No place is safe. Israel has intensified attacks including in the central and southern Gaza Strip.
On Friday, the United Nations Office for Human Rights (OHCHR) warned that Israel's "collective punishment of the entire Gaza population" constitutes a war crime that must be immediately stopped.
"For nearly three weeks, Palestinian civilians have endured relentless Israeli airstrikes by air, land, and sea; thousands of them have perished, some amidst the ruins of destroyed homes, mosques, or bakeries," OHCHR spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani said, and revealed that the families of two organization workers had perished in the attacks.
"We have received harrowing accounts of parents writing their children's names on their arms to identify the bodies in the future," she emphasized, adding that 57 UN workers have lost their lives in the hostilities that began on October 7.
The spokesperson for the office led by Volker Türk also deemed Israel's forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of Gazans, through evacuation orders, a war crime. This comes at a time when "no place is safe" in Gaza.
People complain about the UN doing nothing, but it's also important to remember it was literally designed to not be able to do anything if one of the security council nations -- USA, UK, France, Russia, or China -- vetoes it. And USA always vetoes anything against the Israeli government.
Considering the UN's hands are tied, I'm very glad they're at least using their figurative microphone and international influence to call attention to how fucked up the treatment of Palestinians is.
I don't know for others, but growing up American, Israel and its friends in Washington had done a terrific job of conflating any criticism of Israel with anti-semitism. What finally got me to re-evaluate my stance on the Israeli government a few years back was when well-known, respectable organizations like the Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International started using the word "apartheid" to describe the situation of Palestinians.
Hearing sources like the UN Office for Human Rights, the UN Secretary General, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International calling out the Israeli government's actions in strong, unequivocal terms like "war crime" and "apartheid" is a start. I wish they could do more, and I sure as heck am angry with US foreign policy in this, but I'm just glad the UN has the balls to actually call this a war crime.
You might say Israel is implementing a final solution to their problem...
Oh how the turntables.
That's how you imagine yourself as. Realistically it just feels like a mask has slipped of your face and a lot of people in the world realised you aren't the oppressed anymore.
Yes, you're an occupying, child-killing, war-crime-comitting illegal state.
You care about human lives? Tell that to the thousands of dead women and children.
They wouldn't condemn Hamas or the Oct 7th attacks, however.
Hamas isn’t a state.
That's correct.
Aren’t they the leading political “party” if you will in Gaza? Weren’t they elected like over a decade ago? (Before they got rid of elections.) Or maybe I’m not remembering correctly.
Gaza isn't a country either