Tag: Gaza

By Media Wire

Israeli troops have committed widespread abuses in the Gaza Strip, including potential war crimes, according to photos and videos they posted, shared and the celebrations on their social media accounts, a new documentary has disclosed.

According to the feature-length documentary Gaza, published online by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit, Israeli soldiers routinely shared abuses they committed on platforms including TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook after invading the enclave.

The crimes ranged from wanton destruction and looting, to the demolition of entire neighbourhoods and possible unlawful killings.

Al Jazeera said it was able to track down the names, ranks and military units of many of the soldiers after compiling a database of “over two and a half thousand social media accounts, containing photos and videos placed online by Israeli soldiers”.

Human rights lawyer Rodney Dixon, who watched an early screening of the documentary, called it “a treasure trove you very seldom come across”.

Dixon suggested that the documentary could be of relevance to the International Criminal Court (ICC), claiming it included material which “prosecutors will be licking their lips at”.

Israeli and Hamas leaders are currently facing a range of charges before the ICC for their roles in alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the war on Gaza.

In May, ICC prosecutor Karim Khan said he filed an application for arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh and Mohammed Deif.

The Al Jazeera documentary also supports previous investigations which have highlighted how Palestinian civilians are routinely killed by Israeli snipers.

Commenting on the abuses featured in the documentary, Dixon stated: “Just because a civilian is in an area where combat is going on does not make them fair game.

“If they get involved in hostilities at a particular moment, yes, they lose their civilian status, they can be targeted. But then you have to show the evidence that they are presenting a threat to you.”

“It’s potentially a matter that the International Criminal Court would want to look at,” Dixon added.

The documentary also referenced one video uploaded to YouTube by a member of Israel’s 202nd Paratroopers Battalion, in which three unarmed Palestinian men were shot dead by Israeli snipers.

Retired British army general Charlie Herbert said it was “extraordinary” that an Israeli soldier uploaded the video to YouTube.

“The degree of impunity,” he said, adding, “[There] may have been legitimate targets, but it sure doesn’t look like it to me.”

Later, when commenting on an incident where an Israeli soldier blew up a building, Herbert noted: “The fact that they’ve been able to rig these buildings up with explosives shows very clearly there’s no current threat from those buildings.”

The film also explored how an Israeli army unit destroyed Khirbet Khaza’a, a small town just across the barrier wall separating Gaza from the Israeli kibbutz of Nir Oz, which was attacked on 7 October.

One soldier posted on Facebook a video set to music showing the destruction of the town, along with a voiceover saying: “We went joyously to annihilate the village of the Nazis. We worked hard for two weeks. We blew up the entire village.”

At the end of the operation the soldiers posted before and after shots of the destruction.

According to a separate video posted on Instagram, Israeli soldiers could be seen leaving with a message that read: “Mission accomplished. We… destroyed a whole village as a revenge for what they did to Kibbutz Nir Oz.”

According to Dixon, the human rights lawyer, “It is strictly prohibited to use reprisal against the civilian population of your enemy.”

Bill Van Esveld, an associate children’s rights director at Human Rights Watch, said that the large-scale unnecessary destruction of civilian property was prohibited by the Geneva Conventions and under the Rome Statute of the ICC.

The documentary also includes testimony from Fadi Bakr, a former prisoner at the Sde Teiman detention camp in southern Israel.

After sharing his personal account of his own detention and torture, Bakr describes witnessing Israeli soldiers arranging the rape of one of his fellow prisoners by a dog.

“They [Israeli forces] forced him [the Palestinian prisoner] to the ground on his belly. They tied his hands and tied his feet. There were about eight or nine soldiers. They stripped him of his underpants. A captain came and sprayed something on his backside. There was a dog there. They unleashed the dog on him. The dog raped the young man. It raped him, literally speaking. Rape.”

“It is impossible that anyone ever heard of it or saw it, or [it] could be imagined by a human mind,” he added.

The documentary also highlights the role played by US President Joe Biden and suggests he was the most senior enabler of alleged Israeli criminality, and also explores possible British complicity in Israeli abuses, especially via RAF surveillance flights over Gaza from the Akrotiri base in Cyprus.

The film opens with a quote from Palestinian novelist Susan Abulhawa: “The West cannot hide, they cannot claim ignorance. Nobody can say they didn’t know. We live in an era of technology and this has been described as the first livestream genocide in history, and I believe that to be true.

