(Several videos of the day’s incidents are here.)

In response to news of Israeli soldiers abusing bodies, the Israeli military said in a statement, “This is a serious incident that is not in line with [Israeli military] values ​​and what is expected of [Israeli military] soldiers.”

Israeli Supreme Court rejects petition to shut prison where Palestinian was raped

Middle East Monitor reports:

The Israeli Supreme Court has rejected a request by civil society organizations to shut down the notorious Sde Teiman Prison, where aggravated human rights violations have been committed against Palestinian detainees.

The request came as part of a petition filed in May by the Association for Civil Rights, the Doctors for Human Rights, Gisha, Hamoked and the Committee Against Torture to immediately close the prison.

The court rejected the closure request and said, “In these difficult days, the Supreme Court is also required to issue rulings that should be obvious — that the state must abide by the law and is prohibited from abusing the detainees.”

In July Israel’s Attorney-General demanded Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu close the detention camp “immediately” following the rights groups’ petition.

Thousands of Palestinian civilians, including women, children, and health and civil defence workers have been arrested since 7 October. Images emerging from Gaza show them being rounded up, stripped to their underwear in public and taken away.

Over the past few months, the army has released dozens of Palestinian prisoners from Gaza in separate batches, most of whom suffered from deteriorating health conditions and bore signs of torture and medical neglect.

RECOMMENDED READING: Hostages of Israeli revenge in the Gaza Strip: Testimonies of 100 released Palestinian detainees reveal crimes of torture, cruel treatment.

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Netanyahu lashes out at UK prime minister for giving mixed signals on Israel support

Middle East Eye reports:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has criticized the government of new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, accusing it of sending “mixed messages” regarding the United Kingdom’s support for Israel.

In an interview with the Daily Mail, Netanyahu condemned London’s recent suspension of arms licenses to Israel as “misguided”.

“After the October 7 Hamas massacre,” Netanyahu stated, “the previous British government was clear in its support. Unfortunately, the current government is sending mixed messages.”

He criticized the UK’s discontinuation of support for Netanyahu in the International Criminal Court and its decision to suspend a small percentage of arms licenses to Israel.

In response, a Foreign Office spokesperson stated: “We have been absolutely clear that Israel must adhere to international humanitarian law when taking military action.”

He added, “The UK has raised concerns about these issues over many months, as have other allies. Unfortunately, these concerns have not been satisfactorily addressed.”

Hezbollah leader vows “just retribution” for Israel’s pager explosions

Andalou Agency reports:

Hezbollah Secretary-General, Hassan Nasrallah, vowed to turn Israel’s actions into a “hell”, Thursday, after the group suffered a “severe blow” when communication devices were detonated earlier this week in Lebanon, Anadolu Agency reports.

Nasrallah made the remarks during a televised speech to address the explosions that killed 37 people and injured thousands.

“We admit we have received a severe blow which is natural as we acknowledge Israel’s technological superiority, backed by the US, NATO and the West,” said Nasrallah. “The Israeli enemy sought to kill 5,000 people within just two minutes, showing no regard for anything.”

“The number of pagers carried by Hezbollah members is 4,000, which implies that Israel intentionally sought to kill 4,000 people,” he said.

The explosions “will be met with a just retribution, severe reckoning, timing, place, nature of which we will determine,” said Nasrallah.

Paging The Hague: Israel’s Exploding Electronics Might Be War Crimes

The Intercept reports:

The seemingly indiscriminate nature of the attacks in Lebanon this week has drawn the attention and concern of experts in international law who caution that the explosions may rise to the level of war crimes.

Brian Finucane, a former State Department legal adviser under Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, “If it is Israel behind this [it is], they’ve got some tough questions to answer, including to the U.S. government, because the U.S. government is providing great military support.”

“It really should be in the U.S. government’s interest to ensure that its military partners are complying with the laws of war.”

Finucane said that, were he still advising the State Department, he would urge the U.S. to ask a series of questions: Did Israel take precautions to minimize harms to civilians? Did it anticipate blasts to be large enough to harm civilians? How and when were the devices altered to be detonated?

On the specific topic of exploding pagers and walkie-talkies, he highlighted a law of war that prohibits the “use of booby-traps or other devices in the form of harmless portable objects which are specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive material.”

