JEWISH VOICES FOR PEACE: ‘Jews say stop arming Israel’ ‘Opposing fascism is a Jewish tradition’. Jewish protesters stormed Trump Tower earlier today and demanded the release of Palestinian student Khalil who has been illegally detained by Ice. He is in possession of a Green Card, and his American wife is eight months pregnant. Speaking out about the atrocities being committed in Gaza is not pro-Hamas, it is pro-humanity.
Not all Jews are Zionists and not all Jews support the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu. Just because I am a white Afrikaner doesn’t mean I’m a racist. Generalisations and stereotypes are a lazy way to put all people from a certain culture, religion, or ethnicity, into a neat little box with a ribbon on top.
Not all Muslims are terrorists, not all Christians are fundamentalists, not all Catholics priests are pedophiles, not all billionaires are evil, not all Russians support Putin, not all men are toxic, not all immigrants eat cats and dogs. Let me rephrase that last part, Donald Trump is full of shit.
Each person and situation deserves to be dealt with on a case by case basis. This philosophical position becomes complicated when dealing with Nazis or fascists for example. Some people might even apply this to MAGA. The truth is than many otherwise normal Americans have been caught up in something they don’t fully comprehend. Do they get a free pass, that’s not up to me to decide. History will be the judge.
CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY: UN experts have accused Israel of increasingly using sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinians and carrying out “genocidal acts” through the systematic destruction of maternal and reproductive healthcare facilities.
A report commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council documents alleged violations, including rape, in Gaza and the occupied West Bank since Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war.
It also says the destruction of maternity wards in Gaza and embryos at a fertility clinic could indicate a strategy to prevent births among a particular group – one of the legal definitions of genocide.
Israel said it “categorically rejects the unfounded allegations”.
The commission’s chair Navi Pillay, a South African former UN human rights chief, said the evidence collected “reveals a deplorable increase in sexual and gender-based violence” that she claimed was being employed by Israel against Palestinians “to terrorise them and perpetuate a system of oppression that undermines their right to self-determination”.
The report says specific forms of sexual and gender-based violence – such as forced public stripping and nudity, sexual harassment including threats of rape, as well as sexual assault – “comprise part of the Israeli Security Forces’ standard operating procedures toward Palestinians”.
Other forms of such violence, including rape and violence to the genitals, were “committed either under explicit orders or with implicit encouragement by Israel’s top civilian and military leadership”, it alleges.
Commission member Chris Sidoti, an Australian human rights lawyer, told the BBC: “Sexual violence is now so widespread that it can only be considered systematic. It’s got beyond the level of random acts by rogue individuals.”
The report says the commission also found that Israeli forces had systematically destroyed sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities across Gaza during the 17-month war there.
It concludes that women and girls have died from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth due to conditions imposed by the Israeli authorities which have denied access to reproductive health care, and says they amount to the crime against humanity of extermination.
The commission also alleges that Israeli authorities have “destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of Palestinians in Gaza as a group” through the “systematic destruction” of sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities, including maternity hospitals and maternity wards of hospitals and Gaza’s main in-vitro fertility clinic, Al-Basma IVF Centre in Gaza City.
This amounts to “two categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention, including deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians and imposing measures intended to prevent births”, it concludes.
According to the report, the embryology laboratory at Al-Basma was hit in early December 2023, reportedly destroying around 4,000 embryos as well as 1,000 sperm samples and unfertilised eggs.
The International Court of Justice is hearing a case bought by South Africa that accuses Israeli forces of committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Israel has vehemently denied the allegation.
The Israeli military launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to an unprecedented cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage. More than 48,520 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Most of Gaza’s 2.1 million population has also been displaced multiple times. Almost 70% of buildings are estimated to be damaged or destroyed; the healthcare, water, sanitation and hygiene systems have collapsed; and there are shortages of food, fuel, medicine and shelter. – BBC – 13/3
Images Associated Press:
Mar 13, 2025 8:55:29 pm
