Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Prisoners held at an Israeli detention camp in the Negev desert are being subjected to widespread physical and mental abuses, with at least one reported case of a man having his limb amputated as a result of injuries sustained from constant handcuffing, according to two whistleblowers who worked at the site.
The sources described harrowing treatment of detainees at the Israeli Sde Teiman camp, which holds Palestinians from Gaza and suspected Hamas militants, including inmates regularly being kept shackled to hospital beds, blindfolded and forced to wear nappies.
According to the two sources, the facility, located approximately 18 miles from the Gaza border, consists of two distinct sections: an enclosure where up to 200 Palestinian detainees from Gaza are confined under severe physical restrictions inside cages, and a field hospital where dozens of patients with war injuries are handcuffed to their beds and often deprived of pain relief.
Israeli leaders are publicly stating that an impending ruling on Friday from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) will not have any impact on their plans to continue the government’s genocidal war on Gaza.
But in private, officials are worried that a ruling against Israel will come with immense political costs on the international stage.
The ICJ is set to rule in a decision regarding a request from South Africa last week to limit Israel’s imminent military offensive in Rafah, which technically already began earlier this month. The request from South Africa is part of its ongoing case accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza.
The ICJ has so far refused to rule that Israel has engaged in genocide or that it must halt its military operations. It did rule in January, however, that Israel must ensure its troops do not commit genocidal acts, and allow for more humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza — something Israel has refused to do.
South African officials claim the offensive in Rafah and other actions by Israel since the January verdict are destroying the “essential foundations of Palestinian life.” Indeed, in the months since the initial ICJ ruling, thousands more have been killed in Gaza, with aid groups expressing grave concern over famine taking over many parts of the region. Some health workers in Gaza are even reporting that many patients, lacking proper medical care and access to treatments, have maggot-infested wounds.
An exposé by the Washington Post (5/16/24)
showed the degree to which wealthy pro-Israel businesspeople
coordinated with each other to pressure New York City Mayor Eric Adams
to take drastic action against college campus protests against the
genocide of Palestinians.
It’s a remarkable piece of reporting, by Hannah Natanson
and Emmanuel Felton, that points to a pervasive problem in American
politics: that the wealthy enjoy outsized influence with the political
class, while the rest of us drift in the wind.
The story is based on transcripts of a WhatsApp
groupchat called “Israel Current Events,” whose participants included
“billionaires and business titans.” One message by a billionaire’s
staffer “told the others the goal of the group was to ‘change the narrative’ in favor of Israel,” the Post reported.
A person identified only as “a staffer” told the group, “While Israel
worked to ‘win the physical war,’ the chat group’s members would ‘help
win the war’ of US public opinion by funding an information campaign
against Hamas.”
he article reported that the chats revealed collaboration with Adams:
“He’s open to any ideas we have,” chat member [Joseph] Sitt, founder of the retail chain Ashley Stewart and the global real estate company Thor Equities, wrote April 27, the day after the group’s Zoom call with Adams. “As you saw he’s OK if we hire private investigators to then have his police force intel team work with them.”
The piece revealed that groupchat members, aware that “Columbia had to grant Adams permission before he could send city police to the campus,” strategized about how to apply the group’s “leverage” to Columbia president Minouche Shafik, including contacting the university’s board of trustees.
Needless to say, City Hall wasn’t too happy about the piece. One of the mayor’s deputies, Fabien Levy, quickly responded on Twitter (5/16/24) that “the insinuation that Jewish donors secretly plotted to influence government operations is an all-too-familiar antisemitic trope.”
His multi-post thread concluded:
@WashingtonPost & others can make editorial decisions to disagree with the decisions by universities to ask the NYPD to clear unlawful encampments on campuses, but saying Jews “wielded their money and power in an effort to shape American views” is offensive on so many levels.
The Washington Post, of course, did not report that “Jews” had “wielded their money and power”—but that “some prominent individuals” had, distinguished not by religion or ethnicity, but by their politics.
