On Monday, the United Nations Famine Review Committee (FRC) published a report on the situation in the northern Gaza Strip, concluding that there is insufficient reliable information to declare a famine. While some Israeli media outlets, including #Haaretz, perceive the report as a net positive for #Israel, the conclusion actually highlights the challenges posed by Israel's restrictions.
The FRC's inability to endorse the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) findings stems from the lack of access to Gaza, which prevents the collection of essential data required for its work. This underscores the limitations imposed by Israel's prevention of journalists and international organizations from entering Gaza and evaluating the circumstances on the ground.
Rather than being positive news for Israel, the report underscores the concerning lack of transparency and the inability of independent observers to accurately assess the humanitarian situation in Gaza. Ultimately, this lack of access and information is detrimental not only to the people of Gaza but also to Israel's stated commitment to facilitating humanitarian aid and relief efforts in the region.
[...] Firstly, all stakeholders who use the IPC for high-level decision-making must understand that whether a Famine classification is confirmed does not in any manner change the fact that extreme human suffering is without a doubt currently ongoing in the Gaza Strip and does not in any manner change the immediate humanitarian imperative to address this civilian suffering by enabling complete, safe, unhindered, and sustained humanitarian access into and throughout the Gaza Strip, including through ceasing hostilities. All actors should not wait until a Famine classification for the current period is made to act accordingly.
[...] Secondly, the FRC would like to highlight that the very fact that we are unable to endorse (or not) FEWS NET’s analysis is driven by the lack of essential up to date data on human well-being in Northern Gaza, and Gaza at large. Thus, the FRC strongly requests all parties to enable humanitarian access in general, and specifically to provide a window of opportunity to conduct field surveys in Northern Gaza to have more solid evidence of the food consumption, nutrition, and mortality situation.
#Palestine / Norway, along with Ireland and Spain, to recognize Palestinian state (to be followed by Slovenia and Malta)
With over 140 UN member states now recognizing Palestine, the wave of European support signals growing impatience with the stalled peace process and a willingness to challenge U.S.-backed insistence on direct negotiations favoring Israel's position.
[...] "In the middle of a war, with tens of thousands of dead and injured, we must keep alive the only thing that can provide a safe home for both Israelis and Palestinians: two states that can live in peace with each other," --- Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere (#Norway)
Israel swiftly condemned the move, recalling its ambassadors from Norway and Ireland, and warning of "dire consequences" if Spain follows through. The Israeli Foreign Minister accused the countries of "undercutting Israel's sovereignty and endangering its security."
[cont’d] Norwegian Foreign Minister: We Decided to Recognize a Palestinian State Now Due to Netanyahu's Government's Policies
In an interview with Haaretz, Anniken Huitfeldt said that the government's position against negotiations with the Palestinians, its support for the establishment of settlements and its policies in the West Bank pushed her country and its partners to initiate the move now.
[…] "There is a feeling that with the current government, it is impossible to continue sitting and waiting for an agreement, […] This encourages countries to take action."
[…] "Our commitment to a two-state solution has existed for decades, but we always believed that it would come as a result of an agreement and mutual recognition,"
[…] "The current Israeli government is very clear in its position against negotiating (with the Palestinians), and this certainly influenced us, […] Some said we should have done this long ago."
Huitfeldt accused Netanyahu's current government of
[…] "supporting the establishment of new and illegal settlements, and an overall policy that distances an agreement in the West Bank."
In response to #Haaretz's question about the Israeli criticism that the three countries' decision is an achievement for Hamas, Huitfeldt said that in her view the opposite is true:
[…] "We want to strengthen the moderate forces in the Palestinian Authority and in Israel that support the two-state solution and are enemies of Hamas. We want to strengthen the anti-Hamas, and I hear reactions from Palestinians today telling me – 'This is an important step for those who oppose terror, oppose violence, and support a political solution.' That is our goal, to convey a message of support for the two-state solution, which Hamas does not support."
#ICC / Prosecutor asks for arrest warrants for three leading Hamas leaders, as well ass Netanyahu and Galant
[...] The office of the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on Monday said it was seeking arrest warrants against three leading Hamas militants for their alleged roles in the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Watch: ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan explains the charges against top Hamas and Israeli leadership in detail in this excerpt from his interview with @amanpour this morning at The Hague
[cont'd] The Israeli press is failing in its duty in covering the war in Gaza
The media, especially the news channels, are creating a black hole in Israelis' worldview. So there is a disconnect between how Israelis perceive the conflict and how it is viewed internationally, with Israelis struggling to understand the "sudden hatred" against them worldwide. Potential Israeli explanations range from the world forgetting the events of October 7th to ... yes, #antisemitism.
Over at "The Seventh Eye" (investigative online magazine dedicated to journalism and the media) Chen Egri writes that the real reason is that Israelis are largely unaware of the massive humanitarian disaster and civilian casualties in Gaza due to lack of media coverage on the issue. All major Israeli outlets except #Haaretz are ignoring basic facts about Palestinian deaths, injuries, displacement, etc.
