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'If It Looks Like Ethnic Cleansing, It Probably Is,' Says Israeli Newspaper of North Gaza Siege
"If this process doesn't stop immediately, hundreds of thousands of people will become refugees, entire communities will be destroyed and the moral and legal stain of this crime will cling to and pursue every Israeli."
Oct 30, 2024
The editors of Israel's oldest newspaper on Wednesday published an editorial decrying the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from northern Gaza amid a ferocious Israeli offensive there that's killed more than 1,000 people over the past three weeks.
"For three and a half weeks, Israeli forces have been besieging the northern Gaza Strip," the editors of the left-wing newspaper Haaretz wrote in Wednesday's lead editorial. "Israel has almost completely blocked the entry of humanitarian aid, thereby starving the hundreds of thousands of people who live there. Information emerging from the besieged area is only partial, because ever since the war began, Israel has barred journalists from entering Gaza."
"Israel says it told the residents that they needed to leave northern Gaza, and even now, they can still move southward on routes the army has designated for this purpose," the editors noted. "Thus the residents, many of whom have already been uprooted two or three times or even more from the places to which they have fled the terrors of war, are now being asked to move again. Yet Israel has refrained from giving the displaced any guarantee that they will be able to return once the war ends."
"Given this," they added, "it's no wonder that grave suspicions have arisen that Israel is effectively perpetrating ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza and that this operation is intended to permanently empty this area of Palestinians."
"This suspicion fits with both the principles of the 'Generals' Plan' being pushed by Maj. Gen. (Res.) Giora Eiland—a plan Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has denied implementing—and the demands of the Jewish supremacist parties in the governing coalition that are openly pursuing a policy of mass expulsions and the renewal of Jewish settlement in northern Gaza," the editorial states.
Last week, senior Israeli officials including members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Cabinet and far-right Knesset lawmakers gathered near the Gaza border for a conference dedicated to the ethnic cleansing of Arabs and Jewish recolonization in the embattled Palestinian enclave.
"We came here with one clear purpose: to settle the entire Gaza Strip... Every inch from north to south," settler leader Daniella Weiss told attendees of the rally, which was backed by Netanyahu's Likud party. "Each of you will witness how Jews go to Gaza and Arabs will disappear from Gaza."
As the Haaretz editors noted:
Ethnic cleansing is both a moral crime and a legal one. Criminal law treats mass expulsions as both a war crime and a crime against humanity. Horrifyingly, some members of Benjamin Netanyahu's government want to commit these crimes. As soon as the war began, they began calling for "erasing Gaza" and for perpetrating a "second Nakba." But many Israelis made light of such statements, and the law enforcement system, headed by Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, refrained from dealing with this incitement to commit crimes.
Now, we can see the results: Israel is sliding into ethnic cleansing; its soldiers are carrying out the criminal policies of the messianic, Kahanist right; and even the opposition on the center and center-left isn't making a peep. This consensus behind ethnic cleansing is shameful, and every public leader who doesn't demand an end to the de facto expulsion is supporting this crime and has become a party to it.
"If this process doesn't stop immediately," the editors stressed, "hundreds of thousands of people will become refugees, entire communities will be destroyed and the moral and legal stain of this crime will cling to and pursue every Israeli."
Israel was founded in 1948, largely through the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Arabs from Palestine during the Nakba, or "catastrophe." Zionist militias—the two most violent of which were led by future Israeli prime ministers—utilized terror tactics including massacres and a death march to force the Indigenous Arabs from their homeland.
Israeli ethnic cleansing continued over the following eight decades and, according to critics, currently involves home demolitions and expulsions in the illegally occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, systematic land theft, and pogroms and other violent attacks by Jewish settler colonists backed—and sometimes joined—by Israel Defense Forces troops.
United Nations officials and international human rights groups said this week's Knesset vote to ban the life-saving U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) will exacerbate Israeli crimes in Gaza, including ethnic cleansing.
"Efforts to eliminate UNRWA are illegal under international law and will only amplify the genocide and ethnic cleansing Israel is enacting in Gaza while also undermining long-term prospects for peace," the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group, said Tuesday. "The Israeli government is not only deliberately blocking humanitarian and medical aid to people who are starving and dying, it is undermining support for Palestine refugees and the international legal framework protecting their rights."
On Monday, Francesca Albanese, the U.N.'s special rapporteur on Palestine, published a
report "contextualizing the situation within
a decadeslong process of territorial expansion and ethnic cleansing aimed at liquidating the Palestinian presence in Palestine."
