Norway gives $26 million to UNRWA this year, more could come

Fri, February 9, 2024 

 Palestinians gather to receive flour bags distributed by UNRWA in Rafah

By Gwladys Fouche

OSLO (Reuters) - Norway is giving 275 million crowns ($26 million) this year to the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) and could increase that sum if needed, it said on Friday, days after the agency warned it could cease all activity by the end of the month.

A string of countries including the United States, Germany and Britain paused their funding to the aid agency after accusations by Israel last month that some UNRWA staff were involved in Hamas' Oct. 7 attacks in southern Israel.

Norway, a top donor to UNRWA, is maintaining its funding.

UNRWA said on Feb. 1 that it could be forced to shut down its operations in the Middle East, not only in Gaza, by the end of February if its funding remains suspended.

Oslo said on Wednesday it was transferring 275 million crowns to UNRWA. On Friday the ministry of foreign affairs said that money covered Norway's regular, annual contribution to UNRWA, but that there could be additional payments.

"Due to the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, there may be additional funds from Norway to UNRWA throughout the year," said a foreign ministry spokesperson.

By comparison, Norway gave UNRWA 470.5 million crowns last year, she said. "This includes additional funding after the war started in October," she said.

"There is a shortage of all essential items and people are facing daily threats to their lives and safety. UNRWA is the backbone of humanitarian efforts in Gaza," Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said in a statement on Wednesday.

Oslo said on Jan. 31 it was urging countries that have paused funding to consider the wider consequences of their actions on the population in Gaza, given UNRWA is the main organisation supplying aid to Palestinians.

($1 = 10.6041 Norwegian crowns)

(Reporting by Gwladys Fouche; Editing by Frances Kerry)

UN chief warns Palestinian aid agency cannot be replaced
AFP
Thu, February 8, 2024 

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has led crunch talks with donor countries to have payments reinstated to the UN's Palestinian refugee agency

 (ANGELA WEISS)


United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday warned that his organization's Palestinian refugee agency cannot be replaced, even as it faces criticism after 12 staffers were implicated in Hamas's attack on Israel.

Several countries -- including the United States, Britain, Germany and Japan -- have suspended funding to the UNRWA agency, and Guterres has led crunch talks with donor countries to have payments reinstated.

"No other organization has a meaningful presence inside Gaza -- and nothing compared with this situation. So there is no other organization that would be able now to replace" it, Guterres told a media briefing.

The dispute intensified at the end of last month after Israel accused UNRWA of allowing Hamas to use agency infrastructure in the Gaza Strip for military activity.

UNRWA said it has acted promptly over allegations by Israel -- which Guterres called "credible" -- that 12 of its staff were involved in the Hamas attacks, adding that cuts in funding would affect ordinary Palestinians.

The UN agency has long been under scrutiny by Israel, which accuses it of systematically going against the country's interests, with Israel vowing to stop the agency's work in Gaza after the war.

Guterres pointed to the cost effectiveness of UNRWA as he defended why it was the best-placed organization to continue to deliver aid to Gaza.

"The costs with UNRWA are much lower than the costs with other agencies for historical reasons. The salaries paid by UNRWA are one-third of the salaries paid by UNICEF or WFP or other UN organizations," Guterres said, singling out the UN's children's fund and its World Food Programme.

"So any attempt of replacement, that is not possible."

Heavy fighting has raged on despite international efforts towards a ceasefire in the bloodiest ever Gaza war, sparked by Hamas's October 7 attack on southern Israel.

Hamas's unprecedented attack resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Israel vowed to eliminate the militant group and launched air strikes and a ground offensive that have killed at least 27,840 people, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza health ministry.

Militants also seized around 250 hostages. Israel says 132 remain in Gaza, of whom 29 are believed to have died.

Fears of ground fighting grew Thursday among the more than one million Palestinians crowded into Rafah as Israel stepped up air strikes on the far-southern city.

abd-gw/sst

Israel welcomes investigation into allegations against UNRWA

DPA
Fri, February 9, 2024

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks during a press conference about his priorities for 2024. Bianca Otero/ZUMA Press Wire/dpa

Israel welcomed a planned investigation into the allegations that members of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) were involved in the October 7 killings on Friday.

"The establishment of an independent review group to assess UNRWA’s neutrality following the publication of information indicating the participation of agency employees in terror activities is a positive step, although it is long overdue," an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Friday.

"However, the review group should include research institutes with relevant professional experience that includes counter-terrorism, security and vetting procedures," he said in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

"Israel expects that the group will include major donors to the agency as well as Israeli experts," he added.

The UN said Former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna is to head an independent group of experts to examine the serious allegations against UNRWA, the UN said on Monday.

Israel has accused several UNRWA employees of being involved in the October 7 terror attacks led by the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Several major Western donors to UNRWA, including the United States and Germany, temporarily suspended payments to the Gaza relief agency over the allegations.

Colonna's group is due to begin its work on February 14, with an interim report expected sometime before the end of March.

The expert panel is expected to consider whether UNRWA has violated measures aimed at maintaining the group's neutrality in the Gaza Strip, which Hamas has been ruling since 2007.

UN Secretary General António Guterres promised comprehensive clarification. Several employees have already been terminated.

Suggestions for improvements and changes can also be made, as international donors such as the United States demand fundamental reforms.

Alongside Colonna's investigation, the UN is conducting a second, internal audit, dealing specifically with the allegations against the UN aid organization's staff. This is expected to take several weeks.

Israel expects the review committee to also investigate "incitement to violence and antisemitism in UNRWA’s educational system, in textbooks and by teachers, before and after the October 7 massacre," the spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry said.

The areas of the investigation should be more clearly defined, regarding "the need to prevent the employment of members of terror groups in the ranks of the organization and to ensure that the organization’s facilities will not be used for terror purposes," he added.

