BACBI.be

09/08/2024

"We need a break to cry" - No respite for exhausted Gaza healthcare workers after 300 days of Israel’s military assault" (Medical Aid for Palestine UK, 1 Aug 2024):
As Gaza marks 300 days of Israel’s military assault and siege, Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) calls for the world not to normalise the ongoing relentless attacks on civilians and healthcare, and to cease arms transfers to Israel.
Since October, 1.9 million Palestinians in Gaza – 90% of the population – have been driven from their homes by the Israeli military. More than 1.7 million Palestinians have been forcibly evacuated into an area of land only 48km2, meaning there are now more than 35,000 people per km2, five times the population density of London.
People are crammed into areas coming under constant attack, including so-called ‘safe-zones’. The Israeli military has systematically dismantled healthcare services which has exacerbated a public health catastrophe, with 1.8 million cases of communicable diseases recorded and a severe risk of an outbreak of polio after the virus was found in wastewater samples..."

News and Press Release in English on occupied Palestinian territory about Health and Safety and Security; published on 1 Aug 2024 by MAP UK

08/08/2024

"Des milliers d’universitaires européens demandent la fin du soutien européen aux institutions universitaires israéliennes " Posted on août 5, 2024 | European Scholars for Human Rights | Traduction CG pour l’AURDIP

Plus de 2000 universitaires européens et 45 organisations ont signé une pétition demandant que la Commission européenne mette fin au traité d’association entre Israël et l’Union européenne, retirant ainsi un pilier du soutien financier européen aux institutions israéliennes qui sont complices de violations des droits humains.

Des milliers d’universitaires européens demandent la fin du soutien européen aux institutions universitaires israéliennes Posted on août 5, 2024août 5, 2024 | European Scholars for Human Rights | Traduction CG pour l’AURDIPsource Plus de 2000 universitaires européens et 45 organisations on...

07/08/2024

Al-Shabaka.org, August 7, 2014: "Haniyeh's Assassination & Israel's Charade of Diplomacy" :
Ismail Haniyeh, chairman of Hamas’s Political Bureau, was assassinated on July 31, 2024, in the heart of Tehran while attending the inauguration of the new Iranian president. While the Israeli regime has yet to claim responsibility for the operation, the targeted killing follows a long history of assassinations of Palestinian political leaders by Israeli forces. As political chief, Haniyeh served as a key public figure for Hamas. Importantly, he also served as Hamas’s chief negotiator for current ceasefire talks amid Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. Indeed, Haniyeh’s presence in Qatar enabled him to represent Palestinians at an international level. His assassination lays bare the reality that the Israeli regime is not interested in a ceasefire any time soon. It also raises questions surrounding the future of Hamas and its operational reality.

In this roundtable, Al-Shabaka analysts Belal Shobaki, Tariq Kenney-Shawa, and Fathi Nimer offer their insights on the impact of Haniyeh’s assassination. They reflect on Hamas’s future, the impetus behind the operation, and its wider regional consequences, placing them within the historical context of so-called Israeli diplomacy...

Al-Shabaka analysts offer their insights on the impact of Ismail Haniyeh's assassination and Hamas's future.

01/08/2024

“No other land”: award-winning documentary about Palestinian dispossession" (Jewish Voice for Labour, Fri 1 Mar 2024 ):
JVL Introduction:

On 24th February a joint Israeli-Palestinian production, “No Other Land,” won the prize for best documentary at the prestigious Berlin film festival.
The film tells the story of the community of Masafer Yatta in the West Bank, currently being levelled by Israeli bulldozers. It was made by two Palestinian directors and two Israeli, the Palestinians from the community in question. Given the recent criminalisation of solidarity with Palestine in Germany this is a particularly gratifying award.

Israeli director Yuval Abraham and Palestinian director Basel Adra were there to collect the award, but extracts from Abraham’s acceptance speech were broadcast on Israeli TV channel 11 ( a public broadcaster) where it was labelled as “antisemitic”. Legal action has won him a half-apology, but he is still being hounded in Israel with everything up to death threats.
Nirit Anderman tells the story. We also link to the full documentary on YouTube. This article was originally published by Haaretz on Wed 28 Feb 2024.

On 24th February a joint Israeli-Palestinian production, “No Other Land,” won the prize for best documentary at the prestigious Berlin…

31/07/2024

31/07/2024

"THE LEVEL OF VIOLENCE IS UNTHINKABLE." Annie Thibault of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on the Humanitarian Horror in Gaza She is interviewed by Tom Pollitt (DAWN, July 10, via JVL, July 30).

