SPECIAL REPORTS PALESTINE

FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA - FREE PALESTINE
  August 2 P2 -- August wk2 -- August wk1 P2 -- August wk1 -- July wk4 P3 --  July wk4 P4/2-- July wk4P4 -- July wk4 P3 --  July wk4 P2 --   Click here for an overview by week in 2024
 

Special reports: TRIBUTES TO MOTHERS AND CHILDREN Shoroughs' family August 7, 2024: 'My children cry all day from the heat': Life in Gaza’s tent camps... and August 5, 2024: Shorough 'We have nothing left in this world, except our daughter': a young mother on life in Gaza... Alaa al-Nimer  and daughter Nimah July 28, 2024 "My baby girl was born on the street": A traumatic birth in Gaza

July 22, 2024 Ms. Maram Humaid: "A letter to my son: As you turn one today in Gaza, I feel joy and sorrow"  July 12, 2024 Noor Alyacoubi - "I'm fighting to keep my baby alive" and other stories Mothers and children: Boom-And again Boom Special report: July 12, 2024: Scorched Hospitals - Schools -  Housing - Bodies -- fake or fact?

August 7 - 5, 2024 Food for thought: "The Israelis claim it is a safe zone. Why are they shelling the area now? This is all false propaganda." and "Welcome to Hell" and actual news

August 6 - 3, 2024 <<Israel's 'Samson syndrome' in Gaza... and <<Israeli rights group details systematic abuse of Palestinians in Israel's jails... and <<Israeli prisons 'operate like torture camps' for Palestinian detainees... and <<Live: UN calls for 'urgent de-escalation' as tensions mount in Middle East... and <<Israeli strikes killed 12 people in Gaza, including four in a tent camp for displaced people... and <<Inside the one place left for Gaza's population to go, civilians live among the dead... and more actual news

August 3 - July 31, 2024 Food for thought by Gino d'Artali: "Reading the below may cause 'light' patterns or images that could trigger seizures or cause discomfort for people with a heart".   Read the latest news below.   Click here to go throughout July and earler, 2024

June 14, 2024 Palestinian-Jordanian journalist Hiba Abu Taha sentenced to one year in prison

Related news: July 11, 2024: Media organizations demand access to Gaza July 2 2024: Arrests of Palestinian journalists since start of Israel-Gaza war   Click here for earlier stories/news

May 23, 2024 In commemoration of Roshdi Sarraj and tribute to Shrouq Al Aila

 
When one hurts or kills a women
one hurts or kills hummanity and is an antrocitie.
Gino d'Artali
and: My mother (1931-1997) always said to me <Mi figlio, non esistono notizie <vecchie> perche puoi imparare qualcosa da qualsiasi notizia.> Translated: <My son, there is no such thing as so called 'old' news because you can learn something from any news.>
Gianna d'Artali.