Albanese's report was released a day after Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich—who supports the "total annihilation" of Gaza and said that killing 2 million Palestinians would be "justified and moral"—reiterated his call for Israeli annexation of the entire West Bank and the expulsion of the occupied territory's Palestinians.
Israel's policies and practices in Gaza—where more than 150,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023—are the subject of an ongoing South Africa-led genocide case before the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
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Analysis Details How Israel's Gaza Siege 'Is Driving a Humanitarian Disaster'
"Over 11 months, we have reached shocking levels of conflict, displacement, disease, and hunger," said one campaigner.
Sep 16, 2024
Israel's "complete siege" of the Gaza Strip "is driving a humanitarian disaster," with 83% of required food aid failing to enter the embattled enclave, where the entire population is facing hunger and disease and almost half a million Palestinians are at risk of starvation, an analysis published Monday revealed.
The analysis by 15 international aid organizations noted that a record-low average of just 69 aid trucks are entering the Gaza Strip each day, compared with an already insufficient 500 daily truckloads a year ago. Additionally, the groups said that "only 17 out of Gaza's 36 hospitals remain partially functional, and "critical infrastructure such as water networks, sanitation facilities, and bread mills" have been destroyed.
"While Israeli military attacks on Gaza intensify, lifesaving food, medicine, medical supplies, fuel, and tents have been systematically blocked from entering for almost a year," the aid groups—which include ActionAid, American Friends Service Committee, CARE International, Christian Aid, Islamic Aid, Oxfam International, and Save the Children—said in a statement.
The publication highlights numerous ways that "lifesaving aid is systematically obstructed on a daily basis" in Gaza.
"These include the denial of safety, with more than 40,000 Palestinians and nearly 300 aid workers killed since last October; the sharp tightening of a 17-year blockade to a full siege, which prevents aid from entering Gaza; delays and denials which restrict the movement of aid around Gaza; tightly restrictive and unpredictable control of imports; the destruction of public infrastructure such as schools and hospitals; and the displacement of civilians and humanitarian workers," the analysis' authors wrote.
Zenab, a 33-year-old Palestinian woman pregnant with her second child, said that her pregnancy "has been the hardest time of my life."
"It was also hard to get the medication I needed," she continued. Sometimes I had to walk for hours to different pharmacies, hospitals, and health centers to see if anyone had my medication available. For me as a pregnant woman, there has been hardly any healthcare support, no proper hygiene and sanitation, and no suitable mattress to sleep on."
"I was suffering from complications during my pregnancy," Zenab added. "We didn't have enough water to drink, and had hardly any food. The doctors again told me that my pregnancy was in danger."
Among the report's key findings:
- 83% of required food aid doesn't make it into Gaza, up from 34% in 2023;
- An estimated 50,000 children aged between 6-59 months urgently require treatment for malnutrition by the end of the year;
- 65% of the insulin required and half of the required blood supply are not available in Gaza;
- Availability of hygiene items has dropped to 15% of the amount available in September 2023, with 1 million women now going without the hygiene supplies they need;
- Only around 1,500 hospital beds in Gaza remain operational, compared to around 3,500 beds in 2023 which was already well below sufficient to meet the needs of a population of more than 2 million people; and
- 1.87 million people are in need of shelter with at least 60% of homes destroyed or damaged as of January, yet tents for around just 25,000 people have entered Gaza since May 2024.
"There is a shortage of all humanitarian items. We are overwhelmed [with] these needs and [these] urgent requirements," said Amjad Al Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGOs Network. "People [are] starving due to the shortage of aid. One hundred percent of the population depends on humanitarian aid."
The authors of the analysis—which was released ahead of this week's United Nations General Assembly in New York—are demanding that Israel secure an immediate and lasting cease-fire. They are also calling for an arms embargo on Israel and Israeli compliance with the recent International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion, which found that the occupation of Palestine is an illegal form of apartheid that must end immediately. Israel is on trial for genocide in a separate ICJ case.
"The situation was intolerable long before last October's escalation and is beyond catastrophic now."
"The situation was intolerable long before last October's escalation and is beyond catastrophic now," CARE International West Bank and Gaza country director Jolien Veldwijik said in a statement. "Over 11 months, we have reached shocking levels of conflict, displacement, disease, and hunger."
That includes dozens of children who have died due to malnutrition, dehydration, and lack of adequate medical care.
