Publications

Our publications page is a curated bank of articles collected and/or written by JVP Health Advisory Council members. It aims to highlight the most incisive information and analysis on the health crisis Palestine.

Alice Rothchild Alice Rothchild

Letter to the editor: Journal of Public Health and Emergency

On the duty to protect the people of Gaza: how the collapse of the hospital health care system has reinforced genocidal intent.

JVP Health Advisory Council steering committee members Alice Rothchild, Alan Meyers and Rachel Rubin coauthored a critical analysis of the implications of and motivations for the destruction of Gaza’s health care system.

To read the article: https://jphe.amegroups.org/article/view/9883/pdf

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MediaWatch - October 1, 2023

Welcome to the Health and Human Rights Media Watch

If you want to be involved in this JVP Health Advisory Council Media Watch project, contact us: https://www.jvphealth.org/contact

Many of the reports this month are examples of medical apartheid in Israel/Palestine

Of note, Israeli forces continue to kill and maim Palestinian children in the occupied territories at an alarming rate. Combine that with very aggressive Israeli military policies, increasing settler aggression, especially in Area C, and a health care system suffering from decades of de-development, and the racist fascistic policies of the Israeli government, the situation remains dire. There are small protests from Israeli groups and human rights organizations as well as resistance groups in the West Bank and Gaza. Gazans are also dealing with the halt of the transfer of commercial goods, severe restrictions of movement, especially for those seeking high level care outside the strip, and Palestinian refugees face a massive UNRWA funding crisis.

Violation: Israeli Special Forces

Israeli forces have killed at least 240 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and besieged Gaza Strip since the start of 2023, including 46 children [File: Issam Rimawi/Anadolu Agency]

Palestinian boy killed after discovering Israeli special forces

Villains are abundant in Palestine. The IDF commits atrocities daily, and Netanyahu has no moral compass. However, the award this month goes to Israeli Special Forces who chased and killed a 15 year old because he discovered them as he was leaving his grandfather’s house and shouted out to warn others. For that he was shot and the special forces did not allow ambulances to reach him in a timely manner, leading to his death.

Hero: Carleton University

Shireen Abu Akleh, a renowned and celebrated journalist who worked with Al Jazeera for more than two decades, was killed by Israeli forces in May 2022 while reporting in the occupied West Bank [File: Majdi Mohammed/AP Photo]

Award named for Palestinian journalist

Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada has inaugurated a reward in honor of Palestinian journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed by Israel. She was killed in May 2022 while reporting on an Israeli military raid in Jenin.
Carleton University award ‘will maintain legacy’ of beloved journalist killed last year by Israeli forces, family says.

In Academia…

The Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights is an academic hub engaging in a broadly collaborative health- and human rights-based approach to understanding Palestinian health, supported through a partnership between the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University and the Institute of Community and Public Health at Birzeit University. Plans are underway for the 2nd Annual Palestine Social Medicine course in August 2024. With each successive course, the Program hopes to build an alumni network of future leaders who are passionate about championing structural health issues via local, national, and global advocacy and organizing efforts. Applications will open in late Fall 2023.
Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights

The Freedom Cure — Structural Intervention as Medicine by Jacob M. Izenberg, M.D. and Nathaniel P. Morris, M.D. August 3, 2023 N Engl J Med 2023; 389:389-391, DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp2301818
While this article is not about Palestine, it reminds us of the profound role of social and environmental factors in shaping mental health and the importance of addressing these factors in any health care setting.  A strong argument can be made for structural intervention as an essential part of health care. Structural competency has been defined as “the trained ability to discern how a host of issues defined clinically as symptoms, attitudes, or diseases…also represent the downstream implications of a number of upstream [social and policy] decisions.” In situations in which these decisions, in aggregate, systematically deprive certain people of dignity, economic stability, bodily integrity, or other social goods, “structural violence” occurs.  https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2301818?query=health-policy&cid=DM2282006_Non_Subscriber&bid=1777195278

Medical apartheid in Palestine by Yazid Barhoush and Joseph J. Amon, Article: 2201612 | Received 31 Jul 2022, Accepted 06 Apr 2023, Published online: 23 Apr 2023 
https://doi.org/10.1080/17441692.2023.2201612

Although this article was published in April 2023, we are sharing it again as an excellent review of medical apartheid in Palestine.
Global Public Health

Health and Human Rights News

8/22/23 In the final week of August 2023 the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) was expected to hold its first periodic review of the State of Israel.  In anticipation Adalah (the Legal Center for Arab Minority rights in Israel), along with Al Mezan and the UK-based Medical Air for Palestinians, submitted a report with a three-party focus in large part based on the facts of Israel’s response to the Great March of Return (GMR: from March 2018 to March 2020); Israel’s shoot-to-kill and shoot-to-maim policies against Palestinian protesters; Israel’s policy of prohibiting injured persons from accessing MEDICAL TREATMENT; and the lack of civil remedies for victims.  The three organisations called upon the CRPD to address all these critical issues, including urging Israel to cancel the illegal medical exit permit system and to allow residents of Gaza to receive medical treatment outside of Gaza and to take all necessary measures to hold accountable those who caused permanent disabilities or deaths as a result of such denials.
Mezan

8/23/23 Israel’s war on Palestinian childhood is its war on education. Palestinian pedagogy of liberation and international solidarity through BDS is the only way to fight this war. The Israeli Military destroyed the school of Ein Samiya in the Central West Bank just days before the start of school in Palestine thus targeting Palestinian children.
Mondoweiss

8/25/23
The United Nations found restrictions on movement deepen humanitarian needs among Palestinians, undermining access to livelihoods, services such as health care and education, and have a psychosocial impact on communities. The UN reveals there are 645 movement obstacles spread across the West Bank. This includes 49 constantly staffed checkpoints; 139 intermittently staffed checkpoints; 304 roadblocks, earth-mounds and road gate; 73 earth walls, road barriers and trenches; and 80 additional obstacles of various types within the Israeli controlled area of Hebron (H2). These obstacles restrict access to main roads, city hubs, services, farmland, and have a severe impact upon Palestinians. Under inter-national law, the Israeli authorities have the obligation to facilitate free movement of Palestinians within the oPt including East Jerusalem as concluded by the International Court of Justice. This is certainly apartheid.
OCHAOPT

8/26/23 Thousands of Palestinians enter Israel every day from Gaza on permits that don’t cover medical care. When accidents occur, they have nowhere to turn. When Israel resumed issuing work permits to Palestinians in Gaza at the end of 2021, following a 15-year ban, the legal rights group Gisha, which advocates for the freedom of movement of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, published a report addressing the permit system’s failures, and pointing out how it leaves Palestinian workers exposed to abuse and violates their human and labor rights.
+972

8/27/23 With the start of the new school year, Palestinian children in Masafer Yatta defy Israeli army and settler harassment to go to class in tents, since Israel demolished their school last year. The constant exposure to settler violence and military drills fosters an environment of permanent terror, shaping the everyday lives of the people of Masafer Yatta. These Israeli policies amount to forcible transfer and create a serious toll on the psychological health of the students and their families.

Mondoweiss

8/29/23 ( Human Rights Watch ) – (Jerusalem) –Last year, 2022, was the deadliest year for Palestinian children in the West Bank in 15 years, and 2023 is on track to meet or exceed 2022 levels. Israeli forces had killed at least 34 Palestinian children in the West Bank as of August 22. In all cases, Israeli forces shot the children’s upper bodies, without, according to witnesses, issuing warnings or using common, less-lethal measures such as tear gas, concussion grenades, or rubber-coated bullets. They killed children in situations where they do not appear to have been posing a threat of grievous injury or death, which is the standard for the use of lethal force by law enforcement officers under international norms. From 2017 to 2021, fewer than one percent of complaints of violations by Israeli military forces against Palestinians, including killings and other abuses, resulted in indictments, the Israeli rights group Yesh Din reported. Between 2015 and 2022, the UN attributed over 8,700 child casualties to Israeli forces, yet Israel has never been listed. 
Juan Cole

8/31/23 Few Palestinians remain in a vast area stretching east from Ramallah to the outskirts of Jericho. Most of the communities in the area — which covers around 150,000 dunams, or 150 square kilometers, of the occupied West Bank — have fled for their lives in recent months as a result of intensifying Israeli settler violence and land seizures, backed by the Israeli army and state institutions. Over 10 settler outposts have recently been established in this area, with settlers weaponizing shepherding to take over Palestinians’ land and force them out. 
+972

9/1/23 Infections hamper healing for wounded Gazans. This article profiles Muhammad Moaz Fayyad, a 33-year-old business administration graduate, who was seriously wounded in the Great March of Return protests in 2018. The unarmed protests were met with deadly violence by the Israeli military including live fire and sniper fire. By the end of the protests, more than 35,000 people had sustained injuries, some 8,000 of them from live fire. Of 223 fatalities, nearly 50 were minors.
Electronic Intifada

9/4/23 As COVID-19 cases rise, the Israeli Health Ministry believes incidence of the disease is underreported and has instructed medical centers to give newly hospitalized patients PCR tests for the next three weeks.
Haaretz

9/1-4/23 Key developments from September. A Palestinian man was shot in the head and killed during an Israel army raid on the town of Aqaba, in the Tubas district of the northern West Bank on September 1. Three Palestinians were arrested during an Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp, the first raid since the army’s large-scale invasion of the camp last July.  Israel has broken a 30-year record for administrative detention of Palestinians, with 1,264 Palestinians currently imprisoned under the policy, which human rights groups have criticized as cruel and inhumane. 
Mondoweiss

9/5/23 Hundreds of Israelis gathered outside the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium high school in central Tel Aviv for the launch of a new letter signed by 230 young conscientious objectors under the banner of “Youth Against Dictatorship.” As opposed to previous so-called “refusenik letters,” the current letter connects opposition to the government’s judicial overhaul to conscientious objection due to the occupation. Signatories told +972 spoke they had planned to refuse to join the army even before the current government was formed, to protest the occupation.
+972

9/5/23 Two masked Israeli women soldiers with rifles and an attack dog forced five female members of a Palestinian family to strip naked, each one separately, in the West Bank city of Hebron in July. The soldiers threatened to release the dog if the women did not comply.
Haaretz

9/5, 9/7, 9/9/23 According to a tally by Haaretz's as of September 9, 174 homicides have occurred in Israel's Arab community, compared to 112 in the entirety of the previous year.
Haaretz
Haaretz
Haaretz
Haaretz

9/5, 9/6, 9/7, 9/9/23 More than 50 Eritreans suspected of involvement in Saturday's Tel Aviv riots were transferred to a prison in central Israel without appearing before a judge. The detention of these asylum seekers without trial is indefinite and does not obligate the state to provide the suspects with legal representation.
Haaretz
Haaretz
Haaretz
Haaretz
Haaretz
Aljazeera
Haaretz


9/6/23 Settler attacks are rapidly depopulating Palestinian communities in Area C of the West Bank. The forced depopulation of Widady is not an anomaly but, in fact, part of an emerging phenomenon. Faced with the constant threat of settler attack, entire Palestinian communities in Area C—the roughly 60% of the West Bank’s territory which is under full Israeli control—are fleeing their land. According to B’Tselem, in just one area of the West Bank, east of the city of Ramallah, four communities have been forced off their land by settler violence.
Jewish Currents

9/7/23 As B’Tselem, Israel’s leading human rights organization, previously documented, “[Israel’s] open-fire policy — which allows the unjustified use of lethal force — conveys Israel’s deep disregard for the lives of Palestinians and facilitates Israel’s continued violent control over millions of Palestinians.”
Mondoweiss

9/7/23 Israel has halted the transfer of commercial goods from Gaza in what human rights groups and trade unions say is an act of collective punishment after the alleged discovery of explosive material in a shipment destined for the West Bank. The Israeli human rights group Gisha said that the ban has “disastrous implications for Gaza’s population” and “thousands of civilians, including traders and workers in the agriculture sector and other fields,” over “a single incident that has nothing to do with them.”
Electronic Intifada

9/7/23 Republican US senator Jim Risch of Idaho is toying with the lives of Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Risch, the most senior Republican on the Committee on Foreign Relations, has put a hold on $75 million in food assistance to the UN agency for Palestine refugees until he receives assurances from the Biden administration that UNRWA is not promoting anti-Semitism or colluding with Hamas. Yet as Khaled Elgindy, senior fellow and director of the Program on Palestine and Palestinian-Israeli Affairs at the Middle East Institute, notes, “These and other conditions are already requirements UNRWA must abide by in its framework agreement with the State Department.”
Electronic Intifada

9/8/23 There are currently 14,200 registered nurses in Gaza, yet only 4,000 are employed as nurses while 10,200 are not working in the field. The number of nursing graduates is outpacing the available jobs since public institutions simply cannot afford to hire more nurses, despite the need for them. Gaza’s healthcare system is facing numerous crises. Hospitals lack adequate medicine and medical equipment on any given day. Yet their day-to-day operations are anything but normal, as nurses and doctors often have to treat the wounded and dying following Israeli military attacks.
Electronic Intifada

9/9/23 Muhammad al-Kafarna, a former chairman of the Palestinian Nursing Association, which advocates for nurses’ rights, is alarmed by the number of unemployed nurses. He said that only 120 nursing positions open each year, yet there are 5,000 nursing students in Gaza. He fears for the future of nursing in Gaza, especially since many recent graduates are considering moving abroad to find work. Meanwhile, some nurses whose families sacrificed for their training are working in hospitals as unpaid volunteers.
Electronic Intifada

9/9/23 Israeli army soldiers entered the Arab-Israeli city of Kafr Qasem overnight during a pursuit of Palestinians without authorization, contrary to military guidelines. The soldiers confronted local residents, fired a stun grenade, and, according to residents, physically assaulted them.
Haaretz

9/10/23 A new policy in Israel's Health Ministry allows doctors to refuse treatment for handcuffed prisoners. Dr. Yossi Volfish, Chairman of the Ethics Bureau of the Medical Association, emphasized the need to balance security concerns with the patient's well-being and labeled shackling during hospitalization as a form of torture.
Haaretz

9/11/23 Israeli settlers in the West Bank attacked and injured a Palestinian shepherd with a club, breaking his hand. In a second incident, settlers attacked left-wing activists who were being detained by police. “This was the worst incident I’ve ever been involved in,” said one of the activists.
Haaretz

9/8-9/11/23 Key developments reported by Mondoweiss. Palestinian resistance groups carried out a number of operations across the West Bank over the weekend, including the firing of a rocket towards an illegal Israeli outpost in the northern West Bank. Notably, the Hebron district has also seen the emergence of new “brigades’,’ seemingly modeled after the armed militias that have been cropping up across Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarem, and Jericho over the past two years. Palestinian Authority Security Forces faced off with local resistance groups in Tulkarem and Jenin over the weekend. Israeli forces shot and killed a 15-year-old boy in the Al-Arroub refugee camp in the Hebron district.
Mondoweiss 

9/11/23 OCHA oPt Protection of Civilians Report 0/22 – 9/4.  Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man and a 17-year-old child and another Palestinian died of wounds sustained during an earlier operation.  This brings the total that Israeli forces have killed 178 Palestinians in the West Bank or Israel for this year, exceeding the death toll of any year since 2005.   282 Palestinians, including at least 29 children were injured.   Since the beginning of the year, 722 Palestinians have been injured with live ammunition by Israeli forces in the West Bank, almost double the number in the equivalent period in 2022 (432).  In addition to these, 11 Palestinians, including one child and two women were injured by Israeli settlers; and people known or believed to be settlers damaged Palestinian property in another 15 instances across the West Bank. Eleven Israeli settlers were injured in five incidents across the West Bank.  Fourteen structures were demolished in the West Bank area C and East Jerusalem, including 7 homes that left 9 Palestinians, including 5 children, displaced and affected the livelihoods of more than 50 others. Additionally, a water tank was destroyed and nine trees uprooted.  Israeli forces closed barrier gates in several locations forcing long detours to access jobs and services. In the Gaza Strip, two fishermen were injured by “warning fire” off the coast.  Israeli forces shot live ammunition as hundreds of people participated in protests near the Gaza fence injuring 18 people including 4 children.  On September 1, the Gaza Power Plant reduced electricity production disrupting daily life and the provision of health, water, hygiene, and sanitation services.  
OCHAOPT

9/12/23 The Gaza blockade is pushing people into new levels of poverty. Talal Kull, 31, is trying to sell his kidney to meet his debts. He admits that what he’s doing is nothing but a slow suicide. “I only have two choices, and the first is to go to prison and tear my family apart and lose everything. The second is to sell my kidney and stay among my family, maybe not in full health, but at least I will be with them,” he said.
Mondoweiss

9/12/23 Israel's Health Ministry issued a statement on recommending a return to masks for at-risk groups and anyone in a crowded place, given the recent rise in COVID-19 cases. 
Haaretz

9/13/23 Israel’s interior minister Itamar Ben-Gvir is pushing forward new policies against Palestinian political prisoners – whom Israel calls “security” prisoners. These policies only serve as punitive measures to tighten the noose around prisoners’ necks. One major change would be to reduce the number of visits from once a month to once every two months although Palestinians have the right to family contact under international law.
Electronic Intifada

9/13/23 At the Israeli film awards ceremony, Watfa Jabali stood on the red carpet alongside actress Samar Qupty. Jabali wore black; Qupty wore a bloodstained white dress. It was a quiet protest. “As mothers, there is nothing more important to us than our children – to know that they are going to bed safe and getting up in the morning with the feeling that they have a future. Over the last two decades, more than 1,500 mothers have lost everything in a single moment. Our lives aren’t lives. Every child is afraid that he will be the next in line.”
Haaretz

9/11-9/14/23  Key developments from September 11-14:.The Palestinian Authority reportedly received a shipment of armored vehicles and weapons from the US government as part of the Biden administration’s efforts to aid joint Israeli-Palestinian Authority efforts to quash Palestinian resistance. Israeli forces detained at least 38 Palestinians over three days across the occupied West Bank, Jerusalem, and Gaza. Israel has killed at least 234 Palestinians since the start of the year; and 5,100 Palestinian political prisoners are being held in Israeli jails, including 1,200 administrative detainees. 
Mondoweiss

9/15/23 The UN is finding it increasingly hard to persuade member governments to fund its humanitarian operations. The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), created in 1949 to care for Palestinian refugees, is facing a particular challenge. With a $1.6 billion annual budget, its perennial funding difficulties are exacerbated by both donor fatigue and a creeping sense that the settlement needed to end the Israeli-Palestinian crisis may never come. UNRWA’s unravelling would be devastating, both for millions of refugees, who would be suddenly deprived of jobs and services, and for their fragile host states. Palestinians fearing – rightly or not – an end to their status as refugees as a result of UNRWA’s collapse, or even a drastic cut in services, could foment new turmoil in the Israeli-occupied territories and destabilise Jordan and Lebanon. 
International Crisis Group

9/16/23 Side by side with its claim of equality for women and LGBTQ+ people, including its boast of conscripting women and queers (albeit under attack by the 2023 government), obscuring the profound inequalities between Ashkenazi Jewish, Mizrahi Jewish, and Palestinian women, and between Israeli Jewish and Palestinian queers, stands Israel’s refusal to abide by international law. Refusal is perennial in gender terms as well, despite the highly sexualized nature of Israeli society, where gender-based violence, rape culture, and pinkwashing are normalized practices. 
Mondoweiss

9/18/23 Khitam Salim struggles to provide her children with packed lunches. A mother of three, she has been a single parent since her husband died from leukemia four years ago. Her children attend a primary school in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, run by the UN agency for Palestine refugees. Since UNRWA has experienced major budget cuts, the school does not provide its students with meals. “The children see some of their classmates buying things during the break. Not being able to buy anything themselves has a bad effect on them psychologically.” Faris Qishta has five children, all of whom attend UNRWA schools. If it wasn’t for food aid packages he receives, “my family would have died of hunger,” he said. The aid, however, does not include meals at school.
Electronic Intifada

9/18/23 The UN Right to Health program reported that in August, Israeli authorities allowed 58,606 exits of people from Gaza, 88% below the monthly average in 2000 (before the imposition of category-based restrictions). Some 87% of exits were of Palestinians allowed to leave for work-related purposes, primarily as day laborers. Only six % of exits were by patients referred for medical treatment in the West Bank or Israel. A total of 1,899 exit permit applications were submitted to Israeli authorities for medical appointments scheduled for August; of these, 19%  were not approved on time.
OCHAOPT

9/20/23 Israel's Finance Ministry is asking the Knesset Finance Committee to authorize hundreds of millions shekels in state funding that will go mainly to Haredi educational institutions and yeshivas. The request comes a week after the Knesset Finance Committee approved 700 million shekels ($183 million) in government spending to cover the cost of coalition agreements, including money for Haredi schools and yeshivas.
Haaretz

9/20/23 In the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, a 15 year old was leaving his grandfather’s house. He saw three vehicles with Palestinian licenses but the IOF exited the vehicles and so the young man ran yelling, “special forces.” An Israeli soldier chased him and shot him. A Palestinian man offered aid and threw himself on top of the boy and rolled the boy toward his house. The Israeli military prevented ambulances from accessing Jenin refugee camp. The boy died before the arrival of an ambulance.
Electronic Intifada 

9/21/23 The United National released their report Displacement of Palestinian Herders amid Increasing Settler Violence.  "Since 2022, over 1,100 Palestinians from 28 communities have been displaced citing rising violence and prevention of access to grazing land by Israeli settlers. During the same period, 1,614 settler-related incidents resulted in Palestinian casualties or property damage, an average of 80 incidents per month – the highest volume ever documented by the UN since its tracking began in 2006." The report documents the effects of settler violence on Palestinian population displacement; agricultural production; water sources; access to health and education; and home demolitions without any Israeli accountability Together with Palestinians’ inability to obtain approvals to build, demolitions, evictions, movement restrictions and ongoing settlement expansion create a coercive environment that contributes to displacement that may amount to forcible transfer, a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention
OCHAOPT

9/29/23 After 230 young Israelis in the previous week declared they would refuse the military draft, +972 Magazine spoke with eight of them about the occupation, the judicial coup, and conscientious objection as a tool of protest. In a speech by one of the young refusers re-published in the magazine, Yahli Agai stated that Israelis have long closed their eyes to the oppression of Palestinians, Mizrahim, and African asylum seekers — but that her generation can be different.
+972

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Media Watch September 1, 2023

Welcome to the JVP Health and Human Rights Media Watch

Of note: The impacts of settler colonialism on health equity and human rights as well as the “masks off” policies of the Israeli government when it comes to oppressing and dispossessing Palestinians, in combination with climate change and the blocking of UNRWA funding, continue to be vividly apparent. Children in particular are in dire straits. There was a spike in aggression and violations of international law with the two day attack on the Jenin refugee camp in July. We see the price of occupation and siege on Palestinian mental and physical health and the wellbeing of Palestinian prisoners. There is growing support for BDS and for the recognition of medical apartheid.  

If you want to be involved in this JVP Health Advisory Council Media Watch project, contact us: https://www.jvphealth.org/contact

Academic Journals

On settler colonialism and health inequity:
“Settler colonialism’s relationship to health inequity is at once obvious and incompletely described, a paradox arising from epistemic coloniality and perceived analytic challenges that we address here in three parts. First, in considering settler colonialism an enduring structure rather than a past event, and by wedding this fundamental insight to the ascendant structural paradigm for understanding health inequities, a picture emerges in which this system of power serves as a foundational and ongoing configuration determining social and political mechanisms that impose on human health. Second, because modern racialization has served to solidify and maintain the hierarchies of colonial relations, settler colonialism adds explanatory power to racism’s health impacts and potential amelioration by historicizing this process for differentially racialized groups.”
Public Health, 11 July 2023
Sec. Life-Course Epidemiology and Social Inequalities in Health
Volume 11 - 2023 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2023.1137428

On the Israeli judicial amendment and public health:
”The [judicial] amendment allows for political interests to supersede public health, potentially facilitating harmful policies….Health is fundamental to societal wellbeing, which is the right of all Israeli citizens; therefore, health should be considered in all decisions. This holistic view of health rights is absent in Israel's jurisprudence. The amendment risks weakening the Health in All Policies approach, potentially leading to unchecked decisions without consideration of the health implications.”
The Lancet

Health and Human Rights issues….

June 29, 2023
Doctors are leaving Gaza in search of better working conditions and professional development. Between 2017 and 2019, approximately 320 Palestinian doctors left Gaza. As doctors leave Gaza, it further fuels the cycle of referring patients to doctors outside of Gaza. This cycle can be perilous for Palestinians, since travel permits, even for urgent medical care, are routinely denied by Israel.
Electronic Intifada

June 30, 2023 Israeli authorities are refusing to release a terminally ill Palestinian prisoner with Israeli citizenship who has completed his sentence of 37 years in Israeli detention. Author and activist Walid Daqqa, 61 was arrested in 1986 for allegedly participating in armed resistance as a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a leftist political party. Israeli authorities sentenced him to life imprisonment, with a maximum term of 37 years. Daqqa has completed that sentence. In 2017, Israel extended his detention by two years on the grounds that he had smuggled phones into his cell with the assistance of a lawmaker from the Knesset. This week a special judicial committee rejected a request for Daqqa’s release, despite the fact that he has leukemia and a rare bone cancer.

