Amnesty report 'shines light on horrific ordeals' of Iran protesters including brutal sexual assault
Video by:
05:50
Members of the Iranian security forces raped and used other forms of sexual violence against women, men, and even boys and girls as young as 12, all detained in the crackdown on nationwide protests that erupted from September 2022. An Amnesty International report documented 45 such cases of rape, gang rape or sexual violence against protesters. With cases in more than half of Iran's provinces, it expressed fear these documented violations appeared part of a "wider pattern". The London-based organisation said it had shared its findings with the Iranian authorities on November 24 "but has thus far received no response". The protests began in Iran in September 2022 after the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, 22. Her family says she was killed by a blow to the head but this has always been disputed by the Iranian authorities. For in-depth analysis and a closer look into the Amnesty report, FRANCE 24's Kethevane Gorjestani is joined by Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa.
i've stopped reading your posts, but i am just wondering. why do you never post links?
good question, but it does seem like an attempt to malign a given demographic, in this case muslims. When the indisputable fact about rape is its a MALE problem. doesnt fucking matter from what walk of life, belief system, religion or none.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Strikes on Gaza's southern edge sow fear in one of the last areas Palestinians are fleeing
By NAJIB JOBAIN and KAREEM CHEHAYEB
Today
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli forces struck the southern Gaza town of Rafah twice, residents said Thursday, sowing fear in one of the last places where civilians have sought refuge after Israel widened its offensive against Hamas to areas already packed with displaced people.
United Nations officials say there are no safe places in Gaza. Heavy fighting in and around the southern city of Khan Younis has displaced tens of thousands of people and cut most of Gaza off from deliveries of food, water and other vital aid. More than 80% of the territory's population has already fled their homes.
Two months into the war, the grinding offensive has set off renewed alarms internationally, with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres using a rarely exercised power to warn the Security Council of an impending “humanitarian catastrophe” and urging members to demand a cease-fire.
The United States has called on Israel to limit civilian deaths and displacement, saying too many Palestinians were killed when it obliterated much of Gaza City and the north. But the U.S. has also pledged unwavering support for Israel and appears likely to block any U.N. effort to halt the fighting.
Israel says it must crush Hamas' military capabilities and remove it from power following the Oct. 7 attack that ignited the war. Troops have pushed into Khan Younis, Gaza's second-largest city, which Israeli officials have portrayed as Hamas' center of gravity — something they previously said was in Gaza City and its Shifa Hospital.
Israel has ordered the evacuation of some two dozen southern neighborhoods, rather than the entire region as it did in the north, which the military says shows increased concern for civilians.
But the areas where Palestinians can seek safety are rapidly receding. With northern and central Gaza largely isolated and cut off from aid, Palestinians are heading south to Rafah and other areas along the border with Egypt, where family homes are packed tight and makeshift shelters are overflowing.
Even there, safety has proven elusive, as Israel continues to strike what it says are Hamas targets across the coastal enclave.
A strike late Wednesday leveled a home in Rafah, sending a wave of wounded streaming into a nearby hospital. Eyad al-Hobi, who witnessed the attack, said around 20 people were killed, including women and children. Another house was hit early Thursday, residents said.
“We live in fear every moment, for our children, ourselves, our families,” said Dalia Abu Samhadaneh, now living in Rafah with her family after fleeing Khan Younis. “We live with the anxiety of expulsion.”
The military accused militants of firing rockets from open areas near Rafah in the humanitarian zone. It released footage of a strike Wednesday on what it said were launchers positioned outside the town and a few hundred meters (yards) from a U.N. warehouse.
BATTLES IN NORTH AND SOUTH
The U.N. says some 1.87 million people — over 80% of the population of 2.3 million — have already fled their homes, many of them displaced multiple times.
Israel's campaign has killed more than 17,100 people in Gaza — 70% of them women and children — and wounded more than 46,000, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which says many others are trapped under rubble. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths.
Doctors Without Borders, the international aid group, said another 115 bodies arrived at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah in a 24-hour period.
“The hospital is full, the morgue is full,” the group said on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The military said Thursday that it struck dozens of militant targets in Khan Younis, including a tunnel shaft from which fighters had launched an attack. It said two of the attackers were killed.
In the afternoon, a heavy strike near a main intersection in the center of Khan Younis left a large field of rubble, and survivors said many people were believed buried underneath. Rescuers pulled bloodied women and children from the shells of nearby buildings gutted in the blast and a pickup truck rushed off carrying several wounded men.
Hamas and other militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in the Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war, and took some 240 people hostage. An estimated 138 hostages remain in Gaza, mostly soldiers and civilian men, after 105 were freed during a cease-fire in late November.
A built-up refugee camp inside Khan Younis was the childhood home of Hamas’ top leader in Gaza, Yehya Sinwar, and the group’s military chief, Mohammed Deif, as well as other Hamas leaders — though their current whereabouts are unknown.
Heavy fighting is also still underway in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, even after two months of heavy bombardment and encirclement by ground troops. The military said troops raided a militant compound, killing a number of fighters and uncovering a network of tunnels.
It was not immediately possible to confirm the latest reports from the battlefield.
Israel blames the high civilian death toll on Hamas, accusing it of using civilians as human shields when the militants operate in residential areas. But Israel has not given detailed accounts of its individual strikes, some of which have leveled entire city blocks.
The military says 87 of its soldiers have been killed in the Gaza ground offensive. It also says some 5,000 militants have been killed, without saying how it arrived at its count.
HUMANITARIAN CRISIS WORSENS
Tens of thousands of people have fled from Khan Younis and other areas to Rafah, on Gaza's southern border with Egypt, the U.N. said, adding that five U.N. schools where displaced people were sheltering in Khan Younis were completely evacuated after direct orders from the Israeli military.
Rafah, normally home to around 280,000 people, is already hosting more than 470,000 who fled from other parts of Gaza.
On the other side of the border, Egypt has deployed thousands of troops and erected earthen barriers to prevent any mass influx of refugees. It says an influx would undermine its decades-old peace treaty with Israel, and it doubts Israel will let them back into Gaza.
For days now, aid groups have been able to distribute supplies only in and around Rafah, and mainly just flour and water, the U.N.’s humanitarian aid office said. Access farther north has been cut off by fighting and Israeli forces closing roads.
Within shelters in the south, communicable diseases have significantly increased, along with cases of diarrhea, acute respiratory infections, skin infections and hygiene-related conditions such as lice, the U.N. said.
The World Food Program said a “catastrophic hunger crisis” threatens to "overwhelm the civilian population.”
Gaza has been without electricity since the first week of the war, and hospitals and water treatment plants have been forced to shut down for lack of fuel to operate generators. Israel allows a trickle of aid from Egypt but has greatly restricted imports of fuel, saying Hamas diverts it for military purposes.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Israel would allow small deliveries of fuel into the southern Gaza Strip “from time to time” to prevent the spread of disease. The “minimal amount” of fuel will be set by the war cabinet, he said.
___
This story has been corrected to show that the Israeli military says 87 of its soldiers have been killed during the Gaza ground offensive, not 88.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Israel and US are at odds over conflicting visions for postwar Gaza
By JOSEF FEDERMAN and SAMY MAGDY
2 hours ago
JERUSALEM (AP) — The United States has offered strong support to Israel in its war against the Hamas militant group that rules the Gaza Strip. But the allies are increasingly at odds over what will happen to Gaza once the war winds down.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, this week announced that Israel would retain an open-ended security presence in Gaza. Israeli officials talk of imposing a buffer zone to keep Palestinians away from the Israeli border. They rule out any role for the Palestinian Authority, which was ousted from Gaza by Hamas in 2007 but governs semi-autonomous areas of the occupied West Bank.
The United States has laid out a much different vision. Top officials have said they will not allow Israel to reoccupy Gaza or further shrink its already small territory. They have repeatedly called for a return of the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority and the resumption of peace talks aimed at establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
These conflicting visions have set the stage for difficult discussions between Israel and the U.S.
Israel declared war on Hamas after the Islamic militant group burst across its southern border on Oct. 7, slaughtering some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping more than 240 others. President Joe Biden quickly flew to Israel on a solidarity mission, and his administration has strongly backed Israel’s right to defend itself while providing weapons and military assistance.
Israel has said its goal is to destroy Hamas —- a difficult task given the group’s deep roots in Palestinian society.
The U.S., which along with other Western countries considers Hamas a terrorist group, has embraced this goal. But as the war drags on, it has expressed misgivings about the dire humanitarian conditions and mounting civilian death toll in Gaza, where health authorities report over 16,000 dead, at least two-thirds of them women and children. Israel says Hamas is to blame by using civilians as human shields.
Over the weekend, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said it is critical that Israel protect Gaza’s civilians.
“If you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat,” he said. “So I have repeatedly made clear to Israel’s leaders that protecting civilians in Gaza is both a moral responsibility and a strategic imperative.”
On Thursday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken went even farther, telling Israel that “civilian casualties remain too high and that Israel must step up its efforts to reduce them,” his office said. Blinken also called on Israel to increase the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
DIFFERENT VISIONS
The biggest differences between the allies have emerged over the longer-term vision for Gaza.
Netanyahu has offered only glimpses of what he plans.
On Tuesday, he said the military would retain open-ended security control over the Gaza Strip long after the war ends, suggesting a form of extended Israeli occupation.
Netanyahu ruled out the idea of foreign peacekeepers, saying only the Israeli army could ensure that Gaza remains demilitarized. Netanyahu has also rejected a return of the Palestinian Authority, saying its leader, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas cannot be trusted.
“After destroying Hamas, Gaza will be demilitarized and de-radicalized so that no threat will be posed to Israel from Gaza,” said Ophir Falk, an adviser to Netanyahu. “The buffer zone may be part of the demilitarization. That’s the plan.”
Israel told Western allies and regional neighbors about the buffer zone plans as recently as last week, without offering a detailed proposal, according to Egyptians officials and Arab and Western diplomats, who insisted on anonymity to discuss the topic.
The officials said countries informed of the proposal include Egypt, Qatar, Jordan, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Two Egyptian officials said it appears that Israel doesn’t have a detailed workable plan for such a zone, including its width.
“They just say, ‘it would be a temporary buffer zone,’” one of the officials said. “But when we asked for details, they don’t have answers.”
While no decisions have been taken, these ideas appear to put Israel at odds with the White House.
Biden and other top officials have repeatedly said that a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority must play a role in postwar Gaza and that Israel must seek a two-state solution involving the PA. They have ruled out a long-term re-occupation or redrawing of Gaza’s borders.
Vice President Kamala Harris laid out perhaps the clearest U.S. vision during an address in Dubai last weekend.
“Five principles guide our approach for post-conflict Gaza: no forcible displacement, no re-occupation, no siege or blockade, no reduction in territory, and no use of Gaza as a platform for terrorism,” she said. “We want to see a unified Gaza and West Bank under the Palestinian Authority, and Palestinian voices and aspirations must be at the center of this work.”
Frustration with Netanyahu may not be limited to the U.S.
Amos Harel, the military affairs columnist for the Haaretz daily, said Israeli army commanders believe Netanyahu is motivated by domestic political considerations and refusing to deal with the Palestinian Authority “due to coalition constructions from his far-right partners.” Netanyahu and his hardline coalition partners oppose Palestinian independence.
HOW SERIOUS ARE THE DISPUTES?
For now, both sides seem to be focused on the shared goal of destroying Hamas.
“It's important for them that Israel achieve the military goals because this is the starting point for any changes that can happen the day after,” said Eldad Shavit, a former high-ranking Israeli intelligence official.
He said U.S. pressure in the short term will be on immediate issues — such as pressure to minimize civilian casualties and to allow more deliveries of humanitarian aid.
The U.S. has indicated that it will show some patience after the fighting subsides.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the U.S. understands “there will have to be some kind of transition period after the end of major combat operations.” He declined to say how long that would take.
But as the death toll in Gaza continues to rise, conditions deteriorate, and Biden enters an election year with significant portions of his Democratic base pushing for an end to Israel’s offensive, these differences are likely to grow in the absence of a clear endgame.
Shavit said that tensions could rise if the U.S. at some point concludes that Israel is dragging its feet or ignoring American demands. But for now, “the Americans want Israel to succeed," he said.
Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator who is president of the U.S./Middle East Project, a policy institute that studies the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said the Americans are unlikely to put their foot down.
He cited what he described as a tepid American response to heavy civilian casualties in southern Gaza as an indicator of what lies ahead.
“Israelis have a sense that their road to run is not endless, but they still feel they have lots of road to run,” he said.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Opinion | Two months later, Hamas’s Oct. 7 horror cannot be allowed to fade Opinion by Qanta A. Ahmed December 06, 2023 at 10:27 ET Qanta A. Ahmed is a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum and author of “In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor’s Journey in the Saudi Kingdom.” With the lighting of the first Hanukkah candle on the evening of Dec. 7, the usually joyous eight-day celebration will carry a solemn significance as Jews reaffirm the ideals of Judaism. Hanukkah commemorates the restoration of the Temple in Jerusalem after its desecration by invaders more than two millennia ago. Dec. 7 will mark two months since Hamas invaders intent on slaughtering Jews embarked on a murderous rampage in Israel. So much has happened in those two months, as the world focuses on Israel’s counterattack against the terrorists’ stronghold in Gaza. Some supporters of Palestinians have defended Hamas’s action on Oct. 7. Others have tried to diminish or downplay the hostage-taking, the sexual violence targeting women and girls, and the atrocities that claimed the lives of more than 1,200 people — mothers, fathers, the elderly, children, infants, the unborn. Barely eight weeks have passed, but this needs saying: Hamas committed crimes against humanity in Israel on Oct. 7. That much should be obvious from the terrorists’ own mass-murder video recordings, but it is indisputable for anyone who has visited, as I have, the ravaged sites of their attack. The flowers still haunt me. In house after house, I saw flowers: the universal sign of hope and love, the natural world brought indoors, no doubt placed in these homes to adorn a Shabbat celebration. Now wilted, they had outlived the hands that arranged them.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Amnesty report 'shines light on horrific ordeals' of Iran protesters including brutal sexual assault
Video by:
05:50
Members of the Iranian security forces raped and used other forms of sexual violence against women, men, and even boys and girls as young as 12, all detained in the crackdown on nationwide protests that erupted from September 2022. An Amnesty International report documented 45 such cases of rape, gang rape or sexual violence against protesters. With cases in more than half of Iran's provinces, it expressed fear these documented violations appeared part of a "wider pattern". The London-based organisation said it had shared its findings with the Iranian authorities on November 24 "but has thus far received no response". The protests began in Iran in September 2022 after the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, 22. Her family says she was killed by a blow to the head but this has always been disputed by the Iranian authorities. For in-depth analysis and a closer look into the Amnesty report, FRANCE 24's Kethevane Gorjestani is joined by Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa.
i've stopped reading your posts, but i am just wondering. why do you never post links?
lol, I’m not reading you but I want more. Actually ROFL.
like the concept of google can’t be used here to find an article
why not ask Byzantine or whatever that long departed commenters name was how to Google articles in under five seconds?
