التصنيف: estaql

Vivian Silver, 74, had moved to Israel to advocate for peace, according to her family.

Vivian Silver, a Canadian-Israeli peace activist who went missing during Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel, has been confirmed dead, her family have told Canadian media.

Silver, 74, was killed in the Palestinian armed group’s initial attacks on southern Israeli communities, Silver’s son, Yonatan Zeigen, told CBC News and CTV News on Monday.

He said his mother’s remains had been found earlier but were only identified more than five weeks after the attacks.

Silver, the founder of Women Wage Peace and the Arab-Jewish Center for Equality, Empowerment and Cooperation, had been living in Kibbutz Be’eri, near Gaza, after relocating from Winnipeg in the early 1970s.

In an article earlier this month, the Washington Post described Silver as having spent “her entire adult life denouncing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, lobbying for diplomatic solutions to the conflict, ferrying children from Gaza to Israeli hospitals”.

Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly described Silver as a “proud Israeli-Canadian and lifelong advocate for peace”.

“I met her son in Tel Aviv, and he described her as kind, generous, and selfless,” Joly said on X, formerly Twitter. “Canada mourns her loss with him and her loved ones.”

John Lyndon, the executive director of the Washington, DC-based Alliance for Middle East Peace, said Silver had wanted Gaza to be “free and at peace”.

“Rest in power, Vivian,” he said on X.

The Jewish Federation of Winnipeg said it was “devastated” to learn of Silver’s death.

“Vivian was a civilian brutally taken from her home, and now we know, from all of us, forever,” the group said on Facebook.

“She was a renowned pacifist who tirelessly advocated for peace and the improvement of the quality of life for Palestinians. We are with heavy hearts as we learn of the impact of Hamas’ terrorist attack and as time passes, to learn of the identity of those massacred in Israel.”

Hamas killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 240 others captive during the worst attack on Israel in decades, according to Israeli officials.

On Monday, Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, said the armed group was prepared to release up to 70 women and children held in Gaza in return for a five-day truce, but that Israel was “procrastinating and evading” on the terms of a deal.

US president says he hopes to see ‘less intrusive action’ at Al-Shifa Hospital as patients and staff remain trapped inside.

United States President Joe Biden has said that Gaza’s largest hospital “must be protected” as Israeli tanks surround the facility with hundreds of patients and staff trapped inside.

Speaking to reporters at the White House on Monday, Biden said he hoped to see Israel take “less intrusive action” at Al-Shifa Hospital, which medical staff say has been repeatedly targeted by Israeli bombing and snipers.

“My hope and expectation is that there will be less intrusive action relative to hospitals and we remain in contact with the Israelis,” Biden told reporters in the Oval Office.

“Also, there is an effort to get this pause to deal with the release of prisoners and that’s being negotiated, as well, with the Qataris … being engaged,” the US President added. “So I remain somewhat hopeful but hospitals must be protected.”

Biden’s comments came as medics warned of mounting casualties among patients, including newborn babies, at the hospital, which has been encircled by Israeli forces since Saturday.

Witnesses on Monday reported that tanks and armoured vehicles were positioned just metres from the gate of the medical complex, where staff say power outages, dwindling medical supplies and Israeli bombardment have made taking care of patients next to impossible.

At least 32 patients, including six premature babies, have died at the hospital since Friday, Palestinian health ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qudra said on Monday.

Three nurses have also been killed at the facility, the UN relief agency in the occupied Palestinian territory said on Sunday.

Israel has claimed that Hamas operates a command centre under the hospital, which the armed group and hospital officials have denied.

Israel’s military said on Monday that its soldiers had discovered a weapons cache in a tunnel connected to Rantissi Hospital, a facility for treating children in northern Gaza, sharing a video of what it said were grenades, suicide vests and other explosives.

“Hamas hides in hospitals,” spokesman Daniel Hagari said during a nightly press conference. “Today, we will expose this to the world.”

Since Sunday, the Al-Shifa, Al-Quds and Kamal Adwan hospitals have suspended operations due to Israeli bombardment and dwindling supplies of fuel and medicines.

Israel has told civilians to leave Al-Shifa and medics to send patients elsewhere. Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Khan Younis, said the “Israeli military is calling on patients to step out of the hospital with their hands above their heads”.

“But some of them need wheelchairs while others are disabled, hence cannot walk,” he said. “It’s hard to comprehend these are the demands of the Israeli military, while at the same time [it is] playing nice with the media, telling journalists ‘we are offering a safe corridor’.”

Israel has pledged to eliminate Hamas in response to the armed group’s October 7 attacks on southern Israeli communities, which Israeli officials say killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

Israel’s bombardment and ground operation in Gaza since then have killed at least 11,240 Palestinians, including more than 4,600 children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-governed enclave.

