and Iranian terror cultists, which supports 73 percent of the world’s dictators, which interferes constantly in the electoral processes of other countries as a matter of policy, which stages coups around the world, which has encircled the globe with military bases, whose FBI still targets black civil rights activists for persecution to this very day, which routinely enters into undeclared wars of aggression against noncompliant governments to advance plutocratic interests, which remains the only country ever to use nuclear weapons on human beings after doing so completely needlessly in Japan, and which is functionally a corporatist oligarchy with no meaningful “democratic model” in place at all. 

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‘Deliberate war crime’: Palestinians decry murder of 21yo female paramedic at Gaza border

RT

The killing of a 21-year-old female medical worker during the Great March of Return at the Gaza border is nothing short of a war crime, Palestinian officials said, calling on the international community to hold Israel responsible.

The murder of 21-year-old medical volunteer, Razan Al-Najar, is a direct violation of all “international treaties and conventions” that ensure the protection of the medical staff in the conflict zones, Palestinian Minister of Health, Jawad Awwad, said late Friday, noting that the shooting of the paramedic must have been “deliberate” and amounted to a “war crime.”

The volunteer was shot in the chest by the Israeli Defense Forces on Friday near the border fence east of Khan Younes, in the southern Gaza Strip, while she was helping wounded Palestinians.

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While the Israeli military has yet to comment on Najar's death, an anonymous witness told Reuters that, at the time of the tragedy, the medical worker wore a white uniform, which clearly distinguished her from the rest of the Palestinian crowd taking part in the 10th weekly Great March of Return protests.

Furthermore, the medical volunteer “raised her hands high in a clear way, but Israeli soldiers fired and she was hit in the chest,” the witness told Reuters.

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‘War crimes’: Palestine calls on ICC to investigate Israeli ‘human rights violations’

RT

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry has asked the International Criminal Court to open a probe into Israeli violations against Palestinians, linked to illegal settlements, calling Tel Aviv’s actions “crimes against humanity”. 

The settlements are “the single most dangerous threat to Palestinian lives, livelihoods, and national rights,” the ministry said in a statement released on Facebook. Israel called the move “cynical” and claimed the request to the ICC has no legal validity.

Saying that while “Israel maintains, expands, and protects the settlement regime by committing war crimes, crimes against humanity,” Palestinians are not seeking revenge but redress and “justice for the crime of apartheid against the Palestinian people.”

Palestine exercised its right as a State Party to the Rome Statute – the treaty that established the ICC – to refer the situation in the region to the international tribunal. The ministry says that Palestinian people “continue to suffer from ongoing, widespread and systematic crimes” committed by Israel.

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Gazan Gandhis: Gaza bleeds alone as ‘liberals’ and ‘progressives’ go mute

Ramzy Baroud
Intrepid Report

Three more Palestinians were killed and 611 wounded last Friday, when tens of thousands of Gazans continued their largely non-violent protests at the Gaza-Israel border.

Yet as the casualty count keeps climbing—nearly 45 dead and over 5,500 wounded—the deafening silence also continues. Tellingly, many of those who long chastised Palestinians for using armed resistance against the Israeli occupation are nowhere to be found, while children, journalists, women and men are all targeted by hundreds of Israeli snipers who dot the Gaza border.

Israeli officials are adamant. The likes of Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman perceives his war against the unarmed protesters as a war on terrorists. He believes that “there are no innocents in Gaza.” While the Israeli mindset is not in the least surprising, it is emboldened by the lack of meaningful action, or outright international silence to the atrocities taking place at the border.

The International Criminal Court (ICC), aside from frequent statements laced with ambiguous legal jargon, has been quite useless thus far. Its chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, derided Israel’s killings in a recent statement, but also distorted facts in her attempt at ‘even-handed language,’ to the delight of Israeli media.

“Violence against civilians—in a situation such as the one prevailing in Gaza—could constitute crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court . . . as could the use of civilian presence for the purpose of shielding military activities,” she said.

Encouraged by Bensouda’s statement, Israel is exploiting the opportunity to deflect from its own crimes. On April 25, an Israeli law group, Shurat Hadin, sought to indict three Hamas leaders at the ICC, accusing Hamas of using children as human shields at the border protests.

It is tragic that many still find it difficult to grasp the notion that the Palestinian people are capable of mobilizing, resisting and making decisions independent from Palestinian factions.

