Category World News

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague holds its third day of hearings on Israel’s humanitarian obligations to Palestinians. It is 60 years old.

Before Israel resumed its ground assaults and bombardments on March 18, which have resulted in the deaths of more than 52, 000 Palestinians in the enclave since October 7, 2023, no food, water, or medical supplies have been allowed into the war-torn Gaza Strip since March 2.

The UN has called for “concerted” action to put an end to the “humanitarian catastrophe” in the Strip and issued a warning about “full-scale famine conditions” across the Strip.

According to the UN’s World Food Programme, all of its bakeries have been completely depleted, and all of its stock inside Gaza have been completely depleted.

Numerous people have been forced to leave food supplies and emergency stocks that were secured during the January ceasefire, according to a report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Additionally, according to the report, the majority of people are unable to bake for themselves because wheat flour is so expensive and there is a severe shortage of cooking fuel.

Because 70% of the enclave has been designated as a “no-go” area or has been given orders by the Israeli military, the report continued, people are also forced to rely on aid supplies because farmers and breeders cannot access their land.

If aid is not provided, the remaining soup kitchens in Gaza say they may have to close them in days.

Famine’s precipice

According to the UN agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, some families are resorting to eating “whatever they can find” even when it is not safe to eat.

Meanwhile, a WFP spokesperson stated to our colleagues in Arabic that “aid trucks are] stuck at the border waiting to enter Gaza.”

NGO Mercy Corps warns that Gaza’s food systems could completely collapse unless borders open immediately, not to mention that prices inside the enclave have increased by more than 500 percent.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system, the world’s largest hunger monitor, has begun an investigation into the Gaza Strip’s lack of food and malnutrition.

OCHA estimates the assessment will take one week and begin on April 28. The exercise is being led by more than 50 trained analysts from international and local UN agencies, including those from the Gaza Strip.

Since Israel began its genocidal actions in Gaza, the IPC had issued at least four warnings, warning that the region may be on the verge of famine.

According to Hani Mahmoud, a journalist from Gaza City for Al Jazeera, medical staff warn that many patients and injuries are dying as a result of the shortage of medical supplies.

Due to a shortage of medical supplies, medical staff warn that there are many more patients quietly dying inside the remaining health facilities. He claimed that there are no such things as painkillers.

Younis al-Khatib, the president of the Palestine Red Crescent, demanded that Israel be subject to sanctions because it “left no place for humanity in Gaza.”

According to al-Khatib, “I can’t see my colleagues, my friends, and my staff being killed by a state that disrespects our flag and international law,” he said.

“It would have been sanctioned if any other state had done it.”

At the ICJ, the US defends Israel.

In addition, the UN’s top court was holding hearings on what Israel should do to aid Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank for the third day in The Hague following last year’s request for an advisory opinion from the UN General Assembly.

Israel is required to aid Gaza, but the United States defended it on Wednesday, saying UNRWA is not required to cooperate with UNRWA. After Israel claimed 19 of the agency’s roughly 13, 000 employees were involved in Hamas’ attack in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, it was prohibited from operating on its territory in January.

There is no legal requirement that an occupying power authorizes a particular third state or international organization to engage in activities that would compromise its security interests, according to Josh Simmons, a lawyer from the US State Department.

Simmons suggested that other organizations could carry out UNRWA’s mission despite the UN agency’s repeated assertions that its current role as an aid provider could not be replaced.

Hungary made similar points when it spoke out in support of Israel.

The Russian Federation stated in a statement following the US that the majority of the world’s leaders backed UNRWA’s efforts because it was crucial to the Palestinian people.

“This matter cannot be overstated because it is urgent.” Gaza is on the verge of famine. In the ruin, there are hospitals. Existential despair is a reality for many Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and East Jerusalem, according to Maksim Musikhin of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Other nations, including Turkey, France, Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, and Kuwait, were expected to voice opposition to Israel’s aid embargo before the end of the day, according to Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands, who is a journalist from The Hague.

Challands claimed that all of the nations that made statements to the court in the opening days of the hearings had been hostile toward Israel. He claimed that a nation only showed up in support of Israel at the beginning of the third day, and that was the US.

Dearborn, Michigan – Traveling is a regular occurrence for Michigan attorney Amir Makled. As recently as December, he went overseas and returned home to the United States without any issues.

“I’ve left the country at least 20 times. I’ve visited every continent. I go to Lebanon every year”, he said.

However, the Detroit Metro Airport’s return this month was completely different.

When they reached a customs checkpoint, he and his family had just returned from a spring break trip to the Dominican Republic.

“The agent looked over at me and then looked to another agent and asked him if the TTRT agents are here. I had no idea what this meant.

He looked up the acronym on Google. It stands for Tactical Terrorist Response Teams.

When I travel, even if I’m driving in from Canada, I feel some sort of anxiety that I’ll be randomly selected to be stopped or profiled, he explained.

