Israeli warplanes continue to pummel Gaza, Health Ministry now reporting a death toll of 87 Palestinians – 18 of them children – and 530 wounded. Israeli casualties largely unchanged: 7 deaths, several dozen injuries. Biden administration blocks UN statement aimed at reducing violence. Journalism groups condemn Israel’s targeting of journalists.
As Israel continues its attacks on Gaza, and Gazan resistance fighters retaliate, the death toll continues to rise; Israeli rhetoric grows more hawkish; the US stands solidly by Israel’s side.
Israel’s ongoing attacks on Gaza on are the worst the enclave has seen since 2014, when Israeli forces killed 2,200 Palestinians, and Palestinian resistance fighters killed 72 Israelis. One recent Israeli strike alone made about 80 families homeless. As the deaths, injuries, and damage climb, Palestinian resistance groups launch rockets into Israel.
Tensions have been running especially high in Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territories, as Israel violently clamps down on Palestinian protests against occupation and land confiscation and other human rights violations. Read these short reports, all from Friday, May 6th.
The situation in Sheikh Jarrah, a Palestinian neighborhood of Jerusalem, continues to be unstable as Palestinians protest the imminent forced eviction of multiple families so that illegal Jewish settlers can take over their homes. The world barely notices as news media either ignore it or cover it poorly…
H.A. Hellyer of the Carnegie Foundation calls on the American government to stop acting like Israel isn’t practicing full-blown apartheid, and start focusing on Palestinian human rights. Our leaders need to get aligned with their constituents, who are more willing than ever to be critical of Israel.
Idaho & West Virginia have just passed AIPAC promoted legislation against BDS, the international boycott against Israel over its human rights abuses. The government of Israel has been leading the effort against BDS; in 2017 it approved $72 million to combat the human rights campaign… 33 states have now passed anti-BDS legislation
Pillsbury is doing business in illegal Israeli settlements & profiting from Israel’s war crimes, and a member of the PIllsbury family is calling for boycott of his own family’s products.
In a move widely recognized as illegal under international law, Israel has forbidden all fishing in the waters off Gaza. Israel’s blame-the-victim rationale for the ban is to punish Palestinian protest against Israel’s now 14-year-old, illegal blockade of the enclave. Palestinian resistance groups launched several dozen small, homemade projectiles toward Israel in recent days – projectiles that rarely cause injury. In the 1990s, the Oslo Accords set the Gazan fishing zone at 20 miles, but Israel has unilaterally moved the boundary again and again as a form of collective punishment that impoverishes and starves the Palestinian population.
A Jewish Israeli eyewitness to this week’s anti-Palestinian violence in Jerusalem recalls the sights, sounds, and smells of racism.