Israel's ongoing assault on Gaza, in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, has been of a scale and a brutality arguably unmatched since World War II. From the staggering number of civilians among the dead—over 70 percent of them women and children, according to Palestinian health officials—to Israel's blockade of crucial humanitarian aid into the besieged territory, which has led to mass starvation and now famine, the war in Gaza evokes the horrors of another era.

According to a new report published in The Lancet, the eminent British medical journal, the death toll in Gaza could be as high as 186,000 people. That shocking figure, representing roughly 8 percent of Gaza's population, accounts for "indirect deaths" from severe shortages of food, water, shelter and medical care, given how much of Gaza's health-care infrastructure has been destroyed by Israeli bombardment.

It’s worse than we see in the news; it is ongoing, it is relentless, the scale of the violations of the humanitarian space hard to believe.
An improvement in the flow of aid, reopening the borders, a “humanitarian pause ” – all are woefully inadequate. Nothing short of a full and complete cease-fire will do...

Annie Thibault, an administrative manager for MSF’s emergency medical programme in Gaza from February to March this year, is interviewed…

29/07/2024

https://www.lesoir.be/612673/article/2024-07-28/le-hezbollah-t-il-frappe-par-erreur-les-druzes-du-golan-occupe

Une roquette tombée sur un terrain de jeu samedi a fait douze victimes parmi les jeunes Druzes qui y jouaient. Israël accuse le Hezbollah qui dément avec force. La tension entre l’Etat hébreu et le mouvement chiite libanais a rarement été aussi vive.

28/07/2024

"The decimation of Gaza’s academia is ‘impossible to quantify’" (Ibtisam Mahdi, +972, July 26, 2024): "With thousands of faculty and students likely killed and campuses destroyed, Palestinian universities in the Strip are barely surviving Israel’s scholasticide."

Dr. Refaat Alareer was a good friend of mine. A poet, writer, and prominent activist for the Palestinian cause, Refaat taught English literature and poetry for many years at the Islamic University of Gaza. He loved the works of Shakespeare, Thomas White, John Donne, Wilfred Owen, and many others, and he was the editor of two books: “Gaza Unsilenced“ and “Gaza Writes Back.”
Refaat is one of at least 105 Palestinian academics killed in Gaza since the start of Israel’s war, according to the Palestinian Education Ministry’s latest statistics. His home institution, the Islamic University, has been completely demolished by the bombing campaign — and all of Gaza’s 19 universities have sustained severe damage or lie in utter ruins, with over 80 percent of university buildings destroyed. The Strip’s nearly 90,000 students who were enrolled in institutions of higher learning before the war have largely been unable to continue their studies...

26/07/2024

"The Neck and The Sword", Rashid Khalidi Interviewed by Tariq Ali (New Left Review, May/June 2024):

"Let’s start with the present, not just in the sense of the horrors being inflicted on Palestine right now, but the present as part of Palestine’s still-active past. The brutal Anglo-Zionist repression of the great Arab Revolt of 1936–39 was followed by the Nakba of 1948, the Six-Day War in 1967, the 1982 siege of Beirut, led by Ariel Sharon, and the massacres of Sabra and Shatila, the two Intifadas, the continuous raining down of terror by Israel since then. Yet the post-October 7 genocide seems to have had a bigger global impact than any of these."
─ Yes, something has shifted globally...

Rashid Khalidi and Tariq Ali discuss the political and intellectual history of the Palestinian national movement, its fraught entanglement with neighbouring Arab regimes, the realities of the ‘peace process’, Israel’s grip on the Biden Administration and the strategic calculations—or miscalc...

25/07/2024

de Standaard, 25/7: "Congreslid Rashida Tlaib houdt bordje omhoog tijdens toespraak Netanyahu: ‘Oorlogsmisdadiger’"
Tijdens de langverwachte toespraak van Benjamin Netanyahu in het Amerikaans Congres hield het Palestijns-Amerikaanse Congreslid Rashida Tlaib een opvallend bordje omhoog in de Kamer van Afgevaardigden. ‘Oorlogscrimineel’ hield ze in de lucht, wanneer ze het bordje omdraaide, was de boodschap ‘schuldig aan genocide’ te lezen.