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Gaza massacre: Will Israel pay a price for its latest war crimes

Ali Abunimah
The Electronic Intifada

Palestinians are calling for escalating global campaigns to isolate Israel after its army killed 16 people in the Gaza Strip and wounded almost 1,500 others.

Meanwhile, Israel has rejected calls for an international investigation and its defense minister has commended soldiers on Friday's slaughter.

"Evoking memories of the South African apartheid regime's massacre of peaceful protesters in Sharpeville in 1960, Israel's military committed a new massacre against Palestinian civilians as they were peacefully commemorating Palestinian Land Day," the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) said Monday.

The BNC, the steering group for the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, urged people around the world to "mainstream the demand for all private and public entities in your country to end all cooperation and/or trade with the Israeli military and 'security sector.'"

It also calls for heightened campaigns targeting companies and financial institutions complicit in Israel's crimes.

Devastating injuries

On Monday, the health ministry in Gaza announced that 29-year-old Fares al-Ruqab had succumbed to wounds he suffered after Israeli snipers opened fire into the territory Friday.

Tens of thousands took part in Great March of Return rallies to demand their right of return to lands from which Palestinians were ethnically cleansed, and to protest Israel's decade-long blockade of Gaza.

That brought to 16 the number of Palestinians killed. The Israeli army injured almost 1,500 people, more than 800 of them with live ammunition, according to the health ministry.

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‘We may forgive, but won’t forget’: Serbia’s commemoration of NATO bombing victims ignored by West

RT 

Thousands of Serbs honored the victims of the 1999 NATO bombings with a commemoration on Saturday, attended by Serbian president and many officials, including the Russian envoy, but with a glaring absence of Western diplomats. 

The main commemorative event, held under the slogan “We will forgive, if we can, we will not forget while alive,” took place in the Southern town of Aleksinac which suffered heavily in the 1999 US-led NATO campaign.

Darkness and silence fell over the entire city center as the ceremony, attended by President Aleksandar Vucic and his cabinet ministers, opened with deafening sounds of air alarm sirens. At least 3,000 people gathered in front of the stage and the ruins of a building destroyed in NATO bombing, according to Sputnik’s correspondent.

“What do we say today, we on whom 420,000 missiles and nearly 40,000 cluster bombs and 1,300 cruise missiles have been dropped?” Vuvic asked. He went on to speak of the deaths and destruction caused by NATO, though adding that his country still seeks a partnership with the alliance.

“Yes, we want a partnership with you, you who have perpetrated terrible crimes on us. We want from the enemy to become friends, just do not expect us to forget that you killed us, or to blame our country for it. We want a partnership, but we will not join NATO. It would be rubbing too much salt into our wounds,” Vuvic said.

The Russian Ambassador to Serbia, Aleksandr Chepurin, who also attended the poignant ceremony, noted the glaring absence of representatives of Western states. 

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Iraq: Will Tony Blair Finally Stand Trial for His Part in the “Supreme International Crime”?

Felicity Arbuthnot

Global Research

“I think most people who have dealt with me, think I’m a pretty straight sort of guy, and I am.” (Tony Blair, BBC “On the Record”, 16^th November 1997.) 

On 30th November last year, Michael Gove, currently UK Environment Minister, pretty well unloved by swathes of the population whatever Ministry he heads, declared, at the post Chilcot Inquiry debate in Parliament regarding Tony Blair’s role in dragging the UK in to a monumental tragedy for which history will not forgive:

“History, I think will judge him less harshly than some in this House do.”

Deciding whether or not to illegally invade Iraq was a “finely balanced act”, fantasized Gove.

It was not. It was a pack of lies, many of which came from the Blair regime, as confirmed by Colin Powell’s delusionary address to the UN on 5^th February 2003, in subsequently unearthed correspondence and of course, the Chilcot Inquiry. 

On 15^th September 2004, the then UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, in an interview with the BBC World Service, asked if the invasion was illegal, stated:

“Yes, if you wish.” He continued without caveat: “I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN Charter. From our point of view and from the Charter point of view it was illegal.” 

Blair, his Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw and his Attorney General Lord Goldsmith did not face a Nuremberg type trial – and surreally, Blair, after his 2007 resignation was appointed Middle East Peace Envoy. Straw and Goldsmith went back to business as usual.

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