The Gaza war was triggered by the unprecedented attacks by militants from the Palestinian Hamas organization and other extremist groups in Israel on October 7. More than 1,200 Israelis were killed, including around 850 civilians.

In response, Israel's massive airstrikes and ground offensive in Gaza have killed 27,478 Palestinians since the war began, according to the health authority in the coastal strip.

At least 300,000 at risk from lack of food in north, central Gaza: UN

Adel ZAANOUN with Chloe ROUVEYROLLES-BAZIRE in Jerusalem
Thu, February 8, 2024 


Hundreds of thousands of people's lives are at risk in north and central Gaza because of a lack of food, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) warned on Thursday.

UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said the last time the agency was allowed to deliver supplies to the area was more than two weeks ago on January 23.

Other agencies providing humanitarian aid also reported blocks on getting relief into the Palestinian territory, which has been bombarded by Israel since Hamas's deadly attack on October 7.

"Since the beginning of the year, half of our aid mission requests to the north were denied," Lazzarini wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

"The @UN has identified deep pockets of starvation and hunger in northern #Gaza where people are believed to be on the verge of famine.

"At least 300,000 people living in the area depend on our assistance for their survival."

Israel, which has laid siege to the tiny, densely populated territory, ordered people living in north and central Gaza to move south as it goes after those responsible for the October 7 attack.

More than half of Gaza's estimated 2.4 million people are now crowded into the city of Rafah in the south, where Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered troops to prepare to attack.

Thomas White, director of UNRWA affairs in Gaza, said there was now "enormous concern" about a looming offensive in Rafah, where the agency bases its operation for the whole of the Gaza Strip.

"It's going to be very difficult to manage an aid operation if we have to move from Rafah. We are struggling to meet the demands of the people right now," he told Al Jazeera English.

"If there are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people on the move again, we just do not have the resources to support them but also operationally we will not be able to effectively or safely run operations from a city that's under assault from the Israeli army."

- 'Hunger and despair' -

Despite the move south, many remain in Wadi Gaza, in the centre, and the north.

Georgios Petropoulos, head of the UN humanitarian agency OCHA in Gaza, said the territory was being turned "into a wasteland of hunger and despair".

Aid agencies were being blocked, while the few trucks that make it through are mobbed by residents, who in north Gaza were "on the edge of starvation", he told AFP on Wednesday.

"They congregate by trucks and other vehicles carrying goods sometimes in their thousands, and unload them in minutes," he added.

An AFP reporter on Wednesday witnessed hundreds of men waiting for a convoy of aid trucks south of Gaza City on the main road from north to south.

When they saw Israeli military vehicles advance in their direction, many fled but others kept moving towards the convoy. Several were wounded by gunfire and were taken to hospital, the reporter added.

World Central Kitchen, a non-profit organisation providing food aid, also reported only being able to get to north Gaza "a limited number of times each week".

They now take two trucks -- one transporting meals for hospitals, and the other to deliver food to crowds on the route, it said in a statement.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, on a visit to the region this week, made a new plea for more aid into Gaza.

"Preventing access prevents lifesaving humanitarian aid," wrote Lazzarini. "With the necessary political will, this can be easily reversed."

But Israel claims that Hamas, which runs Gaza, is diverting aid for its own ends to prolong the five-month conflict.

Israel strikes Rafah after US warning against expanding ground offensive to overcrowded city

THE USA IS A PAPER TIGER

GRAFITTI VIET NAM, 1968

Tara Suter
Fri, February 9, 2024



Israel struck the southern Gaza city of Rafah, following a warning from Biden administration officials and aid agencies to Israel against expanding its ground offensive to there, according to The Associated Press.

Airstrikes, occurring overnight and into Friday, struck two residential buildings in the southern city. In central Gaza, two other places were bombed, including a kindergarten that had become a shelter for those who were displaced. AP journalists who saw bodies coming into hospitals reported that 22 people were killed.

On Thursday, President Biden gave some of his most forceful criticisms of Israel’s actions in Gaza in remarks from the White House.

“I’m of the view, as you know, that the conduct of the response in Gaza Strip has been over the top,” the president said.

Biden said he had pushed the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, whom he accidentally called the “president of Mexico,” to open gates for humanitarian aid to make its way into Gaza.

“I’ve been pushing really hard, really hard to get humanitarian assistance into Gaza,” Biden said. “There are a lot of innocent people who are starving, lot of innocent people who are in trouble and dying. And it’s got to stop.”

The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza said that the death toll of Palestinians is now close to 28,000, according to the AP. This toll includes both civilians and combatants.

Israel stating its intention for the expansion of the ground offensive into Rafah resulted in American backlash.

“We have yet to see any evidence of serious planning for such an operation,” State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said Thursday.

Patel also said that going ahead with the offensive “with no planning and little thought in an area where there is sheltering of a million people would be a disaster.”

Israel-Gaza war: US says it will not back unplanned Rafah offensive

Tom Bateman State Department Correspondent & Kathryn Armstrong & Patrick Jackson - BBC News
Fri, February 9, 2024 at 6:59 AM MST·4 min read
69

The British Broadcasting Corporation

The US has warned Israel that staging a military offensive into Gaza's southern city of Rafah without proper planning would be a "disaster".

Some 1.5 million Palestinians are surviving in the city bordering Egypt in dire humanitarian conditions.

The White House said it would not support major operations without due consideration for the refugees there.

The comments come days after Israel's leader said the military had been told to prepare to operate in Rafah.

Speaking on Thursday evening, and without referring to Rafah, US President Joe Biden said Israel's actions in Gaza had been "over the top".

Reported Israeli air strikes on Gaza on Friday killed at least 15 people including eight in Rafah, officials from the Hamas-run health ministry said. Israel did not immediately comment.

Salem El-Rayyes, a freelance journalist living at a camp for displaced people in Rafah, said children were among those killed when an air strike hit a house nearby. Bodies of the victims "flew from the third floor", he told Reuters.