Electronic Intifada

July 13, 2023 From the moment Israel launched its military aggression against the Jenin refugee camp on July 3, thousands of Palestinians inside found themselves cut off from their most basic needs. The two-day assault effectively placed the camp under blockade, with the supply of water, electricity, and food coming to a standstill. Hours after it began, the army ordered thousands of camp residents to leave their houses with only the clothes they were wearing, evoking harrowing images of the expulsions of the Nakba in 1948.  Yet alongside the horrific scenes of destruction and displacement, inspiring stories of Palestinian solidarity and interdependence also emerged throughout those days. 
+972    

July 14, 2023 On July 3rd, Israeli drones launched airstrikes on the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, and over 1,000 troops invaded the area. The two-day assault was the biggest military operation in the West Bank since 2002. By the time Israeli forces withdrew from the camp, soldiers had killed 12 Palestinians, injured more than 100, and forced thousands to flee from their homes. They had also attacked the camp’s infrastructure, bulldozing roads and devastating electricity, water, and sewage networks, as well as damaging cars, homes, and hospitals.
Human rights attorney Noura Erakat says the attack violated international law. Israel’s justifications demonstrate its continued commitment to what she deems the “shrinking civilian,” narrowing the legal scope of who counts as a civilian when it comes to Palestinians.
Jewish Currents

Human rights lawyer, Diana Buttu’s devastating account of what she saw in Jenin after the Israeli assault. “The West has turned rights and responsibilities on their head, claiming that Palestinians—suffering under 56 years of Israeli occupation and military rule in the West Bank—must ensure that Israel and Israelis feel ‘safe’ as they continue their theft and pillage of Palestinian land. The outgoing U.S. ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides, said as much in a recent interview, telling the Wall Street Journal: ‘I think the important thing for the security state of Israel is to keep things calm in the West Bank.’"
Democracy for the Arab World Now

July 16, 2023 One of the prices of siege and occupation is the loss of mental health wellbeing. According to the survey of 5,876 Palestinian adults, Gazans exhibit high rates of depression (71%) while West Bank Palestinians residents are more likely to show symptoms of PTSD. 58% of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip suffer from symptoms of depression, and 7% show symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, a survey by the World Bank found.
Haaretz

July 19, 2023 The Israeli military’s large-scale operation in the refugee camp filled residents with fear. Health crews’ mobility to rescue those stranded under fire were hindered by Israeli checkpoints at the camp’s entrance. Two days later, the Israeli army announced the withdrawal of its forces, ending a two-day raid that killed twelve Palestinians and left over a hundred others injured. Despite the army’s statements, the assault was not about Israel’s security — it is collective punishment for the Palestinian people at large. There is no strategic reason to use heavy equipment to destroy civilian infrastructure other than to inflict collective punishment.
Portside

Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip have been left struggling to cope with rising temperatures, due to widespread electricity cuts. The constant power cuts have also had a knock-on effect on businesses, medical facilities and the wider economy.  With no power for the majority of the day, many people are exposed to increased risks, such as food poisoning, a decreased quality of life and clinics unable to tend to patients. Water services have also come under severe strain.
Middle East Eye

July 25, 2023  Israeli forces attacked medics during separate raids on two Palestinian refugee camps in the occupied West Bank early on July 24. Troops shot a medic with the Palestine Red Crescent Society “with two bullets in both feet” while he was on duty in Askar camp near Nablus, the group said. Medical Aid for Palestinians is providing bulletproof vests and helmets.
Electronic Intifada
Medical Aid for Palestinians

July 27, 2023  Palestinians warmly welcomed a significant victory as the American Anthropological Association voted overwhelmingly to boycott Israeli academic institutions. This makes the AAA the “largest and oldest scholarly body” to endorse the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement launched by Palestinian civil society organizations in 2005, modeled on the successful global effort to help end apartheid in South Africa.
Electronic Intifada

The tributes following the death of Sinéad O’Connor underscored how she brought attention to uncomfortable truths, yet her contribution to the campaign for Palestinian rights has been overlooked. In 2014, she canceled a concert she was scheduled to play in Israel in protest at the major attack on Gaza that summer. “Nobody with any sanity, including myself, would have anything but sympathy for the Palestinian plight,” she said at the time. “There’s not a sane person on earth who in any way sanctions what the fuck the Israeli authorities are doing.” These heartfelt words are at odds with the increasingly gutless positions on Palestine taken by the government of her native Ireland.
Electronic Intifada
Haaretz

July 28, 2023 As the top ranking members on their congressional foreign affair panels, Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID) and Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) are blocking about $75 million in food assistance from reaching Palestinian refugees through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). In 2018 the Trump administration cut funding to the program. The Biden administration moved to restore it but at a level of more than $250 million less than previously.
Mondoweiss

July 31, 2023 “Being a doctor is basically a humanitarian job,” said Dr. Nabil Ayad, head of the nephrology department at al-Rantisi hospital. “But in Gaza, we doctors work under inhuman conditions. I am always exhausted, physically and emotionally. My heart aches for every mother who sees her child suffering.” Shortages of medicines have forced the hospital into giving lower doses than those recommended internationally. Gaza’s health ministry reported that hospitals in Gaza are working at half their capacity; about 40% of medicines and over 30% of medical supplies are no longer in stock.
Electronic Intifada

August 1, 2023 Israeli forces and settlers have killed 215 Palestinians since the beginning of the year. The number of Palestinian political detainees under administrative detention has reached a record high since 2003, reaching 1,200 Palestinians (including children and minors), who are held without charge or trial. Israel continues to illegally withhold the bodies of 138 deceased Palestinians as bargaining chips, denying their families the right to burial.
Mondoweiss

WHO report issued for June 2023 on health access in the occupied Palestinian territories, including detailed information on barriers to care for patients. Of 6,274 referrals from the West Bank 77% of patients and companions approved to travel.  Of 2,251 referrals from Gaza, 82% of patients and 50 % of companions approved for permit to travel. 37 Gazan patients called for security interrogation.
World Health Organization

Adalah, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and Medical Aid for Palestinians   submitted a report to the Committee on Israel’s violations of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, with respect to Palestinians in Gaza.  The report describes Israel’s illegal conduct primarily during the Great March of Return in Gaza that posed no threat to Israel.  The Israeli military killed 217 Palestinians at the protests, including nine individuals with disabilities, and wounded thousands more, disabling at least 178 protesters.  Key issues of the report include Israel’s shoot-to-kill policy and shoot-to-main policy, preventing injured persons from receiving medical care, and the lack of civil remedies for victims.  
Adalah

August 4, 2023 How do people with disabilities cope when Israel bombs Gaza? Hasan al-Zaalan, the head of the Palestinian General Union of People with Disabilities, explained that “People with disabilities face many obstacles amid wars, such as having limited mobility as they escape the bombing.”
Electronic Intifada

August 5, 2023 A Palestinian ambulance carrying an unconscious stroke victim was prevented from passing through an East Jerusalem checkpoint, whereupon he underwent fruitless attempts at resuscitation. Mundal Jubran, aged 40, died. Even an ambulance carrying someone who is critically ill, who is dying, needs to coordinate its movement in advance via the regular channels – three copies of two documents or two copies of three documents. 
Haaretz

Thousands of people marched in Tel Aviv in protest of the government's inaction amid a violent wave of crime in Israeli's Arab communities. Participants carried dozens of coffins in memory of the 141 Israeli Arabs murdered since the beginning of the year. This figure exceeds the total number of homicides in 2022, which was 111.
Haaretz

August 7, 2023 The Israeli District Court ruled against granting early release to ailing Palestinian prisoner Walid Daqqah. Daqqah’s family described the ruling as a “death sentence” for the political prisoner, who has spent 37 years behind bars and contracted a rare and deadly form of bone marrow cancer in 2018. Daqqah continues to be held at the Ramleh Prison clinic, which is notorious for its deliberate medical negligence of Palestinian political prisoners, as in the case of the death of Sheikh Khader Adnan.
Mondoweiss

The protest group representing Israeli health care professionals opposed to the judicial overhaul, which includes thousands of doctors, announced that if the Netanyahu-led coalition refuses to respect High Court rulings then its members will not report for work at hospitals. Around 20% of Israel’s doctors under the White Coats protest group signed a letter stating “Responsibility for disruptions of the healthcare system will fall entirely on the prime minister and his ministers who led us to this.”
Haaretz

August 8, 2023 A letter to the US Jewish community, accusing it of supporting progressive causes while turning a blind eye to Israeli “apartheid” and ethnic cleansing, has gotten hundreds of signatures from leading figures, including mainstream voices in the Zionist world. The letter says that one democratic state is a legitimate outcome and calls on American Jewish leaders to recognize “apartheid” and demand that U.S. leaders “restrict American military aid from being used in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and end Israeli impunity in the UN and other international organizations.”
Mondoweiss

August 10, 2023 The suspension of medical coverage for 14,000 Ukrainian refugees in Israel is expected to hurt the most seriously ill among them, whose treatment costs are particularly high. The decision is already felt by seriously ill refugees from Ukraine receiving medical care in Israel's hospitals and health maintenance organizations. Welfare ministry officials urge the government to 'immediately solve this issue.'
Haaretz

August 10, 2023 Protection of Civilians Report July 25 – August 7, 2023.  Outside the reporting period – on August 10, undercover Israeli forces raided Zawata (Nablus), and an exchange of fire with Palestinians ensued, killing a 23-year-old Palestinian man. During four attacks or attempted or alleged attacks by Palestinians in the West Bank and Israel, one Israeli policeman was killed, and eight Israelis injured. During these four incidents, six Palestinians, including one child, were killed and two were injured.  Israeli forces killed seven Palestinians, including two children, in three separate operations which involved exchange of fire.  During the reporting period, 276 Palestinians, including at least 60 children, were injured by Israeli forces across the West Bank, including nine people by live ammunition.  
Details on OCHA oPT.  

August 11, 2023 Sperm smuggling started in 2012 as a reaction to the Israeli ban on family visitation for Palestinian prisoners. Since then, the phenomenon of sperm smuggling has increased dramatically among Palestinian prisoners, especially with the predominance of long sentences. This is their way of fighting back against the fate that Israel decided for them. 
Mondoweiss

The southern governorate of Khan Younis and other areas in the center of the Gaza Strip witnessed tense scenes as several thousand Palestinians took to the streets to protest frequent power outages, food shortages, and overall harsh living conditions. Marching under the banner of “Bidna N’eesh” (“We Want to Live”), the mass protests mark a significant expression of public resentment that has accumulated among the blockaded population for years. 
+972

Israel prevents Palestinians from defending themselves as it empowers the settlers. For Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank, self-defense against Jewish violence is a criminal offense subject to arrest, trial, imprisonment and heavy fines – or death
Haaretz

August 12, 2023 Growing segregation by sex in Israel raises fears for women’s rights. Ultra-Orthodox members of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s far-right coalition want to expand the powers of all-male rabbinical courts, and to bar women and men from mixing in many public arenas.
New York Times
Haaretz
Haaretz
Mondoweiss

August 13, 2023 Ex-IDF general likens military control of West Bank to Nazi Germany. Amiram Levin accuses the IDF of being a ‘partner in war crimes’ when it stands by as settler extremists attack Palestinians, says situation in West Bank is ‘absolute apartheid.’
Times of Israel

The Israel Prison Service (IPS) has been continuously withdrawing from its responsibility to provide adequate medical services and has repeatedly asserted that it is not legally bound to the National Healthcare Basket. Yet, the High Court saw no reason to intervene and argued that there is no need to standardize prison health services. This grants the IPS full discretion to determine the scope of health care it offers people in prison - which may result in inferior health services compared to those accessible outside prison walls.
Physicians for Human Rights Israel

August 14, 2023 The Israeli Medical Association petitioned the High Court against the law revoking the reasonableness standard, calling it a danger to the health care system because it will permit political considerations to override professional judgment. Podcast on the same topic: Haaretz
Haaretz

Yehiel Indore, who is suspected of murdering a 19-year-old Palestinian, was allegedly described by a psychiatrist as unfit to be questioned, according to his lawyer. A source familiar with the details says that was not the case.
Haaretz

Power cuts in Gaza, the Israel-controlled enclave – home to more than 2.3 million – now last for around 12 hours a day as demand for air conditioning soars. 'Power cuts deprive patients of their right to regular oxygen ventilation and that pushes patients to keep visiting hospital,' one Gazan doctor said.
Haaretz

August 15, 2023 In July, the Israeli crossing with Gaza recorded the highest number of people’s exits since at least 2004 (when OCHA started regular monitoring). Still, most Palestinians in Gaza are not eligible to apply for Israeli exit permits.
OCHA

The government’s judicial overhaul could negatively impact Israelis’ health, public health experts warned in an article published in the prestigious medical journal “The Lancet.”
Haaretz

A new Israeli “anti-miscegenation” law classifies some sexual crimes as “terrorism,” signaling an intent to target Arabs—and a goal of preventing racial mixing.
Jewish Currents

August 16, 2023 The struggle for water access in this strip of fertile land reflects a wider contest for control of the West Bank — and in particular the Jordan Valley, which Palestinians consider the breadbasket of their hoped-for future state and Israelis view as key to protecting their eastern border. This is a good description of the current water disaster and the underlying history and politics.
AP News

August 17, 2023 Two Palestinians, Qusai al-Walaji, 16, and Mohammad Nujoom, 25, were killed by Israeli forces during a raid on August 15 in the Aqbat Jaber Refugee Camp in Jericho, raising the number of Palestinians killed in the camp this year to 11. On August 17 Israeli forces raided the northern West Bank city of Jenin on August 17, shooting and killing one Palestinian, Mustafa al-Kastouni, 32, whose family home they exploded, and injuring several others. This Mondoweiss report details developments such as Israeli forces preventing Red Crescent crews from reaching the wounded during raids, firing towards press crews covering attacks, and demolishing Palestinian schools. An estimated 227 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli gunfire, including soldiers and settlers, since the start of the year. Israel is currently imprisoning 5,100 Palestinian political prisoners in its jails, according to prisoners rights group Addameer
Mondoweiss
Mondoweiss

Why Palestinians could be facing another Naka.  There are terrifying present-day echoes of the circumstances that led to the catastrophe of 1948. Senior officials are calling for the expulsion of Palestinians and there is rising violence and aggressive expansionism from Israel settlers. 
The Nation

August 20, 2023 Hundreds of Israeli academic experts and social workers say government is shifting spending away from the neediest for political reasons. “The current government inherited a crumbling welfare system and is leading it to total collapse,” they warn.
Haaretz

August 21, 2023 Muhammad Musleh, director of the environmental protection unit at Gaza’s Water Environmental Quality Authority, told The Electronic Intifada that the Israeli ordnance dropped on Gaza is an exceptionally perilous and noxious threat to the environment. Musleh, who participated in a study examining the destructive impact of Israel’s 2014 war on Gaza’s environment, noted that the bombings have contaminated crops and destroyed soil quality in agricultural areas.
“Rainfall causes the toxic components to seep into the groundwater,” Musleh said, noting that deep-buried bombs “pose a significant threat to the people and the environment.”
Electronic Intifada

Children are back to school in Palestine. Some will find their school in ruins, and some will be missing schoolmates they had only a few months ago. Since the beginning of 2023, Israel has killed at least 38 Palestinian children, injured almost 1000, while 160 are lingering in Israeli jails. 2280 Palestinian children have been killed since January 2000. 
Beyond the shocking numbers and the painful stories behind each case, there is an evident pattern in the targeting of Palestinian children and childhood. It is not a side effect, but rather a necessary component of Israel’s settler colonial project and apartheid regime. 
Mondoweiss

August 22, 2023 This update on “the unchilding of Palestinian children” includes links to articles on the abuse of Palestinian children compiled by the UK-Palestine Mental Health Network and an interview with Dr. Samah Jabr about psychological resistance to settler colonialism.
US Palestine Mental Health Network

The Israeli Education Ministry is freezing a Hebrew proficiency program for Arab students citing a lack of funding. The Ivritana Hebrew proficiency program helps high schoolers from Israel's Arab society practice Hebrew, which affects their success rates in the matriculation exams and in the job market.
Haaretz

August 23, 2023 The WHO Monthly Report for the occupied Palestinian territories highlights statistics for healthcare access: 9,698 referrals issued to access health facilities outside the Palestinian MoH (2,402 Gaza, 7,191 West Bank); 81% of Gaza patient permits approved, 
World Health Organization

August 23, 2023 The only way to fight Israel’s war on education of Palestinian children is through a Palestinian pedagogy of liberation and international solidarity through BDS. This is the second of a two-part article summarizing a new study by Stop the Wall about Israeli policies that target Palestinian children and childhood. Part I of the article can be found here.

Mondoweiss

Despite the Israeli government’s announcement that it would resume funding health insurance coverage for Ukrainian war refugees after it was stopped for two weeks, it was not clear where the money will in fact come from. The social affairs, health, and interior ministries refuse to finance health services to Ukrainian refugees, demanding the treasury foot the entire bill.
Haaretz

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media watch Alice Rothchild media watch Alice Rothchild

Media Watch-July 1, 2023

Welcome to the Health and Human Rights Media Watch.

Of note: check out the important article in the Journal of Palestine Studies and the framing of the health of Palestinians in Israel within an indigenous/settler-colonial rather than minority health framework. Also, important and disturbing follow up on our colleague, Dr. Lara Sheehi.
The occupation and siege continues to have a brutal impact on children worsened by rising racist military and Jewish settler attacks, grave mistreatment in prisons, and the financial collapsing of two important aid organizations, the World Food Program and UNRWA as well as ecological degradation due to lack of infrastructure.

If you want to be involved in this JVP Health Advisory Council Media Watch project, contact us: https://www.jvphealth.org/contact

This month we are focused on the impact of the Israeli occupation and siege on children.

ACADEMIC JOURNAL
This article challenges the dominant notion that the health of Palestinians inside the Green Line can be framed or understood as an issue of “minority health” characterized by a “gap” that needs bridging in order for health equity to be attained. It situates the health of Palestinians in Israel within the realm of Indigenous health and claims that the settler-colonial nature of the state of Israel, the minoritization of Palestinians, and their depeasantization through land policies and water infrastructures have produced an Indigenous community alienated from its lands and from nature. These processes contribute to adverse health outcomes that are then reported simply as “minority health” phenomena, chalked up to behavioral patterns or biology. Journal of Palestine Studies

FOLLOW UP ON DR LARA SHEEHI
A psychoanalytic psychotherapist and psychology professor was accused of antisemitism. From an argument about Israel and Palestine, the Sheehi case has become a larger debate about psychology itself. Are psychoanalysts neutral interlocutors, healing one mind at a time, or activists, diagnosing society’s pathologies and fighting injustice? Can someone be a nuanced and empathetic clinician, and also take to Twitter to issue thundering political judgments?
The Guardian

Back to…the impact of the Israeli occupation and siege on children

5/26/23  A nine-year-old Israeli girl was struck by a stray bullet on Friday evening in the West Bank settlement of Kokhav Ya'akov, near Ramallah, Magen David Adom rescue services reported. Security concerns were initially raised, but later dismissed.
Haaretz

5/28/23  From nighttime detentions without a court order, to blindfolding and beatings: the silence of Israeli mental health therapists in the face of severe harm to Palestinian children is particularly alarming. Israel detains 2,000 Palestinian children every year.
Haaretz

By August, the World Food Program will be forced to suspend operations in the West Bank and Gaza if no funding is received. This will affect 200,000 families.
Aljazeera

5/30/23  How Primo Levi’s words echo across the daily routine of Israelis and Palestinians. “While Israelis were returning to bed, a 4-year-old Palestinian boy was wetting his pants because soldiers had brought his entire family out into the yard, … rifles trained on them.” 
Haaretz

6/1/23  Israeli authorities' systematic denial of fair trial rights to Palestinian children detained by Israeli forces from the occupied West Bank and prosecuted in Israeli military courts constitutes arbitrary detention, Defense for Children International - Palestine said in a report released today. The report, “Arbitrary by Default: Palestinian children in the Israeli military court system,” details and examines the systemic denial of fair trial rights inherent in Israeli forces’ practice of arrest, detention, interrogation, and prosecution of Palestinian children in the Israeli military courts. 
DCI-Palestine

Physicians at Assaf Rofeh Medical Center in central Israel have collectively refused to examine otherwise healthy children for deportation.  The hospital had agreed to provide such certification to the Immigration Authority when the authority struggled to find pediatricians willing to provide examinations.  The physicians, backed by Israeli Physicians for Human Rights, insist that they have a moral obligation to treat all patients equally on the basis of medical, not political, need.  The Immigration Authority claims that the physicians are failing to “serve the public.” 
Haaretz

6/2/23 Jewish Currents sent a selection of testimonies curated by the Israeli veterans’ group Breaking the Silence, featuring Israeli soldiers who have served in the occupied Palestinian territories. Regarding the treatment of children, one Israeli veteran testified, “I see [another soldier on patrol with me] catch the little boy, I’d say he was about seven or eight. He grabs him by the shirt, picks him up, presses him up against the wall. His feet are off the ground; he’s right in front of the officer’s face. He takes his M-16 and puts the barrel in the boy’s mouth and yells at him. The kid’s hysterically crying. That lasted a minute or two and [then] he let him go . . . That image stayed with me for a long time.”
Jewish Currents

6/3/23  The UN secretary-general warned of “catastrophic” consequences with UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, “on the verge of financial collapse.” Meanwhile, food assistance to Palestinians from the World Food Programme is set to dry up simultaneously, most impacting families in Gaza, where the majority of people are food insecure after 15 years of Israeli-Egyptian blockade. The World Food Programme this month will be suspending food aid to some 200,000 Palestinians, pointing to a funding shortfall of $51 million. By August, the UNRWA will be forced to “completely suspend operations in the West Bank and Gaza if no funding is received,” affecting an additional 100,000 beneficiaries.
Electronic Intifada
Electronic Intifada

6/4/23  Dr Yasser Abu Jamei is a psychiatrist in Gaza, where four out of five children live with depression, fear and grief. Abu Jamei is head of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program (GCMHP). The NGO supports the only psychotherapists and the only child psychiatrist in Gaza, as well as community outreach projects, including a sports program for some of the most vulnerable children. Part of its work, particularly the sports program, aims to help traumatized children find a path back to something like normal life.
The Guardian

A 47-year-old Palestinian with Israeli citizenship, later identified as Ismail Aal-Shamali, was killed on June 3 in a shooting in Ramle, a city in central Israel. A 16-year-old from the same area also sustained injuries during the incident, which is believed to be connected to a family-related conflict. Israeli police arrested 24 suspects following the incident. So far in 2023, 85 Palestinians have been killed in violent incidents.
Haaretz
Haaretz
Haaretz
Haaretz
Haaretz

A new report from Defense for Children International – Palestine concludes, “From the widespread ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children to the systematic denial of their due process rights emerges a system of control that masquerades as justice.” DCIP’s 39-page, extensively-researched, thoroughly-footnoted report includes detailed descriptions of—and international laws and human rights conventions pertaining to—Israeli military detention, the military court system, military orders related to the arrest, detention and incarceration of children. The report ends by listing measures DCIP strongly urges upon the government of Israel, the State of Palestine and the international community.
Mondoweiss
Mondoweiss

6/5/23 Mohammed al-Tamimi, a Palestinian toddler (reported in different sources as 2 ½ or 3 years old), died in hospital four days after he was shot in the head by Israeli soldiers while riding in a car with his father in the occupied West Bank. The child was airlifted to the Sheba hospital near Tel Aviv after the incident and remained in critical condition until medical officials announced his death four days later. His father, Haitham al-Tamimi, 40, who is still being treated at a Palestinian hospital, told reporters he had just buckled up his son to drive to an uncle’s house. 
Aljazeera
The Guardian
Electronic Intifada
Haaretz
Haaretz
Haaretz
Haaretz

On the occasion of this year’s World Environment Day, conditions in the Gaza Strip continued to be marked by crisis levels in the areas of disposal of solid waste, provisioning of sufficient fresh water and electricity, and treatment of wastewater -- all with obvious negative ramifications especially for the well-being of Gaza’s children.  In large measure owing to the continuing Israeli closure and blockade of Gaza and consequent insufficiency of building materials, the necessary infrastructure is unavailable to supply enough clean water and electricity, safe treatment of wastewater, and the secure disposal of solid waste.  Of the many striking negative results of this situation, the sewage crisis has led to the pollution of the seawater along the Gaza coast, compromising the crucial supply of fresh fish as well as decent facilities for swimming -- a particularly cruel effect on the children of Gaza.
Mezan

6/6/23 With most of Gaza’s 2 million inhabitants categorized as food insecure, further aid cuts will be catastrophic for Gaza’s poor.
Electronic Intifada

6/8/23 The Israeli Education Ministry is promoting a separate curriculum for the children of asylum seekers in south Tel Aviv aimed at preparing them for life abroad. A similar program promoted by the right-wing Israeli Immigration Policy Center in collaboration with the Education Ministry is said to be aimed at reducing the children's affinity for Israel.
Haaretz

The rights of civil society members in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory are being violated by authorities in all areas through harassment, threats, arrests, interrogations, arbitrary detention, torture and inhuman and degrading treatment, according to a report to the Human Rights Council issued today by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel.
UN Office of the High Commissioner

6/10/23 The UN’s World Food Program (WFP) has provided food aid to 8,000 families in Gaza suffering from food insecurity, but is now suspending support due to budget cuts. As a result, many families in Gaza will go hungry.
Mondoweiss
Electronic Intifada

6/12/23 Israeli forces, usually the army, have killed 28 children so far this year in the West Bank and Jerusalem. In Gaza, 5-year-old Tamim literally died of fear during an airstrike. In the West Bank, Mustafa was shot in the heart after he and his friends threw stones at soldiers 50 meters away. Amira Hass names these children.
Haaretz

6/13/23 Israel's interior minister ordered a reexamination of the legal status of Ethiopian national Maza Dekomo, the mother of eight-year-old Israeli girl Geffen, both of whom were scheduled to be deported to Ethiopia this summer. Interior Minister Moshe Arbel urged the family to reapply for a permit, giving the family a longed-for postponement of deportation.
Haaretz

6/14/23 The sounds of war fill 4-year-old Mutasim al-Shinbari’s heart with fear. “Whenever Mutasim hears sirens or aircraft, he flees into a corner screaming ‘a missile, a missile,’” Hadeel, his mother, said. During a major Israeli attack on Gaza in May 2021, his uncle Ibrahim – an imam, with whom he was very close – was killed while heading home from a mosque. Since that horrible day, Mutasim has been having nightmares. He constantly wets the bed; he has lost his appetite, and cannot bear to be away from his mother. Almost exactly two years after losing his uncle, Mutasim had to endure another large-scale Israeli assault on Gaza.
Electronic Intifada

Israeli forces killed a 19-year-old Palestinian and injured at least eight others during a raid on the Balata refugee camp in Nablus, in the occupied West Bank. The soldiers were searching for another man when they started firing on people in the vicinity of his home. Suhaib Sallaj, the brother of the wanted man, said their house was surrounded by Israeli forces who threatened to bomb it and kill everyone inside. “Suddenly, they shoot at people. A young child who was walking with groceries was shot. We knew it was the army. Then we heard them calling on megaphones for Issam to surrender: 'We know you are inside the house.'”
Democracy Now

6/15/23 Israeli occupation forces killed a mentally disabled teenager on June 13 during their incursion into Balata refugee camp on the outskirts of the West Bank city of Nablus. Israeli soldiers killed Faris Abd al-Munim Hashash, 19, while he was hiding behind a wall and observing the area where the army was stationed about 200 meters away. He was shot with three live bullets, one in the abdomen and two in his thighs. Israeli forces also injured seven other people, including two children.
Electronic Intifada

6/18/23 Protection of Civilians Report | 30 May - 12 June 2023, report includes: 6/1 An Israeli soldier shot a 2-year-old Palestinian child and his father. 
5/20 – 6/12:  A total of 382 Palestinians, including at least 34 children, were injured by Israeli forces across the West Bank, including 15 injured with live ammunition.  In east Jerusalem, approximately 970 Palestinians (424 children) are at risk of forced eviction.  Home demolitions in East Jerusalem, Area C of the West Bank, and Silwan displaced a total of 75 Palestinians, including 41 children.  
6/8/23 Israeli forces raided Ramallah city in Area A of the West Bank and carried out a punitive demolition with explosives the second floor of a residential building.  41 Palestinians were injured, including 8 children. 
OCHA OPT

On 2 June, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) held its annual donors conference in New York. The conference failed to raise the funds necessary to cover UNRWA’s financial needs for the rest of the year. As of mid-May, the agency still needed $1.3 billion to ensure the continuity of its services and its future is again at risk. UNRWA’s financial crisis comes at an especially difficult time for Palestinian refugees, 90 percent of whom live below the poverty line in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza.
Electronic Intifada

6/22/23 In the fourth of Medical Aid for Palestinians’ (MAP’s) series of videos highlighting the stories and experiences of different generations of Palestinians, Rabab shares her fears for her baby Yahya’s future in Gaza amid Israel’s blockade and repeated military offensives. 
Youtube Medical Aid for Palestinians

Almog Cohen, a member of Itamar Ben-Gvir's Jewish Power party, threatened to "blow up" an Israeli youth center because of plans to host a joint Palestinian-Israeli summer camp. Cohen was also recently in the news for organizing vigilante groups in the southern Naqab (Negev) meant to “save the Negev from problematic absence of personal security.”
Mondoweiss

6/24/23 Israeli authorities razed homes in the Negev town of Arara, leaving 50 Bedouin Israelis citizens homeless, 15 of them children.
Haaretz

UNRWA is facing a dire financial crisis that could end all services to Palestinian refugees as soon as August. This would be devastating to the millions of Palestinians who rely on the agency for essential services. UNRWA has received 57% of the total funds it needs. The Ukrainian crisis caused a global rise in food prices and other basic human needs. Donors redirect their funds to Ukraine instead of UNRWA
Mondoweiss

OTHER RELATED TOPICS
5/30/23 The Israel Medical Association censured a bill to prevent funding for medical treatments to “improve quality of life” for Palestinian security prisoners at hearing of the Knesset National Security Committee. Dr. Yossi Walfisch, the chairman of the body’s Ethics Committee, said he “was not familiar with the term ‘life-improving’ treatments. The purpose of treatment is to heal,” adding that Israel Prison Service doctors must not be placed in the role of judges. “We need to meet international standards,” said Walfisch.
Haaretz

