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matthew miller
UN Chief Warns of Israel's Syria Invasion and Land Seizures
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres stressed the "urgent need" for Israel to "de-escalate violence on all fronts."
Dec 12, 2024
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Thursday that he is "deeply concerned" by Israel's "recent and extensive violations of Syria's sovereignty and territorial integrity," including a ground invasion and airstrikes carried out by the Israel Defense Forces in the war-torn Mideastern nation.
Guterres "is particularly concerned over the hundreds of Israeli airstrikes on several locations in Syria" and has stressed the "urgent need to de-escalate violence on all fronts throughout the country," said U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.
Israel claims its invasion and bombardment of Syria—which come as the United States and Turkey have also violated Syrian sovereignty with air and ground attacks—are meant to create a security buffer along the countries' shared border in the wake of last week's fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and amid the IDF's ongoing assault on Gaza, which has killed or wounded more than 162,000 Palestinians and is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case.
While Israel argues that its invasion of Syria does not violate a 1974 armistice agreement between the two countries because the Assad dynasty no longer rules the neighboring nation, Dujarric said Guterres maintains that Israel must uphold its obligations under the deal, "including by ending all unauthorized presence in the area of separation and refraining from any action that would undermine the cease-fire and stability in Golan."
Israel conquered the western two-thirds of the Golan Heights in 1967 and has illegally occupied it ever since, annexing the seized lands in 1981.
Other countries including France, Russia, and Saudi Arabia have criticized Israel's invasion, while the United States defended the move.
"The Syrian army abandoned its positions in the area... which potentially creates a vacuum that could have been filled by terrorist organizations," U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said at a press briefing earlier this week. "Israel has said that these actions are temporary to defend its borders. These are not permanent actions... We support all sides upholding the 1974 disengagement agreement."
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Biden Admin Hasn't Acted on 500 Reports of Israel Attacking Gaza Civilians With US Arms
One expert said the Biden administration is "ignoring evidence of widespread civilian harm and atrocities to maintain a policy of virtually unconditional weapons transfers to the Netanyahu government."
Oct 30, 2024
The Biden administration has reportedly received around 500 notices from international humanitarian groups, nonprofit organizations, and eyewitnesses alleging that the Israeli military has used American weaponry in attacks that harmed civilians in the Gaza Strip, likely in violation of both U.S. and international law.
But the administration, which has armed Israel's military to the hilt since the Hamas-led attack of last year, "has failed to comply with its own policies requiring swift investigations of such claims," according to The Washington Post, which first reported the nearly 500 notices on Wednesday.
Dozens of the reports delivered to the U.S. State Department over the past year "include photo documentation of U.S.-made bomb fragments at sites where scores of children were killed," the Post noted, citing unnamed human rights advocates who were briefed on the process.
"Yet despite the State Department’s internal Civilian Harm Incident Response Guidance, which directs officials to complete an investigation and recommend action within two months of launching an inquiry, no single case has reached the 'action' stage," the newspaper reported, citing unnamed current and former officials. "More than two-thirds of cases remain unresolved... with many pending response from the Israeli government, which the State Department consults to verify each case's circumstances."
"When it comes to the Biden administration's arms policies, everything looks good on paper but has turned out meaningless in practice when it comes to Israel."
John Ramming Chappell, a legal and policy adviser at the Center for Civilians in Conflict, told the Post that Biden administration officials are "ignoring evidence of widespread civilian harm and atrocities to maintain a policy of virtually unconditional weapons transfers to the Netanyahu government."
"When it comes to the Biden administration's arms policies," Chappell added, "everything looks good on paper but has turned out meaningless in practice when it comes to Israel."
William Hartung, a senior research fellow and arms industry expert at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told the Post that "it's almost impossible" that Israel isn't violating U.S. law "given the level of slaughter that's going on, and the preponderance of U.S. weapons."
Since last October, the U.S. has delivered more than 50,000 tons of weaponry to Israel, a flow of arms that has continued amid overwhelming evidence that the Israeli military has used American weapons to commit grave violations of international law.
In April, as Common Dreamsreported at the time, Amnesty International USA sent a research brief to the Biden administration detailing several cases in which the Israeli military violated international humanitarian law with U.S. weapons, including a pair of deadly strikes last year on homes full of civilians—attacks that killed 19 children.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military bombed a five-story residential building in northern Gaza, killing around two dozen children and scores of adults.
Matthew Miller, a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department, told reporters Tuesday that the Biden administration is "deeply concerned by the loss of civilian life in this incident" and has "reached out to the government of Israel to ask what has happened here."
Later in the same briefing, reporters pressed Miller on actions the Biden administration is taking to push Israel to stop impeding shipments of humanitarian assistance to Gaza. It's been just over two weeks since the Biden administration sent a letter to the Israeli government threatening to cut off U.S. military assistance if the humanitarian situation in Gaza doesn't improve within 30 days.
"Obviously, the 30 days isn't up," Drop Site's Ryan Grim noted during Tuesday's press briefing. "But two weeks ago the situation in northern Gaza was bad; like, today it's utterly dystopian. The opposite of making progress has happened there."
Miller responded that "we have made clear that the situation in northern Gaza... needs to change."
Nevertheless, Miller insisted to reporters that the U.S. State Department has "not assessed [Israel] to be in violation of the law at this point," a statement that contradicts the findings of both internal department experts and outside analysts.
