Israel subjects UN workers to torture
Maureen Clare Murphy, Electronic Intifada, Apr 19 2024
Israel is abusing UNRWA employees detained in Gaza in order to extract forced confessions against the agency, with detainees describing being subjected to acts of torture. The forced confessions are likely to be used by Israel in an attempt to incriminate UNRWA. Israel is seeking to starve UNRWA out of existence through smears and unsubstantiated allegations aimed at drying up the agency’s voluntary funding. Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the embattled agency, told the UNSC on Wednesday that Israel continues to block the provision of life-saving aid as part of its “insidious campaign” to push UNRWA out of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. More than a dozen countries, including top donors US and Germany, froze funding or suspended future support for UNRWA after Israel alleged that 12 of its employees were involved in the Oct 7 attacks led by Hamas. The allegations were made public by the agency on Jan 26, the same day that the UN’s World Court stated there is a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza. Israel has not presented the UN with evidence substantiating its allegations. Despite this, UNRWA dismissed the employees in question, the UN secretary-general ordered an investigation and an independent review of the agency’s adherence to neutrality is expected to make its findings public in the coming days. During the Security Council meeting on Wednesday, Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, accused UNRWA of “creating a sea of Palestinian refugees, millions of them, indoctrinated to believe that Israel belongs to them.”
UNRWA provides government-like services to 5.9 million registered Palestine refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. The agency is mandated by the UNGA to serve the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were displaced from their homeland during the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 and “as a result of the 1967 and subsequent hostilities,” as well as their descendants. Palestinian refugees’ right of return is enshrined in UNGAR 194. Israel has denied Palestinians from exercising this right because doing so “would alter the demographic character of Israel to the point of eliminating it as a Jewish state,” as the UN’s Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia stated in a 2017 report. Several UN special rapporteurs stated in Jun 2023, on the occasion of World Refugee Day:
Since 1948, both the General Assembly and the Security Council have consistently called upon Israel to facilitate the return of Palestinian refugees and provide reparations. The right of return constitutes a fundamental pillar of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.
Around two-thirds of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million Palestinians are refugees. Nearly every Palestinian in the territory has been displaced from their home in the past six months and Israel has gunned down people attempting to return to the areas from which they were displaced. A majority of Gaza’s population is now concentrated in Rafah along the boundary with Egypt, raising fears of a mass expulsion from the territory. At least 178 UNRWA employees are among the 34k Palestinians killed in Gaza since Oct 7. Israel has banned UNRWA from delivering aid to Gaza’s north as children are dying of hunger and dehydration, in violation of consecutive orders from the International Court of Justice to allow the unimpeded flow of aid. Lazzarini told the UNSC:
We demand an independent investigation and accountability for the blatant disregard for the protected status of humanitarian workers, operations and facilities under international law.
UNRWA staff released from Israeli detention told their employer that in addition to ill treatment that may amount to torture, they were “subjected to threats and coercion” and pressure during interrogations to incriminate the agency, “forced confessions against the agency that the agency has affiliations with Hamas and that UNRWA staff took part in the Oct 7 attacks against Israel.” According to UNRWA, some staff members were “detained during the performance of their official duties for the UN, including while working at UNRWA installations and in one case during a coordinated humanitarian movement.” Detained UNRWA staff were subjected to a litany of abuses, they say, such as beatings, including by doctors, attacks by dogs and threats of rape and electrocution. The agency said that its employees underwent treatment akin to waterboarding and had guns pointed at them. UNRWA staff also experienced “verbal and psychological abuse; threats of murder, injury or harm to family members; humiliating and degrading treatment; being forced to strip naked and being photographed while they are undressed; and being forced to hold stress positions.”
