Saturday, 30 December 2023 10:18 PM [ Last Update: Sunday, 31 December 2023 2:47 AM ]
This file photo released on December 14, 2023 shows Israeli forces during their military aggression against the Gaza Strip, which has been the subject of the regime’s genocidal war since October 7. (via Reuters)
An international human rights group says in addition to killing thousands of civilians in the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces have been also conducting systematic looting of Palestinians’ homes across the besieged territory, stealing their property.
The Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor announced the information in a report, citing testimonies that it had obtained from aggrieved Palestinians.
“According to testimonies gathered by Euro-Med Monitor, the Israeli army’s crimes extend beyond arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, and field executions. They also involve the intentional destruction of property, the theft of personal belongings, and the looting and burning of homes—all part of a systematic strategy that is evidently based on collective punishment of the Palestinian people,” the rights group said.
It added that Israeli soldiers participate in and witness the deliberate theft of the assets and money of Palestinian civilians, including laptop computers, gold, and large quantities of cash.
“Preliminary estimates suggest that the Israeli army may have looted valuable possessions worth tens of millions of dollars, in addition to stealing personal belongings from Palestinian civilians,” Euro-Med’s report said.
Israeli troops go on looting, vandalism spree amid genocide in Gaza
Thabet Salim, one of the Palestinians cited by the rights body, said Israeli troops had raided his house in the south of Gaza City, abducting him and his two sons. Israeli forces, Salim added, then stole all of the gold and cash that was at hand at his residence.
“The amount of money the soldiers took from my house is worth more than 10,000 US dollars, plus nearly the same amount of gold from my wife, and the wife of my eldest son,” Salim said.
Umm Muhammad Gharbiyya, a Palestinian woman, also told Euro-Med Monitor that Israeli forces had forcibly taken away her gold and jewelry after violently breaking into her family’s house earlier this month.
The testimonies have been verified by many videos circulating across the social media, which show Israeli forces taking away Palestinians’ belonging, looting their properties, and trying to sell their stolen possessions.
Euro-Med Monitor concluded its report by calling for “a comprehensive and impartial international investigation …. into the grave Israeli violations against the residents of the Gaza Strip and their property, and for the international community to take urgent measures to ensure that Israel is held legally accountable.”
Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza on October 7 following an operation by the territory’s resistance movements, dubbed Operation al-Aqsa Storm. The historic operation came in response to the regime’s decades-long violence against Palestinians.
Since the start of its military aggression, the Israeli regime has killed at least 21,672 Palestinians, mostly women and children, while injuring over 56,000 others.
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Diseases threaten survival of Palestinians amid Israel’s siege of Gaza: UN
Saturday, 30 December 2023 1:58 PM [ Last Update: Saturday, 30 December 2023 1:58 PM ]
A displaced Palestinian woman sits with children outside a tent in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on December 27, 2023. (Photo by AFP)
Residents of the besieged Gaza Strip, who have so far survived Israel’s 12 weeks of constant bombardment of their homeland, are now facing the growing threat of infectious diseases, the United Nations warns.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a report that the spread of diseases in Gaza has increased, especially due to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people in the southern part of the coastal enclave.
Israel’s brutal onslaught on the Palestinian territory that began on Oct. 7 has so far displaced some 85 percent of the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million residents and sparked a humanitarian crisis that has left a quarter of Gaza’s population starving.
According to OCHA report, about 180,000 people have been diagnosed with upper respiratory infections, with more than 136,000 cases of diarrhea recorded among the population.
At least 55,400 cases of lice and scabies and 5,330 cases of chickenpox have also been recorded.
The situation, OCHA said, has increased pressure on the already overwhelmed health system in the Palestinian territory, where only 13 out of 36 hospitals are partially functional.
Earlier this week, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned of a severe shortage of food in Gaza hospitals, which also serve as shelters for displaced people in the territory.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has now assigned its teams to educate children on how to maintain hygiene despite the water scarcity.
“Due to the spread of diseases and epidemics among displaced individuals in shelter centers, especially children, the PRCS Community Work teams have undertaken awareness activities with displaced children at the PRCS’s headquarters in Khan Yunis,” it wrote on X.
UN frustrated as Israel hinders life-saving aid to Gaza
UN humanitarian chief says aid convoys come under fire by Israeli forces in Gaza.
Israel imposed a “total siege” on the coastal enclave since it launched its onslaught on the Gaza Strip. The blockade has deprived the population of Gaza of food and water.
The United Nations expressed frustration at how life-saving aid is being hampered from entering the besieged coastal enclave. The persistent difficulty in getting humanitarian relief into the territory comes as a UN-backed report said last week that the entire 2.3 million population of Gaza is facing crisis levels of hunger, with 576,600 people at catastrophic – or starvation – levels.
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Donald Trump Claims Jews In America ‘Don’t Love Israel Enough’
By CFT Team — 25 Comments
Former President Donald Trump told the Jewish weekly Ami that he was disappointed in how his pro-Israel policies did not translate into massive support among US Jews during his term and in the 2020 election:
The interview, which will appear in the upcoming edition of the US-based publication, was conducted at the 45th president’s Florida home and club known as Mar-a-Lago.
“You know what really surprised me?” Trump told reporter Jake Turx, in an excerpt, before mentioning how the various pro-Israel decisions he made during his term did not dramatically impact the historically left-leaning Jewish electorate in the US.
He noted the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the Golan Heights as sovereign Israeli territory, and withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which both former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump see as a grave threat to the region.
“I did the Heights, I did Jerusalem, and I did Iran – the Iran Deal was a disaster, right? And I also did many other things. Jewish people who live in the United States don’t love Israel enough. Does that make sense to you? I’m not talking about Orthodox Jews. I believe we got 25% of the Jewish vote, and it doesn’t make sense. It just seems strange to me,” Trump lamented. “But I did very well in Florida. I did great in Florida.”
Turx’s exchange with Trump during a press conference early in his term became viral after the then-president cut him off and told him to sit down.
If Trump truly does not understand these trends with Jews — his popularity among certain Jewish groups and not others — it shows just how clueless he really is.
Trump admitted in 2019 that he moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem as a personal favor to his largest Jewish supporter — Sheldon Adelson.
But Sheldon Adelson was an ultra-Zionist — and his views did not agree with the majority of liberal Jews in America — it was these liberal Hollywood and corporate Jews who hated Trump and distanced themselves from the violence in Israel.
The liberal Jews distance themselves from Israel, but they will rarely publicly disavow it.
The Orthodox Jews supported Trump because many of them were pro-Israel — and perceived Trump as very pro-Jew, which, of course, he was — he could have run for Prime Minister of Israel and won, as he once bragged.
But the vast majority of Jews in America are not ardent Zionists — and many of their efforts to get American Jews interested in Israel have largely failed.
Israel received far more enthusiastic support from evangelical Christians in America than they have from Jews — which isn’t surprising considering that the majority of Jews in America never set foot in a synagogue outside marriages or funerals — if that.
Liberal Jews in America saw Trump as the second coming of Adolf Hitler — and actually signed a petition to have him removed from office to avert “another Holocaust.”
Trump ignored the constant attacks from the Jewish Left — instead listening only to his Jewish fans on the Right, like Wayne Allyn Root who called Trump “the greatest President for Jews and Israel in the history of the world.”
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Ronald Lauder –
End Jew-hatred
BIG BROTHER in the 21. Century 