Most of the people in Rafah have been displaced by fighting from other parts of Gaza and are living in tents.

Garda al-Kourd, a mother-of-two who said she had been displaced six times during the war, said she was expecting an Israeli assault but hoped there would be a ceasefire agreement before it happened.

"If they come to Rafah, it will be the end for us, like we are waiting for death. We have no other place to go," she told the BBC from a relative's house in Rafah where she was living with 20 other people.

The head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, Jan Egeland, told the BBC that such an operation in Rafah - which he called "the world's biggest displacement camp" - would be a catastrophe.

"There are people on their flimsy plastic sheeting. They are fighting for food. There is no drinking water. There is epidemic disease and then they [the IDF] want to bring a war to this place. You can't make it up really," he said.

Much of northern and central Gaza has been reduced to ruins by sustained Israeli bombardment since the war began on 7 October.

Earlier, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the Israeli military had a "special obligation as they conduct operations there or anywhere else to make sure that they're factoring in protection for innocent civilian life".

"Military operations right now would be a disaster for those people and it's not something that we would support," he said, adding that the US had not seen anything to suggest Israel was going to launch a major operation in Rafah imminently.

Deputy State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel echoed Mr Kirby's comments, saying: ''We [the US] would not support the undertaking of something like this without serious and credible planning."

Asked by the BBC where refugees in Rafah should go in the event of an operation, Mr Patel said these were "legitimate questions that we believe the Israelis should answer".

Speaking in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said any "military operation that Israel undertakes needs to put civilians first and foremost... and that's especially true in the case of Rafah".

It is rare for the US, a key ally and military backer of Israel, to talk about any forthcoming stages of the country's military offensive in Gaza - but this was a clear warning.

Why are Israel and Hamas fighting in Gaza?

Washington sends around $3.8bn (£3bn) in military aid to Israel each year, making the country the world's biggest recipient of such funding.

Around 1,300 people were killed during the Hamas attacks on southern Israel on 7 October, according to Israeli officials.

More than 27,800 Palestinians have been killed and at least 67,000 injured by the war launched by Israel in response, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

"They are living in overcrowded makeshift shelters, in unsanitary conditions, without running water, electricity and adequate food supplies," was the stark assessment of the situation by UN chief António Guterres on Thursday.

"We were clear in condemning the horrific acts of Hamas. We are also clear in condemning the violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza."

On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had ordered troops to "prepare to operate" in Rafah and that "total victory" by Israel over Hamas was just months away.


map

Israel is a Jewish nation, but its population is far from a monolith

Jessica Trisko Darden, Virginia Commonwealth University
Fri, February 9, 2024 

THE CONVERSATION

Israeli soldiers attend the funeral of Staff Sgt. Emanuel Feleke, an Ethiopian Israeli who was killed in Gaza in December 2023. Ohad Zwigenberg


As the toll of the Israel-Hamas war continues to mount, Israeli military casualties are shedding new light on a topic that rarely gets international media attention – Israel’s ethnic diversity.

In Israel’s single largest casualty event since the Gaza invasion began in October 2023, 21 Israeli soldiers were killed in an explosion on Jan. 22, 2024.

Among the dead was reserve soldier Sgt. 1st Class Cedrick Garin, a 23-year-old Filipino-Israeli whose mother came to the country to work before he was born.

Earlier in the war, Staff Sgt. Aschalwu Sama, an Ethiopian Jew, saved his comrades after being fatally wounded in an explosion at the entry to one of Gaza’s tunnels.

Other Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza include reserve Sgt. Maj. Rafael Elias Mosheyoff, born in Colombia, and reserve soldier Sgt. 1st Class Yuval Lopez, who moved to Israel from Peru at the age of 6.

I am a scholar who examines the roles of minority groups in armed conflict. I find the ethnic diversity of people fighting in and otherwise affected by the Israel-Hamas war exceptional.

Hamas’ roughly 240 hostages, for example, were nationals of 25 different countries, including Thailand, Nepal, the Philippines and Tanzania. Hamas kidnapped Muslim citizens of Israel alongside Jewish Israelis, Americans and other dual nationals.

The mother of Israeli-Filipino soldier Cedric Garin, killed in Gaza on Jan. 23, 2024, grieves during his funeral in Tel Aviv.

Marco Longari/AFP via Getty Images

Israel’s diversity

Israel has close to 9.7 million residents. About 75% of these people identify as Jewish. Almost 80% of Israeli Jews were born in Israel. Much smaller groups of Israeli Jews were born in Africa and Asia, in countries including India and Uzbekistan.

Roughly 20% of Israelis are Arab, including Muslims, Christians and Druze, a group of people who observe a distinct monotheistic religion.

Israel is also home to Muslim ethnic minority communities. This includes the Bedouins, formerly nomadic Arab herdsmen who have lived in the area for centuries, and the Circassians, Muslims who were expelled from the Caucasus region of the Russian Empire during a period of ethnic cleansing in the 19th century.

Another 5% of Israeli residents are neither Jewish nor Arab, including more than 25,000 African migrants who live in Israel.

Military service requirements

Israel has different rules for military service for its citizens, depending on their background.

Every Israeli citizen over the age of 18 who is Jewish, Druze or Circassian must serve in the military, unless they are religiously observant and/or married when conscripted. Israeli Arabs are not required to serve but can volunteer to do so. Women serve for a minimum of two years, while men must serve for 32 months.

The Israel Defense Forces has long been considered the central institution that unifies Israeli society. Mandatory service brings together Israelis of all backgrounds, forces them to work together and instills a sense of obligation to the broader society.

While military casualty figures are not broken down by religion or ethnicity, my analysis of death notices shows that Israel’s minorities, both Jewish and non-Jewish, are prominent among those killed fighting for the world’s only Jewish state.

Relatives and friends attend the funeral of Maj. Jamal Abbas, an Israeli-Druze soldier killed in Gaza in November 2023. 

