SLAPP HAPPY

Balkan journalists battle deluge of malicious lawsuits

Belgrade (AFP) – Serbian journalist Radmilo Markovic has gone over every full stop and comma of an article about the powerful mayor of Belgrade that has landed him in court.

Issued on: 11/12/2024 -

'No free country without a free press': A Reporters Without Border protest 

© Tobias Schwarz / AFP

Aleksandar Sapic is demanding 100,000 euros ($105,000) in damages from the investigative news site where Markovic works -- an enormous sum for such a case in the Balkans.

The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) -- one of the best outlets of its kind in Eastern Europe -- fears they could go bankrupt if they lose.

The case is far from uncommon. Serbia is bottom of the class in the region for abusive lawsuits designed to muzzle the media, according to the Europe-wide legal watchdog CASE.

It says SLAPPs -- or strategic lawsuits against public participation -- are being increasingly used by the rich and powerful to bully and silence journalists, activists and NGOs.





Sapic, a member of the governing right-wing Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), sued BIRN, claiming two articles about alleged corruption involving two of his properties damaged his reputation and caused him mental anguish.

While the mayor insists he is only defending himself, BIRN and rights groups argue that the lawsuits are blatant SLAPPs.

"The deployment of abusive lawsuits (SLAPPs) is a growing trend in the Balkans," Pavol Szalai, head of the Europe desk of media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF), told AFP.

A string of other outlets in Serbia, including the Crime and Corruption Reporting Network (KRIK), are also facing highly questionable lawsuits, with journalists in neighbouring Montenegro, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina saying they too are being targeted.
Psychological pressure

Activists say SLAPPs are designed to cow critics with the threat of having to mount a long and costly legal defence.

"The biggest problem is psychological, knowing that it will drag on for who knows how long," Markovic said.

"It's stressful for the entire office."

Investigative Reporting Lab (IRL) in neighbouring North Macedonia has already gone through what BIRN and Markovic are now facing.

It was sued for defamation by the country's former deputy premier Kocho Angjushev, a businessman who was blacklisted for corruption by the US last year.

He sued only for symbolic damages of one euro. But the legal battle drained IRL.

Editor-in-chief Saska Cvetkovska said the real goal was to intimidate and hamstring them.

"We were spending most of our time on crisis management instead of doing our job as journalists. I was diagnosed with PTSD, severe burnout, and anxiety because of this," Cvetkovska told AFP.

Their ordeal ended in legal stalemate, with the court ruling that IRL was not a media outlet but an NGO, and should not have published such content.

The decision sparked protests and a furious reaction from Macedonian journalists.
Judges need training

Kocho Angjushev, North Macedonia's former deputy premier, sued the Investigative Reporting Lab for alleged defamation © HANS PUNZ / APA/AFP

Angjushev nearly won again last month when he and Sapic were nominated for a satirical "Obstructor of Transparency" award by the European Fund for the Balkans.

Instead Sapic shared the rather dubious honour with Tirana's former chief prosecutor Elizabeta Imeraj, who sued a journalist after he reported the threats he got for his coverage of her vetting process.

The mock contest is meant to highlight the SLAPP problem in the Balkans and prod the courts into action.

"Neither prosecutors nor judges recognise SLAPP in legal proceedings," said Uros Jovanovic of Civic Initiatives, one of the NGOs that organised the competition.

"We have something in our legislation called abuse of rights. This is something we have recognised as a way for judges to identify SLAPP," Jovanovic added, but up to now they have not been using it to counter malicious lawsuits.

Reporters Without Borders has urged Balkan nations to adopt EU guidelines on the issue.

These "include monitoring of SLAPPs, their early dismissal in court, sanctions against their authors, as well as compensation and assistance for the victims.

"Training of judges is also very important as is their independence," RSF's Szalai told AFP.

But if the experience of Croatia, the only Balkan nation to have so far been admitted into the European Union, is anything to go by, the road may be long.

The Croatian Journalists' Association (HND) has counted several hundred lawsuits brought against reporters there.

© 2024 AFP

34 US Lawmakers Urge Biden to Pardon Steven Donziger

"We are deeply concerned about the chilling effect this case will have on all advocates working on behalf of other frontline communities, victims of human rights violations, and those seeking environmental justice."

Steven Donziger speaks at a "Free Donziger" rally held in front of the Manhattan Court House in New York City on October 1, 2021.
(Photo: Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Dec 11, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

More than 30 Democratic members of Congress on Wednesday called on outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden to pardon environmental and human rights lawyer Steven Donziger, who endured nearly 1,000 days in prison and house arrest after successfully representing Ecuadoreans harmed by Big Oil's pollution of the Amazon rainforest.

In a letter to Biden led by Rep. Jim McGovern, (D-Mass.), 33 House and Senate Democrats plus Independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont noted the "troubling legal irregularities" in Donziger's case, which have been "criticized as unconstitutional or illegal by three federal judges, 68 Nobel laureates, and five high-level jurists from the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention of the United Nations."


