Human Rights Watch investigated several Israeli attacks that resulted in particularly high numbers of civilian casualties – with no evident military target – and determined that the incidents may have been war crimes. Other Israeli attacks during the conflict were also likely unlawful.
On Wednesday, Israeli forces killed Mohammad, the 11th Palestinian child victim of Israel in the West Bank in 2021. A few days before they had killed a 17-year-old. Today, they shot dead a 20-year-old participating in Mohammad’s funeral march. Also today, Israeli soldiers broke into and ransacked the local Defense for Children International office. Tuesday, Israeli forces killed a 41-year-old Palestinian man. In the middle of all this, the House advanced a bill to give Israel billions of Americans’ tax dollars.
The Olympics opening ceremony featured a moving commemoration for Israeli athletes who tragically and needlessly died half a century ago (when the Israeli prime minister refused a prisoner exchange), but failed to highlight a tragedy going on now that the world could stop: the desperate plight of Palestinian athletes who have been shot, maimed, & sometimes killed by Israeli forces… The ceremony also ignored the hundreds of men, women, and children killed by Israeli forces in the lead up to the tragic 1972 event, and the hundreds more killed by Israeli forces the following day…
Sujoud’s story is unique in its details, but many Palestinian children in the West Bank have had similar haunting experiences with Israeli settlers, soldiers, or another form of the inescapable presence of the occupation.
Childhood in the Gaza Strip is unlike anywhere else in the world. Here, thanks to Israel, a ten-year-old has already experienced the violence of three wars and has spent his entire life under brutal blockade.
Much essential information is frequently omitted from US news coverage, including the vast difference in weaponry used in the “Israel-Hamas wars” – see this detailed report and videos of the weapons used by Israeli military forces and Palestinian resistance groups.
Multiple sworn affidavits from the past few weeks testify to rampant, systemic Israeli police attacks and brutal beatings of Palestinian citizens of Israel – protesters, minors, innocent bystanders, and even attorneys – inside the city’s police station; floor of ‘torture room’ was covered in blood from violent police beatings.
The Israeli police ran over him, beat him, and instead of calling an ambulance, they arrested him – because he had a Palestinian flag on his bicycle.
In unprecedented actions, the front pages of the New York Times and the Israeli daily newspaper Ha’aretz featured photos of the 67 children in Gaza who were killed by Israeli airstrikes this month. Some Israel partisans called this a ‘blood libel.’
Palestinians are routinely prosecuted in an Israeli military court system that lacks basic and fundamental guarantees of due process.