The agency has collected information from hundreds of Palestinians, men, women and children, who were detained in Gaza since the beginning of Israel’s ground operation in late October last year. Palestinians in Gaza have been detained by Israeli forces while sheltering in UNRWA facilities under the protection of the UN flag since mid-November. They have also been detained while attempting to flee south, while working in hospitals or in the sanctity of their homes. Overall, “possibly thousands of Palestinian men and boys, and a number of women and girls,” have been detained in Gaza, the UN human rights office said in mid-December. UNRWA says that as of Apr 4, it has documented the release of more than 1,500 detainees from Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing point with Israel, including 43 children and 84 women. Detainees said they were taken in trucks to various detention centers in Israel and “held incommunicado in between periods of interrogation, sometimes for several weeks,” according to UNRWA. The transfer and detention of detainees outside of occupied territory are war crimes that violate the Fourth Geneva Convention and Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
Israeli authorities subjected Palestinians, “men and women, children, older persons, persons with disabilities,” according to UNRWA, to ill treatment throughout their detention. UNRWA staff observed “signs of trauma and ill treatment” including dog bite wounds among the released detainees upon their arrival to Kerem Shalom checkpoint on the Gaza-Israel boundary. Many were transferred to hospitals in Gaza due to injury or illness. Released detainees said they were forced to sit on their knees for hours on end while blindfolded and their hands tied. They described ill-treatment including “physical beatings, threats of physical harm, insults and humiliation such as being made to act like animals or getting urinated on, use of loud music and noise.” Detainees were also deprived of food, water, sleep and toilets and prevented from praying. Tightly locked handcuffs caused “open wounds and friction injuries,” according to UNRWA, while detainees had their ribs broken and shoulders dislocated as a result of beating with metal bars, rifle butts and boots. Men and boys who were sheltering at an UNRWA installation were forced to strip naked and remained naked during their detention. Men and women were subjected to sexual violence and harassment, threats of rape and were forced to strip in front of soldiers and “photographed and filmed while naked.” A 41-year-old man who was detained told UNRWA that detainees were subjected to electrical shocks through their anuses, causing another man he was detained with to get sick and die. A woman who was detained said that an Israeli intelligence officer displayed her neighborhood on a computer screen and asked them about individuals residing there. The woman told UNRWA:
She said if you don’t confess with all information, we will bomb your home and kill your family.
The Palestinian Prisoners Club says that Israel “refuses to disclose information on the number of people from Gaza it has detained over the past six months, or on where they are being held,” Reuters reported. Al Mezan, a Palestinian human rights group based in Gaza, says:
Israeli forces have detained at least 3k people in the territory, who are subjected to multiple forms of cruelty, torture, inhuman and degrading treatment from the moment they are arrested. Their detention and interrogation occurs without any judicial oversight or legal protection, in blatant defiance of international humanitarian law and international human rights law.
Around 1,650 Palestinians from Gaza are being imprisoned by Israel under its Unlawful Combatants Law in total isolation and denied the right to a lawyer or legal representation. According to Al Mezan:
Detainees held under this law are neither granted the status of prisoners of war under the Third Geneva Convention, nor afforded the protections of civilian detainees under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
A lawyer with the rights group recently visited Ashkelon and Ofer prisons, where some 300 Palestinians from Gaza not held under the Unlawful Combatants Law are being detained pending investigation. Al Mezan’s lawyer met with approximately 40 detainees, who provided “harrowing accounts of torture and inhumane treatment,” including sleep deprivation and starvation “as a form of torture and collective punishment.” A 19-year-old told the rights group that three of his fingernails were removed during interrogation, that a dog was unleashed on him and he was placed in a stress position for prolonged periods during three days of interrogation. Al Mezan’s lawyer “reported that all detainees suffer from acute emaciation, fatigue and back curvature due to being forced to bend their backs and heads while walking.” Many were unable to “recall the names of people present in the room” due to the physical and psychological abuse, the rights group said. According to Al Mezan’s lawyer:
In his more than 20 years of working with detainees, he had never encountered conditions as appalling as those observed at Ofer prison.
The rights group said that the serious harm caused to Palestinians from Gaza in Israeli detention situates it “within the legal framework of the crime of genocide.” Al Mezan added that Israel’s use of “systematic and widespread torture” constitute crimes against humanity and called on the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants.
Students fight escalating repression on US campuses
Nora Barrows-Friedman, Electronic Intifada, Apr 19 2024
Across the US, students are mobilizing in defense of Palestinian rights. Sustained protests have been organized in direct opposition to university administrations’ relationships with Israeli institutions and investments in corporations that aid and abet Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Israel lobby groups have mounted escalating attacks on students who support Palestinian liberation, and have worked with university administrations to crack down on student activism and speech. In NYC, the Columbia University administration suspended the campus chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace in late 2023. Earlier this month, after students organized an event focused on Palestine, the administration suspended four students and issued them eviction orders from student housing with only 24 hours notice. On Apr 17, students at Columbia began an occupation of the East Lawn on campus, bringing tents and banners to establish a “liberated zone” in defense of students whom the university has criminalized for protesting Israel’s genocide in Gaza. On Apr 18, in an attempt to quash the protests, Columbia University’s president Minouche Shafik authorized the NYPD to remove and arrest students in the encampments. The university also suspended several students.
