This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for today:
Employees at over two dozen U.S. departments and federal agencies as well as congressional staffers participated in a "Day of Mourning" on Tuesday, declining to work in the wake of the 100th day of Israel's war on the Gaza Strip.
U.S. President Joe Biden and other leaders in his administration have faced mounting outrage from government employees, the American public, and the international community for supporting the Israeli bombardment and siege that has killed over 24,000 Palestinians in Gaza.
It's now been 102 days since the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel
sparked a retaliatory war that a growing number of experts and groups
are calling "genocidal." In addition to the rising death toll, tens of
thousands of Palestinians have been wounded, about 90% of Gaza's 2.3
million residents are displaced, and children are dying of starvation.
Feds United for Peace, which organized Tuesday's initiative, explained in an email to Common Dreams that "this Day of Mourning was not just for government employees in Washington but for federal employees across the country."
"Despite the closure of federal offices in Washington because of the weather, many employees eligible for telework still participated," the group said. "We do not have a final figure to share, but the number of agencies represented speaks for itself."
"We feel a responsibility and a moral obligation to speak up when our
country's leaders are choosing to pursue policies that are hurting
America."
There were participants across the departments of Commerce, Defense, Energy, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Labor, State, and Veterans Affairs, as well as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Environmental Protection Agency, Executive Office of the President, Federal Aviation Administration, Food and Drug Administration, and Internal Revenue Service, according to organizers.
Others joined from the National Labor Relations Board, National Park Service, National Security Agency, National Science Foundation, Naval Research Laboratory, Patent and Trademark Office, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Office of Personnel Management, Social Security Administration, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, United States Agency for International Development, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The Day of Mourning—exclusively previewed by Al-Monitor—went ahead despite a threat from far-right U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who said Sunday that "any government worker who walks off the job to protest U.S. support for our ally Israel is ignoring their responsibility and abusing the trust of taxpayers. They deserve to be fired."
A group of Senate Democrats voted Tuesday in favor of advancing a resolution sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to potentially freeze U.S. military aid to Israel, sending a pointed message to President Biden that the war in Gaza is becoming a major problem for his party.
The Senate voted 72 to 11 to table the matter, but the number of Democrats who supported the measure reflects rising dissatisfaction among progressives over the civilian casualties in Gaza, which are now said to exceed 24,000.
[. . .]
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who voted to advance the resolution, said she wanted to send a message.
“Prime Minister Netanyahu has to understand that he does not get a blank check from the United States Congress,” she said. “We have a responsibility to stand up now and say that given how Netanyahu and his right-wing war Cabinet have prosecuted this war, we have serious questions that we are obligated to ask before we go further in our support.”
She said while the Biden administration is “pushing” the Netanyahu regime to reduce civilian deaths and ratchet down the intensity of the fighting, “Congress [has] a role here to play as well to make sure that Mr. Netanyahu understands we’re not writing blank checks.”
The Jordanian army has said its military field hospital in the city of Khan Younis in Gaza was badly damaged as a result of Israeli shelling in the vicinity.
In a statement, the army said it held Israel responsible for a "flagrant breach of international law."
It said that the hospital "was subjected to severe material damage as a result of the continuous Israeli bombing in its surroundings from yesterday until this morning," adding that it "will continue to perform its medical and humanitarian duty towards the people in Gaza".
The Palestinian Wafa news agency is reporting that one member of staff and a Palestinian patient in the intensive care unit were inured in the Jordanian field hospital in Khan Younis.
Earlier the Jordanian army said its military field hospital was badly damaged as a result of Israeli shelling in the vicinity. The army said it held Israel responsible for a “flagrant breach of international law”.
Citing a military source from the Jordanian armed forces, Wafa reports the injuries were sustained “in clashes near the hospital in the past few hours”.
Wafa reports that the staff member has “moderate injuries” and will be airlifted to Jordan for medical attention. The patient was reported to be “injured by shrapnel and a bullet”.
The news agency reported that “Despite significant material damage due to the ongoing Israeli bombardment in the vicinity, which started yesterday and continued into Wednesday morning, the hospital remains committed to fulfilling its medical and humanitarian duties to the residents of the Gaza Strip.”
