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56158
From: chaskuchar@stcharlesmo, [DNS_Address]
Subject: israel passes law banning unrwa
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this is the un agency that provides support for 6 million Palestinians who have had their homes taken away, |
Responses:
[56172] [56164] [56159] [56161] [56160] [56166] [56162] [56163] [56173] [56168]
56172
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: meanwhile Israel is relying on UNRWA to prevent a polio epidemic
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...a situation created by Israel. "Israeli officials are relying on UNRWA to prevent a polio epidemic — while the Knesset advances laws to expel the agency. By Jonathan Adler October 10, 2024 ☝🏿 Palestinians at the site of an Israeli airstrike at a UNRWA school in the Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip, June 6, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90) Last month, nearly a year into Israel’s genocidal war, there finally seemed to be a small dose of good news from the Gaza Strip. After the destruction of Gaza’s healthcare and wastewater management infrastructure, a widespread polio epidemic in the besieged territory appeared likely by mid-summer, when the disease was first detected in sewage samples; in early August, a 10-month-old baby contracted the disease and quickly became paralyzed. International media and aid organizations sounded the alarm, yet there seemed to be little chance of conducting a successful mass inoculation campaign in the absence of a ceasefire — an outcome that, after Israel’s assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, grew further out of reach. Then things started to shift. On Aug. 25, Israel announced that the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) — the civilian branch of Israel’s military government in the occupied West Bank and Gaza — had coordinated with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to bring 1.2 million doses of the polio vaccine into Gaza. A week later, the Israeli government agreed to pause its military offensive in discrete regions of the Strip to ensure vaccines could be distributed. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quick to affirm that these pauses were not a ceasefire, but that Israel was “committed to preventing an outbreak of the disease in the Gaza Strip, as well as in the entire region.” These Israeli decisions did not arise out of a sudden concern for the welfare of Palestinians. In July, when polio was beginning to spread in Gaza, Israel’s first priority was to administer polio booster shots to its own troops. Yet even vaccinated soldiers could still be a vector for the virus, carrying it from Gaza back into Israel. This posed an immediate threat to Israeli citizens — and, in particular, to the approximately 150,000 children who have not been vaccinated against polio, many from the ultra-Orthodox community. Over the first two weeks of September, three-day “polio pauses” — first in the Deir al-Balah area, then in and around Khan Younis, and finally in Gaza City and the decimated northern Strip — were largely effective. Aid workers traveled to hundreds of designated vaccination sites, and by Sept. 12, nearly 560,000 Palestinian children under the age of 10 had received a first dose of the oral polio vaccine, reaching 90 percent coverage. To administer the necessary second dose, the WHO is now planning to launch the next phase of vaccinations in mid-October through a similar structure of polio pauses. Although COGAT didn’t acknowledge as much, a third organization inside Gaza was vital to the success of the vaccination effort: the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). As the largest humanitarian aid agency in Gaza, with 13,000 employees — most of whom are Palestinian — the agency was uniquely positioned not only to administer the vaccines, but to encourage Palestinian families to participate in the campaign and achieve mass inoculation. In the words of Sam Rose, the Senior Deputy Director of UNRWA Affairs in Gaza, there was “no way the vaccination campaign would have been able to take place without UNRWA.” Legislate to liquidate UNRWA has coordinated its activities with COGAT for decades. As recently as February, COGAT chief Major General Rasan Elian admitted that “no other organization is equipped to take over the critical role played by UNRWA in distributing humanitarian aid.” But it has become harder for Israeli officials to justify this cooperation, as politicians have ramped up a campaign to abolish the organization amid Israel’s onslaught on the Strip. In July, the Knesset passed its first reading, by an overwhelming margin, of a bill to brand UNRWA as a terrorist organization and force the government to cut all ties with the agency. Two other bills — one to ban UNRWA from operating on Israeli territory, and another to strip UNRWA personnel of the legal immunities given to UN staff in Israel — were passed as well. As the Knesset entered its end-of-summer recess, the three bills moved on to the parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. Yet by September, Israel found itself in the awkward position of relying on UNRWA to facilitate a mass vaccination effort in Gaza — primarily to protect its own citizens — while advancing legislation to liquidate the organization. This contradiction was not lost on MK Yulia Malinovsky, a member of the