Tag Archives: Mideast

The Elders warn Gaza ceasefire and recovery at risk if UNRWA is not protected

. HUMAN RIGHTS .

An article from The Elders

January 24: The Elders warn today that a sustained ceasefire and recovery in Gaza are at risk if Israel ends cooperation with UNRWA on 30 January, in line with the legislation passed by the Israeli Knesset in October.

After fifteen months of war and at least 46,000 Palestinians killed, the massive surge in humanitarian relief and the restoration of essential services that are so urgently needed now rely on UNRWA as the indispensable agency in Gaza. 


Photo by Ramzi Mahmud/Anadolu via Getty Images

If implemented, the legislation would prohibit contact between UNRWA and Israeli authorities, ending the de-confliction needed for safe operations in Gaza. It could also end UNRWA’s ability to operate across the Occupied Palestinian Territory.  

To do so at the very moment when a ceasefire is opening the way for recovery in Gaza and the welcome release of all Israeli hostages would be morally reprehensible.   

UN member states have a duty to defend UNRWA against this serious attack, which violates the UN Charter. A mandate given by the General Assembly, and reaffirmed in the resolution passed on 5 December, cannot be revoked by a national parliament. UNRWA remains essential until there is a just solution for Palestinian refugees, and its functions are transferred to a Palestinian entity as part of a peace settlement.

Member states should impose targeted sanctions if the Israeli government implements the legislation, given it constitutes a clear violation of international law with grave consequences. 

We regret that US funding to UNRWA remains suspended, and that Sweden decided to stop funding the agency in December. European and Arab states must stand by their commitments to provide political and financial support to UNRWA at this critical time. UNRWA has been independently investigated and is taking action in light of those investigations to ensure its continuing neutrality.

There is a stark choice ahead: a pathway to peace and mutual security for Israelis and Palestinians, or deepening occupation, annexation and renewed bloodshed.

(article continued in right column)

(Click here for the original Spanish version.)

Question related to this article:

How can a culture of peace be established in the Middle East?

(article continued from left column)

We welcome the support of President Trump for the ceasefire. We urge him to apply effective pressure on the conflict parties to move towards a peace settlement based on a two-state solution. We also encourage him to reconsider his reversal of US sanctions on extremist Jewish settlers in the West Bank. Provocative settler violence threatens Israel’s security and jeopardises the chance for a real breakthrough following the ceasefire.

Regional stability and prosperity can never be achieved without a just and lasting settlement to the Palestinian question. All parties must comply with their obligations to bring an end to both Israel’s unlawful occupation and attacks on Israeli civilians, and ensure security and self-determination for Palestinians and Israelis alike.

ENDS

Juan Manuel Santos, former President of Colombia, Nobel Peace Laureate and Chair of The Elders

Ban Ki-moon, former UN Secretary-General and Deputy Chair of The Elders

Graça Machel, Founder of the Graça Machel Trust, Co-founder and Deputy Chair of The Elders

Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Prime Minister of Norway and former Director-General of the WHO

Helen Clark, former Prime Minister of New Zealand and former head of the UN Development Programme

Elbegdorj Tsakhia, former President and Prime Minister of Mongolia

Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

Hina Jilani, Advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan and co-chair of the Taskforce on Justice

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, former President of Liberia and Nobel Peace Laureate

Denis Mukwege, physician and human rights advocate, Nobel Peace Laureate

Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

Ernesto Zedillo, former President of Mexico

For media inquiries, please contact William French, Head of Communications (+44 7795 693 903) or email: media@theElders.org

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HUMAN RIGHTS, Mideast

CODEPINK Celebrates the Announced Ceasefire in Gaza

DISARMAMENT AND SECURITY .

An article from the X account of Codepink

CODEPINK celebrates the news of a ceasefire agreement in Gaza. As reported, as of now only the first stage of the ceasefire agreement has been accepted by both Israel and Hamas. We hope all stages are also accepted as soon as possible to ensure a permanent ceasefire and the ability for Palestinians to rebuild with freedom from Israeli attacks.

For fifteen months, the world community has demanded an end to the slaughter, only to witness Israel’s continued bombings and siege, with full backing from the United States. This ceasefire agreement is a welcome development, and we will continue to demand accountability for the war crimes Israel committed over the past 15 months and the past 75 years. This agreement is virtually the same agreement Israel has been rejecting for months, reaffirming that this could have been accomplished long ago, with fewer Palestinians killed.

We hope that Israel and the United States respect the terms of the ceasefire so that Palestinians can rebuild their lives in Gaza. We will continue to organize toward a future that includes a free Palestine with no border fences, checkpoints, or blockades. In this important moment, we are rejoicing alongside our Palestinian siblings in Gaza who have been waiting for far too long for this moment to arrive.

It’s been reported that the Israeli government was pressured to agree to the terms of the ceasefire in a meeting with the incoming Trump administration’s Middle East envoy. If it’s true that the Trump administration finally pushed Netanyahu to end the constant and indiscriminate slaughter of civilians on a daily basis, then President Biden’s legacy as an architect of genocide is set in stone. He was not working “tirelessly” for a ceasefire. He was not willing to use any of his leverage to force a ceasefire. He let the genocide continue because he had no interest or care to stop it. Our deepest hope is that the ceasefire lasts, without Israel breaking ceasefire agreements as they’ve done in the past, and progresses to the final stages of prisoner swaps.

(article continued in right column)

Question related to this article:

How can a culture of peace be established in the Middle East?

