from TheWire [online publication of Jewish Voice For Peace in USA]

Michael Moore October 16, 2024

After trying to block production at an Elbit factory in New Hampshire, the Palestine solidarity activists are calling for more, better direct action.

Natasha Lennard October 30, 2024

After a year-long campaign against its premises by Palestine Action and local community groups, Barclays PLC has sold all of its shareholdings in Elbit Systems Ltd (ELST). Until recently, Barclays owned over 16,000 shares in Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons company.

Starting just over one year ago, Palestine Action’s campaign saw activists undertake 54 actions against Barclays premises nation-wide. Smashing branch windows, spraying them in blood-red paint, many of these actions put Barclays sites out of operation for weeks, actions which sought to raise the costs associated with dealing with Elbit.

In the latest U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings, Barclays owned 0 shares in Elbit Systems Ltd (ELST) [1], down 16,345 since the previous filing, 15th May 2024, worth over $3,400,000 [2].

Until then, recent filings had showed Barclays’ Elbit shareholdings at record high quantities [3], having steadily increased from zero ten years ago. The most recent SEC filings and NASDAQ data record an immediate total sale of Barclays’ ELST shares [4], abruptly sold just when Palestine Action’s campaign hit them hardest.

By Sharon Zhang, Truthout
Published October 30, 2024

10/29/2024 6:43:25 AM

By Nidal Al-Mughrabi
October 29, 2024 9:12 AM EDT

[plus other articles on Gaza on Updates page]
[gift article - expires in 30 days]

October 29, 2024

KEY POINTS

• An Israel strike on a residential building in northern Gaza has killed at least 93 people, officials say.
• The Gaza health ministry says healthcare system in north Gaza has collapsed
• The director of the nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital said it was overwhelmed by the wave of wounded people from the strike.

Speech by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, at the quarterly open debate of the UN Security Council on “The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian Question.”  New York, October 29, 2024.

Mr. President:

We support the statements of Uganda, on behalf of the Non-Aligned Movement; of Cameroon, on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation; and of Senegal, in its capacity as President of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.

It is inconceivable that, more than a year after it began, the Security Council has not put an end to the genocide being committed against the Palestinian people.

More than 42,000 Palestinians have been massacred, 70% of whom are women and children. More than 2,500 Lebanese have been killed. These numbers are growing rapidly.

Far from an immediate and permanent ceasefire, Israel continues to attack hospitals, schools and refugee camps in the occupied Palestinian territories, in flagrant violation of International Humanitarian Law.

At the same time, it is spreading the conflict in the Middle East region, expanding its aggression to Lebanon, indiscriminately bombing territories in Syria and Yemen and undertaking a new and dangerous escalation against the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The Israeli government attacks and disdains the UN and its Secretary-General, undermines the security of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon and maintains the deadliest attacks in history against UN staff and humanitarian workers in Gaza.

The Occupying Power continues to obstruct humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people. The recent passage by the Israeli Parliament of a law banning all activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), in violation of the UN Charter and Israel's obligations under international law, will deepen the suffering of the Palestinian population.

How many more children and women must be massacred before the international community acts to end the aggression, end the illegal occupation and provide the international protection that the Palestinian people urgently need?

How much more destruction is needed before, instead of rhetorical speeches of support, practical action is taken against the ongoing genocide?

The impunity with which the Israeli government continues to act not only demonstrates the ineffectiveness of the Security Council, it undermines multilateralism and undermines the very essence of the United Nations Charter and International Law.

It also means that the Palestinian people face an existential threat. It means that more innocent people will continue to be killed, maimed, detained and displaced.

Such impunity is only possible because of the complicit political, military, logistical and financial support provided to the Occupying Power by the United States government, which acts with double standards and prevents the Security Council from acting.

Mr. President:

It is not possible to achieve peace in the Middle East without a just solution to the Palestinian question, which the Israeli government is trying to prevent by all means by destroying the State of Palestine in order to nullify the creation of two States.

A sovereign and independent Palestinian State is not possible without Gaza and the pre-1967 borders, just as it is not possible without East Jerusalem as its capital and without the return of refugees.

The International Court of Justice, at the request of the UN General Assembly, has issued a clear position: Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory and its denial of the right of that people to self-determination are illegal actions that violate international law.

The immediate and unconditional admission of Palestine as a member state of the UN is an essential step towards a definitive solution to the conflict.

Why does Palestine have to continue waiting to become a full member of the United Nations, when Israel did so 75 years ago under a resolution that provided for the creation of two States?

In order to achieve peace and stability in the region, Israel's complete and unconditional withdrawal from the Syrian Golan and all occupied Arab territories is also necessary.

We demand an end to the aggressions against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the sister nations of the Middle East. External interference in that region must cease.

We reiterate the call for an immediate and unconditional end to the arbitrary and illegal unilateral coercive measures imposed by the United States against sovereign countries in the Middle East.

Cuba will continue to contribute with all legitimate international efforts that contribute to a just, comprehensive and lasting solution to the conflict in the Middle East.

