Compilation of news reports – IAK staff
At least two Palestinians were killed on Friday in an Israeli drone strike targeting a gathering of civilians in eastern Gaza City.
Gaza ceasefire violations: Legal experts say Israel committing war crimes and more
Israel’s systematic attacks on Palestinians would qualify as a crime against humanity under Article 7(1)(k) of the Rome Statute, says Saeed Bagheri, international law lecturer at University of Reading.
Israel’s curbs on aid could constitute both the war crime of starvation and the war crime of intentionally depriving Gaza’s civilian population of objects indispensable to their survival, says University of Westminster’s Marco Longobardo.
Continued Israeli restrictions on aid could amount to a violation of the Genocide Convention, particularly the prohibition of genocide by imposing destructive living conditions on a targeted group, says international law expert Luigi Daniele (find more detail here).
RELATED: Life on the Brink of Thirst: Kidney Patients in Gaza Struggle amid Water Shortages
Tel Aviv, Washington discuss establishing fund to finance expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza
The Israeli public broadcaster revealed on Friday that the US and Israel are engaged in discussions to establish a fund to finance the expulsion of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
The broadcaster claimed that the project would require a budget estimated in the billions of dollars and that “contacts are also being made with Arab countries to reach an agreement on this matter.” However, it did not specify any countries that have agreed to accept Palestinians or mention any nations that might fund the project.
These claims come just days after an Arab summit in Cairo, where Arab nations unanimously rejected any attempts to rebuild Gaza through the expulsion of its residents, under any name or circumstance.
NOTE: The Palestinian people have made it clear that the vast majority of them do not want to leave.
Forced population transfer is a crime against humanity, and a form of ethnic cleansing. If world leaders truly want to offer Gazans a good life outside Gaza, the just solution would be to return them to their homes in historic Palestine.
RELATED: From Bot Farms to Censorship: Israel’s Disinformation Warfare against Palestinians
Jerusalem: 90,000 worshipers attend 1st Friday prayers of Ramadan at Al-Aqsa Mosque despite Israeli restrictions
Despite strict Israeli restrictions, approximately 90,000 Palestinian worshipers gathered for the first Friday prayers of Ramadan at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the occupied East Jerusalem.
“Around 90,000 worshipers attended Friday prayers at Al-Aqsa Mosque,” Sheikh Azzam al-Khatib, director-general of the Islamic Waqf in Jerusalem, told Anadolu.
Israeli police forces were heavily deployed around the mosque and throughout the Old City of Jerusalem to restrict the entry of worshipers.
On Thursday, Israeli police announced that 3,000 officers would be stationed across East Jerusalem on Friday.
Israeli authorities also imposed severe restrictions on worshipers from the occupied West Bank attempting to reach Jerusalem.
Eyewitnesses told Anadolu that the Israeli army prevented tens of thousands of Palestinians from crossing military checkpoints surrounding Jerusalem to reach Al-Aqsa.
Israel ‘sabotaging’ direct talks between Trump, Hamas officials: Report
Israel has been attempting to obstruct recent talks held directly between Hamas officials and representatives of US President Donald Trump’s administration, according to reports in Hebrew media.
Ronen Bergman, analyst for Yedioth Ahronoth, cited US sources as saying that Tel Aviv is trying to “sabotage” negotiations between Washington and Hamas in the Qatari capital, Doha.
The report said that US officials traveled to Doha to meet with Hamas officials about releasing Israeli captives with US citizenship separately, and did not inform Israel in advance. Israel is opposed to a separate channel between Hamas and Washington because it fears progress will be made about arrangements for the future of Gaza and post-war affairs in the strip – without it being an intermediary, according to the sources.
“Jerusalem is not happy about the direct US–Hamas talks,” an official source told the Times of Israel. “Israel was behind Wednesday’s media leak about the negotiations’ existence,” the source said, adding that while the White House claimed it coordinated with Israel, “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu only found out about the US talks with Hamas after the fact.”