(article continued from left column)

The crisis in Gaza did not happen in a vacuum. The people of Gaza were not all of a sudden in a state of war or siege. When the current genocide campaign began, over half of the population in Gaza were children – born there and never able to leave. For years, Israel let only the minimum caloric value of food into Gaza to keep the entire population on the brink of starvation. Periodically, Gaza would face brutal and extended periods of bombing campaigns carried out by the Israeli military. If world leaders are serious about peace, they must also confront the material reality that launched us into this current moment. If we want peace, we also need to demand justice. Neither peace nor justice looks like a return to the status quo pre-October 7. The news of a ceasefire gives us a reason for optimism, and we hope it’s the start to a chapter of accountability, reconciliation, and true peace.

We continue to demand:

• An end to all US military “aid” to Israel

• The reinstatement of USAID and UNRWA funding to Gaza so that Palestinians who are recovering from 15 months of bombardment can be able to feed and shelter themselves, as well as ensuring secured open and uninterrupted access to humanitarian aid trucks

• The freedom of Palestinians who were taken as political prisoners since October 7, 2023, and before, such as Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya, who Israel kidnapped in recent weeks

• Accountability for war criminals, including Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, by supporting prosecutions in international courts for Israel’s repeated violations of international law.

• Removal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip, Lebanon and Syria

• An end to the siege on Gaza and Israel’s settler colonial occupation of Palestine

• The right of return for all Palestinians barred from their homeland

• A free Palestine from the river to the sea

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DISARMAMENT & SECURITY, Mideast

Michael Moore: From the Rubble Rises 22 Powerful Voices

. . HUMAN RIGHTS . .

An article by Michael Moore

Last week, I, as an Executive Producer of FROM GROUND ZERO: STORIES FROM GAZA, was quoted across the country as stating the following: “No filmmaker, writer or artist should ever have to tell the story of their own extermination.”

And yet…

As I write this, in a scattered group of cinemas across the country, movie-goers are watching this anthology of stories captured on camera by Palestinian filmmakers in Gaza amidst Netanyahu’s reign of terror over the past year. This collection of 22 short films of his shameless extermination attempt — the unending barrage of bombs and bullets, the forced starvation — is what the people of Gaza are facing every single day.

And during this hour and fifty-two minutes on the screen, you will feel the pulse of the Palestinian people. Their resilience. And you are right there with them. 

They are not Hamas. They are not rapists. They are not lying in wait to murder Israelis. They are not a threat to any human or to Democracy as certain propagandists are hoping you’ll be brainwashed into believing.

They are taxi drivers and mothers, toddlers and teachers, comedians and artists — finding ways to survive. To feed their families. To bathe their children. To retain a sense of self and normality. To bring joy to their community. To keep warm at night. To keep hope alive. 

The review from Variety  said it best: 

“Their stories, and their essence, live within these pixels the way the Holocaust was captured on celluloid. The images of the latter that are the most familiar to the public were snapped either by perpetrators or liberators. “From Ground Zero” exists more in the tradition of photographers Henryk Ross and Mendel Grossman, inhabitants of Poland’s Jewish ghettos who not only documented daily life with their cameras, but imbued it with a familiar, beating humanity. In that vein, it’s hard to ignore just how much “From Ground Zero” feels like history unfolding, and tragedy being memorialized, right before our eyes.”
Every American needs to see this film. 

This genocide, though executed by the Israeli government, is Made in the USA. Manufactured in places like San Diego and South Bend, Fort Worth and Fairfax and bankrolled with our tax dollars. Yours and mine. It’s disgusting. It’s shameful. But it also means we hold immense power in our hands at a time when we still have the power to change the outcome. 

We have been in this position before as a nation. And we failed. We turned away ships carrying thousands of Jewish refugees who fled Germany as the Holocaust was unfolding. We let fear and bigotry overtake our humanity — “We have no idea who these Jews are!” — and turned our backs, refusing to let them dock, and sealing their fate. Let’s not accept the fate of the Palestinian people as decreed by Netanyahu and his racist Likud party hacks (“Between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty!”) any more than we will accept the fate of the 13 million immigrants who have come to this country to work, raise their children and pay taxes — human beings that Trump and his racist MAGA sycophants have decreed will be rounded up and dragged back across the border beginning nine days from now.

(continued in right column)

Question related to this article:

How can war crimes be documented, stopped, punished and prevented?

Presenting the Palestinian side of the Middle East, Is it important for a culture of peace?

Do the arts create a basis for a culture of peace?

(continued from left column)

Art has always been a powerful weapon of the oppressed — Philosopher Viktor Frankl honed his theory that our primary motivation for living as humans is to find meaning while imprisoned in Dachau and other concentration camps for being Jewish. Oscar Wilde wrote “De Profundis” while imprisoned in England for the crime of loving a man. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail” while imprisoned for protesting against racist segregation. There is no better means of cultivating understanding and empathy than through art. And for me, there’s no better outlet to convey truth and inspire resistance than the art of the moving image.

I believe that one great movie can change the world. 

This is that movie. 

You are that audience. 

Don’t look away. Find a way to watch this work of art by these 22 artists imprisoned in Gaza and see the Palestinian people for who they are. 