The mayor himself called the story “antisemitic in its core” (Good Day New York, 5/20/24) and doubled down on this point when speaking to reporters (New York Post, 5/21/24). The Anti-Defamation League (Twitter, 5/20/24) said that the Washington Post should be
ashamed of publishing an article that unabashedly (and almost entirely on anonymous sources) plays into antisemitic tropes by inferring a secret cabal of Jews is using wealth & power to influence governments, the media, the business world & academia.
The
Adams administration’s effort to redirect scrutiny away from the latest
credible charge of coziness with wealthy donors found a friendly
audience in right-wing media. Fox News (5/17/24) gave Levy’s claims headline status, and the New York Post editorial board (5/17/24) said that the Adams administration “smells a whiff of antisemitism in the WaPo
report,” because “intimating that a mainly Jewish bunch of wealthy
power-players were quietly pulling a politician’s strings is a classic
trope of Jew-hate.”
Yes, that’s the same New York Post that obsessively ties every political cause to the left of Emperor Palpatine to the Jewish philanthropist George Soros (e.g., 8/1/22, 1/22/23, 1/25/23, 7/24/23, 12/9/23, 4/26/24, 4/26/24). It is also interesting to note that two Rupert Murdoch outlets, thought to be Republican stalwarts, are once again acting as in-kind public relations agents for a Democratic mayor, a testament to Adams’ right-wing agenda—the New York Post endorsed him (5/20/21) and continues to cheerlead for him (1/27/24) as he approaches the end of his first term. For the Murdoch empire, politics (including shielding Israel) sometimes comes before party.
The accusation that the student protest
movement against the genocide of Palestinians is “antisemitic” has
become more and more tired. Many Jews are mobilizing in these protests (ABC, 4/24/24). As a result, many Jewish protesters face state violence (Al Jazeera, 5/3/24) and censorship (FAIR.org, 12/15/23)
for speaking out against the Israeli military. Yet the Adams
administration, Fox and the New York Post continue to hurl the insult,
this time at the Washington Post, signaling that they have no more
honest way to defend the behavior exposed by the Post.
Despite such smears and lies, students around the world have stood up. Ethan Gudge and Phil Mercer-Kelly (BBC NEWS) report:
Sixteen protesters have been arrested after a University of Oxford building was locked down due to an occupation by a pro-Palestinian group.
Oxford Action for Palestine (OA4P) started a sit-in at university offices on Wellington Square at 08:00 BST, demanding a meeting over its policies relating to the Israel-Gaza conflict
Activists began the occupation and hung Palestinians flags outside of the university administration building as well as a banner of their demands for the university to divest.
A local activist told Socialist Worker, “Police then went to arrest all 16 of the students involved in the occupation, but students rallied outside the building. Around 350 students outside blocked all exits to the building, preventing police vans from leaving with the arrested students. It’s an incredible show of solidarity. It’s very militant.”
Students chanted, “Let them out,” and, “40,000 people dead and you’re arresting kids instead,”outside main entrance to Oxford university offices.
The police then tried to bring another van down the main road, but students sat down in front of the van, blocking it from moving. “Students are sitting in front and behind the van, it has been completely stopped,” the local activist said.
The police forced their way through the crowd to the van with one arrested student just before 1pm. But protesters were undeterred. “Students have been here for over four hours and the chants and numbers are continuing,” said the local activist.
A police van eventually got through the student blockade and police took all of the activists who began the occupation into police custody. “The students outside have now moved to picket the head of colleges conference that is happening nearby,” a local activist said.
“The students went in at 8am and the police got them out at 2:30pm. We didn’t get them released and it’s worth noting that the college authorities initiated the calling of the police.”
The rage of students across Britain shows no sign of fading. In Edinburgh, students have set up an encampment against the £55 million of investments the university has in companies that support the Israeli military or apartheid system.