Al Jazeera - August 7, 2024
<<Israel issues new evacuation orders as 'safe areas' of Gaza under attack
Overnight Israeli air raids hit shelters in Deir el-Balah as Gaza City braces for a possible ground operation. The Israeli military has issued new evacuation orders for Palestinians in northern Gaza, as Gaza City braces for a possible ground operation. On Wednesday, army spokesperson Avichay Adraee posted the evacuation orders for several districts in Beit Hanoon and Beit Lahiya, areas that were among the most affected by Israel's ground invasion at the onset of the war 10 months ago. In a message sent to Palestinian residents, he said that Hamas and other groups were <firing rockets from your area> towards Israel and that the military <will act forcefully and immediately against them>. <For your own safety, evacuate immediately to the known shelters in the centre of Gaza City,> the army spokesman said. Israel's Channel 12 reported that the army was preparing for a <large-scale> ground operation in Gaza City, where an Israeli air raid on a house killed three Palestinians on Wednesday, according to medical sources. Al Jazeera correspondents reported at least two other people were killed in air raids in the city. One of the victims was found in Gaza City's Daraj neighbourhood while another was recovered in the Zeitoun area. Overnight Israeli attacks also destroyed two homes and tents sheltering displaced people in central Gaza's Deir el-Balah, killing three people and wounding 10. Palestinians who had moved to the area after Israeli forces said it was a designated <safe zone>, are now forced to pick up their lives again. "Most of the people here have been displaced numerous times - from Rafah, Khan Younis and central Gaza - now they’re all crammed into Deir el-Balah," one resident told Al Jazeera. "The Israelis claim it is a safe zone. Why are they shelling the area now? This is all false propaganda."
Verge of large-scale attack
"There is a growing fear right now because of the concentrated air attacks on the central area, coupled with heavy artillery in the past few days," Al Jazeera's Hani Mahmoud reported from Khan Younis in southern Gaza. "Deir el-Balah is the only remaining, somehow intact, city with buildings people can shelter in. But right now, there is a growing concern that the repeated attacks on Deir el-Balah indicate that this area, and largely the central area, is on the verge of a wider-scale attack and a larger invasion." Fighting has continued in the Gaza Strip even as Israel braces for an expected response from Iran and its close Lebanese ally Hezbollah after the July 31 assassination in the Iranian capital, Tehran, of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
Israeli military attacks on Gaza have killed 24 people and injured 110 in the latest 24-hour reporting period, according to the enclave's Health Ministry.
It said on Wednesday that at least 39,677 people have been killed and 91,645 wounded in Gaza since October 7. An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led attacks and more than 200 were taken captive.>>
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/7/israel-issues-new-evacuation-orders-as-safe-areas-of-gaza-under-attack

France 25 - August 7, 2024 - by NEWS WIRES
<<Paris probes threats to Israeli Olympic athletes amid tensions over Gaza war
Paris prosecutors are investigating death threats and other offenses against athletes from Israel's Olympic team amid tensions over the Gaza war and increasing fears of a broader conflict in the Middle East. Israel's Olympic team said some athletes have received threats as they compete in Paris amid larger tensions over Palestinian deaths during the war in Gaza and the threat of a wider regional conflict in the Middle East. Yael Arad, president of the Israeli National Olympic Committee, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that team members had received <centralized> threats meant to generate <psychological terror> in athletes, without giving further details. Last week, Paris prosecutors opened an investigation into emailed death threats to Israeli athletes, and the national cybercrime agency is looking into the leak of some Israeli athletes' personal data online, which has since been taken down. Prosecutors also launched an inquiry into inciting racial hated after Israeli athletes received <discriminatory gestures> during an Israel-Paraguay match. Tom Reuveny, a 24-year-old Israeli athlete who won a gold in wind surfing over the weekend, was among those who said he’s received threats. Politics "should be put aside" during the Games, he told AP during a memorial Tuesday for 11 Israeli athletes killed during the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany. "I don't think any politics should be involved in sport, especially in the Olympic Games," Reuveny said. "Unfortunately, there is a lot of politics involved - not in the Games - of the people who don't want us to compete and don't want us to be here. I've gotten quite a few messages and threats." While Israel has called for the Olympics to remain a neutral space, the Palestinian delegation has used the Games as a way to generate conversation about the day-to-day struggles of those in Gaza. The Israel-Hamas war has claimed more than 39,000 Palestinian lives. "The thing that really hurts me is that people are looking at Palestinians as just numbers now. The number of people that died. The number of people displaced," Palestinian American Olympic swimmer Valerie Tarazi told the AP on Sunday. "As athletes, we're here just as everyone else. We want to compete. As people, we have lives. ... We want to live in our homes, just like everyone else in the world," she added.
As global leaders have raised alarm over deaths in Gaza and called for Hamas and Israel to agree to a cease-fire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he would accept nothing less than a <total victory> against Hamas. The world is coming together in Paris at a moment of global political upheaval, multiple wars, historic migration and a deepening climate crisis, all issues that have risen to the forefront of conversation in the Olympics. Tensions across the Middle East are spiking following the killings last week of a senior Hezbollah commander in Lebanon and Hamas' top political leader in Iran, in suspected Israeli strikes. Both groups are backed by Iran. Palestine's Olympic team has demanded that the International Olympic Committee ban Israel from competing in the Olympics, alleging the country has violated the Olympic charter. Last week, the Palestinian delegation said it had not received a response from the IOC and that it planned to take its plea to higher sports courts. Israel's team has been met by jeers in stadiums during the country's national anthem, and athletes have arrived to events under a heavy police escort, including riot police vans.
"It's not easy to be an Israeli athlete in the international arena these days," said Arad, head of Israel's Olympic committee. The Olympics is "a bridge between people, between countries, between religions. And we are here to compete."
(AP)>>
Source:
https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20240807-paris-investigates-threats-israeli-olympic-athletes-tensions-gaza-war