Right now FROM GROUND ZERO: STORIES FROM GAZA is playing in theaters across the United States from San Fransisco and San Diego to Louisiana and Tennessee, from Chicago to New York City. It is not playing everywhere, as you can imagine just how hard it is to convince theaters to play a movie like this. Even though it is currently the best-reviewed film in the U.S. — 98% on Rotten Tomatoes! Motion Picture Academy voters two weeks ago declared it to be one of the 15 best international feature films in the world for this year’s Oscars. It has already been placed on the shortlist for nomination consideration for the Academy Awards. At New York City’s Quad Cinema last week, it was the third highest grossing film in the last 12 months. And yet…

And yet… In the land of free speech and freedom of expression you will be hard-pressed this weekend in certain parts of the country to find the much-acclaimed FROM GROUND ZERO: STORIES FROM GAZA.

This is one of the reasons that I have stepped in as an Executive Producer, to see that as many Americans as possible get the chance to watch this brilliant movie.

Please know that I and others are doing our best to jump every hurdle placed in front of us to guarantee your right to go to the movies and experience the truth.

Please ask your local independent theater to book FROM GROUND ZERO. For Theatrical, Non-Theatrical & Festival Booking/Screening inquiries: bookings@watermelonpictures.com

And go here for the most up-to-date locations and showtimes for you to see it:

https://fromgroundzero.url.film/

If you live in the vicinity of a showing, or have the means to get to one, please go and support these courageous storytellers. Help their voices be heard. We will do our best to make sure that the forces which would prefer you not see this movie are defeated. In a true Democracy, it’s as easy as that.

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HUMAN RIGHTS, Mideast, North America,

For Nobel Peace Prize: Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh, Bethlehem, Palestine

FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION .

A press release from Mairead Corrigan of the Peace People

Nobel Peace Laureate, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, to-day nominated Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh for the Nobel peace prize.   Maguire said ‘I have great pleasure in nominating Prof. Mazin Qumsiyeh for the 2025 Nobel peace prize. 


Mazin Qumsiyeh

“I have met professor Mazin and have followed his inspiring peace work for many decades.    Prof. Mazin Qumsiyeh is a life scientist, teacher and activist for peace, nonviolence and the sustainability of human and natural communities over the past 50 years. 

Qumsiyeh was born in Beit Sahour, the Shepherds’ field on the outskirts of Bethlehem.  He got his formal education in Jordan and the USA in areas of biology and medical genetics.  Yet the pressures of the Israel occupation on his people and the pressure on the environment that culminated in genocide and ecocide ensured Qumsiyeh pursued a life focused on peace-making, non-violent resistance, service to people, and service to nature. 

(article continued in right column)

Question related to this article:

Presenting the Palestinian side of the Middle East, Is it important for a culture of peace?

Where in the world can we find good leadership today?

(article continued from left column)

In the l990 he created peace groups like the Triangle Middle East dialogue and led the Palestinian American congress.  He activated and led a chapter of the American Arab anti-discrimination committee receiving the Raymond Jallow award for activism.  He organized a petition garnering over one million signatures supporting the right of Palestinian refugees.  He was the key founder of the Palestine right to return coalition.  (PRRC).  He organized what was at that time the largest demonstrations for Palestine in Washington DC with over 5000 attending (only in 2024 during the genocide in Gaza did larger demonstrations happen).  

He founded the Wheels of Justice bus tour promoting non-violence with justice.  Between 2000 and 2006 the tour team reached 48 states speaking at over 1200 colleges and universities over 400 schools and hundreds of community centers, churches and mosques.  (more background on prof. Qumsiyeh on;   www.//qumsiyeh.org   
 
He oversaw many conservation projects including formulating the national biodiversity strategy and action plan and creating a new protected area network and landscape for nature conservation.  But perhaps his most enduring legacy is the tens of thousands of children empowered in peacemaking and environmental stewardship including with the mobile educational unit.  More background is;   https://palestinenature.org 

(Editor’s note: Mairead Maguire is a laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize.)

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FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION, Mideast,

With Israel’s destruction of Kamal Adwan Hospital, UN rapporteur calls for global medical boycott

. . HUMAN RIGHTS . .

An article from Nation of Change

Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for the Israeli-Occupied Palestinian Territories, reacted forcefully to the complete destruction by the Israeli military of Kamal Adwan Hospital at Beit Lahia in northern Gaza and the arrest and abuse of its patients and its director. She called for a world-wide medical boycott of Israel, writing at “X” :

“I urge medical professionals worldwide to pursue the severance of all ties with Israel as a concrete way to forcefully denounce Israel’s full destruction of the palestinian healthcare system in Gaza, a critical tool of its ongoing genocide.”

She was concurring with San Francisco-based physician and author Rupa Marya.

Muhammad Muhsin Watad at the Israeli newspaper Arab 48 explained that last Friday, “the Israeli army stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital after hours of besieging it. They burned its facilities, mistreated those inside, including patients, the injured, and medical staff, before taking into custody several individuals and forcing others [including women] to strip in the severe cold and undergo forced evacuation, all while gunfire and tank shelling occurred in the surrounding area.” Some 350 staff and patients were illegally detained by Israeli forces, though most were subsequently released.

The actions were part of Israel’s strategy of forcibly displacing 400,000 Palestinians from northern Gaza and making it uninhabitable for them, as the occupying army systematically detonates buildings and destroys neighborhoods. The forced displacement of an occupied population is a war crime. Gaza Palestinians are huddling in tents or sleeping rough amid heavy downpours and frigid temperatures in which several babies are known to have died in recent days.

Also on Friday, having emptied and burned the hospital, the Israelis detained its director and other medical staff.

