Category World News

The International Criminal Court’s (ICJ) January finding of a “plausible genocide” in Gaza, and subsequent ruling that Israel is responsible for an apartheid system in the West Bank and East Jerusalem would not have surprised former Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, Carter, or indeed Reagan, who famously denounced Israel’s 1982 levelling of West Beirut to Prime Minister Menachem Begin as a “holocaust”.

Israel is the only US ally with whom such oppression and terror has ever existed. For many years, consecutive American administrations, both Democratic and Republican, condemned Israel’s recurring practice of terror. &nbsp, Today, however, the Biden-Harris administration has been supporting these practices to the extreme.

Harry S Truman recognised Israel in May 1948, yet once re-elected in November, wrote of his “disgust” over how “the Jews are approaching the refugee problem”. Then his successor, Dwight Eisenhower, joined Winston Churchill, who’d returned as the UK’s prime minister, to censure Israel in the UN Security Council in November 1953.

Paratroopers under Colonel Ariel Sharon, a future Israeli prime minister, had “shot every man, woman and child they could find”, in the Jordanian-controlled West Bank village of Qibya, according to Time&nbsp, magazine, leaving 69 dead. Prime Minister Ben-Gurion cried “anti-Semitism”.

Eisenhower had Israel censured twice more: In March 1955, after a self-described Israeli “terror unit” bombed US consulate libraries in Cairo and Alexandria, seeking to blame Egypt, followed by an attack on Egyptian-controlled Gaza that killed 38, and in March 1956 over a so-called “retaliation” against Syria that killed 56 soldiers and civilians.

“Upward of 2, 700 Arab infiltrators, and perhaps as many as 5, 000, were killed by the]Israeli military], police, and civilians along Israel’s borders between 1949 and 1956”,&nbsp, writes Israeli historian Benny Morris, &nbsp, “the vast majority of those killed were unarmed”. They were shepherds, farmers, Bedouins, and refugees.

Israel would continue to commit wildly disjointed acts of terror for decades because Eisenhower refused to accept the claims of Israeli ambassador Abba Eban, who had sided with Eisenhower.

Israel invaded Egypt and began massacring refugees in Khan Younis and Rafah shortly after killing some 49 civilians in the Kafir Qasim village near Tel Aviv in October 1956. Eisenhower responded by declaring that the US would “apply sanctions” on Israel. The US president threatened to obstruct Israel’s access to US financial markets when it remained in Gaza and Sharm El Sheikh’s movement. The Israeli retreat followed.

In November 1966, Lyndon Johnson once again put “the Palestine Question” on the UN agenda&nbsp, to condemn Israel, this time&nbsp, after&nbsp, a massive attack on Jordan involving more than 3, 000 soldiers. His National Security Advisor W. W. Rostow remarked that “they have severely damaged our interests and their own,” adding that “they have destroyed a good system of tacit cooperation.”

All-out war followed in 1967, after which Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. Jimmy Carter called the conditions imposed on Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory after the illegal Israeli settlement there began to be called “apartheid” despite the martial law that has been in effect since the state’s founding in 1966.

With nothing resolved by 1982, Prime Minister Begin, a former Irgun terrorist against British authorities, vowed to “destroy” the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). He oversaw then-Defence Minister Ariel Sharon’s killing of some 18, 000 Palestinians and Lebanese, overwhelmingly civilians, in Beirut. Belatedly, Reagan stopped the slaughter with a phone call, given Israel’s dependence. The Israeli assault was then referred to as a “holocaust” by him.

Despite using a word with such weight, however, the White House did not demand the UN censure Israel. Israel’s illegal settlements, which resulted from the 1967 war, were not the US’s first attempt to sanction it. Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren explained why in his 2007 book, Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East 1776 to the Present. &nbsp, &nbsp, In the mid-1970s, he wrote, Israel’s supporters began to achieve “the financial and political clout necessary to sway congressional opinion” – meaning that they had acquired enough power to impede US official opposition to Israel at the UN or elsewhere. Ever since, Israel has taken US backing for granted, no matter the record of wildly disproportionate atrocities.