France 25 - August 7, 2024 - by NEWS WIRES
<<Israel vows to kill new Hamas chief Sinwar as US warns against escalation
Israel's army chief vowed on Wednesday to pursue and eliminate Yahya Sinwar, who was named leader of Hamas following the killing of his predecessor in Tehran last week. Earlier in the day, Israeli forces raided the Balata refugee camp near the city of Nablus and destroyed the local headquarters of the Fatah faction, Palestinian authorities said, as security forces continued sweeps in the occupied West Bank. Read our liveblog to see how all the day's events unfolded.
Summary:
Israel's army chief vowed on Wednesday to pursue and eliminate Yahya Sinwar, who was named leader of Hamas following the killing of his predecessor in Tehran last week. Israeli forces raided the Balata refugee camp near the city of Nablus and destroyed the local headquarters of the Fatah faction, Palestinian authorities said, as security forces continued sweeps in the occupied West Bank. Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi movement said on Wednesday that it had targeted a ship identified as the Contship Ono with ballistic missiles in the Red Sea, as well as two US destroyers heading northwards in the waterway.
At least 39,677 Palestinians have been killed and 91,645 injured in Israel's war in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run enclave. The Hamas-led October 7 attacks resulted in the deaths of more than 1,190 people, mostly civilians, according to official Israeli figures. Some 250 people were taken hostage, with about 120 remaining in Gaza. Many have been declared dead by Israeli authorities.>>
Read more here incl. video:
https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20240807-%F0%9F%94%B4-live-israel-war-blinken-says-up-to-new-hamas-chief-yahya-sinwar-decide-gaza-ceasefire