The city of London in the video below.
At COMMON DREAMS, Jon Queally reports:
Major coordinated demonstrations took place across the world on
Saturday to mark the 100th day of Israel's bombardment and military
assault on the people of the Gaza Strip that have now claimed the lives
of nearly 24,000 Palestinians, a large majority of them innocent men,
women, and children who had nothing to do with the attacks orchestrated
by Hamas on October 7 of last year.
In London, as many as 500,000 people marched on Parliament Square to demand an immediate cease-fire Gaza, condemn their own U.K. government's support of Israel's disproportionate and "genocidal" onslaught, and warn against a wider regional war that experts warn is creeping closer by the day.
"This Global Day of Action, from Australia through to Asia, Europe and the Americas, is the first coordinated, international movement against the war being waged by Israel on the Palestinian people," said Gaza Global Day of Action organizers ahead of the demonstration. "It will send a powerful message not just to the Israelis but to the Western powers who are backing them that the public say 'not in our name.'"
In Dublin, organizers of a march that saw more than 100,000 march through city streets called it the largest rally for Palestinian rights in Irish history.
As the Irish Timesreports:
The crowd was filled with Palestinian flags, posters calling for an "End to the Gaza genocide" as well as makeshift washing lines, with baby clothes hanging from it, representing the many young lives lost in the conflict.
At the front of the march, four people held mock corpses in bloody body bags to represent the growing number of civilian casualties.
In the United States, tens of thousands marched in Washington, D.C. to denounce the Israeli onslaught—which has claimed over 23,000 lives, including more than 10,000 children—as well as their own government's complicity in the carnage. President Joe Biden was on the tip of many demonstrators' tongues and polls in the U.S. have shown very little support across the political spectrum for how he is handling the situation.
Jake and Ida Braford, a young couple from Richmond, Virginia, who brought their two small children to the protest, told the Associated Press the situation in Gaza has made them unsure of their support for Biden come this year's election.
"We're pretty disheartened," Ida told the news agency. "Seeing what is happening in Gaza, and the government's actions makes me wonder what is our vote worth?"
Following the march, demonstrators left a pile of bloodied baby dolls, including severe parts, in a pile outside the White House as a message to Biden. "The blood of the over 10,000 murdered children in Gaza is on his hands," said CodePink co-founder Jodie Evans.
Meanwhile, in Indonesia, thousands gathered outside the U.S. embassy in Jakarta to condemn the ongoing "genocide" in Gaza perpetrated by Israel with the backing of the U.S. government and other Western allies.
NPR has a photo essay on the DC protest.
The rally in the United States was organized by a coalition of Muslim groups along with ANSWER, which is associated with the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL).
A request sent to the organizers by the World Socialist Web Site and Socialist Equality Party to speak at the demonstration was rejected. While a number of Palestinian speakers spoke movingly about the catastrophe in Gaza, the political line was provided by a handful of Democrats who could be found to criticize Israel’s actions, along with presidential candidates Jill Stein (Green Party) and Cornel West.
Interrupting to correct Kishore here. Jill Stein is running to become the Green Party's presidential candidate. She is NOT the candidate. They will select their candidate at their national convention this summer. It is a sign of how weak and pathetic the Green Party is becoming that 73-year-old Jill Stein is even running for the nomination having already been the party's nominee in 2012 and 2016. No, this is not a sign of progress. This suggests a still-born political party which is unable to advance or to represent the people. Back to Kishore.
Among the Democrats was Congressman Andre Carson (Indiana), who declared that he saw in the demonstration “what it means to leverage our voting bloc.” Carson is among those Democrats (along with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others) who signed a letter addressed to the White House last year which, while expressing some criticism of Israel’s actions, concluded by thanking the Biden administration for what it “is doing to respond to this crisis, provide support to our ally Israel, and bring American citizens home safely.”
Carson avoided any reference in his remarks to the Biden administration or its support for the genocide, while concluding with a call for “re-electing those who represent us”—presumably himself and other Democrats.