"Aid is still not getting in, and humanitarian workers are risking their lives to do their jobs while attacks and violations of international law intensify," Veldwijik added. "Aid, which is urgently required for 2.2 million people at risk of dying in the coming weeks and months, should never be politicized. We demand an immediate and sustained cease-fire, and the free flow of humanitarian aid into and throughout Gaza."
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What Students Mean When They Demand Divestment, and Why We Should Listen
The basic idea of divestment is simple: Stop investing in corporations or other entities that are doing harm.
Jun 29, 2024
Almost every day this spring, students used their graduation ceremonies as a platform to demand their universities and colleges divest from genocide in Gaza. Though I have been to hundreds of protests and events in my lifetime—in Palestine and in the U.S.—I find something particularly moving about students risking their own academic achievements to shine a light on the suffering and struggle of Palestinians.
I watched the first news reports of the Columbia University encampment from my family home in Ramallah, on the West Bank, during a work trip to the region. As the movement spread to other colleges and universities, I was meeting with staff from the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)—a Quaker organization I lead—in Ramallah and Amman. I met with teachers, farmers, activists, and politicians. They were so moved by the student encampments; it was all they wanted to talk about.
Our staff in Gaza have continued their lifesaving humanitarian aid work despite multiple displacements and the deaths of many friends and family members. They too were encouraged by the student protests. People in Rafah were painting messages of support and thanks for the students on the walls of their tents.
Missiles and bombs should have no place in a university’s investment portfolio, just as they should never be dropped on universities—in Gaza or anywhere in the world.
In the face of so much death and destruction, the protests bring hope to people in Palestine and around the world. But on my return to the U.S., many people seemed confused about what the demand for divestment actually meant.
The basic idea of divestment is simple: Stop investing in corporations or other entities that are doing harm. When large corporations profit from war and occupation, or poor labor conditions and environmental destruction, they tend to use their political influence to deepen and entrench these harmful activities—for example, the defense industry hires lobbyists and makes campaign contributions to influence politicians and policies to buy and use more weapons. Institutions like colleges and universities generally have large endowments that are invested in the stock market—and their portfolios may include such companies.
Divestment campaigns put pressure on these institutions to withdraw their money from companies engaging in harmful activities. When colleges and universities withdraw their investments from companies profiting from violence and exploitation, they also withdraw their political and financial support for these institutions and help create new behavior standards that respect human life, human rights, peace, and sustainability.
There is a long history of divestment as part of successful nonviolent movements for change. At AFSC, we’ve used divestment strategies in the anti-apartheid movement, farmworkers’ rights campaigns, the movement for nuclear disarmament, peace and anti-militarism campaigns, and struggles against mass incarceration and for the rights of immigrants.
We also practice what we preach. Using our investment screen, AFSC has divested our own funds from fossil fuels, Israeli occupation and apartheid, mass incarceration and mass surveillance in the U.S., and the militarization of borders, among other oppressive systems. Like many other organizations that invest responsibly, we have not seen any negative impact on our returns. The investors that insist on continuing to invest in social harm and human suffering are motivated by political will, not financial acumen.
Today we are joining with thousands of people across the U.S. to call for divestment from companies profiting from Israel’s brutal attacks on Gaza and its refusal to allow sufficient lifesaving humanitarian aid to enter. In fact, we are calling for divestment from all companies that are consistently, and knowingly complicit in grave human rights violations and violations of international law—wherever they occur.
The International Court of Justice, in response to South Africa’s request for additional measures in its genocide case, ordered an immediate halt to the assault on Rafah. Instead, Israel is bombing tent encampments in areas they have declared “safe zones,” killing children while they sleep. Institutions that choose to keep profiting from or supporting these atrocities are themselves complicit. The students occupying their universities are doing what student movements have done courageously for decades. They are leveraging their position to challenge their academic institutions to do the right thing. While the details of the demands vary from campus to campus, the message is the same: No one should profit from genocide, and we all must take action to stop it.
This includes divesting from publicly traded weapons manufacturers like Boeing, Elbit Systems, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin Corp, and Northrop Grumman, all of whom have provided weapons used in Israeli attacks on Gaza. It also includes companies like Valero, an oil and gas company that has been supplying military-grade jet fuel for the Israeli Air Force, and Palantir, a high-tech mass surveillance company that has been providing its AI-powered tools to the Israeli security forces.
Missiles and bombs should have no place in a university’s investment portfolio, just as they should never be dropped on universities—in Gaza or anywhere in the world. Yet as many student protestors have pointed out, every university in Gaza has been destroyed by Israeli airstrikes. Academic institutions should be investing in the wellbeing and intellectual development of the next generation, not its destruction.
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