As the war enters its 629th day, these are the main developments.

Here is the situation on Tuesday, November 14, 2023.

Fighting

• A Russian rocket and artillery attack on the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson killed two people and injured at least 11, damaging a hospital and more than a dozen homes. Local governor Oleksandr Prokudin said a family driving home from a medical appointment was also hit by artillery fire, leaving one man dead and a two-month-old baby injured.
• Russian military bloggers reported that Ukrainian troops had secured a foothold on the occupied eastern bank of the Dnipro river in the village of Krynky, about 35km (22 miles) upstream from Kherson. The Kremlin declined to comment on the situation. “We do not comment on the course of the special military operation itself, that is the prerogative of our specialists, our military,” said spokesman Dmitry Peskov. The advance would be a significant breakthrough for Kyiv.
• Russia’s defence ministry said reports from two state news agencies – RIA Novosti and TASS – on troop movements in Ukraine were “false” and a “provocation”. The agencies reported that Russian troops were being moved to “more favourable positions” east of the Dnipro River, but quickly removed the alerts after publishing them.

Politics and diplomacy

• United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Andriy Yermak, a top aide to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in Washington, DC and promised sustained US support for Ukraine. Blinken spoke to Yermak about “steps we can take together with Ukraine to harden its infrastructure for the upcoming winter,” said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller. “We, of course, in the last winter saw Russia trying to take down energy sites in Ukraine. They may very well do that again”.
• European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said officials were finalising the “last details” of a proposed 12th package of sanctions on Russia that will include a diamond ban. The European Commission, the EU executive, could approve the proposed package on Wednesday and it would then go to the Council of the EU, made up of the bloc’s 27 member countries, for discussion and approval.
• Ukrainian lawmaker Oleksandr Dubinsky has been formally notified that he is suspected of treason for allegedly spreading misinformation about the political leadership and cooperation with Russia’s military intelligence. Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, said that a politician was under suspicion but did not name the suspect. He was later named by lawmaker Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, who is the first deputy head of the parliamentary committee on anti-corruption policy, and another lawmaker, Oleksiy Honcharenko. Dubinsky was expelled from the ruling party in 2021 after he was put on a US sanctions list over alleged election meddling. He has denied the accusations.
• Lawyers for Russian artist Alexandra Skochilenko, who faces as many as eight years in prison for replacing supermarket price tags with demands for an end to the war in Ukraine, told a court the 33-year-old would not survive a jail term and should be freed. Skochilenko, who is known as Sasha, has already spent more than 18 months in jail in St Petersburg and denies the formal charge of knowingly spreading false information about the Russian army.

Weapons

• Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said the country will block the disbursement of the next tranche of military aid to Ukraine under the European Peace Facility (EPF) until Kyiv provides “guarantees” that OTP bank or other Hungarian firms will not be blacklisted as “international sponsors of war”.
• A report from the Washington, DC-based Institute for Science and International Security said Russia was making progress on the construction of a factory to mass produce Iranian-designed Shahed-136 kamikaze drones.

 

Washington, DC – Anti-Palestinian sentiment is on the rise in the United States, with politicians from both major political parties backing Israel’s war in Gaza despite the mounting Palestinian death toll and growing accusations of war crimes.

Last week, the war in Gaza dominated the third Republican presidential debate, where competing candidates were unanimous in their support of Israel.

“I’m sick of hearing the media, I’m sick of hearing other people blame Israel just for defending itself,” one of those candidates, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, told the audience.

Such statements cropped up throughout the two-hour event, even when the candidates were discussing topics unrelated to the crisis. But Palestinians were barely ever mentioned, despite a death toll in Gaza that has ticked past 11,000.

In fact, the only time a candidate said “Palestinian” or “Palestine” was when DeSantis bragged about banning a Palestinian student advocacy group from state universities.

Advocates say this is indicative of a wider trend of US politicians — across ideological lines — justifying and denying Israeli atrocities in Gaza.

“There is a bipartisan effort to dehumanise the Palestinian people,” said Ahmad Abuznaid, the executive director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USPCR).

Abuznaid cited recent episodes in US politics that he said underscore hostility towards Palestinians. They include Democratic President Joe Biden voicing doubt over the accuracy of the Palestinian death count and attacks on Palestinian American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib for her criticism of Israel’s military offensive.

“Whether they fail to mention Palestinians, question our death tolls, attack our students and protests, or censure the only Palestinian American representative in Congress, their attempts to silence us won’t work,” Abuznaid said.

“As much as they wish us to disappear, we are here and will be here, and they will be seeing much more of us moving forward.”