Donziger represented a group of Ecuadorean farmers and Indigenous people in a 1990s lawsuit against Texaco—which was later acquired by Chevron—over the oil company's deliberate dumping of billions of gallons of carcinogenic waste into the Amazon. He played a key role in winning a $9.5 billion settlement against Chevron in Ecuadorian courts.



However, Chevron fought Donziger in the U.S. court system, and when the attorney refused to disclose privileged client information to the company, federal District Judge Lewis Kaplan—who was invested in Chevron—held him in misdemeanor contempt of court. Loretta Preska, Kaplan's handpicked judge to preside over Donziger's contempt trial, is affiliated with the Chevron-funded Federalist Society.

Donziger's case drew worldwide attention and solidarity, with human rights experts and free speech groups joining progressive U.S. lawmakers in demanding his release. He was released in April 2022 after 993 days in prison and house arrest.

"Donziger is the only lawyer in U.S. history to be subject to any period of detention on a misdemeanor contempt of court charge," the 34 lawmakers wrote. "We believe that the legal case against Mr. Donziger, as well as the excessively harsh nature of the punishment against him, are directly tied to his prior work against Chevron. We do not make this accusation lightly or without evidentiary support."

The legislators warned:

Notwithstanding the personal hardship, this unprecedented legal process has imposed on Mr. Donziger and his family, we are deeply concerned about the chilling effect this case will have on all advocates working on behalf of other frontline communities, victims of human rights violations, and those seeking environmental justice. Those who try to help vulnerable communities will feel as though tactics of intimidation—at the hands of powerful corporate interests, and, most troublingly, the U.S. courts—can succeed in stifling robust legal representation when it is needed most. This is a dangerous signal to send.

"Pardoning Mr. Donziger," the lawmakers added, "would send a powerful message to the world that billion-dollar corporations cannot act with impunity against lawyers and their clients who defend the public interest."

The lawmakers join more than 100 environmental and human rights groups that have urged Biden to pardon Donziger.



In an April opinion piece published by Common Dreams, Donziger contended that "I need this pardon because I am the only person in U.S. history to be privately prosecuted by a corporation."

"More specifically, the government (via a pro-corporate judge) gave a giant oil company (Chevron) the power to prosecute and lock up its leading critic," he continued. "As a result of this unprecedented and frightening private prosecution, I still cannot travel out of the country and I have been prohibited from meeting with clients I have represented for over three decades. Nor can I practice law, maintain a bank account, or earn a livelihood."

"No matter where one stands on the political spectrum," Donziger added, "we should all be able to agree that what happened to me should not happen to anybody in any country that adheres to the rule of law."

The appeal for a Donziger pardon comes amid a wave of eleventh-hour pleas from lawmakers for Biden to grant clemency to figures ranging from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden to Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier—often described as the nation's longest-jailed political prisoner—and federal death row inmates including Billie Jerome Allen, who advocates say was wrongly convicted of murder.

Once Again, Tom Cotton Blocks Bill to Shield Journalists From Betraying Sources


Responding to the GOP senator's latest thwarting of the PRESS Act, Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden vowed to "keep trying to get this bill across the finish line" before Republicans take control of the Senate next month.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) walks through the Senate subway after a vote in the U.S. Capitol on January 9, 2024.
(Photo: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Dec 10, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

Republican U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas on Tuesday again blocked the passage of House-approved bipartisan legislation meant to shield journalists and telecommunications companies from being compelled to disclose sources and other information to federal authorities.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) brought the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying (PRESS) Act—which would prohibit the federal government from forcing journalists and telecom companies to disclose certain information, with exceptions for terroristic or violent threats—for a unanimous consent vote.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) argued Tuesday that passing the PRESS Act is "more important now than ever before when we've heard some in the previous administration talk about going after the press in one way or another," a reference to Republican President-elect Donald Trump's threats to jail journalists who refuse to reveal the sources of leaks. Trump, who has referred to the press as the "enemy of the people," repeatedly urged Senate Republicans to "kill this bill."


Cotton, who blocked a vote on the legislation in December 2022, again objected to the bill, a move that thwarted its speedy passage. The Republican called the legislation a "threat to national security" and "the biggest giveaway to the liberal press in American history."




The advocacy group Defending Rights and Dissent lamented that "Congress has abdicated their responsibility to take substantive steps to protect the constitutional right to a free press."


However, Seth Stern, director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, noted ways in which Senate Democrats can still pass the PRESS Act before Republicans gain control of the upper chamber next month:
Senate Democrats had all year to move this bipartisan bill and now time is running out. Leader Schumer needs to get the PRESS Act into law—whether by attaching it to a year-end legislative package or bringing it to the floor on its own—even if it means shortening lawmakers' holiday break. Hopefully, today was a preview of more meaningful action to come.