(continued in right column)

Question related to this article:

How can war crimes be documented, stopped, punished and prevented?

How can a culture of peace be established in the Middle East?

(continued from left column)

Watad at Arab 48 says that the Government Media Office in Gaza is alleging that Abu Safieh was subjected to physical and psychological abuse. He was forced to strip out of his medical coat and clothing and was used as a human shield. His children called on the international community to pressure Israel to release their father, whose fate remains unknown.

He was last seen walking outside the ruined hospital toward the turret of an Israeli tank.
When dissidents in other countries have faced tanks, they have been celebrated widely in U.S. media. American mass media “news” for the most part have ignored Abu Safieh and his fate.

Medical boycotts are not unprecedented. Physicians in the allied victor states of WW I boycotted  the German scientific and medical establishment on the grounds that German researchers and physicians were guilty of praising German militarism and denying German war guilt. They even founded alternative associations, such as the one to fight tuberculosis set up in Berlin, and held international congresses only in French and English, excluding German-speakers.

Medical boycotts of Israel have also been proposed  previously, as with the 2007 call of some British physicians for non-cooperation with the Israeli Medical Association for failing to uphold ethical standards in their treatment of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. They urged that the IMA be kicked out of the World Medical Association.

As I have noted before, the Rome Statute  underpinning the International Criminal Court, which went into effect in 2002, lists among “War Crimes” “ix) Intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not military objectives.” The Israeli army’s allegations that hospitals in Gaza are armed camps and weapons depots is ridiculous, and such assertions have been disproven whenever newspapers of record such as the Washington Post have investigated them.

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global, HUMAN RIGHTS, Mideast, United Nations, ,

Activists Occupy Canadian Parliament Building to Protest Gaza War & Arming of Israel

. . HUMAN RIGHTS . .

An article from Democracy Now (licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License)

“Canada needs to stop arming Israel and implement an immediate arms embargo.” In Ottawa, over 100 Jewish activists began a sit-in inside a Canadian parliamentary building Tuesday to demand Canada stop arming Israel.

Rachel Small, a member of the Jews Say No to Genocide Coalition and a member of the sit-in, says that the Canadian government’s claims that it is halting arms shipments to Israel are obfuscating the fact that Canadian weapons are still being transported via the United States. “We’re here to make sure that they … actually cut off the flow,” says Small. Such protest “is what we should be seeing more of,” adds Israeli journalist and former conscientious objector Haggai Matar.

Transcript of video

AMY GOODMAN: Haggai, you asked if people are doing enough. I want to break into this conversation with this breaking news. In Canada, about 150 Jewish activists and allies have just launched a protest inside the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa to demand Canada stop arming Israel.

We’re joined now by Rachel Small, a member of the group Jews Say No to Genocide Coalition.

Rachel, can you describe where you are and what you’re doing and what you’re calling for?

RACHEL SMALL: Thank you. We are in a Parliament Hill building. Right now we have completely taken over the lobby of this building, that has hundreds of parliamentarians’ office in here.

Our demand is clear: Canada needs to stop arming Israel and implement an immediate arms embargo. We know that every F-35 fighter jet, every Boeing Apache helicopter dropping bombs on Lebanon and Gaza right now is full of hundreds of Canadian components. We’re here as Jews to say this violence cannot continue in our name. And we’re here as people of conscience to say that the absolute bare minimum Canada needs to be doing right now is stop arming a genocide.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Haggai Matar, your response to these kinds of actions occurring abroad? Does this have an impact on the Israeli public?

HAGGAI MATAR: Well, first of all, I want to commend the activists on the ground now in Ottawa. It’s incredible. This is the exact kind of protest that people should be taking on in Canada, definitely in the U.S., which is the biggest supplier of weapons and funding and diplomatic support to Israel. So, yes, this is what we should be seeing more of.

I’m afraid that in Israel, again, these protests are usually seen as antisemitic or, in the case of Jews protesting, of self-hating Jews or people that are unhinged. That’s the way it’s being perceived. It’s our job as Jewish Israelis on the ground, talking in Hebrew, talking to people in our communities, to try and help them understand that it’s not the world that has gone mad, it’s us.

(continued in right column)

Question related to this article:

How can war crimes be documented, stopped, punished and prevented?

How can a culture of peace be established in the Middle East?

(continued from left column)

AMY GOODMAN: Interesting that the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, just met with President-elect Trump in Mar-a-Lago in Florida. Rachel Small, we’re looking at the group of people. One of them, I think, says “Jews for a Free Palestine.” What has been Trudeau’s position? And what’s going to happen to you this morning?

RACHEL SMALL: We have seen an unprecedented wave of resistance across Canada over the past 13 months, many, many thousands of people across the country not only petitioning their MPs, not only protesting, not only meeting with them, but actually holding blockades at weapons factories, doing just really everything we can to get Canada to stop arming Israel.

And that pressure has resulted in the Canadian government taking a stance that we would have not thought possible a year or two ago. They have committed to stop arming Israel. They have, in fact — the foreign affairs minister recently, in fact, said that Canadian weapons are not going to be going and used in Gaza.

Unfortunately, it’s not true. Unfortunately, we know that they have not tackled all the permits, and they have continued to conveniently send weapons to the U.S. without even requiring a permit. Those are going into every F-35 Israel is using. That is going into Israel’s primary weapons of war.

