May, 14 2018, 12:00am EDT
American Jews Stand Against the U.S. Embassy Move and Israel's Mass Killing of Protesters in Gaza
“This is the ongoing Nakba: Celebrating the annexation of Jerusalem while gunning down Palestinian protesters”
WASHINGTON
As the ceremony to open the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem is taking place, Israeli military forces are killing Palestinian protesters in Gaza. In moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, U.S. President Trump is cementing the U.S. - Israeli partnership to annex Jerusalem and further repress Palestinian rights.
"This is the ongoing Nakba," said Rebecca Vilkomerson, Executive Director of Jewish Voice for Peace. "The celebration of annexation, even as Palestinians - the vast majority of whom are refugees - are being gunned down simply for protesting for their basic rights to live in dignity and freedom, could not illustrate more clearly the continuing catastrophe that Israel is imposing on Palestinians. Still worse, it's doing so with the full collusion of the U.S."
The scenes of celebration at the new embassy, even as Israeli military forces use deadly violence against protesting Palestinians in Gaza, are appalling. At least 43 demonstrators have already been killed today and 1,700 wounded, as of 11.30am.
The blessing by Pastor Robert Jeffress at the opening of the U.S. Embassy exemplifies the disgraceful approach of the Trump administration to Israel/Palestine. Pastor Jeffries is a Christian Zionist who is outspoken in his proclamations that members of every religion except Christianity - including Jews, Muslims, Mormons, Hindus and Buddhists - are going to hell, among other reprehensible beliefs.
Since the demonstrations in Gaza began, Jewish Voice for Peace chapters have organized or participated in over 45 demonstrations, vigils and protests across the country in solidarity with Palestinians' right to protest and to demand a better life.
Rabbi Joseph Berman, Manager of Government Affairs and Grassroots Advocacy for JVP, said: "Jerusalem is a symbol of wholeness, liberation, and hope. Trump's immoral and irresponsible move of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem desecrates the city, goes against international consensus, and contributes to the ongoing occupation and displacement of Palestinians."
Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, a member of the JVP Rabbinical Council, added: "I am shaken to the core and dumbfounded that, on the even of the 70th commemoration of the catastrophe that befell the Palestinians when the state of Israel was established, Israeli military forces are continuing to shoot unarmed men, women and children engaged in nonviolent protest. We cannot be silent. The killing and maiming of Palestinians seeking their human rights must stop immediately." The JVP Rabbinical Council issued a statement condemning the killing of protesters in Gaza: "This is not what human beings do to one another. And we will not stand idly by as our neighbor's blood is shed."
Prior to today's protest, at least 43 Palestinians had been killed in the past six weeks by the Israeli military for protesting along the militarized fence between Gaza and Israel, and over 7,000 were wounded. Amnesty International called the Israeli assault by military snipers of the Great March of Return in Gaza "murderous" and charged Israel with "deliberately inflicting life-changing injuries," with soaring numbers of lower-limb amputations.
Tuesday marks the 70th anniversary of the Nakba (catastrophe) and the founding of the state of Israel, when close to a million Palestinians were forced from their homes. Most Palestinians in Gaza are refugees, forced to flee into Gaza during the Nakba. Demonstrations are expected to continue to Gaza and in Jerusalem. Since Israel unilaterally annexed the eastern half of Jerusalem in 1967, the international community has considered it to be occupied territory.
Jewish Voice for Peace is a national, grassroots organization inspired by Jewish tradition to work for a just and lasting peace according to principles of human rights, equality, and international law for all the people of Israel and Palestine. JVP has over 200,000 online supporters, over 70 chapters, a youth wing, a Rabbinic Council, an Artist Council, an Academic Advisory Council, and an Advisory Board made up of leading U.S. intellectuals and artists.
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Iranian President Missing After Helicopter Crash
President Ebrahim Raisi had been traveling in Iran's mountainous East Azerbaijan province.
May 19, 2024
This is a developing story... Check back for possible updates...
Dozens of search teams were deployed to Iran's mountainous East Azerbaijan province on Sunday to search for a helicopter that had been carrying the country's president, Ebrahim Raisi, as well as Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, after the aircraft reportedly experienced a "hard landing."
State news agency IRNA and Iran's mission to the United Nations reported that inclement weather, including rain and fog, had prevented the teams from finding the crash site after almost five hours of searching.
The helicopter had also been carrying East Azerbaijan province Gov. Malek Rahmati and Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Ale-Hashem, representative of the Iranian supreme leader to East Azerbaijan. Raisi had been in the province on an official visit to inaugurate a dam on the Iran-Azerbaijan border.
The term "crash" was used by one government official speaking to an Iranian newspaper, but details of the severity of the hard landing are not yet known.