5/31/23  Palestinian activists in Gaza continued to show support for Walid Daqqa, a 60-year-old cancer patient held in Israeli prison. The latest rally in support of Daqqa took place near the Beit Hanoun, or Erez Checkpoint. An Israeli prison administration committee, known as the Early Release Committee, postponed the decision regarding a possible early release of Daqqa and referred the decision to another commission responsible for Palestinian prisoners who were sentenced to life imprisonment. 
Palestine Chronicle
Mondoweiss

6/2/23  Based on the 2023 Humanitarian Response Plan The occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) is a protracted political crisis characterized by 55 years of Israeli military occupation. This crisis is exacerbated by a lack of adherence to international humanitarian and human rights law, internal Palestinian divisions, and the recurrent escalation of hostilities between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups. The results are chronic protection concerns and humanitarian needs which will continue in the absence of a sustainable political solution and opportunities for further development.
OCHAOPT

6/5/23 This WHO report includes extensive health access report for April 2023 (a good resource). 
WHO

6/6/23 In light of ‘classified intelligence’ suggesting he has ‘ties to terrorist operatives,’ Israel barred a Gazan resident from traveling to Jordan through Israeli territory for medical treatment that would prevent his leg from being amputated. Egypt also prevented the 43-year-old man from going through its territory. Concluding that traveling to Jordan wasn't possible, the man made arrangements to have his leg amputated in Gaza.
Haaretz

6/8/23 The Palestinian Authority is blaming Israel for an acute drug shortage in the West Bank that is affecting Palestinian hospitals and residents with chronic conditions, arguing Israel has failed to help the organization supply and fund the medicines. The Gaza Strip is facing a similar crisis.
Haaretz

6/13/23 Israeli feminist groups say a crucial element of the far-right’s judicial overhaul package has been lost in the noise, and as a result, women’s legal rights are more at stake than they have been in years. “I think most of the public who are out protesting don’t even know about this issue, but it’s hugely problematic for women,” said the Israeli lawyer Tamar Ben Dror of the group Women Lawyers for Social Justice, referring to a subset of changes that would massively expand the power of state-run religious courts.
The Guardian

6/14/23 Israel’s Military Advocate General announced that the soldiers involved in the death of an 80-year-old Palestinian American would be disciplined but would not face criminal charges. On January 12th, 2022, Israeli soldiers dragged Omar Asaad out of his West Bank home in the middle of the night during a violent raid. Witnesses say he was bound, gagged, and left in a cold warehouse for hours. He was found face down and unresponsive. An autopsy determined that he had died of a heart attack.
Mondoweiss
Electronic Intifada

6/16/23 A department head at Haifa’s Rambam medical center systematically performed unnecessary operations and seriously harmed some patients, according to a 2020 Haaretz report. A new Health Ministry probe has revealed shocking findings, and the surgeon may now face criminal charges.
Haaretz

6/17/23 More than any other issue, personal safety is now the number one concern of Palestinian citizens, with some feeling they can hardly walk down the street, visit family members, or send kids to school without worrying if they will make it back home unharmed. Yet there is something deeply troubling about the way solutions to the violence are being deliberated, even among Palestinian citizens; the dominant thinking is that the intervention of the Israeli police and security agencies is needed to combat the problem.
+972

6/18/23 Nearly two years after complaints were filed against a group of ultra-Orthodox boys for desecrating and tearing up prayer books belonging to Women of the Wall, police notified the leader of the feminist prayer group that they had no intention of pursuing charges.
Haaretz

6/19/23 Israel's biggest public health care group recently opened Jerusalem’s first full-service LGBTQ medical clinic, serving both Jewish and Arab communities. But it is deliberately keeping a low profile – hoping to avoid ultra-Orthodox pushback.
Haaretz

The Israeli military used combat helicopters in the occupied West Bank for the first time in years, as an arrest operation in Jenin encountered unexpectedly fierce Palestinian resistance. As of late afternoon on June 19, the fighting was still raging, with four Palestinians killed, including a 15-year-old boy, and 45 injured, including four critically, according to Palestinian health officials. One of those was a 15-year-old girl who Palestinian witnesses quoted by Israel’s Haaretz website, said was shot inside her house.
The Guardian
Mondoweiss
Electronic Intifada

Far-right MKs threaten summer camp for Israeli and Palestinian orphans. At a Knesset Education Committee meeting, coalition MKs slam a youth village for renting its complex to host a summer camp for bereaved Israeli and Palestinian children, warning that ‘this government will respond’.
Haaretz

6/20/23 A 20-year-old Palestinian man was shot dead in clashes with the Israeli army in the town of Husan near Bethlehem in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Haaretz

6/21/23 Palestinians reported that Sedil Naghniyeh was struck by a live bullet in the head while standing in the front yard of her house. This brings the number of total casualties from the Monday's clash in Jenin on June 19 to seven.
Haaretz

Israeli settlers rampaged through several Palestinian towns in the West Bank on the night of June 20 torching cars, setting farmlands on fire and vandalizing homes, in scenes reminiscent of a pogrom earlier this year in the village of Huwwara. On June 21, settlers attacked the town of Turmusaya, south of Huwwara, setting vehicles, homes, and farmland on fire.
Middle East Eye
Electronic Intifada
Haaretz
Mondoweiss

6/22/23 Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) is calling for action to urgently protect healthcare workers and civilians as Israeli military and settler violence continues to spiral in the occupied West Bank. On June 19, the Israeli military launched its latest deadly incursion into the city of Jenin. The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) reported that Israeli forces shot and damaged two of its ambulances with live ammunition, one of which was taken out of service due to the severity of the damage. The Israeli military also delayed PRCS medical teams from reaching and treating the injured, and paramedics reportedly also came under fire. 
MAP

Thanks to Trude Bennett

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Media Watch-June 1, 2023

Welcome to the Health and Human Rights Media Watch. 

If you want to be involved in this JVP Health Advisory Council Media Watch project, contact us: https://www.jvphealth.org/contact

This month we are focused on Gaza, the impact of the siege on mental, physical, and public health, with a secondary focus on settler and soldier violence in the oPt. With the recent assault on Gaza and the closure of Erez checkpoint and increased restrictions, health care is even more strangled and patients can't get out for high level care. Israeli attacks continued in the West Bank and Palestinian hunger striker and political activist Sheikh Khader Adnan, 45, died inside the Ramleh prison clinic. There are a number of important research and NGO reports this month and an action item regarding the new Betty McCollum bill HR 3103.

VIOLATION FOR THE MONTH:  Israeli assassinations and bombing of Gaza.

The funeral of Ali Hasan Ghali, a leader in the military wing of the Islamic Jihad resistance group, who was killed in an Israeli air strike in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, on 11 May.  Salam YasserAPA images

Hostilities between Israeli and Palestinian resistance fighters in Gaza were sparked by a surprise Israeli attack  on May 11, 2023 that killed three leaders, their children and other family members. Human Rights Watch investigated three Israeli strikes that killed 62 Palestinian civilians where there were no evident military targets in the vicinity. Palestinian armed groups also committed unlawful attacks, launching more than 4,360 unguided rockets and mortars toward Israeli population centers, violating the prohibition against deliberate or indiscriminate attacks against civilians. The United Nations reported that during the May fighting, attacks by the Israeli military killed 260 Palestinians, including at least 129 civilians, of whom 66 were children. The Gaza Health Ministry said Israeli forces injured 1,948 Palestinians, including 610 children. Israeli authorities said that rocket and mortar attacks by Palestinian armed groups resulted in the death of 12 civilians, including two children, one soldier, and injured “several hundred” people. 
Healthcare suffered due to the closure of the Erez checkpoint, the only human crossing between Israel and Gaza. 430 Palestinians and their companions, mostly cancer patients were blocked access to treatment in hospitals in the occupied West Bank and Israel according to the Ministry of Health. The checkpoint for receiving goods, medication and fuel was also blocked. The lives of the Gazan people were made more difficult resulting in increased food insecurity, water and electricity shortages, mental health issues as well as fear for their lives.
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/resistance-vows-fight-after-more-israeli-assassinations
https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/07/27/gaza-apparent-war-crimes-during-may-fighting

HEROES OF THE MONTH: Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT).

Rashida Tlaib, from her website

The Institute for Middle East Understanding, Democracy for the Arab World Now, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, and Jewish Voice for Peace Action organized an educational event, “Nakba 75 & the Palestinian People,” with special guest Rashida Tlaib. This event was to educate Congress and their staff about the ongoing Nakba and its impact upon Palestinians followed by dinner to take place in the auditorium of the Capitol Visitor Center. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) blocked the event. Rep. Tlaib condemned McCarthy"s move and stated, "This event is planned to bring awareness about the Nakba and create space for Palestinian Americans to tell their stories of trauma and survival." Senator Sanders gave a
conference room to the group so the educational event could take place. "We will not be
silenced."
https://mondoweiss.net/2023/05/kevin-mccarthy-blocks-nakba-event-from-happening-in-capitol-says-he-will-honor-israel-instead/?ml_recipient=87877747829900661&ml_link=87877425635001777&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2023-05-21&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines


ACTION ITEM: Defending the Human Rights of Palestinian Children and Families Act (HR3103)

Tell your representative to cosponsor or support the Defending the Human Rights of Palestinian Children and Families Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act, reintroduced by Rep. Betty McCollum (MN-04) for the new congressional term.
Write to your Representat

Back to our focus on Gaza and settler & soldier violence on the West Bank…(a sampling of health news and analysis)

Important report in The Lancet, www.thelancet.com, Vol 401 May 20, 2023
The Lancet World Report "Palestinians Continue to Face Barriers to Health" presents the findings of two new reports issued by the World Health Organization on 9 May 2023. The WHO reports document 750 attacks on health care in the Gaza Strip and West Bank from 2019 to 2022, resulting in the death of one health-care worker and injuries to 568, with 315 ambulances and 160 health facilities affected. Ajith Sunghay, Head of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in the occupied Palestinian territory, said in a press release. “This trend has only accelerated in 2023. OHCHR and WHO documented that Israeli forces have frequently prevented access to medical care, including for first response teams to reach persons with life-threatening injuries.” Only 65% of patients’ applications to exit the Gaza Strip to reach East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Jordan,or Egypt for treatment were approved by Israel, and ambulances faced an average waiting time of 68 min at the Erez crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip; 331 678 permit applications from the West Bank were denied between 2011 and 2021.
Al-Shabaka

And in Global Public Health, An International Journal for Research, Policy and Practice, Volume 18, 2023 - Issue 1,

Structural racism and the health of Palestinian citizens of Israel. Palestinian citizens of Israel (PCI) constitute almost 20% of the Israeli population. Despite having access to one of the most efficient healthcare systems in the world, PCI have shorter life expectancy and significantly worse health outcomes compared to the Jewish Israeli population. While several studies have analysed the social and policy determinants driving these health inequities, direct discussion of structural racism as their overarching etiology has been limited. This article situates the social determinants of health of PCI and their health outcomes as stemming from settler colonialism and resultant structural racism by exploring how Palestinians came to be a racialized minority in their homeland. In utilising critical race theory and a settler colonial analysis, we provide a structural and historically responsible reading of the health of PCI and suggest that dismantling legally codified racial discrimination is the first step to achieving health equity.4/14/23 The full blockade of Gaza – imposed by Israel since 2007 – has caused major problems for the healthcare system, with severe shortages of essential drugs and Gazans having to choose between increasingly expensive drugs and food.
Global Public Health

4/25/23 The 81,000 families in Gaza who depend on social welfare payments disbursed by the Palestinian Authority were hard hit by a six-month delay in payments from October 2022 to April 2023. Withholding of funds is a common weapon in political disputes between the PA and Hamas, while 80% of the population live below the national poverty line. Muhammad al-Nouri is sole provider for his family of nine, including a 19-year-old daughter with cerebral palsy; laid off from a job with the Gaza municipality in 2007,  he relies on social welfare but has received nothing for the last six months.

Electronic Intifada

4/27/23 Twelve-year-old Areej Asaliyeh dreamed of becoming a poet until shrapnel from an Israeli missile struck her home in Jabaliya refugee camp during Israel’s assault on Gaza in August 2022, causing her to lose her eyesight. Before Israel’s last assault, she said, “I wasn’t afraid of war, I wasn’t bothered by the sound of missiles. I never thought a missile would hit us and I would lose my eye.” The injury left Areej feeling fearful of even going to school.
Electronic Intifada

4/28/23 For 8 to 12 hours a day, in his donkey-driven cart, Abdullah al-Siksik, 27, collects garbage from the bins of Gaza City in the Al-Nasser Street area. The work is tiring, yet al-Siksik is nearly always eager to get home from work, shower and start his second job. A college graduate, he tutors adolescent and teenage students in English from his home in the Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip. With only four students who pay him $8 per month, he has had to supplement this income by working as a waste collector, which pays $288 monthly. It’s a meager income, but al-Siksik uses it to support his seven-member family, including his wife, two toddler-age daughters and his unemployed parents; he considers himself lucky to have a job at all. The unemployment rate in Gaza was 73.9% among college graduates aged 19 to 29 in 2022.
Electronic Intifada

4/30/23 Mahmooood Sif, 51, of the Palestinian village of Burka in the northern West Bank, told Haaretz he and a friend were attacked by eight Israeli settlers while picking zaatar on land owned by Sif. The young male settlers threw stones, used pepper spray, and beat them with bats, fleeing only when villagers from Burka arrived on the scene. Sif and his friend were taken to a hospital in Nablus where they were treated for their injuries. Sif said he was wounded in his back and leg and was released after receiving treatment. His friend, also in his 50s, remained hospitalized with a broken finger and face injuries. 
Haaretz

5/1/23 Jericho enters its tenth consecutive day under siege as the Israeli army launches deadly raids into Aqbat Jabr refugee camp in search of Palestinian resistance fighters. Witnesses say that the Israel Defense Forces conducted arrest raids in the Aqabat Jabr refugee camp, leading to violent clashes between the two sides. A Palestinian teen was shot dead and six others were wounded during clashes with the Israeli army in the area of Jericho. According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, the victim of the clashes at refugee camp in the West Bank is 17-year-old Muhammed Eldaa. Israeli forces also shot and killed 39-year-old Ahmad Yacoub Taha, who was shot near the Palestinian district of Salfit. More details in the Mondoweiss article.
Haaretz
Mondoweiss

5/2/23 On the morning of May 2, Palestinian hunger striker and political activist Sheikh Khader Adnan, 45, died inside the Ramleh prison clinic. Since February 5, Adnan was on hunger strike protesting his imprisonment by Israel, which has been targeting and harassing him over the past decade. Adnan was the veteran of eight hunger strikes launched to protest his unlawful imprisonment by the Israeli authorities over the years, most of them without charge or trial. Khader was a highly reputed and resilient resistance actor within the Palestinian Prisoners’ Movement, and his political reach ran far beyond the four walls of his prison cell and deep into Palestinian civil society.  He had been held in solitary confinement in a cockroach-infested cell and was refused family visitation rights, even up to the end of his life -- all in violation of international human rights law.  Khader’s martyrdom is a renewed call to action, a stern rejoinder of the reality that might befall any Palestinian who dares to speak against injustice, and a stirring reminder that no Palestinian is free until every Palestinian prisoner is free.
New York Times
Mondoweiss
American Muslims for Palestine
+972
Mondoweiss
Al-Mezan

5/4/23 For eight months in 2022, the fishing boat of Jihad al-Hissi, 56, was held by Israeli authorities after its crew ventured a short distance beyond the small zone in which Gaza’s fishers are permitted to operate in contradiction of the Oslo accords. Israeli naval vessels attacked the boat’s crew with rubber-coated steel bullets, water cannons, and electric shock weapons. “Feeding our families was very hard during those months,” al-Hassi said. “All we know how to do in life is fish.” Eventually the boat – named Al-Haj Rajab after Jihad’s father – was released to him under strict conditions, and he was required to pay approximately $5,500. All six fishers on board were arrested, brought to the Erez military checkpoint, and interrogated until late evening.
Electronic Intifada

5/8/23 After years of Israeli neglect, preschool is still out of reach for many Bedouin children. Over 5,000 children are unregistered at educational institutions, with registration among Jews standing at 100%. Among the causes are lack of facilities and transportation difficulties. 
Haaretz

5/8/23 Israeli forces demolished the elementary school in Jib al-Dib, an unrecognized village adjacent to a string of Israeli settlements in Area C of the occupied West Bank. Village residents reported that soldiers arrived at the building at around 5 a.m., prevented anyone from approaching the demolition site, forbade any documentation of the demolition, and then razed the school to the ground. The right-wing organization Regavim, co-founded by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich — who is also a minister in the Defense Ministry and oversees the Civil Administration, the bureaucratic arm of the occupation — spearheaded the legal fight against the school.
+972

5/8/23 The use of facial recognition technology by Israel to target Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem has escalated, particularly following protests and in regions surrounding illegal settlements. Amnesty’s report “Automated Apartheid” exposes how this monitoring forms part of a calculated effort by Israeli officials to generate a hostile and coercive environment for Palestinians. In Hebron and East Jerusalem, the technology focuses almost entirely on Palestinians, marking a new way to automate the control of interior boundaries that separate the lives of Palestinians and Israelis. 
Mondoweiss

5/9/23 Israeli warplanes struck multiple sites across Gaza early on May 9, killing three Islamic Jihad military leaders along with several others, with an initial total of 12 fatalities. The Israeli military announced on Twitter that it had launched the beginning of an operation and thus a major escalation and yet another episode of terror for Gaza’s besieged population of 2.2 million Palestinians.
Electronic Intifada
Aljazeera

5/9/23 Israel renewed its bombing in the occupied Gaza Strip late in the day, killing two near Khan Younis. Their deaths bring to 15 the number of Palestinians killed in the territory since Israel launched a surprise attack on Gaza, killing three Islamic Jihad leaders as well as their family members and other civilians in their homes. The only possible outcome of the recent Israeli airstrikes on residential sites in Gaza was a massacre, but Israel conducted them anyway.
Electronic Intifada  
Mondoweiss
OCHA

5/11/23 “There is no future in this country”: Notes from a Research in Progress on Slow Violence, Mental Health and Resilience in Gaza.
UCL London’s Global University

5/13/23 United Nations update on Israeli attacks and consequences for civilians. Referring to the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza, the executive director of UNICEF has stated that she “deplores all acts of violence against children and calls for the immediate cessation of hostilities and for all parties to protect children from all forms of violence and grave violations, in accordance with international law, including international humanitarian law. 
OCHA OPT

5/13/23 As the recent military offensive on the Gaza Strip escalated attacks on houses with highly destructive missiles, in addition to human casualties numbering in the hundreds there was substantial damage beyond intended targets, including dozens of houses and other civilian targets like hospitals and medical facilities.  Merely in the days since May 9 through the middle of the month 33 Palestinians were killed, including six children and four women, and 147 others were injured, including 48 children and 26 women. In addition, 57 residential units housing 58 families of 374 people, including 133 children and 53 women, were entirely destroyed. Three hundred more residential units were also partially damaged, while hundreds of people were displaced amid the relentless airstrikes.  In addition to the offensive itself, Israel’s complete closure of Gaza crossings continued to threaten the supply of essential basic services foreshadowing a major humanitarian crisis sparked by lack of fuel threats to water supply (including the safety of some 200 drinking water wells), to proper treatment of sewage, and to the continued operation of Gaza’s only power plant. 
Al-Mezan

5/13/23 Gaza cancer patients face life threatening delays in treatment due to the closings of Gaza crossings.
BBC

5/15/23 From expanding illegal Jewish settlements to severely restricting Palestinians’ freedom of movement, taking Palestinian resources and arresting Palestinians on a near-daily basis – such policies have become a blueprint for successive Israeli governments. The Nakba (Catastrophe in Arabic) remains an ongoing, all-encompassing system that affects all aspects of life, Palestinians say. Israel is taking over not just the land but also the names of towns and cities and is “appropriating the culture and our rights … this is ongoing,” prominent Palestinian politician Hanan Ashrawi told Al Jazeera from the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah.
On top of decades of Israeli efforts to rename Palestinian towns and villages, a more recent example of this erasure is Israel’s so-called nation-state law.
Aljazeera

5/15/23 The details of the May 9-14 escalation of hostilities in Gaza and Israel are available in OCHA’s Flash Updates. The UN verified the killing of 33 Palestinians including 12 civilians (4 girls, 2 boys, 4 women and 2 men).  One additional killing was unverified at the time of the report.  190 Palestinians were injured (including 64 children and 38 women.  At least three of the fatalities were due to rockets falling short.  One Israeli woman and Palestinian worker from Gaza were killed and at least 40 injuries due to rocket fire were reported in Israel.  A total of 2,943 housing units were damage and 1,244 Palestinians were internally displaced.  At least 26 schools were . damaged and Al Aqsa hospital and the Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza sustained, and two primary health care clinics in Khan Youris and northern Gaza sustained partial damage. 
OCHAOPT
(also OCHAOPT May 12 & May 13)

5/15/23 From the director if the Gaza Community Mental Health Program. Children in Gaza cannot heal from the trauma of Israel assaults because the assaults never end. It is time to stop the seige.

Le Monde Diplomatique

5/15/23 The 75th anniversary of the Nakba brought unprecedented coverage in American media of the Palestinian experience. MSNBC, NPR, and Vox did very good Nakba pieces.
Mondoweiss

5/16/23 In its latest attack on Gaza, Israel killed at least 33 Palestinians in five days, including seven children; other children were orphaned. The attack was accompanied by calls from Israel’s government ministers – including the overt fascists Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich – for greater violence, in effect the intensification of genocide. To Israel the children it killed were just “collateral damage” of its military onslaught – grotesquely named Operation Shield and Arrow. To “justify” the dehumanization of Palestinian children, Maurice Hirsch, who spent almost two decades in Israel’s Military Advocate General Corps, tweeted that “while the incidental loss of life of non-combatants is always unfortunate, the Laws of War take into account that this is a possible and even legitimate result.” Civilian deaths are seen as acceptable “collateral damage.”
Electronic Intifada
Gisha

5/16/23  “Nine out of ten children in the Gaza Strip suffer[ed] some form of conflict-related trauma” following the Israeli military attack in May 2021, according to a report by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. The situation is further exacerbated, the report concluded, because Gaza’s population is so young: around half of its population of more than two million is under 15.
Electronic Intifada

5/18/23 Beyond the skyscrapers and rows of cement buildings in Haifa, a small number of pre-1948 Palestinian sandstone homes tell a different story.
Haifa came under the control of Zionist militias in April 1948, three weeks before Israel signed its declaration of independence on May 14, hours before the end of the British Mandate in Palestine at midnight on May 15. The latter date is commemorated annually by Palestinians as the Nakba, or “catastrophe”, marking the violent ethnic cleansing of their country.
By then, Zionist forces had expelled more than 95% of Haifa’s residents.
Aljazeera

5/18/23 Gaza City, Palestine – Israeli forces have used live fire and tear gas against Palestinians who joined a demonstration on the besieged Gaza Strip’s eastern border with Israel, injuring several Palestinians, as far-right Israelis held a so-called ‘flag march’ in occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City. Hundreds of Palestinians joined the protest, the Gaza demonstration condemned the ‘flag march’ in Jerusalem, and called for an end to Israeli attacks in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.
Aljazeera

5/18/23 Hundreds of Palestinian stores in the Old City of Jerusalem have been forced to shut their doors ahead of an annual Israeli far-right march, which has witnessed violence in the past.
The event marks the capture of East Jerusalem in 1967, is known as the “flag march” and is notorious for scenes of Israelis chanting racist slogans such as “Death to Arabs” and harassing Palestinians as they parade through the Old City.
“I am 70 years old, how can I resist the occupation? How can I resist their flags? Or people like this?” al-Hroub, a father of 12, said. “The occupiers try to provoke us and we do not have the power to deter them. They come in large numbers. I prefer to close my store,” he told Al Jazeera from the Old City. “When the Old City is closed, it is like all of Palestine is closed. We call on the Arab Muslim world not to leave Al-Aqsa, not to leave Palestinians on their own. The city is under siege,” said al-Hroub.
Aljazeera

5/18/23 Lawmakers from the Democratic Party joined Abu Akleh’s family in Washington, DC,  to renew demands for an independent investigation into the killing of the veteran reporter, who was an American citizen. No American journalist or journalist working for an American company should ever fear retaliation, imprisonment or death for simply doing their job. Shireen stood for justice; she stood for conviction; she stood for always telling people’s stories and telling the truth.
Aljazeera

5/19/23 OCHA oPt Protection of Civilians Report, May 19, 2023.  From May 2 – 12, 2023, Israeli carried out 3 operations in the West Bank (in Nablus and the Tulkarm and Balata refugee camps) that killed 7 Palestinians and injured 236 others.   In three additional operations, Israeli forces killed another four Palestinians (3 in Jenin, 1 Tulkarm).   Since the beginning of 2023 until the 15 May, Israeli forces killed 108 Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, more than double the death toll of 51 in the same period in 2022. Two Palestinians (a man and a woman) were killed in separate incidents at Israeli military checkpoints.  A total of 688 Palestinians, including at least 72 children, were injured by Israeli forces across the West Bank.

5/21/23 Adalah, Bimkom and the RCUV Launch New Interactive Map: Bedouin Communities Under Threat in the Naqab.  The commentary and interactive online map displays the ongoing forced displacement of Bedouins in the Naqab. 
Adalah

5/22/23 Israeli occupation forces attacked Balata refugee camp in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus on the morning of May 22, killing three Palestinians. Muhammad Bilal Zaytoun, 31, a cleaner with the Nablus municipality, was returning home from work when Israeli soldiers raided the camp in the occupied West Bank city. As Zaytoun stepped out of a municipal vehicle, Israeli soldiers fired at him without warning even though he posed no danger, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR). The Israeli invaders shot him in the chest, hand, and leg, and left him “to bleed for 20 minutes without providing him [with] first aid.” 

Electronic Intifada
Aljazeera

5/22/23 Homesh was originally built in 1978 as an Israeli military base on private Palestinian land and handed over to settlers in 1980. It was then evacuated in 2005 as part of then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s “disengagement plan”. While all Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem are considered illegal under international law, the settlement of Homesh is also considered illegal under Israeli law because the Supreme Court ruled that the land belonged to private owners.
Aljazeera
5/23/23

Israel's state prosecution announced that it would oppose the granting of parole to Palestinian prisoner Walid Daqqa, who was convicted in 1986 in the murder of soldier Moshe Tamam and is now suffering from terminal cancer.
Haaretz

5/23/23 In its annual review, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) reports that more than one in four patients screened in violence-afflicted Gaza at UN-run health centers require mental health and psychosocial support. That is the highest rate of mental health need ever recorded across UNRWA’s medical system [and refers only to patients in the UNRWA system; population estimates are likely to be much higher].
United Nations News

5/24/23 Dr. Lina Qasem-Hassan, Board Chairwoman of Physicians for Human Rights Israel, describes her experience as a Palestinian doctor in the Israeli healthcare system, and how the Israeli healthcare system neglects Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territory. [As told in a video with producer/director Ghousoon Bisharat and cinematographer/editor Thomas Dallal.]
Mondoweiss

5/26/23 Israel conducted a large-scale attack on Gaza earlier this month, the BBC and other news outlets reported that hundreds of people – mostly with cancer – were blocked from traveling for urgent treatment. The headlines briefly drew attention to the deadly consequences of the movement restrictions Israel places on Palestinians. Such restrictions also occur when Israel is not subjecting Gaza to continuous airstrikes. Most instances in which Israel prevents patients from keeping appointments go unreported in the press. 
Electronic Intifada

 

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Media Watch-April 10, 2023

Welcome to the Health and Human Rights Media Watch.