This followed Shafik’s appearance before the House of Representatives’ Committee on Education and the Workforce, in which she threw Columbia students and faculty under the bus to appease members of Congress and their efforts to smear anti-genocide protesters as anti-Jewish bigots.
Shafik’s efforts to stop the rising tide of protests have not worked.
Since Thursday afternoon, a spontaneous protest began on the West Lawn, and it is still ongoing at the time of publication.
Even the NYPD admitted that Shafik’s stated justification for authorizing police to remove students from the encampment contradicted what they saw.
Students at Columbia have pointed to the historic 1968 protests on campus as inspiration for the current mobilization against Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the university’s complicity.
Students have organized solidarity protests at Miami University in Ohio and at the University of North Carolina.
Earlier this week, before the encampments began at Columbia University, I spoke with four students from around the US who are fighting back against their colleges’ repression and attacks by Israel lobby organizations. K, a student at Columbia University who did not wish to be named, talked about the administration’s recent disciplinary actions against student activists in an effort to destroy the anti-genocide movement. Safiyyah Ogundipe, a senior at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the campus’ Coalition Against Apartheid, explained the relationships between the university and US weapons manufacturers which work to supply Israel with high-tech weapons. Lea Kayali at Harvard Law School told us about the divestment organizing there as well as administrative punishment over Palestine solidarity activism, and what material ties there are between Harvard and Israeli institutions. Sabirah M is a junior at the University of Pennsylvania and told us about students who faced administrative discipline for screening a documentary on Zionism.
Genocide alert issued over Israeli violence in West Bank
Tamara Nassar, Electronic Intifada, Apr 19 2024
The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention has issued an “active genocide alert” over the situation for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. The Lemkin Institute said earlier this month:
Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians across Palestine.
Last weekend, violence against Palestinians escalated sharply as large groups of Israeli settler mobs launched attacks on at least 17 Palestinian villages following the disappearance of an Israeli teenager. Settlers killed thousands of chickens and dozens of sheep, and stole others. They blocked entrances to villages, set Palestinian homes on fire, burned hundreds of olive trees, injured dozens of Palestinians with live ammunition and destroyed private Palestinian property, including cars and livestock pens. Settlers were often accompanied and protected by the Israeli military. In total, between Apr 12-15, seven Palestinians
Before Oct 7, violence in the West Bank was already on pace to eclipse that of any year on record, with Israeli military forces killing roughly 200 Palestinians in the West Bank in the first nine months of 2023.
After Israel began its campaign of slaughter in the Gaza Strip, violence by Israeli settlers and the state against Palestinians reached its peak in the West Bank. This made 2023 the deadliest year in the occupied West Bank since the UN monitoring group OCHA began recording casualties in 2005. The Lemkin Institute said:
Israeli military forces continue a campaign of genocide and unprecedented violence in the West Bank.
On Apr 12, a 14-year-old Israeli settler went missing near the village of al-Mughayyir, near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. Despite no evidence linking the boy’s disappearance or death to Palestinians, hundreds of settlers launched a rampage against Palestinian villages and communities in the West Bank on Apr 12-13. He was found dead the next day near the settlement outpost of Malachei Hashalom, which was constructed on private Palestinian land in 2015. The Israeli army labeled it a “terrorist attack” as soon as he was found dead, igniting violence from settler mobs against Palestinians. “Under the watchful eye and protection” of the Israeli army, some 1,500 to 2,000 settlers, some of whom were armed, stormed the village of al-Mughayyir over two days, Palestinian human rights groups said. Jihad Afif Abu Aliyya, 25, was killed during these attacks. He “was shot in his head while protecting one of the homes targeted by settler attacks,” the Palestinian rights groups said.
When Jihad was shot, he was among a group of around 25-27 Palestinians on the rooftop of a Palestinian home, which was surrounded by around 400 Israeli settlers.
