Author: Brett Wilkins

Israel’s intensified bombardment of northern Gaza – which according to Palestinian officials has killed or wounded more than 1,700 people since early October – has forced a halt to the third phase of a polio vaccination campaign scheduled to begin Wednesday.

“Due to the escalating violence, intense bombardment, mass displacement orders, and lack of assured humanitarian pauses across most of northern Gaza, the Polio Technical Committee for Gaza – including the Palestinian Ministry of Health, World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), and partners – have been compelled to postpone the third phase of the polio vaccination campaign, which was set to begin today,” WHO said in a statement Wednesday. “This final phase of the ongoing campaign aimed to vaccinate 119,279 children across northern Gaza.”

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Some U.S. universities have torn down solidarity sukkahs that Jewish students opposed to Israel’s war on Palestinians have built in recent days to honor the Sukkot holiday and to “protest as the Israeli military continues to invoke the Jewish tradition as fuel for the destruction of Gaza.”

Sukkahs are temporary booths erected for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, an eight-day celebration of the fall harvest and the ancient Israelites’ escape from slavery in Egypt.

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The Israel Defense Forces’ use of Palestinians – who are often handcuffed and forced to wear IDF uniforms – as human shields prompted the leading U.S. Muslim advocacy group on Monday to call on the Biden administration to investigate what experts say is a war crime by the No. 1 recipient of American military aid.

International law prohibits the use of combatants or civilians as human shields. However, numerous reports have emerged during Israel’s yearlong assault on Gaza – which has left more than 152,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing and is the subject of an International Criminal Court genocide case led by South Africa – of IDF troops forcing captured Palestinians, including children, to protect Israeli forces in life-threatening situations.

Continue reading “Israel’s Use of Human Shields in Gaza Sparks Calls for US Probe”

At least one U.S.-supplied bomb was used by Israel in a Thursday night airstrike that killed at least 22 people and wounded over 115 more in the Lebanese capital of Beirut, according to a Guardian analysis published on Friday.

The crisis, conflict, and arms division of Human Rights Watch and a former U.S. military explosives expert analyzed shrapnel from a bomb used by Israel in the strike on an apartment complex in the densely populated Basta neighborhood near central Beirut and concluded it came from a joint direct attack munition (JDAM) manufactured by Boeing.

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The head of the United Nations World Health Organization said Thursday that Israeli forces killed 28 healthcare workers in Lebanon over the previous 24 hours, and that 73 medical personnel are among the nearly 2,000 Lebanese killed during Israel’s bombing and invasion of its northern neighbor.

“In southern Lebanon, 37 health facilities have been closed, while in Beirut, three hospitals have been forced to fully evacuate staff and patients, and another two were partially evacuated,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press conference in Geneva. “And yet healthcare continues to come under attack. In Lebanon alone, 28 health workers have been killed in the last 24 hours.”

Continue reading “Israel Killed 28 Lebanese Medical Workers in 24 Hours, 73 Since War’s Start: WHO”