 

If you want to be involved in this JVP Health Advisory Council Media Watch project, contact us: https://www.jvphealth.org/contact

This month we are focused on the impact of settler violence, (with the support and collusion of the military), on health and human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory.

Of note, review of the past 6 weeks reveals the following:

1.     The underlying context for the conversation is the ongoing occupation and siege, restrictions of economic development, restrictions of movement and denial of medical permits and medical supplies, especially lethal for cancer patients: ie., Israeli apartheid and its consequences.

2.     The latest assault comes from Netanyahu’s very racist, violent coalition that has embraced policies including pogroms, murder, collective punishment, and other atrocities, with the goal of claiming more land with less Palestinians and provoking Palestinian attacks to justify more Israeli assaults. Netanyahu has done this before, especially when he is in political trouble.

3.     This has more recently been accomplished through repeated violent Israeli military attacks of worshippers at al-Aqsa Mosque along with the rising state-backed settler violence, endemic in the occupied West Bank.

4.     As Bteselem said:  “The settlers carry out the attack, the military secures it, the politicians back it.”

5.     For Palestinians, this has resulted in rising numbers of injured, dead, destruction of property, arrests, emotional and physical trauma, and loss of human rights. Add this to the ongoing divisions within Palestinian leadership and the lack of adequate funding for health care.

Savor the victory….

Special focus on the exoneration of Dr. Lara Sheehi

3/27/23 ADC welcomes the conclusion and findings of a third-party investigation by George Washington University (GWU) which unequivocally clears and exonerates Dr. Lara Sheehi from any and all claims made by the spurious Title VI complaint by StandWithUs (SWU), a right-wing pro-Israel political activist group. These findings send a resounding message: pro-Israeli smear campaigns and tactics targeting academics who advocate for Palestinian rights are baseless and primarily meant to intimidate, harass and silence. They prove our position that StandWithUs fabricated a complaint and intended it to find traction because of anti-Arab racism and anti-Palestinian sentiment.
ADC

3/30/23 Lara Sheehi, a psychology professor at George Washington University, has been exonerated of all spurious allegations a right-wing Israel lobby group made against her. Civil rights group Palestine Legal has filed its own complaint to the government, demanding that the top civil rights office investigate George Washington University for numerous instances of racist abuse and hostility against Palestinian students and faculty who support Palestinian rights. Sheehi said that she is “grateful to the investigators and the labor that was expended to meticulously document what I have known since day one: those of us who fight for Palestinian liberation do not do so on the backs of our Jewish siblings, nor do we discriminate, retaliate or isolate Jewish or Israeli students in our classrooms.”
Electronic Intifada

The impact of settler violence, (with the support and collusion of the military), on health and human rights in the oPt.

2/24/23 Israel’s medical permit system which prevents Palestinians who require lifesaving treatment from travelling to services in other areas is another mechanism used to control and inflict violence on the Palestinian people, is a mechanism of oppression.
The New Arab

2/26/23 Zvika Fogel, a member of Parliament said, "A terrorist came out of Huwara- and Huwara was closed and burned, this is what I want to see, that's the only way we will achieve deterrence." " I think the village of Huwara needs to be wiped out. I think the state of Israel should do it", said Israeli Minister of finance Bezalel Smotrich, who also handles administration in the occupied West Bank.
Aljazeera

2/27/23 Over the past years, we have reported on the alarming rise of joint settler-soldier militias across the occupied West Bank as they murder, wound, and terrorize Palestinian communities. Those same militias left Huwara burning on 2/26/23.
+ 972

2/27/23 Israeli settlers set dozens of Palestinian homes and cars on fire in Huwara, a town in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, in what appeared to be the worst outburst of settler violence in decades. The army allowed settlers to enter Huwara on foot, while preventing journalists, medics, and Palestinian aid workers from doing the same. Palestinian media said some 30 homes and cars were torched during the late-night rampage by the settlers, which came a day after two settlers were killed. Earlier this month, 11 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli military raid in Nablus.
The Palestinian health ministry said a 37-year-old man was shot and killed by Israeli fire. The Palestinian Red Crescent said two others were shot and wounded, a third person was stabbed and a fourth was beaten with an iron bar.
Aljazeera
+972
Defense of Children International-Palestine

2/27/23 Near daily settler violence has forced a 62 year old Bedouin farmer to move out of the area he has lived in for over 50 years, a village near Jericho. The settlers pick fights with the shepherds, threaten to burn their homes down, steal their sheep, and infringe on their grazing lands.
Aljazeera

2/27/23 Ramallah, occupied West Bank – Israeli settlers have carried out at least 300 attacks, including shootings and arson, in a rampage through Palestinian villages in the Nablus area of the occupied West Bank, Palestinian officials say, in what has been described as a “pogrom”.
A 37-year-old Palestinian man identified as Samih al-Aqtash was shot in the stomach by settlers protected by the Israeli army in the village of Zaatara south of Nablus. He died of his injuries. The father of five returned home five days ago after volunteering to help earthquake survivors in Turkey.
Aljazeera

3/3/23 Since the start of 2023, Israeli settler-related violence reached an average of three incidents per day compared with two incidents per day in 2022, and one incident per day in 2021, the UN told Al Jazeera. This is the highest daily average of settler-related incidents affecting Palestinians since 2006. According to Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din, seven percent of settler attacks have led to criminal charges with only three percent of investigations leading to a conviction. During the first two months of 2023, at least five Palestinians have been killed by Israeli settlers and 62 by the Israeli army.
Aljazeera

3/3/23 Under Israel’s apartheid system, impunity reigns. Despite the intensity and scale of recent  attacks, which resulted in the killing of one Palestinian and the wounding of nearly 400 more, and despite a rare show of international condemnation of settler violence, Israeli police yesterday released six suspects who were arrested in connection with the attacks. Meanwhile two others have been issued with administrative detention orders, which violate international law. Israeli authorities have long enabled and incited settler attacks against Palestinians, and in some cases soldiers have directly participated.  
Amnesty International

3/5/23 Protecting Human Rights in Occupied Palestine: Working through the United Nations, a book conversation with UN Rapporteurs Richard Falk, Michael Lynk, Jonanthan Kuttab, and Francesca Albanese
Youtube

3/8/23 From the Palestinian perspective, the Huwwara pogrom is not something abnormal. Rather, it is the logical result of the Zionist colonial project in Palestine. Israeli settlers – colonizers would arguably be a more accurate word – are not an outlaw group in Israel. They are a strategic tool in the implementation of policies pursued by successive Israeli governments.
The objectives of those policies have been to steal land and to expel Palestinians.
What is new is that the most hardline colonizers now occupy a position of immense power. Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are both colonizers themselves, living in settlements that are illegal under international law. The settlers do not act alone. B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, has pointed to how settlers benefit from cooperation. “The settlers carry out the attack, the military secures it, the politicians back it.”
Electronic Intifada

3/23/23 On March 11, settlers broke down the door of the home of a Palestinian family in a small agricultural village in the occupied South Hebron Hills during a solidarity visit by Israeli activists accompanying the father to his land. Under the cover of night, two settlers later broke into the home brandishing a gun and demanded the family “stop bringing leftists [to the area].”
+972

3/24/23 To understand the settler mindset, read this eulogy. The eulogy delivered by Rabbi Eliezer Melamed at the funeral of two “terror” victims should be required reading for anyone who wants to gain insight into contemporary Israeliness, which is coalescing with the worldview of settlers. The message [if you do not have an account] is: “Every Jew [especially settlers] who is killed simply for being a Jew is holy.” In other words, the only reason for terror attacks is fathomless hatred of Jews, which is not related to the deeds of the Jews or their behavior, or to the perpetrators’ feeling that Jews have wronged them. In Melamed’s world, there is no dispossession of people from their land, no expulsion, no acts of violence against innocent Palestinians, no damage to property, no acts of humiliation.
Haaretz

3/27/23  Settler pogroms become the norm as Israel begins Ramadan crackdown. While tensions rise at the Al Aqsa compound in anticipation of a broader Israeli crackdown, settlers burned down a Palestinian home near Ramallah and continued the organized assault on Huwwara. 
Mondoweiss
Mondoweiss

 3/27/23 The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) launched a new report on “Medical Equipment and Medicines in Gaza Strip: Perpetual Shortage and Serious Repercussions”. The report addresses the deteriorating health conditions in the Gaza Strip and sheds light on the suffering of Gaza Strip’s patients triggered by the frail health system and its inability to provide medicines and medical equipment for the governmental health facilities. 
The report also highlights the Israeli occupation authorities’ restrictions on the entry of medical equipment and spare parts needed for maintenance; most notably the diagnostic medical devices used for diagnosing and treating cancer patients such as the interventional radiology and ultrasonography devices as well as oxygen generating stations.  
The report also underlines the impact of the ongoing Palestinian political division on the health system operation by not allocating budgets and operating expenses needed for the work of the health facilities in the Gaza Strip and absence of plans aimed at correcting and developing the health system in Palestine, including adopting a drug policy that guarantees the availability of treatment for all citizens and purchasing medical equipment, devices, and spare parts for the maintenance of inoperative machines at the Gaza Strip’s hospitals. Full report here: 
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights

3/28/23  Netanyahu has agreed to establish a new armed battalion under the control of Itamar Ben-Gvir, the ultranationalist national security minister who openly supports the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and already has immense power over police forces that regularly inflict violence on Palestinians. This new militia will pick up the mantle of the settler vigilantes who hunted for Palestinians in Lyd, Haifa, and other cities during the May 2021 Unity Intifada. 
Adalah Justice Project       

3/28/23  On March 27, Israeli settlers invaded the Palestinian town of Huwara, stoning vehicles and setting a firefighting truck on fire. Their attacks injured six Palestinians. The settler attack came two days after a Palestinian gunman opened fire at Israeli soldiers in the town, injuring two.
Jewish Currents

3/30/23  Netanyahu placated Ben G’Vir after postponing judicial overhaul by promising him the establishment of a “National Guard” as settler violence continued spreading throughout the West Bank.
Mondoweiss
Fosna

3/30/23 Authoritarian tools forged to control Palestinians are now being turned on elements of the Israeli Jewish population. As Israel’s economy was shuttered and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu became convinced of the need to temporarily suspend his judicial reform legislation this week, one final deal was necessary to hold together his governing coalition. Itamar Ben Gvir, a serial racist who leads the Jewish Power party and serves as national security minister, was promised by Netanyahu that the state would move forward with creating a national guard under Ben Gvir’s authority - dubbed by some commentators as his “private militia”. Israeli society is experiencing what French-Martinique anti-colonial author and politician Aime Cesaire called the “boomerang effect of colonisation”. The work of Cesaire and others looked at how policies used on the colonised by colonial states could then be brought back to the imperial metropole and deployed against citizens. 
Middle East Eye

4/1/23 Masafer Yatta, a collection of hamlets in the pastoral hills surrounding Yatta, is one of several areas across the occupied West Bank where the Israeli state has for decades forced out Palestinians and replaced them with Israeli settlers. The apartheid regime over Palestinians continues unchallenged as Jewish Israelis protest mounting authoritarianism in their own lives.
The Intercept

4/3/23 Netanyahu surrounds himself with extremists promoting violence – a list of names and their shameless, racist statements.
Electronic Intifada

4/4/23 The Israeli ministry that oversees settlements intends to double the budget allocated to settlers for drones and inspectors to monitor Palestinian construction. The National Missions Ministry intends to allocate a total of 40 million shekels ($11.1 million) for this purpose. The transfer of funds will take place only after the Knesset passes the state budget.
Haaretz

4/4/23  A French diplomatic source slammed Israeli politicians ‘encouraging settler violence.’ Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said he and his French counterpart discussed curbing the Iranian nuclear program and expanding the Abraham Accords, but failed to mention that the conversation also dealt with the government’s plan to weaken the judicial system.
Haaretz

4/5/23 Palestinian witnesses describe how the beatings and violence Israeli forces meted out on worshippers was far worse than the online footage shows. Stun grenades and teargas were fired into the thousand-year-old building, before soldiers threw Palestinians to the ground, stamped on them, and bound their hands forcefully behind their backs. The Palestine Red Crescent Society and local media said dozens of Palestinians were injured in the crackdown. Medics were denied access to those hurt and one was assaulted outside the mosque.
Middle East Eye
Electronic Intifada
+972

4/6/23 Israeli forces repeatedly invaded al-Aqsa Mosque, brutally beat, and expelled worshipers, on behalf of Jewish extremists. In Israel and in the West Bank, Palestinians held marches and rallies to protest the attacks.
Reader Supported News

4/6/23 Summary of events around al-Aqsa Mosque attack. The Israeli violence has sparked widespread protest across Palestine, reminiscent of the beginnings of the 2021 Unity Uprisings.
Mondoweiss

4/6/23 A barrage of rockets was fired into Israel from Lebanon as tensions over Israeli assaults on worshippers in Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque mount.
Middle East Eye

4/7/23 The Palestinian Health Ministry said that Israel “partially damaged” Gaza’s Al-Durra Children’s Hospital during a series of airstrikes launched on the besieged Strip and Lebanon. The recent crackdown on worshipers at the Al-Aqsa compound has confirmed the fears of many in Gaza: the Netanyahu government is provoking Palestinians as a pretext to launch another war.
Palestine Chronicle
Mondoweiss

4/7/23 The provocative, extremist Temple Movement activists (The Temple Institute,  The Temple Mount and Land of Israel Faithful Movement, and Return to the Mount ) planned to enter the Aqsa compound to slaughter goats and challenge the Muslim presence in the holy site. Palestinian worshippers remaining in the mosque during Ramadan are resisters.
Mondoweiss

4/8/23 Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has previously been convicted of inciting racism and supporting a terror organization, is one step closer to having power over his own “private militia,” rights groups warned this week after the Israeli government advanced a decision to further the establishment of a National Guard. The National Guard will be composed of Israel’s Border Police, army reservists, and “civilian volunteers” who would be answerable to his Ministry of National Security, focused on controlling Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Mondoweiss

International news

3/3/23 A British pro-Israel charity has managed to pressure the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital into removing from one of its corridors an exhibition of art by Palestinian children from the Gaza Strip. The UK Lawyers for Israel group submitted a complaint to the hospital it said "on behalf of some Jewish patients, who said that they felt vulnerable and victimised by this display". A UKLFI director commented: "We are pleased that the display has been removed and that the hospital has responded positively to its patients’ complaints."
Middle East Eye

3/10/23 The Palestine Global Mental Health Network calls on the International Neuropsychoanalysis Association to call off its upcoming conference in Israel in light of human rights abuses and their impact on psychological well-being.
Mondoweiss

3/31/23 Senator Bernie Sanders and Congressmember Jamaal Bowman, backed by other progressive lawmakers, are calling on the Biden administration to reconsider U.S. policy toward Israel “in recognition of the worsening violence, further annexation of land, and denial of Palestinian rights.”
Democracy Now

4/6/23 The BBC is using a bogus ‘neutrality’ to trick its audience into siding with Israeli state oppression. The BBC regularly chooses language and terminology whose effect is to deceive its audience. And it compounds such journalistic malpractice by omitting vital pieces of context when that extra information would present Israel in a bad light.
BBC bias was starkly on show once again this week as the broadcaster reported on the violence at Al-Aqsa Mosque. Social media was full of videos showing heavily armed Israeli police storming the mosque complex during the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. 
What is wrong with the British state broadcaster’s approach - and much of the rest of the western media’s - is distilled in one short BBC headline: “Clashes erupt at contested holy site.”
Middle East Eye

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Media Watch - March 1, 2023

Welcome to the Health and Human Rights Media Watch. 

We are pausing the Present! project
 (those Palestinians who have been killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers
in the past 4 weeks). It will resume when we are able.

 If you want to be involved in this JVP Health Advisory Council Media Watch project, contact us: https://www.jvphealth.org/contact

This month we are focused on mental health in Palestine/Israel

 MONTHLY HUMAN RIGHTS HERO AND VIOLATION

HERO: Ada Colau, the mayor of Barcelona, in Spain's Catalonia region.

A rally in support of Palestinian liberation in Barcelona, in Spain’s Catalonia region, May 2021. ( Adria Salido ZarcoPacific Press/SIPA USA)

Colau announced February 8, 2022 that they are suspending all institutional
ties with Israel. She wrote a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel
that any agreements would remain suspended until "Israeli authorities put an end to the
systematic violation of the people of Palestine's human rights." This move comes as a
response to a petition by 100 social organizations and thousands of residents under
the slogan of 'Barcelona says NO to Apartheid, Barcelona says YES to Human Rights.'
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/barcelona-freezes-ties-israel

VIOLATION: Israeli cabinet’s decision that Palestinian citizens of Israel working in medical fields are a “threat to national security,” and other racist decisions.

Palestinian pharmacy students at Birzeit University don white coats to begin training at Palestinian health institutions following the end of their third year at Birzeit University in a ceremony organized by the faculty of pharmacy, nursing and health professions on April 20, 2019. (photo: Birzeit University website)

The Israeli cabinet sees Israel's high reliance on the expertise of Palestinian citizens of Israel in the medical fields to be a 'threat to national security.' Other actions proposed by the Israeli government are denying national insurance benefits, deporting families of Administrative prisoners, revoking the citizenship of Arab prisoners’ families and withdrawing identity cards and residency from the families of Jerusalemite prisoners. Palestinian universities are popular with Arab students in Israel due to their focus on the health and medical fields with flexible admission conditions, ability to study in Arabic or English, and affordability of tuition. The Israeli universities want to preserve 'Jewish purity' in medicine.
https://mondoweiss.net/2023/02/israel-sees-reliance-on-palestinian-health-workers-as-a-threat-to-national-security/?ml_recipient=80361793282639238&ml_link=80361623685957072&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2023-02-21&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines

Mental Health in Palestine/Israel

A little background.

2023 Mental health and psychosocial issues represent one of the most significant public health challenges across the occupied Palestinian territory. WHO supported the Ministry of Health in developing the National Mental Health Strategy which aims at integrating mental health services into primary health care, enhancing the emergency response and scaling up community mental health services.
World Health Organization

Organizations in the region that provide mental health care include: Bethlehem Arab Society for rehabilitation program, mental health department, Gaza Community Mental Health Program, Ministry of Health, School Mental Health Programs, Treatment and Rehabilitation Center for Victims of Torture, Unicef Gaza Family Centers, UNRWA Mental Health and Psychosocial Support and local clinicians. Other resources, The twin challenges to Palestinian mental health of occupation and pandemic.

Special Issue of “Psychoanalyst Activist” on the Nakba.
USA Palestine Mental Health Network

We could not find many recent relevant articles, but clearly a population subjected to multigenerational trauma in the form of wars, killings, dispossession, occupation, movement restrictions, house demolitions, reduced functionality of the health care system, rising rates of domestic violence, and a strong cultural bias against admitting to emotional ill health and the need for treatment, carry a heavy burden of mental diseases. These include depression, PTSD, anxiety, stress, bed wetting in children, and many other mental health issues.  The primary cohesive forces for Palestinians are strong family and social supports, and a belief in the rightness of their cause. While individual treatment is critical, the only definitive relief is a political solution to the ongoing occupation, siege, and trauma and a resolution to decades old injustices.

1/30/23 In the context of the occupied  Gaza Strip, Israeli apartheid targets its two million inhabitants  through the imposition of a 16-year closure and blockade. Among  numerous other hardships, dozens of Palestinian families have  been denied their right to live together and have been separated  while waiting for an Israeli-issued exit permit that would allow  them to leave the Gaza Strip through Erez and obtain residency in  the West Bank. Families in which the husband has a West Bank ID  and residency, while the wife and children have a Gaza ID and residency, are routinely denied family reunification applications  by Israeli authorities — all with the resulting negative impacts on  economic and social well-being, as well as from the perspective of  the conditions of mental health across the Gaza community. 
Al Mezan Center for Human Rights

2/10/23  Trauma crosses Gaza’s generations. “The journey I have undertaken should serve as a wake-up call to mental health professionals. They need to address a range of issues: both present-day and historical trauma and the way that trauma is passed on from one generation to the next, collective and individual loss and all the resulting symptoms. The mainstream media and the general public need to wake up, too.”
Electronic Intifada  

Related mental health questions in the US

1/27/23 The Palestine-Global Mental Health Network stands with psychologist, Dr. Lara Sheehi, as she faces false charges of antisemitism at George Washington University due to her political views on Zionism. The case of Dr. Sheehi is unfortunately but one of many similar cases, in which critics of Israel are subject to personal and professional attack—often as here orchestrated through media campaigns spearheaded by overtly political pro-Zionist organizations. 
Mondoweiss

2/24/23 We are writing to you as Academia for Equality, an Israeli organization of over 700 academics, holding positions of all ranks in universities and colleges in Israel and around the world. Dr. Sheehi is just the latest of far too many professors and clinicians to become the victim of these tactics, which dovetail with a wider, programmatic attempt by pro-Israeli lobbies to influence the activities of the Department of Education. Dr. Sheehi has been singled out in this complaint as creating an environment hostile for her Jewish students precisely because she stands in solidarity with Palestinians and is an Arab woman. 
Mondoweiss

2/21/23 Civil Rights group Palestine Legal has filed a complaint against George Washington University in Washington D.C. The complaint alleges "Palestinian students and students perceived to be Palestinian have been denied access mental health services, falsely accused of committing crimes, investigated by campus police and put through disciplinary processes for infractions the non-Palestinian students have admitted to." The complaint also notes the recent defamation campaign against George Washington University psychology professor Lara Sheehi.
Electronic Intifada

The outrageous ongoing background level of violence continues unabated, clearly impacting physical and emotional health and calling for an international response.  Here is a sampling of the realities.

1/29/23 A Palestinian man was fatally shot outside an Israeli settlement in the West Bank and Israeli settlers carried out nearly 150 attacks against Palestinians and their properties across the region. Palestinian attacks have targeted Israeli settlers and settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The Israeli government said it planned to expedite gun licenses for Israeli citizens, reinforce military and police units to carry out more arrests of Palestinians, and conduct operations aimed at seizing Palestinians’ weapons and demolishing homes of those related to suspected attackers.
New York Times
Aljazeera

1/31/23 The myth of the ‘cycle of violence’. There is no “cycle” here. From the structural to the physical, violence is a constant, daily experience for Palestinians, and far less so for Jewish-Israelis. Few media outlets, for example, spent ink on the fact that about 30 Palestinians have already been killed this past month, and if they did, it was invoked only in light of the killings of Israelis last weekend. Many Israelis would not have heard that…settlers set fire to and destroyed Palestinian property across the occupied West Bank — a so-called “price tag” that is already inflicted on villages every week. Thanks to the boasting of government officials, though, they may have seen that Israeli forces are currently demolishing multiple homes in Palestinian neighborhoods of Jerusalem — never mind if the owners have any connection to the recent murders.

The myth of violence equally hurting Palestinians and Israelis further obfuscates the fact that one side actually tends to benefit from this “cycle” at the expense of the other. Violence is both a means and a pretext for Israeli land authorities to chip away at Palestinian neighborhoods and expand Jewish settlements, as is happening now in Jerusalem; or for Israeli politicians, including Netanyahu and Itamar Ben Gvir, to show their constituents that they are turning their aggressive rhetoric into action; or for hasbarists to rally international sympathy behind Israel and its military actions; or for the Israeli public to convince itself that an ethno-national regime is warranted and necessary.
+972

2/2/23 In response to the January 27 shooting by two Palestinians which killed seven people and wounded at least three others, Israeli authorities sealed and are preparing to demolish the alleged assailants’ homes, according to Human RIghts Watch and other sources. Home demolitions are considered collective punishment under international law. “Deliberate attacks on civilians are reprehensible crimes,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. “But just as no grievance can justify the intentional targeting of civilians in Neve Yaakov, such attacks cannot justify Israeli authorities intentionally punishing the families of Palestinian suspects by demolishing their homes and throwing them out on the street.”
Human Rights Watch

2/9/23, Human Rights Watch published a commentary by HRW Senior EU Advocate, Claudio Franavilla,  “EU Buries Head Deeper in Sand Over Israel’s Apartheid”. This is well worth reading as the author describes how the EU continues to avoid holding Israel accountable for human rights abuses despite the documented rise in military violence and resumption of collective punishment against Palestinians. The double stand by the EU between maintaining the status quo (i.e., occupation and apartheid) by Israel and the actions being taken toward Russia over its illegal invasion and occupation in Ukraine are well documented in this piece. 
Human Rights Watch

Summaries and cross sectional analysis:

With reference to Police, Military, and Settler Violence:

(see the American Public Health Association Statement in 2018 declaring law enforcement violence as a public health issue). 
Adalah Justice Project “Resisting State Violence from Jenin to Atlanta '' highlights the escalating violence in policing in both Palestine and in the US. In both Memphis, TN (where Tyre Nichols was recently killed by the police) and Atlanta, GA (where protesters of Cop City have faced lethal police attacks), police personnel received training from Israeli police and military. 
In Atlanta, protesters continue their non-violent resistance to Cop City, a massive $90 million police training center to be built on forest and park land. For more on Cop City, see these sources Democracy Now, The Guardian, and NBC News.
In Palestine, escalation in state sanctioned violence includes actions by Israeli military and police and also settlers on the West Bank. B’tselem documents many of these incidents. 
The policies put forth by the current Israeli government lessening restrictions on gun possession by Jewish Israeli citizens are of grave concern. Yara Hawari, a Senior Policy Fellow at Shabaka described this as “ a worrying escalation that will no doubt lead to more attacks and more extrajudicial killings of Palestinians”.

With reference to Palestinian Children at risk in their homes and neighborhoods in the West Bank and Gaza:

The ongoing targeting of children by the Israeli military likely constitutes war crimes under international law. The targeting of children (or failing to protect children from potentially lethal situations) is:  
·       A grave breach of the Geneva Conventions and the laws of war
·       A violation of customary norms of international law 
·        A contravention of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and other international and regional human rights treaties
·       A war-crime and crime against humanity under the Rome Statute
Defense for Children International-Palestine documents the following three Palestinian child/youth fatalities during February 2023. 

            Mahmoud Majed Mohammad Ayed, 17
            Qusai Radwan Yousef Waked, 14
Hamza Amjad Yousef Ashqar, 16

In the two months since the start of 2023, 10 Palestinian children on the West Bank have been killed by the Israeli military. 
In response to the January 27 shooting by two Palestinians which killed seven people and wounded at least three others, Israeli authorities sealed and are preparing to demolish the alleged assailants’ homes, according to Human RIghts Watch and other sources. Home demolitions are considered collective punishment under international law. “Deliberate attacks on civilians are reprehensible crimes,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. “But just as no grievance can justify the intentional targeting of civilians in Neve Yaakov, such attacks cannot justify Israeli authorities intentionally punishing the families of Palestinian suspects by demolishing their homes and throwing them out on the street.”

The ongoing siege and occupation have dire impacts on health care.