Hostility in Congress

At Wednesday’s debate, DeSantis and Nikki Haley, a former ambassador to the United Nations, used similar language to push Israel to take strong action in Gaza.

“Finish the job once and for all with these butchers, Hamas,” DeSantis said, referring to the Palestinian group that launched a surprise attack on Israel on October 7.

Haley echoed that sentiment, saying, “Finish them. Finish them,” in response to a question about whether she would urge a “humanitarian pause” during the fighting.

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie — another Republican presidential candidate — followed his appearance in the debate with a visit to Israel on Sunday, where he likewise rejected calls for ending the violence.

A bipartisan delegation of US congress members, including the top lawmakers on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, also made a solidarity trip to Israel this past weekend.

Ohio Republican Max Miller, who has faced outrage for saying that Palestine will be turned into a “parking lot”, accompanied key Democrats on that visit and posted a photo of the group with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Ambassador to Israel Jacob Lew.

Here is my statement as I head home from #Israel.#StandWithIsrael pic.twitter.com/wcnnmLEp9I

— Congressman Max Miller (@RepMaxMiller) November 12, 2023

Advocates have warned that comments like Miller’s could be interpreted as a call for mass violence against the Palestinian people.

But Miller is hardly alone in his sentiments. Congressman Brian Mast suggested earlier this month that there are no innocent Palestinian civilians. “I don’t think we would so lightly throw around the term ‘innocent Nazi civilians’ during World War II,” he said on the House floor.

Such comments did not provoke a rebuke in the House of Representatives. However, the chamber did vote to censure its sole Palestinian American member, Tlaib, over her criticism of Israel.

Twenty-two Democrats, including the former chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Debbie Wasserman Schultz, joined Republicans in supporting the symbolic punishment, which passed 234 to 188.

Attacks against Tlaib have continued after the censure vote. On Sunday, Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn baselessly accused Tlaib of having “alleged ties to Hamas” and “calling for a genocide against the Jewish people”.

Rashida Tlaib has alleged ties to Hamas.

Based on these allegations, it’s sadly not surprising she’s calling for a genocide against the Jewish people.

— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) November 12, 2023

Tlaib is one of more than a dozen House Democrats to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, out of a chamber that contains 435 voting members.

Meanwhile, other congressional Democrats have voiced opposition to ceasefire efforts, similar to their Republican colleagues. Democratic Senator John Fetterman, for instance, waved an Israeli flag as he walked by protesters demanding a ceasefire on Capitol Hill last week.

To highlight the solid bipartisan support for Israel, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has been sharing videos of left-wing Senator Bernie Sanders expressing opposition to a ceasefire in Gaza.

Sanders is usually one of AIPAC’s most vocal critics, often rebuking the pro-Israel lobby group for spending millions of dollars on election campaigns to undermine progressive candidates.

‘All of them’

Anti-Palestinian sentiment is also appearing in US politics at the state level. In Florida last week, when State Representative Angie Nixon questioned how many dead Palestinians would be enough to end the violence, her fellow lawmaker Michelle Salzman responded by saying, “All of them.”

Nixon had introduced a resolution urging a ceasefire but the measure failed in a 104-2 vote.

Rasha Mubarak, a Palestinian-American organiser from Florida, called Salzman’s comments “vile” and “disturbing”.

“It’s interesting because when the only Palestinian member of Congress calls for an end to the violence and a ceasefire, she’s literally censured,” Mubarak told Al Jazeera, referring to Tlaib.

“And then we have people in the Florida Legislature, but also people in Congress, who have called for the erasure of the Palestinian people.”

Mubarak said support for Israel appears to unite the US political spectrum — with the exception of a minority of lawmakers who are “connecting the dots” between Palestinian liberation, global human rights and injustices at home.

But Mubarak added that Palestinian rights supporters are not discouraged by the pro-Israel consensus in US politics. She noted the growing protests across the country in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

“The movements and the masses of people — and the rare people who are serving in Congress and in state, local, federal positions — are trying to interrupt and disrupt the status quo,” she said, referring to Palestinian rights supporters.

Mubarak also warned that Democrats are ignoring and alienating certain members of their base with their stance towards Israel’s military offensive.

“What we’re seeing is people committing to not voting for Biden, not voting down ballot, not voting for Democrats that weren’t right on this issue,” she said. “I don’t think this time around people are going to forget. People remember.”

Abuznaid, of the USPCR, echoed Mubarak’s comments, saying that unwavering support for the Israeli government could fracture the political left and estrange the Palestinian rights movement.

“The bipartisan support is a challenge for the movement, but the cracks in the system are deepening,” he told Al Jazeera.

“Our movement is larger than ever and growing daily. US complicity in the Israeli genocide of Palestinians will be another lasting stain in this nation’s troubled history. Palestinian Americans remain undeterred and will push until there is a ceasefire and a free Palestine.”