The remarks of Stein, ostensibly running independently of the Democrats as a member of the Green Party, were entirely oriented to pressuring the political establishment, while not referring to either the Democratic Party or President Biden by name. “We have the power to say to the AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] White House and to the AIPAC Congress, that you are accountable to us, to we the people… We have the power to be instructing our elected officials what they need to do.”
The experience of the past three months, however, has demonstrated that the “elected officials” in both the Democratic and Republican parties respond to mass opposition not by being “instructed,” but by denouncing protests against genocide as antisemitic and seeking to criminalize them. The Biden administration, moreover, has responded to growing opposition by carrying out a major expansion of the war in the Middle East through the bombing of Yemen, threatening war with Iran.
Cornel West addressed the rally toward its conclusion. West specializes in a type of speaking that acts more on the nerves than on the brain, full of sound and fury that, if one gives it a moment of thought, signifies nothing. As typical in all his remarks, West shouted about “love warriors,” the need for “love in freedom and freedom in love,” “truth across the world rising again,” and other moralistic generalities.
West referred to Biden and other officials in the administration as war criminals, though again he made no reference to the Democratic Party itself, with which he has a long association. West concluded his remarks by declaring, “We are calling for more than ceasefire, we are calling for an end of the siege, an end of the occupation, and for Palestinians to live a life of dignity.” How is this to be achieved? Through what means and based on what perspective? West offered nothing, except the hope that Biden and Secretary of State Blinken would change their ways.
Excluded from the demonstration was any reference to the essential issues in the development of a movement against the genocide. Nothing was said of the history of Israel and Zionism or its role as a bulwark for imperialism in the Middle East. No one referred to the interests motivating imperialist support for the genocide, the three decades of unending war, the preparations for war against Iran, the relationship of this to the ongoing US-NATO war against Russia or the developing conflict with China. There was no reference to the working class or the growth of the class struggle throughout the world. The words “imperialism” and “capitalism,” let alone “socialism,” were not uttered.
The organizers wanted no references to any of this because it would cut across their orientation to the Democratic Party. This of course is why they refused to allow a speaker from the World Socialist Web Site to address the rally.
For masses of workers and youth, including those who have participated in the demonstrations, the urgent question is the development of a movement of the working class, on a world scale, in the US and internationally, including through mass strikes and other actions to stop the flow of weaponry to Israel.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
Major rallies calling for a ceasefire in Gaza were held worldwide this weekend, marking 100 days of the Israeli assault on Gaza. Those rallies included one in Washington, D.C., where organizers say 400,000 people protested U.S. complicity in what they called one of the deadliest and most destructive military assaults in recent history. Palestinian health officials say Israeli attacks have killed 158 civilians in Gaza over the last 24 hours alone, bringing the death toll since October 7th to 24,000, though this likely an undercount — the majority of those killed women and children. It’s believed more than 10,000 children have died.
On Sunday, President Biden put a statement marking 100 days since the October 7th Hamas attack and condemned Hamas for continuing to hold more than 100 hostages. But he made no mention of the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed, injured or displaced during Israel’s bombardment.
On Monday, United Nations humanitarian leaders issued a joint demand for dramatically increasing the flow of aid into Gaza. This is the World Food Programme’s Palestine country director, Samer AbdelJaber.
SAMER ABDELJABER: Everyone in Gaza is hungry. We are exploring all possible solutions, but none are sufficient in the face of obstacles. There are people starving in areas, and we are not able to give basic food for. … The needs are rising faster than we are able to respond. We need to be able to bring in more supplies, and we need safe access to reach people everywhere in Gaza, not just those who are close to the borders. We need a long-lasting ceasefire to stop the suffering.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by Dr. Omar Abdel-Mannan, pediatric neurologist, co-founder of Gaza Medic Voices and Health Workers for Palestine, in constant touch with his colleagues in Gaza, joining us from London.
Doctor, thanks so much for being with us. The assault this weekend, especially in the central and south part, in Khan Younis, is intense, with well over a hundred Palestinians killed just in the last 24 hours. Can you talk about the desperation of people there and what you think could lead to a ceasefire, as millions around the world demanded one this weekend?