In 1991, Israeli Prime Minister Itzhak Shamir, who had approved the murder of UN negotiator Folke Bernadotte, tried to explain why terrorism was “acceptable” for Jews, but not Arabs: Palestinians are “fighting for land that is not theirs. The people of Israel reside in this country.

Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel was distinct. Only once in a lifetime were Palestinian resistance groups able to withstand decades of comparable-scale Israeli terror. In response to the attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu simply doubled down on Israel’s recurring massacre-making, now backed by starvation and disease. &nbsp, The&nbsp, US administration took no meaningful action to stop “plausible genocide”.

Israel has also become the only country in the world where Washington has the authority to carry out unpunished killings of US citizens. Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, Mohammad Khdour, and Shireen Abu Akleh were among the West Bank’s ever-growing list of murder victims each fatally shot in the head. Following their deaths, there were no renditions or sanctions. The White House simply suggested the sniper-killings were “not acceptable” and asked Israel to “investigate” itself. The issue was swiftly dismissed.

As Gaza’s torment enters its second year, Israel’s killing has reached unprecedented levels in the West Bank, and Lebanon once again becomes a target of Israel’s self-described retaliation. More needs from Israel’s patron than mutterings to possibly halt some arms shipments. Washington should stop supporting apartheid-style Israeli brutality and support the pending International Criminal Court indictments, which will eventually include an Israeli prime minister.

Former US presidents had attempted to control Israeli behavior, as statesman Abba Eban put it when Israel’s previous bombing of Beirut showed that it “wanted to inflict every measure of death and suffering on civilian populations.” Washington’s leaders should take note of those presidents’ examples and rescind diplomatic immunity as well as Israeli weapons exports.

Israel has accused the investigators of bias after concluding a UN&nbsp investigation into how it had purposefully attempted to undermine the Gaza Strip’s healthcare system.

Israel “perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system,” according to a report released by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry (CoI).

The nation was “committeding war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities,” according to the statement.

In a statement from its mission in Geneva, Israel on Friday firmly rejected the allegations.

The CoI’s most recent report is yet another blatant attempt to delegitimize the State of Israel and obstruct its legitimate right to defend its citizens while concealing the crimes of terrorist organizations, according to the statement.

Hamas, a Palestinian-backed group, claims that it uses hospitals for military purposes. The Gazan healthcare system is already flooded with patients and infrastructure destroyed, so Israeli forces have repeatedly attacked it.

The Israeli statement reads, “This report shamelessly portrays Israel’s actions in Gaza’s terror-infested health facilities as a matter of policy against the health system there.”

Israel also rejected the report’s findings, which claim that Palestinian prisoners are repeatedly and consistently abused, a crime against humanity and a war crime.

Numerous UN officials and reports claim that Israel has detained thousands of Palestinians during its war in Gaza and has been accused of conducting numerous torture operations. Additionally, they allege that there have been reports of numerous instances of sexual abuse of prisoners who have been imprisoned in secret and abused by both men and women.

Yet, Israel accused the commission of creating an “alternate reality”, and thereby contributing to “the exacerbation of this conflict”.

We urge states to speak out against this prejudiced approach, which will only strengthen the United Nations and the Human Rights Council’s standing.

The three-person commission’s release of the report follows the Hamas-led October 7 attack that sparked the current conflict, which was the first one since. The UN Human Rights Council established the commission in May 2021 to look into alleged violations of international law in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

“International order crumbling”

UN special rapporteurs warned in a joint statement on Friday that the “international legal order is crumbling in the occupied Palestinian territory as a result of these atrocities.”

The group of experts said, “The world is in the most profound crisis since World War II,” adding that the group’s findings “have led to widespread genocidal attacks, ethnic cleansing, and collective punishment of Palestinians, which pose a risk to the international multilateral system.”