Elizabeth Magill: UPenn loses $100m donation after House antisemitism testimony
8th December 2023, 10:23 EST
Watch: University leaders testify to Congress on antisemitism
A major University of Pennsylvania donor has withdrawn a $100m (£79.3m) grant after a controversial appearance in Congress by the school's president.
In an email seen by the BBC, Ross Stevens said he was "appalled" Elizabeth Magill avoided questions about how students calling for the genocide of Jews would be punished.
Ms Magill was grilled by politicians on Tuesday about antisemitism on campus.
She has since apologised for her remarks, but is facing calls to resign.
US media are reporting the advisory board at Wharton - the university's business school - has written a letter to Ms Magill calling for her to step down "with immediate effect".
American college campuses have seen angry protests and rising incidents of antisemitism since the war between Israel and Hamas erupted two months ago.
Ms Magill appeared in the House of Representatives alongside the presidents of Harvard and MIT, Claudine Gay and Sally Kornbluth.
They were asked by Republican New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik: "Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate [your university's] code of conduct or rules regarding bullying and harassment? Yes or no?"
Ms Magill and her MIT and Harvard counterparts did not reply yes or no but said - in varying ways - that it depended on the "context".
There has been a widespread backlash since, with the White House condemning the remarks.
"The lack of moral clarity is unacceptable," Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, the highest-ranking Jewish member of the administration, said on Thursday at a ceremony to mark the lighting of the national menorah.
In his message about the withdrawal of the donation, Mr Stevens said: "I have clear grounds to rescind Penn's $100 million of Stone Ridge shares due to the conduct of President Magill."
The founder and CEO of Stone Ridge Asset Management, he told the university that its "permissive approach" to those calling for violence against Jewish people "would violate any policies or rules that prohibit harassment and discrimination based on religion, including those of Stone Ridge".
Penn is one of the oldest universities in the US and a part of the elite Ivy League group, which also has Harvard, Columbia and Yale as members.
Wharton counts former US President Donald Trump, Tesla and SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk, and many other powerful names in business and finance among its graduates.
The donation, in the form of limited partnership units in Stone Ridge, was gifted by Mr Stevens in 2017 to help Wharton create a finance innovation centre.
Getty Images
University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill has faced mounting calls to resign after her congressional testimony
Ms Magill in particular has faced mounting scrutiny as to whether she can continue in her position.
She released a video on the university's website on Thursday apologising for her response during the hearing, saying that she was focused on the "university's long-standing policies - aligned with the US Constitution - which say that speech alone is not punishable".
She added she should have been focused on the "irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate", adding that it is "evil, plain and simple".
While her apology on Wednesday was welcomed by some, Mr Stevens' letter appeared to call for her resignation.
He said Stone Ridge would welcome the opportunity to review its decision "if, and when, there is a new University President in place".
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce announced on Thursday that they will formally investigate Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology over "rampant antisemitism".
"Committee members have deep concerns with their leadership and their failure to take steps to provide Jewish students the safe learning environment they are due under law," the committee's chairwoman Virginia Foxx said in a statement.
Two University of Pennsylvania students - both of whom are Jewish - filed a lawsuit against the school on Thursday, claiming it has become "an incubation lab for virulent anti-Jewish hatred, harassment and discrimination."
The lawsuit also accuses the school of "selectively" enforcing rules of conduct "to avoid protecting Jewish students" and hiring "rabidly antisemitic professors who call for anti-Jewish violence".
Islamophobic attacks have also been on the rise on university campuses.
The Department of Education has launched an investigation into multiple schools over alleged incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia.
Beta Terms By using the Beta Site, you agree that such use is at your own risk and you know that the Beta Site may include known or unknown bugs or errors, that we have no obligation to make this Beta Site available with or without charge for any period of time, nor to make it available at all, and that nothing in these Beta Terms or your use of the Beta Site creates any employment relationship between you and us. The Beta Site is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis and we make no warranty to you of any kind, express or implied.
In case of conflict between these Beta Terms and the BBC Terms of Use these Beta Terms shall prevail.
Here you go mate, in this article, hope there’s enough here to source if you don’t trust a simple copy and paste
Elizabeth Magill: UPenn loses $100m donation after House antisemitism testimony
8th December 2023, 10:23 EST
Watch: University leaders testify to Congress on antisemitism
A major University of Pennsylvania donor has withdrawn a $100m (£79.3m) grant after a controversial appearance in Congress by the school's president.
In an email seen by the BBC, Ross Stevens said he was "appalled" Elizabeth Magill avoided questions about how students calling for the genocide of Jews would be punished.
Ms Magill was grilled by politicians on Tuesday about antisemitism on campus.
She has since apologised for her remarks, but is facing calls to resign.
US media are reporting the advisory board at Wharton - the university's business school - has written a letter to Ms Magill calling for her to step down "with immediate effect".
American college campuses have seen angry protests and rising incidents of antisemitism since the war between Israel and Hamas erupted two months ago.
Ms Magill appeared in the House of Representatives alongside the presidents of Harvard and MIT, Claudine Gay and Sally Kornbluth.
They were asked by Republican New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik: "Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate [your university's] code of conduct or rules regarding bullying and harassment? Yes or no?"
Ms Magill and her MIT and Harvard counterparts did not reply yes or no but said - in varying ways - that it depended on the "context".
There has been a widespread backlash since, with the White House condemning the remarks.
"The lack of moral clarity is unacceptable," Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, the highest-ranking Jewish member of the administration, said on Thursday at a ceremony to mark the lighting of the national menorah.
In his message about the withdrawal of the donation, Mr Stevens said: "I have clear grounds to rescind Penn's $100 million of Stone Ridge shares due to the conduct of President Magill."
The founder and CEO of Stone Ridge Asset Management, he told the university that its "permissive approach" to those calling for violence against Jewish people "would violate any policies or rules that prohibit harassment and discrimination based on religion, including those of Stone Ridge".
Penn is one of the oldest universities in the US and a part of the elite Ivy League group, which also has Harvard, Columbia and Yale as members.
Wharton counts former US President Donald Trump, Tesla and SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk, and many other powerful names in business and finance among its graduates.
The donation, in the form of limited partnership units in Stone Ridge, was gifted by Mr Stevens in 2017 to help Wharton create a finance innovation centre.
Getty Images
University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill has faced mounting calls to resign after her congressional testimony
Ms Magill in particular has faced mounting scrutiny as to whether she can continue in her position.
She released a video on the university's website on Thursday apologising for her response during the hearing, saying that she was focused on the "university's long-standing policies - aligned with the US Constitution - which say that speech alone is not punishable".
She added she should have been focused on the "irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate", adding that it is "evil, plain and simple".
While her apology on Wednesday was welcomed by some, Mr Stevens' letter appeared to call for her resignation.
He said Stone Ridge would welcome the opportunity to review its decision "if, and when, there is a new University President in place".
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce announced on Thursday that they will formally investigate Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology over "rampant antisemitism".
"Committee members have deep concerns with their leadership and their failure to take steps to provide Jewish students the safe learning environment they are due under law," the committee's chairwoman Virginia Foxx said in a statement.
Two University of Pennsylvania students - both of whom are Jewish - filed a lawsuit against the school on Thursday, claiming it has become "an incubation lab for virulent anti-Jewish hatred, harassment and discrimination."
The lawsuit also accuses the school of "selectively" enforcing rules of conduct "to avoid protecting Jewish students" and hiring "rabidly antisemitic professors who call for anti-Jewish violence".
Islamophobic attacks have also been on the rise on university campuses.
The Department of Education has launched an investigation into multiple schools over alleged incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia.
Beta Terms By using the Beta Site, you agree that such use is at your own risk and you know that the Beta Site may include known or unknown bugs or errors, that we have no obligation to make this Beta Site available with or without charge for any period of time, nor to make it available at all, and that nothing in these Beta Terms or your use of the Beta Site creates any employment relationship between you and us. The Beta Site is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis and we make no warranty to you of any kind, express or implied.
In case of conflict between these Beta Terms and the BBC Terms of Use these Beta Terms shall prevail.
Here you go mate, in this article, hope there’s enough here to source if you don’t trust a simple copy and paste
To the bold, really? Do you believe this? Being critical of Israeli policies toward Palestinians is "virulent anti-Jewish hatred."
Are you now for BDS?
What specifics do we know of the faculty members named in the suit? Were they teaching that Hitler's Final Solution was correct or justified or are they teaching of the atrocities committed by the Israeli state against Palestinians? How were the proffs calling for anti-Jewish violence? I couldn't find anything other than "no comment" on the particulars and the broad-brush claims against UPenn.
NO government gets a free pass. I don't give a fuck what the history of a given people are when it comes to being critical of their government. Those two are mutually exclusive in my opinion.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Amnesty report 'shines light on horrific ordeals' of Iran protesters including brutal sexual assault
Video by:
05:50
Members of the Iranian security forces raped and used other forms of sexual violence against women, men, and even boys and girls as young as 12, all detained in the crackdown on nationwide protests that erupted from September 2022. An Amnesty International report documented 45 such cases of rape, gang rape or sexual violence against protesters. With cases in more than half of Iran's provinces, it expressed fear these documented violations appeared part of a "wider pattern". The London-based organisation said it had shared its findings with the Iranian authorities on November 24 "but has thus far received no response". The protests began in Iran in September 2022 after the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, 22. Her family says she was killed by a blow to the head but this has always been disputed by the Iranian authorities. For in-depth analysis and a closer look into the Amnesty report, FRANCE 24's Kethevane Gorjestani is joined by Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa.
i've stopped reading your posts, but i am just wondering. why do you never post links?
lol, I’m not reading you but I want more. Actually ROFL.
like the concept of google can’t be used here to find an article
why not ask Byzantine or whatever that long departed commenters name was how to Google articles in under five seconds?
yeah just go post random paragraphs with screenshots then. with a timestamp. that provides real context.
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
NO government gets a free pass. I don't give a fuck what the history of a given people are when it comes to being critical of their government. Those two are mutually exclusive in my opinion.
agreed.
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
Amnesty report 'shines light on horrific ordeals' of Iran protesters including brutal sexual assault
Video by:
05:50
Members of the Iranian security forces raped and used other forms of sexual violence against women, men, and even boys and girls as young as 12, all detained in the crackdown on nationwide protests that erupted from September 2022. An Amnesty International report documented 45 such cases of rape, gang rape or sexual violence against protesters. With cases in more than half of Iran's provinces, it expressed fear these documented violations appeared part of a "wider pattern". The London-based organisation said it had shared its findings with the Iranian authorities on November 24 "but has thus far received no response". The protests began in Iran in September 2022 after the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, 22. Her family says she was killed by a blow to the head but this has always been disputed by the Iranian authorities. For in-depth analysis and a closer look into the Amnesty report, FRANCE 24's Kethevane Gorjestani is joined by Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa.
i've stopped reading your posts, but i am just wondering. why do you never post links?
lol, I’m not reading you but I want more. Actually ROFL.
like the concept of google can’t be used here to find an article
why not ask Byzantine or whatever that long departed commenters name was how to Google articles in under five seconds?
yeah just go post random paragraphs with screenshots then. with a timestamp. that provides real context.
I googled the headline and found article in less time than it took you to type that.
Of course when it’s Iran the context matters , because in the right context the actions of Iran are pure and good.
Elizabeth Magill: UPenn loses $100m donation after House antisemitism testimony
8th December 2023, 10:23 EST
Watch: University leaders testify to Congress on antisemitism
A major University of Pennsylvania donor has withdrawn a $100m (£79.3m) grant after a controversial appearance in Congress by the school's president.
In an email seen by the BBC, Ross Stevens said he was "appalled" Elizabeth Magill avoided questions about how students calling for the genocide of Jews would be punished.
Ms Magill was grilled by politicians on Tuesday about antisemitism on campus.
She has since apologised for her remarks, but is facing calls to resign.
US media are reporting the advisory board at Wharton - the university's business school - has written a letter to Ms Magill calling for her to step down "with immediate effect".
American college campuses have seen angry protests and rising incidents of antisemitism since the war between Israel and Hamas erupted two months ago.
Ms Magill appeared in the House of Representatives alongside the presidents of Harvard and MIT, Claudine Gay and Sally Kornbluth.
They were asked by Republican New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik: "Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate [your university's] code of conduct or rules regarding bullying and harassment? Yes or no?"
Ms Magill and her MIT and Harvard counterparts did not reply yes or no but said - in varying ways - that it depended on the "context".
There has been a widespread backlash since, with the White House condemning the remarks.
"The lack of moral clarity is unacceptable," Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, the highest-ranking Jewish member of the administration, said on Thursday at a ceremony to mark the lighting of the national menorah.
In his message about the withdrawal of the donation, Mr Stevens said: "I have clear grounds to rescind Penn's $100 million of Stone Ridge shares due to the conduct of President Magill."
The founder and CEO of Stone Ridge Asset Management, he told the university that its "permissive approach" to those calling for violence against Jewish people "would violate any policies or rules that prohibit harassment and discrimination based on religion, including those of Stone Ridge".
Penn is one of the oldest universities in the US and a part of the elite Ivy League group, which also has Harvard, Columbia and Yale as members.
Wharton counts former US President Donald Trump, Tesla and SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk, and many other powerful names in business and finance among its graduates.
The donation, in the form of limited partnership units in Stone Ridge, was gifted by Mr Stevens in 2017 to help Wharton create a finance innovation centre.
Getty Images
University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill has faced mounting calls to resign after her congressional testimony
Ms Magill in particular has faced mounting scrutiny as to whether she can continue in her position.
She released a video on the university's website on Thursday apologising for her response during the hearing, saying that she was focused on the "university's long-standing policies - aligned with the US Constitution - which say that speech alone is not punishable".
She added she should have been focused on the "irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate", adding that it is "evil, plain and simple".
While her apology on Wednesday was welcomed by some, Mr Stevens' letter appeared to call for her resignation.
He said Stone Ridge would welcome the opportunity to review its decision "if, and when, there is a new University President in place".
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce announced on Thursday that they will formally investigate Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology over "rampant antisemitism".
"Committee members have deep concerns with their leadership and their failure to take steps to provide Jewish students the safe learning environment they are due under law," the committee's chairwoman Virginia Foxx said in a statement.
Two University of Pennsylvania students - both of whom are Jewish - filed a lawsuit against the school on Thursday, claiming it has become "an incubation lab for virulent anti-Jewish hatred, harassment and discrimination."
The lawsuit also accuses the school of "selectively" enforcing rules of conduct "to avoid protecting Jewish students" and hiring "rabidly antisemitic professors who call for anti-Jewish violence".
