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Gaza under attack yet again.

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This sounds interesting:

Day of Action in Solidarity with the Palestinian Uprising and General Strike: Tuesday, May 18

Hard to find much about it - the fact that airstrikes are also called "strikes" makes it hard to get the right results when searching, but here's a thread about it:

Palestinian youth, along with a broad range of civil society and other groups, are calling for a national strike on Tuesday across all of historical Palestine. This is a significant development for multiple reasons.
1. It is breaking decades of political fragmentation where Palestinian actors in each subdivision (WB, #Gaza, 48 areas), acted individually. The youth’s initiative to refuse to allow this fragmentation to continue, if it succeeds, further builds up unity not seen in decades.
2. Whereas the last month’s developments mainly included young people, this allows a broader swath of society to engage. This is key at this moment, expanding agency to meet demographics.
3. The PA and Arab party leaders in Israel are working, quietly, to go back to oppressive status quo where they control the street. This, if it succeeds, turns those plans on its heads.
4. This horizontal coordination across spaces, with continued initiative to push forward, can increase pressure on Israel & international community to push towards justice.
5. Lastly, it’s key that popular initiatives continue to expand — and beyond strikes and other actions, agency and actions for impact will need to find creative and impactful new tactics to serve the cause of freedom.
All ideas and initiatives are welcome here — and my plea to Palestinian youth in the diaspora to continue to build on the massive protests they led, and just like in Palestine, to create their own tools and actions of resistance; organizing to build momentum. Until Liberty.
 
Unsurprisingly the US still refuses to call for upholding international law, and blocked the UN motion calling for a "cessation of violence and respect for international humanitarian law, including the protection of civilians, especially children".
 
In her bed in Gaza City’s Shifa hospital, 25-year-old Aya Aloul recalls the moment her 66-year-old father, Moeen, one of Gaza’s few neurologists, was killed in an Israeli strike, one of two key Palestinian medical staff killed within hours on Sunday.
Covered in wounds and bruises caused by shrapnel and falling masonry, she described the bombing of the family’s home in the Rimal neighbourhood.
“I get scared,” Aya told the Guardian on Monday, “so, since the war began, I’ve slept next to my parents’ bed, putting a mattress on the floor.
“I was lying awake chatting with a friend on WhatsApp while my mum and dad were sleeping, when suddenly the sound of the bombing started violently. Within a second it was black. I couldn’t see anything, and I found myself on the ground in the street.”
The shops below the building where her family lived had been hit by an Israeli munition, and Aya and her parents were left trapped in the rubble.
“There was a lot of concrete on top of me. My mother was next to me under a lot of rubble too, I didn’t know how I strength but I got out and I tried to free my mother, but I could not.”
“I ran until I found a street with lights on, and started screaming loudly. Then neighbours came and I asked them to get my mother out.”
Aloul’s mother was eventually dug out, but her father was killed in the attack, one of 42 Palestinians to die that day.
Also killed in the same barrage was Dr Ayman Abu al-Auf, the Shifa hospital’s head of internal medicine and the head of its coronavirus response, who was also buried in rubble from a collapsing building in Gaza City’s al-Wehda Street on Sunday.
Later that morning colleagues at the hospital held an impromptu funeral to commemorate Abu al-Auf, who also taught medicine in several Palestinian universities in the Gaza Strip, and was responsible for training new doctors at the hospital.
Injured Palestinian children receive medical care al-Shifa hospital

Injured Palestinian children receive medical care at al-Shifa hospital Photograph: APAImages/REX/Shutterstock

Describing the loss of Abu al-Auf, Ashraf Al Qidra, a spokesman for the Palestinian ministry of health in Gaza, said: “His absence will undoubtedly affect the internal medicine department, and his great experience in his field will have an impact on the treatment of patients in the Gaza Strip.
“There has been a depletion of resources over the course of the year of the corona pandemic, and now this aggression has drained our limited health capacities significantly. We will be in a dangerous situation as a health system within days if this continues.”
While the deaths of the two senior doctors on Sunday have attracted the most headlines, Gaza’s medical system has been damaged in other ways.
According to a bulletin by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, as of noon on Saturday four hospitals run by Gaza’s ministry of health had sustained damage, along with two hospitals run by NGOs, two clinics, a health centre and a facility belonging to the Palestine Red Crescent Society.
According to Palestinian health officials, damaged facilities included the Hala al-Shawa clinic, which was no longer operating, as well as the Indonesian hospital in the northern Gaza Strip and the Beit Hanoun hospital, which have also been damaged.
Riyad Eshkuntana kisses his daughter Suzy’s hand as they are treated at a hospital after being pulled from the rubble of a building

Riyad Eshkuntana kisses his daughter Suzy’s hand as they are treated at a hospital after being pulled from the rubble of a building Photograph: Mohammed Salem/Reuters

The medical facilities were damaged in what some emergency workers have described as destructive violence that surpassed even the 2014 war that last 50 days.
“I have not seen this level of destruction through my 14 years of work – not even in the 2014 war,” said Samir al-Khatib, an emergency rescue official in Gaza.
And while some respite was offered by Egypt’s decision to open the southern Rafah border crossing to evacuate wounded, the situation remained critical.
Also among the facilities damaged on Sunday was a clinic run by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) which also said that a clinic that provided trauma and burn treatment had been hit by an Israeli missile in Gaza City.
Even before that strike, the MSF medical coordinator, Dr Natalie Thurtle, had warned of the danger facing Gaza’s already depleted health system.
“The 14-year Israeli blockade on Gaza means that the health system here lacks many of the things it needs to treat people even during normal times,” said Thurtle last week.
“Yet every few years it is called on to deal with a huge influx of wounded: 11,000 injured during the 2014 war; more than 7,000 shot during protests in 2018 and 2019; and now already hundreds injured in bombings and dozens dead since [last] Monday.”
Another injured Palestinian man arrives at al-Shifa hospital

