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For Immediate Release
September, 11 2024, 08:34am EDT
Contact:
Sunrise on debate: A Missed Opportunity for Harris in Debate With A Climate Criminal
Following the tonight's Presidential Debate, Sunrise Communications Director Stevie O'Hanlon issued the following statement:
"Tonight, Trump made it very clear. He will give oil and gas CEOs exactly what they want: a boom in oil and gas production at the expense of our health and our planet.
Harris missed a critical opportunity to lay out a stark contrast with Trump and show young voters that she will stand up to Big Oil and stop the climate crisis. Harris spent more time promoting fracking than laying out a bold vision for a clean energy future.
We have just 6 years to stop catastrophic climate change. Young voters want more from Harris. We want to see a real plan that meets the scale and urgency of this crisis. 78% of young voters in key swing states say climate change is a major issue shaping their vote.
This election is going to be incredibly close. We’re working hard to turn out young voters, but we hear people asking every day, “What are Democrats going to do for us?” To win, Harris needs to show young people she will fight for us."
Sunrise Movement is a movement to stop climate change and create millions of good jobs in the process.
LATEST NEWS
As Biden Defers to Israel, Turkey Plans Arrest Warrants for IDF Killers of Aysenur Eygi
"We will make every effort to ensure that this crime does not go unpunished," the Turkish Foreign Ministry said as new evidence undercut the Israeli military's claims about the killing.
Sep 12, 2024
Turkey's justice minister said Thursday that the country intends to seek international arrest warrants over the Israeli military's killing of Aysenur Eygi, a dual citizen of the United States and Turkey who was shot in the head by an unidentified IDF soldier during a protest in the illegally occupied West Bank last week.
Yilmaz Tunc told journalists that Turkey's chief prosecutor's office is currently investigating "those responsible for the martyrdom and murder of our sister Aysenur Ezgi Eygi" and plans to pursue arrest warrants over the killing, Reutersreported Thursday.
The outlet noted that Tunc said the Turkish government "had evidence regarding the killing," without offering specifics.
Turkey's Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, issued a statement Thursday saying Eygi "was deliberately targeted and killed by Israeli soldiers during a peaceful demonstration in solidarity with Palestinians in the occupied West Bank."
"We once again condemn this murder committed by the genocidal Netanyahu government," the statement continued. "We will make every effort to ensure that this crime does not go unpunished."
"We fear that if this pattern of impunity does not end with Ms. Eygi, it will only continue to escalate."
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) acknowledged in a statement earlier this week that it is "highly likely" Eygi was killed "by IDF fire" but insisted she "was hit indirectly and unintentionally" in the heat of a "violent riot."
But a Washington Postinvestigation published Wednesday undercuts that narrative, which eyewitnesses have repeatedly disputed in recent days.
Citing testimony from more than a dozen eyewitnesses as well as video and photographic evidence, the Post reported that "Eygi was shot more than a half-hour after the height of confrontations in [the West Bank village of] Beita, and some 20 minutes after protesters had moved down the main road—more than 200 yards away from Israeli forces."
The IDF "declined to answer questions from The Post about why its forces fired toward the demonstrators so long after they had retreated, and from a distance where they posed no apparent threat," the U.S. newspaper added.
The Post published its investigation shortly after U.S. President Joe Biden faced backlash for parroting the IDF's claim that Eygi's killing was "apparently an accident." Biden later issued a statement saying the "shooting that led to her death is totally unacceptable."
With the Biden administration deferring to the Israeli military's investigation and declining to launch its own probe, U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) called for a "thorough independent U.S. investigation, led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), into the killing of Ms. Eygi," who recently graduated from the University of Washington.
"Tragically, Washington state is no stranger to this issue," Jayapal and Murray wrote in a letter to Biden and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. "In 2003, Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old U.S. citizen and college student from Olympia, Washington, was killed while peacefully protesting the demolition of homes in Gaza. Despite over 70 members of Congress calling for an independent investigation, no such investigation was undertaken."
"We fear that if this pattern of impunity does not end with Ms. Eygi, it will only continue to escalate," they added. "It is imperative that the United States take concrete and decisive action to better protect American citizens."
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'No More Money for Netanyahu's War Machine,' Says Sanders After Latest Gaza Atrocities
"Another school bombed, killing 14 people, including six U.N. aid workers," U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders wrote. "Enough is enough."
Sep 12, 2024
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders reiterated his call for an end to American arms transfers to the Israeli military on Wednesday following the latest deadly attack on a school-turned-shelter for displaced people in central Gaza.