Islamophobic attacks have also been on the rise on university campuses.
The Department of Education has launched an investigation into multiple schools over alleged incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia.
Beta Terms By using the Beta Site, you agree that such use is at your own risk and you know that the Beta Site may include known or unknown bugs or errors, that we have no obligation to make this Beta Site available with or without charge for any period of time, nor to make it available at all, and that nothing in these Beta Terms or your use of the Beta Site creates any employment relationship between you and us. The Beta Site is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis and we make no warranty to you of any kind, express or implied.
In case of conflict between these Beta Terms and the BBC Terms of Use these Beta Terms shall prevail.
Here you go mate, in this article, hope there’s enough here to source if you don’t trust a simple copy and paste
To the bold, really? Do you believe this? Being critical of Israeli policies toward Palestinians is "virulent anti-Jewish hatred."
Are you now for BDS?
What specifics do we know of the faculty members named in the suit? Were they teaching that Hitler's Final Solution was correct or justified or are they teaching of the atrocities committed by the Israeli state against Palestinians? How were the proffs calling for anti-Jewish violence? I couldn't find anything other than "no comment" on the particulars and the broad-brush claims against UPenn.
Never heard of BDS.
As far as the first bold, not so much, but the second bold, absolutely
The lawsuit also accuses the school of "selectively" enforcing rules of conduct "to avoid protecting Jewish students" and hiring "rabidly antisemitic professors who call for anti-Jewish violence".
Elizabeth Magill: UPenn loses $100m donation after House antisemitism testimony
8th December 2023, 10:23 EST
Watch: University leaders testify to Congress on antisemitism
A major University of Pennsylvania donor has withdrawn a $100m (£79.3m) grant after a controversial appearance in Congress by the school's president.
In an email seen by the BBC, Ross Stevens said he was "appalled" Elizabeth Magill avoided questions about how students calling for the genocide of Jews would be punished.
Ms Magill was grilled by politicians on Tuesday about antisemitism on campus.
She has since apologised for her remarks, but is facing calls to resign.
US media are reporting the advisory board at Wharton - the university's business school - has written a letter to Ms Magill calling for her to step down "with immediate effect".
American college campuses have seen angry protests and rising incidents of antisemitism since the war between Israel and Hamas erupted two months ago.
Ms Magill appeared in the House of Representatives alongside the presidents of Harvard and MIT, Claudine Gay and Sally Kornbluth.
They were asked by Republican New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik: "Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate [your university's] code of conduct or rules regarding bullying and harassment? Yes or no?"
Ms Magill and her MIT and Harvard counterparts did not reply yes or no but said - in varying ways - that it depended on the "context".
There has been a widespread backlash since, with the White House condemning the remarks.
"The lack of moral clarity is unacceptable," Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, the highest-ranking Jewish member of the administration, said on Thursday at a ceremony to mark the lighting of the national menorah.
In his message about the withdrawal of the donation, Mr Stevens said: "I have clear grounds to rescind Penn's $100 million of Stone Ridge shares due to the conduct of President Magill."
The founder and CEO of Stone Ridge Asset Management, he told the university that its "permissive approach" to those calling for violence against Jewish people "would violate any policies or rules that prohibit harassment and discrimination based on religion, including those of Stone Ridge".
Penn is one of the oldest universities in the US and a part of the elite Ivy League group, which also has Harvard, Columbia and Yale as members.
Wharton counts former US President Donald Trump, Tesla and SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk, and many other powerful names in business and finance among its graduates.
The donation, in the form of limited partnership units in Stone Ridge, was gifted by Mr Stevens in 2017 to help Wharton create a finance innovation centre.
Getty Images
University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill has faced mounting calls to resign after her congressional testimony
Ms Magill in particular has faced mounting scrutiny as to whether she can continue in her position.
She released a video on the university's website on Thursday apologising for her response during the hearing, saying that she was focused on the "university's long-standing policies - aligned with the US Constitution - which say that speech alone is not punishable".
She added she should have been focused on the "irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate", adding that it is "evil, plain and simple".
While her apology on Wednesday was welcomed by some, Mr Stevens' letter appeared to call for her resignation.
He said Stone Ridge would welcome the opportunity to review its decision "if, and when, there is a new University President in place".
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce announced on Thursday that they will formally investigate Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology over "rampant antisemitism".
"Committee members have deep concerns with their leadership and their failure to take steps to provide Jewish students the safe learning environment they are due under law," the committee's chairwoman Virginia Foxx said in a statement.
Two University of Pennsylvania students - both of whom are Jewish - filed a lawsuit against the school on Thursday, claiming it has become "an incubation lab for virulent anti-Jewish hatred, harassment and discrimination."
The lawsuit also accuses the school of "selectively" enforcing rules of conduct "to avoid protecting Jewish students" and hiring "rabidly antisemitic professors who call for anti-Jewish violence".
Islamophobic attacks have also been on the rise on university campuses.
The Department of Education has launched an investigation into multiple schools over alleged incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia.
Beta Terms By using the Beta Site, you agree that such use is at your own risk and you know that the Beta Site may include known or unknown bugs or errors, that we have no obligation to make this Beta Site available with or without charge for any period of time, nor to make it available at all, and that nothing in these Beta Terms or your use of the Beta Site creates any employment relationship between you and us. The Beta Site is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis and we make no warranty to you of any kind, express or implied.
In case of conflict between these Beta Terms and the BBC Terms of Use these Beta Terms shall prevail.
Here you go mate, in this article, hope there’s enough here to source if you don’t trust a simple copy and paste
To the bold, really? Do you believe this? Being critical of Israeli policies toward Palestinians is "virulent anti-Jewish hatred."
Are you now for BDS?
What specifics do we know of the faculty members named in the suit? Were they teaching that Hitler's Final Solution was correct or justified or are they teaching of the atrocities committed by the Israeli state against Palestinians? How were the proffs calling for anti-Jewish violence? I couldn't find anything other than "no comment" on the particulars and the broad-brush claims against UPenn.
Never heard of BDS.
As far as the first bold, not so much, but the second bold, absolutely
The lawsuit also accuses the school of "selectively" enforcing rules of conduct "to avoid protecting Jewish students" and hiring "rabidly antisemitic professors who call for anti-Jewish violence".
So you believe that an Ivy League university would hire “rabidly anti-Semitic professors who call for anti-Jewish violence?” Okay. Wow. Now that we’ve established that, you also believe that UPenn “selectively” enforced “rules of conduct to ‘avoid’ protecting Jewish students. Okay. Sounds like a lawsuit written by an Israeli apparatchik in tel aviv in an effort to silence any criticism or condemnation of Israel. I look forward to reading the lawsuit as filed if and when it’s made public.
What is a university’s obligation to its student body when some douche bag scrawls any kind of hateful, threatening and/or intimidating graffiti directed at any group on or off campus?
Seriously, you’ve never heard of BDS? Says the guy/gal that excoriated the rest of us to read up on the history of the region and Israel in particular? Okay then. You’re googling wrong or your search algorithm has purposely buried it.
Elizabeth Magill: UPenn loses $100m donation after House antisemitism testimony
8th December 2023, 10:23 EST
Watch: University leaders testify to Congress on antisemitism
A major University of Pennsylvania donor has withdrawn a $100m (£79.3m) grant after a controversial appearance in Congress by the school's president.
In an email seen by the BBC, Ross Stevens said he was "appalled" Elizabeth Magill avoided questions about how students calling for the genocide of Jews would be punished.
Ms Magill was grilled by politicians on Tuesday about antisemitism on campus.
She has since apologised for her remarks, but is facing calls to resign.
US media are reporting the advisory board at Wharton - the university's business school - has written a letter to Ms Magill calling for her to step down "with immediate effect".
American college campuses have seen angry protests and rising incidents of antisemitism since the war between Israel and Hamas erupted two months ago.
Ms Magill appeared in the House of Representatives alongside the presidents of Harvard and MIT, Claudine Gay and Sally Kornbluth.
They were asked by Republican New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik: "Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate [your university's] code of conduct or rules regarding bullying and harassment? Yes or no?"
Ms Magill and her MIT and Harvard counterparts did not reply yes or no but said - in varying ways - that it depended on the "context".
There has been a widespread backlash since, with the White House condemning the remarks.
"The lack of moral clarity is unacceptable," Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, the highest-ranking Jewish member of the administration, said on Thursday at a ceremony to mark the lighting of the national menorah.
In his message about the withdrawal of the donation, Mr Stevens said: "I have clear grounds to rescind Penn's $100 million of Stone Ridge shares due to the conduct of President Magill."
The founder and CEO of Stone Ridge Asset Management, he told the university that its "permissive approach" to those calling for violence against Jewish people "would violate any policies or rules that prohibit harassment and discrimination based on religion, including those of Stone Ridge".
Penn is one of the oldest universities in the US and a part of the elite Ivy League group, which also has Harvard, Columbia and Yale as members.
Wharton counts former US President Donald Trump, Tesla and SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk, and many other powerful names in business and finance among its graduates.
The donation, in the form of limited partnership units in Stone Ridge, was gifted by Mr Stevens in 2017 to help Wharton create a finance innovation centre.
Getty Images
University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill has faced mounting calls to resign after her congressional testimony
Ms Magill in particular has faced mounting scrutiny as to whether she can continue in her position.
She released a video on the university's website on Thursday apologising for her response during the hearing, saying that she was focused on the "university's long-standing policies - aligned with the US Constitution - which say that speech alone is not punishable".
She added she should have been focused on the "irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate", adding that it is "evil, plain and simple".
While her apology on Wednesday was welcomed by some, Mr Stevens' letter appeared to call for her resignation.
He said Stone Ridge would welcome the opportunity to review its decision "if, and when, there is a new University President in place".
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce announced on Thursday that they will formally investigate Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology over "rampant antisemitism".
"Committee members have deep concerns with their leadership and their failure to take steps to provide Jewish students the safe learning environment they are due under law," the committee's chairwoman Virginia Foxx said in a statement.
Two University of Pennsylvania students - both of whom are Jewish - filed a lawsuit against the school on Thursday, claiming it has become "an incubation lab for virulent anti-Jewish hatred, harassment and discrimination."
The lawsuit also accuses the school of "selectively" enforcing rules of conduct "to avoid protecting Jewish students" and hiring "rabidly antisemitic professors who call for anti-Jewish violence".
Islamophobic attacks have also been on the rise on university campuses.
The Department of Education has launched an investigation into multiple schools over alleged incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia.
Beta Terms By using the Beta Site, you agree that such use is at your own risk and you know that the Beta Site may include known or unknown bugs or errors, that we have no obligation to make this Beta Site available with or without charge for any period of time, nor to make it available at all, and that nothing in these Beta Terms or your use of the Beta Site creates any employment relationship between you and us. The Beta Site is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis and we make no warranty to you of any kind, express or implied.
In case of conflict between these Beta Terms and the BBC Terms of Use these Beta Terms shall prevail.
Here you go mate, in this article, hope there’s enough here to source if you don’t trust a simple copy and paste
To the bold, really? Do you believe this? Being critical of Israeli policies toward Palestinians is "virulent anti-Jewish hatred."
Are you now for BDS?
What specifics do we know of the faculty members named in the suit? Were they teaching that Hitler's Final Solution was correct or justified or are they teaching of the atrocities committed by the Israeli state against Palestinians? How were the proffs calling for anti-Jewish violence? I couldn't find anything other than "no comment" on the particulars and the broad-brush claims against UPenn.
Never heard of BDS.
As far as the first bold, not so much, but the second bold, absolutely
The lawsuit also accuses the school of "selectively" enforcing rules of conduct "to avoid protecting Jewish students" and hiring "rabidly antisemitic professors who call for anti-Jewish violence".
So you believe that an Ivy League university would hire “rabidly anti-Semitic professors who call for anti-Jewish violence?” Okay. Wow. Now that we’ve established that, you also believe that UPenn “selectively” enforced “rules of conduct to ‘avoid’ protecting Jewish students. Okay. Sounds like a lawsuit written by an Israeli apparatchik in tel aviv in an effort to silence any criticism or condemnation of Israel. I look forward to reading the lawsuit as filed if and when it’s made public.
What is a university’s obligation to its student body when some douche bag scrawls any kind of hateful, threatening and/or intimidating graffiti directed at any group on or off campus?
Seriously, you’ve never heard of BDS? Says the guy/gal that excoriated the rest of us to read up on the history of the region and Israel in particular? Okay then. You’re googling wrong or your search algorithm has purposely buried it.
Fine - BDS is a political pro Palestine organization. It does not represent fact within itself. It is a political entity.
There are numerous reports of college professors denying the holocaust and being exhilarated By the Oct 7 hamas attack. There’s plenty more of that.
Elizabeth Magill: UPenn loses $100m donation after House antisemitism testimony
8th December 2023, 10:23 EST
Watch: University leaders testify to Congress on antisemitism
A major University of Pennsylvania donor has withdrawn a $100m (£79.3m) grant after a controversial appearance in Congress by the school's president.
In an email seen by the BBC, Ross Stevens said he was "appalled" Elizabeth Magill avoided questions about how students calling for the genocide of Jews would be punished.
Ms Magill was grilled by politicians on Tuesday about antisemitism on campus.
She has since apologised for her remarks, but is facing calls to resign.
US media are reporting the advisory board at Wharton - the university's business school - has written a letter to Ms Magill calling for her to step down "with immediate effect".
American college campuses have seen angry protests and rising incidents of antisemitism since the war between Israel and Hamas erupted two months ago.
Ms Magill appeared in the House of Representatives alongside the presidents of Harvard and MIT, Claudine Gay and Sally Kornbluth.
They were asked by Republican New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik: "Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate [your university's] code of conduct or rules regarding bullying and harassment? Yes or no?"
Ms Magill and her MIT and Harvard counterparts did not reply yes or no but said - in varying ways - that it depended on the "context".
There has been a widespread backlash since, with the White House condemning the remarks.
"The lack of moral clarity is unacceptable," Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, the highest-ranking Jewish member of the administration, said on Thursday at a ceremony to mark the lighting of the national menorah.
In his message about the withdrawal of the donation, Mr Stevens said: "I have clear grounds to rescind Penn's $100 million of Stone Ridge shares due to the conduct of President Magill."
The founder and CEO of Stone Ridge Asset Management, he told the university that its "permissive approach" to those calling for violence against Jewish people "would violate any policies or rules that prohibit harassment and discrimination based on religion, including those of Stone Ridge".
Penn is one of the oldest universities in the US and a part of the elite Ivy League group, which also has Harvard, Columbia and Yale as members.
Wharton counts former US President Donald Trump, Tesla and SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk, and many other powerful names in business and finance among its graduates.
The donation, in the form of limited partnership units in Stone Ridge, was gifted by Mr Stevens in 2017 to help Wharton create a finance innovation centre.
