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Middle East Eye
12 hours ago
- Politics
- Middle East Eye
Ireland stands by claim Israel committing genocide in Gaza
Ireland's Tanaiste, or deputy prime minister, Simon Harris, defended the government's position on Thursday that Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza, Irish broadcaster RTE reported. 'We are the first government in the European Union (EU) to say what Israel is doing is genocide. It is genocide," Harris told an opposition lawmaker during a heated exchange in parliament, known as the the Dáil. That lawmaker, Catherine Connolly, an Independent, accused the government of not doing enough to punish Israel for its 19-month-long war on Gaza, which has killed more than 54,000 Palestinians, more than half of them children, according to the Palestinian health ministry. 'I'm disgusted and sickened, sickened - watching children dying on our television screens and every day I come to work and work with all the people in here to do our best to show leadership at a time of horrific conflict," Harris said. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters 'We're working to support the people of Palestine and the only chamber I ever go into in the entire world where people don't acknowledge that Ireland, the government, the people of Ireland, are standing with the people of Palestine, standing up for human rights, standing up for international law, is here when you get up and distort - with your ideology - the actions of this government." Ireland recognised Palestinian statehood one year ago, and in January, it joined South Africa's genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). On Thursday, Harris said that a bill banning trade with goods from Israeli settlements - deemed illegal under international law - would move to the foreign affairs committee next month, the Irish Times said. The government is also under pressure to help remove the Central Bank's role in permitting the sale of Israel Bonds in the EU, and to stop any flights over Ireland that may be carrying weapons to Israel, the paper reported. 'I'm proud of the people of this country. I'm proud that we went into an election, and it didn't matter what party you were in, you stood up and said, 'We are going to support the people of Palestine'." Harris's stance was backed by the Taoiseach - or Prime Minister Micheal Martin earlier in the week. 'We have been very consistent in our support to the Palestinian people and their right to self-determination, and in condemning the war crimes and the genocide that is occurring right now,' Martin told the Dail. 'The focus has to be relentlessly on the policies of Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli government, made up of extreme far-right elements who are committing genocide in Gaza right now. In 2018, the Occupied Territories Bill was introduced in Ireland by Independent Senator Frances Black, proposing a ban on trade with businesses operating in illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land, but it was ultimately blocked over concerns about breaching EU trade rules. However, an advisory opinion from the ICJ in July marked a turning point in reconsidering the enactment of the Irish bill. The ICJ concluded that Israel's presence in the occupied Palestinian territories is 'unlawful' and the country should 'end its presence in the occupied Palestinian territory as rapidly as possible'. More than 400 of Ireland's senior legal academics and practising lawyers have called on the government to enact the bill in its original form, prohibiting all goods and services in the occupied West Bank, such as Airbnb.
Middle East Eye
12 hours ago
- Politics
- Middle East Eye
Brazilian oil trade unions urge Lula to impose energy embargo on Israel
Two of the largest federations of trade unions for oil workers in Brazil have called on the government to impose an energy embargo on Israel. The National Federation of Oil Workers and the Single Federation of Oil Workers sent a joint letter to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and key ministers in the Brazilian government on Wednesday, urging them to take more concrete action against Israel's 'genocide' in Gaza. Referring to comments made by Lula in February, the federations said that Brazil needs to go beyond public rhetoric and implement an energy embargo against Israel in accordance with its international legal obligations to prevent the 'ongoing Nakba' - meaning 'catastrophe' in Arabic and referring to the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians in 1948 when Israel was created. In February, President Lula, while he was attending the African Union Summit in Ethiopia, accused Israel of committing 'genocide' against Palestinians in Gaza and compared its war on Gaza with Nazi Germany's extermination of Jews. The letter highlighted that 2.7m barrels of crude oil were exported from Brazil to Israel in 2024 alone, representing a significant portion of Israel's military fuel supply, and Brazil had a global responsibility to avoid complicity in war crimes, as articulated by legal experts and international judicial bodies. