Official Gaza death toll passes 40,000; over 92,000 injured

FEWS NTET reports: The amount of humanitarian food supplies entering Gaza through crossings in the south were at their lowest levels in July since Israel’s war on the enclave began.

The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) said that only 724 humanitarian trucks with food or mixed items entered through the Karem Abu Salem crossing in the entire month of July. They carried roughly 5,035 to 5,566 metric tonnes of supplies.

A further 54,764 to 60,529 metric tonnes of food supplies carried on commercial trucks also entered through the crossing, but the network said that increased “commercial cargo entry into Gaza may not necessarily translate to improved food availability and access within Gaza, particularly given low household purchasing power”.

RECOMMENDED READING: This is the truth about “there is no famine in Gaza”

NOTE: Hundreds of aid trucks are reportedly waiting and spoiling at the southern border of Gaza, where Israel has made it extremely difficult to pass, employing complicated and arbitrary procedures.

Israel has also attacked food aid convoys and those who accompanied them.

In mid-March, Israel promised to “flood” Gaza with aid, but has failed to do so.

Israel has killed 2,100 babies under two in Gaza: Rights monitor

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor reports that out of nearly 17,000 Palestinian children killed by Israel in the Gaza Strip since October 7, about 2,100 were babies under the age of two.

“The number of Palestinian children – whether infants or children in general – killed by the Israeli army is horrifying, and the rate of their killing is unprecedented in the history of modern wars,” says the Geneva-based organization.

“It also represents a dangerous trend based on the dehumanization of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Israel’s military targets Palestinians and their children daily, methodically, and widely in the most heinous and brutal ways possible, and virtually without pause for 10 consecutive months.”

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Israel shoots dead 2 firefighters in Gaza

Middle East Monitor reports: Two civil defense crew members were shot dead today by Israeli occupation forces in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip.

The General Directorate of Civil Defence confirmed the death of firefighter Suhaib Abu Taqiya and Hussein Abu Jamous after they were shot while carrying out their work in Rafah.

Their deaths bring to 82 the number of civil defense crew members who have been killed since the outbreak of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, the directorate added.

Since the beginning of the Israeli war of genocide, the IOF has targeted dozens of civil defense and ambulance crew members while they were providing services to displaced Palestinians in addition to destroying civil defense facilities and vehicles to prevent rescue and evacuation efforts.

Israel’s intensifying attacks on Gaza schools

West Bank: Israeli occupation forces kill five Palestinians in assault on Tubas

WAFA reports: Five Palestinians today were killed during the ongoing Israeli aggression on the city of Tubas and the town of Tamoun, southeast of the city.

Security sources reported that four Palestinians were killed when an Israeli drone bombed a group of young men in the town of Tamoun, southeast of Tubas.

They also said that the occupation forces withheld the bodies of the four young men after killing them.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said that the occupation prevented its crews from reaching the targeted location.

Meanwhile, the fifth Palestinian was killed after Israeli occupation forces besieged his house in the early morning hours in the city of Tubas.

Shocking news in OCHA’s weekly report on the West Bank

Since October 7th, there have been over 100 instances of Palestinian bodies being withheld by Israeli forces.

In the last week, Israeli settlers perpetrated 25 attacks against Palestinians, while Palestinians perpetrated three attacks against settlers. Between 7 October 2023 and 12 August 2024, OCHA recorded around 1,250 attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians, of which around 120 led to Palestinian fatalities and injuries.

On 12 August, Israeli settlers physically assaulted and injured two 15-year-old Palestinian boys near Artas, Bethlehem, attacking them with knives. The settlers assaulted the boys, broke their legs, and urinated on them, then handcuffed the boys and threw them in an open area near Artas. A local resident discovered them and called for an ambulance. The boys were then taken to a nearby hospital for treatment.