Getty Images
University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill has faced mounting calls to resign after her congressional testimony
Ms Magill in particular has faced mounting scrutiny as to whether she can continue in her position.
She released a video on the university's website on Thursday apologising for her response during the hearing, saying that she was focused on the "university's long-standing policies - aligned with the US Constitution - which say that speech alone is not punishable".
She added she should have been focused on the "irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate", adding that it is "evil, plain and simple".
While her apology on Wednesday was welcomed by some, Mr Stevens' letter appeared to call for her resignation.
He said Stone Ridge would welcome the opportunity to review its decision "if, and when, there is a new University President in place".
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce announced on Thursday that they will formally investigate Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology over "rampant antisemitism".
"Committee members have deep concerns with their leadership and their failure to take steps to provide Jewish students the safe learning environment they are due under law," the committee's chairwoman Virginia Foxx said in a statement.
Two University of Pennsylvania students - both of whom are Jewish - filed a lawsuit against the school on Thursday, claiming it has become "an incubation lab for virulent anti-Jewish hatred, harassment and discrimination."
The lawsuit also accuses the school of "selectively" enforcing rules of conduct "to avoid protecting Jewish students" and hiring "rabidly antisemitic professors who call for anti-Jewish violence".
Islamophobic attacks have also been on the rise on university campuses.
The Department of Education has launched an investigation into multiple schools over alleged incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia.
Beta Terms By using the Beta Site, you agree that such use is at your own risk and you know that the Beta Site may include known or unknown bugs or errors, that we have no obligation to make this Beta Site available with or without charge for any period of time, nor to make it available at all, and that nothing in these Beta Terms or your use of the Beta Site creates any employment relationship between you and us. The Beta Site is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis and we make no warranty to you of any kind, express or implied.
In case of conflict between these Beta Terms and the BBC Terms of Use these Beta Terms shall prevail.
Here you go mate, in this article, hope there’s enough here to source if you don’t trust a simple copy and paste
To the bold, really? Do you believe this? Being critical of Israeli policies toward Palestinians is "virulent anti-Jewish hatred."
Are you now for BDS?
What specifics do we know of the faculty members named in the suit? Were they teaching that Hitler's Final Solution was correct or justified or are they teaching of the atrocities committed by the Israeli state against Palestinians? How were the proffs calling for anti-Jewish violence? I couldn't find anything other than "no comment" on the particulars and the broad-brush claims against UPenn.
Never heard of BDS.
As far as the first bold, not so much, but the second bold, absolutely
The lawsuit also accuses the school of "selectively" enforcing rules of conduct "to avoid protecting Jewish students" and hiring "rabidly antisemitic professors who call for anti-Jewish violence".
So you believe that an Ivy League university would hire “rabidly anti-Semitic professors who call for anti-Jewish violence?” Okay. Wow. Now that we’ve established that, you also believe that UPenn “selectively” enforced “rules of conduct to ‘avoid’ protecting Jewish students. Okay. Sounds like a lawsuit written by an Israeli apparatchik in tel aviv in an effort to silence any criticism or condemnation of Israel. I look forward to reading the lawsuit as filed if and when it’s made public.
What is a university’s obligation to its student body when some douche bag scrawls any kind of hateful, threatening and/or intimidating graffiti directed at any group on or off campus?
Seriously, you’ve never heard of BDS? Says the guy/gal that excoriated the rest of us to read up on the history of the region and Israel in particular? Okay then. You’re googling wrong or your search algorithm has purposely buried it.
Fine - BDS is a political pro Palestine organization. It does not represent fact within itself. It is a political entity.
There are numerous reports of college professors denying the holocaust and being exhilarated By the Oct 7 hamas attack. There’s plenty more of that.
“Numerous reports “ do not equate to the specific allegations made in the UPenn lawsuit. You’re grasping. Where are these numerous reports of college professors “denying the Holocaust”? I can remember one or two, who I believe were fired, filed a lawsuit for wrongful dismissal and/or discrimination and maybe won a settlement. Your claim of exhilarated professors sounds a lot like the reports of taxi drivers avoiding the twin towers and Muslims in general celebrating on 9/11.
I’d be interested in any “reporting” and links to the sources that you refer to.
Amnesty report 'shines light on horrific ordeals' of Iran protesters including brutal sexual assault
Video by:
05:50
Members of the Iranian security forces raped and used other forms of sexual violence against women, men, and even boys and girls as young as 12, all detained in the crackdown on nationwide protests that erupted from September 2022. An Amnesty International report documented 45 such cases of rape, gang rape or sexual violence against protesters. With cases in more than half of Iran's provinces, it expressed fear these documented violations appeared part of a "wider pattern". The London-based organisation said it had shared its findings with the Iranian authorities on November 24 "but has thus far received no response". The protests began in Iran in September 2022 after the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, 22. Her family says she was killed by a blow to the head but this has always been disputed by the Iranian authorities. For in-depth analysis and a closer look into the Amnesty report, FRANCE 24's Kethevane Gorjestani is joined by Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa.
i've stopped reading your posts, but i am just wondering. why do you never post links?
lol, I’m not reading you but I want more. Actually ROFL.
like the concept of google can’t be used here to find an article
why not ask Byzantine or whatever that long departed commenters name was how to Google articles in under five seconds?
yeah just go post random paragraphs with screenshots then. with a timestamp. that provides real context.
I googled the headline and found article in less time than it took you to type that.
Of course when it’s Iran the context matters , because in the right context the actions of Iran are pure and good.
you are posting a point. why not post the link as well? people should not have to google your posts. seems lazy on your part, or like you are trying to hide the source you are sharing from.
i'm pretty sure i am not the only one that feels that way.
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
Elizabeth Magill: UPenn loses $100m donation after House antisemitism testimony
8th December 2023, 10:23 EST
Watch: University leaders testify to Congress on antisemitism
A major University of Pennsylvania donor has withdrawn a $100m (£79.3m) grant after a controversial appearance in Congress by the school's president.
In an email seen by the BBC, Ross Stevens said he was "appalled" Elizabeth Magill avoided questions about how students calling for the genocide of Jews would be punished.
Ms Magill was grilled by politicians on Tuesday about antisemitism on campus.
She has since apologised for her remarks, but is facing calls to resign.
US media are reporting the advisory board at Wharton - the university's business school - has written a letter to Ms Magill calling for her to step down "with immediate effect".
American college campuses have seen angry protests and rising incidents of antisemitism since the war between Israel and Hamas erupted two months ago.
Ms Magill appeared in the House of Representatives alongside the presidents of Harvard and MIT, Claudine Gay and Sally Kornbluth.
They were asked by Republican New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik: "Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate [your university's] code of conduct or rules regarding bullying and harassment? Yes or no?"
Ms Magill and her MIT and Harvard counterparts did not reply yes or no but said - in varying ways - that it depended on the "context".
There has been a widespread backlash since, with the White House condemning the remarks.
"The lack of moral clarity is unacceptable," Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, the highest-ranking Jewish member of the administration, said on Thursday at a ceremony to mark the lighting of the national menorah.
In his message about the withdrawal of the donation, Mr Stevens said: "I have clear grounds to rescind Penn's $100 million of Stone Ridge shares due to the conduct of President Magill."
The founder and CEO of Stone Ridge Asset Management, he told the university that its "permissive approach" to those calling for violence against Jewish people "would violate any policies or rules that prohibit harassment and discrimination based on religion, including those of Stone Ridge".
Penn is one of the oldest universities in the US and a part of the elite Ivy League group, which also has Harvard, Columbia and Yale as members.
Wharton counts former US President Donald Trump, Tesla and SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk, and many other powerful names in business and finance among its graduates.
The donation, in the form of limited partnership units in Stone Ridge, was gifted by Mr Stevens in 2017 to help Wharton create a finance innovation centre.
Getty Images
University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill has faced mounting calls to resign after her congressional testimony
Ms Magill in particular has faced mounting scrutiny as to whether she can continue in her position.
She released a video on the university's website on Thursday apologising for her response during the hearing, saying that she was focused on the "university's long-standing policies - aligned with the US Constitution - which say that speech alone is not punishable".
She added she should have been focused on the "irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate", adding that it is "evil, plain and simple".
While her apology on Wednesday was welcomed by some, Mr Stevens' letter appeared to call for her resignation.
He said Stone Ridge would welcome the opportunity to review its decision "if, and when, there is a new University President in place".
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce announced on Thursday that they will formally investigate Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology over "rampant antisemitism".
"Committee members have deep concerns with their leadership and their failure to take steps to provide Jewish students the safe learning environment they are due under law," the committee's chairwoman Virginia Foxx said in a statement.
Two University of Pennsylvania students - both of whom are Jewish - filed a lawsuit against the school on Thursday, claiming it has become "an incubation lab for virulent anti-Jewish hatred, harassment and discrimination."
The lawsuit also accuses the school of "selectively" enforcing rules of conduct "to avoid protecting Jewish students" and hiring "rabidly antisemitic professors who call for anti-Jewish violence".
Islamophobic attacks have also been on the rise on university campuses.
The Department of Education has launched an investigation into multiple schools over alleged incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia.
Beta Terms By using the Beta Site, you agree that such use is at your own risk and you know that the Beta Site may include known or unknown bugs or errors, that we have no obligation to make this Beta Site available with or without charge for any period of time, nor to make it available at all, and that nothing in these Beta Terms or your use of the Beta Site creates any employment relationship between you and us. The Beta Site is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis and we make no warranty to you of any kind, express or implied.
In case of conflict between these Beta Terms and the BBC Terms of Use these Beta Terms shall prevail.
Here you go mate, in this article, hope there’s enough here to source if you don’t trust a simple copy and paste
To the bold, really? Do you believe this? Being critical of Israeli policies toward Palestinians is "virulent anti-Jewish hatred."
Are you now for BDS?
What specifics do we know of the faculty members named in the suit? Were they teaching that Hitler's Final Solution was correct or justified or are they teaching of the atrocities committed by the Israeli state against Palestinians? How were the proffs calling for anti-Jewish violence? I couldn't find anything other than "no comment" on the particulars and the broad-brush claims against UPenn.
Never heard of BDS.
As far as the first bold, not so much, but the second bold, absolutely
The lawsuit also accuses the school of "selectively" enforcing rules of conduct "to avoid protecting Jewish students" and hiring "rabidly antisemitic professors who call for anti-Jewish violence".
i find it hard to believe that anybody such as yourself that has followed the conflict has never heard of BDS. it has been a major issue/talking point on both sides for several years.
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
Israel presses on with bombarding Gaza, including areas it has called safe zones for Palestinians
By WAFAA SHURAFA and BASSEM MROUE
Today
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli warplanes on Saturday struck parts of southern Gaza it had described as safe zones when telling Palestinians to evacuate, while displaced residents said the constant bombardment left many families without food and sleeping outside in the cold.
Gaza residents “are being told to move like human pinballs — ricocheting between ever-smaller slivers of the south, without any of the basics for survival," U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the council before the vote.
Gaza’s borders with Israel and Egypt are effectively sealed, leaving 2.3 million Palestinians with no option other than to seek refuge within the territory 25 miles (40 kilometers) long by about 7 miles (11 kilometers) wide.
A day after Israel confirmed it was rounding up Palestinian men for interrogation, some told The Associated Press they had been badly treated.
Osama Oula, one of a group of 10 boys and men dropped off at a hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah after being freed, said Israeli forces bound him and others with zip ties, beat them for several days and gave them little water to drink. Some were not allowed out to use the toilet. Once freed, barefoot and in their underwear, they were told to walk south, he said.
Another man, Ahmad Nimr Salman, showed his marked and swollen hands from the zip ties. He said his 17-year-old son, Amjad, was still held. “They used to ask us, ‘Are you with Hamas?’ We say ‘no,’ then they would slap us or kick us,” he said. The Israeli military had no immediate comment when asked about the alleged abuse.
With the war in its third month, the Palestinian death toll in Gaza has surpassed 17,700, the majority women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-controlled territory. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths.
Two hospitals in central and southern Gaza received the bodies of 133 people from Israeli bombings over the past 24 hours, the Health Ministry said midday Saturday.
Israel holds the Hamas militants responsible for civilian casualties, accusing them of using civilians as human shields, and says it has made considerable efforts with evacuation orders to get civilians out of harm’s way. It says 97 Israeli soldiers have died in the ground offensive after Hamas raided southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking about 240 hostages.
Hamas said Saturday that it continued its rocket fire into Israel.
In Gaza, residents reported airstrikes and shelling, including in the southern city of Rafah near the Egyptian border — one area where the Israeli army had told civilians to go. In a colorful classroom there, knee-high children's tables were strewn with rubble.
“We now live in the Gaza Strip and are governed by the American law of the jungle. America has killed human rights," said Rafah resident Abu Yasser al-Khatib.
In northern Gaza, Israel has been trying to secure the military’s hold, despite heavy resistance from Hamas. The military said it found weapons inside a school in Shujaiyah, a densely populated neighborhood of Gaza City, and in a separate incident, militants shot at troops from a U.N.-run school in the northern town of Beit Hanoun.
More than 2,500 Palestinians have been killed since the Dec. 1 collapse of a weeklong truce, about two-thirds of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
The truce saw hostages and Palestinian prisoners released, but more than 130 hostages are believed to remain in Gaza.
On Saturday, a kibbutz that came under attack on Oct. 7 said 25-year-old hostage Sahar Baruch had died in captivity. His captors said Baruch was killed during a failed rescue mission by Israeli forces Friday. The Israeli military said Hamas killed him.
With no new cease-fire in sight and humanitarian aid reaching little of Gaza, residents reported severe food shortages. Nine of 10 people in northern Gaza reported spending at least one full day and night without food, according to a World Food Program assessment during the truce. Two of three people in the south said the same. The WFP called the situation “alarming.”
“I am very hungry,” said Mustafa al-Najjar, sheltering in a U.N.-run school in the devastated Jabaliya refugee camp in the north. “We are living on canned food and biscuits and this is not sufficient.”
While adults can cope, “it’s extremely difficult and painful when you see your young son or daughter crying because they are hungry,” he said.
Israelis who had been taken hostage also saw the food situation deteriorate, the recently freed Adina Moshe told a rally in Tel Aviv seeking the rapid return of all. "We ended up eating only rice,” said Moshe, who was held for 49 days.
On Saturday, 100 trucks carrying unspecified aid entered Gaza through the Rafah crossing with Egypt, said Wael Abu Omar, a spokesman for the Palestinian Crossings Authority. That is still well below the daily average before the war.
Despite growing international pressure, President Joe Biden's administration remains opposed to an open-ended cease-fire, arguing it would enable Hamas to continue posing a threat to Israel.