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters The letter cited action taken by other countries, such as Colombia's suspension of coal exports to Israel, and global grassroots campaigns such as #BlockTheBoat, where dockworkers around the world have refused to load Israeli ships and cargo and transport arms to Israel. In the United States, Block the Boat was organised by the Arab Resource and Organizing Center in San Francisco. In addition to the immediate suspension of oil exports to Israel, the federations urge the Brazilian government to suspend projects with Israeli energy companies, and support United Nations-led sanctions and measures to hold Israel to account. Signatories said this was an opportunity for Brazil to 'honor its diplomatic legacy, affirm its position on the right side of history, and ensure that its economic policies reflect its ethical and legal commitments to human rights and international law". The Single Federation of Oil Workers is a national trade union, while the National Federation of Oil Workers is a trade union federation comprised of independently operating oil workers' unions. Diplomatic backlash to Lula's comments Lula has been a longtime supporter of Palestine. His comment to reporters on 17 February in Ethiopia sparked a diplomatic backlash when he said that Israel's actions in Gaza were not a war, "It's a genocide". "It's not a war of soldiers against soldiers. It's a war between a highly prepared army, and women and children," he said. "What's happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people hasn't happened at any other moment in history. Actually, it has happened: when Hitler decided to kill the Jews." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Lula's Nazi Germany comparison was 'disgraceful and grave', while Foreign Minister Israel Katz said that Lula would be 'a persona non grata in Israel' until he took back his comments. Lula refused to take back his comments and recalled Brazil's ambassador from Israel. Reuters reported that his approval ratings fell from 54 percent to 51 percent after his comments. Lula also backed South Africa's International Court of Justice case against Israel in January, which ruled that a 'plausible genocide' was happening in Gaza. An official statement highlighted Lula's role in the decision: 'The president expressed his support for South Africa's initiative to bring Israel before the ICJ to determine that Israel immediately ceases all acts and measures that may constitute genocide or related crimes under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.'
Middle East Eye
14 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Middle East Eye
'Hypocrisy': Zadie Smith faces backlash after signing letter calling for Gaza ceasefire
On Wednesday, a total of 380 writers and organisations signed a letter condemning the Israeli government's actions in Gaza as 'genocidal' and urged for an immediate ceasefire. Among the signers were Zadie Smith, Ian McEwan, Russell T Davies, Hanif Kureishi, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, and George Monbiot. The letter states that describing the situation in Gaza as "genocide" or involving "acts of genocide" is no longer a matter of debate among international legal experts or human rights groups. It was also signed by notable authors and figures such as William Dalrymple, Jeanette Winterson, Brian Eno, Kate Mosse, Irvine Welsh, and Elif Shafak. This letter coincided with another letter published on Thursday to the UK government by 300 British artists, doctors, activists and academics, who urged British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to end UK complicity in Gaza war crimes and help broker an immediate and permanent ceasefire. Singer-songwriter Dua Lipa, actors Benedict Cumberbatch, Brian Cox, Toby Jones, Andrea Riseborough, and broadcaster Gary Lineker are among the signatories of this letter. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters Some of the letter's signatories, like Lineker and Cox, for instance, have been vocal about the war for months, but many others have remained silent. While many on social media cheered on these letters and supported the calls for a ceasefire by such prominent names, many said the letter was a little too late. We reject these letters. The time has passed for these letters to have any legitimacy. These letters are now used to whitewash the silence and worse whitewash the active complicity of authors like @ZadieSmith in the genocide of the Palestinian people. — Danya (@dandoon_danya) May 28, 2025 Specifically regarding the letter signed by Smith and other authors, many social media users expressed anger due to her previous comments about Israel and Palestine in a 4 May 2024 New Yorker article. In this article, while talking about Israel's war on Gaza and the crackdown on pro-Palestinian students