In a social media post, Sanders (I-Vt.) highlighted atrocities committed by Israeli forces over just the past week, including the bombing of a so-called "safe zone" and the killing of an American citizen in the West Bank.
"Now, another school bombed, killing 14 people, including six U.N. aid workers," Sanders wrote. "Enough is enough. No more money for Netanyahu's war machine."
Israel's bombing of the United Nations-run al-Jaouni school in the Nuseirat refugee camp on Wednesday was the most recent in a string of attacks on displaced people who have been forced by the Israeli military's evacuation orders and relentless airstrikes to crowd into ever-shrinking slivers of Gaza.
The school was sheltering around 12,000 people at the time of the Israeli airstrikes, according to the head of the United Nations.
Israel's military
claimed it was targeting militants. Hospital officials said at least two children were among those killed in Wednesday's strike.
The Israeli attack on the tent city of al-Mawasi earlier this week appeared to have been carried out with 2,000-pound bombs supplied by the United States, killing or wounding dozens of people including entire families.
"The United States is complicit in this individual crime, as well as in Israel's genocide of Palestinians, because it continues to supply Israel with weapons, despite knowing that the Israeli army uses these massively destructive weapons to regularly kill hundreds of civilians," the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said in a statement Tuesday.
"All nations that cooperate with Israel in committing crimes by providing it with any kind of direct support or assistance must be held accountable, most notably the United States," the group added. "Giving aid and engaging in contractual agreements with Israel relating to the military, intelligence, politics, law, finance, and the media, among other domains that might help its crimes continue, is enabling Israel to commit its atrocities against Palestinians."
The United States has provided Israel with over 50,000 tons of weaponry and other military equipment since the October 7 Hamas-led attack, and the Biden administration recently signed off on a $20 billion sale of F-15 fighter jets, mortar shells, and other wares.
With U.S. support, Israeli atrocities in Gaza continue to mount.
Shortly before the school attack on Wednesday, Israeli forces bombed "a home near the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, killing 11 people, including six brothers and sisters from the same family ranging in age from 21 months to 21 years old," news agencies
reported.
"A strike late Tuesday on a home in the urban Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza killed nine people, including six women and children," the news outlets added. "
The civil defense agency said the home belonged to Akram al-Najjar, a professor at the al-Quds Open University, who survived the strike."
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UNRWA Says 6 Workers Among at Least 18 Killed in Israeli Strikes on Gaza School
"This school has been hit five times since the war began. It is home to around 12,000 displaced people, mainly women and children. No one is safe in Gaza. No one is spared."
Sep 11, 2024
The United Nations relief agency for Palestine said Wednesday that six of its workers are among the at least 18 people killed in a pair of Israeli airstrikes targeting a U.N. school in the Gaza Strip where thousands of forcibly displaced Palestinians were sheltering.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said the Israeli strikes on one of its schools, located in Nuseirat in central Gaza, resulted in "the highest death toll among our staff in a single incident" since Israeli forces began bombarding the strip following last October's Hamas-led attack on Israel.
"Among those killed was the manager of the UNRWA shelter and other team members providing assistance to displaced people," the agency said. "Sincere condolences to their families and loved ones. This school has been hit five times since the war began. It is home to around 12,000 displaced people, mainly women and children."
Victims of the strikes included women and children.
Earlier on Wednesday the United Nations said the school had been "previously deconflicted with the Israeli forces."
"No one is safe in Gaza. No one is spared," UNRWA stressed. "Schools and other civilian infrastructure must be protected at all times, they are not a target."
Responding to the attacks, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said on social media that "these dramatic violations of international humanitarian law need to stop now."
Israel is currently on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice, a U.N. body. International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan is also seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders—at least one of whom, Ismail Haniyeh, has been assassinated.
Over the past 341 days, Israel's assault on Gaza has left more than 145,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, according to Palestinian and international officials. Nearly all of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been forcibly displaced, while Israel's "complete siege" of Gaza has starved and sickened millions of Palestinians, dozens of whom have died of malnutrition, dehydration, and lack of medical care.
UNRWA says around 200 of its staff members have been killed in more than 450 Israeli attacks on agency facilities since October. More than 500 Palestinians have been killed while seeking shelter under the U.N. flag.
Responding to Israeli claims—reportedly extracted from Palestinian prisoners in an interrogation regime rife with torture and abuse—that a dozen of the more than 13,000 UNRWA workers in Gaza were involved in the October 7 attack, numerous nations including the United States cut off funding to the agency. Almost all of them have restored funding as Israeli lies have been debunked.
Bucking this trend, U.S. President Joe Biden in March signed a bill prohibiting American funding for UNRWA.
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