Indian activists have slammed the authorities in Indian-administered Kashmir for putting a Global Positioning System (GPS) tracker on the body of a man facing “terrorism” charges – the first such use of electronic monitoring reported in the South Asian country.

For more than a week now, Ghulam Muhammad Bhat, a 65-year-old resident of the region’s main city of Srinagar, has been walking with the tracker around his ankle, which officials said has been introduced for prisoners out on bail.

The officials said the device will allow security agencies to maintain round-the-clock surveillance on defendants.

Bhat, a lawyer, was a close associate of Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Kashmir’s top separatist leader, who, until a year before his death in 2021, presided over the Hurriyat Conference, the leading separatist group in Indian-administered Kashmir, a region also claimed by neighbouring Pakistan.

Bhat was arrested at his Srinagar home in 2011 under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) for allegedly financing the activities of the Hurriyat Conference. He was held in a jail in New Delhi and denied bail several times until last week when it was finally approved.

‘Imprisonment by other means’

As part of Bhat’s bail conditions, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) court in the southern city of Jammu ordered authorities to track his activities 24 hours a day. The court also asked him not to change his residence while he is released on bail.

“The Superintendent of Police, Srinagar shall keep the mobility of the applicant on track so as to notice the activities of the applicant time and again,” the court order said.

A police officer in Indian-administered Kashmir told Al Jazeera the GPS device will help authorities track real-time locations of defendants to ensure they comply with their bail conditions.

“It is GPS- and SIM-based, and it alerts the control room if a person tries to remove it,” the official said on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to speak to the media.

But rights activists said the black, square-shaped, water-resistant gadget is a form of “virtual imprisonment” and compromises the privacy of an individual who is facing trial but not convicted.

“We know from other contexts where this technology is used that GPS tracker is imprisonment by other means. Given that it is used against undertrial accused, it relies on the logic that one is guilty until proven innocent. That is injustice,” Mohamad Junaid, a Kashmiri and assistant professor of anthropology at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in the United States, told Al Jazeera.

Junaid said the worst part is that any form of political dissent can now be seen as a violation of bail conditions. “That makes this new process mind and mobility control, a true techno dystopia,” he said.

Officials defend move

In September, a parliamentary panel recommended the use of GPS trackers on inmates to reduce the stress on India’s notoriously overcrowded jails.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, there are 554,034 prisoners in Indian jails and 427,165 of them – 76 percent – are awaiting trial. In Indian-administered Kashmir, where a crackdown on pro-freedom groups has seen thousands of arrests, that number is 91 percent.

Earlier this month, RR Swain, the director general of police in the region, told reporters there was no mechanism to ensure the bail conditions of a suspect freed on bail are being followed. He said real-time monitoring of the accused is necessary.

“So we had to think of something that would address it. We came up with a tracker that is widely used in Western countries. We are happy that we have fixed the first tracker on an accused person,” Swain said.

“I have been told that this person [Bhat] was carrying 5 million Indian rupees [$60,000] in a gas cylinder for terrorists and separatist financing when he was arrested. With the help of the tracker, we can monitor his movements as directed by the court. We are the extended arms of the court,” he said.

Ajai Sahni, a security analyst at the Institute for Conflict Management, a New Delhi-based think tank, told Al Jazeera the GPS tracker is a condition for defendants to get bail.

“Otherwise, for most of these people, it would be difficult to get bail. … It makes things much easier for both the undertrials, so that they can be given bail under greater confidence and for the police so that these people do not get into mischief,” he said.

Sahni said the device is used across the world, especially when an accused faces serious charges.

“In that case, some restrictions can be expected. Invasion of privacy is there till the moment you are arrested. The moment you are accused of a crime, most of your rights are diluted unless they are proven innocent. They [the accused] will go through one restriction or the other, and this [tracker] is better than being in jail,” he added.

However, Ravi Nair, executive director of the South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre, argued that electronic tagging fitted to the body of a person may raise issues of fundamental liberties, such as freedom of movement or a person’s right to privacy.

“The state through tagging seeks to maintain public security, but on the other hand, those subjected to it must be accorded their fundamental rights,” he told Al Jazeera.

He said the use of electronic monitoring raises a number of ethical, legal and practical issues.

“The surveillance potential creates concerns of overregulation and infringement of human rights. The necessity for ensuring informed consent of those chosen to be subject to monitoring should be guaranteed and effective procedures established to deal with unethical or illegal practices,” he said.

The fact that a private firm manufactures the GPS trackers is also a major concern, Nair said.

“It is also important to ask whether the security establishment has developed any standards and ethics in electronic monitoring, or are we creating a new security creep?”