I sat there and said, “OK, I’m going to be profiled here.”

Sure enough, Makled and his family were asked to go to another room.

Makled was aware that he couldn’t be denied entry because he was a citizen of the US and was born in Detroit, Michigan. He urged his wife and children to pass the checkpoint without him.

“I knew my rights at the border in that regard. And I was also aware of how frequently border searches are conducted, he said. For the first time in my life, I was stopped.

But what happened next would put the lawyer in a precarious position.

Border control officers have a lot of legal authority to search a person’s belongings. The goal is to stop people from entering the country with security threats, contraband, or environmental threats.

Those searches, however, extend to the contents of electronic devices. And that raises questions about what should be protected from the government’s prying eyes and what needs to be regulated.

A threat to the attorney-client privilege

Makled knew the border agents could take his phone. He was faced with a complex ethical dilemma, though, as an attorney. His phone contained privileged client information.

In the US, a basic tenet of the legal system is that a client can have frank discussions with their lawyer, with the safety of knowing anything they say will be kept confidential.

Makled’s phone contained a sizable portion of his writing. He claimed he couldn’t give the device to the border officers when asked to do so.

“All my emails, my text messages, my files, the cloud-based software I use for my office”, he said, “it’s all through my phone”.

Makled, a lawyer for people he described as particularly vulnerable, represents those who are in need of civil rights and criminal defense.

A protester was detained last year at a University of Michigan pro-Palestine encampment, according to one of his clients. She was later charged with resisting and obstructing police, a felony that carries up to a two-year prison sentence.

Makled thinks that because the border patrol officers had this information in mind, he was targeted. He claimed that one of the agents even called him a “famous lawyer,” which he thought was a statement made in response to the protester’s case.

In the end, he gave the agents written permission to see his contacts but no other permissions. He was permitted to leave with his phone after about 90 minutes at the airport.

A growing trend

Border control officers have the authority to search any person entering the country, their luggage, or other items in their possession at the time of the inspection since Title 19 of the US code began almost a century ago.

However, today’s digital devices contain far more information than is necessary for a trip.

The most recent fiscal year saw 47, 047 electronic devices searched by border control officers, the vast majority of which belonged to non-US citizens.

That is an almost 13% increase over the previous fiscal year, which US Customs and Border Protection recorded with 41, 767 electronic searches.

The process has long been hampered by the uncertainty of whether these searches can be used for political gain or to retaliate.

In November 2018, for instance, an employee of the tech company Apple, Andreas Gal, said he was detained while returning to San Francisco from an international trip.

Gal was flagged for the TTRT, just like Makled. Customs officers pushed to search his electronic devices, just like the lawyer. He refused. Gal later stated that he thought his online political views had caused him to be targeted.

However, experts have increased their concern about such searches in recent weeks.

Since taking office for a second term in January, President Donald Trump has sought to deport noncitizens he sees as critical of the US or its ally Israel. Among the allegedly used evidence to expel people from the country was material from electronic devices.

Rasha Alawieh, a kidney transplant specialist, was denied re-entry after returning from Lebanon to the US. She held a valid H-1B visa that allowed her to work in the US.

According to reports, the Trump administration cited photos recovered from her phone, including those of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, as justification for her expulsion.

Following Alawieh’s expulsion, the Department of Homeland Security stated in a statement that “supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be denied.”

Also in March, the French government said one of its citizens, a scientist, was prevented from entering the US on account of the political messages on his phone.

However, that accusation has been refuted by the Trump administration.

Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin wrote on social media that the French researcher in question had access to sensitive information from Los Alamos National Laboratory, in violation of a non-disclosure agreement.

“Any claim that his removal was based on political beliefs is blatantly false”.

a lack of legal consensus

There are two types of screenings a device may undergo while in border control custody.

When an officer uses a hand-held electronic device to conduct a “light” search, it occurs. The device is connected to external equipment during an advanced search, which legally calls for “reasonable suspicion” of a crime. The device may not be returned to its owner for weeks or months.

Although US citizens are not required to unlock their electronics in order to re-enter their country, border agents do not require a warrant to search an electronic device.

However, refusing to provide these details may result in a ban on entry for travelers who are not US citizens or permanent residents.

But experts say these practices raise serious concerns about the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution, which grants protection from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.

The American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project’s deputy director, Esha Bhandari, shared examples of the government bridging Fourth Amendment protections with these border checks.

According to Bhandari, “the government is increasingly viewed this as a constitutional flaw.”

“They have someone under investigation, and rather than waiting on whether they can establish probable cause, which requires a judge to give a warrant, they wait until someone crosses the international border and treat that as a convenient opportunity to search their devices”.

However, it is up for debate how far that loophole can extend.

The US courts have yet to come to an agreement regarding the extent and limits of searches of digital devices, according to Saira Hussain, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

“At this moment, whether you fly into San Francisco vs Boston vs Atlanta, there are three different rulings on exactly which part of your phone can be searched, for what purposes]or] what level of suspicion is needed”, Hussain said. There hasn’t been uniformity, according to the statement from several lower courts regarding the issue.