This lack of knowledge creates an "unexplained gap" between international condemnation of #Israel's actions and how Israelis view the situation through the limited lens provided to them of defeating Hamas and Palestinian militancy.
[...] If in online and print journalism it is still possible to find some articles and reports on the civilian reality in Gaza, in television news channels, the main source of news information for Israelis, the situation is appalling. Channel 12 News, the news monopoly watched by most Israelis, refuses to report on the situation in Gaza.
[...] On the fundamentalist Channel 14 website, a counter of "the terrorists we have eliminated" is still prominently displayed. At the time of publishing this column, it stands at 34,971. Most of them, even according to #IDF estimates, were civilians who did not participate in the fighting. Like Hamas, Channel 14 also does not distinguish between infants and fighters. The counter on the N12 website does not wallow in bloodlust like Channel 14, but only shows the number of Hamas militants killed. Civilians are simply not mentioned.
[...] A search on the #N12 website yields a single-digit number of articles on what is happening in the Strip since the outbreak of the war, and even those mostly focus on the resentment of #Gaza residents towards #Hamas and the disaster it has brought upon them, with headlines like "Channel 12 News camera in Gaza: What do the Strip's youth think about Hamas?" What do the Strip's youth think about Israel? Channel 12 News does not address Israel's part in the situation of the Gaza Strip and its residents, or even simply the situation itself.
#Israel / IDF Data: 44 Soldiers Injured in Fighting Over the Weekend, 8 in Serious Condition
While pressure in mounting on #Netanyahu to end the war and sign a deal with Hamas to return the captives, #Haaretz is reporting that 44 soldiers have been injured since Thursday in fighting in the various sectors, eight of them seriously – according to IDF data. According to the data, 22 of the injured were in the Gaza Strip and 22 outside of it.
#Judaism / There Are No Lights in War: We Need a Different Religious Language (Ariel Schwartz [January 16, 2024])
Ariel Schwartz comes from a right-wing, religious Zionist family, in the political dialing areas of Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. He studied at the Etzion Yeshiva, in southern Mount Hebron, and during his regular service in the settlements in the West Bank, he asked himself who those stateless Palestinians were, "who live under the daily rule of the IDF." These questions caused him to become a left-wing activist.
He tells #Haaretz […] "They took from me the thing most precious to me, my faith, and directed it against me. As religious people, we believe that our tradition demands a different moral stance, one that can restrain the war instead of fueling it."
[…] An example of this can be found in the recent words of R. Amihai Friedman, the rabbi of the Nahal brigade’s training base: “I sit and imagine that in these days there are no casualties, hostages, or injured,” he told his soldiers. “And the second I remove them from the screen, I’m left with what is maybe the happiest month in my life since I was born.”[1]
[…] R. Friedman’s words give rise to a harsh realization: around us is a religious world that is happy, in many respects, about the current war.
[…] Thus, for example, writes R. Yigal Levinstein in the pamphlet He Leaps Up Like a Lion: On the Exaltation of the Spirit and the Special Level of Life During Times of War that saw light in the situation: “The war is not a marginal thing, and we should not view it as a ‘mistake’ or a ‘mishap’ which we would have preferred to avoid. The war is a great thing and, at the end of the day, brings a great message to humanity on its wings.”[2]
[…] According to R. Levinstein, the greatness of the war is rooted in the fact that it is one of those extraordinary moments in which “the inner soul shines in all its vitality.” Indeed, for the individual, the war is a difficult event, but at the national level it calls forth great moments in which the people of Israel “reveals from within itself its mighty heights of life.”
[…] Widening segments of the contemporary religious community are seeking to wrap the war in a halo of enchantment and holiness and turn it pleasant, ideal, and even joyous from an emotional perspective. In furtherance of this aestheticization and idealization, there are those who seek to remove any ethical brakes from the war. They call for us not to differentiate between blood and blood and condone any action done in its framework. These conceptions treat the spirit of battle as the climax of the revelation of the human spirit, but within this, implicitly, it is as though they require war to happen again and again, so that this “spirit of battle” may be revealed. In light of this attempt, we must seek a different religious language―one that remembers that the Jewish horizon is not war but peace, that the goal of the Jewish nation’s existence on this land is not “to shorten the life of man but to lengthen,” and that ethical conduct even in times of war is the soul of our religious tradition.
from #NewYorkTimes [gift article below]
How Counterprotesters at #UCLA Provoked Violence, Unchecked For Hours
The #NYT used videos filmed by journalists, witnesses and protesters to analyze hours of clashes — and a delayed police response — at a pro-#Palestinian encampment on Tuesday.
@plink it really feels like a concentrated effort to bismmerch the anti-war protesters. Israeli media, including #Haaretz, is recently full of reports about who’s been financing left leaning anti-war academics, and of course only using images of protesters wearing kaffeyhes smashing windows.