The legal strategies in use to resolve the issue have so far failed to produce the desired outcomes.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other figures connected to the Gaza war are still in the international criminal court’s (ICC) prosecution’s) custody, but provisional measures to stop genocidal acts in Gaza have not been implemented.

Israel continues to act with blatant disregard for international law and order in response to the overwhelming public opinion in the international community, according to the statement.

The inability to put an end to Israel’s aggression in Gaza “not only allowed for the continuation of unprecedented brutality but also extended it to the entire region, igniting Lebanon with violence and destruction.”

Al Jazeera journalists who have covered the war in Gaza’s most devastating locations describe the experience of working for a living while also losing family, friends, coworkers, and homes over the past year.

London, United Kingdom – Keir Starmer, who will on Saturday mark his first 100 days in office as the British prime minister (PM), is unpopular.

The 62-year-old former lawyer’s favorability ratings, according to a YouGov poll on October 8, have dropped to the lowest level since he took over as Labour leader in 2020, and his popularity has decreased even further since becoming PM.

More than six in 10 Britons now dislike Starmer, YouGov reported.

“It’s easily the worst start to a government’s time in office in living memory – and it wasn’t as if Labour were that popular anyway”, Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, told Al Jazeera.

Starmer on July 4 led his then-opposition party to a resounding election victory and large majority in Parliament, sweeping the Conservatives, in power for more than a decade, into the shadows.

But turnout was low at about 50 percent, the poorest level by share of population since universal suffrage.

“The freebie problem is the most immediate issue]Labour] need to put behind them because it’s badly damaged their brand”, said Bale.

“In the long term, the main issues – as they always are, are the economy and the NHS. If the government can get them right, they stand a chance of recovering”.

Recent weeks have seen the most attention for a donations scandal.

Starmer, whose annual salary is now about 167, 000 pounds ($218, 000), has declared receiving freebies worth more than 100, 000 pounds ($131, 000) over the past five years. He has accepted gifts during this time more than any other MP, some of which came after winning the PM position.

News of the accommodation costs, pricey glasses, Taylor Swift concert tickets, football match tickets, clothing and other giveaways he has embraced has angered the British public, many of whom are still grappling with a cost-of-living crisis.

Starmer’s donors include a wealthy Labour peer, Lord Waheed Alli, and the Premier League.

Although accepting gifts is permitted, the PM and other Labour MPs who have abused freebies are accused of being greed because Labour is traditionally a left-wing party that values equality and transparency.

There are also questions over influence.

Henry Newman, an ex-political adviser to the Conservatives and the director of The Whitehall Project on Substack, told the Financial Times: “]Starmer’s] personal donor, Alli, was given privileged access to Downing Street while working on both fundraising and government appointments. Without Lord Alli’s exact role, concerns about cronyism will continue to grow. The government needs to clarify.

‘ It’s been quite a shaky start ‘

By restricting the pensioners’ winter fuel payment, Chancellor Rachel Reeves has also caused a stir among many people, leaving about 10 million elderly people without the equivalent of a few hundred pounds of relief from energy price increases this winter.

“It’s been quite a shaky start”, said Anand Menon, professor of European politics and foreign affairs at King’s College London. “The surprise was how badly they’ve handled it”.

He thinks there is a problem with Labour’s public relations.

“They’ve allowed]the donations scandal] to be the story … They failed quickly enough to come out with a coherent coordinating response”, he said.

“What you want is the government to intervene and tell us a story about our situation and where they’re taking us,” the government responded. Over the first few months in government, there hasn’t been a narrative, and I think because of that, there’s been a hole. Everyone’s waiting for the budget”.

Reeves, who accepted a 7, 500-pound donation ($9, 800) before the election to use on clothing, will unveil the budget on October 30. There is rumor that the government might increase certain taxes, including inheritance and capital gains.