“I think detonating pagers in people’s pockets without any knowledge of where those are, in that moment, is a pretty evident indiscriminate attack,” said Jessica Peake, an international law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law. “I think this seems to be quite blatant, both violations of both proportionality and indiscriminate attacks.”

Both Peake and Finucane said the scale of this week’s attacks are unprecedented.

(Read the full article here.)

U.S. Officials Concede Gaza Cease-Fire Out of Reach for Biden

Wall Street Journal reports: 

After months of saying a cease-fire and a hostage-release deal was close at hand, senior U.S. officials are now privately acknowledging they don’t expect Israel and Hamas to reach an agreement before the end of President Biden’s term.

“No deal is imminent,” one of the U.S. officials said. “I’m not sure it ever gets done.”

NOTE: The WSJ article goes on to give a fabricated list of reasons why no deal has been reached, including that “Hamas makes demands and then refuses to say ‘yes’ after the U.S. and Israel accept them.”

In reality, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has been repeatedly “sabotaging talks“; adding “nonnegotiable” demands,” and “collaps[ing] the deal.” While the Biden administration has been publicly declaring for weeks that an agreement is very close, Netanyahu, his team, and mediators have insisted this is not the case. Israeli officials have said that Netanyahu’s hard lines are actually making a deal much harder to reach.

US: University of Virginia refuses to divest from Israel despite student referendum

Middle East Eye reports:

The managers of the University of Virginia’s (UVA) multi-billion-dollar endowment announced on Friday that they will not divest from Israel, a decision taken despite a February referendum passing a pro-boycott, divestment and sanctions resolution targeting Israel.

Students and faculty had been engaged in a divestment campaign since the fall of 2023, among many other college campuses.

UVA’s investment management company, responsible for managing the school’s nearly $14bn endowment, has now officially rejected those calls to withdraw investments from companies linked to Israel on the basis of not “using divestment as a means of expressing political views”, according to Kristina Alimard, the company’s chief operating officer.

During a recent board of visitors meeting, Alimard stated, “We are not divesting from any investments in response to the student referendum that was passed earlier this year.”

Over 8,000 students voted in the referendum calling for full divestment from Israel in the university’s $13.6bn endowment in companies “that engage with or profit from Israel’s apartheid regime and its acute violence against Palestinians”.

More than two-thirds of the voters supported the measure.

IMEMC Daily Reports.

The Intercept: Kamala Harris Refused to Meet With Uncommitted About Gaza — and Uncommitted Refused to Endorse Her

CounterPunch: Exploding Pagers in Lebanon, Another Israeli Terrorism Blunder?

FAIR interview with Gary Shupak: ‘Genocide Can and Should Never Be Just a Normal Story’

FOR MORE NEWS ON THE LEBANON FRONT:

The Cradle: Hezbollah chief challenges Israeli leaders: ‘You will not return settlers to the north’

Andalou Agency: Israel launches intensive airstrikes against southern Lebanon amid escalating tensions

 

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The Gaza Ministry of Health released a 649-page document with the name of every identified Palestinian killed in Gaza.

The first 14 pages alone are babies under the age of one.

This is not self-defense. This is genocide. pic.twitter.com/ffoKcMlAIs

— Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (@RepRashida) September 19, 2024

STATISTICS OCTOBER 7 – SEPTEMBER 19:

Palestinian death toll from October 7, 2023 – September 19, 2024: at least 41,978* (41,272 in Gaza* – 11,308 women (30%), 16,715 children as of September 5. [The Ministry’s figures have been contested by the Israeli authorities, although they have been accepted as accurate by Israeli intelligence services, the UN, and WHO. These data are supported by independent analyses, comparing changes in the number of deaths of UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) staff with those reported by the Ministry, which found claims of data fabrication implausible.]

This is expected to be a significant undercount since thousands of those killed have yet to be identified – and at least 706 in the West Bank (~148 children). This does not include an estimated 10,000 more still buried under rubble (4,900 women and children). Euro-Med Monitor reports 49,032 Palestinian deaths.

Lancet: “Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the 37,396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.