right- wing opposition party Yisrael Beiteinu, who had sponsored the bill to designate UNRWA as a terrorist entity and demanded that the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee meet during the recess to address the legislation. “It is unacceptable,” Malinovsky wrote to the committee chair Yuli Edelstein, “that UNRWA will be declared the chief coordinator of the drive.” When the committee convened on Sept. 4, Edelstein agreed to discuss the three bills in order to “introduce clarity into the State of Israel’s attitude towards UNRWA.” This past Sunday, to mark the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks, the committee formally approved two amended bills: the first would sever all ties between UNRWA and Israeli state authorities, while the second would ban UNRWA from operating in Israel. UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called upon Netanyahu to stop the legislation, warning that it may force UNRWA to cease all activity in the occupied territories. Malinovsky, on the other hand, is urging the Knesset to hold a special session to pass the laws before the end of the recess later this month. Over the coming weeks, then, UNRWA will be racing against the clock to simultaneously administer a second round of desperately needed polio vaccines and secure its very existence in Palestine. A decades-long crusade Established in the wake of the 1948 Nakba, UNRWA has long been the primary humanitarian aid organization for Palestinian refugees across the Middle East. Since Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank in 1967, UNRWA has closely coordinated with Israeli authorities — which, in many ways, have come to rely on the agency’s work. With its educational and vocational training programs, healthcare and social service centers, infrastructure improvement schemes, and emergency response capabilities, UNRWA provides services to the nearly 2.4 million registered refugees across the occupied territories — services for which Israel, as the occupying power, would otherwise be responsible. In a broader sense, Israel and its allies have also profited from UNRWA’s role as what the historian Laura Robson terms an “instrument of containment”: offering some of the structures and resources of a state, but without direct representation, to “keep a lid” on Palestinian political action. Yet if UNRWA is only a quasi-state, it is a quasi-Palestinian one. Palestinians not only constitute the vast majority of the agency’s employees, but have shaped and transformed it in critical ways — even as senior leadership has largely remained in the hands of Western former diplomats and career UN officials. In its early years, refugees forced UNRWA to abandon a series of resettlement schemes in Arab countries and to redirect its funding toward education instead; UNRWA’s schools, in turn, became key sites for the development and transmission of Palestinian nationalism. Perhaps most importantly, UNRWA has helped to keep the Palestinian refugee question alive, and serves as a reminder that the international community bears responsibility for its just resolution. It is for this reason that Israel has long sought to dismantle UNRWA — even though doing so would have no bearing on UN Resolution 194, which enshrined the right of return for Palestinian refugees in international law, or the other conventions affirming that right for all refugees worldwide. The current legislative effort to tarnish and stamp out UNRWA is only the latest and most dangerous stage of this crusade. Israel began targeting UNRWA with the Jan. 26 claim that 12 agency employees had taken part in Hamas’ October 7 attack — an accusation made on the same day that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled Israel’s conduct in Gaza was plausibly a genocide. Over the following weeks, without providing evidence, Israel further alleged that some 1,200 UNRWA employees in Gaza had ties to Hamas, which, in Netanyahu’s words, had “totally infiltrated” the agency. The reputational and financial damage to UNRWA was swift. Eighteen countries suspended their existing or planned donations to UNRWA, leaving a massive $430 million hole that threatened to debilitate the agency in the middle of a war. Since then, the UN has completed two investigations into the agency’s alleged terrorist infiltration. The first concluded that UNRWA had “a more developed approach to neutrality” than other UN bodies or aid groups, and that Israel provided no evidence to support the charge that UNRWA was overrun by Hamas members; the second found that nine employees “may have been involved” in the Oct 7. attack, yet the evidence was inconclusive. More recently, as Israel expanded its war into Southern Lebanon, airstrikes killed a former UNRWA teacher who was subsequently revealed to be a Hamas commander — although he had been on administrative leave from the agency since March for violating its ban on “political activities.” As reported by the New York Times, several donor countries were unconvinced by Israel’s claim that UNRWA was deeply compromised, and many resumed their funding even before the UN investigations had finished. But in the United States — UNRWA’s largest donor, and the last holdout — Congress passed legislation to ban funding to the agency until March 2025. For the rest of the year, UNRWA has raised enough funds from private donors to bridge the gap left by the U.S., but pro-Israel Republican and Democratic