The administration has approved the emergency sale to Israel of nearly 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition worth more than $106 million, the State Department said. Secretary of State Antony Blinken determined that “an emergency exists that requires the immediate sale” in the U.S. national security interest, meaning the purchase will bypass required congressional review. Such determinations are rare.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has argued that “a cease-fire is handing a prize to Hamas."
Blinken continued to speak with counterparts from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and elsewhere amid open criticism of the U.S. stance.
“From now on, humanity won’t think the U.S.A. supports the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a speech.
Amid concerns about a wider conflict, Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen threatened to prevent any ship heading to Israeli ports from passing through the Red Sea and Arabian Sea until food and medicine can enter Gaza freely. Spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree said in a speech that all ships heading to Israel, no matter their nationality, will be a target.
In southern Gaza, thousands were on the run after what residents called a night of heavy gunfire and shelling.
Israel has designated a narrow patch of barren southern coastline, Muwasi, as a safe zone. But Palestinians described desperately overcrowded conditions with scant shelter and no toilets. They faced an overnight temperature of around 52 degrees (11 degrees Celsius).
“I am sleeping on the sand. It’s freezing,” said Soad Qarmoot, who described herself as a cancer patient forced to leave her home in the northern town of Beit Lahiya.
As she spoke, her children huddled around a fire.
___
Mroue reported from Beirut. Associated Press writers Julia Frankel in Jerusalem; Samy Magdy in Cairo; Matthew Lee in Washington; Andrew Wilks in Istanbul; and Cara Anna in Albany, New York, contributed to this report.
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Israeli military says it mistakenly killed 3 Israeli hostages in battle-torn part of Gaza
By NAJIB JOBAIN, JACK JEFFERY and JULIA FRANKEL
2 hours ago
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli troops mistakenly shot three hostages to death Friday in a battle-torn neighborhood of Gaza City, and an Israeli strike killed a Palestinian journalist in the south of the besieged territory, underscoring the ferocity of Israel’s ongoing onslaught.
The deaths were announced as a U.S. envoy tried to persuade the Israelis to scale back their campaign sooner rather than later.
The hostages were killed in the Gaza City area of Shijaiyah, where troops have been engaged in fierce fighting with Hamas militants in recent days. The soldiers mistakenly identified the three Israelis as a threat and opened fire on them, said the army’s chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari.
He said it was believed that the three had either fled their captors or been abandoned.
“Perhaps in the last few days, or over the past day, we still don’t know all the details, they reached this area,” Hagari said. He said the army expressed “deep sorrow” and was investigating.
Hamas and other militants abducted more than 240 people in the Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war, and the hostages' plight has dominated public discourse in Israel ever since. Their families have led a powerful public campaign calling on the government to do more to bring them home.
Demonstrations in solidarity with the hostages and their families take place nearly every day. Late Friday, hundreds of protesters blocked Tel Aviv’s main highway in a spontaneous demonstration calling for the the hostages' return.
Israeli political and military leaders often say freeing all the hostages is their top aim in the war alongside destroying Hamas.
Still, in seven weeks since ground troops pushed into northern Gaza, they have not rescued any hostages, though they freed one early in the conflict and have found the bodies of several others. Hamas released over 100 in swaps for Palestinian prisoners last month, and more than 130 are believed to still be in captivity.
The three hostages were identified as young men who had been abducted from Israeli communities near the Gaza border — Yotam Haim, 28, Samer Al-Talalka 25, and Alon Shamriz, 26.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called their deaths an “unbearable tragedy” and vowed to continue "with a supreme effort to return all the hostages home safely.”
In southern Gaza, the Al Jazeera television network said an Israeli strike Friday in the city of Khan Younis killed cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa and wounded its chief correspondent in Gaza, Wael Dahdouh. The two were reporting at a school that had been hit by an earlier airstrike when a drone launched a second strike, the network said.
Khan Younis has been the main target of Israel’s ground offensive in the south.
Speaking from a hospital bed, Dahdouh told the network that he managed to walk to an ambulance. But Abu Daqqa lay bleeding in the school and died hours later. An ambulance tried to reach the school to evacuate him but had to turn back because roads were blocked by the rubble of destroyed houses, it said.
Dahdouh, a veteran of covering Israel-Gaza wars whose wife and children were killed by an Israeli strike earlier in the war, was wounded by shrapnel in his right arm.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Abu Daqqa is the 64th journalist to be killed since the conflict erupted: 57 Palestinians, four Israelis and three Lebanese journalists.
Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour told a General Assembly meeting on the war that Israel “targets those who could document (their) crimes and inform the world, the journalists.”
“We mourn one of those journalists, Samer Abu Daqqa, wounded in an Israeli drone strike and left to bleed to death for six hours while ambulances were prevented from reaching him,” Mansour said.
The Israeli army did not immediately respond to an Associated Press request for comment about Abu Daqqa’s death.
Israel's offensive has flattened much of northern Gaza and driven 80% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million from their homes. Displaced people have squeezed into shelters mainly in the south in a spiraling humanitarian crisis.
The offensive has killed more than 18,700 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza. Thousands more are missing and feared dead beneath the rubble. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths. Its latest count did not specify how many were women and minors, but they have consistently made up around two-thirds of the dead in previous tallies.
While battered by the Israeli onslaught, Hamas has continued its attacks. On Friday it fired rockets from Gaza toward central Israel, setting off sirens in Jerusalem for the first time in weeks but causing no injuries. The group's resilience called into question whether Israel can defeat it without wiping out the entire territory.
Israelis remain strongly supportive of the war and see it as necessary to prevent a repeat of the Hamas attack, in which militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians. A total of 116 soldiers have been killed in the ground offensive, which began Oct. 27.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has expressed unease over Israel’s failure to reduce civilian casualties and its plans for the future of Gaza, but the White House continues to offer wholehearted support with weapons shipments and diplomatic backing.
Israeli airstrikes and tank shelling continued Friday, including in Khan Younis and in Rafah, which is one of the shrinking areas of tiny, densely populated Gaza to which Palestinian civilians have been told by Israel to evacuate. Details on many of the strikes could not be confirmed because communications services have been down across Gaza since late Thursday because of fighting.
In meetings with Israeli leaders on Thursday and Friday, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan discussed a timetable for winding down the intense combat phase of the war.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told Sullivan that it would take months to destroy Hamas, but he did not say whether his estimate referred to the current phase of heavy airstrikes and ground battles.
"There is no contradiction between saying the fight is going to take months and also saying that different phases will take place at different times over those months, including the transition from the high-intensity operations to more targeted operations,” Sullivan said Friday.
Sullivan also met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to discuss Gaza’s postwar future. A senior U.S. official said one idea being floated is to bring back Palestinian security forces driven from their jobs in Gaza by Hamas in its 2007 takeover.
Any role for Palestinian security forces in Gaza is bound to elicit strong opposition from Israel, which seeks to maintain an open-ended security presence there. Netanyahu has said he will not allow a postwar foothold for the Abbas-led Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The U.S. has said it eventually wants to see the West Bank and Gaza under a “ revitalized Palestinian Authority " as a precursor to a Palestinian state — an idea soundly rejected by Netanyahu, who leads a right-wing government that is opposed to Palestinian statehood.
Palestinian officials have said they will consider a postwar role in Gaza only in the context of concrete U.S.-backed steps toward statehood.
In the meeting, Abbas called for an immediate cease-fire and ramped-up aid to Gaza, and emphasized that Gaza is an integral part of the Palestinian state, according to a statement from his office. It made no mention of conversations about postwar scenarios.
The 88-year-old Abbas is deeply unpopular, with a poll published Wednesday indicating close to 90% of Palestinians want him to resign. Meanwhile, Palestinian support for Hamas has tripled in the West Bank, with a small uptick in Gaza, according to the poll. Still, a majority of Palestinians do not back Hamas, according to the survey.
___
Jeffery reported from Cairo and Frankel from Jerusalem. Associated Press journalists Aamer Madhani in Washington, Elena Becatoros in Athens and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed.
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Killing of USAID contractor in Gaza fuels internal protest By John Hudson December 16, 2023 at 6:00 ET Before he was killed alongside his wife and two children in Gaza last month, Hani Jnena, 33, sent a final message to his colleagues in the West Bank. “My daughters are terrified, and I am trying to keep them calm, but this bombing is terrifying,” he wrote, referring to Israel’s campaign of airstrikes and artillery bombardment of the Palestinian enclave. Jnena, a contractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development, died along with his family when an Israeli airstrike hit Gaza City’s Al Sabra neighborhood on Nov. 5, according to a statement his employer provided to The Washington Post. He is among hundreds of humanitarian and development workers killed during the two-month conflict, a statistic that has infuriated USAID officials who want the Biden administration to intensify pressure on Israel to limit the civilian bloodshed. Already, 135 United Nations relief workers have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7. That’s more deaths than in any single conflict in the organization’s 78-year history, officials say. Outside of the U.N., prominent aid groups such as Save the Children also have suffered losses. On Tuesday, the group announced that a staff member, his four children, his wife, and many other members of his extended family of 28 were killed in an Israeli airstrike Dec. 10. Hamas killed at least 1,200 people in Israel and took more than 240 people hostage. USAID officials, some of whom endorsed an open letter last month urging a cease-fire in Gaza, told The Post that the Biden administration should use its leverage to force a change in Israel’s behavior. That would include placing restrictions on the billions of dollars in military assistance the United States provides to Israel every year. “We’ve seen far too much inaction from the White House and USAID leadership on this issue,” said one USAID official, who like some others interviewed for this report spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss disagreements with U.S. policy.
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3 hostages mistakenly killed by Israeli troops had been holding a white flag, military officials say
By JULIA FRANKEL, NAJIB JOBAIN and SAMY MAGDY
2 hours ago
JERUSALEM (AP) — Three Israeli hostages who were mistakenly shot by Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip had been waving a white flag and were shirtless when they were killed, military officials said Saturday, in Israel's first such acknowledgement of harming any hostages in its war against Hamas.
Anger over the mistaken killings is likely to increase pressure on the Israeli government to renew Qatar-mediated negotiations with Hamas over swapping more of the remaining captives, which Israel says number 129, for Palestinians imprisoned in Israel. Israeli leaders have said the hostages' release can only be achieved through military pressure.
A senior Hamas official, Osama Hamdan, reiterated on Saturday that there will be no further release of hostages before the war ends and Israel accepts Hamas conditions for an exchange. Hamdan, a member of the militant group's decision-making political bureau, said he had no information on unconfirmed reports of a meeting between Israeli and Qatari officials regarding a possible exchange.
Israel's account of how the three hostages died raised questions about the conduct of its troops. Palestinians on several occasions have reported that Israeli soldiers opened fire as civilians tried to flee to safety. Hamas has claimed other hostages were previously killed by Israeli fire or airstrikes, without presenting evidence.
An Israeli military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to brief reporters in line with military regulations, said it was likely that the hostages had been abandoned by their captors or had escaped. The soldiers’ behavior was “against our rules of engagement,” the official said, and was being investigated at the highest level.
The hostages did everything they could to signal they weren't a threat, “but this shooting was done during fighting and under pressure,” Herzi Halevi, chief of the military's general staff, said in a statement later Saturday.
Halevi added: “There may be additional incidents in which hostages will escape or will be abandoned during the fighting. We have the obligation and the responsibility to get them out alive.”
The hostages, all in their 20s, were killed Friday in the Gaza City area of Shijaiyah, where troops are engaged in fierce fighting with Hamas militants. They had been among more than 240 people taken hostage during an unprecedented raid by Hamas into Israel on Oct. 7 in which around 1,200 people were killed, mostly civilians.
The hostages’ plight has dominated public discourse in Israel. Speaking at a Saturday night rally in Tel Aviv, Rubi Chen, father of 19-year-old hostage Itay Chen, criticized the government for believing hostages could be retrieved through military pressure. “Put the the best offer on the table to get the hostages home alive,” he said. “We don't want them back in bags."
The Israeli military official said the three hostages had emerged from a building close to Israeli soldiers’ positions. They waved a white flag and were shirtless, possibly trying to signal they posed no threat.
Two were killed immediately, and the third ran back into the building screaming for help in Hebrew. The commander issued an order to cease fire, but another burst of gunfire killed the third man, the official said.
Israeli media gave a more detailed account. The mass circulation daily Yediot Ahronot said that according to an investigation into the incident, soldiers followed the third man and shouted at him to come out, and at least one soldier shot him when he emerged from a staircase.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz gave a similar account, saying the soldiers who followed the third hostage believed he was a Hamas member trying to trick them. Local media reported that soldiers earlier had seen a nearby building marked with “SOS” and “Help! Three hostages” but feared it might be a trap.
Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israeli political analyst, said it was unlikely that the killings would massively alter public support for the war. Most Israelis still have a strong sense of why it is being fought and believe Hamas needs to be defeated, she said.
“They feel like there’s no other choice," she said.
The killings emphasized the dangers hostages face in areas of house-to-house combat like Shijaiyah, where nine soldiers were killed this week on one of the war's deadliest days for ground forces. The military has said Hamas has booby-trapped buildings and ambushed troops after emerging from a tunnel network it built under Gaza City.
On Saturday, the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum asserted that another hostage, 27-year-old Inbar Hayman, had been killed in Gaza. The group gave no details.
Hamas released over 100 hostages for Palestinian prisoners during a brief cease-fire in November. Nearly all freed on both sides were women and minors. Talks on further swaps broke down.
The offensive has killed more than 18,700 Palestinians, the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Thursday. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths. Its count did not specify how many were women and minors, but they have consistently made up around two-thirds of the dead.
It was the ministry's last update before a communications blackout that continued to hamper telephone and internet services in the Gaza Strip. “Now 48 hours and counting. The incident is likely to limit reporting and visibility to events on the ground,” said Alp Toker, director of NetBlocks, a group tracking internet outages.
The war has been deadly for journalists. Dozens of mourners held funeral prayers Saturday for Samer Abu Daqqa, a Palestinian journalist working for broadcaster Al Jazeera who was killed Friday in an Israeli strike in the southern city of Khan Younis. The Committee to Protect Journalists said the cameraman was the 64th journalist to be killed in the conflict: 57 Palestinians, four Israelis and three Lebanese.
The war has flattened much of northern Gaza and driven 85% of the territory's population of 2.3 million from their homes. Displaced people have squeezed into shelters mainly in the south. Only a trickle of aid has been able to enter Gaza. Israel has said it would open a second entry point at Kerem Shalom to speed up deliveries.
The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem said two Christian women at a church compound in Gaza City were killed Saturday by Israeli sniper fire and seven others were wounded. The women were identified as a mother and daughter, with one killed trying to carry the other to safety. Gaza has a small Christian community consisting of about 1,000 people. There was no immediate Israeli comment.
Elsewhere in devastated Gaza City, resident Assad Abu Taha by phone from Shijaiyah reported “a violent bombardment.” And an Associated Press journalist in southern Gaza reported airstrikes and tank shelling overnight in Khan Younis and Rafah.