1/27/23 For over a year, according to Gaza’s ministry of health, Israel has prevented medical diagnostic devices, critical equipment such as mobile and standard x-ray machines, as well as spare parts for such machines, from entering Gaza.
Along with a host of medicines and other medical equipment barred from entry, Israel’s blockade has left Gaza’s health sector dramatically undersupplied and in a constant state of crisis.
This in spite of clear international guidelines and rules under the Geneva Conventions and other international agreements that the right to healthcare must be preserved in times of war.
Electronic Intifada

1/31/23 Mahmoud al-Kurd, 45, from Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, died of lung cancer on 16 December, two days after he was granted a repeatedly delayed exit permit by the Israeli military to leave Gaza for treatment in the West Bank. According to the World Health Organization, since 2007 and the tightening of Israel’s blockade of Gaza, about a third of Gaza’s patients’ exit permit applications have been either denied or delayed. According to Al Mezan, nine patients, including three children, died in Gaza after being denied exit permits in 2022.
Electronic Intifada

2/15/23 A number of leading medical professionals and a US lawyer have written an open letter pointing out that the Israeli occupation authorities continue to block the passage of vital medical supplies to the besieged Gaza Strip. It is, they say, "collective punishment" of the Palestinians in the coastal enclave…In 2022, delivery of essential medical supplies to hard-pressed public and private hospitals was denied or delayed. This has affected, for example, the import of x-ray machines, calibration tools for mammograms, interventional catheters, digital video monitors, and mobile imaging units for general surgery and orthopaedics. All of these require Israeli permission to be released from suppliers in the West Bank and delivery to the Gaza Strip through the Israeli-controlled border. The MoH estimates that about 50 per cent of patients in the Gaza Strip have been affected by the lack of medical equipment.
Middle East Monitor

 

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Media Watch - February 1, 2023

Welcome to the Health and Human Rights Media Watch.

We are pausing the Present! project

 (those Palestinians who have been killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers

in the past 4 weeks). It will resume when we are able.

 

If you want to be involved in this JVP Health Advisory Council Media Watch project, contact us: https://www.jvphealth.org/contact

This month we are focused again on the impact of the new government of terror and racism in Israel on Palestinians in Israel and the oPt affecting health and human rights.

 Of note: The Israeli campaign in the West Bank and Gaza, to provoke, attack, injure, and kill Palestinians continues in full fury, raising the suspicion that the new rightwing government is going to continue these provocations until there is a more militant response from Palestinians and then use that to justify an all-out war. This has certainly happened before and Palestinians are facing horrific grief and dangerous collective punishment. The Israeli rightwing coalition is fulfilling its promises on multiple fronts from hate crimes to violence to subjugating anything and anyone that is not Jewish, Orthodox, or male. While much of the international community is trying to get along with and possibly weakly contain Netanyahu, the power of the Israel hasbara industry was challenged by the recent drama with Kenneth Roth and the Harvard Kennedy School. These are frightening and deadly times and we must not be silent.

MONTHLY HUMAN RIGHTS HERO AND VIOLATION

HERO: UN General Assembly resolution to International Court of Justice

Israeli settlers attempt to establish a new settlement in the northern West Bank in October 2015. Yotam Ronen ActiveStills

UN General Assembly passed a resolution asking the International Court of Justice to give an advisory opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation of Palestine. Netanyahu called the request a “despicable decision”.
Reuters
Electronic Intifada
Aljazeera
Common Dreams
Haaretz

VIOLATION: Itamar Ben Gvir visit to the Al Aqsa mosque

Fascist smirking across the street from Terra Sancta College, Jerusalem Wikimedia commons

The new minister of national security for Netanyahu’s government provides abundant examples of villainy, unfortunately. His visit to Al-Aqsa mosque at the beginning of the year caused widespread condemnation internationally and has been called an “unprecedented provocation”.
NPR
Aljazeera
Aljazeera

Important report from human rights organization:  One-Way Ticket: Israel is committing forcible transfer of protected persons in the occupied Palestinian territory, and most of the victims are women

December 25, 2022 Palestinians registered as West Bank residents in the Palestinian population registry who reside in the Gaza Strip must sign a document stating that they have “settled” in Gaza permanently in order to apply for an Israeli permit to exit Gaza for any reason. In signing the document, Israeli authorities assert, these individuals “agree” to waive their right to move back to the West Bank in the future. This policy “is basically forced deportation. It not only infringes on freedom of movement but also has far-reaching social repercussions, even affecting people’s mental health.”

Gisha

Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch, and the Harvard Kennedy School fellowship offer/non-offer/offer
Much has been written this month about the Harvard Kennedy School offer to Kenneth Roth for a fellowship at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. On January 5, The Nation revealed that the school’s dean, Douglas Elmendorf, vetoed the proposal citing concern over Human Rights Watch’s “bias against Israel.” The Dean has had no problem accepting a variety of Israeli military and government officials. This provoked many rebukes, much agitation, and criticism (see articles below for a sampling) with concern focused on the negative role of “pro-Israel” donors, threats to academic freedom, and the muzzling of voices critical of Israel. On January 19, the dean rescinded his veto and extended an invitation to Roth.
The latest:
1/21/23 Roth was attacked because he said that Israel's conduct fosters antisemitism in the west. But he joins a long list of distinguished writers who have said the same, including Hannah Arendt.
Mondoweiss

1/19/23 Harvard Reverses Course After a Nation Exposé
The Nation

1/19/23 Harvard Reverses Course on Human Rights Advocate Who Criticized Israel
New York Times

The controversy
1/5/23 Why the Godfather of Human Rights is Not Welcome at Harvard
The Nation

1/5/23 Former HRW Head Denied Harvard Fellowship Over His “Anti-Israel Bias”
Jewish Journal

1/5/23 Pen America Expresses Dismay Over Harvard’s Denial of Fellowship of Former Human Rights Watch Executive Director Ken Roth
Pen America

1/5/23 excellent twitter thread from Sunjeev Bery
https://twitter.com/SunjeevBery/status/1611133935257518080?s=20&t=o1UE87t_Y_oNLM5gsPH_nw 

1/6/23 Harvard axes fellowship for expert who affixed ‘apartheid’ label on Israel, evidently under donor pressure
Mondoweiss

1/6/23 HRW former head denied Harvard fellowship over ‘anti-Israel bias’
Aljazeera

1/6/23 Longtime HRW Head Denied Harvard Post Over Criticism of Apartheid Israel
Common Dreams

1/7/23 Harvard University Succumbs Harvard University Withdraws a Fellowship from Kenneth Roth & HRW
Richard Falk
Reprinted in Palestine Chronicle 1/9

1/8/23 Harvard Kennedy School condemned for denying fellowship to Israel critic -ACLU and Pen America back former Human Rights Watch chief Kenneth Roth and say decision ‘raises serious questions’
The Guardian

1/8/23 A Vetoed Harvard Appointment
Inside Higher Ed

1/8/23 Israel Sees Palestinian Human Rights Groups as Terrorist Organizations
Haaretz

1/9/23 Longtime HRW Head Denied Harvard Post Over Criticism of Apartheid Israel
Common Dreams

1/9/23 Richard Falk Reflects on the Irony of Harvard’s Decision to Withdraw Fellowship from Kenneth Roth, HRW
Palestine Chronicle

1/10/23 I once ran Human Rights Watch. Harvard blocked my fellowship over Israel
The Guardian 

1/10/23 Harvard’s decision to not offer fellowship to leading human rights activist brings uproar
Boston Globe

 1/18/23 Silencing Dissent by Rami Khouri and Sara Roy
London Review of Books

 The impact of the new government of terror and racism in Israel on Palestinians in Israel and the oPt affecting health and human rights.

12/26/22 Israel will not ratify the Istanbul Convention on combating violence against women, incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party agreed in its coalition agreement with far-right politician Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism faction. Countries that accede to the convention are required to legislate strict laws on the prevention of domestic violence, protection of victims, prosecution and policy coordination. The convention officially opened for signing in 2011 has been signed by 45 countries and the European Union.
Haaretz

12/26/22 Civil society organizations have condemned Israel’s targeted smear campaign against UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, the latest in a pattern of attacks aimed at silencing criticism of Israel and undermining the work of the United Nations.
Mondoweiss

12/27/22 The Knesset approved amendments to the Basic Law on the Government, giving far-right leaders unprecedented authority in the West Bank. “I have already instructed the IDF to prepare for possible escalations,” said the outgoing defense minister.
Haaretz

12/28/22 A bill granting Ben-Gvir expanded police power was signed into law, giving the incoming national security minister more powers while clarifying that the commissioner will remain in charge of Israel’s police.
Haaretz
Haaretz
Haaretz

12/28/22 Netanyahu laid out a far-reaching plan to annex the West Bank, taking into consideration national and international interests. Hardline coalition vows to legalize dozens of illegally built outposts and annex the occupied territory
Haaretz
Haaretz
The Guardian

12/29/22 Netanyahu's new government is already guilty of hate crimes. Even before it takes office, Israel's extreme-right coalition is persecuting gays, Arabs and women.
Haaretz

12/29/22 A key part of Netanyahu’s coalition agreements are devoted to expanding control by the leaders of the religious and Haredi parties over as many areas of life as possible and subjugating Israel’s large and varied secular public to the Orthodox version of Jewish identity…This is the new order that the sixth Netanyahu government is promoting: a fire sale of everything that is not Jewish, Orthodox and male.
Haaretz

12/29/22 Thousands march in Tel Aviv to protest LGBTQ discrimination as Israel’s far-right government is sworn in.
Haaretz

12/30/22 The family of Ahmad Dawabsheh, the sole survivor of a vicious settler attack in Duma, fears fresh attacks.  According to the UN, 2022 has been the “deadliest year” for Palestinians in the West Bank since it started counting fatalities in 2005  There have been nearly 800 settler attacks against Palestinians and their property so far this year. At least 175 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army in the West Bank and Gaza during 2022.
Electronic Intifada

12/30/22 The expansion of powers of the new “national security” ministry under Itamar Ben-Gvir, includes more control over Israel’s police as well as the transfer to the ministry of the so-called Border Police, usually deployed against Palestinians in occupied territory. All of Historic Palestine was declared the “exclusive” domain of the Jewish people. The guiding coalition principles include: deepening its apartheid policies leading towards annexation, and intensifying Jewish supremacy and systemic discrimination against Palestinians, with much more funding to accomplish these tasks, a weakening of the judiciary, and a more aggressive attitude towards Iran.
Electronic Intifada

12/30/22 Members of the Dar-Mohammed family from the village of Tarrama were astounded to find one day that settlers had planted grapevines on their land. When younger members of the family began uprooting them, soldiers assaulted them
Haaretz

12/31/22 In one of the deadliest years for Palestinians, a tradition of political and armed groups claiming Palestinian “martyrs” clouds the distinction between civilian and fighter. It is a tradition that some families object to, saying they don’t want loved ones used for political purposes.
New York Times       

1/1/23 The goal of Israel’s fascist right is to establish a religious dictatorship run according to their openly oppressive principles, explicitly targeting Palestinians, LGBTQ people, women, and most every marginalized group in Israel." In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich writes that the new government will make Israel "more like the U.S…. Israel will enact legislation that allows business owners to refuse service to certain customers on the basis of their religious conscience — that is, to pass a law that allows for blatant discrimination against LGBTQ people and other marginalized groups."
+972

1/3/23 Israel’s far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem in a move Palestinians called a “deliberate provocation”, ignoring warnings from Israeli politicians that his appearance at the holy site would inflame tensions.
Aljazeera

1/4/23 Adam Ayad 15 was shot and killed by Israeli forces during a raid on the Dheisheh refugee camp in the occupied West Bank City of Bethlehem. Ayed is the third Palestinian child killed in 2023.
Mondoweiss

1/4/23 The discriminatory movement restrictions and the arbitrary permit regime imposed by Israeli authorities on Palestinian patients from Gaza, which obstruct their access to hospitals outside the Strip, have claimed another Palestinian life. The most recent case of permit delay led to the death of Mahmoud Mohammed Al-Kurd, a 45-year-old cancer patient from Deir al-Balah City, on 12/16/22, after being denied access repeatedly to the Augusta Victoria Hospital in Jerusalem.  Al-Kurd suffered from lung cancer. Despite having obtained a medical referral from the Palestinian Ministry of Health and secured multiple appointments at the Augusta Victoria, Israeli authorities denied him the requisite exit permit to travel for four different appointments.  Although he eventually did on 12/15/22 access the  hospital, he arrived in extremely poor health conditions and was pronounced dead the next day.
Al-Mezan 

1/4/23 The Israeli army has informed Palestinian officials of their imminent plans to forcibly displace more than 1,000 Palestinian residents, including some 500 children, in the Masafer Yatta area of the southern occupied West Bank, according to human rights organizations and Palestinians in Masafer Yatta. The Israeli High Court of Justice (HCJ) had green-lit the plan in May 2022, in a decision that concluded a legal battle the residents waged for more than 20 years against their displacement. 
Aljazeera

1/4/23 144 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank over the past 12 months. It is the highest number in 18 years.
Haaretz

1/5/23 Israeli forces shot and killed Amer Abu Zaytoun 16 from Balata refugee camp, east of Nablus. Abu Zaytoun is the fourth Palestinian minor to be killed this year. During the invasion of the camp, armed confrontations broke out between the Israeli army and camp youth. Israeli forces denied medics access to the injured forcing them to be transported in civilian cars thus threatening their health and lives.
Mondoweiss

1/5/23 In the first few days of 2023, Israel killed four Palestinians, three of which were children. A 16 year old boy from the Balata refugee camp in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, a 15 year old boy from the Dheisheh refugee camp near the West Bank city of Bethlehem shot in the shoulder and later succumbed to his wounds, Ahmad Ayman Abed and Abdulrahman Hani Abed from Kafr Dan near Jenin. Violence and provocations against Palestinians have increased with Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir promoting incursions into Palestinian homes under his so called “Temple Movement” thus threatening the health and human rights of the Palestinian people.
Electronic Intifada

1/5/23 According to  a monthly survey of Jewish and Arab Israelis by the Israel Democracy Institute, half of respondents said they are worried about the state of democracy in Israel, including over 80% of self-identified leftists and 74% of centrists, but only 30% of those on the right. In 2021, 63% of the left and 43% of the center said democracy was in grave danger. “That’s a huge change in such a short term, only one-and-a-half years,” said Or Anabi, a researcher at the institute. 
Forward

1/5/23 Decoding Israeli ‘Extremism’. Netanyahu’s claim of exclusive Israel’s supremacy on behalf of the Jewish people over the whole of the promised land is in direct defiance of international law…Netanyahu’s brazen avowal of Israeli unilateral expansionism foregoes earlier diplomatic charades. 
Counterpunch

1/6/23 A new fanatical Israeli government is putting the old flailing Palestinian leadership to the test — and this could be its final test. How it responds will determine the future of Palestine, Israel and the entire Middle East. The coalition of religious Zionist and far-right parties now in power in Israel rejects Palestinian statehood and claims exclusive right to all of historic Palestine. It tramples over past agreements as it prepares to annex much of the occupied West Bank, which makes up the backbone of a prospective Palestinian state.
Aljazeera

1/6/23 Israel’s right-wing government says it has approved a series of punitive measures in response to a Palestinian bid to push the International Court of Justice to give its opinion on the decades-old occupation including using Palestinian money to compensate the families of Israeli settlers and soldiers who were attacked by Palestinians, and imposing a moratorium on Palestinian construction in some areas of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Aljazeera

1/7/23 Israel uses numerous tools to control and abuse Palestinian prisoners. One of the lesser known instruments of repression is a seemingly innocuous means of transportation : a bus. Palestinian prisoners call this bus a ‘moving grave’. Palestinian prisoners are transferred from one prison to another, or from a prison to a military court date or a hospital when a prisoner needs advanced medical treatment. On the bus the prisoners’ hands and feet are cuffed and there is a lack of ventilation.
Mondoweiss

1/9/23
Itamar Ben Gvir banned the Palestinian flag and the flag is no longer able to be flown in public spaces. This order is one in a recent string on the human rights of Palestinians including those Palestinians with Israeli citizenship living within the Israeli state. It is a form of erasure against the Palestinian people which is being intensified daily.
Mondoweiss

1/10/23  There is an expectation that the situation on the ground is going to implode at some point in the near future. For close to a year, the occupied West Bank has witnessed an increase in violence by the Israeli military, with at least 170 Palestinians, including 30 children, killed during near-daily raids in 2022 – the highest death toll in 16 years according to the United Nations. Attacks committed against Palestinians by Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank have also sharply increased.
Aljazeera

1/12/23 Israeli occupation forces killed five Palestinians in the West Bank over the course of 48 hours on Wednesday, January 11, 2023 and Thursday, January 12,2023. Two Palestinians were shot in Qabatiya, a town near Jenin on Thursday, January 12, 2023, one 25 years old and the other 19. Earlier in the day Israeli troops killed Samir Awni Harbi Aslan 41 after they arrested his 17 year old son. They let Aslan bleed to death for more than an hour as reported by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.
Electronic Intifada
Aljazeera
Haaretz

1/13/23 As senior members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government, Itamar Ben Gvir and Company have sought to portray Jewish access and Israeli annexation and domination of the Al-Aqsa mosque compound as an “equal rights” issue. Neither Ben-Gvir nor anyone else in Israel’s government has any interest   in equal rights or human rights where Palestinians are concerned. They assert that “the Jewish people have an exclusive and unquestionable right to all areas of the land of Israel” by any means necessary.
Electronic Intifada

1/14/23 Israel has killed 12 Palestinians thus far since the start of the year. Three on 1/14. Seven of the twelve slain Palestinians in 2023 are from Jenin. Five were killed within the same two day period. Most of the killings were the result of targeted Israeli gunfire to the chest, abdomen, and head. Izz Eldin Basem Hamamra and Amjad Adnan Khaliliyeh were gunned down in their white Toyota by the Israeli army while trying to escape from an Israeli military target. Israel’s military Campaign Operation Break The Wave is continuing.
Mondoweiss
Aljazeera

1/16/23 Israeli forces conducted a search and arrest operation in Duheisheh refugee camp (Bethlehem) where they shot a child who died shortly after from his wounds. This is the latest attack in the 12/20-1/9 report documenting killings, injuries and home demolitions by Israeli forces.
OCHA

1/17/23 Israeli forces killed two Palestinians one on 1/16, 2023 and the other on 1/17. Both Amer al-Khmour 14, and Hamdi Abu Dayyeh 40 were found holding wills purportedly written by them detailing their final wishes in death. 
Mondoweiss

1/17/23 American Friends of the Parents Circle reports that the new Israeli government is threatening to cancel Parents Circle-Families Forum (PCFF) school programs, including the long-standing Dialogue Meeting program and the Joint Memorial Day Ceremony. PCFF is a joint Israeli-Palestinian organization of over 600 families, all of whom have lost an immediate family member to the ongoing conflict, and works to promote dialogue, tolerance, reconciliation and peace. "These are some of the first unofficial signs that the new, right-wing government in Israel is trying to silence and prevent us from our peace education work."
Parents Circle Friends

1/19/23 A local hiking group of mostly Palestinians were on a hike from the outskirts of Ramallah to Jericho when they were attacked by a group of Israeli settlers carrying clubs and guns. If the hikers had defended themselves they would be dead. Two hikers needed to go to the hospital from their injuries and others received more minor injuries.
Mondoweiss

1/20/23 In Tuwani, a small town in the West Bank there is a mobile clinic to help 150,000 residents access healthcare. Residents suffer from limited access to water, electricity, education, transportation and healthcare.
OCHA

1/20/23 Israeli military shot and killed Adham Muhammad Jabarin a 28 year old member of Saraya al-Quds. He was injured on the doorstep of Jawad Bawaqneh’s house. Jawad Bawaqneh and his son Farid rushed to the aid of Jabarin when Israeli forces opened fire with eight shots fatally injuring the 57 year old father and school teacher. Ambulances were barred from entering the refugee camp. Both people shot were finally transferred to a Jenin public hospital where they were declared dead. Israeli forces shot directly at a Jenin public hospital during the raid. The World Health Organization expressed “healthcare should be respected and protected at all times.”
Electronic Intifada

1/20/23 The electricity crisis began in Gaza in 2006. It has impacted businesses, social problems, serious poverty due to Israel’s blockade of electricity. Hospitals do not have sufficient electricity to run ventilators and other systems needed to maintain healthcare. Students don’t have sufficient electricity to do their schoolwork. Fuel is expensive and generators cut out.
Electronic Intifada

1/23/23 Dozens of Palestinians have protested against threats made by top Israeli politicians to imminently carry out the forced displacement of the Palestinian Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar on the eastern outskirts of Jerusalem, home to at least 180 people.   
Aljazeera

1/24/23 From restricting visitations to demanding the death penalty, Ben Gvir, national security minister has begun rolling out his harsher vision for Israeli prisons. He appears to be translating his aggressive views into policy. The coalition agreement signed with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu includes a clause approving what he has been demanding for years: capital punishment for “terrorists.” A few days after Ben Gvir took office, the IPS announced that it would disperse dozens of senior Palestinian prisoners, including the prominent political figure Marwan Barghouti, in order to break up the “centers of power” inside the prisons. 
+972

1/25/23 Israeli forces have shot dead a Palestinian man in the northern occupied West Bank after he allegedly attempted to carry out a stabbing attack. The man was identified as 20-year-old Aref Abdel Nasser Lahlouh by the Palestinian Ministry of Health on Wednesday morning.
Aljazeera

1/25/23 Netanyahu is back in as PM for his sixth term and ushered in the country’s most far right government ever elected. Palestinians and critics fear this government will open the floodgates to expansion of illegal settlements and embolden already increasing violence against Palestinians.
Aljazeera

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Media Watch-January 1, 2023

Welcome to the Jewish Voice for Peace Health and Human Rights Media Watch

Going forward, we are separating out the Present! project
(those Palestinians who have been killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers
in the past 4 weeks). This report will be sent out midmonth.

 If you want to be involved in this JVP Health Advisory Council Media Watch project, contact us: https://www.jvphealth.org/contact

Of note: As the most right wing Israeli government comes to power and Palestinians continue to lack effective leadership, we are seeing an accelerated expansion of Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land; more Israeli provocations in and around the Noble Sanctuary/Mosque complex in occupied East Jerusalem; an erosion of democratic rights and privileges enjoyed by Jewish Israelis, increased conservative religious influence over Israel’s government and society and an acceleration of the oppression of the Palestinian population on all fronts.

This month we are focused on Impact of the new government of terror and racism in Israel on Palestinians in Israel and in the oPt affecting health and human rights.

MONTHLY HUMAN RIGHTS HERO AND VIOLATION

HERO: The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel

Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI)

The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) has issued its "Torture in Israel Situation Report 2022". The report states "Every year, PCATI receives dozens of complaints alleging physical and psychological torture used by ISA (Shabak) interrogators. Torture methods reported include painful shackling, sleep deprivation, exposure to extreme heat and cold, threats, sexual harassment, and religion-based humiliation...Since 2001, over 1,400 complaints of torture by the ISA have been submitted to the Ministry of Justice. Only 3 criminal investigations have been opened following these complaints, and 0 indictments have been served."
https://stoptorture.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/ENG.pdf

VIOLATION: Palestinian political prisoner Nasser Abu Hmeid, 50, dies from cancer in Israeli custody

ARMED MILITANTS FROM AL-AMARY REFUGEE CAMP IN MOURNING OVER THE DEATH OF NASSER ABU HMEID FOLLOWING A BOUT WITH CANCER AND MONTHS OF “MEDICAL NEGLIGENCE” ON PART OF ISRAELI AUTHORITIES, ACCORDING TO HIS FAMILY AND PALESTINIAN PRISONERS’ GROUPS. (PHOTO: QUDS NEWS NETWORK TELEGRAM CHANNEL)

Palestinian political prisoner Nasser Abu Hmeid, 50, died in Israeli custody on 20 December, following a bout with cancer and months of “medical negligence” on the part of Israeli authorities, according to his family and Palestinian prisoners groups. Along with Abu Hmeid’s family, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) and the Palestinian Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs Commission have maintained that the IPS deliberately denied Abu Hmeid proper medical treatment for years, which led to such a late diagnosis of his cancer. Following his death, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh said in a statement that Abu Hmeid “died as a result of the policy of deliberate medical negligence that the Israeli occupation prisons administration use against sick prisoners.”
https://mondoweiss.net/2022/12/palestinian-prisoner-dies-of-cancer-amid-accusations-of-medical-neglect/

Reports

Torture in Israel Situation Report 2022
The Committee Against Torture

SPECIAL SECTION: Settler Colonialism, Structural Racism, and the Palestinian Right to Health
Seven articles examining a reconception of Palestinian health, including emergency care, covid-19 vaccinations, amputees in Gaza, outdoor play in a militarized one, and mental health
Health and Human Rights Journal

Israeli Apartheid: Tool of Zionist Settler Colonialism

Includes indepth historical overview, prohibition of the crime of apartheid, Israeli policies, responsibilities, and accountability, and the responsibilities of third parties
Al Haq

Protection of Civilians Report November 22 – December 5, 2022.  OCHA reports 13 Palestinians killed and 302 Palestinian injuries by Israeli forces.  Seven Israelis were injuries by Palestinians.  Two Israelis, including a child, were killed during the reporting period in a suspected Palestinian attack whose perpetrator’s identity is still unknown.  
OCHA

Israeli naval forces arbitrarily arrested more than a dozen Palestinian fishermen in Palestinian territorial waters.  On November 27, the Israeli navy opened fire, arrested six fishermen, wounding two of them with rubber-coated bullets and confiscating their two boats.  This followed similar incidents on Oct. 26 (once again after Israel naval forces opened fire: five arrests, boat confiscated) and on Nov. 1 (four arrests, including a child, with a boat once again confiscated).  Since the start of 2022 the Israeli navy has carried out 415 attacks against Palestinian fishermen, injuring 20 (including three children), arbitrarily arresting 58 fishers (including eight children), and confiscating 21 fishing boats: all in violation of international law.
Al Mezan

Impact of the new government of terror and racism in Israel on Palestinians in Israel and in the oPt with regard to health and human rights

11/27/22 Even before Netanyahu formed a government, Ben-Gvir’s right-wing tailwind could already be felt. Hours after Ben-Gvir signed an agreement to become minister of national security, an Israeli soldier was filmed punching a leftist activist in Hebron.
Haaretz
Haaretz

11/27/22 The incoming government is by far the most right-wing and racist government in Israeli history, and that’s saying a lot. And so far the messaging from the Biden administration seems to be that its policy towards this new government will be one of benign neglect. 
Mondoweiss

11/27/22 Israel’s Environmental Protection Ministry’s enforcement agency, the Green Police, will be reassigned to the newly renamed ‘National Security Ministry,’ raising fear it will be used to employ police forces against the Bedouin population in Israel’s south.
Haaretz

11/27/22 “Rotten,” “racist,” “mafia,” “organization of a culture of lies.” These are a few of the epithets that Chanamel Dorfman, slated to be chief of staff of the designated Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, used to describe the Israeli police. The police won’t become more efficient or disciplined under Ben-Gvir, but rather more aggressive, violent, and lawless.
Haaretz
Haaretz

11/27/22 Netanyahu gave unprecedented power to a far-right politician fighting LGBTQ so-called ‘deviants”. Likud says Avi Maoz will become a deputy minister to promote ‘national-Jewish identity’ as part of a coalition agreement with the Noam party.’ Maoz will direct the Cross-Sector Partnerships Unit, which is responsible for managing the relationship of ministries with civil society organizations and local governments.
Haaretz
Haaretz

11/28/22 As expected, the New York Times and the Washington Post have so far ignored Ben- Gvir’s appointment, even though the dangerous consequences started immediately.
Mondoweiss

11/28/22 Ben-Gvir wants to change the Temple Mount status quo, but will need Netanyahu to do it. As national security minister, the far-right leader is set to make good on his promise to permit Jewish visitors to pray on the Mount.
Haaretz

11/29/22 Before the new government was sworn in, Likud was collecting signatures to pass a legislative package granting far-right Ben-Gvir direct control over the Israeli Police and allowing Shas Party’s Arye Derry to bypass his criminal conviction and serve as minister.
Haaretz

11/29/22 Mikhael Manekin was part of a group of left-wing Israelis attacked by soldiers in Hebron last week. He tells +972 army violence in the city is getting worse.

