Author: Brett Wilkins

The United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday published a draft report that found “reasonable grounds to believe” that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, a move that came on the same day as the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire in the ongoing war.

The advance unedited version of the report – entitled Anatomy of a Genocide – concludes that Israel’s far-right government and military “have intentionally distorted jus in bello principles, subverting their protective functions, in an attempt to legitimize genocidal violence against the Palestinian people.”

Continue reading “Draft UN Report Finds Israel Has Met Threshold for Genocide”

A Biden administration spokesperson on Monday attempted to avoid addressing allegations by employees of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees that they were tortured while in Israeli detention by claiming the U.S. State Department has not seen any media reporting on the accusations.

Ryan Grim, The Intercept‘s Washington, D.C. bureau chief, asked deputy State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel if he believes the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) staff members who say they were tortured by Israeli interrogators into making false confessions about involvement with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which led the October 7 attacks on Israel. Israeli officials claimed that at least 12 out of UNRWA’s 13,000 staff in Gaza had ties to Hamas and October 7.

Continue reading “US State Department Claims It Hasn’t Seen Reports of Israel Torturing UNRWA Staff”

More than 100 pro-Palestine demonstrators were arrested Thursday after staging a protest at The New York Times‘ Midtown Manhattan headquarters, where activists handed out copies of a satirical knockoff of the newspaper that skewered what organizers called its biased coverage of the Gaza genocide.

After surrounding the Times‘ printing plant in College Point, Queens, members of Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG), Palestinian Youth Movement, and other groups shut down the paper’s Midtown West headquarters, where they chanted, “New York Times you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide,” “free, free Palestine,” and “from the river to the sea.”

Continue reading “Protests and Parody Paper Decry New York Times‘ Pro-Israel Bias in Gaza Coverage”

In addition to killing, maiming, and forcibly displacing hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children, Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza has wrought tremendous psychological damage upon kids in the embattled strip, as detailed by a Save the Children report published Tuesday.

The charity’s report – entitled Trapped and Scarred: The Compounding Mental Harm Inflicted on Palestinian Children in Gaza – examines how “five months of violence, displacement, starvation, and disease on top of nearly 17 years of a blockade have caused relentless mental harm to children in Gaza.”

Continue reading “Israeli Genocide Causing ‘Complete Psychological Destruction’ of Gaza Children”

Bullet wounds caused by the same type of large-caliber ammunition used in several Israel Defense Forces rifles and machine guns undercut Israeli officials’ dubious claim that most victims of last week’s “Flour Massacre” near Gaza City died in a stampede, one human rights monitor said Wednesday.

Gaza officials said at least 118 Palestinians were killed and 760 others injured when Israeli troops shot and shelled a large crowd of starving people waiting for food distribution in the al-Nabulsi Roundabout area south of Gaza City on February 29. Israeli officials said many or most of the victims were trampled as the large crowd of people starving due to Israel’s siege and blockade of Gaza desperately rushed aid trucks.

Continue reading “Bullets Found at Gaza Flour Massacre Site Belie Israel’s ‘Stampede’ Claim”

Seven national and over 200 local labor unions in the United States on Friday announced the establishment of a coalition to promote a cease-fire in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

The American Postal Workers Union (APWU), the Association of Flight Attendants, the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, the National Education Association, National Nurses United (NNU), the United Auto Workers (UAW), and the United Electrical Workers (UE), and 200 local unions and labor organizations launched the National Labor Network for Cease-fire (NLNC) to “end the death and devastation” in Gaza.

The coalition says it represents more than 9 million union workers – “more than half the labor movement in the United States.”

Continue reading “200+ Unions Launch Network To Push for Gaza Ceasefire”