Labour has made it clear that the state pension will increase by 4% and that it will follow its election promise to add VAT to private school tuition, in addition to delaying the winter fuel payment to the wealthier pensioners.

In September, Starmer, Reeves and Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner tried to draw a line under the donations scandal, saying they would no longer accept free clothing.

Steven Fielding, a professor of politics at the University of Nottingham and author of a book that examines the Labour Party since the 1970s, claims that Starmer’s administration has been “stumbling” rather than “striding purposefully into the future.

He said Labour “totally misunderstood” the timeframe that most British voters live in, “which is they want jam today, not tomorrow, even though it’s unreasonable to expect it”.

The freebies and the pensioners’ poor old pensioners losing out on their winter fuel payments have been the two main themes that have persisted throughout this period of 100 days, according to the author.

While neither issue is “quite as bad” as headlines suggest, since politicians accepting donations is hardly novel and because the payment will still reach tens of millions of pensioners in need, “that’s the takeaway”, said Fielding.

After a fatal stabbing attack against young girls in northern England, Starmer’s first days in office were shook by race riots across the country. Online agitators, who were stooling the flames of division, came up with the idea of a Muslim immigrant suspect to blame and succeeded in infiltrating thousands of rioters.

Starmer backed what his home secretary called “swift justice” against the rioters, winning praise for his calm yet firm response.

However, the hard-right MP Nigel Farage led the PM’s critics, a group which includes billionaire Elon Musk, in accusing the government of overseeing “two-tier” policing, suggesting without evidence that minority groups and the left are punished less severely than white offenders.

Amid riots, a scandal and a financial blow to pensioners, some of Labour’s less dramatic promises have fallen under the radar.

Starmer promised a 10-year plan to improve the NHS in September, stating that the health service would need to be funded before reform.

Most Britons will be affected by any changes to the health service, which is plagued by lengthy waiting lists and staff shortages, a significant issue for the election campaign.

“Labour will definitely hope that the first 100 days will not be in the forefront of anybody’s mind by the time there’s a next election”, said Fielding.

Beirut, Lebanon – “Lebanon, as we know it, will not exist. ”

That is what Yoav Kisch, Israel’s education minister, told a local news programme in early July.

His threat came in response to ministers of far-right in Israel’s call for the Hezbollah to be destroyed.

After the Palestinian group’s armed wing launched an attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023 that resulted in 1,139 fatalities and about 250 taken hostages, Israeli ministers backed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ostensible war effort to “eradicate” Hamas in Gaza a year ago.

In Gaza, under that pretext, Israel has nearly 42,000 Palestinians killed and nearly wiped out the entire population. 3 million people were killed, destroying all infrastructure for the common people, and creating widespread famine.

Since stepping up its war against Lebanon in late September, ostensibly to defeat Hezbollah, Israel is now deploying similar tactics in south Lebanon, according to civilians, analysts and rights groups.

“We can’t compare the severity of [south Lebanon] with Gaza, because what Gaza is going through is historically unprecedented and it is a genocide,” said Amal Saad, an expert on Hezbollah who is originally from south Lebanon.

However, she told Al Jazeera, “It appears that Israel is adapting the tactics it used in Gaza.” “[The campaign] is still less than Gaza because what’s happening in [Lebanon] is not ethnic cleansing, yet. It’s not genocidal, yet.

“But it could head there. ”

Kill zones

Israeli military chief Daniel Hagari urged the south-lebanese people to leave the “buildings and areas used by Hezbollah for military purposes, such as those used to store weapons,” on September 23.

According to Ramzi Kaiss, a researcher in Lebanon for Human Rights Watch, the warning did not specify which villages needed to be evacuated and which areas, if any, would be safe.

In addition, he added, the warnings suggest that Israel is using anyone who doesn’t or is unable to leave their villages as a military target, just as it did in Gaza, where Palestinians were told to evacuate as “kill zones.”