The United States, Israel’s closest ally, has expressed unease over Israel’s failure to reduce civilian casualties, but the White House continues to offer support with weapons shipments and diplomatic backing.
Jobain reported from Rafah, Gaza Strip and Magdy from Cairo. Associated Press writers Bassem Mroue in Beirut and Iris Samuels in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
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Hold us accountable by rating this article's fairness
Palestinian civilian casualties have become the issue in the Hamas War, precipitating worldwide condemnation of Israel. "A staggering and unacceptable number of civilian casualties," United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has said. "Far too many" Palestinians have been killed, said Secretary of State Antony Blinken. President Joe Biden
summed up the dilemma Tuesday, saying that while Israel has had
European support in addition to U.S. backing, "they're starting to lose
the support by indiscriminate bombing that takes place."
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3 hostages mistakenly killed by Israeli troops had been holding a white flag, military officials say
By JULIA FRANKEL, NAJIB JOBAIN and SAMY MAGDY
2 hours ago
JERUSALEM (AP) — Three Israeli hostages who were mistakenly shot by Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip had been waving a white flag and were shirtless when they were killed, military officials said Saturday, in Israel's first such acknowledgement of harming any hostages in its war against Hamas.
Anger over the mistaken killings is likely to increase pressure on the Israeli government to renew Qatar-mediated negotiations with Hamas over swapping more of the remaining captives, which Israel says number 129, for Palestinians imprisoned in Israel. Israeli leaders have said the hostages' release can only be achieved through military pressure.
A senior Hamas official, Osama Hamdan, reiterated on Saturday that there will be no further release of hostages before the war ends and Israel accepts Hamas conditions for an exchange. Hamdan, a member of the militant group's decision-making political bureau, said he had no information on unconfirmed reports of a meeting between Israeli and Qatari officials regarding a possible exchange.
Israel's account of how the three hostages died raised questions about the conduct of its troops. Palestinians on several occasions have reported that Israeli soldiers opened fire as civilians tried to flee to safety. Hamas has claimed other hostages were previously killed by Israeli fire or airstrikes, without presenting evidence.
An Israeli military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to brief reporters in line with military regulations, said it was likely that the hostages had been abandoned by their captors or had escaped. The soldiers’ behavior was “against our rules of engagement,” the official said, and was being investigated at the highest level.
The hostages did everything they could to signal they weren't a threat, “but this shooting was done during fighting and under pressure,” Herzi Halevi, chief of the military's general staff, said in a statement later Saturday.
Halevi added: “There may be additional incidents in which hostages will escape or will be abandoned during the fighting. We have the obligation and the responsibility to get them out alive.”
The hostages, all in their 20s, were killed Friday in the Gaza City area of Shijaiyah, where troops are engaged in fierce fighting with Hamas militants. They had been among more than 240 people taken hostage during an unprecedented raid by Hamas into Israel on Oct. 7 in which around 1,200 people were killed, mostly civilians.
The hostages’ plight has dominated public discourse in Israel. Speaking at a Saturday night rally in Tel Aviv, Rubi Chen, father of 19-year-old hostage Itay Chen, criticized the government for believing hostages could be retrieved through military pressure. “Put the the best offer on the table to get the hostages home alive,” he said. “We don't want them back in bags."
The Israeli military official said the three hostages had emerged from a building close to Israeli soldiers’ positions. They waved a white flag and were shirtless, possibly trying to signal they posed no threat.
Two were killed immediately, and the third ran back into the building screaming for help in Hebrew. The commander issued an order to cease fire, but another burst of gunfire killed the third man, the official said.
Israeli media gave a more detailed account. The mass circulation daily Yediot Ahronot said that according to an investigation into the incident, soldiers followed the third man and shouted at him to come out, and at least one soldier shot him when he emerged from a staircase.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz gave a similar account, saying the soldiers who followed the third hostage believed he was a Hamas member trying to trick them. Local media reported that soldiers earlier had seen a nearby building marked with “SOS” and “Help! Three hostages” but feared it might be a trap.
Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israeli political analyst, said it was unlikely that the killings would massively alter public support for the war. Most Israelis still have a strong sense of why it is being fought and believe Hamas needs to be defeated, she said.
“They feel like there’s no other choice," she said.
The killings emphasized the dangers hostages face in areas of house-to-house combat like Shijaiyah, where nine soldiers were killed this week on one of the war's deadliest days for ground forces. The military has said Hamas has booby-trapped buildings and ambushed troops after emerging from a tunnel network it built under Gaza City.
On Saturday, the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum asserted that another hostage, 27-year-old Inbar Hayman, had been killed in Gaza. The group gave no details.
Hamas released over 100 hostages for Palestinian prisoners during a brief cease-fire in November. Nearly all freed on both sides were women and minors. Talks on further swaps broke down.
The offensive has killed more than 18,700 Palestinians, the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Thursday. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths. Its count did not specify how many were women and minors, but they have consistently made up around two-thirds of the dead.
It was the ministry's last update before a communications blackout that continued to hamper telephone and internet services in the Gaza Strip. “Now 48 hours and counting. The incident is likely to limit reporting and visibility to events on the ground,” said Alp Toker, director of NetBlocks, a group tracking internet outages.
The war has been deadly for journalists. Dozens of mourners held funeral prayers Saturday for Samer Abu Daqqa, a Palestinian journalist working for broadcaster Al Jazeera who was killed Friday in an Israeli strike in the southern city of Khan Younis. The Committee to Protect Journalists said the cameraman was the 64th journalist to be killed in the conflict: 57 Palestinians, four Israelis and three Lebanese.
The war has flattened much of northern Gaza and driven 85% of the territory's population of 2.3 million from their homes. Displaced people have squeezed into shelters mainly in the south. Only a trickle of aid has been able to enter Gaza. Israel has said it would open a second entry point at Kerem Shalom to speed up deliveries.
The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem said two Christian women at a church compound in Gaza City were killed Saturday by Israeli sniper fire and seven others were wounded. The women were identified as a mother and daughter, with one killed trying to carry the other to safety. Gaza has a small Christian community consisting of about 1,000 people. There was no immediate Israeli comment.
Elsewhere in devastated Gaza City, resident Assad Abu Taha by phone from Shijaiyah reported “a violent bombardment.” And an Associated Press journalist in southern Gaza reported airstrikes and tank shelling overnight in Khan Younis and Rafah.
The United States, Israel’s closest ally, has expressed unease over Israel’s failure to reduce civilian casualties, but the White House continues to offer support with weapons shipments and diplomatic backing.
Jobain reported from Rafah, Gaza Strip and Magdy from Cairo. Associated Press writers Bassem Mroue in Beirut and Iris Samuels in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
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good question, but it does seem like an attempt to malign a given demographic, in this case muslims. When the indisputable fact about rape is its a MALE problem. doesnt fucking matter from what walk of life, belief system, religion or none.
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another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli forces struck the southern Gaza town of Rafah twice, residents said Thursday, sowing fear in one of the last places where civilians have sought refuge after Israel widened its offensive against Hamas to areas already packed with displaced people.
United Nations officials say there are no safe places in Gaza. Heavy fighting in and around the southern city of Khan Younis has displaced tens of thousands of people and cut most of Gaza off from deliveries of food, water and other vital aid. More than 80% of the territory's population has already fled their homes.
Two months into the war, the grinding offensive has set off renewed alarms internationally, with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres using a rarely exercised power to warn the Security Council of an impending “humanitarian catastrophe” and urging members to demand a cease-fire.
The United States has called on Israel to limit civilian deaths and displacement, saying too many Palestinians were killed when it obliterated much of Gaza City and the north. But the U.S. has also pledged unwavering support for Israel and appears likely to block any U.N. effort to halt the fighting.
ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR
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Israel and US are at odds over conflicting visions for postwar Gaza
Israel says it must crush Hamas' military capabilities and remove it from power following the Oct. 7 attack that ignited the war. Troops have pushed into Khan Younis, Gaza's second-largest city, which Israeli officials have portrayed as Hamas' center of gravity — something they previously said was in Gaza City and its Shifa Hospital.
Israel has ordered the evacuation of some two dozen southern neighborhoods, rather than the entire region as it did in the north, which the military says shows increased concern for civilians.
But the areas where Palestinians can seek safety are rapidly receding. With northern and central Gaza largely isolated and cut off from aid, Palestinians are heading south to Rafah and other areas along the border with Egypt, where family homes are packed tight and makeshift shelters are overflowing.
Even there, safety has proven elusive, as Israel continues to strike what it says are Hamas targets across the coastal enclave.
A strike late Wednesday leveled a home in Rafah, sending a wave of wounded streaming into a nearby hospital. Eyad al-Hobi, who witnessed the attack, said around 20 people were killed, including women and children. Another house was hit early Thursday, residents said.
“We live in fear every moment, for our children, ourselves, our families,” said Dalia Abu Samhadaneh, now living in Rafah with her family after fleeing Khan Younis. “We live with the anxiety of expulsion.”
The military accused militants of firing rockets from open areas near Rafah in the humanitarian zone. It released footage of a strike Wednesday on what it said were launchers positioned outside the town and a few hundred meters (yards) from a U.N. warehouse.
BATTLES IN NORTH AND SOUTH
The U.N. says some 1.87 million people — over 80% of the population of 2.3 million — have already fled their homes, many of them displaced multiple times.
Israel's campaign has killed more than 17,100 people in Gaza — 70% of them women and children — and wounded more than 46,000, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which says many others are trapped under rubble. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths.
Doctors Without Borders, the international aid group, said another 115 bodies arrived at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah in a 24-hour period.
“The hospital is full, the morgue is full,” the group said on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The military said Thursday that it struck dozens of militant targets in Khan Younis, including a tunnel shaft from which fighters had launched an attack. It said two of the attackers were killed.
In the afternoon, a heavy strike near a main intersection in the center of Khan Younis left a large field of rubble, and survivors said many people were believed buried underneath. Rescuers pulled bloodied women and children from the shells of nearby buildings gutted in the blast and a pickup truck rushed off carrying several wounded men.
Hamas and other militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in the Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war, and took some 240 people hostage. An estimated 138 hostages remain in Gaza, mostly soldiers and civilian men, after 105 were freed during a cease-fire in late November.
A built-up refugee camp inside Khan Younis was the childhood home of Hamas’ top leader in Gaza, Yehya Sinwar, and the group’s military chief, Mohammed Deif, as well as other Hamas leaders — though their current whereabouts are unknown.
Heavy fighting is also still underway in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, even after two months of heavy bombardment and encirclement by ground troops. The military said troops raided a militant compound, killing a number of fighters and uncovering a network of tunnels.
It was not immediately possible to confirm the latest reports from the battlefield.
Israel blames the high civilian death toll on Hamas, accusing it of using civilians as human shields when the militants operate in residential areas. But Israel has not given detailed accounts of its individual strikes, some of which have leveled entire city blocks.
The military says 87 of its soldiers have been killed in the Gaza ground offensive. It also says some 5,000 militants have been killed, without saying how it arrived at its count.
HUMANITARIAN CRISIS WORSENS
Tens of thousands of people have fled from Khan Younis and other areas to Rafah, on Gaza's southern border with Egypt, the U.N. said, adding that five U.N. schools where displaced people were sheltering in Khan Younis were completely evacuated after direct orders from the Israeli military.
Rafah, normally home to around 280,000 people, is already hosting more than 470,000 who fled from other parts of Gaza.
On the other side of the border, Egypt has deployed thousands of troops and erected earthen barriers to prevent any mass influx of refugees. It says an influx would undermine its decades-old peace treaty with Israel, and it doubts Israel will let them back into Gaza.
For days now, aid groups have been able to distribute supplies only in and around Rafah, and mainly just flour and water, the U.N.’s humanitarian aid office said. Access farther north has been cut off by fighting and Israeli forces closing roads.
Within shelters in the south, communicable diseases have significantly increased, along with cases of diarrhea, acute respiratory infections, skin infections and hygiene-related conditions such as lice, the U.N. said.
The World Food Program said a “catastrophic hunger crisis” threatens to "overwhelm the civilian population.”
Gaza has been without electricity since the first week of the war, and hospitals and water treatment plants have been forced to shut down for lack of fuel to operate generators. Israel allows a trickle of aid from Egypt but has greatly restricted imports of fuel, saying Hamas diverts it for military purposes.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Israel would allow small deliveries of fuel into the southern Gaza Strip “from time to time” to prevent the spread of disease. The “minimal amount” of fuel will be set by the war cabinet, he said.
___
This story has been corrected to show that the Israeli military says 87 of its soldiers have been killed during the Gaza ground offensive, not 88.
___
Chehayeb reported from Beirut.
___
Full AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
JERUSALEM (AP) — The United States has offered strong support to Israel in its war against the Hamas militant group that rules the Gaza Strip. But the allies are increasingly at odds over what will happen to Gaza once the war winds down.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, this week announced that Israel would retain an open-ended security presence in Gaza. Israeli officials talk of imposing a buffer zone to keep Palestinians away from the Israeli border. They rule out any role for the Palestinian Authority, which was ousted from Gaza by Hamas in 2007 but governs semi-autonomous areas of the occupied West Bank.
The United States has laid out a much different vision. Top officials have said they will not allow Israel to reoccupy Gaza or further shrink its already small territory. They have repeatedly called for a return of the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority and the resumption of peace talks aimed at establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
These conflicting visions have set the stage for difficult discussions between Israel and the U.S.
Here’s a closer look at the issues.
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SHAKY COMMON GROUND
Israel declared war on Hamas after the Islamic militant group burst across its southern border on Oct. 7, slaughtering some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping more than 240 others. President Joe Biden quickly flew to Israel on a solidarity mission, and his administration has strongly backed Israel’s right to defend itself while providing weapons and military assistance.
Israel has said its goal is to destroy Hamas —- a difficult task given the group’s deep roots in Palestinian society.
The U.S., which along with other Western countries considers Hamas a terrorist group, has embraced this goal. But as the war drags on, it has expressed misgivings about the dire humanitarian conditions and mounting civilian death toll in Gaza, where health authorities report over 16,000 dead, at least two-thirds of them women and children. Israel says Hamas is to blame by using civilians as human shields.
Over the weekend, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said it is critical that Israel protect Gaza’s civilians.
“If you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat,” he said. “So I have repeatedly made clear to Israel’s leaders that protecting civilians in Gaza is both a moral responsibility and a strategic imperative.”
On Thursday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken went even farther, telling Israel that “civilian casualties remain too high and that Israel must step up its efforts to reduce them,” his office said. Blinken also called on Israel to increase the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
DIFFERENT VISIONS
The biggest differences between the allies have emerged over the longer-term vision for Gaza.
Netanyahu has offered only glimpses of what he plans.
On Tuesday, he said the military would retain open-ended security control over the Gaza Strip long after the war ends, suggesting a form of extended Israeli occupation.
