The U.S. Must Change Course on Gaza Today
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- Written by Michelle Nunn, Tjada D’Oyen McKenna, Jan Egeland, Abby Maxman, Jeremy Konyndyk and Janti Soeripto Michelle Nunn, Tjada D’Oyen McKenna, Jan Egeland, Abby Maxman, Jeremy Konyndyk and Janti Soeripto
- Published: 11 December 2023 11 December 2023
Michelle Nunn, Tjada D’Oyen McKenna, Jan Egeland, Abby Maxman, Jeremy Konyndyk and
Ms. Nunn is president and C.E.O. of CARE USA. Ms. McKenna is C.E.O. of Mercy Corps. Mr. Egeland is secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council. Ms. Maxman is president and C.E.O. of Oxfam America. Mr. Konyndyk is president of Refugees International. Ms. Soeripto is president and C.E.O. of Save the Children U.S.
We are no strangers to human suffering — to conflict, to natural disasters, to some of the world’s largest and gravest catastrophes. We were there when fighting erupted in Khartoum, Sudan. As bombs rained down on Ukraine. When earthquakes leveled southern Turkey and northern Syria. As the Horn of Africa faced its worst drought in years. The list goes on.
But as the leaders of some of the world’s largest global humanitarian organizations, we have seen nothing like the siege of Gaza. In the more than two months since the horrifying attack on Israel that killed more than 1,200 people and resulted in some 240 abductions, about 18,000 Gazans — including more than 7,500 children — have been killed, according to the Gazan health ministry. More children have been reported killed in this conflict than in all major global conflicts combined last year.
The atrocities committed by Hamas on Oct. 7 were unconscionable and depraved, and the taking and holding of hostages is abhorrent. The calls for their release are urgent and justified. But the right to self-defense does not and cannot require unleashing this humanitarian nightmare on millions of civilians. It is not a path to accountability, healing or peace. In no other war we can think of in this century have civilians been so trapped, without any avenue or option to escape to save themselves and their children.
Most of our organizations have been operating in Gaza for decades. But we can do nothing remotely adequate to address the level of suffering there without an immediate and complete cease-fire and an end to the siege. The aerial bombardments have rendered our jobs impossible. The withholding of water, fuel, food and other basic goods has created an enormous scale of need that aid alone cannot offset.
(see the full opinion piece on the NY Times).
URGENT: Stop genocide against Palestinians in Gaza (call now)
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- Written by Peter Miller Peter Miller
- Published: 11 December 2023 11 December 2023
Over 7,000 children have been killed. We need a ceasefire now! The humanitarian situation is worse by the day and Palestinians fear another Nakba (ethnic cleansing).
Please call, write and call again!
https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/resource/urgent-tell-congress-to-stop-fueling-violence/
Film: Israelism
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- Written by Peter Miller Peter Miller
- Published: 11 December 2023 11 December 2023
Monday, December 11th at 8pm Eastern Time: https://kinema.com/events/israelism-5bdinr
About the event
Israelism Free Virtual Screening (open to North America viewers only)
We will be holding a Free Virtual Screening of Israelism on Monday, December 11th, at 8pm ET, followed by a Q&A with the team. This screening is for a North America audience only, we hope to bring the film to a wider international audience soon. Limited space is available. Sign up here, and you’ll receive an email with a link to watch.
Israelism explores the quickly changing American Jewish relationship with Israel, and features interviews with Simone Zimmerman, Peter Beinart, Sami Awad, Noura Erakat, Jeremy Ben-Ami, Abe Foxman, Rebecca Pierce, and many others.
Israelism premiered at Big Sky Film Festival in Feb 2023, and has won awards at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, Tallgrass Film Festival, Arizona International Film Festival, and Brooklyn Film Festival. It has been covered in the pages of Jacobin, the Forward, YNet, and the NYT.
Donate to Tikkun Olam Productions, the non-profit behind Israelism, to support the film: bit.ly/DonateTikkunOlam
About the film
When two young American Jews raised to unconditionally love Israel witness the brutal way Israel treats Palestinians, their lives take sharp left turns. They join a movement of young American Jews battling the old guard to redefine Judaism’s relationship with Israel, revealing a deepening generational divide over modern Jewish identity.
WE ARE COMPLICIT! U.S., alone against the world, vetoes Security Council resolution on Gaza ceasefire
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- Written by MONDOWEISS PALESTINE BUREAU MONDOWEISS PALESTINE BUREAU
- Published: 09 December 2023 09 December 2023
The U.S. was the lone Security Council member to vote against a resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, casting its veto despite nearly 100 states sponsoring the proposal. The American veto provoked outcry from humanitarian and advocacy groups, with Doctors Without Borders (MSF) calling it “a vote against humanity.”
To few people’s surprise, but amid widespread consternation, the United States chose on Friday to veto a United Nations Security Council resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. The resolution was brought forward by the United Arab Emirates and co-signed by 97 U.N. member states, after U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres made the rare move to invoke Article 99 of the U.N. Charter, which allows the highest representative of the international body to bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter that “threatens the maintenance of international peace and security.”
The U.S., Israel’s foremost ally and financial backer, was the lone country in the 15-member Security Council to vote against the resolution, with the United Kingdom choosing to abstain.
WE ARE COMPLICIT!
‘The Gospel’: how Israel uses AI to select bombing targets in Gaza
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- Written by Harry Davies, Bethan McKernan and Dan Sabbagh in Jerusalem and 972's Yuval Abraham Harry Davies, Bethan McKernan and Dan Sabbagh in Jerusalem and 972's Yuval Abraham
- Published: 01 December 2023 01 December 2023
The latest Israel-Hamas war has provided an unprecedented opportunity for the IDF to use such tools in a much wider theatre of operations and, in particular, to deploy an AI target-creation platform called “the Gospel”, which has significantly accelerated a lethal production line of targets that officials have compared to a “factory”.
The Guardian can reveal new details about the Gospel and its central role in Israel’s war in Gaza, using interviews with intelligence sources and little-noticed statements made by the IDF and retired officials.
This article also draws on testimonies published by the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call, which have interviewed several current and former sources in Israel’s intelligence community who have knowledge of the Gospel platform.
Their comments offer a glimpse inside a secretive, AI-facilitated military intelligence unit that is playing a significant role in Israel’s response to the Hamas massacre in southern Israel on 7 October.
The slowly emerging picture of how Israel’s military is harnessing AI comes against a backdrop of growing concerns about the risks posed to civilians as advanced militaries around the world expand the use of complex and opaque automated systems on the battlefield.
“Other states are going to be watching and learning,” said a former White House security official familiar with the US military’s use of autonomous systems.
The Israel-Hamas war, they said, would be an “important moment if the IDF is using AI in a significant way to make targeting choices with life-and-death consequences”.
Read more at the Guardian:
The breaking story came from +972 Magazine:
‘A mass assassination factory’: Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza
The Israeli army’s expanded authorization for bombing non-military targets, the loosening of constraints regarding expected civilian casualties, and the use of an artificial intelligence system to generate more potential targets than ever before, appear to have contributed to the destructive nature of the initial stages of Israel’s current war on the Gaza Strip, an investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call reveals. These factors, as described by current and former Israeli intelligence members, have likely played a role in producing what has been one of the deadliest military campaigns against Palestinians since the Nakba of 1948.
https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/