Joint action by all peoples and governments of the world is urgently needed to stop the aggressions of the Israeli government. Every minute of passivity will cost more innocent lives, more suffering and destruction.

Cuba will never be indifferent to injustice. The Palestinian cause and the sister nations of the region can always count on our firm solidarity and support.

Thank you very much.

(Cubaminrex)

Opinion | Israel’s Invasion of Lebanon May Doom Kamala Harris’s White House Chances:
Michigan’s Lebanese community is being asked to overcome its grief. That’s a tall order. (Abby Ellis | The Intercept, 2024-10-26)

https://theintercept.com/2024/10/26/kamala-harris-michigan-voters-lebanon-israel/

#USPol #Michigan
@palestine@lemmy.ml
@palestine@a.gup.pe
@israel

For Gaza’s schoolchildren, another year of destruction, loss, and uncertainty:
Makeshift schools in tent camps have served thousands of Palestinian children. But can they survive the approaching winter and Israel’s intensifying assaults? (+972 Magazine, 2024-10-24)

https://www.972mag.com/gaza-tent-schools-scholasticide/
———

#scholasticide #StopGenocide
@palestine@lemmy.ml
@palestine@a.gup.pe

Mona Mawari
Thu 24 Oct 2024 10.46 EDT

[Please read the entire article - it is very thoughtful and informative. With her record on Gaza and Lebanon, voting for Harris will be difficult for millions in the US. --PL]

Pulitzer Prize-Winning author Nathan Thrall will discuss his book “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy.”

About the Book Five-year-old Milad Salama is excited for the school trip to a theme park on the outskirts of Jerusalem. On the way, his bus collides with a semitrailer in a horrific accident. His father, Abed, gets word of the crash and rushes to the site. The scene is chaos—the children have been taken to different hospitals in Jerusalem and the West Bank; some are missing, others cannot be identified. Abed sets off on an odyssey to learn Milad’s fate. It is every parent’s worst nightmare, but for Abed it is compounded by the maze of physical, emotional, and bureaucratic obstacles he must navigate because he is Palestinian. He is on the wrong side of the separation wall, holds the wrong ID to pass the military checkpoints, and has the wrong papers to enter the city of Jerusalem.

Abed’s quest to find Milad is interwoven with the stories of a cast of Jewish and Palestinian characters whose lives and histories unexpectedly converge: a kindergarten teacher and a mechanic who rescue children from the burning bus; an Israeli army commander and a Palestinian official who confront the aftermath at the scene of the crash; a settler paramedic; ultra-Orthodox emergency service workers; and two mothers who each hope to claim one severely injured boy.

Immersive and gripping, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama is an indelibly human portrait of the struggle over Israel/Palestine that offers a new understanding of the tragic history and reality of one of the most contested places on earth...

Ziad Abu Helaiel – political activist and social reformer – was best known for his defiant phrase “Bihimish!” (“doesn’t matter” in Arabic). The phrase was delivered brazenly, dismissively even, to Israeli soldiers who were trying to scare him as he stood in their way, often using just his body to prevent them from shooting solidarity demonstrators in the West Bank during the 2014 war on Gaza.

To say Abu Helaiel, who was beaten to death at his home near Hebron by Israeli soldiers on October 7 this year, was well known would be an understatement. He was famous in the West Bank for the peaceful protests he led against the Israeli occupation, never armed and often standing as a human barrier between protesters and Israeli soldiers.

Thousands of people attended his funeral in the West Bank. Several thousand more tried to attend but were stopped at roadblocks manned by Israeli forces.

In the early hours of October 7, the one-year anniversary of the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel which ended with 1,139 people dead and 251 captured, and triggered the onset of the Israeli war on Gaza, occupation soldiers stormed the courtyard of Abu Helaiel’s house.

“It was about three in the morning when we heard the voice of the soldiers while they were besieging the house and ordering us to open the door,” says Basma.

At that moment, other soldiers stormed into the house to find Ziad and began to beat him mercilessly. He kept repeating that he had a heart condition, but one of the soldiers deliberately hit the heart area. As Abu Helaiel tried to follow them from the house, one of the soldiers slammed the heavy iron front door into his chest, causing him to collapse.

Abu Helaiel had previously undergone a number of heart procedures including a catheterisation of the artery. He lost consciousness for more than half an hour but the house was surrounded by soldiers. “They were preventing the ambulance from reaching us,” Basma says.

Israel knew that, if it could stop foreign correspondents from reporting directly from Gaza, those journalists would end up covering events in ways far more to its liking.

They would hedge every report of a new Israeli atrocity – if they covered them at all – with a "Hamas claims" or "Gaza family members allege". Everything would be presented in terms of conflicting narratives rather than witnessed facts. Audiences would feel uncertain, hesitant, detached.

In a story whose framing should have been unthinkable – but sadly was all too predictable – CNN reported on the psychological trauma some Israeli soldiers are suffering from time spent in Gaza, in some cases leading to suicide.

Committing a genocide can be bad for your mental health, it seems. Or as CNN explained, its interviews "provide a window into the psychological burden that the war is casting on Israeli society".

Natasha Leonard October 22, 2024