on western campuses, Smith wrote, 'In the case of Israel/Palestine, language and rhetoric are and always have been weapons of mass destruction.' At the time, many on social media harshly criticised these statements, saying that Smith compared the language of the students protesting in support of Palestine to weapons of mass destruction. Today, when the letter by Smith and other prominent authors came out, the same anger resurfaced, with many showing their resentment towards the author. Zadie Smith signed an open letter calling Israel's actions in Gaza genocide. When tens of thousands of Palestinians had already been killed, she was calling for "nuance." Now, she's trying to save her reputation. I threw all her books in the bin and will never buy another. — Carlos Azevedo (@cprazevedo) May 28, 2025 Many suggested that Smith helped 'manufacture consent for criminalising Palestine solidarity campus protests' with that New Yorker article, but now is only trying to 'save her career'. Zadie Smith helped manufacture consent for criminalizing Palestine solidarity campus protests by calling protest slogans "weapons of mass destruction," and now she wants to subscribe to the letter calling it a genocide. Girl, fuck all the way off — Anita Zsurzsan 🇵🇸 🕎 (@iamjourjean) May 28, 2025 Many social media users said that Smith is only 'trying to rewrite her culpability' because of the discourse she used in the New Yorker article, criminalising students and having a reductive stance on Israel's war on Gaza. God give me the strength to handle repulsive pro-genocide people trying to rewrite their culpability. The day started with Zadie "I know I said protesting genocide is evil but now it wins Pulitzers so I changed my mind" Smith and now this absurdity. — Heidi N. Moore (@moorehn) May 28, 2025 In the face of such letters, many social media users also referred to what they termed as 'hypocrisy' and 'two-siding' Israel's war on Gaza, which until now has killed over 54,000 people since October 2023. Worth revisiting this Radar now that Zadie Smith has come around a year later. I'm glad she's signed the pro-Palestine letter. I just wish it didn't take over year and a half of obvious genocide for her to stop both sidesing the issue. — Briahna Joy Gray (@briebriejoy) May 29, 2025 Since Israel's war on Gaza started, many prominent artists have repeatedly called for a ceasefire and a stop to the war on the enclave. These letters are the latest examples of such calls, and they have garnered more reaction and support because they include prominent figures from the film and literary worlds. Artists have also faced censorship and criticism from pro-Israeli supporters due to their advocacy for Palestine. One example of this was when over 750 artists signed a letter criticising the Royal Academy of Arts for 'anti-Palestinian censorship' after it removed two artworks about Israel's war on Gaza from its Young Artists' Summer Show.
Middle East Eye
15 hours ago
- Politics
- Middle East Eye
Hamas is studying another US ceasefire proposal for Gaza. What has changed?
Hamas said on Thursday it was studying a Gaza ceasefire proposal by US envoy Steve Witkoff, which Israel announced it had accepted, as starvation stalks the enclave and Israel ramps up its air strikes. "The leadership of the Hamas movement has received Witkoff's new proposal from the mediators and is currently studying it responsibly, in a manner that serves the interests of our people, provides relief, and achieves a permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip,' Hamas said. Witkoff sounded an optimistic note speaking at the White House on Wednesday, saying, 'I have some very good feelings about getting to… a temporary ceasefire and a long-term, peaceful resolution of that conflict.' US President Donald Trump on Thursday confirmed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had accepted a new ceasefire proposal from Witkoff, but added that Hamas had not yet accepted. However, reports that Israel and Hamas were nearing an agreement have occurred regularly throughout the 18 months of war, only to wither a few days later. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters Hamas and Israel reached a brief three-stage ceasefire in January, but the deal collapsed in March after Israel took back several of its captives and resumed bombing Gaza, walking away from the deal before talks with Hamas on a permanent end to the war could start. While the Trump administration has broken with Israel on bombing the Houthis, negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran, and lifting sanctions on Syria, it has given Israel full backing to wage war on Gaza. What we know about Witkoff's proposal According to Axios, the latest Witkoff proposal is similar to the one Israel broke in March. It calls for the release of captives in return for 60 days of no fighting. The deal would set a timeline for Hamas and Israel to begin negotiating a permanent end to the war and withdrawal of Israeli troops. Several