According to Ynet, the US did not inform Israel of the talks between Trump official Adam Boehler’s recent meeting with Hamas representatives because when it previously proposed the idea, strong Israeli pressure resulted in the meeting being canceled.
Ynet says the media leak was an Israeli attempt at “sabotage.”
Trump administration cancels $400m in funds to Columbia University
The Donald Trump administration announced on Friday that it had canceled $400m in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University in New York because of what it alleges is the college’s repeated failure to protect students from antisemitic harassment.
The announcement comes after Columbia set up a new disciplinary committee and initiated its own investigations into students critical of Israel and its war on Gaza after Hamas’s own attack on Israel. That move by the university has alarmed advocates of free speech.
It also comes at a time of widespread backlash to American universities by the Trump administration and conservatives more broadly who see the higher education sector in the US as dominated by liberals and ripe for a rightwing attack on its influence.
Linda McMahon, the Trump-appointed secretary of education, said in a statement, “For too long, Columbia has abandoned that obligation to Jewish students studying on its campus.”
The statement also refers to ongoing “illegal protests” on college and university campuses, a phrase Trump has used to refer to some student protests, though what makes these illegal remains unclear.
Columbia was central to campus protests that broke out across the US over Gaza last spring. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators set up an encampment there in April and inspired a wave of similar protests in many other colleges.
NOTE: Pro-Palestine demonstrations on college campuses have overall been peaceful and non-confrontational, and have notably included a significant number of Jewish students. When there has been violence, it has come from pro-Israel counter-protesters and police.
Pro-Israel organizations consistently work to silence Palestine advocacy on campus – a free speech violation. One strategy they use is to pressure universities to officially adopt the IHRA “definition” of antisemitism, which defines legitimate criticism of Israel as antisemitic. Other strategies include blocking prestigious appointments of and events featuring supporters of Palestinian rights, threatening to withhold major donations, and more. But supporters of Palestine on campus are fighting back.
It is also notable that pro-Israel orgs regularly sponsor trips to Israel for influencers and the influence-able – trips that invariably provide a whitewashed view of Israel and no exposure to the Palestinian narrative, and by withholding the truth, “buy” new Israel partisans.
Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem rebukes US secretary of state over backing of Israel’s war in Gaza on Ash Wednesday
Archbishop Atallah Hanna, head of the Sebastia of the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem, criticized US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday after he appeared publicly having marked his forehead with a cross on Ash Wednesday.
In a Facebook post accompanied by a photo of Rubio bearing the cross mark, Hanna stated that “a true Christian must stand with the oppressed, the suffering, and the afflicted—not with the oppressors who commit violence and repression against nations,” referring to US support throughout Israel’s ongoing genocidal war in Gaza.
He condemned “politicians who distort Christianity’s message through positions that contradict the teachings of the Gospel,” calling such actions “an internal enemy targeting the Church from within.”
Hanna emphasized that those who “take pride in the cross and openly declare their Christianity must also acknowledge the historical injustice inflicted upon the Palestinian people and recognize the need to end this oppression so Palestinians can achieve the freedom and peace they deserve.”
On Tuesday, Rubio reaffirmed US support for Israel in a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, stating that backing Tel Aviv is a “top priority” for the Trump administration.
Additionally, Rubio announced Saturday that he had signed a decision to fast-track $4 billion in military aid to Israel.
Revealed: Secret BBC report “found no evidence” of anti-Israel bias
More than two decades on, The Electronic Intifada has obtained a report the BBC has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep under wraps.
In 2003, under pressure from Israel, its lobby groups in the United Kingdom and its many influential British friends, the BBC commissioned a senior news executive, Malcolm Balen, to analyze the corporation’s news and current affairs broadcasts on the Israel-Palestine conflict and judge whether they showed anti-Israeli, pro-Palestinian bias.