lawmakers are seeking to make the ban permanent. The January allegations largely failed to undermine UNRWA in the short term, but Israel has not relented from its explicit campaign to cripple the organization. The government has frozen UNRWA’s accounts in Israeli banks and blocked all requests from UNRWA employees for residency visas. Israel’s state advertising agency has bought anti-UNRWA ads on Google, redirecting search users to a government website that tries to link UNRWA to Hamas. In Jerusalem, Deputy Mayor Aryeh King led protests outside UNRWA’s East Jerusalem headquarters for months, culminating in an arson attack on May 9, which King vowed to see repeated. This harrassment has forced UNRWA to temporarily relocate its operations to Amman and Ramallah, and they may not be able to return: the Israel Land Authority has moved to evict UNRWA permanently from East Jerusalem and seize the property for settlement construction. It is in Gaza, however, where Israel’s assault on UNRWA has been the most destructive. According to the agency’s own tally, there have been over 460 attacks on UNRWA facilities — schools, offices, healthcare clinics — since the start of the war. At least 563 Palestinian civilians have been killed and 1,790 injured while sheltering on UNRWA premises, in addition to the deaths of 226 of UNRWA’s own staff, the highest in any conflict in UN history. The deadliest incident occurred just last month, during the final days of the polio vaccination campaign, when Israeli airstrikes hit a school in Nuseirat refugee camp and killed six UNRWA workers. In this sense, the legislative offensive to abolish UNRWA from the occupied territories is merely a codification of its existing military practice. The proposed laws may give Israel greater license to target UNRWA infrastructure and personnel, but Israeli troops haven’t waited for any legal permission to do so. Vaccinate by day, kill by night The ferocity of Israel’s multi-pronged assault on UNRWA makes the successful delivery of polio vaccines all the more striking. Even while helping bring 1.2 million vaccine doses into Gaza, Israel has continued to restrict entry of other humanitarian aid. On Sept. 12, the final day of the vaccine rollout, relief groups projected that 1 million Gazans would go hungry over the course of the month, while Refugees International warned of a “grave risk of famine conditions” reemerging in the Strip. Palestinians at the site of an Israeli airstrike at a UNRWA school in the Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip, July 15, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90) Palestinians at the site of an Israeli airstrike at a UNRWA school in the Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip, July 15, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90) There is something brutal, too, in the very idea of “polio pauses” — a way of conceding that Israel could continue to kill and maim Palestinians, just not in certain places at certain times. During the 10-day inoculation campaign, UNRWA and other aid workers went to great lengths to prevent Palestinian children from becoming irreversibly paralyzed, but they could do nothing to prevent the same children from being maimed and disabled by Israeli bombs — as happened, for instance, to two Palestinian toddlers in Deir al-Balah, just minutes after the pauses ended. “Where is the humanity in giving children a vaccine during the day,” asked Ola al-Masri, a Palestinian mother in Gaza, “and allowing them to be killed at night?” Academics have long argued that by providing essential services to Palestinian refugees, humanitarian actors like UNRWA create a degree of stability that lowers the cost of Israel’s permanent occupation. Indeed, amid its current existential crisis, UNRWA increasingly invokes the stabilizing effect of its programs to try to shore up international support for the agency. In recent public appearances, UNRWA’s Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini has made an effort to show how Israel benefits from its presence; he has framed UNRWA’s educational programs, in particular, as part of the fight against Hamas, by preventing “resentment, revenge, and extremism” in future generations. This is not to discount the vital importance of UNRWA’s work: if Israel succeeds in banishing the agency from Gaza and the West Bank, Palestinians will only suffer more. But the troubling reality is that UNRWA has now been debilitated to such a degree that it can only deliver lifesaving aid to Palestinians when doing so serves Israel’s interest. In fact, UNRWA’s efforts — the polio vaccination campaign being a prime example — may help Israel continue to pursue its genocidal war. One of the key arguments by Israeli security officials against the government’s plans to dismantle the agency is that the even worse humanitarian catastrophe that would ensue in UNRWA’s absence would “force Israel to halt its fighting against Hamas.” A polio outbreak, which would threaten Israeli lives and ignite a firestorm of international outrage, could do so, too. Most read on +972 Smoke rises after Israeli airstrikes in Beit Lahia, in the northern Gaza Strip, December 28, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90) ‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza Daniella Weiss (left) at the settlement event near Gaza, October 21, 2024. (Oren Ziv) ‘Copy-paste the West Bank to Gaza’: Hundreds join Gaza resettlement