factors have changed since then, but it's unclear how they might impact the talks. In May, the Trump administration began to rely on a new intermediary with Hamas, Palestinian-American businessman Bishara Bahbah. Bishara Bahbah, new US intermediary to Hamas The national chairman for Arab Americans for Trump established a backchannel for Hamas directly to the Trump administration that led to the release of US-Israeli citizen Edan Alexander from captivity earlier this month. Mercenary firm set to oversee Gaza aid for Israel goes on LinkedIn hiring spree Read More » Despite the new diplomatic shake-up, the main roadblock to a deal has not changed. Hamas wants a guarantee that, in return for returning the 20 captives believed to be alive, Israel will agree to a permanent end to the war. Israeli media reported on Thursday that Netanyahu was prepared to move forward with a temporary truce. Netanyahu has regularly insisted on the right to resume fighting and has pledged to totally disarm and eliminate Hamas. Speaking in May, Netanyahu said for the first time that one of his conditions for ending the war was the right to enact a plan floated earlier this year by Trump, which called for the forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza. Will Israel agree to a permanent ceasefire? Israel did withdraw from some points in Gaza in January and February, but it has established the Netzarim Corridor to deploy troops from east to west of Gaza quickly. Hamas is unlikely to forget that Israel quickly reoccupied the enclave in March with little public pressure not to from the US, or Egypt and Qatar, the two Arab mediators. Israel's military said on Monday it wants to control 75 percent of Gaza and force roughly two million Palestinians there into a narrow zone in the south near the Egyptian border. What's inside the boxes of aid being distributed in Gaza? Read More » There was some confusion on Monday after media reports said that Hamas had agreed to a 60-day ceasefire proposed by Witkoff, only for Israel to deny the offer was on the table. Talks are ongoing as Gaza descends into anarchy and starvation. Israel has been blockading the entry of all food, water, and medicine into the enclave until recently. The US and Israel established a controversial organisation in May dubbed the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to distribute aid. Its aid centre in Rafah, staffed by American mercenaries, was overrun with thousands of starving Palestinians. The Israeli military opened fire on the crowd, and images on social media showed Palestinians boxed into narrow fences to obtain aid. The foundation has been slammed by the UN and other aid groups for militarising aid. On Wednesday, four Palestinians died storming a UN warehouse in search of food. At least 44 Palestinians were killed by Israeli strikes across Gaza on Thursday. The total death toll since the war began in October 2023 has surpassed 54,000.
Middle East Eye
15 hours ago
- Health
- Middle East Eye
Has Israel manufactured a famine in Gaza?
The markets are empty. The make-shift hospitals are bare. The water is contaminated. The aid trucks are nowhere in sight. Gaza is being starved, and rights groups say, deliberately. At least 57 children have starved to death since 2 March, and 71,000 children under the age of five are expected to be acutely malnourished over the next eleven months. In the ongoing war on Gaza, which genocide scholars and international human rights organisations have unanimously called a "genocide" against the Palestinian people, Israel also has been accused of implementing a policy of starvation in Gaza. The crisis has escalated to such an extent over the past 11 weeks since Israel blocked aid to the enclave - opening it just this week in a dehumanising manner - that nearly every single person in Gaza is facing prolonged food shortages, with close to a half a million people (or around one in five) are currently experiencing "catastrophic situation of hunger, acute malnutrition, starvation, illness and death". In its assessment in mid-May, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a global initiative aimed at enhancing food security and nutrition analysis to inform decisions, wrote that over the next six months, the entirety of Gaza is expected to face what is referred to by experts as "crisis, or worse acute food insecurity". New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters Around 22 percent of the population is already living in conditions akin to famine. Like Gaza, parts of Sudan have also been facing acute food insecurity, including famine, over the past year, as a result of the ongoing conflict between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. But what happens to the body when it enters "starvation" mode? What does it mean to live in conditions of famine? And when a human being is facing starvation and the body begins to waste away, is it possible to ever reverse the devastating impact on the body? Middle East Eye looks at the medical