Al Jazeera, August 6, 2024 - by Khalid Albaih Political cartoonist
<<Palestine is a glimpse of the dystopic future that awaits us
AI-powered human extermination is no longer science fiction. It is the reality.
"Putting my two girls to bed is a daily ritual for me. I lie down in their bed and have one by each side. We read a story, and they play around, tease each other, tease me. Finally, I ask them to go to bed firmly, and they fall asleep in a second. Recently we had particularly intense weather here in Oslo, with loud thunderstorms disturbing our routine. The girls were scared of the deafening sound that sometimes seemed so close that it even scared me, but I kept it together for them. As they curled closer to me, I reassured them with the same words my own parents used when I was a child to calm me and my siblings down: that we were safe and that God is the most merciful, so not to worry. Still, the girls asked a million questions as children often do: Who sends the thunder? Why does God do this to us? Doesn’t God see and hear everything? As I struggled to answer amid the thunderstorm, I thought about Gaza. At that moment, somewhere in the ruins of a home or in a tent, a Palestinian father was also hugging his two daughters and struggling to answer similar questions. My thoughts raced. What was he telling his children? That it is not God, the most merciful, making the scary, thunderous sounds, but a kid in a military uniform behind a screen, playing god and making decisions about who lives and who dies with a touch of a button? How do you explain a high-tech genocide to a child? How do you tell them that they are living in an extermination campaign of the future? As I lay there with my two scared girls, I thought about what Gaza is and what it tells us about our own future and the future of our children. I am somewhat of a sci-fi buff. Over the past three decades, I have consumed hundreds of science fiction movies, series and comic books. As I read the news and watch videos of the reality the people of Palestine face today, I cannot but get constant deja vus of scenes, concepts and scenarios that I have seen repeatedly in the dystopia genre. The ongoing genocide in Gaza is perhaps the most technology-enabled in the history of humanity. Every aspect of the extermination is powered by technology: the bombs, the shooting, the decisions on who lives and who dies. The trendy <Artificial Intelligence> (AI) is of course all over it. An AI program called Lavender has the names of nearly everyone in Gaza and churns out suggestions for people to attack based on <data inputs>, such as social media use. Another system called <the Gospel> generates endless numbers of <military targets>, including residential buildings. A third AI invention called grotesquely <Where's Daddy?> checks if a <suspect> is at home so they can be bombed - which usually kills their families and neighbours as well. What is going on in Gaza really sounds like a plot of a Hollywood movie about AI going rogue. But it is more than that. It is also what war will look like in our near future: humans will hide behind screens and let technology carry out the killing. The Israelis are doing that quite extensively already. The use of drones and quadcopters to shoot at civilians even in their homes has been well-documented. Fearing Hamas's tunnels, they have also deployed dog-shaped robots to explore the underground. Seeing images of these reminded me of Metalhead, an episode of the British sci-fi series, Black Mirror, in which AI-powered robot dogs hunt people. Another aspect of the use of AI and other high tech is that it brings the Israeli campaign of dehumanising Palestinians to a grand finish. There is nothing that says more clearly <We do not consider Palestinians human> than allowing technology to kill them indiscriminately.
Indeed, the Israelis have perfected dehumanisation. They do not need to implant their soldiers with neurochips - like in the Black Mirror episode Men Against Fire - so they do not feel remorse. The extensive brainwashing in Israeli schools and society has rendered the majority of Israeli soldiers willing to go along with genocide - some appearing to even enjoy it. Israel's genocidal AI technology has been empowered and fed by another major high-tech sector: surveillance. Israel's tremendous progress in surveillance technology has been driven by the need to control the population it occupies. In what Amnesty International calls "automated apartheid", the Israeli authorities have deployed such sophisticated surveillance mechanisms - and so many of them - that Palestine today looks like a much worse version of George Orwell's 1984. In Orwell's novel, an omnipresent regime watches every move of its subjects, its surveillance and repression penetrating and destroying the most intimate, the most precious aspects of human life. The Israeli apartheid regime works in similar ways. There is not a Palestinian cry, not a Palestinian sigh that the Israeli colonial regime does not know about. It knows everything about everyone. By using powerful technological tools - from drones, to various hacking software, high-tech cameras and special facial recognition instruments - it has gained access to all Palestinian public and private spaces. "[T]he drone is constantly with me in my bedroom - worry and fear don't leave our homes," a Palestinian teenager told the AFP in 2022, a year before the war started. She said she had trouble sleeping and concentrating because of the constant buzzing sound of Israeli military drones flying above the crowded Palestinian enclave. "Sometimes I have to put the pillow on my head so I don't hear its buzz," she added. Back then, Israel would fly drones above Gaza for 4,000 flying hours every month - the equivalent of having five such aircraft permanently in the sky. In the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, the situation has been no better. There, Israel has deployed vast networks of security cameras, many pointed directly at the windows of Palestinian homes, closely watching family life. It is also extensively using facial recognition technology. There have been media reports of the so-called Blue Wolf program, in which soldiers are encouraged to take photos of Palestinians, including children and the elderly, to feed a database, with prizes awarded to the units that gather the most. The psychological toll of feeling constantly watched can be immense. Indeed, it is akin to the oppressive atmosphere in Orwell's dystopian world. But the impact of surveillance goes beyond instilling anxiety and fear. Just like in 1984, Israel's surveillance monster machine uses information about Palestinians’ private affairs against them. It is one of its most destructive methods of recruiting informants and collaborators, which undermines internal cohesion and solidarity among Palestinians and destroys families and friendships.
There is one more aspect of Orwell’s novel that I see in the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians: the propensity for double-speak. Genocide is <self-defence>; Palestinian civilians are <terrorists> or <not innocent>; resistance fighters are <terrorists>; colonialism and land theft are <making the desert bloom>. Talking about <making the desert bloom> - this is among the spin Israel is putting on its genocidal campaign in Gaza as well. In May, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office released information about its Gaza 2035 plan, which has the strip looking like a high-tech, prosperous city of the future, with a port, a railway and glitzy residential buildings. This is what Gaza will look like 10 years after the genocide - its survivors enjoying the sweet life of economic progress, bestowed upon them by their Israeli genocidaires. It sounds almost like a plot taken out of The Matrix trilogy, where the oppressors force the oppressed into a virtual reality of an easy life to blind them to their reality - a life of slavery and exploitation. But promises of material prosperity have not dissuaded Palestinians from giving up on their homeland before. This ruse will not work in the future, either. There is an iconic scene in The Matrix illustrating a very human choice between obedience and resistance. Neo has to choose between a blue pill, which maintains the illusion, and a red one - which breaks it. The Palestinian people have made that choice long ago; for them, the blue pill has never been an option. The question now is what choice we will make in the face of the very real possibility that what we see in Gaza today will become the new normal in the very near future. Do we ignore it, and swallow the blue pill? Or do we wake up with the red one? For many people in the world, the genocide in Gaza may seem like a faraway tragedy - one that cannot happen to them. But these killing and surveillance technologies Israel is testing on the Palestinians are up for sale. And many governments and non-state actors have their eyes on them. <Just as Israel's technological revolution provided the world with breathtaking innovation, I am confident that AI developed by Israel will benefit all of humanity,> Netanyahu said ominously at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2023, less than three weeks before his army launched a genocidal war. As I lay next to my two sleeping girls, I fear for their future. I fear that not enough of us are willing to see reality for what it is and take a stance now before it is too late, before the whole world slips down the path towards Gaza."
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.>>
Source:
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/8/6/palestine-is-a-glimpse-of-the-dystopic-future-that-awaits-us