Responding to Tuesday's setback, Wyden vowed, "I'm not taking my foot off the gas."

"I'll keep trying to get this bill across the finish line to write much-needed protections for journalists and their sources into black letter law," he added.

Arrests of US Journalists Surged in 2024 Amid Crackdown on Gaza Protests

Police use of "catch-and-release" tactics is particularly worrying for press freedom advocates, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.


Police arrest New York students protesting Israel's assault on Gaza on April 22, 2024.

(Photo: Fatih Aktas/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Eloise Goldsmith
Dec 12, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

Arrests and detainments of journalists in the United States surged in 2024 compared to the year prior, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a project of the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

The tracker reports that journalists were arrested or detained by police at least 48 times this year—eclipsing the number of arrests that took place in the previous two years combined, and constituting the third highest number of yearly arrests and detentions since the project began cataloging press freedom violations in 2017. 2020, however, still stands as far and away the year with the most arrests and detentions.

The 48 arrests and detentions this year is also part of a larger list of "press freedom incidents" that the tracker documents, including things like equipment damage, equipment seizure, and assault.

While a year with a high number of protests typically leads to more arrests, "it was protests in response to the Israel-Gaza war that caused this year's uptick," according to the tracker.

The vast majority of the arrests and detainments out of the total 48 were linked to these sorts of demonstrations, and it was protests at Columbia University's Manhattan campus that were the site of this year's largest detainment of journalists.

The report also recounts the story of Roni Jacobson, a freelance reporter whose experience on the last day of 2023 was a harbinger of press freedom incidents to come in 2024. Jacobson was on assignment to cover a pro-Palestinian demonstration for the New York Daily News on December 31, 2023 when she was told to leave by police because she didn't have city-issued press credentials with her. She recounted that she accidentally bumped into an officer and was arrested. She was held overnight at a precinct and then released after the charges against her, which included disorderly conduct, were dropped.

Even five arrests that the tracker deems "election-related" took place at protests that were "at least partially if not entirely focused on the Israel-Gaza war." Three of those election-related arrests took place at protests happening around the Democratic National Convention in August.

One police force in particular bears responsibility for this year's crackdown: Nearly 50% of the arrests of journalists this year were at the hands of the New York Police Department (NYPD). Many of those taken into custody had their charges dropped quickly, but the tracker notes that the NYPD's use of "catch-and-release" tactics was particularly worrying to press freedom advocates.

Two photojournalists, Josh Pacheco and Olga Federova, were detained four times this year in both New York City and Chicago while photographing protests. They were both "assaulted and arrested and [had] their equipment damaged" while documenting police clearing a student encampment at Manhattan's Fashion Institute of Technology; however, they were released the next day and told their arrests had been voided.

"While [we are] glad that some common sense prevailed by the NYPD not charging these two photographers with any crime, we are very concerned that they are perfecting 'catch-and-release' to an art form,” Mickey Osterreicher, general counsel for the National Press Photographers Association, told the tracker.

"The fact that they took two photojournalists off the street, preventing them from making any more images or transmitting the ones they already had on a matter of extreme public concern, is very disturbing," he said.

Besides covering protests, 2024 also saw the continued practice of "criminally charging journalists for standard journalistic practices," according to the tracker. For example, one investigative journalist in Los Angeles was repeatedly threatened with arrest while attempting to cover a homeless encampment sweep in the city, and then was detained in October, though he was let go without charges.

Reports Target Israeli Army for 'Unprecedented Massacre' of Gaza Journalists

"In Gaza, the scale of the tragedy is incomprehensible," wrote Thibaut Bruttin, director general of Reporters Without Borders.


Al Jazeera correspondent Wael Dahdouh mourns his son and another journalist killed by an Israeli airstrike on January 7, 2024 in Rafah, Gaza.
(Photo: Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images

Eloise Goldsmith
Dec 12, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

Reports released this week from two organizations that advocate for journalists underscore just how deadly Gaza has become for media workers.

Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) 2024 roundup, which was published Thursday, found that at least 54 journalists were killed on the job or in connection with their work this year, and 18 of them were killed by Israeli armed forces (16 in Palestine, and two in Lebanon).

The organization has also filed four complaints with the International Criminal Court "for war crimes committed by the Israeli army against journalists," according to the roundup, which includes stats from January 1 through December 1.

"In Gaza, the scale of the tragedy is incomprehensible," wrote Thibaut Bruttin, director general of RSF, in the introduction to the report. Since October 2023, 145 journalists have been killed in Gaza, "including at least 35 who were very likely targeted or killed while working."

Bruttin added that "many of these reporters were clearly identifiable as journalists and protected by this status, yet they were shot or killed in Israeli strikes that blatantly disregarded international law. This was compounded by a deliberate media blackout and a block on foreign journalists entering the strip."