Amir Levy/Getty Images

Minorities in Israel

Ahmad Abu Latif, a Bedouin Israeli who previously served in the military as a sergeant major, wrote a social media post in October 2023 highlighting Israeli Arab contributions to the war effort.

“Unfortunately, among the casualties of war are Bedouin and Druze soldiers, Muslims and Christians, who fell as heroes during the defense of the country,” Abu Latif wrote.

Abu Latif, who was called up as a reserve soldier, was killed in the Jan. 22, 2024, blast in Gaza.

The vast majority of the 370,000 Bedouins in Israel are citizens and identify as Muslim. Thousands of Bedouins also live in neighboring countries such as Jordan and Lebanon but do not have citizenship there. Their tribes failed to officially register with these countries when they became independent in the 1940s.

Unlike Jewish Israelis and Druze men who are required to serve in the Israel Defense Forces, Bedouins volunteer. In 2020, a record number of 600 Bedouins joined the Israel military. They are typically placed in scouting or tracking units because of their familiarity with the Negev Desert.

Another minority group in Israel, the Druze people, have a long history of Israeli military service.

Twenty-three-year old Jamal Abbas, a major in the military and a member of the Druze community, was killed in combat in southern Gaza on Nov. 18, 2023. Abbas’ grandfather was one of the first Druze soldiers to attain the rank of brigade commander.

Another Israeli Druze soldier, Lt. Col. Salman Habaka, responded to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. When Habaka was killed in Gaza only a month later, the 33-year-old was the highest-ranking Israeli soldier killed in the war.

Although they make up only 1.5% of Israeli households, roughly 40 Druze civilians have been killed since the start of the war, representing roughly 3.5% of Israeli deaths (including the Oct. 7, 2023, victims). One reason is that their community’s traditional location near the Lebanese border has made them vulnerable to incoming fire from the Hezbollah militant group.

Jewish minorities

Even the deaths of Jewish soldiers reflect the complexity of Israeli society. In all, Jewish soldiers killed in the conflict have ties to at least 12 countries other than Israel.

Soldiers killed in Gaza include Staff Sgt. Yonatan Chaim, an American who converted to Judaism after taking a college course on the Holocaust and then moved to Israel.

Fallen members of Israel’s 170,000-person Ethiopian community include Staff Sgt. Alemnew Emanuel Feleke, a 22-year-old commando who was wounded on Dec. 5, 2023, in southern Gaza and died the following day. Staff Sgt. Birhanu Kassie died in an explosion in late December.

Equal in war?

The visible presence of Israel’s minority communities in the military is partly a result of a long-standing military policy called the Haredi exemption. This exempts ultra-Orthodox Jews, who make up approximately 13% of the country, from military service. Women as well as men studying at a yeshiva, a Jewish religious college, are excused from service so they can follow strict religious observances and study religious texts.

In 2017, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled this policy was discriminatory and unconstitutional. But the ruling has not been enforced because of pressure from religious conservative political parties. In August 2023, only 9% of eligible ultra-Orthodox men served in the military, compared with an 80% national average among other Jewish Israelis.

Yet even the Haredi exemption is being undermined by the war. More than 2,000 Haredi men have volunteered for service since the war began. At least 150 have been formally drafted. War continues to shape the relationship between Israel’s citizens and the military that protects them.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Jessica Trisko Darden, Virginia Commonwealth University

Read more:


Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces a dilemma: Free the hostages or continue the war in Gaza?


Reflections on hope during unprecedented violence in the Israel-Hamas war


Israel’s military reservists are joining protests – potentially transforming a political crisis into a security crisis

Jessica Trisko Darden is Director of the (In)Security Lab at Virginia Commonwealth University and Director of the Security & Foreign Policy Initiative at William & Mary's Global Research Institute.

U$A
Brown University students enter eighth day of hunger strike over Israel-Gaza

Nadine Yousif - BBC News
Fri, February 9, 2024 

A group of Brown University students have entered the eighth day of a hunger strike to pressure their school to divest from businesses they say benefit from Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories.

The 19 students began their protests on 2 February.

They said they will continue until Brown officials consider divesting.

It is likely the longest hunger strike in the US since the beginning of the ongoing Israel-Gaza war.

The strike at the Ivy League university in Rhode Island has been organised by campus groups Palestine Solidarity Caucus and Jews for Ceasefire Now.

It is led by both Palestinian and Jewish students, said Ariela Rosenzweig, one of the students striking.

More than 27,900 Palestinians have been killed and at least 67,000 injured after Israel launched its campaign in the Palestinian enclave, according to the health ministry - which is run by Hamas.

The campaign followed an unprecedented assault by Hamas gunmen on 7 October, in which more than 1,200 people in southern Israel were killed, according to Israeli officials.

• Israel-Gaza inflames tensions on US college campuses

• Israel Gaza war: History of the conflict explained

Ms Rosenzweig, 22, said it was inspired by a similar 11-day hunger strike on campus in 1986 which called for divestment from firms operating under apartheid in South Africa.

"I see our hunger strike as part of a lineage of student organising," she told the BBC on Friday, adding that it follows months of protest at the university, including a sit-in in November where 61 students were arrested.

"It is a desperate plea for the university to not only hear our voices, but the voices of thousands who have been murdered in Gaza," Ms Rosenzweig said.

As part of the hunger strike, the students said they have only consumed water and pedialyte - an electrolyte solution - for over a week.

They added they have spent each day at the university's campus centre, taking part in protests and other programming to raise awareness about Israel's ongoing military campaign in Gaza, and have received support from other students and faculty.

Their action seeks to pressure Brown to consider a proposal recommending that it divest from companies that "profit from human rights abuses in Palestine".

The 16-page proposal, penned in 2020 by Brown's advisory committee on corporate responsibility in investment policies (ACCRIP), names 11 companies, including RTX Corporation, a weapons manufacturer and Northrop Grumman, a military company, among others.