Al Jazeera, August 6, 2024
<<Dr Gabor Mate and Daniel Mate on genocide in Gaza
Dr Gabor Mate and his son Daniel discuss the context of genocide in Gaza and how bearing witness to that has affected them.>>
Source incl. video:
https://www.aljazeera.com/program/the-stream/2024/8/6/dr-gabor-mate-and-daniel-mate-on-genocide-in-gaza

Le Monde - August 6, 2024
<<Hamas names Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar as new political leader
Ismail Haniyeh, Sinwar's predecessor, was killed in Tehran last week, sending regional tensions soaring. Hamas named Gaza Strip chief Yahya Sinwar as its new political leader on Tuesday, August 6, after his predecessor Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Tehran last week, sending regional tensions soaring. "The Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas announces the selection of leader Yahya Sinwar as the head of the political bureau of the movement," a statement from the group said. Minutes after the announcement, Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, said it fired a barrage of rockets from the Gaza Strip toward Israel. The Israeli military and officials accuse Sinwar of being one of the masterminds of the October 7 attack on Israel, making him one of the country's most wanted militants. His appointment as the new chief of Hamas comes less than a week after Haniyeh was killed in Tehran. Iran and Hamas have blamed Israel for his assassination. Israel has declined to comment on the killing.
Hamas's October 7 attack resulted in the death of 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to an Agence France-Presse (AFP) tally based on official Israeli figures.
During the attack, militants also seized 251 people, 111 of whom are still held captive in Gaza, including 39 the military says are dead. Israel's retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has so far killed at least 39,653 people, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory, which does not provide details on civilian and militant deaths.
Le Monde with AFP>>
Source:
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/08/06/hamas-names-gaza-chief-yahya-sinwar-as-new-political-leader_6710457_4.html