and legal dimensions of what it means to starve a population. Palestinians gather to receive a hot meal at a food distribution point in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, on 21 May 2025 (Eyad Baba/AFP) What is starvation, and how is it defined? According to health professionals, starvation occurs in several stages. The first stage can begin as quickly as a single missed meal. The second stage is activated when the body has to rely on stored fats for energy while not eating. The third phase is when the body turns to bone and muscle for energy after releasing all stored fats. When this deficit of nutrients impacts health, the body is considered malnourished. This can result in physical and psychological distress, and over a prolonged period, it can have severe impacts on the human body. Once the body uses its energy reserves, known as glycogen, it moves to fats and then to muscles to keep the heart going. It is particularly damaging for children because it can impact their developing immune systems and make them susceptible to other diseases. Over and above the agonising pain triggered by hunger, the body shrinks, bones protrude, and the cheeks become gaunt and appear hollow. This inevitably impacts the brain, with victims suffering from mood swings and immense irritability. A body struggling with malnutrition and undernutrition can result in wasting and is also likely to impact the heart's function. The body's blood pressure will drop, and the pulse will slow. At some point, the body either succumbs to an infection or the heart simply fails. What is the current level of food insecurity in Gaza? Between late April and early May, around 50 experts from 17 organisations conducted a study into the food insecurity and famine in Gaza. The group coordinated by the IPC concluded that Gaza in its entirety was in phase four of acute food insecurity. This means households across Gaza were facing huge food shortages that have either seen them suffer from high acute malnutrition and excess mortality, or resulted in them adopting desperate measures to survive. On Wednesday, Feroze Sidhwa, an American trauma surgeon who spent five weeks in Gaza, told the UN Security Council that civilians in Gaza were now dying 'not from the constant air strikes, but acute malnutrition, sepsis, exposure, and despair'. "Between my two visits to Gaza, I witnessed a sharp decline in patients' health driven not just by injury, but by worsening hunger and malnutrition that left their bodies weaker, their wounds slower to heal, and their survival far less certain,' Sidhwa said. Marina Pomares, Médecins Sans Frontières' medical coordinator in Deir al Balah, describes the level of malnutrition in Gaza as "very alarming". "We are seeing a lot of children who are coming to us who have not been eating for weeks. These children are going through [the] malnutrition process," Pomares told MEE. Pomares said there were also many adults, especially breastfeeding women, malnourished themselves, who were "giving the little food that they had to their children". Likewise, a World Health Organisation spokesperson told MEE that pregnant and breastfeeding mothers in Gaza "were also at high risk of malnutrition, with nearly 17,000 expected to require treatment for acute malnutrition over the next eleven months". Prolonged starvation can result in severe damage, including stunted growth, impaired cognitive development, and severely poor health. Pomares said that with the right treatment, malnourished children, pregnant and breastfeeding women, could experience some improvement in their health. However, she warned that if the treatment is not followed up with sufficient nutrient intake, the process would repeat itself and, potentially, as others have suggested, severely impact them for the rest of their lives. According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, close to half a million Palestinians in Gaza are in a stage of famine (IPC) What is the difference between food insecurity and famine? Famine is a term used to describe "a societal catastrophe" that calls for an urgent and coordinated humanitarian response to avoid the mass loss of life. There is a set of technical requirements or thresholds that have to be crossed for famine to be declared. These include: at least 20 percent of the population facing extreme food shortages; acute malnutrition rates exceeding 30 percent; and two out of 10,000 people dying from starvation daily. In Gaza, UN human rights experts have sounded the alarm that certain sections of Gaza were already in a state of famine. In July 2024, the IPC said Gaza was facing a 'high risk' of famine, but wouldn't go so far as to call it famine. Likewise, in its most recent report in mid-May, it said Gaza was again on the cusp of famine. Experts argue that whereas Israel has allowed the crisis to deepen, resulting in excruciating living conditions for the people of Gaza, it has looked to let in aid just before Gaza entered the catastrophic phase of