So we have backed the Canadian government into a corner where they know what the right stance is. They know they need to stop arming Israel. And we’re here to make sure they do it. The broad Arms Embargo Now coalition has come together across the country and has, in fact, gotten 45 parliamentarians to formally endorse the call for an arms embargo. We just need the government to step up and take that action to actually cut off the flow of all weapons to and from Israel. It’s the bare minimum they need to be doing.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Rachel Small, member of Jews Say No to Genocide Coalition. If you’re having a little trouble understanding her, she’s inside the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa. There are scores of people behind her, lead Canadian organizer with World — with the group World Beyond War. And in the studio with us in New York, though usually in Tel Aviv, is Haggai Matar, Israeli journalist, activist, executive director of +972 Magazine, a conscientious objector himself. Juan?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, Haggai, we only have about a minute left, but I wanted to ask you about President-elect Trump’s decision to select former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee as the next U.S. ambassador to Israel. Huckabee is not only a leading U.S. Christian Zionist who’s openly advocated for Israel’s annexation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, he declared in 2008 that there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian. What do you expect from this kind of ambassador from the new Trump administration?

HAGGAI MATAR: So, obviously, Trump appointments and Trump policies are terrifying to us and should be, too, to anyone who cares about the rights of Palestinians. I do want to also point out, however, Trump policies have an inherent contradiction. As an isolationist, Trump does not want to get involved in too many wars. As someone who wants to break deals with Saudi Arabia and Arab Gulf states, he may want to ensure that they don’t drift into the Iran-China field of influence. And those two policies, being pro-annexation and pro-settlements and pro-Israel and being pro-war and wanting to sign deals, they collide. And I think it’s our role on the left to kind of put a wedge in there and try and make sure that it becomes more and more apparent how those policies conflict with each other.

AMY GOODMAN: Haggai Matar, I want to thank you so much for being with us, Israeli journalist, activist, executive director of +972 Magazine, former conscientious objector, refused to serve in the Israeli army.

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HUMAN RIGHTS, Mideast, North America,

C­o­m­p­a­n­i­e­s P­r­o­f­i­t­i­n­g f­r­o­m t­h­e G­a­z­a G­e­n­o­c­i­d­e

. . HUMAN RIGHTS . .

An analysis by the American Friends Service Committee

The companies listed here have provided Israel with weapons and other military equipment used in its attacks on Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria since October 2023.

Last updated on June 6, 2024

*Companies marked with (*) are included in our divestment list. The list below is not intended to be used as either a divestment list or a boycott list, as it includes many privately-owned companies as well as companies with a very minor or one-time involvement.

Since October 2023, Israel has waged unprecedented aerial and ground attacks on Gaza after Hamas-led attacks on Israel. Tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza have been killed at a historic pace, mostly unarmed civilians, and most of the Gaza population has been displaced. These attacks may amount to a genocide, according to a preliminary ruling by the International Court of Justice, a , as well as dozens of U.N. experts and legal scholars. Israel’s attacks in Gaza have been accompanied by a surge of Israeli violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, clashes between the Israeli military and militant groups in Lebanon, and Israeli aerial strikes in Syria.

Shortly after Oct. 7, the U.S. government started transferring massive amounts of weapons to Israel. By Dec. 25, Israel received  more than 10,000 tons of weapons in 244 cargo planes and 20 ships from the U.S. These transfers included more than 15,000 bombs and 50,000 artillery shells within just the first month and a half. These transfers have been deliberately shrouded in secrecy to avoid public scrutiny and prevent Congress from exercising any meaningful oversight. Between October and the beginning of March, the U.S. approved more than 100 military sales to Israel, but publicly disclosed only two sales. A list of known U.S. arms transfers is maintained by the Forum on the Arms Trade.

Much of these weapons were purchased using U.S. taxpayers’ money through the Foreign Military Sales program, while some were direct commercial sales purchased through Israel’s own budget.  An undisclosed amount of weapons was also transferred from U.S. military stockpiles already stored in Israel, known as War Reserves Stock Allies-Israel (WRSA-I). The use of WRSA-I to provide Israel with weapons serves to further obfuscate the full picture of U.S. arms transfers, as there is no public record of these stockpiles’ inventory.

The scale of destruction and war crimes in Gaza would not be possible without this continued flow of weapons from the U.S. Despite massive public protests, the Biden administration has been working to give Israel over $14 billion to buy more weapons. This is on top of the $3.8 billion the U.S. already gives to the Israeli military annually. Israel is required to use this money to buy U.S.-made weapons. This is a form of corporate welfare not only for the largest weapons manufacturers, like Lockheed Martin, RTX, Boeing, and General Dynamics, which have seen their stock prices skyrocket, but also for companies that are not typically seen as part of the weapons industry, such as Caterpillar, Ford, and Toyota (see below).

As a Quaker organization with a long history of work in Palestine and Israel, including in Gaza, AFSC supports a full arms embargo to both Israeli and Palestinian militant groups. This list focuses on weapons used by Israel because all Palestinian militant groups are already sanctioned and receive no support from Western governments or corporations.

(continued in right column)

Question related to this article:

How can war crimes be documented, stopped, punished and prevented?

How can a culture of peace be established in the Middle East?

(continued from left column)

This research relies on media sources, social media, and other open sources. Information was also collected by Who Profits and the Database of Israeli Military and Security Export, a project of the Israeli organization New Profile. We welcome any additional information, please contact us.

(Editor’s note: The AFSC website includes descriptions for each of the following companies. The links below to these descriptions do not work, but there is an index of links on the left side of the AFSC website that go directly to the descriptions.)