Sky News - August 6, 2024 - By Claire Gilbody Dickerson, news reporter
<<UNRWA staff fired over possible involvement in Hamas's 7 October attack on Israel
Nine staff members working for the main aid agency in Gaza have been fired as a UN watchdog found sufficient evidence pointing to their possible involvement in the attack. The possible involvement of some UNRWA workers in the attack has been investigated since January, when Israel raised the allegations against the main aid agency in war-torn Gaza. The UN's Office of Internal Oversight Services said it found sufficient evidence pointing to nine employees' potential involvement in the 7 October attack, which saw Hamas militants enter southern Israel to kill 1,200 people and take 250 more hostage. The investigators reviewed internal UNRWA information, including staff records, email and other communications data to reach their conclusion. The UN watchdog said it also drew on evidence provided by Israeli authorities, but as it didn't get direct access to it, the agency couldn't corroborate the claims independently. UNRWA has been the main agency distributing aid to Palestinians in Gaza during the 10-month old war there, which Gaza health officials say has killed more than 39,600 people and unleashed a mass humanitarian catastrophe.
UNRWA - which denies collaborating with Hamas - said more than 200 of its staff members have been killed.
Inside Gaza's only place left to go
The agency previously fired 12 workers and put seven others on administrative leave without pay over the claims about their possible involvement in the 7 October attack. The group of nine fired UNRWA workers announced on Monday includes some from each group, Juliette Touma, the agency's communications director, said. The UN did not clarify how many have now been fired from the agency in total.>>
Source incl. video:
https://news.sky.com/story/unrwa-staff-fired-over-possible-involvement-in-hamass-7-october-attack-on-israel-13191705