Tijdens de langverwachte toespraak van Benjamin Netanyahu in het Amerikaans Congres hield het Palestijns-Amerikaanse Congreslid Rashida Tlaib een opvallend bordje omhoog in de Kamer van Afgevaardigden. ‘Oorlogscrimineel’ hield ze in de lucht, wanneer ze het bordje omdraaide, was de boodschap ‘...

24/07/2024

Ramzy Baroud (July 24, 2024): "What is behind Israel's War against UNRWA?" (Middle East Monitor - Informed Comment):
Targeting a school during a war could be justified as, or at least argued, to have been a mistake. But striking over 120 schools, and killing and wounding thousands of civilians sheltering inside, can only be intentional, with each attack a horrific war crime in its own right.
Between 7 October last year and 18 July, Israel has done precisely that, targeting with total impunity UN infrastructure in the besieged Gaza Strip, including schools and medical centres. According to the estimates of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), at least 561 internally displaced Palestinians sheltering in UNRWA buildings have been killed and 1,768 have been wounded since the start of Israel’s war. Within just ten days between 8 and 18 July, at least six UNRWA schools serving as makeshift shelters for displaced Palestinians were targeted by the Israeli army, resulting in the killing and wounding of hundreds...

( Middle East Monitor ) - Targeting a school during a war could be justified as, or at least argued, …

23/07/2024

Dennis Jett (Informed Comment, July 22: Spain, Ireland and Norway recognized a Palestinian state in May 2024, bringing the total number of countries that do so to 144. The United States is not one of them.

The U.S. has officially favored a two-state solution, meaning both Israel and a Palestinian state would be recognized as official countries, since the Clinton administration in the 1990s. President Joe Biden reiterated that position at his July 11, 2024, news conference following the NATO summit, when he said, “There’s no ultimate answer other than a two-state solution.”

Yet the U.S. alone has consistently blocked the Palestinian territories from being fully recognized as a country – at least symbolically – by preventing them from becoming the 194th member state of the United Nations. Palestine does have the status of being a permanent observer at the U.N., where it is represented by the Palestinian Authority. Being a permanent observer lets Palestine attend most meetings, but it cannot vote on any international agreements or recommendations.
I am a scholar of international affairs and a former U.S. diplomat. Understanding this paradox requires a bit of history...

By Dennis Jett, Penn State | - Spain, Ireland and Norway recognized a Palestinian state in May 2024, bringing the …

21/07/2024

Ibtisam Mahdi, "Searching for Gaza’s missing children." Buried under rubble, lost in the chaos, decomposed beyond recognition: the desperate struggle to find thousands amid Israel’s ongoing war. +972, July 18, 2024.

Every day for the past seven months, 28-year-old Anas Juha and his surviving relatives have visited the ruins of their family home in the hope of finding the remains of their missing loved ones. On Dec. 6, a single Israeli airstrike crushed their five-storey building in Gaza City’s Al-Fayoumi neighborhood, killing 117 members of the family. Fifty-seven bodies were recovered and identified; 60 others have remained trapped under the debris ever since...

Buried under rubble, lost in the chaos, decomposed beyond recognition: the desperate struggle to find thousands amid Israel’s ongoing war.

21/07/2024

Mureen Clare Murphy (The Electronic Intifada, July 19): "Landmark ICJ ruling says world must act to end Israel’s illegal occupation".
In a landmark ruling announced on Friday, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s continued presence in the West Bank and Gaza, occupied by its military and heavily colonized by its settlers since 1967, to be unlawful. The tribunal, which is composed of 15 judges and is also known as the World Court, stated that Israel is obliged to “bring an end to its unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory as rapidly as possible,” halt all new settlement activity and evacuate all settlers.
Israel is also obliged to make reparations, the court declared, and other states and international organizations must not “recognize as legal” Israel’s presence in the occupied territory or render assistance in maintaining the occupation. ...
Friday’s watershed advisory opinion – an “earthquake,” according to international lawyer Michael Sfard – provides more legal levers for those defending Palestinian rights today, according to Alonso Gurmendi, a lecturer in international law at King’s College London. “Do not discount the power of authoritative statements in the formation of world order,” Gurmendi stated. “Especially when world order is already changing so fundamentally.” “Celebrate victories, they are few and scarce,” he added.
And while nothing may seem changed tomorrow, expect third states to “reconsider the nature of their relations with Israel” – commercial, military, economic and diplomatic – in the coming weeks and months, Sfard stated.