MENA

The UN has urged for a probe into an incident where Israeli forces threw dead Palestinians from a rooftop [Screengrab/X]

The United Nations  has urged for a transparent probe into video footage that surfaced this week showing Israeli soldiers throwing dead Palestinians from a rooftop in the West Bank town of Qabatiya following a raid.

The offensive on the town resulted in Israeli forces killing at least seven Palestinians, with the official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, reporting that the disturbing footage showed at least three of those killed being thrown from the top of the building.

On Friday, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric described the footage as “grotesque” and “inhumane”, urging for a “transparent” investigation into it.

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby called the show of brutality  “deeply disturbing”, adding that the US is waiting for the results of an Israeli army investigation into the incident.

Kirby added that the video constitutes “an egregious behaviour by professional soldiers” if verified.

Several rights organisations have confirmed the validity of the video, including the Euro-Med Monitor.

An AP journalist present on the ground also confirmed they saw three Israeli soldiers pushing the bodies from the top of an adjacent multi-story building in Qabatiya, sending the apparently lifeless bodies falling several storeys to the ground.

It happened following a 10-hour offensive on the town, where Israeli forces in armoured jeeps reportedly mowed down pedestrians and caused damage to infrastructure.

Israeli forces had earlier besieged several homes and shot Palestinians dead, reports stated.

“We reached out immediately to our Israeli counterparts about it, and we pressed them for more details. They have assured us that they’re going to investigate this and that there will be proper accountability if it’s warranted,” Kirby said.

“We’re going to be very eager to see what the IDF investigation finds. As always, we expect that an investigation will be conducted thoroughly and transparently,” he continued.

Following the incident, which caused global outrage, the Israeli army said it was a “serious incident that is not in line with IDF values ​​and what is expected of IDF soldiers”.

The former executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, slammed the harrowing footage.

“Under international humanitarian law, soldiers are supposed to ensure the bodies of enemy combatants are treated decently. Yet Israeli soldiers threw the bodies of three Palestinian men from a roof” he wrote on X, adding there was no military need to carry out such actions.

Hamas also issued a response to the footage, denouncing the act as “barbarity”.

Since the launch of Israel’s war on Gaza in October, Israel has frequently raided and violently attacked West Bank towns, killing Palestinians and carrying out mass arrests.

According to the UN, 622 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli violence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem between October and August, including 126 killed in air strikes, and 11 killed by extremist Israeli settlers.

 

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GAZA, (Xinhua)/Flowerbudnews:  — At least 100 Palestinians were killed on Saturday by Israeli airstrikes on a school serving as a shelter for displaced people in Al-Daraj neighborhood in Gaza City, Palestinian medical and security sources said.

They told Xinhua that the slain victims included women and children and were transferred to Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza.

Israeli warplanes targeted the Al-Taba’een School in the Al-Daraj neighborhood in central Gaza City while the displaced people in the school were performing the Fajr prayer.

Local eyewitnesses told Xinhua that due to a lack of resources such as ambulances and civil defense equipment in the city, the victims were transported to the hospital via private cars and animal-drawn carts.

The Hamas-run government media office in Gaza said in a press statement that the Israeli army “directly bombed the displaced people while they were performing the Fajr prayer, and this is what increased the number of dead rapidly.”

“The Israeli bombing of a displaced people’s school comes within the framework of the crime of genocide and ethnic cleansing against our Palestinian people in a clear manner,” the office said.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement on Saturday that directed by intelligence, the Israeli Air Force precisely struck a Hamas command and control center in the Al-Taba’een school and located adjacent to a mosque.

The center served as a hideout for Hamas “terrorists” and commanders, from which various attacks were planned and advanced against IDF troops and Israel, the IDF said, adding that prior to the strike, “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians.”

The Palestinian death toll from Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip since the outbreak of the current round of Israeli-Hamas conflict on Oct. 7 has risen to 39,699, Gaza-based health authorities said in a statement on Thursday.

Courtesy – 1440 media

ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR
Israeli settlements violate international law, U.N.’s top court says in a landmark opinion
The International Court of Justice said Israel should cease all new settlement activities and evacuate settlers from Palestinian territories.

By Chantal Da Silva
Policies and practices used by Israel in its occupation of Palestinian territories are in breach of international law, the United Nations’ top court said in a landmark opinion Friday.