The incident comes just over a month after Iran launched a drone-and-missile attack against Israel in retaliation for Israel's deadly bombing of the Iranian consulate in Syria.
Raisi, who was elected in 2021, has been sanctioned by the U.S. for his role in executing thousands of political prisoners in 1988 at the end of the Iran-Iraq War.
In the event of the president's death, power would be transferred to the first vice president, the conservative Mohammad Mokhber. An election would then be called within six months.
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said "chaotic times in Iran" may be ahead if elections are called.
"And that's not even taking into account if credible evidence emerges that there was foul play involved in the crash," said Parsi.
"The population has by and large lost faith in the idea that change can come through the ballot box," said Parsi. "Real alternatives to Iran's hardliners have simply not been allowed to stand for office in the in the last few elections. At the same time, those alternatives have in the eyes of the majority of the population lost credibility anyways, due to the failure to deliver change."
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Solidarity Marches Held Across Globe to Demand Cease-Fire in Gaza
Organizers held rallies in the U.S., Europe, and Asia to mark Nakba Day and condemn Israel's bombing and starvation of Palestinian civilians.
May 19, 2024
As one United Nations official on Saturday said that "brand new words" are needed to adequately describe the devastation Israel has wrought across Gaza in its U.S.-backed military assault, tens of thousands of people across the globe marched in solidarity with Palestinians to demand an end to the "ongoing Nakba."
The marches were held to honor Nakba Day, which was marked on May 15—the 76th anniversary of the mass displacement of 700,000 Palestinians who were forced from their homes when Israel declared statehood in 1948. The protesters demanded a cease-fire in Gaza, where Israeli forces have killed at least 35,456 people since October, the majority of them women and children.
Protesters in London carried signs reading, "Solidarity is a verb," and "The Nakba never ended" as they marched through Whitehall, close to the home and office of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Palestinian photojournalist Motaz Azaiza, who covered the first months of Israel's bombardment and evacuated Gaza in January, joined the marchers and told the crowd that mass protests around the world have given Palestinians hope.
"I didn't believe that I would stay alive to stand here in London today in front of the people, who saw me there under the bombing," said Azaiza. "Occupation is using all the weapons against us, the bombs, the killing, the starvation, the apartheid in the West Bank, and now killing the people and forcing them to leave their lands... I did my best to show you, and I believe you will do more, we all together will do more to stop this genocide."
In Dublin, Ireland, where politicians have harshly criticized Israel and its supporters for the assault on Gaza and the near-total blockade on humanitarian aid that has pushed parts of the enclave into famine, more than 100 civil society groups supported a march organized by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
Irish Palestinian Zak Hania, a researcher and translator who was trapped in Gaza until earlier this month when he was finally granted permission by Egyptian and Israeli authorities to leave, thanked the crowd for choosing "to stand with justice and to stand with an oppressed people."
"I am proud to be an Irish Palestinian," said Hania. "I am proud to see all of you. It is part of my healing... We inherited a dream from our parents. We are trying for all our lives to fulfill our dreams and our parents' dreams. My parents are dead, but I will work to fulfill their dreams. Their dream is to have a free Palestine."
Other protests included a rally outside the German embassy in Bangkok, a march of about 400 people in Washington, D.C., and a demonstration in Brooklyn where police violently arrested at least 34 people, according to The New York Times.
Nerdeen Kiswani, founder of pro-Palestinian group Within Our Lifetime, told the Times she witnessed "police indiscriminately grabbing people off the street and the sidewalk. They were grabbing people at random."
Independent journalists posted videos on social media of police officers punching and kicking protesters.
The latest show of global outrage toward the Israeli government and the Western leaders who have supported its assault on Gaza came as U.N. humanitarian aid officer Yasmina Guerda told U.N. News about her latest deployment to Rafah, where 900,000 people have now been forced to flee following Israel's incursion in the city.
"We would need to invent brand new words to adequately describe the situation that Palestinians in Gaza find themselves in today," said Guerda. "No matter where you look, no matter where you go, there's destruction, there's devastation, there's loss. There's a lack of everything. There's pain. There's just incredible suffering. People are living on top of the rubble and the waste that used to be their lives. They're hungry. Everything has become absolutely unaffordable. I heard the other day that some eggs were being sold for $3 each, which is unthinkable for someone who has no salary and has lost all access to their bank accounts."
"Access to clean water is a daily battle," she added. "Many people haven't been able to change clothes in seven months because they just had to flee with whatever they were wearing. They were given 10 minutes notice and they had to run away. Many have been displaced six, seven, eight times, or more."