  • AeroVironment (NASDAQ: AVAV)
  • Agilite
  • Aimpoint
  • AM General
  • *BAE Systems (LSE: BA)
  • *Boeing (NYSE: BA)
  • *Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT)
  • *Colt (PSE: CZG)
  • Corsight
  • Day & Zimmermann
  • DJI
  • *Elbit Systems (NASDAQ & TASE: ESLT)
  • Emtan
  • Flyer Defense
  • Ford (NYSE: F)
  • *General Dynamics (NYSE: GD)
  • *General Electric (NYSE: GE)
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    HUMAN RIGHTS, Mideast

    Head of Nuke Abolition Group Decries Gaza Suffering After Winning Nobel Peace Prize

    . . HUMAN RIGHTS . .

    An article by Julia Conley from Common Dreams

    Calling for peace in war zones around the world and an end to the proliferation of nuclear weapons, a grassroots group organized by survivors of the United States’ atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

    Nihon Hidankyo was established in 1956 after a number of local organizations of hibakusha, the Japanese name for “bomb-affected people,” joined together.

    Toshiyuki Mimaki, the group’s leader, was three years old when the U.S. killed 100,000 people in Hiroshima with a nuclear weapon, and his message after learning Nihon Hidankyo was the 2024 Peace Prize winner was straightforward.

    “I am not sure I will be alive next year,” said  Mimaki, 82. “Please abolish nuclear weapons while we are alive. That is the wish of 114,000 hibakusha.”

    Mimaki focused not only on the plight of the estimated 650,000 Japanese people who survived the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks, but also people—particularly children—facing war now.

    “It has been said that because of nuclear weapons, the world maintains peace. But nuclear weapons can be used by terrorists,” said  Mimaki. “For example, if Russia uses them against Ukraine, Israel against Gaza, it won’t end there. Politicians should know these things.”

    “In Gaza, bleeding children are being held [by their parents],” he added. “It’s like in Japan 80 years ago.”

    Mimaki said he had believed “the people working so hard in Gaza” would be awarded the Peace Prize, referring to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which was also nominated.

    The U.N. agency has struggled  to continue providing humanitarian services to Palestinians in Gaza this year after unverified claims by Israel that 12 UNRWA workers were involved in a Hamas-led attack last year prompted countries including the U.S. to suspend its funding. A majority of countries—but not the U.S., the agency’s biggest donor—have restored funding after an independent probe found Israel had not provided evidence  for its accusations.

    (continued in right column)

    Question related to this article:

    Presenting the Palestinian side of the Middle East, Is it important for a culture of peace?

    Where in the world can we find good leadership today?

    (continued from left column).

    Kazumi Matsui, the mayor of Hiroshima, said that with the average age of hibakusha now 85, “there are fewer and fewer people able to testify to the meaninglessness of possessing atomic bombs and their absolute evil.”

    “People in coming generations must know that what happened is not just a tragedy for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but one that concerns all humanity that must not be repeated,” said Matsui.

    The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 for its efforts to ensure countries comply with the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, applauded  the Nobel Committee for recognizing Nihon Hidankyo’s “lifelong work to bring the world’s attention to what nuclear weapons actually do to people when they are used.”

    Several years after the nuclear bombings, rates of leukemia diagnoses rose considerably  in Japan among survivors. After a decade, other cancers were also detected at higher-than-normal rates. Pregnant women who were exposed to radiation from the bombings also had higher rates of miscarriage and their infants were more likely to die.

    Cancer rates have continued to increase among hibakusha throughout their lives.

    “It is particularly significant that this award comes at this time when the risk that nuclear weapons will be used again is as high, if not higher, as it has ever been,” said Melissa Parke, executive director of ICAN.

    As Nihon Hidankyo was honored “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again,” the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) announced  it would be holding its annual nuclear exercise, “Steadfast Noon,” on October 14 over Western Europe.

    On “Democracy Now!” on Friday, Joseph Gerson, president of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament, and Common Security, said  the award “could not come at a better time.” [See CPNN ]

    “What most people don’t understand is the increasing danger of nuclear war at this point,” said Gerson. “Among all the nuclear powers, the threshold for nuclear use is decreasing, and all the nuclear powers are in the process of so-called ‘modernizing’ their nuclear arsenals. This is a very dangerous moment.”

    “We must, as the hibakusha say, recognize that human beings and nuclear weapons cannot coexist,” Gerson added, “and we have to work for their abolition.”

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    East Asia, FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION, HUMAN RIGHTS, Mideast,

    ‘Keep Your Eye On Calendar, Palestine Will Be Free’: Arundhati Roy’s PEN Pinter Prize Speech

    . . HUMAN RIGHTS . .

    An article from the Timeline Daily

    “They fight on because they know that one day—From the river to the sea Palestine will be Free. It will. Keep your eye on your calendar. Not on your clock. That’s how the people – not the generals – the people fighting for their liberation measure time,” asserts Arundhati Roy, the noted Indian author and activist, during her PEN Pinter Prize acceptance speech delivered on October 10 at the British Library.

    After announcing her name for the prize that English PEN established as an annual award in honor of playwright Harold Pinter, Roy declared her share of the prize money will be donated to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund.

    During her award acceptance speech after he thanked the members of English PEN and the jury for the Prize, Roy began by greeting Egyptian author and activist, Alaa Abd El-Fattah, writer of courage, and her fellow awardee. She said she was speaking of her friends and comrades in prison in India—lawyers, academics, students, journalists – Umar Khalid, Gulfisha Fatima, Khalid Saifi, Sharjeel Imam, Rona Wilson, Surendra Gadling, Mahesh Raut we well as thousands of incarcerated people in Kashmir and across the country.

