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US interior department staffer is first Jewish Biden appointee to resign over war in Gaza

Lily Greenberg Call, special assistant to chief of staff, accused Biden of using Jews to justify US policy in the conflict

the Guardian

An interior department staffer on Wednesday became the first Jewish political appointee to publicly resign in protest of US support for Israel’s war in Gaza.Lily Greenberg Call, a special assistant to the chief of staff in the interior department, accused Joe Biden of using Jews to justify US policy in the conflict. Call had worked for the presidential campaigns of both Biden and Kamala Harris, and was a longtime activist and advocate for Israel in Washington and elsewhere before joining the government. She is at least the fifth mid- or senior-level administration staffer to make public their resignation in protest of the Biden administration’s military and diplomatic support of the now seven-month Israeli war against Hamas. She is the second political appointee to do so, after an education department official of Palestinian heritage resigned in January.Her resignation letter described her excitement at joining an administration that she believed shared much of her vision for the country. “However, I can no longer in good conscience continue to represent this administration,” she wrote. In an interview with the Associated Press, Call pointed to comments by Biden, including at a White House Hanukkah event where he said “Were there no Israel, there wouldn’t be a Jew in the world who was safe” and at an event at Washington’s Holocaust Memorial last week in which he said the 7 October Hamas-led attacks that triggered the war were driven by an “ancient desire to wipe out the Jewish people”. “He is making Jews the face of the American war machine. And that is so deeply wrong,” she said, noting that ancestors of hers were killed by “state-sponsored violence”.

How Israel turned hospitals into ‘military targets’ by lying about international law

The bar for hospitals to lose protected status under international law is set very high. Those conditions were not met for any of the 36 hos

Mondoweiss

The Israeli army justifies its attacks on healthcare by alleging that Hamas is operating from hospitals. However, in order for a hospital to lose its protected status under international law, it would need to be used to commit “acts harmful to the enemy.” Hamas fighters sauntering through a hospital to get a hostage treated hardly constitutes an act harmful to the enemy, nor does the strange presence of guns behind an MRI machine (surely the worst place to store a metal object), as they could easily fall under the provision of “small arms and ammunition taken from the wounded and sick…not yet handed to the proper service.” If such arms were to be found in a hospital, they would not deprive the hospital of its protected status under international law.  The bar for losing protected status is set very high. The International Committee of the Red Cross states that, “In case of doubt as to whether medical units of establishments are used to commit an ‘act harmful to the enemy’, they should be presumed not to be so used.” The Israeli army attacked all 36 hospitals in Gaza, such that there are no longer any that are fully functional. Not even one of those hospitals had been shown to meet the criteria needed to lose its protected status, let alone all 36. Moreover, even on the rare occasion that a hospital loses its protected status, the military would still need to protect patients and staff, make contingency plans to address the disruption to healthcare, and help restore healthcare services after the attack.  In light of the scale of human suffering during World War II, the Geneva Conventions of 1949 were created to provide better protection to civilians. Article 19 of the Geneva Conventions states that medical establishments, staff, and patients should not be attacked. The Conventions became a cornerstone in international humanitarian law and medical ethics, but recent conflicts show how easy it is for states that flout them to go unpunished.  In Gaza, it is not that hospitals have suddenly changed their mission such that they can now be used as weapons of war. Rather, their mission to save lives is precisely what renders them so vulnerable in conflicts when the aim is to kill as many people as possible. This vulnerability is being exploited in Gaza to the greatest effect and means that no one, not even an individual seeking medical care, is safe. 

ALT

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Egypt says it will join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at ICJ

Cairo says the move is due to Israel’s worsening attacks against civilians in Gaza.

Al Jazeera

Egypt says it will formally join the case filed by South Africa against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which accuses Israel of violating its obligations under the Genocide Convention in its war on the Gaza Strip. The Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Sunday that Cairo intended to join the case due to escalating Israeli aggression against Palestinian civilians. “The submission … comes in light of the worsening severity and scope of Israeli attacks against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, and the continued perpetration of systematic practices against the Palestinian people, including direct targeting of civilians and the destruction of infrastructure in the Strip, and pushing Palestinians to flee,” the ministry said in a statement.

This work is about my exclusion from the circle of power where social and cultural values are elaborated and about my rejection of the imposed and established order. It is a fact people are discriminated against for being HIV positive. It is a fact the majority of the Nazi industrialists retained their wealth after war. It is a fact the night belongs to Michelob and Coke is real. It is a fact the color of your skin matters. It is a fact Crazy Eddie’s prices are insane. It is a fact that four colors red, black, green and white placed next to each other in any form are strictly forbidden by the Israeli army in the occupied Palestinian territories [this ban was lifted in 1993]. This color combination can cause an arrest, a beating, a curfew, a shooting, or a news photograph. Yet it is a fact that these forbidden colors, presented as a solitary act of consciousness here in SoHo, will not precipitate a similar reaction.

"This is a union action. We condemn the human rights violations committed by the State of Israel. Israel violates media freedom. We are stopping the broadcast for a moment. #ceasefirenow, #stopgenocide," the message said. For a moment it seemed as if there had been a kidnapping, but it seems that the action was coordinated with the managers of VRT. As reported by De Standaard, the VRT spokeswoman claims that they were aware of the union action on public television. "Trade unions have the right to take action. We have taken note of it, but we will not react to it," said Yasmine Van der Borght. Several thousand people peacefully paraded through the streets of Swedish Malmo today as a sign of protest against Israel's participation in Eurovision, a few hours before the performance of 20-year-old singer Eden Golan with the song "Hurricane" in the second semi-final.