"All the laws and policies that are supposed to prevent U.S. weapons from being used to commit atrocities by foreign countries are being completely ignored by the Biden admin in its rush to continue unimpeded weapons flows to Israel to commit genocide," Josh Ruebner, policy director at the IMEU Policy Project, wrote Wednesday.
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Israeli Leaders Demand Probe of IDF Rape Video—To Find Out Who Leaked It
"This is what Israelis rioted to protect, what the Knesset debated—the right to rape Palestinians," said one critic.
Aug 07, 2024
While human rights groups called for an investigation of a leaked recording apparently showing Israel Defense Forces reservists gang-raping a Palestinian detainee at the Sde Teiman military base and detention center, Israeli leaders including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Wednesday also furiously demanded a probe of the video—not to seek justice for the victim, but rather to find and punish whoever leaked it.
Smotrich took to social media Wednesday to call for "an immediate criminal investigation to locate the leakers of the trending video that was intended to harm the reservists and that caused tremendous damage to Israel in the world, and to exhaust the full severity of the law against them."
Israeli media on Tuesday aired footage in which Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reservists are seen attacking a Palestinian man at Sde Teiman while trying to hide their actions with shields.
According to Israeli media reports, the victim was hospitalized with a severe anal injury, ruptured bowel, broken ribs, and lung damage.
Nine alleged assailants—who include members of Force 100, the military unit tasked with guarding Sde Teiman prisoners—were arrested last week in connection with the attack. A mob of far-right Israelis including senior government officials subsequently stormed two military bases in an attempt to free the suspects.
While many Israelis condemned the alleged rape, others rallied around the accused reservists. Smotrich described them as "heroic warriors." National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called them "our best heroes."
Far-right Israeli lawmaker Zvi Sukkot—who took part in last week's riot—joined Smotrich in demanding an investigation of the video leak.
"Leaking and disclosure of investigative materials is a criminal offense that harms the proper legal process, the rule of law, public trust, and the principle of justice," he said Wednesday.
Israeli media reported Wednesday that two of the accused reservists lied on polygraph tests when asked if they had sodomized the prisoner.
Numerous Israelis continued to express support for the accused rapists. Israel Today political reporter Yehuda Schlesinger said Wednesday on a popular morning show that "I don't give a rat's ass what they do to Hamas man."
"The only thing that is a problem for me here is that it's not a regulated policy of the state to abuse the detainees, because, first of all, they deserve it, and it's great revenge... maybe it will serve us a little more a a deterrent..."
Genocidal psycho Yehuda Schlesinger,… https://t.co/hWpsD4VU3q pic.twitter.com/YH6G0kSvs3
— B.M. (@ireallyhateyou) August 7, 2024
"First of all, they deserve it," Schlesinger said of the abuse at Sde Teiman and other Israeli military prisons. "It's great revenge that we need to give them."
"It's just a shame that we don't do it in an institutionalized way, as part of regulations for torture of prisoners," he added, "because then the next guys who think about doing another October 7 will say, 'Do you see what they're doing to [us] in Israel?'"
Etan Nechin, the New York correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, accused the media of being the "main culprit" that "has normalized the most extreme voices, letting genocidal brutes, racists, and messianic zealots into Israeli's TV sets."
Some American media critics drew attention to the scant coverage of abuse at Sde Teiman in the U.S. corporate media.
"U.S. taxpayers continue to support this military and its torture camps," Palestinian American author and political analyst Yousef Munayyer wrote on social media. "How is this not front-page news?"
In the United States—which supports Israel's war on Gaza with billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic cover—State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said during a Wednesday press conference that "there ought to be zero tolerance for sexual abuse, rape of any detainee. Period."
"It is appropriate that the IDF in this case, has announced an investigation, has arrested a number of people who are alleged to have been involved, and I won't speak to the outcome of that investigation, but it ought to proceed swiftly," Miller added.
Critics noted the IDF's chronic failures to credibly investigate its alleged crimes. The Israeli rights group Yesh Din said in late 2022 that less than 1% of Israeli soldiers accused of harming Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza were indicted over the previous five years.
The Israeli Supreme Court on Wednesday took up a petition by rights groups seeking to close Sde Teiman, where widespread—and sometimes deadly—torture has been reported. Last month, Israel's High Court issued a conditional order seeking to shut down the prison in response to the flood of reports of torture there.
Former prisoners including children and Israeli whistleblowers at Sde Teiman—often called "Israel's Guantánamo Bay"—have described rampant torture and abuse at the facility, which is used to imprison Palestinians captured in the Gaza Strip. According to their testimonies, prisoners have been raped, electrocuted, mauled by dogs, burned with cigarettes, severely beaten, starved, and subjected to 24-hour shackling sometimes leading to amputations.
The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem
said this week that at least 60 Palestinians have died in Israeli custody since October.
More than 1,100 Israelis and others died during the Hamas-led attack on October 7, during which more than 240 other people were kidnapped. Israel's response—which is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case—has left more than 142,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, according to local and international officials.
Smotrich suggested earlier this week that it is "moral and justified" to starve 2 million Palestinians to death. So far, at least dozens, mostly children, have died from malnutrition, dehydration, and lack of medical care in Gaza amid Israel's crippling assault and siege.
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