DR. OMAR ABDEL-MANNAN: Thank you so much for having me on the program.
So, the situation is spiraling out of control. Many of our colleagues, British doctors who have just come out of Gaza in the last few days, led by Medical Aid for Palestinians, have come out and said the scenes inside the hospitals are apocalyptic, to say the least. They describe scenes inside Al-Aqsa Hospital, which is no longer functioning and has been completely taken over and besieged by the Israeli occupation forces. They described scenes of 500 admissions in a night, many of whom were serious casualties from air raids, the majority of whom were children, children with double above-the-knee amputations of their lower limbs, children with burns down to the bone that are so horrific that they are disfigured for life, and also women and men also being killed and targeted. What we are seeing is a systematic targeting of healthcare facilities, healthcare workers, 370 at least at the last count of whom have been killed, being either killed, maimed, abducted, or even, more so, tortured when they’ve been held captive, as Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah mentioned on the rally in London on Saturday. These are the reports coming outside from there.
What we are seeing is not a war on children. This is a genocidal, uncontrollable massacre of Palestinians at large and en masse. The Israeli occupation forces and the Israeli government has made it very clear that they are now in a situation where they want to either exterminate Palestinians or force them and displace them out of their ancestral home after 75 years of occupation.
And what would lead to a ceasefire? Well, the simple answer is the American government. President Biden, when he comes out and says, on a national address a hundred days of the 7th of October, he feels for the hostages and the families, we all feel terrible about the situation on the 7th of October. But to completely nullify and ignore the tens of thousands — at least 24,000 — Gazans who have been killed in cold blood by an Israeli war machine is, frankly, outrageous. Frankly, the U.S. government and the U.K. government and other Western leaders are complicit in this, because they are arming the same Israeli bombs that are raining hellfire on Palestinian hospitals, Palestinian schools, Palestinian bakeries and water sanitation plans. Make no mistake: This is an attempt to completely wipe out an infrastructure and a public health system for people in Gaza.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But, Doctor, I wanted to ask you — there have been about an estimated 15,000 children born in Gaza since the assault began. Could you talk about the impact on pregnant women with the collapse of all of these medical facilities?
DR. OMAR ABDEL-MANNAN: So, we had an obstetrician that was with this WHO team that just came out of Al-Aqsa. What she described to us, in speaking to colleagues on the ground, is women giving birth in the shelters, in the rubble, in the streets, with no maternal — maternity care for women who are pregnant in the north and central regions of Gaza. That is at least a million people with no access to maternity care. That means women having to go through high-risk pregnancies, having to go through deliveries with no hospital or pre-hospital care, with no midwives, no doctors to help. What that has led to is many, many women dying in childbirth or after from the normal complications that often happen after a high-risk pregnancy. That includes hemorrhage, where they would not be able to have a blood transfusion because of the lack of supplies. That includes women fitting, having seizures, and no medication being given to them to stop these seizures. This is medieval-style medicine that we are seeing, and this is 100% man-made. Again, this could stop right now if there was a permanent and lasting ceasefire. And unfortunately, as I said, the U.K., the U.S. has continued to warmonger and to actually allow Israel to continue in its genocidal tactics.
And the Global South has started to mobilize. And there has been a great awakening for people who were before not aware of the situation in Palestine. But 70 years of occupation now fast-forwarded and sped up at double speed with this genocidal attacks has led to people protesting in the hundreds of thousands across London, Washington, D.C., and other major cities. And as healthcare workers, myself included, speaking on behalf of Health Workers for Palestine and Gaza Medic Voices, we do not accept this. We will not remain silent. We have escalated and will continue to do so. And as a concerned citizen of the world, what we are seeing is a lack of humanity, a lack of response from our leaders, who are impotent, frankly. And now it is the duty of citizens like us to stand up, to protest, to approach our members of Parliament, to put pressure on our governments to act. And if that doesn’t happen, then the next step, which should be happening now, is to boycott, to boycott any Israeli product that is funding a state that is destroying people and killing human beings in their homes, to apply pressure for academic sanctions, for cultural boycott, academic boycott, and sanctions on the Israeli state. And this is the next step, and this is what I’m calling for as a concerned citizen to my fellow colleagues, health workers, and general citizen professionals and nonprofessionals across the world, to start standing up and start speaking up, because we have had enough. We are sick and tired of seeing our own colleagues being killed and maimed en masse.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Doctor, could you talk about your work trying to bring children to the U.K. for medical care from Gaza and the obstacles you’ve faced?
