Tag: genocide

Greater Middle East
Beirut

Lebanon: humanitarian crisis under Israeli bombardment

UN officials warn of a rapidly worsening humanitarian crisis in Lebanon as death tolls mount from Israeli air-strikes. Secretary-General AntĂłnio Guterres told the Security Council: “Hell is breaking loose in Lebanon and we should all be alarmed by the escalation.” Human Rights Watch has called for urgent UN action, reporting that some 1,600 Israeli strikes have killed at least 700 people, including 50 children, and injured thousands in the span of four days. The UN Refugee Agency reveals that some 90,000 Lebanese residents had been displaced. (Photo: UNICEF/Dar Al Mussawir via UN News)

Planet Watch
ecocide

Progress on making ecocide an international crime

Three Pacific island nations have proposed that ecocide become a crime under international law, which would see the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecute cases of environmental destruction alongside war crimes and genocide. The move by Vanuatu, Fiji, and Samoa is unlikely to see fast results but is expected to force ICC member states to at least consider the question. The initiative could one day lead to company leaders, or even nations, facing prosecution. However, ICC member states notably do not include China, Russia, India or the United States. (Photo: Stefan MĂŒller via Wikimedia Commons)

Palestine
ICJ

Chile files intervention in genocide case against Israel

Chile filed a declaration of intervention in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The South American country submitted its declaration under Article 63 of the Statute of the ICJ, which gives states a right to intervene in the interpretation of a multilateral convention. Chile’s intervention focuses on the duty to prevent and punish genocide under the Genocide Convention. (Photo: ICJ)

Africa
Sudan

Calls mount for Sudan intervention force

A UN fact-finding mission for Sudan called for an independent and impartial force to be deployed “without delay” to protect civilians. Its case is bolstered by reports of a new set of grave human rights violations in the country. In southeastern Sennar state, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) were accused of killing 40 people in artillery strikes on local markets and residential areas, while in Darfur’s famine-stricken Zam Zam displacement site, the RSF reportedly tightened a siege and arrested traders trying to supply the camp. The war that began in April 2023 has produced the world’s largest displacement and hunger crises. Recent mediation efforts have failed, with the army refusing to turn up and the RSF using its attendance to try to launder its terrible image. (Map: PCL)

Africa
iswap

ISIS franchise claims Nigeria massacre

At least 81 people were killed in an attack by militants on the village of Mafa, in Nigeria’s northeastern Yobe state. A statement listing grievances against the village was left at the scene in the name of Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), a Boko Haram splinter group. The attack appears to have been in revenge for villagers alerting the military to the insurgents’ presence in the area—which lies on a smuggling route to ISWAP bases in the Lake Chad region. (Photo: ISS Africa)

Watching the Shadows
computer smash

Podcast: rage against the technocracy II

Amid global protests over the genocide in Gaza, the hypertrophy of digital technology and its colonization of every sphere of human existence continue to advance, portending the ultimate eclipse of human culture and real life, the death of literacy, and the hegemony of saturation propaganda. While the Arab Revolution of 2011 was facilitated through social media, those same platforms are today being used as conduits for propaganda and disinformation lubricating the reconsolidation of dictatorships. This is all about to get much worse—with propaganda especially getting exponentially more sophisticated—through the advent of artificial intelligence. What is urgently mandated—ultimately, even to be able to effectively oppose genocides and dictatorships—is a revolution of everyday life, reclaiming human reality from digital totalitarianism. The uprising in El Salvador against the mandatory imposition of Bitcoin as legal tender in 2021 still stands as a glimmer of hope, pointing the potentiality of this kind of revolution—even if the aspiring autocrat Nayib Bukele, who made Bitcoin a national currency, put down the uprising and is now consolidating an authoritarian regime. Bill Weinberg rants against the digital Borg in Episode 242 of the CounterVortex podcast. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Image: Earth First! Newswire)

Palestine
Gaza

Israeli strikes hit aid convoy in Gaza

An Israeli air-strike hit a convoy carrying fuel and medical supplies to a hospital in Gaza, killing several employees of a transportation company associated with the US-based NGO American Near East Refugee Aid (Anera). Israel says it was attacking “armed assailants” who were trying to hijack the truck, but Anera said the only people killed worked for the transport company and they had confirmed their route as part of a “humanitarian deconfliction” program intended to stop hits on aid. The hit on the convoy, which eventually arrived at the Emirates Red Crescent Hospital in Rafah, came days after Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint shot at a vehicle marked as belonging to the World Food Program, which said it was pausing staff operations in Gaza until further notice. (Photo: Maan News Agency)

Africa
Burkina Faso

Russian fighters leave Burkina Faso for Kursk front

Russia is withdrawing 100 of its paramilitary troops from Burkina Faso to assist in the war with Ukraine, reports indicate. The troops are part of a contingent of some 300 fighters from the Medvedi or Bear Brigade—one of the Russian private military companies operating in West Africa—who arrived in Burkina Faso in May to support the country’s ruling military junta. In a statement, the group said its forces would return home to support Russia’s defense of Kursk oblast against Ukraine’s recent cross-border offensive. There are fears the pull-out could embolden jihadist insurgents in Burkina Faso, who recently killed up to 300 people in one of the biggest attacks in years. (Map: Perry-Castañeda Library)

Watching the Shadows
anti-semitism

Anti-Semitism versus anti-Zionism: beyond parsing II

With anti-Semitic and Islamophobic violence in the US both rising since Israel began its campaign of genocide in Gaza, it is incumbent upon Palestine solidarity activists not to play into this dynamic by engaging in rhetoric and tactics that demonize Jews as the “other.” Cynical weaponization of the accusation of anti-Semitism by Zionist propaganda increases rather than decreases our responsibility to be clear about recognizing and opposing actual anti-Semitism. Alas, in cases from Chicago to Seattle to Philadelphia to Washington DC, activists have failed to make this critical distinction—not only providing propaganda ammo to Israel’s supporters, but displaying a paradoxical point of convergence with the MAGA right. In Episode 241 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg rises to the odious task of calling them out. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Image via frgdr Blog. Hebrew lettering in background spells names of places in Europe where Jews were exterminated.)

Palestine
Jit

Settler pogrom in West Bank village

Dozens of Israeli settlers, many of them masked, attacked the Palestinian village of Jit, outside the West Bank town of Nablus, hurling stones and Molotov cocktails. The group of over 100 assailants put at least four houses and six vehicles to the torch, and apparently killed one resident. The Palestinian Authority health ministry said Rashid Sedda, 22, was killed by gunfire from the settlers and another resident was seriously wounded in what it called an act of “organized state terrorism.” (Photo: Wikipedia)

Greater Middle East
Gaza

Ceasefire talks, as Gaza death toll crosses 40,000

A fresh round of ceasefire negotiations got underway in Doha, Qatar, aiming to bring an end to Israel’s more than 10-month-long war in the Gaza Strip and secure the release of the estimated 115 Israeli hostages still held by Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups. Forty-one of the hostages are believed to be dead, and the recorded death toll from Israel’s military campaign has now reached over 40,000, according to health authorities in the Strip. That’s roughly 2% of Gaza’s pre-war population—or one out of every 50 residents—that has been killed. (Photo: WAFA via Jurist)