When counting the number of journalists killed by the Israeli army since October 2023 in both Gaza and Lebanon, the tally comes to 155—"an unprecedented massacre," according to the roundup.

Multiple journalists were also killed in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mexico, Sudan, Myanmar, Colombia, and Ukraine, according to the report, and hundreds more were detained and are now behind bars in countries including Israel, China, and Russia.

Meanwhile, in a statement released Thursday, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) announced that at least 139 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed since the war in Gaza began in 2023, and in a statement released Wednesday, IFJ announced that 104 journalists had perished worldwide this year (which includes deaths from January 1 through December 10). IFJ's number for all of 2024 appears to be higher than RSF because RSF is only counting deaths that occurred "on the job or in connection with their work."

IFJ lists out each of the slain journalists in its 139 count, which includes the journalist Hamza Al-Dahdouh, the son of Al Jazeera's Gaza bureau chief, Wael Al-Dahdouh, who was killed with journalist Mustafa Thuraya when Israeli forces targeted their car while they were in northern Rafah in January 2024.

ZIONIST  LAND THIEVERY

New Syrian gov't blasts Israel's seizure of Mount Hermon outpost


A general view of the Israeli village of Gahjar on left and the Lebanese village of Khiam on right is shown from Mount Hermon, the strategic outpost at the crossroads between Lebanon, Syria, and Israel. Israel's seizure of the site in the wake of the Assad regime's collapse drew condemnation from Syria's new government on Friday. File Photo by Atef Safadi/EPA-EFE

Dec. 14 (UPI) -- Syria's interim government has asked the United Nations to intervene in Israel's occupation of a key site in the strategically important Golan Heights following the collapse of the regime of former strongman leader Bashar al-Assad.

In a pair of letters sent Friday to the U.N. Security Council and Secretary-General António Guterres, Syria's permanent representative to the U.N., Qusay Al-Dahak, urged the world body to force Israel to relinquish an abandoned position overlooking the city of Damascus, which it seized earlier this week.

The letters are believed to be the first communications between the new de facto authorities in Syria, led by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, and the United Nations.

Dahak's appeals to the U.N. were posted onto the X social media platform Friday by Syrian Kurdish journalist Sulaiman Ahmed. In the documents, the ambassador calls Israel's seizure of the Mount Hermon outpost -- which sits on the border between Syria, Lebanon and a U.N.-enforced demilitarized zone -- to be illegal and a violation of a 1974 disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria.

"At a time when the Syrian Arab Republic is witnessing a new phase in its history in which its people aspire to establish a state of freedom, equality and the rule of law and to realize their hopes for prosperity and stability, the Israeli occupation army has incursed into additional areas of Syrian territory in Mount Hermon and Quneitra Governorate," he wrote.

Syria's new leadership, Dahak said, "condemns in the strongest terms this Israeli aggression," which he characterized as "a grave violation" of the 1974 disengagement agreement and said requires "firm and immediate measures to compel Israel to immediately cease its ongoing attacks on Syrian territory."

In the hours after HTS-led rebel forces overthrew the Assad regime on Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces moved in to seize the Mount Hermon outpost, which offers commanding views of Damascus as well as Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, where Hezbollah militants have long held control.

The outpost had been patrolled by U.N. peacekeepers.

Guterres this week stressed that the 1974 Disengagement of Forces Agreement "remains in force" and must be upheld, "including by ending all unauthorized presence in the area of separation and refraining from any action that would undermine the ceasefire and stability in Golan."

However, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the overthrow of the Assad regime had rendered the 1974 deal moot and declared that Israel would occupy the buffer zone as a "temporary defensive position until a suitable arrangement is found."

"If we can establish neighborly relations and peaceful relations with the new forces emerging in Syria, that's our desire. But if we do not, we will do whatever it takes to defend the State of Israel and the border of Israel," he told reporters.

UN Chief Warns of Israel's Syria Invasion and Land Seizures

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres stressed the "urgent need" for Israel to "de-escalate violence on all fronts."


Israeli tanks invading Syria are seen near al-Qunaitra on December 11, 2024.
(Photo: Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Dec 12, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Thursday that he is "deeply concerned" by Israel's "recent and extensive violations of Syria's sovereignty and territorial integrity," including a ground invasion and airstrikes carried out by the Israel Defense Forces in the war-torn Mideastern nation.

Guterres "is particularly concerned over the hundreds of Israeli airstrikes on several locations in Syria" and has stressed the "urgent need to de-escalate violence on all fronts throughout the country," said U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.

Israel claims its invasion and bombardment of Syria—which come as the United States and Turkey have also violated Syrian sovereignty with air and ground attacks—are meant to create a security buffer along the countries' shared border in the wake of last week's fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and amid the IDF's ongoing assault on Gaza, which has killed or wounded more than 162,000 Palestinians and is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case.