Shea, an Edinburgh university student involved in the encampment, told Socialist Worker the encampment is trying to draw more people in. “The shift began on Monday,” he said. “On Tuesday, we had a stall and mass leafleting for a staff-student rally.
“There is a desire to grow the encampment. By being more outward facing we can get more students involved who haven’t yet been. And there has been discussion with staff about how to unite with them.”
Harvard's controversial decision to block the 13 seniors from graduating strengthened the intensity of Thursday's demonstration, which was "far larger, louder, and more extensive than graduation protests at any other university in the region thus far this spring," according toThe Boston Globe.
Many of the protesting graduates wore keffiyehs, waved Palestinian flags, and carried placards with messages such as "For Gaza." They chanted "Let them walk!" in support of the 13 students during the ceremony before marching out to a nearby church for what one organizer called the "peoples' commencement," the Globe reported.Earlier:
Harvard University's board on Wednesday rejected a faculty vote to allow 13 seniors who had participated in a pro-Palestine encampment to graduate, provoking outrage from educators and students, some of whom protested outside the commencement ceremony Thursday morning.
The Wednesday announcement followed competing decisions by Harvard institutions in the days leading up to graduation. On May 18, the college's administrative board announced disciplinary actions against students—suspending five and placing more than 20 on probation—for their involvement in the on-campus encampment, which ended last week. This left the 13 seniors ineligible to graduate.
Professors in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences responded on Monday by voting to amend the list of students receiving degrees to include the 13 students—effectively rejecting the administrative board's decision. Harvard's main governing board, known as the Corporation, had to make the final decision, which they announced in a statement on Wednesday:
Because the [13] students included as the result of Monday's amendment are not in good standing, we cannot responsibly vote to award them degrees at this time. In coming to this determination, we note that the express provisions of the Harvard College Student Handbook state that students who are not in good standing are not eligible for degrees. We also considered the inequity of exempting a particular group of students who are not in good standing from established rules, while other seniors with similar status for matters unrelated to Monday's faculty amendment would be unable to graduate.
Both faculty and students condemned the decision, which The Harvard Crimson called an "unprecedented veto" of the faculty.
"I would expect a faculty rebellion, possibly a faculty rebellion against the entire governance structure, because there's already a fair amount of mistrust toward the Corporation to begin with," government professor Steven Levitsky told the Crimson.
Interim President Alan Garber was loudly booed as he opened the commencement, and he conceded that “some among us may choose to take the liberty of expressing themselves to draw attention to events unfolding in the wider world.”
The signal for the walkout was given by one of the three student speakers at the commencement, Shruthi Kumar, who deviated from the text of her address to pull a prepared statement out of the sleeves of her gown and read it. Kumar attacked the administration for its treatment of the anti-genocide protests, saying, “This semester our freedom of speech and our expressions of solidarity became punishable,” as students erupted in applause.
She said she wanted to honor “the 13 undergraduates in the class of 2024 who will not graduate today,” adding, “I am deeply disappointed by the intolerance for freedom of speech and the right to civil disobedience on campus … this is about civil rights and upholding democratic principles,” she said.
Referring to the widespread support for the victimized students, she continued, “The students had spoken. The faculty had spoken. Harvard, do you hear us?” She then said she was walking in support of those denied their degrees. “These are my peers and friends, and I can’t in good conscience celebrate when their families are in pain,” she said. “This is beyond politics—it’s about civil rights and civil disobedience. We’re not intending to be disruptive or violent. But it’s making a statement, as a community, as the class of 2024.”
Some of the same democratic sentiments were voiced by the main commencement speaker, Maria Ressa, a Filipino journalist who won the Nobel Peace Prize for her exposures of corruption and state killings under the regime of President Rodrigo Duterte.
“The campus protests are testing everyone in America,” Ressa said. “Protests give voice; they shouldn’t be silenced.” She also noted that she herself had been falsely accused of antisemitism for her opposition to the Gaza genocide, saying she had been “called antisemitic by power and money because they want power and money.”