On 7 August, the Israeli Civil Administration along with Israeli forces dismantled and confiscated three donor-funded tents in the Birin herding community, Hebron governorate. As a result, three families comprising 15 people including 6 children were displaced. The tents had been provided by the Palestinian Authority as a response to a previous demolition that took place on 4 July 2024 in the same area.

Between 7 October 2023 and 12 August 2024, Israeli authorities demolished, confiscated, or forced the demolition of 1,380 Palestinian structures across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, displacing more than 3,100 Palestinians, including 1,375 children.

Israel approves new West Bank settlement on UNESCO World Heritage Site near Bethlehem

The Cradle reports: The Israeli government on 14 August officially approved municipal boundaries for a new settlement on a UNESCO World Heritage Site near Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank.

Jewish supremacist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said his office had “completed its work and published a plan for the new Nahal Heletz settlement in Gush Etzion,” a bloc of settlements south of occupied Jerusalem.

“No anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist decision will stop the development of settlements. We will continue to fight against the dangerous project of creating a Palestinian state by creating facts on the ground. This is my life’s mission, and I will continue it as much as I can,” the Israeli official, who lives in an illegal settlement, said via social media.

All of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank occupied since 1967, are considered illegal under international law, regardless of whether they have planning permission or not.

According to the Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now, the intended area of the new settlement was declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO. “Smotrich continues to promote de facto annexation, disregarding the UNESCO Convention that Israel is a signatory to, and we will all pay the price,” the organization said in a statement, calling the move by the Civil Administration a “wholesale attack” on an area “renowned for its ancient terraces and sophisticated irrigation systems, evidence of thousands of years of human activity.”

“These actions are not only fragmenting Palestinian space and depriving large communities of their natural and cultural heritage, but they also pose an imminent threat to an area considered to be of the highest cultural value to humanity,” Peace Now added.

The Times of Israel reports: “The new settlement will be built on land it says belongs to Battir, home to ancient hillside agricultural terraces that have been designated a world heritage site by UNESCO.”

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. As the ICJ ruling confirms, Israeli settlements and settlers on Palestinian land are a violation of international law, and considered by many Palestinians to be the main barrier to any lasting peace agreement.

Some settler groups, moreover, have a history of violence against Palestinians, often with the assistance of Israeli military forces.

Map: Israel attacked ‘nearly every inch of Gaza with US-made bombs’

She wrote an op-ed criticizing Biden on Gaza. The Justice Department accused her of breaking the law.

The Intercept reports (excerpt): In March, Justice Department employee Emma West Rasmus wrote an [extremely powerful, personalized] op-ed criticizing the Biden administration over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

he next business day, she was accused by senior Justice Department attorneys and ethics officials of violating the Hatch Act. The Hatch Act prohibits federal employees from using their “official authority” to engage in certain political activity, especially advocating for or against a particular candidate or political party.

Five months later, however, the Office of Special Counsel, which investigates Hatch Act violations, determined there was no Hatch Act violation in the first place.

“Although you engaged in political activity while referencing that you work for the federal government in the op-ed, and specifically the Department of Justice in the byline, these references do not constitute a use of official authority rising to the level of a Hatch Act violation,” reads an August 8 determination letter from OSC.

West Rasmus, who still works for the Justice Department, says this decision lifted a huge weight off her shoulders, but that the investigation itself “absolutely had a chilling effect” on her and other federal employees trying to galvanize internal dissent on Gaza policy.

“I always felt like putting the op-ed out there in the way that I did was worth the risk,” she said. “That speaks to how urgently I and other federal employees feel about the need to take actions that we wouldn’t otherwise take.”

(Read the full article here.)

Columbia University president Minouche Shafik resigns in wake of Gaza protests

Al Jazeera reports: Minouche Shafik, the president of Columbia University, has announced her resignation after a tumultuous year marked by tensions with staff and students over her handling of campus protests against the Gaza war.

The university announced her departure in a statement on its website on Wednesday.

“This period has taken a considerable toll on my family, as it has for others in our community,” Shafik wrote in a letter to the university’s staff and students. “It has also been a period of turmoil where it has been difficult to overcome divergent views across our community.”