While Israel argues that its invasion of Syria does not violate a 1974 armistice agreement between the two countries because the Assad dynasty no longer rules the neighboring nation, Dujarric said Guterres maintains that Israel must uphold its obligations under the deal, "including by ending all unauthorized presence in the area of separation and refraining from any action that would undermine the cease-fire and stability in Golan."




Israel conquered the western two-thirds of the Golan Heights in 1967 and has illegally occupied it ever since, annexing the seized lands in 1981.

Other countries including France, Russia, and Saudi Arabia have criticized Israel's invasion, while the United States defended the move.

"The Syrian army abandoned its positions in the area... which potentially creates a vacuum that could have been filled by terrorist organizations," U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said at a press briefing earlier this week. "Israel has said that these actions are temporary to defend its borders. These are not permanent actions... We support all sides upholding the 1974 disengagement agreement."

'This Needs to Stop': UN Envoy Condemns Israeli Military's Advance on Syria


"What we are seeing is a violation of the disengagement agreement from 1974," said Geir Pedersen, the United Nations' special envoy to Syria.

Israeli military vehicles advance through a fence in the Israel-annexed Golan Heights on December 10, 2024. (Photo by JALAA MAREY/AFP via Getty Images)
(Photo: Jalaa Marey/AFP via Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Dec 10, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

The United Nations' special envoy to Syria said Tuesday that the Israeli military's rapid move to seize Syrian territory following the Assad government's collapse is a grave violation of a decades-old agreement that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims is now dead.

"What we are seeing is a violation of the disengagement agreement from 1974, so we will obviously, with our colleagues in New York, follow this extremely closely in the hours and days ahead," Geir Pedersen said at a media briefing in Geneva.

Hours earlier, Pedersen told Zeteo's Mehdi Hasan that "this needs to stop," referring to Israel's further encroachment on the occupied and illegally annexed Golan Heights.


"This is a very serious issue," Pedersen said, rejecting Netanyahu's assertion that the 1974 agreement is null. "Let's not start playing with an extremely important part of the peace structure that has been in place."

Netanyahu, who took the stand for the first time Tuesday in his long-running corruption trial, made clear in the wake of Assad's fall that he views developments in Syria as advantageous for Israel, writing on social media that "the collapse of the Syrian regime is a direct result of the severe blows with which we have struck Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran."

The prime minister also thanked U.S. President-elect Donald Trump for "acceding to my request to recognize Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights, in 2019," adding that the occupied territory "will be an inseparable part of the state of Israel forever."

The Washington Postreported late Monday that "within hours of rebels taking control of Syria's capital, Israel moved to seize military posts in that country’s south, sending its troops across the border for the first time since the official end of the Yom Kippur War in 1974."

"Israeli officials defended the move as limited in scope, aimed at preventing rebels or other local militias from using abandoned Syrian military equipment to target Israel or the Golan Heights, an area occupied by Israel after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war," the Post added. "On Monday, more troops could be seen outside this Druze village adjacent to the border, preparing to cross."

The United States, Israel's main ally and arms supplier, also defended the Israeli military's actions, with a State Department spokesman telling reporters Monday that "every country, I think, would be worried about a possible vacuum that could be filled by terrorist organizations on its border, especially in volatile times, as we obviously are in right now in Syria."

On Tuesday, Israel denied reports that its tanks reached a point roughly 16 miles from the Syrian capital as it continued to bomb Syrian army bases.

"Regional security sources and officers within the now fallen Syrian army described Tuesday morning's airstrikes as the heaviest yet, hitting military installations and airbases across Syria, destroying dozens of helicopters and jets, as well as Republican Guard assets in and around Damascus," Reutersreported. The U.S. also bombed dozens of targets in Syria in the aftermath of Assad's fall.

The governments of Iraq, Qatar, Iran, and Saudi Arabia have each denounced the Israeli military's seizure of Syrian land, with Qatar's foreign ministry slamming the move as "a dangerous development and a blatant attack on Syria's sovereignty and unity as well as a flagrant violation of international law."

"The policy of imposing a fait accompli pursued by the Israeli occupation, including its attempts to occupy Syrian territories, will lead the region to further violence and tension," the foreign ministry warned.

IDF Gaza Bombing 'By Far the Most Intense, Destructive, and Fatal' Airwars Has Analyzed

"Save this for the next time you hear that the Israeli military does everything possible to avoid harming civilians, and that the level of civilian harm in Gaza is less than other comparable conflicts," said one advocate.


An aerial photography taken October 10, 2023 shows a neighborhood of Gaza City destroyed by Israeli bombardment.
(Photo: Al Araby/Wikimedia Commons)

Brett Wilkins
Dec 13, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

The world's foremost monitor of civilian harm caused by aerial bombardment published a report Thursday calling the first 25 days of Israel's ongoing U.S.-backed annihilation of Gaza the worst assault on noncombatants it has ever seen.