event Palestinians fleeing Beit Lahia via Salah al-Din Street to Gaza City, October 22, 2024. (Omar Elqataa) Inside the siege of northern Gaza, where 'death waits around every corner' At the core of Israel’s anti-UNRWA crusade is the claim that the organization is a front for Hamas, and therefore both must be eliminated. Ironically, if UNRWA manages to survive this assault, it could end up more closely resembling the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank: reduced to a mere subcontractor for Israel, offering Palestinians basic services while ultimately accountable to their occupier. But with its military escalation in Lebanon and promise of retaliation against Iran, Israel seems intent on destroying many longstanding actors in the region — and there’s no guarantee UNRWA will make it out of the bloodbath alive. UNRWA Gaza Knesset Palestinian refugees health care humanitarian aid Jonathan Adler Jonathan Adler is an editor at +972 Magazine, based in New York. He was previously a Hurford Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and his writing has been published in New Lines Magazine, Middle East Eye, and Jadaliyya, among others. Follow him on X @JRAdler4. Our team has been devastated by the horrific events of this latest war. The world is reeling from Israel’s unprecedented onslaught on Gaza, inflicting mass devastation and death upon besieged Palestinians, as well as the atrocious attack and kidnappings by Hamas in Israel on October 7. Our hearts are with all the people and communities facing this violence. We are in an extraordinarily dangerous era in Israel-Palestine. The bloodshed has reached extreme levels of brutality and threatens to engulf the entire region. Emboldened settlers in the West Bank, backed by the army, are seizing the opportunity to intensify their attacks on Palestinians. The most far-right government in Israel’s history is ramping up its policing of dissent, using the cover of war to silence Palestinian citizens and left-wing Jews who object to its policies. This escalation has a very clear context, one that +972 has spent the past 14 years covering: Israeli society’s growing racism and militarism, entrenched occupation and apartheid, and a normalized siege on Gaza." We are well positioned to cover this perilous moment – but we need your help to do it. This terrible period will challenge the humanity of all of those working for a better future in this land. Palestinians and Israelis are already organizing and strategizing to put up the fight of their lives. Can we count on your support ? +972 Magazine is a leading media voice of this movement, a desperately needed platform where Palestinian and Israeli journalists, activists, and thinkers can report on and analyze what is happening, guided by humanism, equality, and justice. Join us. |
Responses:
None
56164
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: israel passes law banning unrwa
URL: https://thehill.com/policy/international/4958339-israel-passes-law-banning-unrwa/
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seriously sick... Israel passes law banning UN humanitarian relief agency for Palestinians by Tara Suter - 10/28/24 10:06 PM ET Israel passed a law on Monday banning the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), according to multiple reports. Israel’s legislature, the Knesset, voted 92-10 to bar the UNRWA from operating on Israeli soil on Monday, notes the Associated Press. “It was approved by the plenary: UNRWA activities in the territory of the State of Israel will be stopped,” the Knesset said in a post on the social platform X translated from Hebrew. Another law possibly cutting off diplomatic ties between Israel and UNRWA also passed the Israeli legislature, according to the AP. In the wake of the U.N. receiving notification from Israel’s foreign ministry, both the law on UNRWA activity in Israel and on diplomatic ties have the chance of taking effect in up to 3 months, per a spokesperson for a co-sponsor backing part of UNRWA-targeting legislation. “UNRWA workers involved in terrorist activities against Israel must be held accountable. Since avoiding a humanitarian crisis is also essential, sustained humanitarian aid must remain available in Gaza now and in the future,” a post on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s account on X read Monday. “In the 90 days before this legislation takes effect – and after – we stand ready to work with our international partners to ensure Israel continues to facilitate humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza in a way that does not threaten Israel’s security,” the post continued. UNRWA’s leader, Philippe Lazzarini, criticized the vote in a post on X Monday calling it “unprecedented.” “The vote by the Israeli Parliament (Knesset) against @UNRWA this evening is unprecedented and sets a dangerous precedent. It opposes the UN Charter and violates the State of Israel’s obligations under international law,” he wrote, calling it “the latest in the ongoing campaign to discredit UNRWA and delegitimize its role towards providing human-development assistance and services to #Palestine Refugees.” The Associated Press contributed. |
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56159
From: chaskuchar@stcharlesmo, [DNS_Address]
Subject: israel passes law naming unrwaa terrorist organization
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so they can arrest un employees i guess. how can israel do this? |