Netanyahu ruled out the idea of foreign peacekeepers, saying only the Israeli army could ensure that Gaza remains demilitarized. Netanyahu has also rejected a return of the Palestinian Authority, saying its leader, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas cannot be trusted.
“After destroying Hamas, Gaza will be demilitarized and de-radicalized so that no threat will be posed to Israel from Gaza,” said Ophir Falk, an adviser to Netanyahu. “The buffer zone may be part of the demilitarization. That’s the plan.”
Israel told Western allies and regional neighbors about the buffer zone plans as recently as last week, without offering a detailed proposal, according to Egyptians officials and Arab and Western diplomats, who insisted on anonymity to discuss the topic.
The officials said countries informed of the proposal include Egypt, Qatar, Jordan, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Two Egyptian officials said it appears that Israel doesn’t have a detailed workable plan for such a zone, including its width.
“They just say, ‘it would be a temporary buffer zone,’” one of the officials said. “But when we asked for details, they don’t have answers.”
While no decisions have been taken, these ideas appear to put Israel at odds with the White House.
Biden and other top officials have repeatedly said that a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority must play a role in postwar Gaza and that Israel must seek a two-state solution involving the PA. They have ruled out a long-term re-occupation or redrawing of Gaza’s borders.
Vice President Kamala Harris laid out perhaps the clearest U.S. vision during an address in Dubai last weekend.
“Five principles guide our approach for post-conflict Gaza: no forcible displacement, no re-occupation, no siege or blockade, no reduction in territory, and no use of Gaza as a platform for terrorism,” she said. “We want to see a unified Gaza and West Bank under the Palestinian Authority, and Palestinian voices and aspirations must be at the center of this work.”
Frustration with Netanyahu may not be limited to the U.S.
Amos Harel, the military affairs columnist for the Haaretz daily, said Israeli army commanders believe Netanyahu is motivated by domestic political considerations and refusing to deal with the Palestinian Authority “due to coalition constructions from his far-right partners.” Netanyahu and his hardline coalition partners oppose Palestinian independence.
HOW SERIOUS ARE THE DISPUTES?
For now, both sides seem to be focused on the shared goal of destroying Hamas.
“It's important for them that Israel achieve the military goals because this is the starting point for any changes that can happen the day after,” said Eldad Shavit, a former high-ranking Israeli intelligence official.
He said U.S. pressure in the short term will be on immediate issues — such as pressure to minimize civilian casualties and to allow more deliveries of humanitarian aid.
The U.S. has indicated that it will show some patience after the fighting subsides.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the U.S. understands “there will have to be some kind of transition period after the end of major combat operations.” He declined to say how long that would take.
But as the death toll in Gaza continues to rise, conditions deteriorate, and Biden enters an election year with significant portions of his Democratic base pushing for an end to Israel’s offensive, these differences are likely to grow in the absence of a clear endgame.
Shavit said that tensions could rise if the U.S. at some point concludes that Israel is dragging its feet or ignoring American demands. But for now, “the Americans want Israel to succeed," he said.
Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator who is president of the U.S./Middle East Project, a policy institute that studies the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said the Americans are unlikely to put their foot down.
He cited what he described as a tepid American response to heavy civilian casualties in southern Gaza as an indicator of what lies ahead.
“Israelis have a sense that their road to run is not endless, but they still feel they have lots of road to run,” he said.
___
Magdy reported from Cairo.
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Opinion by Qanta A. Ahmed
December 06, 2023 at 10:27 ET
Qanta A. Ahmed is a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum and author of “In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor’s Journey in the Saudi Kingdom.”
With the lighting of the first Hanukkah candle on the evening of Dec. 7, the usually joyous eight-day celebration will carry a solemn significance as Jews reaffirm the ideals of Judaism. Hanukkah commemorates the restoration of the Temple in Jerusalem after its desecration by invaders more than two millennia ago. Dec. 7 will mark two months since Hamas invaders intent on slaughtering Jews embarked on a murderous rampage in Israel.
So much has happened in those two months, as the world focuses on Israel’s counterattack against the terrorists’ stronghold in Gaza. Some supporters of Palestinians have defended Hamas’s action on Oct. 7. Others have tried to diminish or downplay the hostage-taking, the sexual violence targeting women and girls, and the atrocities that claimed the lives of more than 1,200 people — mothers, fathers, the elderly, children, infants, the unborn.
Barely eight weeks have passed, but this needs saying: Hamas committed crimes against humanity in Israel on Oct. 7. That much should be obvious from the terrorists’ own mass-murder video recordings, but it is indisputable for anyone who has visited, as I have, the ravaged sites of their attack.
The flowers still haunt me. In house after house, I saw flowers: the universal sign of hope and love, the natural world brought indoors, no doubt placed in these homes to adorn a Shabbat celebration. Now wilted, they had outlived the hands that arranged them.
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you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
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another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
like the concept of google can’t be used here to find an article
why not ask Byzantine or whatever that long departed commenters name was how to Google articles in under five seconds?
Elizabeth Magill: UPenn loses $100m donation after House antisemitism testimony
A major University of Pennsylvania donor has withdrawn a $100m (£79.3m) grant after a controversial appearance in Congress by the school's president.
In an email seen by the BBC, Ross Stevens said he was "appalled" Elizabeth Magill avoided questions about how students calling for the genocide of Jews would be punished.
Ms Magill was grilled by politicians on Tuesday about antisemitism on campus.
She has since apologised for her remarks, but is facing calls to resign.
US media are reporting the advisory board at Wharton - the university's business school - has written a letter to Ms Magill calling for her to step down "with immediate effect".
American college campuses have seen angry protests and rising incidents of antisemitism since the war between Israel and Hamas erupted two months ago.
Ms Magill appeared in the House of Representatives alongside the presidents of Harvard and MIT, Claudine Gay and Sally Kornbluth.
They were asked by Republican New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik: "Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate [your university's] code of conduct or rules regarding bullying and harassment? Yes or no?"
Ms Magill and her MIT and Harvard counterparts did not reply yes or no but said - in varying ways - that it depended on the "context".
There has been a widespread backlash since, with the White House condemning the remarks.
"The lack of moral clarity is unacceptable," Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, the highest-ranking Jewish member of the administration, said on Thursday at a ceremony to mark the lighting of the national menorah.
In his message about the withdrawal of the donation, Mr Stevens said: "I have clear grounds to rescind Penn's $100 million of Stone Ridge shares due to the conduct of President Magill."
The founder and CEO of Stone Ridge Asset Management, he told the university that its "permissive approach" to those calling for violence against Jewish people "would violate any policies or rules that prohibit harassment and discrimination based on religion, including those of Stone Ridge".
Penn is one of the oldest universities in the US and a part of the elite Ivy League group, which also has Harvard, Columbia and Yale as members.
Wharton counts former US President Donald Trump, Tesla and SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk, and many other powerful names in business and finance among its graduates.
The donation, in the form of limited partnership units in Stone Ridge, was gifted by Mr Stevens in 2017 to help Wharton create a finance innovation centre.
Ms Magill in particular has faced mounting scrutiny as to whether she can continue in her position.
She released a video on the university's website on Thursday apologising for her response during the hearing, saying that she was focused on the "university's long-standing policies - aligned with the US Constitution - which say that speech alone is not punishable".
She added she should have been focused on the "irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate", adding that it is "evil, plain and simple".
While her apology on Wednesday was welcomed by some, Mr Stevens' letter appeared to call for her resignation.
He said Stone Ridge would welcome the opportunity to review its decision "if, and when, there is a new University President in place".
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce announced on Thursday that they will formally investigate Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology over "rampant antisemitism".
"Committee members have deep concerns with their leadership and their failure to take steps to provide Jewish students the safe learning environment they are due under law," the committee's chairwoman Virginia Foxx said in a statement.
Two University of Pennsylvania students - both of whom are Jewish - filed a lawsuit against the school on Thursday, claiming it has become "an incubation lab for virulent anti-Jewish hatred, harassment and discrimination."
The lawsuit also accuses the school of "selectively" enforcing rules of conduct "to avoid protecting Jewish students" and hiring "rabidly antisemitic professors who call for anti-Jewish violence".
Islamophobic attacks have also been on the rise on university campuses.
The Department of Education has launched an investigation into multiple schools over alleged incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia.
Related
School probes staff member's Israel-Gaza comments
Gaza humanitarian zone not humane, evacuees say
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Here you go mate, in this article, hope there’s enough here to source if you don’t trust a simple copy and paste
Are you now for BDS?
What specifics do we know of the faculty members named in the suit? Were they teaching that Hitler's Final Solution was correct or justified or are they teaching of the atrocities committed by the Israeli state against Palestinians? How were the proffs calling for anti-Jewish violence? I couldn't find anything other than "no comment" on the particulars and the broad-brush claims against UPenn.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
As far as the first bold, not so much, but the second bold, absolutely
The lawsuit also accuses the school of "selectively" enforcing rules of conduct "to avoid protecting Jewish students" and hiring "rabidly antisemitic professors who call for anti-Jewish violence".
What is a university’s obligation to its student body when some douche bag scrawls any kind of hateful, threatening and/or intimidating graffiti directed at any group on or off campus?
Seriously, you’ve never heard of BDS? Says the guy/gal that excoriated the rest of us to read up on the history of the region and Israel in particular? Okay then. You’re googling wrong or your search algorithm has purposely buried it.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
There are numerous reports of college professors denying the holocaust and being exhilarated By the Oct 7 hamas attack. There’s plenty more of that.
I’d be interested in any “reporting” and links to the sources that you refer to.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
i'm pretty sure i am not the only one that feels that way.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli warplanes on Saturday struck parts of southern Gaza it had described as safe zones when telling Palestinians to evacuate, while displaced residents said the constant bombardment left many families without food and sleeping outside in the cold.
Frustration was growing with the United States after it vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire, despite wide international support, and approved the emergency sale of tank ammunition worth more than $100 million to Israel.
Gaza residents “are being told to move like human pinballs — ricocheting between ever-smaller slivers of the south, without any of the basics for survival," U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the council before the vote.
Gaza’s borders with Israel and Egypt are effectively sealed, leaving 2.3 million Palestinians with no option other than to seek refuge within the territory 25 miles (40 kilometers) long by about 7 miles (11 kilometers) wide.
A day after Israel confirmed it was rounding up Palestinian men for interrogation, some told The Associated Press they had been badly treated.
Osama Oula, one of a group of 10 boys and men dropped off at a hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah after being freed, said Israeli forces bound him and others with zip ties, beat them for several days and gave them little water to drink. Some were not allowed out to use the toilet. Once freed, barefoot and in their underwear, they were told to walk south, he said.
Another man, Ahmad Nimr Salman, showed his marked and swollen hands from the zip ties. He said his 17-year-old son, Amjad, was still held. “They used to ask us, ‘Are you with Hamas?’ We say ‘no,’ then they would slap us or kick us,” he said. The Israeli military had no immediate comment when asked about the alleged abuse.
With the war in its third month, the Palestinian death toll in Gaza has surpassed 17,700, the majority women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-controlled territory. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths.
Two hospitals in central and southern Gaza received the bodies of 133 people from Israeli bombings over the past 24 hours, the Health Ministry said midday Saturday.
Israel holds the Hamas militants responsible for civilian casualties, accusing them of using civilians as human shields, and says it has made considerable efforts with evacuation orders to get civilians out of harm’s way. It says 97 Israeli soldiers have died in the ground offensive after Hamas raided southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking about 240 hostages.
Hamas said Saturday that it continued its rocket fire into Israel.
In Gaza, residents reported airstrikes and shelling, including in the southern city of Rafah near the Egyptian border — one area where the Israeli army had told civilians to go. In a colorful classroom there, knee-high children's tables were strewn with rubble.
“We now live in the Gaza Strip and are governed by the American law of the jungle. America has killed human rights," said Rafah resident Abu Yasser al-Khatib.
In northern Gaza, Israel has been trying to secure the military’s hold, despite heavy resistance from Hamas. The military said it found weapons inside a school in Shujaiyah, a densely populated neighborhood of Gaza City, and in a separate incident, militants shot at troops from a U.N.-run school in the northern town of Beit Hanoun.
More than 2,500 Palestinians have been killed since the Dec. 1 collapse of a weeklong truce, about two-thirds of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
The truce saw hostages and Palestinian prisoners released, but more than 130 hostages are believed to remain in Gaza.
On Saturday, a kibbutz that came under attack on Oct. 7 said 25-year-old hostage Sahar Baruch had died in captivity. His captors said Baruch was killed during a failed rescue mission by Israeli forces Friday. The Israeli military said Hamas killed him.
With no new cease-fire in sight and humanitarian aid reaching little of Gaza, residents reported severe food shortages. Nine of 10 people in northern Gaza reported spending at least one full day and night without food, according to a World Food Program assessment during the truce. Two of three people in the south said the same. The WFP called the situation “alarming.”
“I am very hungry,” said Mustafa al-Najjar, sheltering in a U.N.-run school in the devastated Jabaliya refugee camp in the north. “We are living on canned food and biscuits and this is not sufficient.”
While adults can cope, “it’s extremely difficult and painful when you see your young son or daughter crying because they are hungry,” he said.
Israelis who had been taken hostage also saw the food situation deteriorate, the recently freed Adina Moshe told a rally in Tel Aviv seeking the rapid return of all. "We ended up eating only rice,” said Moshe, who was held for 49 days.
On Saturday, 100 trucks carrying unspecified aid entered Gaza through the Rafah crossing with Egypt, said Wael Abu Omar, a spokesman for the Palestinian Crossings Authority. That is still well below the daily average before the war.
Despite growing international pressure, President Joe Biden's administration remains opposed to an open-ended cease-fire, arguing it would enable Hamas to continue posing a threat to Israel.
The administration has approved the emergency sale to Israel of nearly 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition worth more than $106 million, the State Department said. Secretary of State Antony Blinken determined that “an emergency exists that requires the immediate sale” in the U.S. national security interest, meaning the purchase will bypass required congressional review. Such determinations are rare.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has argued that “a cease-fire is handing a prize to Hamas."
Blinken continued to speak with counterparts from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and elsewhere amid open criticism of the U.S. stance.
“From now on, humanity won’t think the U.S.A. supports the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a speech.
Protesters at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai called for a cease-fire, despite restrictions on demonstrations.
Amid concerns about a wider conflict, Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen threatened to prevent any ship heading to Israeli ports from passing through the Red Sea and Arabian Sea until food and medicine can enter Gaza freely. Spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree said in a speech that all ships heading to Israel, no matter their nationality, will be a target.
In southern Gaza, thousands were on the run after what residents called a night of heavy gunfire and shelling.
Israel has designated a narrow patch of barren southern coastline, Muwasi, as a safe zone. But Palestinians described desperately overcrowded conditions with scant shelter and no toilets. They faced an overnight temperature of around 52 degrees (11 degrees Celsius).