U.K.-based Airwars—which over its decadelong existence has meticulously and painstakingly documented civilian casualties in various campaigns of the U.S.-led so-called War on Terror, Russia's bombing of Ukraine and Syria, Turkish attacks on Syria and Iraq, and other conflicts—published a "patterns of harm analysis" examining the first few weeks of Israel's retaliatory assault on Gaza following the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023.

"By almost every metric, the harm to civilians from the first month of the Israeli campaign in Gaza is incomparable with any 21st century air campaign," Airwars said in a summary of the report. "It is by far the most intense, destructive, and fatal conflict for civilians that Airwars has ever documented."

Key findings include:

At least 5,139 civilians were killed in Gaza in 25 days in October 2023, nearly four times more civilians reported killed in a single month than in any conflict Airwars has documented since it was established in 2014;

In October 2023 alone, Airwars documented at least 65 incidents in which a minimum of 20 civilians were killed in a particular incident, nearly triple the number of such high-fatality incidents that Airwars has documented within any comparable timeframe;
Over the course of 25 days, Airwars recorded a minimum of 1,900 children killed by Israeli military action in Gaza, nearly seven times higher than even the most deadly month for children previously recorded by Airwars;

Families were killed together in unprecedented numbers, and in their homes, with more than 9 out of 10 women and children killed in residential buildings; and
On average, when civilians were killed alongside family members, at least 15 family members were killed—higher than any other conflict documented by Airwars.

"The international community has raised grave concern about Israeli military practice and the unprecedented scale of civilian harm," the report notes. "The United Nations has repeatedly warned that Israel is breaching international law and even United States President Joe Biden, a staunch ally of Israel, eventually labeled the military response 'over the top.' In January 2024, South Africa brought a claim of genocide against Israel at the International Court of Justice."

As of Friday, Gaza officials say that at least 44,875 Palestinians have been killed and 106,464 have been wounded in Gaza. At least 11,000 others are missing and believed to be dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed-out buildings.

Throughout the new report, Airwars compares Israel's bombardment of Gaza to two other campaigns it has extensively analyzed, the battles for Mosul, Iraq and Raqqa, Syria during the U.S.-led coalition war against the so-called Islamic State. Airwars concluded that more Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli forces during the first 25 days of the Gaza campaign than were slain in Raqqa during the entire four-month period studied and the deadliest month in Mosul—combined.

The report also pushes back on claims that Israel "does everything possible to avoid harming civilians," and that "the level of civilian harm in Gaza is broadly consistent with, and even favorable to, other comparable conflicts in recent decades."


"The manner in which Israel has conducted the war in Gaza may signal the development of a concerning new norm: a way of conducting air campaigns with a greater frequency of strikes, a greater intensity of damage, and a higher threshold of acceptance for civilian harm than ever seen before," the authors wrote.

Airwars leaves readers with the ominous prospect that, while it is "expecting the overall trends to remain, magnitudes of difference—where measures of civilian harm in Gaza outpace those from previously documented conflicts—are expected to grow."

THANTOS PSYCHOSIS 

Study Finds 96% of Gaza Children Fear Imminent Death—And Half Want to Die


"The world's failure to protect Gaza's children is a moral failing on a monumental scale," said one advocate.


A Palestinian girl is in shock after surviving an Israeli bombing of an UNRWA school in the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza, Palestine on July 14, 2024.
(Photo: Salama Nabeel Eaid Younes/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Dec 13, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

Amid a relentless Israeli onslaught that has wrought monumental physical and psychological destruction in Gaza, a report published this week revealed that nearly all children in the embattled Palestinian enclave believe their death is imminent—and nearly half of them want to die.

The Gaza-based Community Training Center for Crisis Management, supported by War Child Alliance, surveyed more than 500 Palestinian children in Gaza last June and found that 96% of them fear imminent death, 92% are not accepting of reality, 79% suffer from nightmares, 77% avoid discussing traumatic events, 73% display signs of aggression, 49% wish to die because of the war, and many more "show signs of withdrawal and severe anxiety, alongside a pervasive sense of hopelessness."

"This report lays bare that Gaza is one of the most horrifying places in the world to be a child," War Child U.K. CEO Helen Pattinson said in a statement. "Alongside the leveling of hospitals, schools, and homes, a trail of psychological destruction has caused wounds unseen but no less destructive on children who hold no responsibility for this war."



Israel's 434-day assault on Gaza—which is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case—has left tens of thousands of children dead, maimed, missing, or orphaned and hundreds of thousands more forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened. Doctors and others including volunteers from the United States have documented many cases in which they've concluded Israeli snipers and other troops have deliberately shot children in the head and chest.

"The harm caused to Gaza's children goes beyond statistics. Behind every number is a name, a life, and a future that is being extinguished before it can even begin," Iain Overton, executive director of the U.K.-based group Action on Armed Violence, said in response to the new report.