The strike was timed ahead of a series of closed meetings by the Corporation of Brown taking place Thursday and Friday, where the students hoped their demands would be discussed.

In a letter sent to the students at the beginning of the hunger strike, Brown President Christina Paxson expressed concern for their wellbeing, but added that "the bar for divestment is high".

"It requires a demonstration that the University's investments in the assets of specific companies create social harm, and that divestment will alleviate that harm," she said in the letter, dated 4 February.

The president added that the university rejects using the endowment "as a tool for political advocacy on contested issues".

In an email, Brown spokesperson Brian Clark told BBC that the university is not directly invested in any defence stocks or large munition manufacturers.

And while a large percentage of the university's endowment is overseen by third-party managers, he said Brown is "confident that our external managers have the highest level of ethics and share the values of the Brown community, including the rejection of violence".

Sherena Razek, a PhD student and one of the organisers of the divestment campaign, said she believes the university's response shows "a lack of regard" for the students undertaking the hunger strike and their request.

She noted that the university has used divestment in the past to protest other issues, like the South African Apartheid, the Darfur genocide in Sudan and the tobacco industry.

Ms Rosenzweig said that given the university's divestment history, she and the other students believe their request is not impractical.

The hunger strike began as Hisham Awartani, a Palestinian-American student, returned to Brown's campus after spending months recovering from a gunshot wound to his spine.

Mr Awartani, who is among the students supporting the calls for divestment, was one of three young Palestinian-Americans who were shot in Burlington, Vermont on Thanksgiving weekend, in what they believe was a hate crime.

The suspected gunman, 48-year-old Jason Eaton, has pleaded not guilty to three counts of second-degree attempted murder.

During the hunger strike, some students carried signs that read "no others like Hisham".

The protests at Brown are among many that have taken place across American university campuses, which have become the backdrop to heated debates on the ongoing Israel-Gaza war since October.

While it is likely the longest hunger strike in the US since October, it is not the first. Advocates, including Sex and the City actress Cynthia Nixon, staged a five-day hunger strike in November outside the White House calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

A Gazan man in Bristol was in hospital in December after being on a hunger strike for nearly two months over the war.

Israel's war in Gaza claims lives of 85 journalists, media watchdog group CPJ says

Reporters Without Borders filed a war crimes complaint

Fri, February 9, 2024 

Smoke and fire mark the skyline in Rafah in the southern region of Gaza earlier this month. The Committee to Protect Journalists said 85 media workers have died since fighting started between Israel and Hamas militants on Oct. 7. Photo by Ismael Mohamad/UPI

Feb. 9 (UPI) -- At least 85 journalists and media workers have been killed while covering Israel's war with Hamas in Gaza since the initial attack on Oct. 7, the Committee to Project Journalists said on Friday.

The organization said the number represents the deadliest period for journalists since 1992. Overall, more than 27,000 Palestinians have died in Gaza and another 1,200 in Israel.

The CPJ said of those killed, 78 were Palestinian, four were Israelis and three were from Lebanon. The committee said 16 more have been injured in fighting, four remain missing and 25 have been arrested.

"CPJ emphasizes that journalists are civilians doing important work during times of crisis and must not be targeted by warring parties," Sherif Mansour, the organization's Middle East and North Africa program coordinator, said in a statement.

"Journalists across the region are making great sacrifices to cover this heart-breaking conflict. Those in Gaza, in particular, have paid, and continue to pay, an unprecedented toll and face exponential threat."

Last month, CPJ said that, since Oct. 7, 2023, Israel rose to sixth place among countries that have arrested the most journalists -- behind China, Myanmar, Belarus, Russia and Vietnam.

Three months ago, Reporters Without Borders filed a war crimes complaint with the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes committed during the war.

CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

Israel is holding up food for 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza, the main UN aid agency there says

JULIA FRANKEL
Fri, February 9, 2024 

Palestinians protest against the suspension of funds from several donor countries to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, UNRWA, in front of Agency's offices in the West Bank city of Beitunia Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2024. Several countries suspended funding worth some $440 million, almost half of the UNRWA's annual budget following Israeli allegations that 12 UNRWA employees participated in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks.

 (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser) 


JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel has imposed financial restrictions on the main U.N. agency providing aid in the Gaza Strip, a measure which prevented a shipment of food for 1.1 million Palestinians from reaching the war-battered enclave, the agency's director said Friday.

The restrictions deepened a crisis between Israel and UNRWA, whose operations have been threatened following Israeli accusations that some of its workers participated in the Oct. 7 attack that triggered Israel's war in Gaza. Those accusations have led major donor nations, including the U.S., to suspend funding to the U.N. organization and left its future in question.

UNRWA's director, Philippe Lazzarini, said Friday that that a convoy of food donated by Turkey has been sitting for weeks in the Israeli port city of Ashdod. The agency said that the Israeli contractor they work with received a call from Israeli customs authorities “ordering them not to process any UNRWA goods.”

That stoppage means 1,049 shipping containers of rice, flour, chickpeas, sugar and cooking oil — enough to feed 1.1 million people for one month — are stuck, even as an estimated 25% of families in Gaza face catastrophic hunger.

The World Food Program warned Friday that Gaza could be plunged into famine as early as May. The U.N. food agency defines a famine as when 30% of children are malnourished, one-fifth of households face acute food shortages and two of every 10,000 people are dying from hunger or malnutrition.

Israel declared war and imposed a siege on Gaza in response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, which killed 1,200 people and took 250 others hostage. The war has led to a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, with only a trickle of humanitarian aid entering the territory each day.

Israel has long railed against UNRWA, accusing it of tolerating or even collaborating with Hamas and perpetuating the 76-year-old Palestinian refugee crisis. UNRWA, which serves about 6 million Palestinians whose families were displaced during the war surrounding Israel's creation in 1948, denies the charges. But the tensions have only intensified following the latest allegations by Israel.

