June 2022
Assaults on public health infrastructure – war crimes Emily Hacker EI 03/06/22 In May 2021, the Israeli military dropped hundreds of bombs on the Gaza Strip, destroying houses, schools, businesses, and health care facilities. Perhaps nowhere was the human toll of that month more apparent than at al-Shifa hospital, the “only hospital in Gaza equipped for emergency assistance.” Outside the hospital grounds, streets were so badly damaged by Israeli airstrikes that paramedics struggled to bring patients directly to al-Shifa.
In the span of those 11 days in May, Israeli occupation forces wreaked havoc on Gaza’s already precarious public health system, damaging or destroying 19 medical centers, including the offices of the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, a nonprofit that provides cancer treatment and medical prosthetics to children who are unable to seek care outside of Gaza due to Israeli blockades.
Read more: Assaults on public health infrastructure amounts to war crimes
Woman and child shot dead Maureen Clare Murphy EI 04/06/2022
Israeli occupation forces shot and killed four Palestinians in the West Bank during the first two days of June, including a woman and a child.
Ghufran Warasneh, 31, was reportedly on the way to her first day of work at a local radio station when she was killed by Israeli soldiers at the entrance to al-Arroub refugee camp near Hebron on 1 June. The Israeli military claimed in a tweet that an “assailant armed with a knife attempted to stab” a soldier. “Our soldiers thwarted the attack with live fire to neutralize the assailant,” the military said, adding that the Palestinian killed “was imprisoned this year for attempting to stab an Israeli police officer
The following day, Israeli soldiers shot and killed Odeh Muhammad Odeh Sadaqa, 16, in al-Midya village in the central West Bank. Sadaqa is the 14th Palestinian child killed by Israeli forces so far this year after five boys were shot and fatally injured in May.
Read more: Israeli Forces Kill Four
Evictions enabled by British-born judge Omar Zahzah EI 13/06/222
To Palestinians and their supporters, it is known as Masafer Yatta.
To Israel – and in keeping with the aseptic detachment common to colonial regimes – it has been Firing Zone 918 since 1981, when then agriculture minister Ariel Sharon decided on that designation explicitly in order to force out the area’s residents.Located in the South Hebron Hills, the area spans 12 Palestinian villages with nearly 2,800 residents whose livelihoods depend mainly on farming.
Agricultural communities have lived on the 8,600 acres of land and called it home for generations. In 1999, the Israeli army expelled 700 residents of the area, though they were able to return pending a final ruling. This decades-old attempt at ethnic cleansing is now entering a crucial phase.
Read more: Evictions Enabled by British-born Judge
Children working Gaza’s dumps Ola Mousa EI 16/06/22
“When I started doing this work, I felt ashamed,” he said. “But I no longer do. No one can stop me from scavenging. The officials want to stop us but I and many others will keep doing this work. I don’t want to do it. But I also don’t want my children to starve.”
Read more: Children Working Gaza’s Dumps
The Mapping Project is a call to accountability P Weiss & A Horowitz Mondoweiss 16/06/22
After the report was published, all hell broke loose. Critics have called the map a dangerous conspiracy theory, one that could even incite violence against Jews. These critics don’t care about policing or counterterrorism or imperialism. Their focus is the fact that the Mapping Project includes many Jewish groups that advocate for Israeli impunity for its criminal behavior. Among those groups is the Anti-Defamation League, Combined Jewish Philanthropies, Ruderman Family Foundation, Kraft Family Philanthropies, Seth Klarman, and the Klarman Family Foundation, as well as the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston.
And the charge is a now familiar one: the Mapping Project is guilty of antisemitic targeting. . . .
Israeli forces kill three Palestinians in Jenin Yumna Patel Mondoweiss 17/06/22
Israeli forces killed three Palestinians and injured several others during a raid overnight in the city of Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank on Friday. According to Palestinian media, a massive Israeli military convoy raided Jenin in the early predawn hours of Friday morning, and ambushed a car in the al-Marah area of the city, firing dozens of rounds of live ammunition at the vehicle.
Read more: Israeli forces kill three Palestinians in Jenin – Mondoweiss
16-year-old boy dies – left to bleed to death by Israeli forces Tamara Nassar EI 27/06/2022 Route 60 is a highway used by Israeli settlers. Many Palestinians have been killed by Israeli gunfire in this area. Muhammad was shot “from a distance of 50 meters,” from a military watchtower, “where no events took place,” according to an investigation by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR).
An Israeli ambulance transported Muhammad to the Shaare Zedek medical center in Jerusalem after he bled for 45 minutes, according to a field investigation by Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCIP). PCHR’s investigation says he was left to bleed for two hours. Israeli occupation forces “left Muhammad to bleed for about two hours, prevented Palestinian ambulances from reaching him and indiscriminately and heavily opened fire to prevent anyone from approaching him as well,” PCHR stated.
Read more: 16-year-old boy dies after being left to bleed to death by Israeli forces
UK Updates
UK book festival panders to Israel lobby Kit Klarenberg EI 02/06/2022
Syima Aslam, the festival’s founder, has effectively sought to distance herself from public opinion. In October last year, she took part in an online conference organized by B’nai B’rith, a lobby group and apologist for Israel’s colonization of the West Bank and its attacks on Gaza. Aslam used the occasion to suggest that people moved by the plight of Palestinians have ulterior motives.
Her comments accommodated efforts by B’nai B’rith and similar groups to conflate opposition to Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians with anti-Jewish bigotry. Aslam did not spell out what “issues” she meant. Yet her comments were clearly in response to a question about “anti-Semitic actions,” albeit without examples of such “actions” being cited. “There’s a lot that gets vested into, say, the Israel-Palestine conflict and I don’t think the understanding is always there when that is happening,” she said. “I think a lot of emotions come into that and I’m not sure those issues always have to do with that particular conflict itself.”
Read more: UK book festival panders to Israel lobby
A law to protect Israel’s weapons makers? Kit Klarenberg EI 24/06/2022
One of Israel’s most influential backers in Britain is Priti Patel, the home secretary. She has effectively declared war on Palestinian solidarity activists by claiming that the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement is racist – without presenting any evidence. Patel has proposed new legislation which targets the kind of protests Palestine Action has undertaken.
The National Security Bill – as the legislation is called – gives the police powers to designate as “prohibited places” areas where an “aircraft, or a part of an aircraft, used for military purposes” or “equipment relating to such an aircraft” is located.
Read more: A law to protect Israel’s weapons makers
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