"The world's failure to protect Gaza's children is a moral failing on a monumental scale," he added. "We must act decisively and compassionately to ensure that these children's voices are heard and their futures protected."

In October, the U.K.-based charity Oxfam International said that Israel's yearlong assault on Gaza has been the deadliest year of conflict for women and children anywhere in the world over the past two decades. A year ago, the United Nations Children's Fund called Gaza "the world's most dangerous place to be a child." Earlier this year, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres for the first time added Israel to his so-called "List of Shame" of countries that kill and injure children during wars and other armed conflicts.

"The international community must act now before the child mental health catastrophe we are witnessing embeds itself into multi-generational trauma, the consequences of which the region will be dealing with for decades to come," Pattinson stressed. "A cease-fire must be the immediate first step to allow War Child and other agencies to effectively respond to the intense psychological damage children are experiencing."

Addressing the complicity of allies like the United States, Germany, and Britain, who provide weapons and diplomatic cover for Israel, progressive U.K. parliamentarian Jeremy Corbyn wrote on social media in response to the new report, "Every single supplier of arms to Israel has blood on its hands—and the world will never forgive them."

77 House Dems Call for 'Full Assessment' of Israeli Compliance With US Law


Lawmakers told the Biden administration they are "deeply troubled by the continued level of civilian casualties and humanitarian suffering in Gaza."

Palestinians carrying empty pots line up to receive meals distributed by charity organizations in Khan Younis, Gaza on December 13, 2024.
(Photo: Doaa Albaz/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Jessica Corbett
Dec 13, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

As Israel continues to decimate the Gaza Strip with American weapons, 77 Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives this week demanded that the Biden administration "provide a full assessment of the status of Israel's compliance with all relevant U.S. policies and laws, including National Security Memorandum 20 (NSM-20) and Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act."

Reps. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.), and Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.) spearheaded the Thursday letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, with less than six weeks left in President Joe Biden's term.

Since Biden issued NSM-20 in February, his administration has repeatedly accepted the Israel government's assurances about the use of U.S. weapons, despite reports from journalists and human rights groups about how they have helped Israeli forces slaughter at least 44,875 Palestinians and injure another 106,454 people in the besieged enclave over the past 14 months.

"Our concerns remain urgent and largely unresolved, including arbitrary restrictions on humanitarian aid and insufficient delivery routes."


House Democrats' letter begins by declaring support for "Israel's right to self-defense," denouncing the Hamas-led October 2023 attack, and endorsing the Biden administration's efforts "to broker a bilateral cease-fire that includes the release of hostages," noting the deal recently negotiated for the Israeli government and the Lebanese group Hezbollah.

"Further, we condemn the unprecedented Iranian attacks against Israel launched on April 13, 2024, and October 1, 2024," the letter states, declining to mention the Israeli actions that led to those responses. "We must continue to avoid a major regional conflict—and we welcome the concerted diplomatic efforts by the U.S. and our allies to prevent further escalation."

"We are also deeply troubled by the continued level of civilian casualties and humanitarian suffering in Gaza," the lawmakers wrote, citing the administration's October 13 letter imposing a 30-day deadline for Israel to improve humanitarian conditions in Palestinian territory. "That deadline has expired, and while some progress has been made, we believe the Israeli government has not yet fulfilled the requirements outlined in your letter."

Asked during a November 12 press conference if the Israeli government has met the administration's demands, State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said that "we have not made an assessment that they are in violation of U.S. law."

Shortly after that, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) forced votes on resolutions to block the sale of 120mm tank rounds, 120mm high-explosive mortar rounds, and Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs) to Israel, but they didn't pass.

Progressives and Democrats in Congress have been sounding the alarm about U.S. government complicity in Israel's armed assault and starvation campaign—which have led to an ongoing genocide case at the International Court of Justice—to varying degrees since October 2023, including with a May letter led by Crow and Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.) and signed by 85 others.


Citing that letter on Thursday, the 77 House Democrats wrote that "our concerns remain urgent and largely unresolved, including arbitrary restrictions on humanitarian aid and insufficient delivery routes, among others. As a result, Gaza's civilian population is facing dire famine."

"We believe further administrative action must be taken to ensure Israel upholds the assurances it provided in March 2024 to facilitate, and not directly or indirectly obstruct, U.S. humanitarian assistance," the letter concludes. "We remain committed to a negotiated solution that can bring an end to the fighting, free the remaining hostages, surge humanitarian aid, and lay the groundwork to rebuild Gaza with a legitimate Palestinian governing body. We thank you and the administration for its ongoing work to achieve those shared goals."

Amnesty Urges War Crimes Probe of 'Indiscriminate' Israeli Attacks on Lebanon


"The latest evidence of unlawful airstrikes during Israel's most recent offensive in Lebanon underscores the urgent need for all states, especially the United States, to suspend arms transfers," said one campaigner.