BBC - August 6, 2024 - By Robert Greenall
<<Blindfolded, bound and beaten: Palestinians tell of Israeli jail abuse
Israeli Prison Service Handcuffed hands sit in laps of prisoners sat in a rowIsraeli Prison Service
Israeli prisons have become overwhelmed with the number of Palestinian detainees doubling to about 10,000 since October
Israel's leading human rights organisation says conditions inside Israeli prisons holding Palestinian detainees amount to torture.
B'tselem's report entitled "Welcome to Hell", contains testimony from 55 recently released Palestinian detainees, whose graphic testimony points to a dramatic worsening of conditions inside prisons since the start of the Gaza war 10 months ago. It's the latest in a series of reports, including one last week by the UN, which contain shocking allegations of abuse directed against Palestinian prisoners. B'tselem says the testimony their researchers have gathered is remarkably consistent. "All of them again and again, told us the same thing," says Yuli Novak, B'tselem's executive director. "Ongoing abuse, daily violence, physical violence and mental violence, humiliation, sleep deprivation, people are starved. "Ms Novak's conclusion is stark. "The Israeli prison system as a whole, in regard to Palestinians, turned into a network of torture camps.>
'Overcrowded, filthy cells'
Since the deadly Hamas attacks of 7 October, in which around 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals were killed, the number of Palestinian detainees has doubled to around 10,000.
Israel's prisons - some run by the army, others by the country's prison service - have become overwhelmed. Jails are overflowing, with a dozen or more inmates sometimes sharing cells designed to accommodate no more than six. B'tselem's report describes overcrowded, filthy cells, where some inmates are forced to sleep on the floor, sometimes without mattresses or blankets. Some prisoners were captured in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attacks. Others were rounded up in Gaza as Israel’s invasion got under way, or were arrested in Israel or the occupied West Bank.
Many were later released without charge.
Firas Hassan
Firas Hassan says "life totally changed" for him as a prisoner in an Israeli jail after the 7 October attacks
Firas Hassan was already in jail in October, held under <administrative detention>, a measure by which suspects - though it has overwhelmingly been applied to Palestinians - can be detained, more or less indefinitely, without charge. Israel says that its use of the policy is necessary, and compliant with international law. Firas says he saw with his own eyes how conditions quickly deteriorated after 7 October. "Life totally changed," he told me when we met in Tuqu’, a West Bank village south of Bethlehem.
"I call what happened a tsunami."
Mr Hassan has been in and out of jail since the early nineties, twice charged with membership of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an armed group designated as a terrorist organisation by Israel and much of the West. He makes no secret of his past affiliation, saying he was 'active'.
Familiar with the rigours of life in prison, he said nothing prepared him for what happened when officers entered his cell two days after 7 October.
"We were severely beaten by 20 officers, masked men using batons and sticks, dogs and firearms," he said. "We were tied from behind, our eyes blindfolded, beaten severely. Blood was gushing from my face. They kept beating us for 50 minutes. I saw them from under the blindfold. They were filming us while beating us." Mr Hassan was eventually released, without charge, in April, by which time he said he had lost 3 stone (20kg).
A video filmed on the day of his release shows a gaunt figure.
"I spent 13 years in prison in the past," he told B'tselem researchers later that month, "and never experienced anything like that."
Sari Khourieh
Sari Khourieh, an Israeli Arab, says there was no law or order inside the northern Israeli prison where he was held for 10 days
But it's not just Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank who talk about the abuse in Israeli prisons. Israeli citizens, like Sari Khourieh, an Israeli Arab lawyer from Haifa, say it has also happened to them. Mr Khourieh was held at the Megiddo prison in northern Israel for 10 days last November. The police said that two of his Facebook posts had glorified the actions of Hamas - a charge quickly dismissed.
But his brief experience of prison - his first - nearly broke him.
"They just lost their mind," he says of the scenes he witnessed at Megiddo. "There was no law. There was no order inside." Mr Khourieh says he was spared the worst of the abuse. But he says he was stunned by the treatment of his fellow inmates. "They were hitting them badly for no reason," he told us. "They were screaming, the guys, 'we didn't do nothing. You don't have to hit us.'" Speaking to other detainees, he quickly learned that what he was seeing was not normal. "It wasn't the best treatment before 7 October, they told me, but afterwards everything was different." During a brief spell in an area of isolation cells known by the prisoners as Tora Bora (a reference to al-Qaeda's network of caves in Afghanistan), Mr Khourieh says he heard a beaten inmate pleading for medical help in an adjacent cell. According to Mr Khourieh, doctors tried to revive him, but he died shortly afterwards. According to last week's UN report, "announcements by IPS (Israel Prison Service) and prisoners organisations indicate that 17 Palestinians have died in the custody of the IPS between 7 October and 15 May". Israel's military advocate, meanwhile, said on 26 May that it was investigating the deaths of 35 Gaza detainees in army custody. Several months after Mr Khourieh's release - again, without charge - the lawyer is still struggling to make sense of what he witnessed at Megiddo. "I'm an Israeli...I'm a lawyer," he told us. "I've seen the world outside the prison. Now I’m inside. I see another world." His faith in citizenship and the rule of law, he says, has been shattered. "It was all crushed after this experience." We put claims of the widespread mistreatment of Palestinian detainees to the authorities involved. The army said it <rejects outright allegations of systematic abuse of detainees>. <Concrete complaints regarding misconduct or unsatisfactory conditions of detention,> the army told us, <are forwarded to relevant bodies in the IDF, and are dealt with accordingly.> The prison service said it <was not aware of the claims you described, and as far as we know, no such events have occurred>. The Israeli Prison Service denies the allegations of abuse, saying <no such events have occurred> Since 7 October, Israel has refused to grant the International Committee of the Red Cross access to Palestinian detainees, as international law requires. No explanation has been given for this refusal, but the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has frequently expressed its frustration over the ICRC's failure to gain access to Israeli and other hostages being held in Gaza. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) has accused the government of "consciously defying international law". Last week, the treatment of Palestinian prisoners ignited a furious public row, as far right demonstrators - including members of Israel's parliament - violently tried to prevent the arrest of soldiers accused of sexually abusing a prisoner from Gaza at the Sde Teiman military base. Some of those protesting were followers of Israel's hardline security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, the man in overall charge of the prison service. Mr Ben Gvir has frequently boasted that under his watch, conditions for Palestinian detainees have deteriorated sharply. <I'm proud that during my time we changed all the conditions,> he told members of Israel's parliament, the Knesset, during a rowdy session in July. For B'Tselem, Mr Ben Gvir bears a heavy responsibility for the abuses now being reported. "These systems were put in the hands of the most right wing, most racist minister that Israel ever had," Yuli Novak told us. For her, Israel's treatment of prisoners, in the wake of the traumatic events of 7 October, is a dangerous indicator of the nation's moral decline.
"The trauma and anxiety walks with us each and every day," she says.
"But to let this thing turn us into something that it not human, that doesn't see people, I think is tragic." >>
Source:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2yylgze4ro

