News and Analysis 5/25/24

“The sharply focused decision sent a three-pronged message to Israel, ordering a halt to the Rafah offensive, access to Gaza for war crimes investigators, and a big and immediate increase of humanitarian aid to the region” …

• Top UN Court Orders Israel to Halt Military Offensive in Rafah, Though Israel is Unlikely to Comply (AP)

… but Palestinians say, “The massacres are only increasing”:

• After World Court Ruling, Palestinians Want Action Not Words (Reuters)

H.R. 8445 “would extend some U.S. military benefits to the estimated 20,000 Americans currently carrying out the Gaza genocide as members of the Israeli military”:

• New Bill Seeks to Extend U.S. Military Benefits to Americans Serving in the Israeli Army (Mondoweiss)

“The Special Rapporteur received allegations of individuals being beaten, kept in cells blindfolded and handcuffed for excessive periods, deprived of sleep, and threatened with physical and sexual violence”:

• Israel: UN Expert Calls for Probe of Allegations of Torture and Mistreatment Against Palestinian Detainees (UNHRC)

• UCLA Police Chief Reassigned Following Mob Attack on Pro-Palestinian Protesters (Reuters)

“Sociologist Gershon Shafir has charted what he describes as an evolution from a perceived secular Jewish privilege that justified a claim to Palestine based on religion, ethnicity, and/or race to notions of Jewish supremacy“:

• Antisemitism Threatens Jews, Occupation Threatens Judaism (Turbulent World / Substack)

“Booking.com benefits from the systematic deprivation of the Palestinian people of their lands and natural resources, entrenches the apartheid regime, and frustrates the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people”:

• BREAKING-Booking.com Sued for Laundering Profits from Israeli War Crimes in Palestine (European Legal Support Center)

“In US history, anti-Palestinian bigotry, expressed primarily through repressive practices of the US government” later “manifested into a generalized anti-Arab racism, which only later … morphed into the more widespread Islamophobia”:

• Decades of Spying and Repression: the Anti-Palestinian Origins of American Islamophobia (The Guardian)

“Soldiers appear to be loading more than 100 dead bodies into trucks before being moved away from the medical complex”:

• Footage Shows Israeli Forces Seizing Dead Bodies from Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital (Middle East Eye)

“More than 1,000 people walked out of Harvard’s Commencement on Thursday, as mass discontent over the decision to bar 13 pro-Palestine College student protesters from graduating overshadowed a day filled with pomp and circumstance”:

• Outrage at Decision to Deny Diplomas to 13 Pro-Palestine Students Overshadows Harvard Commencement (The Harvard Crimson)

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