The commencement protest came despite a heavy presence of police on the campus. This was a manifestation at Harvard of the crackdown being carried out on virtually every college campus where students have demonstrated, set up encampments or occupied buildings to declare their opposition to the Israeli genocide in Gaza and demand their universities break all ties with the Zionist regime and divest any holdings in companies that supply Israel with war materiel.
The harshest such crackdown Thursday came at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where hundreds of police were mobilized in response to students who set up a new encampment at the school after the previous encampment was broken up by police earlier this month. While police broke up the new protest site, smashing through improvised barricades, students staged a second protest, taking over a building.
The attack on student protesters and their supporters is being driven from Washington, where both the Biden administration and Republicans and Democrats in Congress have sought to criminalize opposition to the Gaza genocide, declaring all criticism of the actions of Israel to be “antisemitic,” even though many of the protesters are themselves Jewish. More than 3,000 have been arrested for participating in the protests since they began last month.
Meanwhile, FRANCE 24 reports of Gaza today:
The ministry said Thursday afternoon that Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah would have to stop operations within two hours. Later, after nightfall, the hospital appeared largely blacked out in Associated Press footage, although it was not clear if it had shut down.
The ministry said the hospital was currently treating more than 600 patients and wounded people and that some 650 other kidney dialysis patients rely on treatment there – warning that their lives could be threatened if the hospital closes.
Losing Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital would leave only two hospitals operating in Deir al-Balah, according to the U.N., at a time when the town has been flooded by Palestinians fleeing Rafah. Across Gaza, only about a third of its original 36 hospitals still function, and those only partially.
Al Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza has run out of fuel and its generators have stopped working, health authorities in the enclave warned.
Iyad Al Jabri, medical director at the hospital, said more than 4,000 litres of fuel was required each day to continue operations and care for patients.
“We have hundreds of patients, including the injured and those that are diagnosed with kidney failure and need electricity for their dialysis treatment,” Mr Al Jabri said.
“This will stop completely without any fuel."
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
We turn now to look more at Gaza and Israel’s continuing targeting of medical facilities. Israeli forces have stormed Al-Awda Hospital in the Jabaliya refugee camp, forcing medical staff to abandon the hospital. The World Health Organization has issued an urgent appeal for Israel to protect medical staff and patients at the hospital. On Tuesday, three Israeli missiles struck the emergency department at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza.
We’re joined now by Dr. Adam Hamawy. He’s a plastic surgeon, Army veteran from New Jersey, who just left Gaza, where he took part in a volunteer mission with the Palestinian American Medical Association. Dr. Hamawy and other volunteer doctors were trapped last week at European Hospital in Khan Younis due to Israel’s military offensive. Twenty years ago, in 2004, he saved the life of future Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois after she was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade while serving in the Iraq War, losing both her legs and partial use of her right arm. Dr. Hamawy is joining us now from Cairo, Egypt.
I’m glad we’re able to speak to you again, Dr. Hamawy. Can you talk about what happened in European Hospital, your response to what’s happening at Al-Awda Hospital, and how you made your way out?
DR. ADAM HAMAWY: Right now at the European Hospital, after we’ve left, people are afraid and are leaving. Even before we were preparing to go, in anticipation, staff members, people who lived inside the hospital for months now, doctors have been making their way out of the region and out from the hospital, after they’ve already evacuated other locations. Many of the physicians that I worked with and the staff had come here after working at places like Shifa and Nasser hospitals, and they expect the same to happen here, now that they’ve lost that sense of security of having an international presence there.
AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about your work there, the children and others who you saw, and why you decided to leave, and also Senator Duckworth’s help in this, and what you were demanding, because there was a time there that you were saying you would not leave Gaza unless you knew you could be replaced.