The daily reality described by Guerda is continuing to unfold as the Israeli forces have prevented 3,000 aid trucks from entering Gaza in the past two weeks, according to the Government Media Office in the enclave. The closure of the Rafah and Karem Abu Salem crossings for the past 13 days, since Israel launched its new offensive in Rafah, has also prevented nearly 700 injured and sick people from leaving Gaza for treatment.
"This constitutes a clear danger in light of the collapse of the health system," said the office.
On Sunday, U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths warned that the blockade on aid is leading to "apocalyptic" consequences, with the famine that has taken hold in parts of northern Gaza close to spreading across the enclave.
"If fuel runs out, aid doesn't get to the people where they need it, that famine, which we have talked about for so long, and which is looming, will not be looming any more," said Griffiths. "It will be present."
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Rights Advocates Demand Probe Into Reports That Israel Uses WhatsApp to Target Palestinians
"The Israeli Lavender system, supported by artificial intelligence, identifies Palestinians by tracking their communications via WhatsApp or the groups they join," said a Palestinian digital rights group.
May 18, 2024
The Palestinian digital rights group Sada Social on Saturday called for an investigation into Israel's alleged use of WhatsApp user data to target Palestinians with its AI system, Lavender.
The group, which is affiliated with the Al Jazeera Media Institute and Access Now, accused Meta, which owns WhatsApp, of fueling "the 'Lavender' artificial intelligence system used by the Israeli military to kill Palestinian individuals within the Gaza enclave."
As Common Dreamsreported in April, the Israel Defense Forces has relied on AI systems including Lavender to target people Israel believes to be Hamas members.
At +972 Magazine, Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham wrote that a current commander of an elite Israeli intelligence unit pushed for the use of AI to choose targets in Gaza. The commander wrote in a guide book to create the system that "hundreds and thousands" of features can be used to select targets, "such as being in a WhatsApp group with a known militant, changing cell phone every few months, and changing addresses frequently."
Sada Social asserted that it had found the Lavender system uses WhatsApp data to select targets.
"The reports monitored by the Sada Social Center indicate that one of the inputs to the 'Lavender' system relies on data collected from WhatsApp groups containing names of Palestinians or activists who are wanted by 'Israel,'" said the group in a press release. "The Israeli Lavender system, supported by artificial intelligence, identifies Palestinians by tracking their communications via WhatsApp or the groups they join."
The mention of Israel's use of WhatsApp data in Abraham's reporting also caught the attention last month of Paul Biggar, founder of Tech for Palestine.
"There's a lot wrong with this—I'm in plenty of WhatsApp groups with strangers, neighbors, and in the carnage in Gaza you bet people are making groups to connect," wrote Biggar. "But the part I want to focus on is whether they get this information from Meta. Meta has been promoting WhatsApp as a 'private' social network, including 'end-to-end' encryption of messages."
"Providing this data as input for Lavender undermines their claim that WhatsApp is a private messaging app," he wrote. "It is beyond obscene and makes Meta complicit in Israel's killings of 'pre-crime' targets and their families, in violation of international humanitarian law and Meta's publicly stated commitment to human rights. No social network should be providing this sort of information about its users to countries engaging in 'pre-crime.'"
Others have pointed out that Israel may have acquired WhatsApp data through means other than a leak by Meta.
Journalist Marc Owen Jones said the question of "Meta's potential role in this is important," but noted that informants, captured devices, and spyware could be used by Israel to gain Palestinian users' WhatsApp data.
Bahraini activist Esra'a Al Shafei, founder of Majal.org, told the Middle East Monitor that the reports that WhatsApp user data has been used by the IDF's AI machine demonstrate why privacy advocates warn against the collection and storage of metadata, "particularly for apps like WhatsApp, which falsely advertise their product as fully private."
"Even though WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted, and claims to not have any backdoors to any government, the metadata alone is sufficient to expose detailed information about users, especially if the user's phone number is attached to other Meta products and related activities," Al Shafei said. "This is why the IDF could plausibly utilize metadata to track and locate WhatsApp users."
While Meta and WhatsApp may not necessarily be collaborating with Israel, she said, "by the very act of collecting this information, they're making themselves vulnerable to abuse and intrusive external surveillance."
In turn, "by using WhatsApp, people are risking their lives," she added.
A WhatsApp spokesperson told Anadolu last month that "WhatsApp has no backdoors and we do not provide bulk information to any government," adding that "Meta has provided consistent transparency reports and those include the limited circumstances when WhatsApp information has been requested."
Al Shafei said Meta must "fully investigate" how WhatsApp's metadata may be used "to track, harm, or kill its users throughout Palestine."
"WhatsApp is used by billions of people and these users have a right to know what the dangers are in using the app," she said, "or what WhatsApp and Meta will do to proactively protect them from such misuse."
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