DR. OMAR ABDEL-MANNAN: So, this is work that is being done by colleagues of ours. There are numerous projects that are attempting to bring children to European cities, to European hospitals, to provide care, similar to what the PCRF, the Palestinian Child Relief Society, has been doing so well to the United States previous to the 7th of October. We are in discussions with the relevant bodies to try and make this happen. Many of these children are children who have had complex injuries as a result of direct bombardment and bombing, who need years of reconstructive plastic surgical work. And these will be specific cases that we will try to help, where the need is not met in Egypt, in Jordan or in neighboring countries. But this is, you know, under — this is happening, but watch this space, essentially.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Dr. Omar Abdel-Mannan, you have Israel talking about this going on for more than a year. They are saying that Hamas has to release the hostages. Meanwhile, Hamas released a hostage video where one of the hostages is shown saying that two other hostages were killed in an Israeli strike. You have the mass protest of hostage families that took place over the weekend, demanding that it be the first priority to release the hostages. What is your response to the Israeli government, to Netanyahu and to the others in the war cabinet saying first Hamas has to release all the hostages?
DR. OMAR ABDEL-MANNAN: We’ve seen this narrative time and time again. At every interlude in this continued bombardment, we have seen the excuse of hostages, the excuses of human shields, the excuses of Hamas tunnels under hospitals, and many of these have been debunked by mainstream media. The Washington Post, BBC News found that many of these tunnels underneath the hospitals were, in fact, you know, previously used for as ventilation shafts. They’re not even Hamas tunnels. So, this idea of the hostages being released, as you have correctly said, we are seeing the Israelis shooting at their own people. They shot two or three hostages waving white flags, who were Israeli hostages running and fleeing from their captives, and they were shot dead at point-blank range. So, frankly, to me and to all of us who have seen the demasking of the Israeli government’s intentions, these are just purely excuses.
And unfortunately, the mainstream media, many of whom are in the U.K. and the U.S., are complicit in this. They are allowing these narratives. When I go on every TV show and I get asked the first question, “Do you condemn Hamas?” or “Do you know about the tunnels underneath the hospitals?” this is pushing that narrative forward. And frankly, investigations so far, you know, in what remains of Gaza, has shown that these — many of these stories, a majority of whom are not true, simply not true. So, that would be my response.
And again, I am not, and we are not, you know, going to be taken for a ride by the Israeli government’s narrative. We know exactly what is happening here. And the West and the U.K. and the U.S. and other governments, as I said, are complicit in continuing this narrative. And until there is a permanent ceasefire, until there is proper humanitarian aid entering through aid corridors, until there is the end of the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank and the continuing atrocities happening in the West Bank with settlers attacking Palestinians, then we will not stop. And we will continue, and we will mobilize, in the hundreds of thousands, in the millions, against this genocide.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Omar Abdel-Mannan, we want to thank you for being with us, pediatric neurologist and co-founder of Gaza Medic Voices and Health Workers for Palestine, speaking to us from London.
Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh is in Qatar for medical treatment after being wounded in an Israeli attack while reporting on the conflict.
Dahdouh – who has been the face of Al Jazeera Arabic’s coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza – arrived in the Qatari capital, Doha, on Tuesday night, via Egypt.
[, , ,]
Dahdouh, who left the besieged enclave for the first time since the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict started in October, lost his wife Amna, son Mahmoud, daughter Sham and grandson Adam in October after an Israeli air raid hit the home they were sheltering in at the Nuseirat refugee camp, after being displaced from their house in Gaza City.
Earlier this month, the 53-year-old veteran journalist’s eldest son, Hamza, also an Al Jazeera journalist, was killed by an Israeli missile strike in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.
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