Ralph Nader earlier estimated 300,000 Palestinians may have been killed in Gaza.

• At least 45 Palestinians have died in Israeli prisons (27 from Gaza, 23 from West Bank).
• At least 41 Palestinians have died due to malnutrition (at least 37 of them children)**.
• About 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million population are currently displaced.
• Almost 500,000 Gazans are currently experiencing catastrophic levels of food insecurity.

Palestinian injuries from October 7 – September 19: at least 101,251 (including at least 95,551 in Gaza and 5,700 in the West Bank, including 830 children). [It remains unknown how many Americans are among the casualties in Gaza.]

Reported Israeli death toll from October 7, 2023 – September 19, 2024: ~1,457 (~1,139 on October 7, 2023, of which ~32 were Americans, and ~36 were children); 293*** military forces since the ground invasion began in Gaza; 25 military and civilians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Israel) and~10,000 injured.

NOTE: It is unknown at this time how many of the deaths and injuries of Israelis on October 7 were caused by Israeli soldiers.

*Previously, IAK did not include 471 Gazans killed in the Al Ahli hospital blast since the source of the projectile was being disputed. However, given that much evidence points to Israel as the culprit, Israel had previously bombed the hospital and has attacked many others, Israel is prohibiting outside experts from investigating the scene, and since the UN and other agencies are including the deaths from the attack in their cumulative totals, if Americans knew is now also doing so.

**Euro-Med Monitor reports that Gaza’s elderly are dying at an alarmingly high rate. The majority die at home and are buried either close to their residences or in makeshift graves dispersed across the Strip. There are currently more than 140 such cemeteries. Additionally, according to Euromed, thousands have died from starvation, malnourishment, and inadequate medical care; these are considered indirect victims as they were not registered in hospitals. 

***Approximately twelve of the deaths listed above were Israeli soldiers killed by Hezbollah in fighting at the Israel-Lebanon border. The figure does not include the reportedly 53 Israeli soldiers – nearly 16% of the total Israeli military deaths – killed due to friendly fire in Gaza and other military-related accidents. 

† For most of the conflict, women and children accounted for about 70% of deaths in Gaza, with children making up a little over 40% of those killed, according to official statistics.

Find previous daily casualty figures and daily news updates here.

• Human rights reports on Israel-Palestine (regularly updated)
• Contrived charges of antisemitism are the new ‘Red Scare’
• How Israel’s quadcopters traumatize, maim and kill Palestinians in Gaza
• Israeli society’s dehumanization of Palestinians is now absolute
• The unpublished genocide diaries of Refaat Alareer
• An arms embargo on Israel is not a radical idea — it’s the law
• Israel is redrawing the West Bank, cutting into a prospective Palestinian state
• Gaza breakdown: 20 times Israel used US arms in likely war crimes
• U.S. universities spent the summer strategizing to suppress student activism. Here is their plan.
• ‘Words like Slaughter:’ A comparative study of The New York Times reporting in Ukraine and Gaza
• Cracks in the Dome: Israel’s security mirage
• Israel Suddenly Has A Problem With Attacks On Population Centers
• Americans are always the last to know…about Israel’s crimes
• Does Any Other Country besides Israel have the Right to Defend Itself?
• ‘Raped by female soldiers’: Palestinian in leaked Sde Teiman photo speaks out
• Alison Weir trending on social media – what the buzz is about
• Israeli media’s coverage of the rape of Palestinian detainees shows support for sexual violence in service of genocide
• Inside Israel’s torture, rape, and dehumanization centers
• I’m a pediatrician. The scars I saw on Gaza’s children will take generations to heal.
• What Harris’s Jewish outreach director said at a private DNC afterparty
• ‘Strong record of supporting the U.S.-Israel relationship’: a look at Tim Walz’s votes on Palestine as a member of Congress
• Nearly Two-Thirds of All Campaign Funds for Cori Bush Challenger Came From AIPAC
• Israeli army probe covered up “friendly fire” killings on October 7
• Are US officials’ investments of public funds in Israeli bonds ethical? How much is too much?
• Honoring the memory of a Gazan Olympic hero: Majed Abu Maraheel
• An American was just shot in the West Bank. The American press can’t be bothered.