Another soldier at the scene was filmed telling the activists that “Ben Gvir is going to bring order to this place,” and “I don’t like leftists, I will fuck you up.”
+972

12/1/22 Ben-Gvir will have control over the prison service in his future role as National Security Minister, and has voiced his desire to worsen the living conditions of Palestinian security prisoners. The prison service believes prisoners will go on a general hunger strike in early 2023.
Haaretz

12/4/22 Over 200 Israeli principals have petitioned against far-right lawmaker’s control over education. Jewish and Arab principals from the state education system say they oppose Avi Maoz’s “racist, homophobic, dark and extreme views that divide and harm entire communities and broad identities in Israeli society.”
Haaretz

12/4/22 The Netanyahu/Ben-Gvir/Smotrich government represents an inevitable continuation of decades in which many Israelis in key positions could have demonstrated decency and responsibility but chose not to do so. They inculcated and expanded concepts of abusive, exploitative Jewish supremacy, even when resistance and refusal to collaborate with these concepts would pose no danger to them.
Haaretz

12/5/22 The presence of anti-LGBT leader Avi Maoz in Netanyahu's incoming coalition has already inspired civil society groups, with new initiatives including free lesbian weddings and a charity ‘honoring’ the homophobic lawmaker.
Haaretz

12/6/22 A representative of a powerful Hasidic court with major real estate holdings and economic interests, Yitzchak Goldknopf, is set to take over the Housing Ministry at a difficult time with the aim of tackling the housing shortage in Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community. In addition, the Likud party struck an agreement that will grant United Torah Judaism control of the Jerusalem Affairs Ministry and the chairmanship of the Knesset Finance Committee.
Haaretz
Haaretz

12/7/22
The far-right Israeli politician Itamar Ben-Gvir has called for the expulsion of Al Jazeera journalists from Israel, shortly after the network filed a formal request with the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate and prosecute those who killed its journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in May.
Aljazeera

12/8/22 The continuing shift to the far-right in Israel is yet another deplorable development in a system that inflicts immense suffering on the Palestinian people. Politicians like Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich (National Union -- Tkuma ) have been leading a racist, violent, at times homophobic and fascist movement in Israel for years. Ben-Gvir has often led mobs changing “Death to the Arabs.” Smotrich organized a “Beast Parade” to protest gay pride events and denigrate their participants.
Portside

12/9/22 A bill was introduced to give Ben Gvir sole control over the Israeli police chief and policies. The determination of policy by elected officials is described as ‘a fundamental principle of modern democracy.’
Haaretz
Haaretz

12/11/22 Far-right Israeli lawmaker Zvika Fogel expressed his desire to scrap the concept of proportionality, saying that “if it is one Israeli mother crying, or a thousand Palestinian mothers crying, then a thousand Palestinian mothers will cry.”
Haaretz

12/11/22 Israel is on the cusp of a wave of army refusal under far-right rule. The incoming government has prompted a new crop of teens to question their upcoming role in one of Israel society’s central tenets.
+972

12/15/22 Israeli settler violence against Palestinians soared in 2022. Palestinians say the worrying trend will only worsen as right-wing extremists lead Israel's new government.
Mondoweiss

12/16/22 What to expect from the new Israeli government: intensifying violence and repression against Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories, including Gaza; accelerated expansion of Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land; more Israeli provocations in and around the Noble Sanctuary Mosque complex in occupied East Jerusalem; an erosion of democratic rights and privileges enjoyed by Jewish Israelis and increased conservative religious influence over Israel’s government and society.
IMEU

The transformation of Israeli leftists into dissidents is a reminder that no one is safe from the attempts to turn the 'wrong kind' of Jews into enemies.
+972

12/21/22 From the perspective and experience of Palestinians, any change in an Israeli government is merely a change in the pair of hands holding the ax. It’s the same ax and it’s still going to come down on Palestinian necks.
Electronic Intifada

12/22/22 Ben-Gvir is expected to serve as security minister with authority over the police, while Smotrich’s Israeli settler party will have control over planning in the occupied West Bank, giving it wide powers over the lives of Palestinians and opening the door to an expansion of illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.
Aljazeera

12/22/22 Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu said he has secured a deal to form a new government with hardline religious and far-right political partners, which will see him return to power as the head of the most right-wing coalition in Israel’s history.
Aljazeera

12/22/22 Fascism has been on the minds of Israel’s friends and foes alike since “the Jewish State” held its latest elections and its former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began negotiations to form a new coalition. Warnings about Israel “heading toward a fascist theocracy” or “sleep walking into Jewish fascism” have multiplied.
Aljazeera

OTHER

11/28/22 Israeli police were allowed to gather information from cellphones belonging to three left-wing activists after they were arrested for entering a closed military zone declared by the army. A Palestinian shortly afterward was detained for three days because the army had issued a similar order for land he owns.
Haaretz

11/28/22 Israel keeps sick prisoners in ‘slaughterhouse’ conditions. Then adjusting to reality outside the confines of an Israeli prison is not easy.
Electronic Intifada

11/28/22 The Israeli army demolished a school in Masafer Yatta, and residents say it won’t be the last. Following the demolition, an Israeli army spokesperson claimed it was an unoccupied building being used as a publicity stunt.

Mondoweiss

11/29/22 Prime Minister Yair Lapid addressed a letter to more than 50 heads of state, in which he calls on them to exert their influence over the Palestinian Authority in order to prevent the vote in the UN Assembly to request an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Haaretz

11/29/22 Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) demanded that the US State Department should formally subject the Israeli Army's Netzah Yehuda Battalion to the Leahy Law vetting process and add it to the list of military units ineligible to receive US military assistance. Such a move would be the first time any Israeli security force is sanctioned by the U.S. government for gross human rights abuses. According to the report, Netzah Yehuda battalion has “a track record of gross human rights abuses and war crimes, including extrajudicial killing, torture and physical abuse.” The battalion’s members are drawn from the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Israel, particularly illegal West Bank settlements.
Democracy for the Arab World Now
Electronic Intifada

11/29/22 Dr. Ahmad Mahajna, a dedicated and valued cardiothoracic resident at Hadassah Hospital, celebrated completing his exams with his department’s staff and then gave out extra refreshments to four hospitalized patients. One was a 16-year-old Palestinian held in police custody following a stabbing. The officers accompanying the detainee complained about Dr. Mahajna’s decision to offer him candy and his refusal to identify himself to them. Before the doctor could tell his side of the story, the hospital quickly issued a press release depicting him as a terrorist sympathizer and summoned him to a hearing before termination. Physicians for Human Rights Israel

11/30/22 An Israeli military court ruled that a Palestinian activist who documented a soldier threatening demonstrators to be removed from his Hebron home for a week. 
Haaretz

12/1/22 Sixteen-year-old Shadi Khoury was allowed to return home under house arrest after 41 days of "Administrative Detention," first in Jerusalem's infamous Moskobiya Interrogation Center, and later in Damon Prison east of Haifa. Two other boys arrested and seen in court at the same time were similarly released, but three other teens were still detained.
Episcopal Peace Fellowship

12/1/22 Israel is considering blocking entry to Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, Israeli media reported. Albanese was accused of taking part in an online conference in Gaza that allegedly included members of the Palestinian political groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Palestine Chronicle

12/1/22 After holding Jerusalem native Salah Hammouri in administrative detention, Israel’s Interior Minister ordered him to be forcibly deported to France – claiming he held a senior position in a terror organization. Hammouri, who had broad support, defended a number of prisoners and was active in a Palestinian human rights NGO.
Samidoun
Haaretz
Haaretz

12/3/22 Floods in Gaza are getting worse every year. Impeding Gaza’s ability to move beyond its own destruction, the blockade is being exacerbated by climate change, and even an hour of rain floods Gaza’s neighborhoods.
Mondoweiss

12/3/22 The Israeli occupation army declared the city of Hebron a "closed military zone" to prevent a tour organized by human rights organizations with the participation of around three hundred activists. This came a week after the occupation soldiers in the city attacked Israeli activists who showed solidarity with the city's residents against settler attacks.
Middle East Monitor

12/5/22 Al-Haq, Addameer, Al-Haq, Bisan Center for Research and Development, Defense for Children International - Palestine, Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees – targeted and criminalized by Israel in 2021 -- were awarded the Middle East Studies Association Award for the Academic Freedom 2022 in Denver, Colorado.
Al Haq

12/6/22 Israeli police and Border Police forces arrested three people at a restaurant in the predominantly Arab city of Baka al-Garbiyeh, including the restaurant's owner, using drawn guns and pepper spray.
Haaretz

12/6/22 It is the ever-present danger of Israeli aggression, and the high price such aggression exacts, that makes the work of first responders in Gaza so demanding and dangerous. Add to this, an Israeli-imposed siege on Gaza prevents necessary equipment from helping the civil defense forces modernize. Thus, Gaza’s firefighters are unable to secure vital items like fire hoses, firefighter lights or spears under Israel’s so-called dual-use lists of banned products.
Electronic Intifada

12/7/22 Resources for Palestinian children with autism in Gaza are scarce, but institutions like the Shams school and Nabeel Childcare Center offer classes and support. Children with autism, who are often highly sensitive to external stimuli, are particularly susceptible to the enduring impacts of war and conflict, which could potentially make diagnosis difficult.
Electronic Intifada

12/11/22 The United Nations representative for dealing with children in conflict zones was slated to arrive on December 11 for her first visit to Israel and the West Bank to examine evidence of harm against children in clashes between the Israeli army and Palestinians in the past year.
Haaretz

12/12/22 An Excel spreadsheet shows settlers dedication to ousting ‘Arabs.’ An internal spreadsheet shows the close cooperation of state and settlers in the dispossession of Palestinians. 
Haaretz

12/11/22 Through recounting his own spectacular life, Dr. Shawki Harb's memoir, "A Surgeon Under Israeli Occupation," depicts Palestinian reality from the British Mandate to today.
Mondoweiss

12/12/22 Military raids, settler attacks, and resistance efforts continue to spread. 
Mondoweiss

12/12/22 Two Twitter accounts registered under fake names that were used to harass left-wing activists and Israeli journalists since November appear to be run by Israeli soldiers deployed in the West Bank.
Haaretz

12/13/22 The principal Israel lobby group in the Netherlands removed three articles from its website containing smears against Al-Haq, a prominent Palestinian human rights group. After Al-Haq took legal action against it, the Center for Information and Documentation Israel (CIDI) admitted that the articles contained false claims harming “the good name of the organization.”
Electronic Intifada

12/15/22 In the last week, Palestinian security services conducted a summons and arrest campaign targeting dozens of those affiliated with Hamas in the West Bank, including university students and activists. This campaign was accompanied by use of force during raids on detainees’ houses, intimidating their families, and assaults with batons and electric shocks.
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights

12/16/22 The legal dispute between Ben & Jerry’s and its parent company Unilever has ended in a bit of a fudge. But as a result, the ice cream maker can say that it is standing by its July 2021 decision to end all business in Israel so as not to be complicit in Israel’s illegal colonization of occupied Palestinian land.
Electronic Intifada

12/16/22 The US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights announced that it has launched a probe into the University of California Berkeley Law School. The investigation will determine whether the school acted appropriately in response to a complaint “from Jewish law students, faculty and staff that they experienced a hostile environment at the law school based on their shared Jewish ancestry.”
Mondoweiss

12/18/22 Israeli soldiers abducted a Palestinian woman near Bab Al-Asbat, one of the gates of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem, in the West Bank. Eyewitnesses said the soldiers took the abducted woman for interrogation at the nearby Al-Qashla Police Station. They added that soldiers stopped many women at the Al-Aqsaa gates and refused to allow them to enter the holy site to allow large groups of Israeli colonizers to tour the holy site’s courtyard.

International Middle East Media Center

12/18/22 The Tiberias Magistrate’s Court was scheduled to hear a petition filed by settlers of a new kind – Galilee settlers – against their eviction from the illegal encampment they established four months ago, east of the mainly Christian Arab village of Ilabun in the Lower Galilee.
Haaretz

12/18/22 Palestinian-French human rights lawyer and researcher for Addameer, Salah Hammouri accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and said his deportation was meant “to show the generations that nobody can resist Israel.” He vowed to fight the order.
Aljazeera

12/21/22 Israel wants to expropriate about 420 acres of land for the ‘Afula-Jenin railroad’ in the north, but the P.A. has no intention of paving a railroad track beyond the Green Line.
Haaretz

12/22/22 In 2017 Israel’s military barred civilians from entering the West Bank outpost of Amona, whose Palestinian owners are still unable to access their land. Jewish settlers plan to violate the military order for a Hanukkah and tree planting ceremony.

Haaretz

12/18/22 The Palestinian Authority (PA) rejected Israeli Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu's offer for self-rule. PA spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said restoring Palestinian rights is the key to security and peace in the Middle East, a day after Netanyahu said he would offer Palestinians self-rule with security to remain in Israel’s hands. 
Middle East Monitor

12/22/22 The new UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Francesca Albanese, has recently come under attack by a host of pro-Israel actors, including the supposedly free Israeli press.
Mondoweiss

12/22/22 The US embassy in Jerusalem is considering denying visas from Israelis suspected of violence against Palestinians. The purpose would be to encourage the Israeli government to work to limit potential violence, as well as reducing the willingness of Israelis to participate in violent incidents against Palestinians; existing regulations have rarely been used against Israelis.
Middle East Eye

12/22/22 Several Israeli military vehicles invaded Palestinian agricultural lands near the perimeter fence east of Gaza city; soldiers also abducted a Palestinian man, Husam Abu Younis, at the Erez Crossing in northern Gaza. Other shootings and abductions of Palestinians were reported at around the same time.
International Middle East Media Center
International Middle East Media Center
International Middle East Media Center

12/22/22 In yet another demonstration of anti-Palestine bias, there is no outcry over Twitter's arbitrary suspension of Said Arikat, longtime D.C. correspondent for Al-Quds newspaper.
Mondoweiss

Thanks for Trude Bennett, Connie Hammond, Steve Ostrow

###

 

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media watch Alice Rothchild media watch Alice Rothchild

Media Watch-Presente!

Of note:  2022 is the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since the United Nations started systematically counting fatalities in 2005. We acknowledge and mourn the ongoing killing - mostly of young men robbed of their lives- and the families and friends who grieve them.

 ¡Presente! (Spanish for “Present”) is a widely used expression of remembrance and honoring of one who has died--as in acknowledging that their presence lives on in our hearts and minds. It is a way of expressing deep sorrow for their death, condolences to their loved ones and to state that their memory gives strength to the movement for justice. 

“Measured as a monthly average, 2022 is the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since the United Nations started systematically counting fatalities in 2005.”
OCHA ReliefWeb 

In early December, The Palestinian Health Ministry reported the total number of Palestinians killed by the Israeli military in 2022 to be 212. 
Aljazeera 
Mondoweiss

More on Shireen Abu Akleh
The US Justice Department announced that the FBI will be conducting an independent investigation into the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by the Israeli military. 
Americans for Justice in Palestine Action Executive Director Osama Abuirshaid said, “While we applaud this critical step to investigate Shireen’s killing, justice will not be served until her killers are held accountable and face the consequences of their murderous actions.” 
The Israeli government declared it would not cooperate with the probe.
Americans for Justice in Palestine
Mondoweiss

The bodies of two Palestinians from Gaza attempting to swim to Greece -- Mustafa al-Samari, 30, and Khalid Shurab, 28 -- were recovered near the Greek island of Kos, A third man, Sakhar,al-Astal, 25, is still missing.  
Electronic Intifada

At least 21 Palestinians, including 10 children, died in a fire in a residential building in Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp on November 17. Because the Israeli blockade limits access to fuel in Gaza, families rely on generators for electricity, gas burners for heating and cooling, and candles for light, making fires a frequent occurrence.
Medical Aid for Palestinians

More than half the population in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are below 18; in fact, one can confidently say that half of the people of the occupied West Bank and besieged Gaza Strip are children. Anyone who wages a war against these two territories, through house demolition, arrests without trial, shoot-to-kill policy, and humiliation, is waging war against children.
Palestine Chronicle
Electronic Intifada

Fulla al-Masalmeh 15, of Beitunia, west of Ramallah
Haaretz
Electronic Intifada
Mondoweiss
Defense for Children International-Palestine

Unidentified civilian
Haaretz

Muhammad Murad Sami Souf 19
Haaretz

5 Palestinians dead in Nablus
Evidence from a military incursion of Nablus raises questions about the IDF’s version of events that left 5 Palestinians dead, raising questions about serious breaches of protocol.
Haaretz—Amira Hass

Mahmoud Al-Sadi 17, (Jenin—on his way to school)
Haaretz
Defense of Children International-Palestine
Al Jazeera

Ahmed Amjad Shehadah 16, (Jenin)
Haaretz
Times of Israel

Nablus, West Bank
Mohammad Abu Kishek 22
Mohammad Hirzallah 30
Al Jazeera
Mondoweiss

Rifat Eissi
Haaretz

One Palestinian was killed and eight wounded by Israeli military forces in clashes near Hebron. An additional three Palestinians were reported killed in separate incidents near Ramallah.Haaretz

Thafer Rimawi 19
Jawad Rimawi 22
Mufid Ikhlayel 44
Ghani Maamoun Faiz Abu Ali 45
Middle East Eye
Mondoweiss
Haaretz
Haaretz
Mondoweiss
Electronic Intifada

Muhammad Al-Saadi
Naim Zubeidi
Issa Hani Talaqat 13
Mondoweiss
Haaretz

Ammar Mefleh 22—(Huwwara village, near Nablus)
Middle East Eye
Electronic Intifada

Omar Manna Fararja 22
WAFA—Palestinian News and Information Agency

Raed al-Naasan 21 (al-Mughayyir village)
BBC 
Electronic Intifada

Omar Manaa 22 (near Bethlehem)
Al Jazeera

Reported on 12/8/22 – List of those killed may not be complete. 
Haaretz

Sidqi Zakarneh 29
Tareq Al-Damaj 29
Atta Shalabi 46
Diaa Muhammad Rimawi 16
Mujahed Najjar Hamed 32
Facebook/Stop The Wall Campaign
Mondoweiss
Al Jazeera

Jana Majdi Zakarneh 16, (Jenin)
Al Jazeera
Haaretz
Electronic Intifada
Middle East Eye
Middle East Monitor
Mondoweiss
Palestine Chronicle

thanks to Trude Bennett & Maxine Fookson

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Alice Rothchild Alice Rothchild

Media Watch - December 1, 2022

Of note: As Israeli settler and military violence continues to explode in the West Bank, the racism, fascism, and ultranationalism of the newly elected increasingly rightwing government pose a dire threat to Palestinians and Israeli activists. 2022 is already set to be the deadliest year in the West Bank with Jewish settlers and Israeli soldiers working together to kill, maim, threaten, and dispossess the Palestinian population. Complaints to the International
Criminal Court and West Bank resistance provide Israel with its justification to continue its devastating occupation and siege of Gaza. The silence of most US Jewish community organizations is both appalling and revealing.

 

Welcome to the Health and Human Rights Media Watch.

 If you want to be involved in this JVP Health Advisory Council Media Watch project, contact us: https://www.jvphealth.org/contact

This month we are focused on settler violence in the West Bank and collaboration with Israeli army and police 

MONTHLY HUMAN RIGHTS HERO AND VIOLATION

HERO: Health for Palestine (H4P) 

PICUTRE

Dr. Rothchild teaching community health workers about basic women’s health.  Lajee Center.

Established in 2018 as a refugee-run community health worker program in Palestine, H4P supports care for chronic disease in patients who live in refugee camps that are experiencing chronic violence under military occupation. H4P provides community health services in the UN-run Aida refugee camp. An in-home health program was developed, training people in areas of diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular issues and psycho-social needs. H4P has worked with the Lajee Center team for development of this program. The community health program has been expanded to the Balata refugee camp in the city of Nablus. The patients in the program have positive results, with the personalized, culturally responsive care, avoiding travel through checkpoints to receive their care at poorly funded, overcrowded facilities.

https://www.1for3.org

VIOLATION: Israeli Forces who killed 16-year-old Ahmed Shehadeh

PICTURE

Twitter – Mohammed El-Kurd

In the largest raid on the city of Nablus in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Ahmed was hit in the heart and dead when he arrived at Rifidia Hospital in Nablus. Ahmed was a middle school student who also worked with his father at his grocery store. Ahmed had already lost an older and younger brother, thus devastating the Shehadeh family. Occupation forces entered Nablus around 9:00 pm November 22, 2022 in armored vehicles. Special forces took over rooftops with snipers. The Israeli forces brought in settlers who came in buses to the Joseph Tomb religious site. They used live fire and tear gas injuring dozens of Palestinians. Medic teams treated 210 injuries, 10 Palestinians wounded by live fire, 6 of whom were hospitalized, 22 wounded by rubber bullets, 3 by fragments and 175 were treated for asphyxiation with tear gas as reported by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. https://www.newarab.com/news/israeli-forces-kill-16-year-old-largest-raid-nablus

Academic journals: We invite you to consider the ongoing health and human rights crisis in Palestine within a global perspective.

Lancet: Human rights and the COVID-19 pandemic: a retrospective and prospective analysis
When the history of the COVID-19 pandemic is written, the failure of many states to live up to their human rights obligations should be a central narrative…COVID-19's effects have been profoundly unequal, both nationally and globally. These inequalities have emphatically highlighted how far countries are from meeting the supreme human rights command of non-discrimination, from achieving the highest attainable standard of health that is equally the right of all people everywhere, and from taking the human rights obligation of international assistance and cooperation seriously. We propose embedding human rights and equity within a transformed global health architecture as the necessary response to COVID-19's rights violations…Above all, new legal instruments and mechanisms, from a right to health treaty to a fund for civil society right to health advocacy, are required so that the narratives of future health emergencies—and people's daily lives—are ones of equality and human rights.
Lancet

Lancet: World Children’s Day 2022: power, policy, and children’s rights to nutrition
World Children's Day on Nov 20, 2022, marks the adoption of the 1959 UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child. As countries reckon with multiple economic, health, social, and political crises, it is timely to address the rights of all children with respect to food. Governments can do more to protect children's rights to good quality diets, nutrition, and health. Globally, about a third of children younger than 5 years experience some form of malnutrition. 
Of further concern, healthy diets have become increasingly unaffordable for millions of children and their families or carers, with food insecurity increasing since 2019, particularly in South Asia, Africa, and other low-income and middle-income economies.
Lancet

 Settler violence in the West Bank and collaboration with Israeli army and police

10/26/22 - No arrests have been made in the settler attack on the 70-year-old Israeli woman activist, Hagar Gefen, who was hospitalized after an assault by settlers near Bethlehem. 
Haaretz
Haaretz

10/26/22 - Ben-Gvir’s party members are trying to form an armed militia in a Tel Aviv suburb. Moran Nunu, who is leading the Bat Yam initiative, told Haaretz that the presence of Palestinian and Arab laborers from the West Bank and Jaffa, while not new, has diminished the city’s sense of security, saying “the soldiers will be armed, will do patrols and help with what they can.”
Haaretz

10/29/22 - 2022 is set to be the deadliest year in the West Bank since 2005 when the UN began systematically collecting data, according to Middle East envoy Tor Wennesland. Since the beginning of the year, 120 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem by Israel’s security forces. Israel’s settlers and Israelis attacked Palestinians 106 times over the period Wennesland reviewed, which resulted in the injury of 63 Palestinians and the destruction of property.
Haaretz

10/31/22 - An Israeli army security coordinator caught on camera for allegedly helping Israeli settlers throw tear gas at Palestinians during clashes earlier this month was suspended by the army, but is now back at his post.
Haaretz

10/31/22 - Palestinians in Hebron say settlers shot at their homes the day after an Israeli was killed in a shooting. “Every time there’s an attack there’s a night of terror here,” a local resident said. An Israeli checkpoint that had been opened for six months was closed to cars again.
Haaretz
+972

10/31/22 - A Bedouin family is calling for the reopening of an investigation into police brutality against them, after a candidate from Israel's far-right Religious Zionism party posted a picture on social media pointing to his involvement in the 2013 incident.
Haaretz

11/04/22 - Palestinian villagers protest theft of their land and incessant harassment by settlers from an illegal outpost. The army and the Border Police set ambushes for the protesters and shoot at them. A 17-year-old is killed and a 16-year-old, left by troops to languish on the ground, is seriously wounded.
Haaretz

11/7/22 - Among the key developments in the week of October 31-November 7, 11 incidents of settler violence were reported by Palestinian media.
Mondoweiss

11/7/22 - A West Bank settler was accused of terrorism after attacking a Palestinian resident of Sheikh Jarrah on his head with a pole in a clash in East Jerusalem in October.
Haaretz

11/7/22 - Israel gave a settlement organization 28 million shekels (almost $8 million) for tourism projects in East Jerusalem areas used by Palestinians, claiming: “This is not an area in dispute.”
Haaretz

11/9/22 - The southern Israeli city of Be'er Sheva is offering scholarships to students who volunteer with an armed civilian militia, according to the armed group's website, which posted applications for 10,000 shekel (over $2,800) scholarships for students who volunteer.
Haaretz

11/11/22 - Graphical depiction of a 170% rise in settler violence between 2017 and 2022.
Visualizing Palestine

11/16/22 - The ‘pro-governance’ Israeli right Is blind to West Bank settlers’ organized crime.
Haaretz

11/18/22 - A Palestinian family was harvesting olives when a group of settlers swooped down and attacked them with clubs, pipes, and stones. Five members of the family were hospitalized, including the 65-year-old father of the household and one of his sons, whose shattered leg will need costly, ongoing rehab. The 8-year-old grandson hid under the family’s pickup.
Haaretz

11/19/22 - Israeli settlers carried out at least 20 revenge attacks on Palestinians and Israeli soldiers following the killing of three settlers near the occupied West Bank village of Salfit. In one incident, northwest of Nablus, settlers dragged a Palestinian driver from his truck, beat him, and burned his vehicle.
Electronic Intifada

11/19/22 - A 17-year-old girl and other Palestinians were wounded by stoning as thousands of Jews marched on Hebron during an annual Jewish pilgrimage. The Israeli army closed off a significantly larger area than in previous years to accommodate the marchers.
Haaretz

11/25/22 - Israeli settlers vandalized Palestinian vehicles and sprayed racist graffiti in the towns of Abu Ghosh and Ein Naqquba, west of Jerusalem. Several Palestinian cars were burned and their tires slashed by a group of settlers in attacks by a group known as “price tag.”
Middle East Eye

OTHER NEWS

10/27/22 - Four prominent Lion’s Den leaders surrendered to the Palestinian Authority in Nablus. The four had been in negotiations with Palestinian security officials and surrendered once an agreement was reached. Official Palestinian sources said they hoped the extradition will bring quiet to the city of Nablus, and lead more young men to join the PA ranks.
Haaretz

10/27/22 - But with the rise of active militant resistance groups in the West Bank, a form of "Gaza-fication" is underway in the shrinking Palestinian pockets of the West Bank. Israel has justified its siege of Nablus as a military operation to find and kill members of the Lions' Den—similar to how it justifies its recurring military offensives in Gaza by the presence of Hamas and their rocket attacks into Israel. The wider aim of Israel's closure of Nablus is to discourage the city's population from supporting the group. 
Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN)

10/28/22 - The resistance now occurring in the West Bank does not appear to have been planned by the leaders of the major Palestinian factions. In recent weeks, a group known as the Lions’ Den has claimed responsibility for many acts of resistance against the Israeli army. Based in Nablus, this group has members of all Palestinian factions in its ranks. This represents a new sense of cooperation among young Palestinians that does not rely on traditional factions.
Electronic Intifada

10/31/22 - The Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) should investigate senior Israeli military lawyer Eyal Toledano in the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the crime of apartheid, said Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), in a submission filed with the Prosecutor. 
Democracy for the Arab World (DAWN)
Haaretz
Electronic Intifada