famine. "Encouraged by the United States, Israel has tried to keep the Gazans from descending into 'famine' by turning the aid tap on whenever the data indicate it is about to cross that threshold. When it does this, and the IPC reports that the deterioration has been arrested, Israeli advocates claim that the famine story was made up all along. That's wrong," Alex de Waal, an expert on famine, Sudan and the Horn of Africa, writes. "The IPC experts protest that even when the situation is an 'emergency' (level four) or 'catastrophe' (level five for food insecurity), the level of distress is unacceptable. But for international policymakers, it seems that what counts is the 'F-word'. "They won't say it out loud, but the implication is that hunger that doesn't reach the famine threshold is somehow tolerable," de Waal added. The IPC did not reply to MEE's request for comment. Meanwhile, on 20 May, Akihiro Seita, director of health at United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (Unrwa), reiterated that the crisis in Gaza could be resolved if the UN were allowed to resume its aid work there. Seita said that whereas medicine was likely to run out by the end of May, there was sufficient medicine and food in Jordan waiting to be taken into Gaza. Seita said Unrwa staff in Gaza were thinking about only two things at this point: how to survive and how to die. What are the driving factors of food insecurity in Gaza? According to the IPC, there are four key drivers of acute food insecurity in Gaza and several contributing factors adding to the crisis. These include: the ongoing Israeli bombardment of Gaza, that has so far killed over 54,000 people, injured tens of thousands and destroyed crucial infrastructure; the restrictions placed by Israel in bringing in essential food, energy, medicine and clean water; the continuous displacement of people - around 1,9 million Palestinians have been made to leave their homes - and move multiple times as a result of evacuation orders and no-go areas; and crucially, the collapse of food systems as a result of the war on Gaza. "The widespread destruction and degradation of productive assets, coupled with the ongoing blockade, have left extremely limited space for any form of domestic food production," the IPC said in its report in mid-May. Israel is starving Gaza to death, and still the world does nothing Mads Gilbert Read More » In addition, the contributing factors of critical deficiencies in the availability of clean water, sanitation, and hygiene, which bear the marks of a two-decade-long blockade, and the prolonged shortage of healthy and nutritious foods, such as fresh fruit, vegetables, meat, and dairy products, have only exacerbated the risk of disease and other health consequences. Over the past 19 months, 75 percent of Palestinians with a reliance on food aid have been eating no more than two food groups per day, hindering nutrient and protein intake. "Israel's military has simultaneously destroyed Gaza's agricultural production capacity and decimated Palestinians' livelihood reserves. Gaza's fragile food basket, bakeries, fishing boats, food storage warehouses, and emergency kitchens have all been targeted," Mads Gilbert, James Smith and Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah wrote in a joint opinion article in early May. What is the legal position on starvation as a weapon of war? Starving a population during a time of war has long been used as a tactic by warring parties to force surrender or to annihilate a population. However, International Humanitarian Law (IHL), specifically Article 54 in the Geneva Convention, is unequivocal in its prohibition of starvation as a war strategy. Article 54 also prohibits the destruction of objects or material indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, including denying access to humanitarian aid intended for civilians in need and deliberately impeding humanitarian aid. Israel has been repeatedly found in breach of Article 54 over the course of the past 19 months. It has shut down Gaza's access to electricity and water, and restricted the entry of essential energy, aid, food and medicinal supplies. It has also killed Palestinians as they assembled to receive supplies, with one of the more infamous incidents being termed the "Flour Massacre". As early as December 2023, human rights experts began accusing Israel of intentionally starving Palestinians as a part of a "genocidal" project across the Gaza Strip. By July 2024, around 33 children, mostly in northern Gaza, had died from symptoms associated with malnutrition, prompting UN experts to accuse Israel of weaponising food and aid as a form of collective punishment, which constituted starvation crimes, and therefore war crimes. Several Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, have been accused of alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed since the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on 7 October 2023. Warrants are still out for their arrest.