Responses:
[56161] [56160] [56166] [56162] [56163] [56173] [56168]
56161
From: mitra, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: israel passes law naming unrwaa terrorist organization
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"how can israel do this?" I think it's the wrong question. (AND why haven't Hamas turned over the remain(s)ing hostages.) It's totally, demonstrably possible terrorists have infiltrated unrwa. And the best result for peace may have to be releasing, shutting down unrwa. The question is, with the whole world in horror at the way this war has been managed, and many thousands willing to help if asked, why are the Israelis not presenting other options and instituting care from other channels. Alternatives exist. Stat. Yesterday. Bad karma. Bad karma. Bad karma. |
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None
56160
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Israel is a terrorist organization & should be treated as one(NT)
| (NT) |
56166
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: correction: Israel is a terrorist state... state terrorism defined
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State terrorism "State terrorism is terrorism that a state conducts against another state or against its own citizens. Acts accused of being state terrorism typically involve the use or threat of violence by state agents, including military, police, or intelligence agencies, and targets can be domestic or foreign individuals or groups." Wikipedia "The Encyclopædia Britannica Online defines terrorism generally as "the systematic use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective", and states that "terrorism is not legally defined in all jurisdictions." The encyclopedia adds that "[e]stablishment terrorism, often called state or state-sponsored terrorism, is employed by governments—or more often by factions within governments— against that government's citizens, against factions within the government, or against foreign governments or groups."[2]" |
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56162
From: mitra, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Israel is a country. Flipping the genocide coin?
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Nasty business that. The fact is that they have 10 times the innocents Gaza has, just as ineffectual against a militarized faction in government as Gazans are. Haven't you said you were against perpetuating war? |
56163
From: chaskuchar@stcharlesmo, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Israel is a country. Flipping the genocide coin?
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i don't think israel has 23 million people. and Israel has not shown any proof of unrwa personel being associated with hamas. and unrwa is 30,000 people. in 90 days when the laws take effect israel will be guilty of mass genocide. |
56173
From: mitra, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Israel is a country. Flipping the genocide coin?
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You are correct, Israel's population is five times the two million in Gaza, not ten. My point is that Israel, while making statements that it will work with other nations to replace UNRWA, has offered no comprehensive plan to do it. Time is short. Of course UNRWA was infiltrated with Hamas. Hamas saturated every activity in Gaza. Israel while cutting off the UN from fulfilling their mission needs must replace it. They've been operating 20 years under Hamas Israel better get it done. Personally I've been stunned at the actions of Netanyahu and others to destroy without viable plans to deal with the effects of that destruction. This is another instance. Israel has a right to self defense, not genocide. If Israel feels that UNRWA works against it through terrorist activities and propaganda, it is their responsibility to shut it down. It then becomes their responsibility to care for the desperate, and while one is well published, from what I see the other has not been addressed at all. . |
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56168
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Israel's Population 9,842,000
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The Israel Central Bureau of Statistics defines the population of Israel as including Jews living in all of the West Bank and Palestinians in East Jerusalem but excluding Palestinians anywhere in the rest of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and foreign workers anywhere in Israel. As of December 2023, this calculation stands at approximately 9,842,000 of whom: 73.2% (about 7,208,000 people) are Jews, including about 503,000 living outside the self-defined borders of the State of Israel in the West Bank 21.1% (around 2,080,000 people) are Israeli citizens classified as Arab, some identifying as Palestinian, and including Druze, Circassians, all other Muslims, Christian Arabs, Armenians (which Israel considers "Arab")[2] An additional 5.7% (roughly 554,000 people) are classified as "others". This diverse group comprises those with Jewish ancestry but not recognized as Jewish by religious law, non-Jewish family members of Jewish immigrants, Christians other than Arabs and Armenians, and residents without a distinct ethnic or religious categorization.[2][1] |
Responses:
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