11/6/22 - The Higher Arab Monitoring Committee calls for ‘state of national emergency’ in Arab society if their situation deteriorates in light of the rise of the far-right in the recent elections.
Haaretz

11/6/22 - Two out of 10 Israeli soldiers voted for Religious Zionism, the slate that includes Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party. Two out of 10 soldiers are Kahanists. Two out of 10 soldiers are in favor of transfer, annexation, death to terrorists, death to Arabs.
Haaretz

11/7/22 Israel resumed construction of a Jewish town planned over the ruins of Umm al-Hiran in the Negev desert, a yet-to-be-demolished Bedouin village that has been fighting state-ordered destruction for two decades.
Haaretz

11/7/22 - In 2019, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) reported that less than 1% of Palestinian decision-making positions were held by youth between 18-29. This lack of formal political participation has prompted Palestinians in Gaza to begin sharing views critically and satirically in the digital sphere, and especially on social media platforms.
Al-Shabaka

11/7/22 - Israel’s state prosecutor says the intimate search of a Palestinian woman in 2018 should not be viewed as a sex crime due to “security importance.”
Haaretz

11/8/22 - Addressing the UN General Assembly, E. Tendayi Achiume, the UN special rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, said countries shouldn’t adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism. Achiume said use of the definition has “an impact on the human rights of minorities and vulnerable groups, including Jews,” and called it “controversial” and “divisive.”
Jewish Currents

11/9/22 - Israel imposed a ban on fish and seafood export from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank, a move Gazan fishermen and merchants fear will inflict a harsh blow to the Strip’s economy and the livelihoods of thousands of families.
Haaretz

11/11/22 - Life in Gaza: first the drones, then the bombs.
Electronic Intifada

11/11/22 - Jerusalem Deputy Mayor and right-wing activist Arieh King is helping an anonymous Jewish philanthropist to launch a program to encourage the emigration of non-Jewish citizens, another racist plan to expel Palestinians from Israel.
Haaretz

11/11/22 - At the request of the Palestinian Authority, the United Nations voted to ask the International Court of Justice for an opinion on the legal status of Israel's "prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.”
Haaretz
Haaretz
Haaretz
Haaretz

11/11/22 - Palestinian families urge US to cancel Jerusalem embassy plans on stolen land. Heirs of original landowners whose property was confiscated by Israel in 1950 and two rights groups call on US Secretary of State and US Ambassador to Israel to halt construction plans.
Middle East Eye

11/12/22 - Two Palestinian children were injured by Israeli gunfire in two separate incidents in the cities of Al-Bireh and Bethlehem, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.
Palestine Chronicle

11/13/22 - Israel’s new junior high school civics curriculum highlights Jewish aspects of Israel and the power of the government while reducing the focus on civil and human rights, the status of the Arab minority, judicial oversight, equal rights and other components of democracy.
Haaretz

11/13/22 - Transport companies refuse to drive children of the unrecognized Bedouin village Ramat Tziporim to school because of the road conditions, and the state refuses to fund repairs. 
Haaretz

11/15/22 - The rise of far-right extremists who could sit in Netanyahu's government is a real and present danger to Israeli democracy, and the lives of both Jews and Palestinians. So why is the American Jewish community not speaking out? T’ruah, J Street, New Israel Fund, Reconstructing Judaism, and Americans for Peace Now, have been strong in their denunciations. Most everyone else has cheered “Israel’s vibrant democracy” or been notably, ominously silent.
Haaretz

11/15/22 - Israeli human rights groups called on the US to sanction Ben G’vir and Smotrich over human rights violations, including inciting genocide against the Palestinian people.
Haaretz

11/15/22 - In Masafer Yatta, teachers can’t guarantee students an education. With schools facing demolition orders and soldiers detaining students and teachers for hours, obstacles to education are becoming insurmountable.
+972

11/16/22 - Ben & Jerry’s has repudiated the ice cream sold under its name in Israel and the occupied West Bank by an Israeli company. Ben & Jerry’s reiterated that “the sale of products bearing any Ben & Jerry’s insignia in the occupied Palestinian territory is against our values. Such sales are inconsistent with international law, fundamental human rights and Ben & Jerry’s social mission.”
Electronic Intifada

11/16/22 - Netanyahu and Ben G’vir agree to legalize West Bank settlement evacuated in 2005, marking a reversal of the 2005 disengagement law which forbids Israelis from staying in the area and comes after US concern over the appointment of a far-right leader as defense minister.
Haaretz

11/17/22 - On November 16, 21 people were killed in an apartment fire in the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. While the cause of the fire remains unknown, Palestinians are forced to endure unsafe living conditions due to the blockade imposed on them by the Israeli siege.
AJP Action
Mondoweiss

11/17/22 - The predicted Republican tsunami now turned red puddle revealed that despite gerrymandering, voter suppression, and massive amounts of right-wing billionaire money and disinformation, US voters have major qualms about a MAGA universe engulfing the country.
But the recent election in Israel has resulted in historically the most racist, ultranationalist, homophobic, religiously fundamentalist parties joining in a coalition to govern.
Palestine Chronicle

11/18/22 - Imprisoned Egyptian technologist, writer, and activist, Alaa Abd-El-Fattah, 41, had a near-death experience, according to his family, who were able to visit him in prison on November 17 for the first time in almost a month. In a statement released last night, the family said he appeared “exhausted, weak, vulnerable and very, very thin.”
Democracy Now

11/20/22 - Thirty Palestinian families from an East Jerusalem neighborhood were sent eviction notices even though a 1980s document from the Israel Lands Administration shows the land is owned by Palestinian.
Haaretz

11/20/22 - Commanders and soldiers within an elite unit stationed in the Jenin area of the West Bank independently distributed leaflets over the last several days threatening to shoot Palestinians who cross the separation barrier. The Israeli army renounced the act, calling it an ‘error.’
Haaretz

11/20/22 - After unidentified men in uniform assaulted Bedouins in Bir Hadaj, police claimed they were soldiers but IDF denied it. Two residents complained that eight armed men in uniform stopped their car, cuffed and beat them, and damaged their property. Some 500 village residents protested the incident. 
Haaretz

11/21/22 - Religious Zionism head, Bezalel Smotrich, said that human rights organizations are an existential threat to Israel and the incoming government must deal with them by "seizing their funds" and acting against them with legal and security measures.
Haaretz

11/23/22 - COP27: Cooperation with Israel on climate without Palestinian self-determination entrenches colonial climate vulnerability of Palestinians.
Al Haq

11/23/22 - Egypt’s “expatriation” policy is meant to humiliate travelers from Gaza, who are routinely subjected to inhumane and degrading treatment by Egyptian officials as they are escorted to Cairo International Airport and placed under guard until they board their planes.
Mondoweiss

11/24/22 - Three Palestinians were kidnapped and beaten in a Druze town in Northern Israel. Police are investigating whether the incident is related to the kidnapping of a Druze teen’s body from Jenin.
Haaretz

11/24/22 - Israel’s Arab community is bracing for the appointment of Itamar Ben-Gvir as public security minister, fearing what might happen when the Otzma Yehudit leader – whose racist election campaign was directed against Arabs – assumes the post. 
Haaretz

11/24/22 - Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are dying a slow death as many are unable to afford medicines or co-share the cost of treatment, especially for chronic diseases and cancer. The spread of cholera is the latest tragic layer that adds to acute hardship and helplessness.
UNRWA

11/24/22 - Benjamin Netanyahu is reported by Haaretz to have agreed to move the civil administration in the West Bank from Israel’s Ministry of Defense to the Ministry of Finance, in order to appease far-right Knesset member Bezalel Smotrich. Religious Zionism will be handed the civil administration portfolio, according to Haaretz. The Ministry is hugely significant for Palestinians, as it oversees the coordination of Israel’s activity in the Occupied West Bank.
Palestine Chronicle

11/25/22 - An IDF solider was filmed attacking a left-wing activist in the West Bank city of Hebron as another soldier told one of the activists that "Ben-Gvir is going to bring order, you've had it," in reference to the Kahanist lawmaker who was named as National Security Minister.
Haaretz

11/25/22 - Netanyahu’s Likud agreed to far-right lawmaker Smotrich’s demand to head the Civil Administration, the military agency that has broad powers in the West Bank including home demolitions. The right-wing plans include expanding settlements and legalizing outposts.
Haaretz

11/25/22 - Israeli Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu’s conservative Likud party signed its first coalition deal with the far-right Jewish Power party, giving ultranationalist leader Itamar Ben-Gvir the police ministry and a seat in the security cabinet.
Aljazeera

Thanks to Trude Bennett

GazaWest  BankEast JerusalemIsraelsettlerracismfascismultranationalismH4PAhmed ShehadehCOVID-19human rightsWorld Children's DayBen GvirHebronrevenge attacksLion's DenInternational Criminal CourtInternational Holocaust Remembrance AlliancefishermandronesMasafer YattaJabalia refugee campBezalel SmotrichLebanon

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Alice Rothchild Alice Rothchild

Media Watch - November 1, 2022

Welcome to the Health and Human Rights Media Watch. Our Coronavirus pandemic updates are being folded back into the monthly Media Watch. 

Going forward, we are separating out the Say their names project
 (those Palestinians who have been killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers
in the past 4 weeks). This report will be sent out midmonth.

 If you want to be involved in this JVP Health Advisory Council Media Watch project, contact us: https://www.jvphealth.org/contact

Of note this month: Israel, (military and settlers), continues a massive, aggressive assault on the West Bank, with a focus on Nablus, Jenin, and East Jerusalem, in an attempt to destroy any Palestinian resistance to the occupation and ongoing oppression, killing at least 74 Palestinians since the end of September. This campaign has been mostly ignored and poorly framed in the mainstream media. Gazans, suffering from their own military onslaughts and restricted movements, are protesting in solidarity. Israel also continues its racist policies towards entry of “foreigners” into the West Bank, discriminatory educational and real estate policies against Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, and arrests and administrative detention in the West Bank. The impact of Israeli hasbara continues to be seen in the West in the media, children’s literature, and antiboycott legislation.

This month we are focused on Operation Breaking the Wave, the Israeli assault on the West Bank and the rising resistance among Palestinians.

 

MONTHLY HUMAN RIGHTS HERO AND VIOLATION

HERO
The Red Carpet Gaza Film Festival celebrates its sixth year.

Palestinians watch a film during the opening ceremony of the Red Carpet Human Rights Film Festival in Gaza, in front of the abandoned Cinema Amer building in Gaza City, on Dec. 4, 2019. - MAHMUD HAMS/AFP via Getty Images

The film festival demanded that the world pay attention to what is happening in the Gaza Strip. The ongoing flood of human rights abuses in the occupied territories gives the filmmakers ample material for their films, and was started in 2014 after that year’s war on Gaza.
Al-Monitor

VIOLATION
Itamar Ben-Gvir is a far right Israeli lawmaker who pulled a gun on residents in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem.

Ben-Gvir is pictured pulling a gun at Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of occupied East Jerusalem on 13 October 2022 (Twitter)

Ben-Gvir earlier tweeted that police should 'shoot or arrest' a man who had hurled a stone at Israeli settlers in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood. He recommended shooting stone throwers.
Israeli Lawmmaker Ben-Gvir

Academic paper
Community Health Worker Program Outcomes for Diabetes and Hypertension Control in West Bank Refugee Camps: A Retrospective Matched Cohort Study
Health for Palestine (H4P) was established in 2018 as a refugee-run community health worker program in the occupied West Bank to provide social accompaniment, address health barriers, and initiate monitoring and support for chronic disease patients. A study from 2 Palestinian refugee camps indicates that accompaniment-based community health worker programs are feasible and effective in improving diabetes and hypertension control in camps experiencing chronic violence under military occupation.
Global Health: Science and Practice

United Nations report
In the present report, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese, addresses a number of concerns pertaining to the situation of human rights in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza and presents an in-depth analysis of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.
UN Special Rapporteur

Report on erasure of Palestine in academia through donor influence
Mondoweiss  

 Operation Breaking the Wave

In late March, Israel’s policing army launched Operation Breaking the Wave, in which it raided Palestinian cities to arrest and kill “terror suspects.” According to UN reports, from the operation’s inception to the end of September, Israel killed 74 Palestinians in the West Bank.
Haaretz

Tensions in Jenin are spilling over into roads in the surrounding area, and one fatal attack could push Israel into an open-ended operation just ahead of an election.
Haaretz

Palestinian cities across the West Bank were shut down as protests erupted in response to an Israeli raid in Jenin that killed four Palestinians and injured over 50.
Mondoweiss

The Israeli army has green-lighted the use of armed drones to carry out assassinations against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, Israeli media reported. Israeli Army Chief Aviv Kochavi gave his approval to use the armed drones for assassinations and “to carry out strikes should armed gunmen be identified as posing imminent threats to the troops.”
Palestine Chronicle

Amad Shaaweet, resident of a Palestinian town called Huwwara south of Nablus, tried to protect passersby from a violent settler rampage. Israeli police and soldiers watched from the side, doing nothing to restrain the settlers, and then beat and jailed Shaaweet.
Haaretz
Mondoweiss

Settlers have carried out increased attacks in Nablus over past month, injuring dozens of Palestinians amid heightened tensions in the occupied West Bank.
Aljazeera

Israel's Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked informed seven relatives of Fadi al-Qanbar—who killed four soldiers in 2017—that they must leave the country within the coming week after the government revoked the residency status of 17 family members. 
Haaretz

Amira Hass writes that the real escalation is the destruction of Palestinian space. Through its conduct since Oslo, Israel has proved what the Palestinians have claimed for more than 100 years – that the goal of Zionism is to dispossess and expel them from their homeland.
Haaretz

From Syria to Ukraine, open-source intelligence (often referred to as OSINT) has not-so-quietly revolutionized the global flow of information during times of conflict. By obscuring Israeli war crimes and fueling narratives that misrepresent the reality of Israel’s occupation, however, Israel has transformed OSINT from a tool of objectivity to one of distortion.
Foreign Policy

Palestine in Pictures: September 2022
Electronic Intifada

A UN human rights expert said that she was “extremely alarmed by the escalation of violence” in the West Bank, where Israeli forces have killed five Palestinians since the beginning of October.
Electronic Intifada

The Israeli NGO B’Tselem has asked the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court to act to prevent the expulsion of about 1,000 residents of Masafer Yatta from their homes after Israel declared the area a live-fire training zone. “Jewish settlers physically assault Palestinian shepherds and use their land, sabotage water sources and enter homes, among other violent acts, with full state backing and often the active participation of Israeli soldiers and police.”
Haaretz

Israeli forces put Nablus under lockdown following shooting attacks in the West Bank. Palestinian shops and businesses in East Jerusalem shut down to protest Israeli police raids.
Haaretz

On October 2, Israeli forces assaulted two Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) paramedics in Nablus, According to PRCS, the medics were threated at gunpoint, kicked, and beaten; Israeli forces also damaged a PRCS ambulance. Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) strongly condemns recent attacks on Palestinian health workers by Israeli forces and settlers in the West Bank, and calls on the international community to demand an immediate end to such violations.
Medical Aid for Palestinians

In Jenin and Nablus, resistance and despair go hand in hand. Palestinian youths are taking up arms amid unrelenting Israeli incursions into refugee camps, with the pervasiveness of death ensuring more will follow.
+972
Haaretz
+972
Jewish Currents

Israeli forces exchanged fire with Palestinians while escorting worshipers to Joseph’s Tomb. Despite warnings of further clashes, the Israeli military accompanied worshipers heading to the holy site near Nablus, where Palestinian militants vowed to disrupt the visit.
Haaretz

Clashes erupted in the West Bank town of Huwwara, as several dozen settlers set fire to a coffee shop, olive trees, Palestinian cars, and other property, according to Palestinian sources. The Red Crescent reported that 53 Palestinians were injured.
Haaretz

In pictures: Shu’fat refugee camp rises up against collective punishment. As the siege of Shu’fat refugee camp entered its fourth day, Palestinians launched a massive civil disobedience campaign to oppose Israel’s policy of collective punishment.
Mondoweiss
Mondoweiss

The settler invasion of Ramallah on October 13 further exposed the impotence of the PA. Escorted by the Israeli army, Israeli settlers invaded a neighborhood, further dispelling the illusion of PA sovereignty.
Mondoweiss

In a bid to boost Abbas’s standing, Israel is set to allow the PA to use helicopters. Israel’s defense establishment has opposed the move for fear that the aircrafts be used for smuggling. Now, it recommends approving President Abbas’s request to strengthen his position in the PA.
Haaretz

Adalah demands that Israel lift the blockade of Palestinian residential areas in East Jerusalem, where troops have sealed off 130,000 Palestinians in five areas, imposing sweeping collective punishment including power cuts, spraying of foul-smelling ‘skunk’ water, and firing off tear gas in densely populated civilian areas – violating Israeli law and the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Adalah

A group of illegal Israeli paramilitary settlers assaulted Palestinians and international peace activists harvesting olive trees in Kisan village east of Bethlehem, stabbing a 70-year-old Jewish Israeli woman volunteer.
International Middle East Media Center
+972

Events in the occupied West Bank indicate that the Palestinian liberation struggle, and Israel’s efforts to repress it with brutal violence, have entered a new phase. In this looming scenario, the formerly extremist fringe settlers see themselves represented at the top levels of Israeli government, emboldened and beyond the restraint of the army.
Electronic Intifada
Al Haq

The Shin Bet security agency took an Arab teacher, who serves as deputy principal as well as a clergyman, from his elementary classroom in Acre and interrogated him for ten hours.
Haaretz

Shadi Khoury, 16-year-old student at Ramallah Friends School and grandson of Sabeel co-founder Samia Khouri, was kidnapped by Israeli occupation forces from his home in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina. When he refused to undress in their presence, he was beaten in front of his parent, and taken away to be interrogated without the presence of his family or legal counsel. His parents, who both run local cultural institutions, were not told why he was arrested.
FOSNA
Haaretz

Between October 11-21, Israeli nationalist settlers committed 100 criminal acts against Palestinians in the West Bank. Contrary to claims, attackers are not ‘just a handful’ and include older adults, women, and children.
Haaretz

In the early morning of October 25, the Israeli army launched a massive overnight assault on Nablus, killing six Palestinians. Dozens of military jeeps were seen driving down Nablus roads into the city, while Israeli drones could be heard in the skies overhead. Palestinian media reported that snipers were positioned on rooftops surrounding the Old City, while the army deployed other troops to the mountaintops surrounding Nablus.
Mondoweiss

Tens of thousands of Palestinians took part on October 25 in the funeral of five [sic] Palestinians killed earlier in the morning by Israeli soldiers during an army assault into the northern West Bank city of Nablus, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported. The mourners carried the Palestinian flag and black banners while denouncing the Israeli aggression and killings.
Palestine Chronicle

For three weeks the Palestinian city of Nablus and nearby towns have been caged in by Israeli settlers and soldiers, targeting an armed resistance group that has inspired mass support despite facing escalating violence and daily hardships.
+972

Israel has appointed a settler as army chief in the occupied West Bank. Critics say Herzi Halevi’s appointment lays bare just how interconnected settlers and the military truly are.
Aljazeera

The resurgence of armed Palestine confrontation with Israeli colonial authorities has been years in the making, and Israel has launched a months-long military campaign to wipe it out.
Mondoweiss

At least six Palestinians were killed and twenty one wounded in Israeli occupied West Bank when Tuesday morning Israeli forces stormed the city of Nablus.
Aljazeera

Thousands have turned out for funeral processions of five Palestinians killed by Israeli forces.
Aljazeera

Israeli military raids and killings have become an almost daily reality in Jenin and Nablus over the past year. The raids are part of a campaign Israel calls “Break the Wave'”, under which it carries out mass arrests and killings in places such as the two northern occupied West Bank cities, aimed at fighters affiliated with armed groups such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s (PIJ) al-Quds Brigades, and Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
Aljazeera

Israel is not only targeting members of certain factions, but any semblance of confrontation to its colonization of Palestine. Intensifying its use of live ammunition, Israel loosened its shoot-to-kill policy last year. According to data collected by Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, most injuries by live ammunition this year were in Nablus, followed by Jenin and Ramallah. 
Mondoweiss

Meanwhile in Gaza…a few reports
Thousands of people in the besieged Gaza Strip have protested in solidarity with fellow Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem amid a wave of Israeli violence.
Aljazeera

The Gaza-based Palestinian factions declared a comprehensive strike in solidarity with the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, after Israel killed six Palestinian fighters in the besieged city.
Alaraby

Stories from survivors of Israel’s recent onslaught on Gaza, who were spared death but now grapple with what remains of their life after the war. It left behind untold numbers of survivors, who have to deal with the attack’s repercussions, both physical and psychological, for the rest of their lives.
Mondoweiss
Mondoweiss

Once again the discriminatory movement restrictions and the arbitrary permit system imposed by Israeli authorities on Palestinian patients from Gaza, which obstruct their access to hospitals outside the Strip, have claimed another Palestinian life. The most recent case of delay led to the death of Akram Ahmed Al-Sultan, a 62-year-old cancer patient residing in North Gaza District, on 17 October 2022, after being denied access to Augusta Victoria Hospital in Jerusalem.  Al-Sultan suffered from leukemia, but despite obtaining a medical referral from the Palestinian Ministry of Health and securing appointments at the Jerusalem hospital, Israeli authorities denied him the requisite exit permit to travel for three separate appointments. 
Al Mezan

The Hamas government has imposed a tax on imported clothing in a bid to support local industries, causing clothing prices to soar and leaving families in the difficult position of choosing between buying food or clothing for their children.
Mondoweiss

Israel
New Israeli defense ministry restrictions on the entry of foreigners to the occupied West Bank will infringe on Palestinians’ basic rights. The 97-page procedure serves Israel’s “racial engineering” of the population in the West Bank, according to a coalition of Palestinian human rights groups, and will “encroach on Palestinians’ freedom of movement, receiving humanitarian and development assistance, and hosting medical practitioners and other experts.”
Electronic Intifada

Israeli officials condemned Booking.com’s decision to display a safety warning on its listings in the illegal West Bank. The Dutch travel company then modified its warning to customers to say Israeli settlement areas are “disputed, conflict-affected or high-risk” (rather than “occupied”) and “may pose greater risks” (rather than “increased risk to safety and human rights”). 
Mondoweiss
Haaretz

Palestinians in Jaffa, Jerusalem, and across Israel are challenging discriminatory Israeli education policies. In April, Adalah filed a petition in an Israeli court against a policy that banned schools and third-party contractors from acknowledging the Nakba. In early September, residents in Jaffa joined to protest the closure of kindergartens, while teachers last week in East Jerusalem observed a strike against the Israeli municipality’s attempts to censor their textbooks.
Mondoweiss

Israel is holding nearly 800 Palestinians without trial or charge, the highest number since 2008. Israeli rights group HaMoked, which regularly gathers figures from Israeli prison authorities, said that 798 Palestinians are currently being held in so-called administrative detention.
Haaretz

International groups denounce the detention of Palestinian theater leader Bilal Al-Saadi. Israel arrested the Jenin Freedom Theatre chairman last month and sentenced him to six months detention on undisclosed charges as part of a crackdown on Palestinians’ artistic freedom.
Mondoweiss

The Arab physicians’ organization has called for the immediate dismissal of Prof. Gideon Sahar, head of Israel’s Soroka Hospital’s cardiac surgery department, over racist comments he made on Arab birthrates (“The Arab womb is defeating us.”)
Haaretz
Middle East Eye

A Jewish crowd attacked a group of Palestinians driving on Yom Kippur outside Tel Aviv. The car was driving through the city of Bat Yam when a crowd of Jewish worshippers, clad in white as is traditional on Yom Kippur, emerged from a nearby synagogue and tipped the vehicle over.
Haaretz
Haaretz

Claiming potential Arab voter fraud, Otzma Yehudit establishes an initiative to make right-wing activists and hilltop youth official election observers, giving them free access to polling sites.
Haaretz

Jaffa may become the next Sheikh Jarrah as Palestinians are pushed out. Palestinians in Jaffa say the Israeli government is attempting to displace them in what residents allege is ethnic cleansing through real estate.
Mondoweiss

For decades, rumors and testimonies swirled about Jewish troops sent to poison wells in Arab villages. Now, researchers have located official documentation of the ‘Cast Thy Bread’ operation – Israel’s 1948 biological warfare.
Haaretz

And internationally
Independent journalist Katie Halper says she was first censored by The Hill TV and then fired from its morning broadcast, “Rising,” after she submitted a commentary in which she stood up for Rashida Tlaib on the apartheid charge and uttered the words, “Free Palestine!”
Mondoweiss

Palestinian photographer says NYT fired him for expressing support for resistance. A Jewish reporter for NYT can have a child in the Israeli army, but Hosam Salem can’t voice support for Palestinian resistance to occupation and keep getting work.
Mondoweiss

Are US kids getting good insight about Palestinians from books? An ongoing research project examining kids’ books involving Palestine shows that even the youngest children are subjected to narratives that erase Palestinians
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has asked the Supreme Court to review a lower court’s ruling that upheld an Arkansas state law penalizing companies that boycott Israel.
Aljazeera

Zionist watchdog groups have launched smear campaigns to silence thee voices of Palestinian journalists, often causing many of them to lose their jobs. Will media organizations continue to allow such groups to dictate their journalism, or will they dare to be as fearless as the Palestinian journalists they claim to support?
Mondoweiss

For the first time, criminal charges have been pursued in a Canadian court over alleged recruitment for the Israeli military. Sar-El Canada must respond to allegations that it acts as an intermediary to recruit Canadians to volunteer in a non-combatant role with the Israeli military.
Electronic Intifada   
Palestine Chronicle

 ###

 

 

GazaWest BankIsraelBreaking the WaveRed Carpet Gaza Film FestivalItamar Ben-GvirHealth4PalestineSpecial RapporteurJeninNablusHuwwaraMasafer YattaPalestine Red Crescent SocietyShu'fatRamallahAdalahJaffaJerusalemadministration detentionKatie HalperSar-El Canada

Read More
Alice Rothchild Alice Rothchild

Media Watch - Say their names September 15-October 14, 2022

International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian Journalist: Two Killed this Year, 20 in Prison
Palestine Chronicle

Suicide in Gaza: “A message of anger”
Electronic Intifada

Boat disaster hits Palestine refugees in Lebanon hard At least two dozen Palestinian refugees, most of them from Nahr al-Bared camp in northern Lebanon, are among the nearly 100 dead after a boat full of asylum seekers headed towards Italy capsized off the coast of Syria last week.
Electronic Intifada

Israeli Refusal to Release Palestinian's Body Stirs Unrest in East Jerusalem
Haaretz

Palestinian death toll in West Bank hits 100 this year
BBC

U.S. government walks back call for investigation of 7-year-old Palestinian’s death
Mondoweiss

Israel says it is to compensate family of Palestinian who died after detention
The Guardian

Omar Assad’s family says Israeli settlement claim is a lie
Electronic Intifada

more on Shireen Abu-Akleh

Israel’s denial of accountability for Abu Akleh killing may require cutoff of aid — Leahy
Mondoweiss

New evidence emerges showing Israel deliberately targeted Shireen Abu Akleh as family files ICC complaint
Mondoweiss

Joint investigation finds Abu Akleh’s killing ‘deliberate’
Aljazeera

Israel “intended to kill” Shireen Abu Akleh — probe
Electronic Intifada

SAY THEIR NAMES – those who died this past month

Hamad Mustafa Abu Jalda 24
Ahmad Ayman Abed 23
Abdulrahman Hani Abed age not stated
Electronic Intifada
Haaretz

Oday Salah 17
Mondoweiss
Haaretz

Sa’ed al-Koni 23
Aljazeera
Middle East Eye
Mondoweiss
Palestine Chronicle
Haaretz

Rian Suleiman 7
Haaretz

Sa’ed Al-Koni 23
Muhammad Ali Hussein Awad 36
Haaretz
Mondoweiss

Firas Yaish 55
Mondoweiss

Tayseer Daoud Yousuf Al-Sayegh 67
International Middle East Media Center

Abed Fathi Hazem 27
Ahmed Nazmi Alawneh 26
Mohammad al-Wanneh 30
Muhammed Abu Naa’sah
Aljazeera
Haaretz
New York Times
Electronic Intifada

Khalid Anbar “young man”
Haaretz
Mondoweiss
Aljazeera

Fayez Khaled Damdoum 18
International Middle East Media Center

Alaa Zaghal 21
Mondoweiss
Electronic Intifada

Two Palestinians in Jenin refugee camp, 18 and 19
Haaretz

Ahmad Muhammad Hussein Daraghmah 19
Mahmoud Moayadd Mahmoud Sous 17
Adel Ibrahim Adel Daoud 14
Mahdi Muhammad Ladadwa 17
Electronic Intifada
Mondoweiss

Mahmoud Mohammad Khalil Samoudi 12
Haaretz
Mondoweiss

Usama Mahmoud Adawi 17
Electronic Intifada

Dr. Abdullay al-Ahmad 43
Mateen Debaya 20
Haaretz
Aljazeera
International Middle East Media Center

thanks to Trude Bennett

Shireen Abu Akleh

Read More
Alice Rothchild Alice Rothchild

Media Watch - October 1, 2022

Welcome to the Health and Human Rights Media Watch. Our Coronavirus pandemic updates are being folded back into the monthly Media Watch. 