Balen studied BBC TV and radio broadcasts in the last six months of 2003, as well as online coverage into the first months of 2004, at the height of the second intifada.
The BBC did not publish the resulting 21,000-word report, and fought a long campaign not to do so. Supporters of Israel applied for its release under the Freedom of Information Act, but in 2010 the Court of Appeal ruled that the document should remain unpublished. In 2012, the Supreme Court rejected a further appeal under the Act.
I [author Tim Llewellyn] have now read the document, the first journalist outside the BBC to have done so.
In it, Balen finds no evidence of deliberate or systemic bias. These are his exact words, summing up:
”I am conscious that this report has been compiled under a weight of criticism from pro-Israelis and is, in some ways, shaped by it: not because their criticisms are necessarily any more accurate than those from pro-Palestinians, but because they [pro-Israelis] are responsible for the climate of perception which surrounds the BBC’s coverage.” [my italics].
Balen “found no evidence of deliberate or systematic bias,” which will be a disappointment to Israel’s supporters, who have spent much time and energy agitating for his review to be published, while the BBC’s legal expenses in fighting to keep it secret were more than $450,000 (continue reading here).
IMEMC Daily Reports
STATISTICS OCTOBER 7, 2023 – MARCH 6, 2025 (ongoing count):
- At least 49,378 Palestinians killed, 119,554 injured – including:
- at least 48,446 killed in Gaza (~14,550 children)
- at least 932 killed in the West Bank (~186 children)
- at least 111,852 injured in Gaza
- at least 7,702 injured in the West Bank
WAR STATISTICS OCTOBER 7, 2023 (Hamas attack) – JANUARY 22, 2025 (Ceasefire):
Palestinian death toll from October 7, 2023 – January 19, 2025: at least 48,143 – including at least 47,283 in Gaza (~20,600 children), and 916 in the West Bank (~183 children). Palestinian injuries: at least 118,472 – including at least 111,629 in Gaza, and 7,000 in the West Bank.
Thousands of those killed in Gaza have yet to be identified, and an estimated 11,000 more are still buried under rubble.
Reported Israeli death toll from October 7, 2023 – January 19, 2025: ~1,616 (or 1,590) – including ~1,139 on October 7, 2023 (~36 children), 436 (or 405) military forces since the ground invasion began in Gaza, 46 military and civilians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Israel.
NOTE: It is unknown at this time how many of the deaths and injuries of Israelis on October 7 were caused by Israeli soldiers.
- Human rights reports on Israel-Palestine (regularly updated)
- Israel is building a ChatGPT-like tool weaponizing surveillance of Palestinians
- Israel’s War Decimated Gaza’s Farmlands and Killed Most of its Livestock
- Israeli forces issue administrative detention order against youngest Palestinian child on record
- Class action lawsuit against California Congress members over Gaza genocide goes international
- Israel threatens a second Nakba, yet denies the first ever happened
- As Freed Palestinians Describe Torture, Trump OKs $3 Billion Arms Package for Israel
- The Oscar-winner Israel partisans blocked Americans from seeing
- BBC & Guardian Editors Held Private Meetings With Israeli General
- Israel’s bombing of Gaza caused untold environmental damage − can it recover?
- Netanyahu only ever saw the hostages as his path back to genocide
- Hamas explained why it attacked Israel on October 7, 2023
- Palestinian Prisoners: Harrowing Reports Of Systemic Torture – 2 articles
- A brief history of Israel’s theft and trafficking of Palestinian organs
- The Last Thing Gaza Needs Is Another Blackwater
- Remembering Aaron Bushnell
- Campus Police Are Using Israeli Spy Tech to Crack Down on Student Protest
- ‘Battle For The Truth’: Pro-Israel Bias Inside UK Newsrooms Revealed
- Israeli Doctors Must Condemn the Inhumane Treatment of Hospitalized Palestinian Detainees
- Did Israel round up women and children after 7 October as bargaining chips?