Protests against the Gaza war began on Columbia’s New York City campus in April inspiring similar encampments at other institutions across the United States and beyond.

As the protests gathered momentum, Shafik was summoned to a congressional committee over allegations the university had failed to protect students and staff from rising anti-Semitism.

The next day, she allowed New York City police onto the campus to clear the protests and about 100 people were arrested, triggering outrage from protesters and some academics and calls for her resignation. Tensions rose further at the end of April, when police returned again to campus, arresting some 300 people and removing the encampment.

THE GUARDIAN ADDS: Meanwhile, Elise Stefanik, one of the congressional representatives most critical of Shafik’s handling of reports of antisemitism on campus, wrote: “THREE DOWN, so many to go,” adding “after failing to protect Jewish students and negotiating with pro-Hamas terrorists, this forced resignation is long overdue”.

NEW: According to a new disclosure, Rep. Elise Stefanik’s recent trip to Israel was funded by the Jewish Policy Center, a group with ties to individuals identified as anti-Muslim by the Southern Poverty Law Center.https://t.co/rIjjAaRBtH

— Sludge (@Sludge) May 30, 2024

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Sludge reports: Stefanik’s trip to Israel was paid for by the Jewish Policy Center, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit that describes its mission as “educat[ing the American public about Israel, foreign affairs and domestic issues of importance to the Jewish community.” The organization spent nearly $48,000 on the trip, including on business-class airfare tickets for the representative and stays at luxury hotels.

[The Jewish Policy Center has multiple individuals on its board of fellows who have been identified as anti-Muslim hate figures, including Daniel Pipes and David Horowitz.]

This election cycle, the PAC of lobbying group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has given $284,000 to Stefanik’s campaign in conduit contributions through April 30, placing her in its top 10 recipients among House Republicans.

New York county signs first mask ban into US law, sparking controversy

The Guardian reports: Nassau county in New York implemented a controversial ban on wearing face coverings in public on Wednesday, in a move criticized by state politicians and civil rights advocates. Opponents of the bill have described it as “a dangerous misuse of the law to score political points and target protesters”, given it was introduced in response to protests against Israel’s war on Gaza.

The Mask Transparency Act, signed into law by Bruce Blakeman, the Republican county executive, makes it a misdemeanor for anyone to wear a facial covering to hide their identity in public.

[Vote Smart reports that Blakeman has been a board member of the American Jewish Congress, which advocates for Israel.]

People who defy the law could be sentenced to up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine, although there are some exemptions for health or religious reasons.

Susan Gottehrer, the regional director of the Nassau county New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), said after the bill was passed, “Masks protect people who express political opinions that are unpopular. Making anonymous protest illegal chills political action and is ripe for selective enforcement, leading to doxxing, surveillance and retaliation against protesters.”

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Melbourne orchestra cancels pianist’s performance after he speaks out on Gaza

Al Jazeera reports: Musician Jayson Gillham was scheduled to perform at Melbourne Town Hall on Thursday, but he was dropped after he discussed the media workers killed in Gaza in a Sunday performance.

“The killing of journalists is a war crime in international law, and it is done in an effort to prevent the documentation and broadcasting of war crimes to the world,” the musician told the audience, adding that Israel has killed more than 100 journalists since October 7.

UPDATE FROM VARIETY: The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra on Thursday tried to extricate itself from controversy caused by its earlier decision to cancel future performances by Australian-British classical pianist Jayson Gillham.

“The MSO acknowledges that an error was made in asking Jayson Gillham to step back from his performance on Thursday 15 August,” it said in a new statement.

Banality of evil in action, enabling genocide—this time against the Palestinian people. It is so disappointing to read that in #Australia, the #MelbourneSymphonyOrchestra has canceled a renowned pianist's performance after he spoke out about journalists murdered in Gaza.

Those…

— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) August 14, 2024

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