Going forward, we are separating out the Say their names project

 (those Palestinians who have been killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers

in the past 4 weeks). This report will be sent out midmonth.

 If you want to be involved in this JVP Health Advisory Council Media Watch project, contact us: https://www.jvphealth.org/contact

This month we are focused on the medical and mental health realities of everyday life in the occupied territories and for Palestinian citizens of Israel.

But first….

JVP webinar: Stand With the 7: Video of conversation with Al Haq, Addameer, and The Union of Agricultural Work Committees
Wesam Ahmad, Head of the Centre for Applied International Law in Al-Haq
Milena Ansari, International advocacy officer at Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association
Moayyad Bsharat, Lobbying and advocacy director of Union of Agriculture Work Committees
here

Rethinking Palestine, conversation with Addameer’s Milena Ansari, recording here

COVID UPDATE

West Bank including East Jerusalem & Gaza

Latest data up to September 26 from the WHO reveals 702,786 confirmed cases (an undercount but a flattened curve of infection rates) and 5,707 deaths. As August 9, 2022, a total of 3,741,181 vaccine doses have been administered.  Graphs included on both sites.
Corona Help
WHO

Israel

Israeli health system officials are discussing canceling the legal requirement for COVID patients to isolate, the only major restriction still in force. The decision could by delayed by the fear of a widespread flu outbreak this winter which. along with a rise in COVID after the requirement for isolation ends, could impose too great a load on the health system.
Haaretz

Israel's High Court ruled against Haaretz's court petition to declassify government minutes of closed-door deliberations over the country's coronavirus pandemic response. Since the pandemic’s outbreak, deliberations in the government, the COVID cabinet, and other ministerial committees have been classified as secret. Participants in these discussions worked off the assumption that minutes would be kept secret, but a petition by Haaretz and The Movement for Freedom of Information in Israel fought to bring the archive of discussions to public light.
Haaretz

 MONTHLY HUMAN RIGHTS HERO AND VIOLATION

Human Rights Hero of the Month: Ariel Koren

Ariel Koren.credit: Geloy Concepcion for The New York Times

https://mondoweiss.net/2022/09/google-worker-who-protested-israel-contract-says-she-was-forced-to-quit/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/30/technology/google-employee-israel.html
https://medium.com/@arielkoren/googles-complicity-in-israeli-apartheid-how-google-weaponizes-diversity-to-silence-palestinians-cb41b24ac423
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2022-08-31/ty-article/jewish-google-worker-quits-alleging-company-silences-palestinian-support/00000182-f3a2-db3f-a3ba-ffa387c50000?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=Content&utm_campaign=daily-brief&utm_content=622b04a579

Ariel Koren, a product marketing manager at Google, who spent more than a year organizing against Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion agreement for Google and Amazon to supply Israel and its military with artificial intelligence tools and other computing services, has resigned from her position citing retaliation from her employer. In October 2021 Koren drafted a public letter criticizing the agreement. “We cannot look the other way, as the products we build are used to deny Palestinians their basic rights, force Palestinians out of their homes and attack Palestinians in the Gaza Strip – actions that have prompted war crime investigations by the international criminal court. We envision a future where technology brings people together and makes life better for everyone. To build that brighter future, the companies we work for need to stop contracting with any and all militarized organizations in the US and beyond.” Hundreds of workers at Google and Amazon signed the letter. She was given an ultimatum by Google: Agree to move to São Paulo, Brazil, within 17 business days or lose your job. 

Human Rights Violation of the Month: Israeli travel permit regime

credit: Mahmoud Ajjour/APA images

https://www.phr.org.il/en/cancer2/
https://www.phr.org.il/en/forcedseparation/
https://electronicintifada.net/content/spike-children-denied-medical-treatment-israels-military/36201
http://www.emro.who.int/images/stories/palestine/July_2022_Monthly.pdf

In the occupied territories, the families of Palestinian children who need advanced medical care must apply for a permit to leave the oPt and access care in Israel or another country, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel reports "in the last two years, Israel has issued far fewer permits for parents to accompany their children for medical care. Israel’s refusal to allow parents to accompany their children leads to major delays in accessing treatment and endangers the children’s lives." 32% of applications made by minors to access treatment outside Gaza from January to September 2021 were delayed or denied, meaning they missed the treatment, an increase from 17% in 2020. The rate of refusal of parents’ applications to accompany their children has increased from 28% in 2020 to 35% in 2021. One example: Inshirah Madani, 16, who has a brain tumor, is waiting for Israeli permission to travel for treatment. Inshirah’s mother said that the delay in her daughter’s treatment caused her to lose one eye as a result of the growth of the tumor. “For years, Israel has been delaying,” the mother said. “I’m in so much pain while my daughter is slowly dying, and I can do nothing for her.”

Medical and mental health realities of everyday life in the occupied territories and for Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Gaza

·       Yasmin Abusaya, 23, did not realize as a child that she was a refugee. Her family is from a city called al-Majdal, though now they live in the al-Remal neighborhood of Gaza. Here she shares the stories of Palestinians of different generations in Gaza’s eight refugee camp and how they came to understand that they were refugees.
Electronic Intifada

·       Abdalla Nasralla had barely begun to get over the trauma of the 2021 Gaza war when Operation Breaking Dawn turned his world upside down all over again. He wants to further his studies and reach his academic potential; but the fear and bad memories constantly disrupt his focus. As he says, “And that’s the whole point of these aggressions. The trauma they invoke is purposeful, a way of further punishing the people of Gaza.
Mondoweiss         

·       Fourteen-year-old Saeed Jarghoon from the city of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, has a cancerous tumor in his right leg. His condition is worsening because the Israeli occupation authorities are preventing him from traveling to Israel for treatment. He is not the only one. Physicians for Human Rights Israel recently announced that the number of children denied treatment outside Gaza, including infants in their first year of life, had nearly doubled.
Electronic Intifada

·       On September 20, a patient namely Tayseer Daoud Yousuf Al-Sayegh (67) died at dawn when the Israeli authorities denied his travel for treatment at Al-Muttala Hospital in occupied Jerusalem from Gaza. Accordingly, since the beginning of this year, the number of patients denied travel for treatment abroad has risen to 6, including 3 children.
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights

·       Al Mezan has strongly condemned the discriminatory movement restrictions imposed by Israeli authorities on Palestinian patients from the Gaza Strip, obstructing their access to hospitals outside Gaza.  A recent case of delay led to the death of the six-year-old child Farouq Mohammed Abu Naja, who was suffering from developmental regression and died after he was denied access to medical care at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem.  The continued impunity granted to Israel and the absence of accountability encourage the recurrence of Israeli government crimes against the Palestinian people, all the more so when Israel's violation of human rights law and its obligations as an occupying power impact the health and very survival of children like Farouq.
Al Mezan       

·       In yet another instance of the deadly effects of Israel's imposition of its arbitrary permit system --which obstructs access for Palestinian patients from Gaza to hospitals outside the Strip -- 32-year-old cancer patient Mohammed al-Ledawi of Rafah City died on Sept. 6, 2022.  He had been denied the requisite exit permits to keep eight separate appointments at hospitals in Jerusalem and Nablus.  Al Mezan's records show that in very recent years, five patients—including three children—have died because of Israel’s denial or delay of exit permits.  Al Meazan once again has  condemned Israel's stifling closure of Gaza, which serves to deny inhabitants their fundamental right to health, and other inalienable rights, guaranteed under international human rights law and which Israel is obligated to observe, as the occupying power.  |
Al Mezan

·       Crushing poverty in Gaza pushes some children into the labor market. For example, brothers Makram, 17, and Yassin Tilbani, 11, work up to 12 hours a day for as little as 10 shekels in an attempt to help their families survive.
Mondoweiss

·       Founded in 1980, the Aged Care Association in Gaza City aims to help improve the health and social conditions of elderly Palestinians, who have a great desire for services. “Ninety percent of the elderly beneficiaries [of the association] are economically insecure and live below the poverty line,” said the association’s director.
Electronic Intifada

East Jerusalem

·       Amani Odeh speaks about her life in Silwan, a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem where 1,500 residents live under the threat of demolition to make way for Israeli settlers. After staking roots in Silwan, the right-wing association Elad has marked the Hinnom Valley for its next expansion project – a tourist attraction called Farm in the Valley in the Himmon Valley.
Mondoweiss
Haaretz
+972

·       The Jerusalem municipal planning and building committee has approved the construction of the Givat HaShaked neighborhood, which lies over the Green Line. The neighborhood, which is intended for the Jewish public, will be built next to the Palestinian quarter of Beit Safafa.
Haaretz

·       Yacoub Ahmad Odeh was eight years old when he was expelled from Lifta during the Palestinian Nakba of 1948. Today he lives in East Jerusalem, only a few kilometers from Lifta, but he is banned from living his home village by Israel. Still, over 70 years later, he is still determined to return to Lifta and is helping lead the fight against Israeli plans to turn Lifta into a Jewish neighborhood of West Jerusalem
Mondoweiss       

·       The Israeli-controlled municipality in Jerusalem forced Nasreen Abu Tayeh to destroy her house on the pretext that it lacked a building license. Abu Tayeh told Wafa that she was forced to demolish the house in which she and her four children live, in order to avoid paying high demolition charges to the Israeli municipality.
Middle East Monitor

·       Thousands of East Jerusalem students skipped school to protest censorship after Israel’s Education Ministry ordered the removal of content from East Jerusalem textbooks which they claim incite violence and contain false information. Over 115,000 students from K to grade 12 attend 280 Palestinian schools in East Jerusalem.
Haaretz
Aljazeera

West Bank

·       The women of Masafer Yatta carry on their backs complex identities, each one with her own story, coping collectively and individually with the implications of the expulsion, the impending demolition of their homes, the unknown, and a state that continually views them as the “enemy,” enacting against them a long series of racist and discriminatory practices. As expulsion plans are set in motion, 972 Magazine has published a link to interviews with women in Masafer Yatta shown on alternative media organization Social TV.
+972

·       Six months after an Israeli court ruled that residents of Masafer Yatta can be evicted, they describe the daily nightmare of walking hours to the doctor, having little access to education, and waking up to the sounds of explosions.
Haaretz

 
·       Israeli forces are conducting military training exercises near the 13 Palestinian herding communities of Masafer Yatta in southern Hebron, restricting the access of Palestinians to basic services, and risking their safety. On several occasions since the start of the school year, Israeli authorities have disrupted the access of teachers and students to school in Masafer Yatta, where four schools operate, through fixed and flying checkpoints. All schools in the area are at risk of demolition by Israeli authorities. On 30 August, Israeli forces stopped a school bus carrying pupils to Al Fakhiet school, forcing at least 30 children to walk a long distance to school. The following day, nine teachers of Jinba school who were travelling into the area from Yatta, were stopped by Israeli forces at a flying checkpoint and forced to continue by foot. Over 1,000 Palestinians, including 560 children, in Masafer Yatta live at risk of forcible transfer.
OCHAOPT

·       New regulations on the entry of foreigners into the West Bank expected to take effect on September 5 included a requirement that foreigners inform Israel if they have a romantic relation with someone in the Palestinian territories, as well as limitations on spousal visits and the entry of foreign students and lecturers. 
Haaretz
BBC
Mondoweiss
Mondoweiss

·       Israel loves war, even a war on love. It loves peace but only at the expense of  Palestinians. Its war on love has waged war on Palestinian culture, landscape, demography, civil society and religion. New laws restrict foreigners access to occupied territories, including requiring foreigner to notify  Israeli authorities if they fall in love with a Palestinian. The September 4th 90 page new law restricts entry  into  Palestinian occupied territories, even for purpose of marriage.
Aljazeera

·       Ayman Abu Shehadeh, a wheelchair-bound man, and 20-year-old cancer patient Asef hRifai were among six Palestinians detained by Israeli occupation forces during raids in the occupied West Bank on September 24. According to local sources, both men were arrested during raids on their family homes.
Palestine Chronicle

·       After nine days in custody, an Israeli military judge ordered the release of Hafez Hureini, a Palestinian farmer from the occupied South Hebron Hills who had his arms broken by settlers as they attacked him on his land last week.
Mondoweiss
+972
Mondoweiss

·       Video shows Israeli border police firing gas grenades at a Palestinian neighborhood in the West Bank for no apparent reason. The two policemen are seen standing in a square without any clear threat nearby.
Haaretz

Israel

·       The Israeli Education Ministry is launching a multi-billion shekel project to invest in education programs within Israel's Palestinian communities, but some doubt as to whether it can overcome years of oppression and fear. Making up around 22% of the country's student population, Palestinian citizens of Israel have been dealing with institutionalized neglect since the state's establishment: outdated study programs, obsolete teaching methods, and a lack of resources and infrastructure. This is in addition to the thousands of teachers who can’t find work in Arab schools and the suspicious attitude toward any hint of a national-cultural identity. 
Haaretz

·       Vera Sajrawi was born into an internally displaced refugee family; when Israel was established, its forces destroyed their village — Al-Sajara — and they became refugees in another Palestinian community inside the new state. After struggling throughout her life with the scars of this history, she writes for 972 Magazine about how a Palestinian psychologist helped explain her family’s trauma.
+972

·       Israel is promoting a plan to double the size of Har Gilo, a settlement just south of Jerusalem. The new satellite neighborhood is not slated to connect to the current settlement, and opponents of the plan argue the new neighborhood is actually a whole new settlement.
Haaretz

·       Online updates regarding the progress of criminal cases in Israel are only written in Hebrew, despite a recent Knesset report stating that 84% of the crime victims between 2017 and 2020 were Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Haaretz

·       Palestinian citizens of Israel are skeptical of their right to vote in the upcoming elections. They feel they are participating as pawns in a longtime political deadlock. Their citizenry is now threatened by a Supreme Court ruling on revoking a person’s citizenship. Palestinian activist Diana Buttu reviews these stories and also a salient view of the so-called equality of citizenship.
Arab America

·       Palestinian journalist Lama Ghosheh was indicted for identifying with a terrorist organization and incitement to violence, based on 11 posts taken from her personal Facebook profile.
+972

ATTACKS IN THE OPT

·       At least eight Palestinians were wounded on August 29, one of them seriously, during an exchange of fire with Israeli forces in the town of Kabatia near Jenin, Palestinian reports say. The eight were hospitalized and then arrested by Israeli forces. The Israelis were seeking two men and surrounded a house where they believed the men were staying; only one of them was in the house, and he reportedly turned himself in to the soldiers.
Haaretz

·       The group, Youth of Summud, have joined other activists in the South Hebron Hills to protest expulsion in Masafer Yatta, retreating to rest, reconvene, and learn from each other in their local community center. Now the Israelis have issued a demolition order for the center to make way for an army firing zone, leaving thousands of people as homeless refugees.
+972

·       As school began in September for children in Gaza, many chairs in many schools were empty. Instead of students, photos of children who were killed occupy these chairs. Although a wonderful gesture by the children, it has turned their first day of school from one of excitement to one of sadness. Injured children feared missing the start of school or being considered different, and some will be forced to abandon their education entirely.
Mondoweiss

·       An Electronic Intifada podcast interviews Refaat Alareer, a professor, writer and father in Gaza, about the latest Israeli military assault on Gaza that killed nearly 50 Palestinians, including 17 children, in early August, and the challenges of raising children  under Israel’s bombs.
Electronic Intifada

·       Two Palestinian boys from the West Bank, aged 11 and 15, each lost an eye after being shot by Israeli soldiers. The younger one has been denied entry into Israel to receive medical care because he is a 'security risk.' The older boy traveled to Jordan to try to save his eye
Haaretz

·       Israeli naval forces continue perpetrating grave and systematic violations against Palestinian fishermen sailing off the Gaza coast. The harassment in Palestinian territorial waters includes recurrent attacks, arbitrary arrests, seizure of fishing boats and equipment, and the use of live ammunition.  On Sept. 13 the Israeli navy opened fire, confiscated two fishing boats off the coast of Deir al-Balah, and arrested four fishermen, all residents of Gaza City.  Al Mezan has called for the immediate release of the four fishermen and the return of the confiscated boats, and it has renewed its call for the international community to pressure Israel to end its closure of the Gaza Strip.
Al Mezan

·       In an exchange of gun fire at the Jamala checkpoint in Jenin, one Israeli officer and two Palestinians were killed on September 14.  The following day, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian child during a search-and-arrest operation in Kafr Dan (Jenin).
OCHAOPT

·       A 21- and a 26-year-old Palestinian were killed when Israeli Forces raided Al Bireh (Ramallah) and Al Far’a refugee camp (Tubas). 
OCHAOPT

·       A 19-year-old Palestinian stabbed and injured an Israeli soldier near Beit Einun Junction in Hebron and was killed by Israeli forces on September 2.  A 17-year-old Palestinian attempted to stab an Israeli soldier near Beit El/DCO checkpoint in Ramallah and was also killed by Israeli forces. A 19-year-old Palestinian man who was filming Israeli forces during a punitive demolition in Jenin city was shot and killed, and 16 others were injured on September 6.  One of the injured Palestinians, a 25-year-old man who succumbed to his wounds from live ammunition on September 11.  Punitive demolitions are a form of collective punishment, illegal under international law.  
OCHAOPT

·       On August 31, Israeli forces blocked with earth mounds an agricultural road in Deir Istiya (Salfit), hindering the access of about 400 Palestinian farmers to their land. In another five incidents, on 4, 7, 9 and 10 September, Israeli forces blocked with earth mounds, and closed the metal gates to Khirbet Atuf (Tubas), Qarawat Bani Hassan (Salfit),  Nabi Salih and Deir Nidham (Ramallah), and Azzun (Qalqiliya), hindering the access of about 18,000 Palestinians to livelihoods and services and forcing them to take long detours. 
OCHAOPT

·       On September 8, 9 and 12, Israeli settlers shot, physically assaulted and pepper-sprayed Palestinian farmers who were farming their land in Sinjil (Ramallah), At Tuwani (Hebron) and Khallet al Louza (Bethlehem). As a result, 21 Palestinians were injured, including at least two with live ammunition. Overall, 126 Palestinian-owned trees were uprooted or vandalized near Israeli settlements. In other reported incidences damages were done to cars, homes, cultivated crops, livestock, agricultural equipment, water tanks and other work equipment.  
OCHAOPT

·       Israeli settlers stormed the Urif school in Nablus on August 31while classes were being held, and threw stones, forcing the administration to suspend school and evacuate the students to safety; 250 students were affected, and damage was reported to the school. According to the village council and eyewitnesses, Israeli Forces were present in the area during the attack but did not intervene to stop the settlers. Subsequently, Israeli Forces shot tear gas canisters at Palestinians who threw stones at settlers in protest at the attack.
OCHAOPT

·       Three Palestinians in Gaza, including a 9 and 12-year-old boy, were injured by the detonation of an unexploded ordnance, after tampering with a munition they found while collecting scrap east of Khan Yunis.  On at least 42 occasions, Israeli forces opened fire near the perimeter fence or off the coast, forcing farmers or fishers away from work.  Two Palestinian children were arrested while attempting to cross the fence east of Rahaf.  On at least 42 occasions, Israeli forces opened warning fire near Israel’s perimeter fence or off the coast, presumably to enforce access restrictions in areas within Gaza. Most of the incidents reportedly forced farmers or fishers away from their areas of work. Two Palestinian children were arrested by Israeli forces while attempting to cross the fence east of Rafah. On at least seven occasions, Israeli military bulldozers leveled land inside Gaza, near the perimeter fence east of Rafah.
OCHAOPT

·       The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports an increase in mental disorders amongst the population of the Gaza Strip, especially among children, many of whom were already in need of mental health services and psychosocial support.
United Nations

ATTACKS ON PALESTIAN NGOs AND US COMPLICITY/OTHER LEGAL REPRESSION

·       The Guardian reported that a classified CIA report “shows the agency was unable to find any evidence to support Israel’s decision” to designate the Palestinian groups as terrorist organizations. Despite not buying Israel’s claims, Washington has so far refused to publicly challenge Israel over the designations and other measures taken against the Palestinian groups. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said this week that “we continue to seek additional information from our Israeli partner.”
Electronic Intifada
Jewish Currents
Mondoweiss

·       An Israeli court sentenced the Gaza director of World Vision, a major international Christian charity, to 12 years in prison after he was found guilty of terrorism charges, despite independent investigations that found no proof of wrongdoing. The trial sheds light on the way Israel's legal system handles sensitive security cases, with the defense team given only limited access to evidence, which was also not made public.
Haaretz
Electronic Intifada
Mondoweiss

·       The Palestinian culture minister condemned Israeli forces’ arrest of Bilal al-Saadi, chairman of Jenin’s Freedom Theatre, at the Za’atara checkpoint, calling it “Part of the policy of abuse and oppression that the occupation employs on a daily basis.”
Haaretz

·       Bulldozers were sent to destroy permitted Bedouin tents protesting the housing shortage. Police denied having approved the protest tents, erected in opposition to the plan to relocate hundreds of Bedouins from nearby unrecognized village to the city of Rahat. But documents signed by officials from the Rahat police station show that the protest was in fact approved.
Haaretz

PRISONERS’ RIGHTS AND PROTESTS
·       One thousand Palestinian security prisoners pledged to join a hunger strike over deteriorating conditions. The director of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club said they believe Israel’s prison service is trying to suppress their political movement in an organized crackdown, following recommendations by the state probe into the Gilboa prison break.
Haaretz
Mondoweiss
Addameer

·       Thirty Palestinian prisoners jailed without charge or trial under Israeli "administrative detention" launched a hunger strike on Sunday, September 25 to demand an end to the policy, which is currently jailing over 740 Palestinian prisoners based on "secret evidence."
Samidoun

·       Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network salutes Khalil Awawdeh, Palestinian prisoner jailed without charge or trial, who suspended his six-month hunger strike August 31 on the occasion of his victory. Awawdeh will be released on October 2, 2022 and his administrative detention will not be renewed.
Samidoun
Electronic Intifada
Mondoweiss

US & INTERNATIONAL PROTEST AND SOLIDARITY

·       J Street student leader Eliana Blumberg supports BDS and says that the organization’s effort to say that being “pro-Israel means being pro-democracy, not pro-apartheid” is “futile.”
Mondoweiss

·       A Jewish group in Germany has filed criminal charges against Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid and defense minister Benny Gantz over the bombardment they ordered in Gaza this summer.

Electronic Intifada

·       Openly committed to damaging and destroying the British-based assets of top Israeli arms manufacturers, including Elbit Systems, Palestine Action has since launch in mid-2020 pulled off a string of successes, resulting in the closure of the company’s sites. Eight activists face trial on 10 October for a variety of alleged offenses, and potentially face many years in prison.
Mondoweiss

CHANGING THE NARRATIVE IN THE UNITED STATES

·       Mo is the sweet, lovable, complex protagonist of Netflix’s comedy series, a refreshing departure from portrayals of Palestinians as terrorists or in conflict settings. The series addresses Palestinian cultural appropriation and erasure of cultural identity. It also deals with undocumented migrants, while providing much needed favorable portrayal of a Palestinian man caught in many comedic episodes.
Aljazeera

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GazaEast JerusalemWest BankIsraelAl HaqAddameerUnion of Agricultural Work CommitteesCovidAriel Korenpermitmovement restrictionsSilwanMasafer YattaIsraeli Education MinistryfishermanOCHApalestinian prisonersMo

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Alice Rothchild Alice Rothchild

Media Watch - Say Their Names: August 15-September 14, 2022

Today we are sharing three articles that explore the ongoing high levels of killing of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers and settlers, the Israeli policy of blaming Palestinians for their own deaths, and the impunity with which Israelis kill.

Why does Israel keep killing Palestinians?
“Israel always has to kill Palestinians because it is an illegitimate settler-colonial regime that faces constant resistance from the people whose land it is occupying, colonizing and stealing…
Insecure settler-colonial regimes like Israel – similar to the ones that existed in Algeria and South Africa – tend to become more vicious as they approach their end. The settler psychosis and fear of giving up power becomes the dominant response: ‘We have to kill or be killed.’”
Electronic Intifada

After initially blaming Palestinians, Israel admits to airstrike that killed 5 children in Gaza
“The Israeli army has admitted to conducting the airstrike that killed five Palestinian children in the northern Gaza Strip earlier this month, after initially blaming their deaths on a misfire from a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket…The strike targeted the al-Faluja cemetery in the town of Jabalia, and struck five children while they were visiting the grave of their grandfather. The youngest victim of the strike was just three-years-old.” 
Mondoweiss

Israel Closes Case Against Settler Suspected of Fatally Stabbing Palestinian
“The investigation into the murder of 27-year-old Ali Hassan Harb was closed by the state prosecution, saying that self-defense could not be ruled out…According to an Israeli security source, several Israelis that were part of a settler-youth group had arrived to set up an outpost at the entrance of Ariel, near lands belonging to the Harb family. Ali made his way to the area after noticing the group, and was stabbed by one of the settlers.”
Haaretz

Shireen Abu-Akleh: her death and the lack of Israeli accountability, despite admitting a high probability of guilt, remains in the spotlight.
Mondoweiss
+972
Haaretz
Mondoweiss
Haaretz
Mondoweiss
Electronic Intifada
Mondoweiss

Muhammad Ibrahim Shaham 21
WAFA
Haaretz
Middle East Eye
Middle East Monitor

Layan Musleh Hamdi Al-Shaer 10
Electronic Intifada

Wasim Khalifa 18
J Post
Haaretz
Times of Israel
Aljazeera

Salah Tawfik Sawafta 58
Haaretz
Haaretz
Electronic Intifada
Reuters

Muhammad Arayshi 25
Mondoweiss
Alaraby
Palestine Chronicle

Farouk Abu Naja 6
Haaretz

Mohammad Sabaaneh 29
Aljazeera
Haaretz
Mondoweiss

Taher Zakarneh 19
Aljazeera

Haitham Hani Mohammad Mubarak 17 or 16
Haaretz
Defense of Children International Palestine

Younis Al-Tayeh 21
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights

Samer Mahmoud Khalid 25
Electronic Intifada
Israel-Palestine Timeline

Rafiq Ghannam 20
Btselem

thanks to Trude Bennett

settler colonial regimeIsraeli armyShireen Abu-Akleh

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