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.
After his arrest by Israeli forces on Sunday for a traffic violation, Abdo Yousef al-Khatib was heard screaming in his prison cell. The Israel Prison Service claims he died of a heart attack.
Jewish author Michael Lesher – who blogs for the Times of Israel, among other outlets – muses on many Jewish leaders’ responses to the recent attack on Gaza: “trust in God and believe in Jewish infallibility.” Lesher suggests that instead, they should “devote their efforts toward restraining the Israeli war machine,” and consider the consequences of “[building a] future on a foundation of stolen property and murdered children.”
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.
Friedman’s fear is that the debate is quietly shifting outside this framework – towards the recognition that Israel is a belligerent apartheid regime and the conclusion that one democratic state for Palestinians and Jews is now the only viable solution.
Since 2013, Israeli forces and settlers have killed at least 168 Palestinian children in the Occupied Palestinian Territory with live ammunition and crowd-control weapons, according to documentation collected by Defense for Children International. Israeli forces shot Mohammad Said Mohammad Hamayel, 16, with live ammunition during a protest in the village of Beita in the occupied West Bank.
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.
Ultra-racist Kahanists, partners of Netanyahu and now members of the Knesset, push their maximalist agenda – including ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
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.’