In these areas, anyone who persists is frequently shot or bombed.

“Just because you give a warning doesn’t give you free reign to treat everyone as a combatant,” Kaiss said.

Four south-lebanese residents spoke with Al Jazeera and claimed that Sidon, a city that is located 44 kilometers (27 miles) south of Beirut, is almost entirely empty.

However, Israel has killed nearly 2,000 people before they left their homes since September 23 – including more than 100 children, as well as dozens of medics and rescue workers.

Despite the danger, Ahmed, a young man from a small village near Nabatiya in south Lebanon, said he did not evacuate in order to look after his grandmother, who has Alzheimer’s.

While speaking to Al Jazeera, he said, an Israeli bomb hit an area close to his home.

“There is a 50-50 chance that somebody [still here] will stay alive,” he said in a voice note.

“[The Israelis] don’t care if you are a civilian,” he added. There are many houses [destroyed by Israel] around me, and I am aware that there are no weapons there. They just assume you are a fighter.

I was aware of every person who owned the homes. ”

Domicide

According to the most recent data released by the United Nations Satellite Center (UNOSAT), Israel has damaged or destroyed roughly 66 percent of Gaza’s structures.

This extensive damage suggests that Israel purposefully confused legitimate military targets with civilian-scale structures like hospitals and medical facilities.

Civilians and analysts told Al Jazeera that this appears to be a playbook that Israel is occasionally following in Lebanon.

A senior resident of a southern Lebanoni village where the majority of Christians lived reported that Israel bombed both his home and the home of his neighbor on September 30.

His wife and two children, including a one-week-old baby, were killed in the latter attack.

The man said he fled to Beirut, but did not specify when he arrived. He just stressed that Israel is targeting everything, and sometimes giving civilians delayed warnings.

“They didn’t give us a warning before they started firing with air attacks on our village,” he told Al Jazeera. “This is not correct. Following that, they issued a warning. ”

Yaroun, a predominately Shia village, has been destroyed by Israeli bombings in a recent video that has been circulated on social media.

The images, which are indistinguishable from those taken in Gaza, raise concerns that countless more civilians will die, according to Kaiss from HRW.

According to what we are seeing on the ground, there is a significant chance that the country’s civilians will experience atrocities or risk going to suffer them,” he told Al Jazeera.

Protracted displacement

People fear how long they might be displaced as Israel carpet bombs large portions of Lebanon, much like Gaza, where Israel has largely cleared the north and is still ordering those who are still there to flee south.

No one in Gaza is aware of their future or of when they will be able to start rebuilding their lives there.

Jad Dilati, whose family emigrated from Nabatieh to Beirut after Israel’s war against Lebanon erupted two weeks ago, worries about the possibility of a protracted, even permanent, displacement.

He claimed that the neighborhood vegetable market and barber shop, as well as other structures that he knew and loved from his early years, are now buried in rubble.

He is concerned that his house might be the place of the future.

“They may target our house just because they feel like it,” Dilati, 23, told Al Jazeera. I feel like I’ll be returning to a lost town. ”

Due to the lingering nature of the conflict or the possibility that Israel might once more attempt to occupy some of the south, as it did from 1982 to 2000, Dilati considered whether he might not go back to Nabatieh for some time.

On October 8, a video that circulated on social media showed Israeli soldiers waving their flags on Lebanon’s soil.

“This is the price we are paying living next to an expansionist ethno-state,” Dilati told Al Jazeera.

Dilati still believes he will go back to Nabatieh to help his community rebuild its homes and livelihoods, which were torn apart by Israeli aggression once more despite Israel’s invasion and widespread destruction of south Lebanon.

“We will rebuild [Nabatieh] to make it even better than it was before. My parents work in Nabatieh. My sister goes to school in Nabatieh. Everything I know, I learned in Nabatieh,” he said.

I have no way of thinking about going back. I know Palestinians went through it and I know it might be a possibility, but I can’t imagine it.