“I am sleeping on the sand. It’s freezing,” said Soad Qarmoot, who described herself as a cancer patient forced to leave her home in the northern town of Beit Lahiya.
As she spoke, her children huddled around a fire.
___
Mroue reported from Beirut. Associated Press writers Julia Frankel in Jerusalem; Samy Magdy in Cairo; Matthew Lee in Washington; Andrew Wilks in Istanbul; and Cara Anna in Albany, New York, contributed to this report.
___
Full AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli troops mistakenly shot three hostages to death Friday in a battle-torn neighborhood of Gaza City, and an Israeli strike killed a Palestinian journalist in the south of the besieged territory, underscoring the ferocity of Israel’s ongoing onslaught.
The deaths were announced as a U.S. envoy tried to persuade the Israelis to scale back their campaign sooner rather than later.
The hostages were killed in the Gaza City area of Shijaiyah, where troops have been engaged in fierce fighting with Hamas militants in recent days. The soldiers mistakenly identified the three Israelis as a threat and opened fire on them, said the army’s chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari.
He said it was believed that the three had either fled their captors or been abandoned.
“Perhaps in the last few days, or over the past day, we still don’t know all the details, they reached this area,” Hagari said. He said the army expressed “deep sorrow” and was investigating.
ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR
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Hamas and other militants abducted more than 240 people in the Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war, and the hostages' plight has dominated public discourse in Israel ever since. Their families have led a powerful public campaign calling on the government to do more to bring them home.
Demonstrations in solidarity with the hostages and their families take place nearly every day. Late Friday, hundreds of protesters blocked Tel Aviv’s main highway in a spontaneous demonstration calling for the the hostages' return.
Israeli political and military leaders often say freeing all the hostages is their top aim in the war alongside destroying Hamas.
Still, in seven weeks since ground troops pushed into northern Gaza, they have not rescued any hostages, though they freed one early in the conflict and have found the bodies of several others. Hamas released over 100 in swaps for Palestinian prisoners last month, and more than 130 are believed to still be in captivity.
The three hostages were identified as young men who had been abducted from Israeli communities near the Gaza border — Yotam Haim, 28, Samer Al-Talalka 25, and Alon Shamriz, 26.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called their deaths an “unbearable tragedy” and vowed to continue "with a supreme effort to return all the hostages home safely.”
In southern Gaza, the Al Jazeera television network said an Israeli strike Friday in the city of Khan Younis killed cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa and wounded its chief correspondent in Gaza, Wael Dahdouh. The two were reporting at a school that had been hit by an earlier airstrike when a drone launched a second strike, the network said.
Khan Younis has been the main target of Israel’s ground offensive in the south.
Speaking from a hospital bed, Dahdouh told the network that he managed to walk to an ambulance. But Abu Daqqa lay bleeding in the school and died hours later. An ambulance tried to reach the school to evacuate him but had to turn back because roads were blocked by the rubble of destroyed houses, it said.
Dahdouh, a veteran of covering Israel-Gaza wars whose wife and children were killed by an Israeli strike earlier in the war, was wounded by shrapnel in his right arm.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Abu Daqqa is the 64th journalist to be killed since the conflict erupted: 57 Palestinians, four Israelis and three Lebanese journalists.
Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour told a General Assembly meeting on the war that Israel “targets those who could document (their) crimes and inform the world, the journalists.”
“We mourn one of those journalists, Samer Abu Daqqa, wounded in an Israeli drone strike and left to bleed to death for six hours while ambulances were prevented from reaching him,” Mansour said.
The Israeli army did not immediately respond to an Associated Press request for comment about Abu Daqqa’s death.
Israel's offensive has flattened much of northern Gaza and driven 80% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million from their homes. Displaced people have squeezed into shelters mainly in the south in a spiraling humanitarian crisis.
The offensive has killed more than 18,700 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza. Thousands more are missing and feared dead beneath the rubble. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths. Its latest count did not specify how many were women and minors, but they have consistently made up around two-thirds of the dead in previous tallies.
While battered by the Israeli onslaught, Hamas has continued its attacks. On Friday it fired rockets from Gaza toward central Israel, setting off sirens in Jerusalem for the first time in weeks but causing no injuries. The group's resilience called into question whether Israel can defeat it without wiping out the entire territory.
Israelis remain strongly supportive of the war and see it as necessary to prevent a repeat of the Hamas attack, in which militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians. A total of 116 soldiers have been killed in the ground offensive, which began Oct. 27.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has expressed unease over Israel’s failure to reduce civilian casualties and its plans for the future of Gaza, but the White House continues to offer wholehearted support with weapons shipments and diplomatic backing.
Israeli airstrikes and tank shelling continued Friday, including in Khan Younis and in Rafah, which is one of the shrinking areas of tiny, densely populated Gaza to which Palestinian civilians have been told by Israel to evacuate. Details on many of the strikes could not be confirmed because communications services have been down across Gaza since late Thursday because of fighting.
In meetings with Israeli leaders on Thursday and Friday, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan discussed a timetable for winding down the intense combat phase of the war.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told Sullivan that it would take months to destroy Hamas, but he did not say whether his estimate referred to the current phase of heavy airstrikes and ground battles.
"There is no contradiction between saying the fight is going to take months and also saying that different phases will take place at different times over those months, including the transition from the high-intensity operations to more targeted operations,” Sullivan said Friday.
Sullivan also met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to discuss Gaza’s postwar future. A senior U.S. official said one idea being floated is to bring back Palestinian security forces driven from their jobs in Gaza by Hamas in its 2007 takeover.
Any role for Palestinian security forces in Gaza is bound to elicit strong opposition from Israel, which seeks to maintain an open-ended security presence there. Netanyahu has said he will not allow a postwar foothold for the Abbas-led Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The U.S. has said it eventually wants to see the West Bank and Gaza under a “ revitalized Palestinian Authority " as a precursor to a Palestinian state — an idea soundly rejected by Netanyahu, who leads a right-wing government that is opposed to Palestinian statehood.
Palestinian officials have said they will consider a postwar role in Gaza only in the context of concrete U.S.-backed steps toward statehood.
In the meeting, Abbas called for an immediate cease-fire and ramped-up aid to Gaza, and emphasized that Gaza is an integral part of the Palestinian state, according to a statement from his office. It made no mention of conversations about postwar scenarios.
The 88-year-old Abbas is deeply unpopular, with a poll published Wednesday indicating close to 90% of Palestinians want him to resign. Meanwhile, Palestinian support for Hamas has tripled in the West Bank, with a small uptick in Gaza, according to the poll. Still, a majority of Palestinians do not back Hamas, according to the survey.
___
Jeffery reported from Cairo and Frankel from Jerusalem. Associated Press journalists Aamer Madhani in Washington, Elena Becatoros in Athens and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed.
___
Full AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.
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By John Hudson
December 16, 2023 at 6:00 ET
Before he was killed alongside his wife and two children in Gaza last month, Hani Jnena, 33, sent a final message to his colleagues in the West Bank.
“My daughters are terrified, and I am trying to keep them calm, but this bombing is terrifying,” he wrote, referring to Israel’s campaign of airstrikes and artillery bombardment of the Palestinian enclave.
Jnena, a contractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development, died along with his family when an Israeli airstrike hit Gaza City’s Al Sabra neighborhood on Nov. 5, according to a statement his employer provided to The Washington Post.
He is among hundreds of humanitarian and development workers killed during the two-month conflict, a statistic that has infuriated USAID officials who want the Biden administration to intensify pressure on Israel to limit the civilian bloodshed.
Already, 135 United Nations relief workers have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7. That’s more deaths than in any single conflict in the organization’s 78-year history, officials say. Outside of the U.N., prominent aid groups such as Save the Children also have suffered losses. On Tuesday, the group announced that a staff member, his four children, his wife, and many other members of his extended family of 28 were killed in an Israeli airstrike Dec. 10. Hamas killed at least 1,200 people in Israel and took more than 240 people hostage.
USAID officials, some of whom endorsed an open letter last month urging a cease-fire in Gaza, told The Post that the Biden administration should use its leverage to force a change in Israel’s behavior. That would include placing restrictions on the billions of dollars in military assistance the United States provides to Israel every year. “We’ve seen far too much inaction from the White House and USAID leadership on this issue,” said one USAID official, who like some others interviewed for this report spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss disagreements with U.S. policy.
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JERUSALEM (AP) — Three Israeli hostages who were mistakenly shot by Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip had been waving a white flag and were shirtless when they were killed, military officials said Saturday, in Israel's first such acknowledgement of harming any hostages in its war against Hamas.
Anger over the mistaken killings is likely to increase pressure on the Israeli government to renew Qatar-mediated negotiations with Hamas over swapping more of the remaining captives, which Israel says number 129, for Palestinians imprisoned in Israel. Israeli leaders have said the hostages' release can only be achieved through military pressure.
A senior Hamas official, Osama Hamdan, reiterated on Saturday that there will be no further release of hostages before the war ends and Israel accepts Hamas conditions for an exchange. Hamdan, a member of the militant group's decision-making political bureau, said he had no information on unconfirmed reports of a meeting between Israeli and Qatari officials regarding a possible exchange.
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Israel's account of how the three hostages died raised questions about the conduct of its troops. Palestinians on several occasions have reported that Israeli soldiers opened fire as civilians tried to flee to safety. Hamas has claimed other hostages were previously killed by Israeli fire or airstrikes, without presenting evidence.
An Israeli military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to brief reporters in line with military regulations, said it was likely that the hostages had been abandoned by their captors or had escaped. The soldiers’ behavior was “against our rules of engagement,” the official said, and was being investigated at the highest level.
The hostages did everything they could to signal they weren't a threat, “but this shooting was done during fighting and under pressure,” Herzi Halevi, chief of the military's general staff, said in a statement later Saturday.
Halevi added: “There may be additional incidents in which hostages will escape or will be abandoned during the fighting. We have the obligation and the responsibility to get them out alive.”
The hostages, all in their 20s, were killed Friday in the Gaza City area of Shijaiyah, where troops are engaged in fierce fighting with Hamas militants. They had been among more than 240 people taken hostage during an unprecedented raid by Hamas into Israel on Oct. 7 in which around 1,200 people were killed, mostly civilians.
The hostages’ plight has dominated public discourse in Israel. Speaking at a Saturday night rally in Tel Aviv, Rubi Chen, father of 19-year-old hostage Itay Chen, criticized the government for believing hostages could be retrieved through military pressure. “Put the the best offer on the table to get the hostages home alive,” he said. “We don't want them back in bags."
The Israeli military official said the three hostages had emerged from a building close to Israeli soldiers’ positions. They waved a white flag and were shirtless, possibly trying to signal they posed no threat.
Two were killed immediately, and the third ran back into the building screaming for help in Hebrew. The commander issued an order to cease fire, but another burst of gunfire killed the third man, the official said.
Israeli media gave a more detailed account. The mass circulation daily Yediot Ahronot said that according to an investigation into the incident, soldiers followed the third man and shouted at him to come out, and at least one soldier shot him when he emerged from a staircase.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz gave a similar account, saying the soldiers who followed the third hostage believed he was a Hamas member trying to trick them. Local media reported that soldiers earlier had seen a nearby building marked with “SOS” and “Help! Three hostages” but feared it might be a trap.
Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israeli political analyst, said it was unlikely that the killings would massively alter public support for the war. Most Israelis still have a strong sense of why it is being fought and believe Hamas needs to be defeated, she said.
“They feel like there’s no other choice," she said.
The killings emphasized the dangers hostages face in areas of house-to-house combat like Shijaiyah, where nine soldiers were killed this week on one of the war's deadliest days for ground forces. The military has said Hamas has booby-trapped buildings and ambushed troops after emerging from a tunnel network it built under Gaza City.
On Saturday, the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum asserted that another hostage, 27-year-old Inbar Hayman, had been killed in Gaza. The group gave no details.
Hamas released over 100 hostages for Palestinian prisoners during a brief cease-fire in November. Nearly all freed on both sides were women and minors. Talks on further swaps broke down.
Hamas said it will only free the remaining hostages if Israel ends the war and releases all Palestinian prisoners. As of late November, Israel held nearly 7,000 Palestinians accused or convicted of security offenses, including hundreds rounded up since the start of the war.
The offensive has killed more than 18,700 Palestinians, the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Thursday. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths. Its count did not specify how many were women and minors, but they have consistently made up around two-thirds of the dead.
It was the ministry's last update before a communications blackout that continued to hamper telephone and internet services in the Gaza Strip. “Now 48 hours and counting. The incident is likely to limit reporting and visibility to events on the ground,” said Alp Toker, director of NetBlocks, a group tracking internet outages.
The war has been deadly for journalists. Dozens of mourners held funeral prayers Saturday for Samer Abu Daqqa, a Palestinian journalist working for broadcaster Al Jazeera who was killed Friday in an Israeli strike in the southern city of Khan Younis. The Committee to Protect Journalists said the cameraman was the 64th journalist to be killed in the conflict: 57 Palestinians, four Israelis and three Lebanese.
The war has flattened much of northern Gaza and driven 85% of the territory's population of 2.3 million from their homes. Displaced people have squeezed into shelters mainly in the south. Only a trickle of aid has been able to enter Gaza. Israel has said it would open a second entry point at Kerem Shalom to speed up deliveries.
The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem said two Christian women at a church compound in Gaza City were killed Saturday by Israeli sniper fire and seven others were wounded. The women were identified as a mother and daughter, with one killed trying to carry the other to safety. Gaza has a small Christian community consisting of about 1,000 people. There was no immediate Israeli comment.
Elsewhere in devastated Gaza City, resident Assad Abu Taha by phone from Shijaiyah reported “a violent bombardment.” And an Associated Press journalist in southern Gaza reported airstrikes and tank shelling overnight in Khan Younis and Rafah.
The United States, Israel’s closest ally, has expressed unease over Israel’s failure to reduce civilian casualties, but the White House continues to offer support with weapons shipments and diplomatic backing.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was traveling to Israel to continue discussions on a timetable for winding down the war's intense combat phase.
___
Jobain reported from Rafah, Gaza Strip and Magdy from Cairo. Associated Press writers Bassem Mroue in Beirut and Iris Samuels in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
___
Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.
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Israel's War on Hamas: How Many Palestinian Deaths Is Too Many?
Dec 13, 2023 at 5:00 AM ESTHold us accountable by rating this article's fairness
Palestinian civilian casualties have become the issue in the Hamas War, precipitating worldwide condemnation of Israel. "A staggering and unacceptable number of civilian casualties," United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has said. "Far too many" Palestinians have been killed, said Secretary of State Antony Blinken. President Joe Biden summed up the dilemma Tuesday, saying that while Israel has had European support in addition to U.S. backing, "they're starting to lose the support by indiscriminate bombing that takes place."
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"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
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