DR. ADAM HAMAWY: I think what we wanted, we were asking that we wanted a safe corridor for us to leave and for us to be replaced. That was an ask that we’ve always made. We came with the expectation that we would leave at some point and that other teams would come in. It was never a condition of our exit to have other people come in. It was an expectation. We did everything that we could do while we were there. We ran out of supplies. We ran out of support, as more and more people were leaving. And in the end, we could only do so much without having that replacement team come in.
Our team wanted to leave together, just like we came in together. When we were given the opportunity to leave as individual nations and only the Americans were given permission to leave, that was something that was unexpected. We never saw ourselves as coming in as individuals with certain passports. We came in as a team of humanitarian medical workers that are trying to help the people in Gaza. And when I stayed, I stayed because I would not leave my team behind, and the same with my colleagues who stayed with me. We would not leave until we were all guaranteed that safe exit. And so, when we were finally given that opportunity to go, we left.
And we still ask that the international community continue to, like, support the people. I’ve heard that President Biden has committed to the entry of humanitarian aid. And I would hope that, as a nation, we would stand by these commitments and that we would do everything that we can to replace us as soon as possible.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Dr. Hamawy, you wrote a letter to President Biden on May 19th, which Senator Tammy Duckworth delivered to the White House on the 20th, describing your experience and what you witnessed on the ground. In that letter, you wrote, “I have never in my career witnessed the level of atrocities and targeting of my medical colleagues as I have in Gaza.” Do you know who got that letter at the White House? Have you gotten a response from the president? And if you could describe in more detail what it was that you were referencing on the ground in Gaza?
DR. ADAM HAMAWY: I know the letter was delivered. I don’t know who — I did not receive a direct response from the president. But I know that he did receive it, and I’ve heard about that commitment.
What I was referring to is the targeting of doctors and nurses. While I was there, one of the doctors and nurses who lived close to the hospital were killed when their house was struck, as well as their family members, who were injured, killed and wounded. I worked with doctors who had fled other hospitals, like I said. They were targeted. I’ve talked to doctors and nurses who were taken as prisoners, interrogated and tortured. I know — I’ve visited other hospitals. I personally went to Nasser Hospital and saw what had happened there. I walked through the halls of an empty hospital that was vandalized, that had bloodstains on the walls and on the chairs and on the desks. That is what I’m referring to.
AMY GOODMAN: A new report by The Washington Post documents at least 90 cases of Israeli forces attacking hospitals in Gaza since October 7th, including on Al-Shifa Hospital, Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. Of the 36 hospitals in Gaza attacked — tracked by the U.N. humanitarian office, only four have not been reported damaged by munitions. Can you talk about what it means to leave a hospital, what you were hearing from doctors who moved from other hospitals to where you were and then were moving on, and at the same time, this mass of humanity making their way away from Rafah, as they were told to leave, though they had — that was sometimes the third and fourth relocation of their families?
DR. ADAM HAMAWY: I worked with a nurse that I first met when I arrived there, for several days, and then I did not see him for about a week. When I saw him, I asked him where he had been. And he was relocating his family. His family lived in Rafah. They were given an evacuation order. And they went to one of the designated zones of safety, which was along the shore — basically, a desert. It’s got sand everywhere. It has no water. It has no electricity. It has no food and no shelter. They basically had bags that they carried with them. So, they did not have tents to set up. His wife and his two children — he had two girls, one that is 2 years old and one that is 3 months old. He had to try to get water for them. He went to a water station, where he stood for approximately eight hours, he described to me, before he was able to fill a jug of nondrinkable water. But that is what they used to drink. And this is an example of just one family. He came back to the hospital. He looked exhausted. He looked dehydrated. He broke down and cried while I spoke to him. And he spent two days in the hospital, then went back to his family. And he’s caught between trying to give aid, because, you know, his services are essential — a hospital cannot run on just a few doctors alone; it also needs nurses, it needs staff, and he was one of those essential staff — but he also had a family that he had to take care of. This is what one person is going through.
