Diaa Al-Kahlout, pictured after his return to Gaza after more than a month in Israeli detention, said he was interrogated over his journalism by Israel’s army and security service. Credit: Courtesy of Diaa Al-Kahlout
NEW YORK, May 1 2024 (IPS)* – Diaa Al-Kahlout, the veteran Gaza bureau chief for the Qatari-funded London-based newspaper Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, had been covering the Israel-Gaza war for two months when he became part of the news.
On December 7, Al-Kahlout was detained along with members of his family by Israeli forces in a mass arrest in Beit Lahya in northern Gaza. Over 33 days in Israeli custody, he said he was interrogated about his journalism and subjected to physical and psychological mistreatment.
(UN News)* —Children as young as four are being forced to go to work in Lebanon amid a “massive collapse” in humanitarian funding and escalating hostilities on the country’s southern border with Israel that threaten to spiral into a “full-scale war”,UN child experts said on Tuesday [].
In a call for an immediate end to the war in Gaza which sparked intensifying exchanges of fire between armed militants Hezbollah and the Israeli military, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned that airstrikes are hitting “deeper and deeper” into Lebanon, with 344 people killed to date, including eight youngsters.
The author has no doubt the Western political elite are complicit in the genocide of Palestinians at a much deeper level than the people have yet understood.
Sunak and Netanyahu in Israel, 19 Oct 2023. (No. 10/Wikimedia Commons)
26 Apr 2024 – Governments cannot take big decisions extremely quickly except in the most extreme of circumstances.
(UN News)* — The head of UN peacekeeping and demining reiterated calls on Monday [] for a ceasefire in Gaza as a first step to returning the war-ravaged enclave to some normality, while mine clearance experts warned that the Strip is now at its “most dangerous period”.
“This is the most dangerous period; once people start returning to the north, that’s when most accidents will occur because they won’t be familiar with where your unexploded ordnance is located,” said Mungo Birch, Chief of the UN Mine Action Programme (UNMAS) in the State of Palestine.
“It’s important that once the returns start, we’re poised and ready to be able to provide the risk education they need.”
A three-day Palestine conference in Berlin was forcibly shut down after three hours on Friday [12 Apr]. Electricity was abruptly terminated in the midst of the presentation by Salman Abu Sitta, the 87 year old author of the authoritative “Atlas of Palestine”.
Rick Sterling
Former Greek Finance Minister and leader of DIEM25, Yanis Varoufakis, was prevented from entering Germany to attend the conference.
He went on Twitter/X to send a message, “Do you know that the German Interior Ministry has just banned me from entering Germany? Indeed if that were not enough, I have been banned from talking to you via zoom, or indeed through a video message like this, exactly like this. The threat being that I will be tried in Germany for breaking German law. Why?
“While the attention of the world is focused on Gaza, abuses in the West Bank, fueled by decades of impunity and complacency among Israel’s allies, are soaring.”
A destroyed car is pictured after Jewish settlers set fire to Palestinian homes and vehicles in the occupied West Bank on 14 Apr 2024. (Photo: Nedal Eshtayah/Anadolu via Getty Images)
17 Apr 2024 – Israeli soldiers have either passively watched or participated in the uprooting of at least seven communities in the West Bank since October of last year, Human Rights Watch said today [17 Apr 2024] in a new report documenting surging settler violence in the occupied Palestinian territory.
(Nairobi) – The Burkina Faso military summarily executed at least 223 civilians, including at least 56 children, in two villages on February 25, 2024, Human Rights Watch said today [25 April 2024].
These mass killings, among the worst army abuse in Burkina Faso since 2015, appear to be part of a widespread military campaign against civilians accused of collaborating with Islamist armed groups, and may amount to crimes against humanity.
Unexpected blistering temperatures across Gaza have added to the daily misery faced by the enclave’s people and sparked new fears of disease outbreaks amid a lack of sufficient clean water and waste disposal, UN humanitarians said on Thursday [].
The warning from the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, came as some 1.2 million people continued to shelter in tents pitched in and around the enclave’s southernmost city, Rafah, with nowhere else to go.
“It is like living in a greenhouse, no-one can tolerate living inside,” the UN agency said, quoting Mustafa Radwan, formerly from Gaza City, in a social media post on X.
Rome, 24 April 2024 (FAO)* – According to the latest Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC), nearly 282 million people in 59 countries and territories experienced high levels of acute hunger in 2023 – a worldwide increase of 24 million from the previous year.
This rise was due to the report’s increased coverage of food crisis contexts as well as a sharp deterioration in food security, especially in the Gaza Strip and the Sudan.
The Right of the Jewish People to the Land of Israel (Eretz Israel)
The right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is eternal and indisputable and is linked with the right to security and peace; therefore,Judea and Samaria will not be handed to any foreign administration; between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 