A wounded man points to photos of civilians killed during an October 16, 2024 Israeli airstrike on the village of Aitou, Lebanon.
(Photo: Fathi al-Masri/AFP via Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Dec 12, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

Amnesty International on Thursday called for a war crimes investigation into recent Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon that killed dozens of civilians, as well as a suspension of arms transfers to Israel as it attacks Gaza, the West Bank, and Syria.

In a briefing paper titled The Sky Rained Missiles, Amnesty "documented four illustrative cases in which unlawful Israeli strikes killed at least 49 civilians" in Lebanon in September and October amid an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) campaign of invasion and bombardment that Lebanese officials say has killed or wounded more than 20,000 people.

"Amnesty International found that Israeli forces unlawfully struck residential buildings in the village of al-Ain in northern Bekaa on September 29, the village of Aitou in northern Lebanon on October 14, and in Baalbeck city on October 21," the rights group said. "Israeli forces also unlawfully attacked the municipal headquarters in Nabatieh in southern Lebanon on October 16."

Erika Guevara Rosas, Amnesty's senior director for research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns, said in a statement that "these four attacks are emblematic of Israel's shocking disregard for civilian lives in Lebanon and their willingness to flout international law."



The September 29 attack "destroyed the house of the Syrian al-Shaar family, killing all nine members of the family who were sleeping inside," the report states.

"This is a civilian house, there is no military target in it whatsoever," village mukhtar, or leader, Youssef Jaafar told Amnesty. "It is full of kids. This family is well-known in town."

On October 16, Israel bombed the Nabatieh municipal complex, killing Mayor Ahmad Khalil and 10 other people.

"The airstrike took place without warning, just as the municipality's crisis unit was meeting to coordinate deliveries of aid, including food, water, and medicine, to residents and internally displaced people who had fled bombardment in other parts of southern Lebanon," Amnesty said, adding that there was no apparent military target in the immediate area.

In the deadliest single strike detailed in the Amnesty report, IDF bombardment believed to be targeting a suspected Hezbollah member killed 23 civilians forcibly displaced from southern Lebanon in Aitou on October 14.

"The youngest casualty was Aline, a 5-month-old baby who was flung from the house into a pickup truck nearby and was found by rescue workers the day after the strike," Amnesty said.

Survivor Jinane Hijazi told Amnesty: "I've lost everything; my entire family, my parents, my siblings, my daughter. I wish I had died that day too."

As the report notes:

A fragment of the munition found at the site of the attack was analyzed by an Amnesty International weapons expert and based upon its size, shape, and the scalloped edges of the heavy metal casing, identified as most likely a MK-80 series aerial bomb, which would mean it was at least a 500-pound bomb. The United States is the primary supplier of these types of munitions to Israel.

"The means and method of this attack on a house full of civilians likely would make this an indiscriminate attack and it also may have been disproportionate given the presence of a large number of civilians at the time of the strike," Amnesty stressed. "It should be investigated as a war crime."

The October 21 strike destroyed a building housing 13 members of the Othman family, killing two women and four children and wounding seven others.

"My son woke me up; he was thirsty and wanted to drink. I gave him water and he went back to sleep, hugging his brother," survivor Fatima Drai—who lost her two sons Hassan, 5, and Hussein, 3, in the attack—told Amnesty.

"When he hugged his brother, I smiled and thought, I'll tell his father how our son is when he comes back," she added. "I went to pray, and then everything around me exploded. A gas canister exploded, burning my feet, and within seconds, it consumed my kids' room."

Guevara Rosas said: "These attacks must be investigated as war crimes. The Lebanese government must urgently call for a special session at the U.N. Human Rights Council to establish an independent investigative mechanism into the alleged violations and crimes committed by all parties in this conflict. It must also grant the International Criminal Court jurisdiction over Rome Statute crimes committed on Lebanese territory."

"Israel has an appalling track record of carrying out unlawful airstrikes in Gaza and past wars in Lebanon taking a devastating toll on civilians."

Last month, the court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in connection with Israel's 433-day Gaza onslaught, which has left more than 162,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing in the embattled enclave.

The tribunal also issued a warrant for the arrest of Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri for alleged crimes committed during and after the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, in which more than 1,100 people were killed and over 240 others were kidnapped.

Meanwhile, the International Court of Justice is weighing a genocide case brought by South Africa against Israel. Last week, Amnesty published a report accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza.


The United States—which provides Israel with tens of billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic cover—has also been accused of complicity in Israeli war crimes in Palestine and Lebanon.


"Israel has an appalling track record of carrying out unlawful airstrikes in Gaza and past wars in Lebanon taking a devastating toll on civilians," Guevara Rosas said. "The latest evidence of unlawful air strikes during Israel's most recent offensive in Lebanon underscores the urgent need for all states, especially the United States, to suspend arms transfers to Israel due to the risk they will be used to commit serious violations of international humanitarian law."