    Speaking about the ongoing Israeli offensive in Gaza, the Indian author said the US and Israel unflinching ongoing “televised genocide in Gaza and now Lebanon in defence of a colonial occupation and an Apartheid state”

    Describing the fatalities of over 42000 lives including women and children, Roy stated the US and Europe have prepared the ground for another situation to assuage their collective guilt for their early years of indifference towards one genocide—the Nazi extermination of millions of European Jews.

    “Hostilities could end right this minute. Israeli hostages could be freed, and Palestinian prisoners could be released. The negotiations with Hamas and the other Palestinian stakeholders that must inevitably follow the war could instead take place now and prevent the suffering of millions of people,” she affirmed.

    The Indian author goes on saying that like every state that has carried out ethnic cleansing and genocide in history, “Zionists in Israel – who believe themselves to be “the chosen people”—began b by dehumanising Palestinians” before driving them off their land and murdering them.

    Roy quoted statements of former Israeli ministers to show how the Jewish state treated Palestinians as a justification to dehumanise them. Former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin called Palestinians ‘two-legged beasts’. Yitzhak Rabin called them ‘grasshoppers’ who ‘could be crushed’. Golda Meir, the fourth Prime Minister of Israel said ‘There was no such thing as Palestinians’.

    (continued in right column)

    Question related to this article:

    Presenting the Palestinian side of the Middle East, Is it important for a culture of peace?

    Where in the world can we find good leadership today?

    (continued from left column).

    Former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the so-called famous warrior against fascism, said, ‘I do not admit that the dog in the manger has the final right to the manger, even though he may have lain there for a very long time’ and then went on to declare that a ‘higher race’ had the final right to the manger. Once those two-legged beasts, grasshoppers, dogs and non-existent people were murdered, ethnically cleansed, and ghettoised, a new country was born, Roy said, quoting the zionists and their supporters

    Roy went on how the West and their media support, arm, applaud Israel, despite floods of evidence for Israeli brutalities. “No wonder Israeli soldiers seem to have lost all sense of decency,” she says, adding that for them the history only began when the Hamas attack Israel on October 7, killing Israeli civilians, triggering the ongoing genocidal war.

    “I refuse to play the condemnation game. Let me make myself clear. I do not tell oppressed people how to resist their oppression or who their allies should be,” Roy says. Noting that when US President Joe Biden met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli war cabinet during a visit to Israel in October 2023, he said, ‘I don’t believe you have to be a Jew to be a Zionist, and I am a Zionist,’ Roy says she is not going to  declare myself or define myself in any way that is narrower than her writing.

    The celebrated Indian writer then poses some questions; I ask you, which of us sitting in this hall would willingly submit to the indignity that Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have been subjected to for decades? What peaceful means have the Palestinian people not tried? What compromise have they not accepted—other than the one that requires them to crawl on their knees and eat dirt?

    Roy then asserts Israel is not fighting a war of self-defence. “It is fighting a war of aggression. A war to occupy more territory, to strengthen its Apartheid apparatus and tighten its control on Palestinian people and the region.”

    Roy says not all the power and money, weapons and propaganda on earth can any longer hide the wound that is Palestine. She notes the polls to shows that majority of  the citizens in the countries whose governments enable the Israeli genocide have made it clear that they do not agree with their government’s support to the Zionist atrocities, including a younger generation of Jews. She cites increasing number of protest in the Europe against Israeli aggression in Gaza.

    “The war that has now begun will be terrible. But it will eventually dismantle Israeli Apartheid. The whole world will be far safer for everyone – including for Jewish people – and far more just. It will be like pulling an arrow from our wounded heart,” the award winning author said, underscoring that the war could stop today if the US government withdrew its support of Israel.

    “When Benjamin Netanyahu holds up a map of the Middle East in which Palestine has been erased and Israel stretches from the river to the sea, he is applauded as a visionary who is working to realize the dream of a Jewish homeland. But when Palestinians and their supporters chant ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’, they are accused of explicitly calling for the genocide of Jews,” Roy said.

    The PEN Prize awardee concluded her speech expressing her conviction that From the river to the sea Palestine will be Free.

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    Europe, HUMAN RIGHTS, Mideast, South Asia, , ,

    From Paris to Caracas, thousands march in support of Gaza around the world, one year after October 7

    . TOLERANCE AND SOLIDARITY . .

    An article from Le Parisien (translated by google)

    “Freedom and justice for the Palestinians!” Thousands of people demonstrated in support of Gaza across Europe and South Africa on Saturday for the first anniversary of the bloody conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.

    Holding placards and Palestinian and Lebanese flags, several thousand protesters marched through the centre of the British capital late in the morning. Leading the march were former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn (now an independent) and former Scottish Prime Minister Humza Yousaf.


    London, October 5, 2024. Many protesters wore keffiyehs, symbols of the Palestinian struggle. Reuters/Chris J Ratcliffe

    “Stop the bombing”, “Free, free Palestine” and “Stop bombing hospitals” were among the most popular slogans chanted in London by protesters, who marched peacefully. “We need a ceasefire now. How many more innocent Palestinians or Lebanese people have to die?” asked Sophia Thomson, 27, who was demonstrating with friends. “The fact that there are so many of us shows that the government is not speaking for the people,” she added.