Settlers continued to fire at Palestinians as they attempted to evacuate Abu Aliyya for medical attention, leaving him to bleed for 30 minutes. Israeli settlers completely burned at least 14 homes and partially burned 15 others in al-Mughayyir. They also completely destroyed more than a dozen livestock pens and partially burned four. Settlers also set fire to around 60 vehicles in the village. Settlers from the Beit El settlement also attacked the nearby village of Beitin on Apr 13, where they set fires and vandalized Palestinian property. Palestinian residents of the village tried to confront the settlers to defend their community. The settlers fired live ammunition at them. Among those responding to the distress calls was Omar Ahmad Abd’ul-Ghani Hamed, a 17-year-old high school senior and the youngest of his siblings.
He was shot in the head just as he arrived to the scene of the attack. The bullet entered his forehead and exited from the back, according to Defense for Children International Palestine, which conducts field investigations of the killings of Palestinian children. He was pronounced dead shortly afterward. That same day, Israeli settlers launched violent attacks in Duma, Qusra and al-Sawiya, villages south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank. They set fire to 300 olive trees, destroyed livestock sheds, and killed 40 sheep, as well as over 10k chickens, Palestinian human rights groups documented. In Duma, hundreds of armed settlers, accompanied by Israeli soldiers, opened fire on Palestinian residents. The Palestine Red Crescent Society reported that at least five village residents sustained injuries from live ammunition, knife attacks and physical assaults. The Palestinian human rights groups reported:
These latest attacks have resulted in the forcible displacement of five families from Duma and another five families from Qusra, whose homes have been rendered completely uninhabitable due to these acts of arson.
Meanwhile, during a military incursion on Apr 15 into Rafidia, a neighborhood in the eastern part of the city of Nablus, an Israeli soldier shot and killed a Palestinian teenager, striking him in the head from a short distance.
The soldier opened fire from inside a heavily armored military vehicle at Yazan Muhammad Shtayyeh, 17, while he was allegedly throwing stones at Israeli soldiers along with other Palestinian youths. One week before, on Apr 8, IOF shot and killed a teenage Palestinian girl at the Tayasir checkpoint near Tubas, northeast of Nablus. Asma Imad Saad Daraghmeh, 17, was “allegedly attempted to carry out a stabbing attack when Israeli forces shot her several times at a distance around 10 meters,” DCIP said. IOF refused to allow Palestinian medics to reach or treat Asma, the human rights group said, leaving her to die. DCIP said:
Asma laid on the ground at the checkpoint bleeding heavily, according to eyewitnesses.
Israeli forces then confiscated her body. Israel has been routinely conducting prolonged military raids in towns, cities and refugee camps across the West Bank, particularly in the north. Israeli military raids often include highly destructive attacks on infrastructure, with Israeli bulldozers damaging water pipes, roads and power facilities. The Israeli army has also been conducting aerial attacks in the occupied West Bank, a practice it revived from the second intifada two decades ago. Israeli troops have killed at least 435 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including 112 children, since Oct 7. Additionally, Israeli settlers have killed at least 10 Palestinians, and another six were killed by either Israeli army or settler fire, according to documentation by UN OCHA. Israeli forces have injured nearly 4,900 Palestinians in the West Bank since Oct 7.
Joseph Massad responds to fabrications and lies about him in Congress
Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada, Apr 17 2024
On Apr 17, Minouche Shafik, the president of Columbia University, appeared before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, the latest episode in efforts by members of Congress to shut down criticism of Israel on campuses by falsely accusing students, professors and administrators of anti-Semitism. Three professors were singled out for vitriol and smears: Katherine Franke, Mohamed Abdou and world-renowned scholar Joseph Massad. Instead of defending the academic freedom of her faculty from what the American Association of University Professors is calling “a new strain of McCarthyism in the US,” Shafik threw them under the bus. A particular focus of the attacks on Massad, who teaches modern Arab politics and intellectual history, was an article he wrote for The Electronic Intifada on Oct 8 2023, titled “Just another battle or the Palestinian war of liberation?” For months, Israel supporters have misquoted and misrepresented the article in an attempt to smear Massad and by extension Columbia, and Wednesday’s hearing was no exception. However, instead of defending Massad’s right to free speech and correcting lawmakers’ lies, Shafik joined the attacks. Shafik said in response to a question from Representative Tim Walberg:
I do condemn his statement. I am appalled by what he said. He has been spoken to.