The International Court of Justice said in its opinion, which was read out by Judge Nawaf Salam, president of the world body, that Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as “the regime associated with them,” were established and are being maintained in violation of international law.

The ICJ said Israel should cease all new settlement activities and evacuate settlers from Palestinian territories.

It further said that Israel systematically discriminated against Palestinians and branded the occupation of the territories as “de facto annexation,” and that Israel’s exploitation of natural resources in the Palestinian territories likewise violates international law.

Its “unlawful policies and practices” were “in breach of the Israeli government’s obligation to respect the right of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination,” the court said.

The International Court of Justice, which is based at The Hague in the Netherlands, had been looking into the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories following a request from the United Nations General Assembly.

The General Assembly had asked the court in January 2023, prior to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, to deliver an opinion on Israeli “policies and practices” toward Palestinians and on the legal status of the occupation of Palestinian territories, including the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.

In a statement on Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the ICJ’s decision as “false,” saying that “the Jewish people are not conquerors in their own land,” referring to Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Benny Gantz, a more moderate Israeli politician and a former member of the war Cabinet, said the opinion “harms security and stability in the region,” and that Israel “will continue to defend ourselves against those who seek to destroy us.”

By contrast, the Palestinian Authority’s foreign affairs ministry called the opinion “a watershed moment,” adding that the ruling meant the “international community is under an obligation not just to reaffirm the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination but to see to it that this right is implemented immediately.”

Mustafa Barghouti, general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative and a veteran Palestinian political activist, welcomed the ICJ’s opinion as a “great victory for the Palestinian people and a major blow to Israel.”

“No more excuses. The international community must force Israel to end the occupation,” B’Tselem, a Jerusalem-based nonprofit organization that documents human rights violations in the Palestinian territories, said in a statement Friday.

The court’s advisory opinion is not legally binding, but it could have a significant political impact as Israel faces mounting backlash and isolation over its deadly military offensive in Gaza, where nearly 39,000 people, including thousands of children, have been killed since the war began, according to local health officials.

It also comes just a day after Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution rejecting the establishment of a Palestinian state, despite growing pressure from the global community, including the United States, which for decades has officially supported the idea of a two-state solution.

Israeli military vehicles enter Balata camp, east of the West Bank city of Nablus. The ICJ said Friday that Israel’s “unlawful policies and practices” in the Palestinian territories violated international law.Nasser Ishtayeh / LightRocket via Getty Images
The ICJ’s opinion Friday is separate from another ongoing case brought to the court by South Africa accusing Israel of committing genocide in its offensive in Gaza, an accusation both the U.S. and Israel have denied.

The General Assembly had asked the ICJ to weigh in on the “legal consequences arising from the ongoing violation by Israel of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, from its prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.”

It also asked the court to give its opinion on how the policies and practices of Israel affected the “legal status of the occupation” and what the legal consequences might be “for all States and the United Nations.

Israel occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in 1967 during the Six-Day War. In 2005, faced with international and domestic pressure, Israel withdrew troops and thousands of Israeli settlers from Gaza, leaving the enclave to be governed by the Palestinian Authority while continuing its occupation of the West Bank and Jerusalem.

In 2006, Hamas was elected into power, replacing the Palestinian Authority as Gaza’s governing body. In response, Israel significantly tightened its control over Gaza’s borders, coastline and airspace, imposing a blockade that, for 17 years, has crippled Gaza’s economy, with a widespread, devastating impact on Palestinian civilians’ daily lives. Israel says that the blockade is required to ensure the safety of its population from Hamas.

Across the West Bank, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have built sweeping settlements, many of which have displaced Palestinian communities. The international community largely considers these settlements to be illegal.

In March, Israel also approved the appropriation of nearly 5 square miles of land in the Jordan Valley, in the largest seizure of land in the West Bank in decades. U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric called the move “a step in the wrong direction,” adding: “The direction we want to be heading is to find a negotiated two-state solution.”

Meanwhile, Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem, where the city’s most sensitive holy sites are based, is not internationally recognized.

As an occupying power, Israel’s actions in the territories are expected to comply with rules under international law that govern occupation.

Netanyahu has previously said Israel does not recognize the legitimacy of the discussions at the ICJ. He decried the case as part of a “Palestinian attempt to dictate the results” of a political agreement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without negotiations.

Chantal Da Silva
Chantal Da Silva reports on world news for NBC News Digital and is based in London.