    A demonstration in memory of the 1,205 people killed in the unprecedented Hamas attack in Israel on October 7 is also due to be held in London on Sunday.

    In Dublin, the Irish capital, several hundred people demonstrated in support of the Gazans, shouting “freedom and justice for the Palestinians”.

    In Berlin, a pro-Palestinian demonstration brought together more than a thousand people and another pro-Israeli demonstration brought together around 650, according to the police. Outside the procession of this last demonstration, 26 people who had accosted the demonstrators were arrested, a police spokesperson told AFP.

    In Rome, pro-Palestinian youth clashed with the police, with bottles thrown, firecrackers, tear gas and water cannons used, after a demonstration that brought together thousands of people. “Italy must stop selling and sending weapons to Israel”, “Free Palestine” and “Israel, a criminal state”, the demonstrators shouted.

    During the offensive led in response by Israel, at least 41,825 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to data from the Hamas government’s Ministry of Health, deemed reliable by the UN. In Lebanon, according to the authorities, more than 2,000 people have been killed since October 2023.

    Representatives of LFI at the Paris demonstration

    In France, several thousand people marched in Paris and several other cities to show their “solidarity with the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples” and to ask the French government to do more.

    In Paris, 5,000 demonstrators, according to the police, marched from Place de la République to Place de Clichy, shouting “Palestine will live, Palestine will win”. At the head of the procession were several political figures from the radical left, including representatives of La France Insoumise Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Manon Aubry. Among them, MP Thomas Portes, interviewed by AFP, once again asked President Emmanuel Macron to “recognise the State of Palestine”.

    At the microphone of a truck present in the procession, Jean-Luc Mélenchon reiterated his call for students to “flaunt the colors of Palestine” and “Lebanon” from October 8, in response to a ministerial circular on maintaining order in universities on the eve of October 7, the anniversary of the Hamas attack in Israel.

    (continued in right column)

    (Click here for the original article in French.

    Question related to this article:

    Presenting the Palestinian side of the Middle East, Is it important for a culture of peace?

    (continued from left column)

    But for Mohammed Ghili, 52, a member of the association Solidarité Palestine, if “it’s good news, it comes far too late” in the face of what he calls “genocide”. In the crowd, Maya, 37, a French-Lebanese physics researcher who arrived from Beirut a week ago, said she was “stunned by the media coverage” of the escalation in Lebanon. “We don’t hear about the bombing of civilians”.

    Among the thousand people who also marched in Lyon according to the prefecture, Jérôme Faÿnel, president of a local collective supporting the Palestinian people, said that it was an opportunity for him to denounce the anniversary of “one year of unheard-of brutality”.

    In Toulouse, 300 demonstrators chanted the name of “Georges Abdallah”, in reference to the Lebanese pro-Palestinian activist Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, imprisoned for 40 years for complicity in murder. His 11th request for release is to be examined on 7 October. “How can a court decision be issued on 7 October?” exclaimed Soraya, 50, who did not wish to give her last name. She denounces “a bias” on the part of the justice system, one year to the day after the unprecedented attack by Hamas.

    Flo, 22, an unemployed resident of Vienne (Isère), who did not wish to give his last name, came to demonstrate as he has been doing for a year, and for him, it is a “fight”: not a “symbolic fight”, but a “fight for justice” for the Palestinian and Lebanese people.

    In Nantes, two marches bringing together some 350 people in total, according to an AFP journalist, marched through the streets of the city center. In Strasbourg, there were 200 demonstrators, as in Bordeaux, where they observed a minute of silence “in homage to the martyrs” before walking peacefully, chanting “Palestine will live, Palestine will win”.

    Gatherings in Switzerland and South Africa

    In Basel, Switzerland, thousands of people also gathered in a park near the train station for a national pro-Palestinian demonstration called by the Swiss-Palestine Federation and a hundred or so organizations.

    In Madrid, 5,000 people, according to the authorities, demonstrated at the call of the Solidarity Network against the Occupation of Palestine (RESCOP), with placards saying “Boycott Israel” or “Humanity is dead in Gaza”. The demonstrators called on Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who has taken a number of critical positions against Israel in recent months, to break off diplomatic relations with the country.

    In Venezuela, hundreds of supporters of the government of Nicolás Maduro and members of the Arab community demonstrated in front of the UN headquarters in Caracas. Carrying a 25-metre-long Palestinian flag and shouting “Long live free Palestine” or “Iran, Iran, strike Tel Aviv”, the Chavistas presented the UN with a document calling for an end to the “genocide” of the Palestinian people and for “concrete actions” against Israel.

    In South Africa, in central Cape Town, hundreds of people demonstrated, waving Palestinian flags and chanting anti-Israel slogans at a pro-Gaza rally. Holding placards accusing Israel of genocide and racism, the protesters – many wearing keffiyehs, a symbol of the Palestinian struggle against Israel – marched toward the South African parliament.

    “Israel is a racist state” and “We are all Palestinians,” protesters chanted. Some of them said they supported South Africa’s complaint to the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Pretoria maintains that Israel’s offensive in Gaza violates the 1948 UN Genocide Convention.

    Many South Africans compare Israel’s stance toward the Palestinians to apartheid, the segregationist regime imposed by the white minority in the country until the first multiracial elections in 1994.

    (Editor’s note: The video of the rally in New York City is especially impressive.)

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    Africa, Europe, Mideast, TOLERANCE & SOLIDARITY, ,