A first: US official acknowledges “famine is underway” in Gaza – Day 188

The Washington Post reached 25 aid groups, U.N. agencies and donor countries about the kinds of aid they have tried to get into Gaza. Food, water and blankets do not require approvals, but agencies submit requests for items they think have a chance of getting rejected, such as communications equipment and sanitation or shelter items.

Wall Street Journal reports: Israel is preparing for a direct attack from Iran on southern or northern Israel as soon as Friday or Saturday, according to a person familiar with the matter. A person briefed by the Iranian leadership, however, said that while plans to attack are being discussed, no final decision has been made.

Iran has publicly threatened to retaliate for an attack last week in Damascus, Syria, that Tehran said was an Israeli airstrike on a diplomatic building. The strike killed top Iranian military officials, including a senior member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force.

Iran’s mission to the UN has suggested that any Iranian military response to the Israeli air strike could have been averted if the UN Security Council had denounced Israel’s attack. (Some analysts suggest that such a condemnation could still possibly avert an Iranian response.)

Head of police killed in Israeli attack on Jabalia camp: Health Ministry

Palestinian health officials have said an Israeli air strike killed Rudwan Rudwan, the head of the police force in Jabalia camp in the northern Gaza Strip.

Hamas said Rudwan was also in charge of supervising the protection of aid truck convoys in northern Gaza areas.

There was no immediate Israeli comment on the incident.

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Israeli military claims killing ‘top Hamas financier’

The Israeli military says it has killed Nasser Yakob Jabber Nasser in Gaza. There was no immediate comment by Hamas.

The military said in a statement that Nasser “was responsible for funding a significant part of Hamas’s military activities” in the enclave’s southern city of Rafah.

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Israeli protesters block Gaza aid passage

Dozens of Israeli demonstrators Thursday blocked the road to trucks carrying humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip near al-Awja (Nitzana) border crossing between Israel and Egypt.

The border crossing was closed for hours. Israel’s border guard forces arrested a number of demonstrators.

Israeli forces target Palestinian journalists – one critically injured – in central Gaza

WAFA reports: Israeli occupation tanks Friday targeted a number of journalists, one critically, in the Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip.

Medical sources said that Israeli occupation warplanes targeted multiple journalists in Nuseirat camp, causing causalities among them, including journalist Sami Shehadeh, whose foot was amputated due to the attack. Shehadehs` injury was described as serious.

Israeli occupation forces continue to deliberately target Palestinian journalists in the Strip in a way to prevent them from delivering the truth to the world.

NOTE: The Committee to Protect Journalsits (CPJ) reports that as of April 12, preliminary investigations showed Israeli attacks have killed at least 95 Palestinian journalists and media workers since October 7th.

CPJ is also investigating numerous unconfirmed reports of other journalists being killed, missing, detained, hurt, or threatened, and of damage to media offices and journalists’ homes.

Under international law, journalists are to enjoy full protection as civilians.

Read about the assassination by Israel of one of Palestine’s most beloved journalists, Shireen Abu Akleh, here.

Two Palestinians fatally shot by Israeli forces’ bullets in Tubas, West Bank

WAFA reports: Two Palestinians were shot dead by the Israeli occupation forces early morning near Tubas in the northern West Bank.

Sources said that a Palestinian man was killed after Israeli forces opened gun fire at his vehicle in the city of Tubas, as heavily armed Israeli soldiers raided the city. They opened fire on a young man who was in his vehicle.

Another Palestinian, who was identified as Muhammad Shahmawi, was shot and killed from Israeli gunfire during their military invasion of the Al-Far’a refugee camp, south of Tubas.

NOTE: Israeli forces, and sometimes settlers, have killed at least 471 Palestinians in the West Bank (117 children) since October 7th.

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Israeli commander behind WCK aid worker killings had demanded ‘siege’ of Gaza

Telegraph reports: The most senior IDF commander dismissed for his role in the drone strike which killed seven aid workers in Gaza is a settler who signed an open letter in January calling for the territory to be deprived of aid, The Telegraph can reveal.

A senior British lawyer said its contents – including a call for a “siege” of Gaza City – should be considered by the Israeli authorities investigating the killings.

Col (Res) Nochi Mandel, the chief of staff of the Nahal Infantry Brigade, was one of two officers dismissed last week following the incident in which three vehicles belonging to the charity World Central Kitchen (WCK) were attacked by drones, killing all those inside, including three Britons.

An investigation by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) characterised the strikes as a “grave mistake” but concluded there was no intentional harm. “Those who approved the strike were convinced that they were targeting armed Hamas operatives and not WCK employees,” it said.

In the letter, Col Mandel, a religious nationalist who lives in a settlement in the occupied West Bank, called with more than 130 other reserve officers and commanders for the flow of aid into Gaza to be restricted.

NOTE: Israel has illegally built around 280 settlements on Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, which are home to more than 700,000 illegal settlers. Israeli settlements and settlers on Palestinian land are a violation of international law. Settlers, moreover, have a history of violence against Palestinians, often with the assistance of Israeli military forces.

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Israel declares record amount of occupied West Bank as state-owned land in 2024

Middle East Eye reports: Israel has so far in 2024 declared a record amount of the occupied West Bank as state-owned land, a move that could see a rapid expansion in settlement construction.

According to data obtained by NGO Kerem Navot, 2,743 acres in the West Bank have been declared state-owned land, with the biggest bloc consisting of nearly 2,000 acres in the Jordan Valley.

A further 650 acres were designated state property near Abu Dis, as well as 42 acres near the Herodion National Park.

The previous record was in 1999, when just 1,285 acres were designated, according to data from the Peace Now NGO.

Read the full article here.

NOTE: UN Resolution 2334 December 2016) states that Israel’s settlement activity constitutes a “flagrant violation” of international law and has “no legal validity”. It demands that Israel stop such activity and fulfill its obligations as an occupying power under the Fourth Geneva Convention. (The US abstained in the vote for this resolution.) 

Amnesty International stated:  “As long as the world continues to turn a blind eye to Israel’s relentless land grab and settlement expansion, both serious violations of international humanitarian law, the human rights of Palestinians will continue to be trampled on with impunity and UN resolutions…will remain little more than empty gestures. The international community must take a clear stand and show that it will no longer tolerate Israel’s illegal policies of annexation and settlement.”

Apple to fix ‘bug’ behind Palestinian flag emoji suggestions

AFP reports: Apple on Thursday promised it would stop a Palestinian flag emoji from being suggested to some iPhone users when they type “Jerusalem” in messages.

The Silicon Valley tech titan blamed a software bug for the prompt, which sparked accusations Apple was showing anti-Israel bias.

Apple told AFP that the predictive emoji suggestion in the iPhone keyboard was not intentional and would be fixed in the next update to its mobile operating system.

The quirk was pointed out on social media by British television presenter Rachel Riley. “When I type the capital of Israel, Jerusalem, I’m offered the Palestinian flag emoji,” Riley wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter, calling on Apple to explain.

She said the Palestinian flag emoji began popping up in connection with Jerusalem after a recent update of the iPhone operating system.

Riley signed her post “a Jewish woman concerned about the global rise in antisemitism.”

NOTE: Actual antisemitism is not as prevalent as Israel partisans would like us to think. A large portion of what they call antisemitism is simply criticism of Israel, the self-proclaimed “Jewish State.” Most of the animosity Israel experiences is opposition to Zionism. Zionism is not a benign philosophy, but a racist ideology – the ideology under which Israel dispossessed 750,000 Palestinian people and exiled them to Gaza and other locations.