Palestinian rights including self-determination cannot be conditioned on "negotiations" with occupier.

19/07/2024

https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/186/186-20240719-pre-01-00-en.pdf (full official text of the ICJ's Call)

On Friday, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) determined that Israeli settlement policies "violate international law" and that their "continued

19/07/2024

https://consortiumnews.com/fr/tag/jonathan-cook/

Volume 29, numéro 205 — mercredi 17 juillet 2024

18/07/2024

Neve Gordon, "Israel seeks to rewrite the laws of war" (Al Jazeera, July 15, via JVL): "If the world accepts the way Israel now interprets the principle of proportionality, then genocide will become justified."
Most people probably don’t know this, but Wikipedia has a page called “List of Israeli assassinations”. It begins in July 1956 and stretches over 68 years until today. The majority on the list are Palestinians; among them are famous Palestinian leaders including Ghassan Kanafani of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine; Fatah’s Khalil Ibrahim al-Wazir – also known as Abu Jihad; Hamas’s Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Fathi Shaqaqi..."

We are in a dangerous place. Israel is tearing up the laws of war in its extensive use of assassination…

17/07/2024

"Open brief - Luce Beekmans, Bruno De Meulder, Hilde Heynen, Kelly Shannon, Lieven De Cauter: "Aan alle universiteiten: boycot volledig universiteiten Israël" (De Wereld Morgen, 16 juli 2024):
"Professoren en doctorandi van het International Center for Urbanism aan de KU Leuven roepen op tot een volledige boycot van alle Israëlische universitaire instellingen. "We steunen de bezetting van onze universiteitsgebouwen door studenten. We roepen de universitaire autoriteit op om dezelfde moed te tonen. Het is de plicht van de universiteit om kritisch te zijn tegenover misdaden tegen de mensheid, vooral wanneer regeringen geen gepaste actie ondernemen."
Wij, het International Center for Urbanism (ICfU) aan de KU Leuven, zien ons genoodzaakt om een standpunt in te nemen en een volledige academische boycot van Israëlische instellingen te steunen als reactie op de meer dan 250 dagen durende genocide op Palestina en het Palestijnse volk.

Als academici zijn we verontwaardigd over de aanval op Palestijnse kennis door de opzettelijke en systematische vernietiging van de twaalf instellingen voor hoger onderwijs in Gaza in de afgelopen acht maanden. Deze ‘educide’ wordt nog verergerd door de moord op meer dan 100 academici (professoren, decanen, rectoren en onderzoekers) en het onthouden van 88.000 studenten van hun universitaire opleiding, waarvan nog onduidelijk is wanneer deze hervat kan worden....

Professoren en doctorandi van het International Center for Urbanism aan de KU Leuven roepen op tot een volledige boycot van alle Israëlische universitaire instellingen. "We steunen de bezetting van onze universiteitsgebouwen door studenten. We roepen de universitaire autoriteit op om dezelfde moed ...

10/07/2024

https://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20240710_95614402

In Gaza worden scholen, waar honderden tot duizenden Palestijnen zich verschuilen voor de Israëlische bommenregen, almaar meer het doelwit van aanvallen. De voorbije vier dagen werden vier scholen aangevallen.

30/06/2024

https://www.circolito.be/home/circusid24/?lid=7027 Palestinian Circus School op bezoek in ons land!

Palestina CIRCUS ID: uitwisseling met Palestijnse en Belgische circusjongeren 21 juni 2024 Van 9 tot 31 juli 2024 zijn 20 jongeren en enkele lesgevers van de ‘Palestinian Circus School’ te gast in België om samen met 20 Belgische jongeren een circusvoorstelling te maken. Het is het tweede deel ...

25/06/2024

https://mondoweiss.net/2024/06/ten-holocaust-survivors-condemn-israels-gaza-genocide/

Holocaust survivors say using the Holocaust to justify genocide in Gaza and repress student protest on college campuses is a complete insult to the Holocaust’s memory.

24/06/2024

"TOLERANCE IS A WASTELAND." Palestine and the Culture of Denial, by Saree Makdisi, University of California Press, 2022, 244 pps.

