YEARS AGO I had a friendly discussion with Ariel Sharon.
I told him: “I am first of all an Israeli. After that I am a Jew.”
He responded heatedly: “I am first of all a Jew, and only after that an Israeli!”
That may look like an abstract debate. But in reality, this is the question that lies at the heart of all our basic problems. It is the core of the crisis which is now rending Israel apart.
THE IMMEDIATE cause of this crisis is the law that was adopted in great haste last week by the rightist Knesset majority. It is entitled “Basic Law: Israel the Nation State of the Jewish People”.
3 August 2018 (UNHCR)* – UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, is ramping up its response to the urgent needs of nearly one million people displaced by recent violence in south western Ethiopia.
Since April of this year, inter-communal clashes flared up in the border area of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region and the Oromia Region. The recent violence came on the heels of more than a year-long crippling drought and tensions over resources.
Yemen, 3 Aug 2018 (IOM)*The world’s worst humanitarian crisis deteriorated even further in June 2018 when a military offensive on Hudaydah led to the displacement of nearly half of the city’s 600,000 population.
Migrants stranded in Hudaydah are forced to wait for the resumption of IOM’s return assistance. Photo: IOM
Nearly two months later, the situation remains unstable and the displaced communities in and near Hudaydah are in desperate need of humanitarian aid.
Marginalized groups suffer unduly harsh consequences due to Brazil’s economic policies of austerity, prompting United Nations rights experts to urge the Government to instead prioritize human rights.
UNICEF/Raoni Libório | In inland Bahia, a northeastern state in Brazil, UNICEF and its partners found Yasmin and her sisters and took the girls to school.
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“People living in poverty, and other marginalized groups, are disproportionately suffering as a result of the stringent economic measures in a country once considered as an example of progressive policies to reduce poverty and promote social inclusion,” said a statement released by a group of seven UN human rights experts on Friday 3 August 2018.
A deadly attack on one of the last functioning hospitals in Yemen in the key port city of Hudaydah has put hundreds of thousands of people at risk and damaged efforts to prevent a third cholera epidemic in the war-torn country, top UN officials on 3 August 2018 warned.
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OCHA/Giles Clarke | Al Thawra Hospital, Al Hudaydah, Yemen. 15 April 2017.
Geneva (IOM)*– IOM, the UN Migration Agency, reports that 57,571 migrants and refugees entered Europe by sea through 29 July 2018. That total compares to 112,375 at this time last year.
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Spain is currently the main arrival-by-sea country in the Mediterranean with 22,858 migrants arriving since the beginning of the year and 1,866 of them arriving since 25 July alone.
3 August 2018 (SPUTNIK)* — Aino Pennanen’s one-person protest apparently failed to repeat the success of a female student, who blocked the deportation of an asylum seeker from Sweden to Afghanistan in a similar incident last week.
Aino Pennanen, the legislative secretary of the Green League, one of Finland’s largest political parties, has been arrested after she protested against the deportation of an asylum seeker on a Finnair flight at Helsinki Airport on Tuesday [31 July 2018].
CIMISLIA, the Republic of Moldova 2 August 2018 (UNFPA)* – Maria* gave birth to her first child when she was 16, an age when most of her peers were graduating from secondary school. Today, at 22 years old, she has three daughters.
“People who meet me for the first time don’t believe that I have three children. They think that they are my little sisters,” Maria said. She met the man who would become her husband, Victor*, when she was 15. She became pregnant soon after.
Beirut (Human Rights Watch)* – Saudi authorities have arrested the internationally recognized women’s rights activist Samar Badawi and an Eastern Province activist, Nassima al-Sadah, in the past two days, Human Rights Watch on 1 August 2018 said.
How farmers are cutting down on chemicals with a natural solution to soil degradation.
Photo by UN Environment / Lisa Murray
2 August 2018 (UN Environment)* — At age 56, Vietnamese farmer Luan is still actively working the land. She is also still learning new things and open to fresh ideas.
In 2015, she agreed to turn part of her smallholding into a demonstration site as part of Biochar for Sustainable Soils – a three-year research and knowledge dissemination project, backed by UN Environment and the Global Environment Facility.
With assistance from researchers at Thai Nguyen University of Sciences, Luan learned to produce biochar, an organic soil enhancer, in her home and apply it to her crops.