Makled, for his part, claimed that he has never been turned down for traveling or supporting controversial causes.

“I feel that this is an intimidation tactic. He defended the protester who was detained at the University of Michigan, saying that it’s an attempt to dissuade me from taking on these kinds of cases.

After fighting broke out near Damascus, Syrian security forces have been dispatched to restore order. Gunfights broke out in Jaramana, a town with a majority of Druze residents, killing more than 20 people. After rumors that an audio recording of the Prophet Muhammad had been made available, the fighting broke out.

Over 40 countries claim that Israel’s ban on the UN’s aid agency violates international human rights law, and Michael Lynk examines the ICJ case.

Samar Abu Elouf, a Palestinian photographer, captured the image Mahmoud Ajjour, Aged Nine, which was published last year for The New York Times, in this month and won the 2025 World Press Photo of the Year award.

Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, where at least 52, 365 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023, resulted in Ajjour’s death, with both of his arms falling off. Although the boy’s head and armless torso are partially obscured in the award-winning photo, his emptiness is still evident in his eyes.

Ajjour, who recently spoke to Al Jazeera, recalls how he felt when his mother informed him that he had lost his arms: “I started crying. My mental state and I were very depressed. Due to Israel’s criminal blockade of medical supplies and all other supplies essential for human survival, he was then forced to undergo surgery without an anaesthetic, a practice that has always been practiced in Gaza. I screamed loudly because I couldn’t bear the pain. The hallways were filled with my voice.

How will I be able to hug you, the child’s mother asked, according to Abu Elouf.

Abu Elouf’s portrayal of Ajjour captures the cataclysmic suffering Israel has inflicted on the children of the Gaza Strip with the full support of the United States. The UN Children’s Fund reported that some 1, 000 children in Gaza had already lost one or both legs just two months after the genocidal assault began in mid-December 2023.

Fast forward to the present day and the UN’s warning that besieged territory was causing at least 100 children’s deaths or injuries every day. How many pictures do you need to depict a genocide, though, according to legend, a picture is worth a thousand words?

Today, April 30 marks the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, another bloody historical occurrence in which the United States played a significant role in the massacre that continues apace in Gaza. Kim Phuc, a nine-year-old girl who was killed in a US-supplied napalm attack outside the South Vietnamese village of Trang Bang in June 1972, also served as the face and body of that conflict.

The now-famous image of Phuc was captured by Vietnamese photographer Nick Ut as she ran naked down the street in the aftermath of the apocalyptic apocalypse, her skin scorched, and her face pictured in agony. The photo, which is sometimes referred to as The Terror of War as “Napalm Girl,” won the 1973 World Press Photo of the Year award.

In an interview with CNN about the photograph’s 50th anniversary in 2022, Phuc recalled the incident: “Unexpectedly, there was the fire everywhere, and my clothes were burned up by the fire. I still remember what I thought. I pondered, “Oh my goodness, I got burned, I’ll be ugly, and people will see me] differently.”

In any remotely civilized world, it should be obvious that any child or adult must endure this, whether physically or psychologically. After being hospitalized for 14 months, Phuc continued to experience excruciating pain, suicidal thoughts, and shame over having her naked and mutilated body exposed for public viewing.

Napalm was only one of many tools in a US-backed toolkit that included human body incineration and other disfigurement techniques to protect the planet from capitalism. The millions of tonnes of ammunition that the US dropped on Vietnam during the war have still left them with the death toll.

Half a century after the end of the war, Agent Orange, a lethal defoliant, was used by the US to swathe vast areas of Vietnam.

The late American author Susan Sontag argued that the purpose of images like those that appeared on the front pages of the world’s newspapers in 1972, including a naked South Vietnamese child sprayed by American soldiers and running down a highway with her arms open, screaming in pain, likely contributed to the public’s disgust with the war than the ten hours of televised barbarities.

Despite Ut’s publication of his photo, US-backed barbarisms in Vietnam continued for three more years. The fact that nearly every image from the Gaza Strip could be labeled The Terror of War just proves that barbarism is still raging at its best.

The desensitizing effect on the public cannot be understated in the current era of social media, where both still images and videos are reduced to flashy visuals for instant consumption, even when it’s talking about nine-year-old children who have both of their arms blown off.

Abu Elouf stated in an Instagram post on April 18: “I always have, and still do, wish to capture the photo that would stop this war, – that would stop the killing, the death, the starvation.”

What is the value of a photo, she continued, “But if our photos can’t stop all this tragedy and horror, then what’s the point? What image do you need to see to understand what’s happening in Gaza?

What, in the end, is the worth of an opinion article, on that depressing note?

Eric Ham, a political analyst, discusses Trump’s defiance and his low approval ratings in his first 100 days.