Miscreants, as we know, tend to resist accusations that they’ve done wrong: they invent alibis, deny key facts, plead confusion, or make other excuses for their conduct. But Israel’s distinctive form of “affirmative denial” runs deeper, and sweeps more broadly, Saree Makdisi shows in "Tolerance Is a Wasteland: Palestine and the Culture of Denial." Beyond merely covering up or refuting allegations, Israel has always promoted comforting counterimages — fairy tales, in effect — about its moral impeccability. The effect is to impugn critics’ motives and displace factual specifics with loud and emotional “affirmation of values such as tolerance, [and] diversity” – all to get away with “unspeakable – and unspoken of – cri.
Wasteland came out in 2022, on the eve of Israel’s most ambitious attempt to “finish the job” of ending Palestinian resistance in the land between the River and the Sea – or even their physical presence. But the sands, tunnels, and sumud of starved and battered Gaza refugees have withstood the bombs and forced the world to pay attention in real time as Israel slaughtered tens of thousands of unarmed Palestinian civilians. Today, the intentionality of its crimes and the falsity of its claims to innocence and victimhood are exposed as never before...

Saree Makdisi’s Tolerance Is a Wasteland: Palestine and the Culture of Denial, published in 2022, preceded October 7th but helps…

22/06/2024

https://www.erasmusmagazine.nl/en/2024/06/18/dutch-university-rectors-have-issued-a-threat-to-academic-freedom/?noredirect=en_US

The letter signed by all the rectors of Dutch universities is an insult to academic freedom, states professor in Sociology Willem Schinkel in an opinion piece.

21/06/2024

MEMO: "The looming famine in Gaza is an extenstion of Israel's exertion of colonial power", Middle East Monitor, June 20:

Since October last year, it is estimated that approximately 70,000 tons of bombs have been dropped by Israel on the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza. The devastating death toll currently stands at around 36,550 Palestinians, including more than 15,000 children, and a further 10,000 missing, presumed dead, under the rubble of what remains of their homes. With famine looming in Gaza, these figures are set to be eclipsed, with the most recent warning from the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN projecting that over a million people — more than half of Gaza’s population — will face death by starvation by mid-July.

This catastrophic analysis makes it clear that, in the absence of meaningful international aid intervention and an end to this latest onslaught against the Palestinian population, more civilians will die due to enforced starvation than as a direct result of unprecedented Israeli military bombardment.

It is important to be clear that this famine is entirely man-made. It is equally important to identify who is responsible. And there is plenty of opprobrium to go around. With backing from Western allies, who have continued to send military aid to Israel whilst failing to intervene meaningfully and secure a ceasefire, Israel has been given a green light to enforce starvation on the Palestinian population in Gaza.

21/06/2024

https://www.delia-arts.org/support-musicians-palestine/

Delia Arts Foundation – www.delia-arts.org LET’S TRANSFORM THE LIVES OF MUSICIANS IN ??PALESTINE! Make sure that Palestinian voices can be heard Take Action The Delia Arts Foundation is part of the JMI Global Network of NGOs empowering youth through music. In Palestine, musicians have limited me...

19/06/2024

https://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20240619_92900476

De Rode Duivels moeten het op 6 september opnemen tegen Israël. Door de situatie in het Midden-Oosten acht het stadsbestuur van Brussel het onmogelijk om de risicovolle Nations League-wedstrijd op zijn grondgebied te organiseren.

17/06/2024

Adam Schatz, "Israel's Descent" (LRB, June 20): Intro Jewish Voice for Labour: "Adam Shatz, the LRB’s US editor discusses half-a-dozen recent books on Zionism and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in an extended review essay.
He ranges widely, from the early cultural Zionism of Brit Shalom genuinely seeking to share the land, to the muscular Zionism that became dominant early on, and the genocidal fundamentalism which has now taken over Israeli society.
Zionism’s original aim was to make Jews like any other nation; instead it feeds off and in turn feeds “the tendency of Israeli Jews to see themselves as eternal victims”.
“What we are witnessing in Gaza is something more than the most murderous chapter in the history of Israel-Palestine: it is the culmination of the 1948 Nakba and the transformation of Israel, a state that once provided a sanctuary for survivors of the death camps, into a nation guilty of genocide.”
Shatz’s conclusion is bleak: “The violence will not cease unless the US cuts off the delivery of arms and forces Israel’s hand. This isn’t likely to happen anytime soon:” The long arc of history, for the Palestinians, seems hell-bent on turning away from justice.

This article was originally published by London Review of Books on Thu 20 Jun 2024

Adam Shatz, the LRB’s US editor discusses half-a-dozen recent books on Zionism and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in an extended review…