Shafik also claimed that Massad was no longer chairing an academic review committee at Columbia. Massad has issued this statement in response to media inquiries and The Electronic Intifada is publishing it in full:
I have not watched the TV coverage nor seen a full transcript of the ongoing congressional interrogation of Columbia University officials, but I have received video clips of some of the testimony that related to me personally. Based on what I have seen, I can say the following: The members of Congress who interrogated President Shafik deliberately misrepresented my article published on Oct 8 2023, when Representative Walberg claimed that I “praised ‘the innovative Palestinian resistance,’ for attacking Israel and glorifying Hamas’s slaughter of nearly 1200 Jews as, and I quote again, ‘awesome, astonishing, astounding and incredible.’” I certainly said nothing of the sort.
- My article explicitly states: “the stunning victory of the Palestinian resistance over the Israeli military on the first day of fighting is a historic event both for Israel, as Netanyahu admitted, and for the Palestinians.”
- The article explicitly states that “The sight of the Palestinian resistance fighters storming Israeli checkpoints separating Gaza from Israel was astounding, not only to the Israelis but especially to the Palestinian and Arab peoples.”
- That “The resistance’s remarkable takeover of Israeli military bases and checkpoints has both shaken Israeli society and struck Palestinians and Arabs as incredible.” “Incredible,” incidentally, means “hard to believe.”
- And that “No less astonishing was the Palestinian resistance’s takeover of several Israeli settler-colonies near the Gaza boundary and even as far away as 22 kms, as in the case of Ofakim.”
- I described the use of motorized hang gliders as “innovative”: “What can motorized paragliders do in the face of one of the most formidable militaries in the world? Apparently, much in the hands of an innovative Palestinian resistance.” I also spoke in the article of the “horrifying human toll on all sides.”
It is unfortunate that President Shafik and the two members of the Columbia University Board of Trustees, including Ms Claire Shipman and Mr David Greenwald, would condemn fabricated statements that I never made when all three of them should have corrected the record to show that I never said or wrote such reprehensible statements. Also, the false and defamatory allegations which Representative Tim Walberg made against me alleging that I gave “support of terrorism” and engaged in “harassing Jewish students” should also have immediately been responded to by President Shafik and the trustees as false, as I have never harassed any of my students and never supported terrorism.
Moreover, President Shafik indicated that I am currently “under investigation” for making discriminatory comments. This is news to me, as I have not been informed or contacted by anyone from the university to inform me of this alleged investigation. In fact, I had a meeting last week with the Columbia University Provost, Angela Olinto, about being subjected to harassment and racism by another university professor. Provost Olinto conveyed to me her support and that she was sorry that I had been subjected to such harassment. The offending professor is the one currently being investigated. I remain the chair of the Academic Review Committee, a one-year position, for the next few weeks, which is the normal end of my chairmanship. Indeed, I just had a meeting with the committee staff yesterday and informed them that I will miss the next and final meeting on 8 May, due to my travel schedule. No one has contacted me at all from the university with regards to my current chairmanship. I will also remain a member of the Academic Review Committee next year, which is a three-year appointment.
President Shafik misconstrued what happened when she stated that I was “spoken to” by my chair and my dean, implying that I was reprimanded. In fact, my chair, Professor Gil Hochberg, who incidentally is Jewish and Israeli, informed me that in light of the pro-Israel campaign targeting me and distorting my article, she had told the executive vice president of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Amy Hungerford, that she had read my article and found it descriptive and did not contain praise for the Oct 7 attack. She even added that her 14-year-old son had read it and deemed it merely descriptive to illustrate the point that if her young son was a careful reader, adults too should not read carelessly. I did meet with Executive Vice President Amy Hungerford on Nov 2 2023, with whom I took a walk. She asked to meet with me because of her concern about my safety and well-being, as I was the target of much hate mail and many death threats that I received by email, in letter form slipped under my Columbia University office door by (what Columbia University Security believes was) a non-Columbia affiliate, and on my home phone. Neither the executive vice president nor my chair reprimanded me about my article nor accused me of praising the attack. However, during our walk, Hungerford asked me if I had expected the response that the article received, and I told her that I had not.
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