France 25 - August 6, 2024 - Video by: Charlotte HUGHES
<<Palestinian officials say 12 dead in Israel West Bank raids
Jenin (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - Palestinian officials said Israeli forces killed 12 people in three separate raids in the northern West Bank on Tuesday, as violence in the occupied territory showed no sign of abating. Five people were killed in the Jenin area and four in Aqaba town in Tubas district when Israeli forces carried out early-morning raids, the health ministry in Ramallah said. The Israeli army said three people were killed and two arrested in another raid in the village of Kafr Qud, west of Jenin. The army added that its aircraft struck <armed terrorist cells> in the Jenin area, but did not give details on casualties. The Palestinian Red Crescent had earlier reported deaths and injuries "due to the occupation's shelling of two vehicles in the eastern neighbourhood of Jenin". Aqaba residents said Israeli troops arrived at dawn and surrounded the house of Amid Ghanam, leading to clashes between troops and young Palestinians. Ghanam and two others were killed in the clashes, while another teenager was killed near a hospital, Tubas governor Ahmed Assad told AFP. "The army entered and surrounded the house as snipers took positions on nearby rooftops and shot anyone who moved," he said. The teenager was shot when the troops "entered the area of the hospital", Assad said. Aqaba mayor Abdel Razzaq Abu Arra said the teenager "was killed in cold blood". "This Zionist crime is a systematic crime that the Israelis carry out on a daily basis," he added.
Since war broke out in October between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, tensions have soared in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.
At least 617 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops or settlers in the West Bank since October 7, according to an AFP tally based on Palestinian official figures.
At least 17 Israelis, including soldiers, have been killed by Palestinian attacks in the West Bank over the same period, according to Israeli official figures.
In a separate incident on Tuesday, police said they killed a Palestinian after he attacked a border police officer with a screwdriver at a checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem.
Police officers immediately <neutralised the terrorist with gunfire, and he was subsequently pronounced dead>, the force said in statement.
AFP>>
Source:
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240806-palestinian-officials-say-eight-dead-in-israel-west-bank-raids

Al Jazeera - August 5, 2024
<<Israel’s war on Gaza live: Israel kills 40 Palestinians in Gaza in 24 hours
The Israeli military has killed at least 40 people and injured 71 others in the Gaza Strip during the past 24 hours, according to the enclave's Health Ministry. Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani says Tehran is not looking to escalate regional tensions but it believes <punishing Israel is necessary> to prevent further instability.
At least 39,623 people were killed and 91,469 wounded in Israel's war on Gaza. An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led attacks on October 7 and more than 200 were taken captive.>>
Source
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/8/5/israels-war-on-gaza-live-80-of-victims-of-school-bombings-are-children

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