The hospital is emptying out, because many of them have done this several times. And the fear that they have is that as they leave — they’re taking care of people because they see themselves as the patients. They see their families. And many of them, almost all of them, have lost someone. So, when they’re taking care of the patients, they’re taking care of their families, they’re taking care of their neighbors, and they expect to be taken care of the same way when they get hurt, as well. And so, they are faced with this choice that, you know, is undescribable. How do you make that decision? And when we had to leave, we were faced with this choice, that is only a small — you know, it’s very small compared to what they’re facing. We had to leave our patients, just like they’re leaving their patients. And the hope is that this would end and they could all come back, resume a life that is a small semblance of normal, be able to take care of people, because that’s what they do, and to be able to take care of their families, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Adam Hamawy, we thank you for spending this time with us. We have 10 seconds. What final message do you have as you’ve left Gaza and head back to New Jersey, where you work as a plastic surgeon and are an Army veteran?
DR. ADAM HAMAWY: Us leaving the hospital is not the end. We have to continue to try to help. There’s many people left behind, and we can’t leave them alone.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Adam Hamawy, we thank you so much for being with us. He has just evacuated from Gaza on Tuesday, where he had been volunteering with the Palestinian American Medical Association at European Hospital in Khan Younis, had been trapped on site along with other international medical workers, after Israel seized the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt two weeks ago.
Next up, we speak with filmmaker Yance Ford about his new documentary, Power, about American policing. Back in 20 seconds.
Gaza remains under assault. Day 231 of the assault in the wave that began in October. Binoy Kampmark (DISSIDENT VOICE) points out, "Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion. The ongoing campaign in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction. But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge for the propaganda outlets: How to justify it? Fortunately for Israel, the United States, its unqualified defender, is happy to provide cover for murder covered in the sheath of self-defence." CNN has explained, "The Gaza Strip is 'the most dangerous place' in the world to be a child, according to the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund." ABC NEWS quotes UNICEF's December 9th statement, ""The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. Scores of children are reportedly being killed and injured on a daily basis. Entire neighborhoods, where children used to play and go to school have been turned into stacks of rubble, with no life in them." NBC NEWS notes, "Strong majorities of all voters in the U.S. disapprove of President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll. The erosion is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza." The slaughter continues. It has displaced over 1 million people per the US Congressional Research Service. Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) points out, "Academics and legal experts around the world, including Holocaust scholars, have condemned the six-week Israeli assault of Gaza as genocide." The death toll of Palestinians in Gaza is grows higher and higher. United Nations Women noted, "More than 1.9 million people -- 85 per cent of the total population of Gaza -- have been displaced, including what UN Women estimates to be nearly 1 million women and girls. The entire population of Gaza -- roughly 2.2 million people -- are in crisis levels of acute food insecurity or worse." THE NATIONAL notes, "Gaza death toll reaches 35,800, with 80,011 wounded." Months ago, AP noted, "About 4,000 people are reported missing." February 7th, Jeremy Scahill explained on DEMOCRACY NOW! that "there’s an estimated 7,000 or 8,000 Palestinians missing, many of them in graves that are the rubble of their former home." February 5th, the United Nations' Phillipe Lazzarini Tweeted:
We’re talking about a three-storey building that housed not only residents but also dozens of other displaced Palestinians in Rafah that made it to Nuseirat three days ago.
I met the neighbours. I met the family. I met one of the relatives of people still trapped under the rubble earlier today. They were telling me heartbreaking things.
Imagine escaping the air strikes in Rafah, looking for a safe space but being killed after three days of evacuating – not only being killed but being trapped where the Civil Defence teams do not have any equipment to remove or pull these people from under the rubble.
I saw Civil Defence teams doing their best to pull people from under the rubble. They were digging with their bare hands, with very basic tools. This was not the first time we have seen this scene. We have been seeing this for more than seven months now.
Unfortunately, it may come to a point where the Civil Defence teams will give up on this house because there are more people being targeted every single hour across the Gaza Strip.
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