Another injured Palestinian man arrives at al-Shifa hospital Photograph: Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images

While Israel has accused Hamas in the past of using medical facilities as a cover for its activities, the situation in Gaza is complicated by the fact that fighters with militant groups often rely on civilian hospitals for treatment, while the ministry of health in Gaza is run by the Hamas government.
While Gaza has a number of hospitals, and often well trained and dedicated staff, equipment is often ageing and basic.
Among those who have raised urgent concerns has been the International Committee of the Red Cross, which has called on both sides to respect the urgent medical requirements of the people of Gaza.
“In the past seven days in Gaza, we’ve seen extensive air strikes and also rockets going out from Gaza to Israel,” a spokesperson inside the coastal enclave told the Guardian.
“There has been a massive destruction of infrastructure, including areas next to hospitals and damage roads beside them. That’s why the ICRC called on leaders in the UN security council to exert influence on all parties, so that medical teams, ambulances and civil defence teams can access hospitals and injured people.
“In Gaza the health system was already facing serious problems of shortages of medicines, and the medical teams working through the escalation have already had a year of working through the pandemic.
“Medical staff were already exhausted and are now having to deal with a huge influx of injuries. Medical facilities are protected under international humanitarian law and should be respected by both parties, which includes allowing ambulance crews to access the injured.”
 
Unsurprisingly the US still refuses to call for upholding international law, and blocked the UN motion calling for a "cessation of violence and respect for international humanitarian law, including the protection of civilians, especially children".
I'm sure Washington is fully briefed what plans the IDF have for this "campaign", all fully approved and signed off.
 
Well that won't be for a while. Look what they did today. can't find anything with detail thats not paywalled
Always check Reuters!

 
U.S. law allows Congress to object to weapons sales, but it is unlikely to do so in this case. Because Israel is among a handful of countries whose military deals are approved under an expedited process, the typical window for objecting will close before lawmakers can pass a resolution of disapproval, even if they were inclined to.

I wonder which other countries are on this list for fast-tracking arms sales?
 
Adam LeBor's City of Oranges - Arabs and Jews in Jaffa is fascinating and gives some background to the events before the Nakba. Above all, it focuses on several families (Jewish, Arab and Christian -all Palestinians) which gives the book a lot of heart.

Thanks for this.

Tom Segev says studying the period of the Mandate was of interest to him as it was a time when , despite frictions and some violence, Jews and Arabs lived side by side.
Adam LeBor's City of Oranges - Arabs and Jews in Jaffa is fascinating and gives some background to the events before the Nakba. Above all, it focuses on several families (Jewish, Arab and Christian -all Palestinians) which gives the book a lot of heart.

This sounds very interesting.

Looks like parallels with Tom Segev One Complete Palestine.

Tom Segev grew up in the new Israel state. Was taught at school that the British Mandate period was when a Jewish national liberation movement fought the British Empire.

When he researched the period he found a more complex history. His book gives sympathetic view of Arab modernisers. He debunks some of the heroic myths of nation building he was taught at school.

He does say that the Jewish migrants built a new Jewish society in Palestine. They also found themselves living in urban areas along with Arabs. Palestine was not an empty land to be built up. This did not fit with some of the more Zionist migrants ideas. Every now and then Jews had to be reminded not to do to much business with Arabs by the more ideologically committed Zionists.

What these kinds of history imo point to indirectly was a different outcome to the present day. One where Arab modernisers and European Jewish migrants learnt to live along side each other.
 
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Demo this Saturday.

 
War on Want have done lot of support for Palestinians.

One way to help is to join PSC Or War on Want.

 
War on Want have done lot of support for Palestinians.

One way to help is to join PSC Or War on Want.


Also Campaign Against Arms Trade
 
Palestinians stage historic strike
over Israeli abuses and Gaza bombing

Doctors, bank clerks, builders and teachers abandon work to join demonstrations against Israeli violations and air strikes

In Israel, occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank, Palestinians have downed tools or stayed away from their desks in just the latest example of pan-Palestinian solidarity following days of Israeli crackdowns and ferocious bombing on Gaza.

"I cannot recall, for years, Palestinians of all backgrounds, factions, Muslims, Christians, atheists, being united under one goal," Inas Abbad, a political science researcher and activist from East Jerusalem, told Middle East Eye.
 

That's a War Crime even my limited training remembers that. Not that Israel will care.😠 As far as they are concerned they are in a desperate fight for survival even though it's been over 50 years since anyone's been a real military threat to them.
But the Israelis give us much notice to international law as their neighbours do and they have all the latest in death tech.
Israel has defeated all its state enemys even Fatah who aren't really a state.
All that's left are non state actors who can only inflict terror and can't real
 
Demo this Saturday.

Posted on the other thread, but there's a good global calendar of events here - so far for the UK there's Bournemouth, Cardiff, Leamington Spa, London, Lowestoft, Manchester, Newcastle, Northampton, Peterborough, Plymouth, Swindon, Waterdale and Wrexham. Plus a few events for NI listed separately.

Also, the news that 11 of the children killed in air strikes were already in a programme to help them deal with trauma is... well, what is there to say?
 
Posted on the other thread, but there's a good global calendar of events here - so far for the UK there's Bournemouth, Cardiff, Leamington Spa, London, Lowestoft, Manchester, Newcastle, Northampton, Peterborough, Plymouth, Swindon, Waterdale and Wrexham. Plus a few events for NI listed separately.

Also, the news that 11 of the children killed in air strikes were already in a programme to help them deal with trauma is... well, what is there to say?
I hear the bookies will soon close the betting on netanyahu getting the Nobel peace prize in 2022
 
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