Juliette Touma, communications director for the agency, said that UNWRA's bank account with Bank Leumi, which the agency has held for decades, was also frozen this week. In addition, Touma said that Israeli customs authorities notified the agency that UNRWA will no longer be granted tax exemptions.

Israel's finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, tweeted on Thursday that “the state of Israel will not give tax benefits to terrorist aides.”

Smotrich, a far-right ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, didn't respond to a request for comment.

The agency has been able to reroute other aid shipments through Port Said in Egypt, but Lazzarini warned Friday that the holdup means further difficulties in the already challenging task of aid distribution to Gaza. About 80% of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been displaced by the war.

UNWRA is the main provider of aid to Palestinians in Gaza, but Israeli bombardment and combat between Israel and Hamas has made much of the territory too dangerous for aid convoys to cross. For the last two weeks, the agency has been unable to deliver aid to around 300,000 Palestinians estimated to still be in the northern half of Gaza, where the World Food Program says food insecurity is the worst.

Lazzarini said efforts have instead focused on the 1.3 million displaced Palestinians sheltering in the makeshift tent camps of Rafah, a city on the border with Egypt where the agency relies on local police to escort aid convoys to distribution points and prevent theft. But that has also grown increasingly challenging, as Israeli warplanes bomb targets in the city.

Airstrikes there killed eight police officers in the city over the last four days, Lazzarini said, making police reluctant to continue helping the agency. Three strikes have taken place near an UNWRA clinic, Lazzarini said. Israeli media have portrayed the police escorts as an attempt by Hamas to seize aid shipments for its own use.

Lazzarini said that the police the agency works with weren't affiliated with militant groups. Touma said that the police escort was necessary to prevent people from throwing stones at the convoy and attempting to steal aid from them.

Israel alleged last month that 12 employees of the aid agency participated in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in southern Israel. Several countries suspended funding worth about $440 million, almost half of the agency’s annual budget.

Two U.N. investigations are underway, including an independent review announced this week. The review, headed by a former French foreign minister, is supposed to focus on the way the agency ensures that it remains neutral and responds to allegations that it failed to do so. Colonna’s team plans to look at whether the system works and how it might be improved.

Lazzarini said Friday that he immediately fired the workers, rather than suspending them, without first investigating the evidence against them. Two had been killed by the time the allegations surfaced. Lazzarini said there was too much pressure on the organization — and current conditions make investigating the workers difficult — to do anything else.

“Knowing that the organization is under fierce and ugly attacks,” he said, “I could not take the risk ... I could have suspended them, but I fired them.”

Undercover Israeli killings in West Bank hospital may be war crimes: UN experts

Reuters
Fri, February 9, 2024 at 8:42 

Aftermath of an Israeli raid, in Jenin


GENEVA (Reuters) - The killing of three Palestinian men in a hospital in the occupied West Bank last month by Israeli commandos disguised as medical workers and Muslim women may amount to war crimes, a group of U.N. experts said on Friday.

The three militants were killed on Jan. 29 in a joint undercover operation by the army, Shin Bet security service and border police in the Ibn Sina hospital in Jenin, one of the most volatile cities in the West Bank, Israel's military said.

"Under international humanitarian law, killing a defenceless injured patient who is being treated in a hospital amounts to a war crime," the U.N. experts said in a statement, referring to Basel Al-Ghazzawi, a patient being treated for injuries it said were caused by an Israeli air strike.


"By disguising themselves as seemingly harmless, protected medical personnel and civilians, the Israeli forces also prima facie committed the war crime of perfidy, which is prohibited in all circumstances," they added, calling for Israel to conduct an investigation.

The experts concerned are special rapporteurs engaged by the United Nations to examine a specific human rights issue.

Israel’s military was not immediately available for comment on their statement.

CCTV footage from the hospital showed a group of about 10 people, dressed variously in civilian clothes and medical garb and including three in headscarves and women's clothing, pacing through a corridor, armed with assault rifles.

Israel's military has said that one of the men killed in the hospital was a member of the militant Palestinian group Hamas, which governs Gaza, and the others worked for Jenin Brigade and the armed wing of Islamic Jihad.

The West Bank has seen an explosion of violence since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7 and the subsequent invasion of Gaza by Israel.

(Reporting by Emma Farge in Geneva; Additional reporting by Emily Rose in Jerusalem; Editing by Gareth Jones)

UN calls for mental health support for children impacted by Gaza war

Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber
Updated Thu, February 8, 2024

Aftermath of an Israeli strike on a house in Rafah


By Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber

GENEVA (Reuters) -A United Nations committee appealed on Thursday for "massive psychosocial support" for children traumatised by violence in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and Israel and said it would review Israel's treatment of children later this year.

Israel's military offensive in Gaza, launched in the wake of a deadly rampage by Hamas militants in southern Israel on Oct. 7, has displaced most of the Palestinian enclave's 2.3 million people, left homes and infrastructure in ruins and caused acute shortages of food, water and medicine.

Children and women make up the bulk of the nearly 28,000 people killed during the offensive, according to the authorities in Gaza. In their Oct. 7 attack in Israel, the militants killed about 1,200 people and took 253 hostages.

"The rights of children living under the state of Israel's effective control are being gravely violated at a level that has rarely been seen in recent history," said Ann Skelton, chair of the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

"We call for massive psychosocial support for children and families to relieve the traumatic and long-lasting impact of war, including Israeli children who were victims of, or witnesses to, the (Oct. 7) attacks and those whose family members have been taken hostage," she told a news conference.

UNICEF said last week that nearly all children in Gaza were thought to require mental health support.

Skelton said the committee "deeply regrets" that Israel had postponed its participation in a planned dialogue on child issues and that it was now scheduled to take place in September.

Israel's diplomatic mission in Geneva said officials were focused on the war effort against Hamas, which made them "unable to dedicate the necessary resources to prepare and appear before the Committee in January."

"It is regrettable, but sadly not surprising, that the CRC does not convey understanding for Israel's request to postpone its review before the Committee, due to the state of the war," the Permanent Mission of Israel in Geneva said in a statement.

Skelton also voiced concern for children living in the occupied West Bank, which she said faced "facing arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial killings and violence committed by occupying forces and settlers".

Israel's military has said it operates against suspected militants in the West Bank.

The West Bank had already been experiencing the highest levels of unrest in decades during the months preceding the Oct. 7 assault on Israel, but confrontations have increased sharply following the Israeli ground invasion of Gaza.

(Reporting by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber; Editing by Gareth Jones and Cynthia Osterman)

Palestinian woman says she was mistreated after Israel detained her in Gaza

Fri, February 9, 2024 
By Mohammad Salem

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (Reuters) - Israeli soldiers seized Tamam al-Aswad after their tanks crashed through the walls of a Gaza City school where she was sheltering in December, later imprisoning her for weeks in Israel where she says she was insulted and mistreated.

Aswad says she was freed on Thursday at the Kerem Shalom crossing point from Israel into Gaza and has been unable to contact her family after last seeing them at the moment of her arrest.

Israel's military did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on Aswad's detention and allegations of mistreatment. It has previously said it detains Palestinians in accordance with international law and its protocols are to treat prisoners with dignity.

"Two tanks entered the school. I was watching from a hole in the wall and I saw them entering homes and blowing them up. I heard women's voices from inside those homes. It was terrifying," she said.

Aswad is one of many Palestinians that Israel has detained during its four-month-old assault on Gaza, an offensive that has led to massive devastation across much of the tiny, crowded enclave, pushing most of its inhabitants from their homes.

Palestinian health authorities say nearly 28,000 people have been killed in the war.

Israel says it wants to crush the militant group Hamas which rampaged across the border on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages according to Israeli tallies.

Israel has won control of much of northern and central Gaza, areas it told civilians to leave early in the conflict and says it has killed about 10,000 of the group's fighters, though Hamas disputes that.

When Israeli forces entered the Omar Ibn al-Aas school in Gaza City's Sheikh Radwan district where Aswad was sheltering on Dec. 14, they lined up the men and ordered them to strip before taking the women to the side, she said.

They assembled captives at the al-Taqwa mosque nearby. "They were interrogating me, asking 'which faction do you belong to?'" she said. Aswad said she told them she was only a housewife and had not harmed anybody.

"They told me: 'You are a threat to Israel's security. You will be detained for five years'," she said. She was then handcuffed and blindfolded and put on a bus with other detainees, she said.

ABUSE

During the drive, the soldiers insulted her and other detainees, she said. She was told to keep her head bent over and despite this being very uncomfortable, they hit her on the head, arm or neck if she tried to lift her head. The same was done to others on the bus, she said.

The first place where they were held for several days "was bitterly cold", Aswad said. She was then blindfolded again, handcuffed and shackled, and transferred to Damon Prison in Haifa, she said.

Israel has not said how many people it has detained during its military operations in Gaza. Rights groups have estimated that the number is in the thousands.

"It was forbidden to raise your head even if your neck or back hurt. It was forbidden to say anything even if you were in pain," she said.

In detention, she said soldiers ordered her over to a wall where there was an Israeli flag. "The soldier said to me 'kiss the flag, kiss the flag'," she said. When she refused, he banged her head into the wall and then hit her on the back, she said.

Reuters was unable to independently confirm any of the allegations.

Eventually a soldier told the detainees "all the women of Gaza will return to their homes", she said. Her return was "an indescribable joy", but it is incomplete. She is now in Rafah in the south and believes her husband and children are still in Gaza City, where much of the worst fighting has happened.

"God willing, we will reach each other," she said.

(Reporting by Mohammad Salem, writing by Angus McDowall, Editing by William Maclean)

NORTH AMERICA

Construction Industry Grapples With Its Top Killer: Drug Overdoses

J. Edward Moreno

The New York Times
Fri, February 9, 2024

Construction workers work at a site, in New York, on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023.

 (Andres Kudacki/The New York Times)

At One Madison, a high-rise under construction on 23rd Street in Manhattan, workers face dangers daily: live wires, electrical hazards, heavy machinery. Cold gusts of wind whip around them as they lay concrete and operate forklifts. Access to the upper floors of the 28-story building is a ride on a noisy construction elevator.

City and federal officials visited the site recently to give a safety presentation, but they weren’t there to remind workers how to avoid falls or injuries. They were showing workers how to prevent the biggest killer in the industry: a drug overdose.

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“We ask you to do things based on getting home at the end of the day,” Brian Crain, a compliance assistance specialist at the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, told a crowd of more than 100 workers in hard hats. “Addiction works the same way,” he said.

Construction workers already had the highest on-the-job death toll of any industry. Now they are more likely to die of overdose than those in any other line of work, according to a new analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That disparity stems in part from addictive medication workers are prescribed to manage pain from injuries, which are common because of the physical nature of the work.

It’s an issue that the industry — which is already trying to protect its workers from falls, electrocutions and chemical hazards — has struggled to get a handle on for more than a decade. The presentation at One Madison in November was just one example of how the industry has started reckoning with the problem in recent years. Unions now employ full-time addiction and mental health specialists, and workplace safety experts have increasingly had to focus on preventing overdoses.

The industry has the highest death rate attributed to overdose, according to the CDC study, which was published in August. The report, the agency’s most comprehensive examination of overdose deaths by occupation, found that there were more than 162 overdose deaths per 100,000 construction workers in 2020, the most recent year for which data is available. The food service industry, with nearly 118 deaths among the same number of workers, had the second-highest rate.

But in the same year, the number of overall deaths on the job in construction was about 10 workers per 100,000, according to data from the Department of Labor, suggesting that workers were roughly 16 times as likely to die of an overdose as they were from a work-related injury.

“Statistically, this is a bigger threat to construction workers’ health and safety than the actual work,” said Brian Turmail, a spokesperson at the Associated General Contractors, a construction industry trade group.

The industry mirrors demographics vulnerable to addiction: A majority of construction workers are men, who are more likely than women to die of overdoses overall. Hispanic people are overrepresented in the construction industry and have a rising overdose mortality rate overall.

The industry is often rife with casual substance use, said Aaron Walsh, an addiction recovery specialist with the St. Louis Laborers’ health and welfare fund. Walsh, who is in recovery for drug addiction, is one of two people the union employs full time to help members struggling with drug addiction.

“It’s pretty prevalent in our population,” he said.

Injuries in construction are more common than in other fields. The job is often stressful and hard on workers’ bodies, making them susceptible to injury and more likely to seek medical attention for pain relief.

In many cases, workers carry heavy tool bags on their shoulders and spend long periods bent down or on their knees. One-third of construction workers have muscle or bone ailments, which make them three times as likely to be prescribed opioids for pain. They also do not often get paid sick leave, which could make opioids an option for getting back to work quickly.

Brendan Loftus knows that experience firsthand. In 1998, he fell down an elevator shaft at a construction site. He learned that he had a spinal injury while in the emergency room but decided to not manage his pain with opioids because he had already overcome an opioid addiction. He was getting married in a month, so against medical advice, he returned to work after only two weeks. “I had a wedding to pay for,” Loftus said.

Construction work tends to be cyclical, adding to the pressure to work whenever possible. Once one project is done, a worker may not know when the next one will come. Wayne Russell, 32, a construction worker from New Jersey, has been out of work since November.

“Money can stop coming in, but your bills don’t,” he said. Russell spent some of his time off taking a mental health and addiction course offered by his union, the International Union of Elevator Constructors. At a recent meeting, four of the 10 men in attendance, including Russell, had struggled with substance abuse.

Loftus, who now provides addiction services for members of the International Union of Elevator Constructors, said that his union had begun to notice that the overdose problem was getting severe in 2015 when it lost five members to overdoses in 11 months, and that the problem had gotten only worse.

“If we had lost five members to on-the-job fatalities, people would be picketing in the streets,” Loftus said. “But nobody wanted to talk about this, because it was a dirty little secret.”

One of the first members Loftus helped with recovery was Michael Cruz, a 25-year-old construction worker who had an opioid addiction.

In October 2016, Cruz had just bought building supplies at Home Depot for an upcoming job when Loftus invited him to dinner. Cruz had recently checked out of a 30-day rehab program and was eager to get back to work. He was particularly excited about the next project because it would be the first he would be able to work on from start to finish.

Cruz declined the dinner invitation. Later that night, he was found at his aunt’s apartment in Queens, dead of an apparent overdose, lying next to a bag with the measuring tape and other supplies he had bought that evening.

Loftus was the last person to speak to Cruz. “That’s how it happens,” he said. “It’s that fast.”

Across the country, overdose deaths are on the rise. That is in part because many who are addicted to prescription painkillers may turn to street drugs such as fentanyl and other potent synthetic opioids, which health officials say are often mixed with other stimulants. The pharmaceutical industry has been widely accused of profiting off the nation’s opioid crisis, which killed nearly 645,000 people from 1999 to 2021, according to the CDC.

Cruz’s addiction started with painkillers that he had been prescribed after a car accident left him with lingering back pain. Eight years later, he had just earned his first paycheck after checking out of rehab when he died.

“He was hiding it well enough,” his sister, Lizbeth Rodas, said at her home in Morristown, New Jersey, which was adorned with framed family photos, including two of her brother. She described Cruz as both a jokester and a gentleman who was like a brother to her children. “We thought he was cured, and everything was back to normal.”

Rodas’ husband and son both work in construction. Two years ago, when one of her sons was in a car accident, he was prescribed OxyContin for the pain. Rodas said she had begged him not to take it, and he complied.

“It was so scary for me, to think of going through the same thing again,” she said.

Cruz’s toxicology report showed traces of codeine, fentanyl and heroin in his system. Loftus, the union counselor, said most workers addicted to substances like heroin had been addicted to prescription painkillers first. Among workers’ compensation claims with at least one prescription, about one-fourth had one for an opioid, according to data from 40 states gathered by the National Council on Compensation Insurance.

Part of the challenge the industry faces is breaking the stigma of addiction. Rodas said that when she and her family were preparing Cruz’s funeral, they were unsure whether they should tell people he died of an overdose. Per their mother’s wishes, they chose to tell the truth.

“So many people came forward after that,” she said, including union colleagues.

Tackling such a pervasive issue is a gargantuan task for the industry’s safety leaders, who are used to protecting workers from physical injuries. Increasingly, construction companies are stocking job sites with Narcan, a brand name for the opioid overdose reversal medication naloxone.

“It’s not just about the physical safety of the workers on our job sites, it’s also what goes on when they’re not on the construction site,” said Rebecca Severson, director of safety at Gilbane Building Co., one of many that have started adding Narcan to its first-aid kits.

The Center for Construction Research and Training, a nonprofit created by a federation of construction unions, has sponsored research projects on the effectiveness of various mitigation measures, including having Narcan on job sites and offering workers paid sick leave.

Chris Trahan Cain, the center’s executive director, has decades of experience making construction jobs safer. She is an expert on chemical exposure, which is a vital concern in an industry where workers can often handle materials containing asbestos and lead.

Cain did not initially see preventing overdoses as a particularly integral part of her job. Now, it is the most acute safety issue in her field. Since 2018, she has led the group’s response to the overdose crisis ravaging the construction industry.

“As I was preparing to create this task force, I cried,” Cain said. “It’s really beyond my scope of expertise.”

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